Suicides teaches a lesson. It is a lesson that will teach you.

“Let this be a lesson for people who box in other people’s affairs.”

“You will know, after I am gone, that I spoke the truth.”

< § >

—
Berg, “Attempts at a Reconstruction from Suicide Notes.”

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Oh hello. You dozed. Only for a moment. Not long enough to miss much of anything. The fire is warm and the Cinnamon Cookies set your mind at ease and your body followed.

Please take the last sip from the Cup of dark tea with a leafy green sprig of mint. The tea in the Cup set upon the Saucer is cool now but that will be just what the doctor ordered for the crackling Fire and Cookies of spice and sugar and the salt of rich melted butter.

The Roast Beast is still ruminating low and slow on just how to slough itself off the bone of itself. Soon we will grate fresh Horseradish Root and pour Gravy straight from the Boat over soft stewed Potatoes.

Where did the story leave off? Nowhere to worry about being beyond suicide. Still time to finish the story.

That was a relief.

A calm settled over the room. The pause was comfortable as the last drop of minted black tea with heavy crystals of sugar swaying gently at the bottom drained down from the up-tipped Cup. The Cup settled back onto the Saucer with a pleasant clink. The pause continued. The Fire crackled. Two remained Cinnamon Cookies looked on.

To be honest, when you dozed I trailed off too, ruminating about a long time ago in what doesn’t really matter to the fullness of this tale truly told, and still I ruminated.

What was I ruminating about? What happened that I remember it so strongly? I really can’t say. I can’t remember, said suspiciously. It was so long ago.

What was so long ago?, awaited the room. What you were ruminating about or your ruminating about it?

So very long ago …

Now all eyes looked to this memory that filled the room but remained concealed to all but one.

A long long pause. Expectation.

Enough!, said gathering himself. We must get back to the real story. We can’t start in on tales that will tell us nothing at all. If I start doing that we will never get to the end. Now where was I?

A let down. Now a disappointed room. Discontentment sets in.

And so I proceed with the Story of Suicide Beyond Suicide, was the firm announcement and declaration colored by a question mark even unto itself because the room may not be with him now.

Er hum. Throat is cleared to show determination. I give you the Story of Suicide Beyond Suicide (continued).

No clapping.

Strong silence.

Hue of indifference descending.

I must insist. I am steadfast. I cannot be convinced otherwise. There is nothing that will deter me from the story that needs telling and nothing to tell me to tell a tale that has nothing to tell.

A pause for acquiescence.

The room becomes uproar. The Cup rattles in the Saucer. Cinnamon Cookies stare accusingly. Nous accusons, il diton! In the distance the Potatoes cry out in tenor while the Roast Beast in bass and the cry is one of protest. The Fire grows louder so as to crackle crackle crackle. The room has spoken.

Very well, but you should know that I am simply embarrassed at what I am about to tell you. Memories so meaningless that now threaten to detract from our already small story. You should reconsider. You should recant.

The room is stubborn. We demand, says the room in steadfastness. Tell us, says the silence.

Very well. I will oblige, said with a huff even as memories well up again. I will obey.

* * *

The story is one of scouting, began the story. But what is scouting? Scouting begins as a boy becoming a cub that scouts so that a cub becomes a scout that is a boy. From being a boy that becomes a cub you can stop being a cub while still being a boy so as to become a boy that scouts that is truly a boy. A genuine being and becoming.

The End.

Well, that was a fine memory. We now return to the Story of Suicide beyond Suicide. Here, let me hum a few bars to set the mood.

But humming could not begin before the room turned outraged. Outrage was the room and the true and iron mood of the room was outrage. The outrage was palpable. It abounded and filled the room. The Tea Cup rattled as the Fire blazed on. There is no going back, said the room. This was indeed a promise to keep.

A sigh. An acknowledgement. And so, let us begin again.

* * *

As a boy that is a cub that scouts you spend most of your time in a Den. This is your home you are told, led by the Leader of the Den who is not a boy nor a cub that scouts. My Den was Room 13 of Leaper Elementary School. Leaper Elementary School is located in a small town at the jointedness of lower flat farmland to the west and unfarmed fields become hill and forest become forested mountains and mountainous wilderness climbing up to rocky mountain peaks to the east.

A river runs down from the snowy bowl of one particular craggy height that had been hollowed out and filled up over time so it could drain out when the sun comes out and the snow begins to melt. Down the mountain the river tumbles into the valley racing along the outskirts of town and rolling on toward the sea.

The town was typical. At the entrance to town on the main road was a big sign with the words Welcome Stranger. For strangers and townsfolk alike there was one movie theater, two banks, a grocery story, a diner and small motel, and three churches, one synagogue, and a burned out mosque. Our town was also home to landmarks that define the character and complexion of the community, the most prominent being that now-rusted old factory along the white bank of the river.

When I was a young child I was told it was a place where salmon were hatched and cared for so they could eventually be released to frolic in wonder in the wild. It was comforting knowing that little baby fishes were swimming around in big pools safe and sound until the time came when they could live life free in nature. At the same time something didn’t seem right. Fish went in but they never came out again. Only a steady stream of old-timey freight trucks issued forth with old-timey wooden beds tied down tight with dark canvas covers. Painted on the side of each truck was a big fat smiling salmon. The salmon smiled broadly as it pushed itself up to the dinner table, napkin tied around his neck, knife and fork in hand. The table was set with a clean white cloth and a flickering candle and a small vase with flowers. A plate of what looked like a big fat steaming yet smiling salmon stared back at the smiling salmon. Just below the picture and painted in heavy red letters were the words, The Eager Salmon. It just didn’t make sense.

One afternoon I was playing at the bend of the dirt road leading up to the big mysterious building next to the river running past town. Freight trucks rumbled by one after the other. Just then another truck lurched around the bend and the canvas cover wasn’t fastened tight enough. The truck rounding the bend leaned heavy and hit a bump and bounced as heavy as it leaned. Out popped a tin can from the back. The can rolled and rolled along the road as the truck sped on. Rolling and rolling, and rolling and rolling, and rolling and rolling, the can rolled off the road to the very spot where I was playing and there it stopped at my feet with nothing left to roll for and happy just to lay down.

What could this be?, I said to myself.

To find out I bent down and picked up the tin can. On the side of the can there was a big fat smiling salmon pushed up to the dinner table, just as eager as that salmon on the side of the truck. The same exact eagerness. No more eagerness but no less eagerness either. Why?, I wondered. Why the eagerness in this same exact eager measure?

It was getting late so I dropped the can with the salmon that was eager into my little rucksack and headed off. That night in the quiet of the night lit only be a single kerosene lamp I pulled out my trusty pocketknife with one long blade and one short blade and a can opener and a cork screw. With the can opener I tore open the top of the tin can until the jagged lid grinned widely as the sign to lift the lid so as to to reveal what’s inside. In the kerosene light I peered down into the can only to discover …

* * *

For you see, the Eager Salmon was not a hatchery where baby salmon were born and nurtured until they were ready for the big wide world. The hatchery was actually a factory that was a trap, an ambush for fish on a long final journey from the ocean back to the headwaters in the great mountain lake where they were born in order to die. Along the way our town welcomed them with open arms and we truly meant it. Welcome!, we cried. But instead of a meal and a good night’s sleep our salmon were greeted by nets casted into the waters and concrete channels in the river that seemed to point upstream but diverted into the bowels of the factory. Day and night salmon spilled out onto long wooden tables with men from town clad in thick rubber boots and rubber aprons and rubber gloves and hair nets awaiting eagerly.

Each man held high at the ready a heavy wooden club poised to throw down lightening bolts. The club, made from the hardwood lignum vitae, was called the priest because a priest eagerly delivers the last and final blow to whomever. In this case it was a salmon. Originally, lignum vitae was so named because of the healing properties of the sap that oozes from the young tree. The sap could be folded into crushed herbs or flowers and applied as a balm. Mixed with strong tea lignum vitae was said to revive body and soul after a long sickness. As the tree ages the sap dries up and the wood is now simply made of iron. Down comes lignum vitae in the hands of the men. Bonk bonk on the head!, was the refrain belted out by the rubber-clad men at the long wooden tables. A bonk for you, said the men, and a bonk for you. Did you not get a bonk? Well, bonk bonk on the head.

Once bonked on the head on the long wooden table the salmon rushed to be first into the tin cans. Last one there … they would call out to each other from their slack and gaping mouths. We’ve come this far, only a few steps farther. That was the shared commitment and point of pride of The Eager Salmon. From can to truck within hours not days weeks months or years, was the motto of The Eager Salmon. And so out pour the freight trucks filled with newly packed cans packed tightly together under dark canvas covers barreling down the dusty road with salmon eager ready for equally eager customers throughout the land.

Everyone was eager it seemed, that is until just down river the town who for years had looked with envy at the eagerness of everyone up here simply built a brand new factory down there in the dead of night so as to welcome salmon earlier on their journey and with even greater hospitality. The factory was unveiled at dawn in the light of day with much fanfare to the shock of everyone up here. At the opening ceremony a gigantic golden curtain concealed a whole side of the building until, with speeches and a marching band and the pull of a cord, the curtain tumbled to reveal in bigger and redder letters, The Ecstatic Salmon. In this case, Salmon was plural for beneath the words was a whole family of salmon sitting around the dinner table talking animatedly about the day’s events, and not just some sad and solitary salmon sitting alone, and everyone was enjoying a tasty meal with plates piled high with …

Soon there were no more salmon to be eager about in our town and the factory closed and rusted and stood as a reminder of the good old days when salmon gladly and gratefully flung themselves onto those long wooden tables in the manner of a weary pilgrim on a long dusty journey finding comfort and rest and replenishment with a hot meal and a place to lay his weary head at the end of the day.

* * *

This is the town where Leaper Elementary School was in and where I went to school at. Leaper Elementary School, Home of the Leaps!, is a big square building with halls in the shape of a capital H. In the morning younger kids in the first grade and second grade and third grade flow in through the first set of doors at the top of first hall of the capital letter H and quickly funnel down into their classrooms on this side of school. There are 9 classrooms here. Rooms 1 and 2 and 3 are for first graders. Rooms 4 and 5 and 6 are for second graders. Rooms 7 and 8 and 9 are for third graders. In the year when I became a boy that is a cub that scouts I was in the third grade in Room 8. That was my classroom at Leaper Elementary School. Go Leaps!

At the start of the school day older kids in the fourth grade and fifth grade enter school through a completely different set of front doors at the top of the hall on the other side of the capital letter H and continue down to their classrooms on that side of school. Rooms 10 and 11 are for fourth graders and Rooms 12 and 13 are for fifth graders. In total there are 13 classrooms. The classrooms on that side are bigger because the kids are bigger.

The hall connecting the halls for classrooms and thus completing the capital letter H without which there would otherwise only be two unconnected capital letter I’s or two lower case l’s consists of two sets of doors each at the center of the hall. One set of doors at top opens up into the cafeteria, that great hall where all the kids eat during Lunch Time. The other set of doors opens down into the gymnasium where gym class happens once a week, with basketball hoops and pull-up bars and a floor with colorful lines marked out for all kinds of games like dodge ball and floor hockey, and bleachers that can be pulled out and a stage at one end for local concerts and traveling acts like Flamingo dancers.

The younger kids hall was decorated with colorful cutouts of letters of the English language alphabet and Arabic language numerals and a display case enclosed in glass and lit by an inner light. What was displayed in the display case changed every month with a new theme corresponding to the time of year. In October, for instance, autumnal leaves garnished a pyramid of cans of Eager Salmon as remembrance of the good old times. In November, browned leaves accompanied relics of the pilgrims who landed at Plymouth Rock, the relics being the ulna and radius of someone named Plim Grimbsby. Next to the relics was a heavy leather-bound book with an impressive buckle. This was the biggest book we had ever seen. How could you have that many words to say about anything?, we wondered.

The cover was black and cracked and dusty. Atop the front cover, in pressed in silver letters, appeared the following:

The True Life of Plim Grimbsby
by Glimby Primsbs

In December, blackened leaves stood for downy white snow on which was displayed what was purported to be a relic of Santa’s sleigh, the skull of a reindeer with a small plaque leaning against the skull that read: Prancer.

At the bell for First Lunch, which rings only on the younger kids side of school, the first and second and third grade kids file through the first hall of the capital letter H and travel halfway down the center hall turning left through open doors into the great hall of the cafeteria. The smell was always one of canned green beans and apple sauce and the dwindling stock of Eager Salmon, day after day. Then one day the lunch menu became one of boiled canned green beans with a side of apple sauce, and that was that.

Once First Lunch was over and the younger kids were back in the classroom the bell rings on the other side of the school for Second Lunch. This is the lunch period for the older kids, but we can hear here the faint ring of the bell on the younger kids side of school. This is when the big kids awaken and rumble out of their classrooms and pour down the hall and burst into the cafeteria and devour food and guzzle milk from little cartons and then drag themselves back through the hall to their classrooms. We could hear it all.

The truth is that for younger kids the big kids hall was a place of mystery and a source of terror. The big kids hall was forbidden territory. We never went more than halfway down the center hall for First Lunch or gym class, and always as a class and always in a straight line and always shepherded and always marching, and we absolutely never made it to the other end of center hall even to peek around the corner to see what was in the big kids hall or to see the big kids in their natural habitat. How was it the same and how was it different from ours? What was it like to be in it? What would big kids do to us if they caught us in the big kids hall where we didn’t belong? It was simply too much to even think. And so we stayed in our hall, the younger kids hall, where it was safe and secure.

At the end of the school day the bell rings twice throughout school and the younger kids line up and march out of their classrooms down the younger kids hall and out the front doors they came in through in the morning. Another day another dollar. The cycle is complete. Except that at the beginning of my third grade year I was a boy who became a cub that scouts and everything changed.

The Wolf Cub Scout Book explains to you that to be a boy that is a cub that scouts is to be a scout that is a cub that is a wolf that is a boy of at least 8 years of age and having completed the second grade. This means that by the time I reached third grade while not being a wolf or a cub or a scout to begin the school year but after finger printing and a thorough background check I was ready to become a wolf that is a cub that scouts as a boy.

The entry point is in the manner of a wolf that is a cub that is a wolf almost by definition except that being a boy that becomes a wolf that is a cub that is really a boy is not merely definitional. Scouting as being a boy that becomes a cub that is a wolf that scouts does not merely happen to you. You must choose to become and then become a scout that is a cub that is a wolf. And so scouting does not merely happen to you. Scouting happens unto itself. Scouting is enhappening. Being that becomes so that one truly is.

The first moment of becoming a scout that is a cub is the uniform. This is the not without which of being what you have become. For those who do not know what a wolf that is a cub that is a scout looks like picture the U.S. Calvary in navy blue uniforms with yellow neckerchiefs riding the Dakota planes or crossing Monument Valley to protect settlers by hunting down those savage Indians atop horses as depicted in films like She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) and The Searchers (1956), directed by John Ford and starring Mr. John Wayne.

Like a scout that is a cub, Mr. Wayne’s dark blue cavalry uniform bears patches and insignia indicating what he is, where he comes from, and what he belongs to, and his yellow neckerchief is worn around his neck with the tails draped dashingly down his manly chest and the large triangle unfurled behind in a dangerous manner. This is what a scout that is a wolf that is a cub looks like except these are 8 year old boys and so the effect varies accordingly. Part of the variance is that U.S. Cavalrymen like John Wayne also wore dark blue woolen pants with yellow stripes down the pant legs and high black boots shined to a luster or dusty from a hard ride tracking down those savage Indians. Mostly boys that are wolves that are cubs wore worn out blue jeans from J.C. Penny’s and dirty white sneakers. And of course we were sans horses. And guns.

The next moment of becoming and so being a scout is the Cub Scout Promise. The Promise of the Cub that is a Scout is said aloud by scouts who are cubs in front of other cubs who scout and the Den leader. The Cub Scout Promise goes like this:

I promise to do my best
To do my duty to God
And my country.
To help other people,
And to obey the
Law of the Pack
Which is the Law of the Strongest
Which we call Nature
Or, the Law of the Weakest
Built on Generations of Ressentiment.

Already a lot of words. Scouting can get wordy. But scouting is about words that are in truth deeds-as-saying-words, troths in a manner of speaking, and deeds as words as troths that beget deeds as enaction as a close cousin to enhappening as more than words to show you feel that scouting for you is real.

The Cub Scout Promise is recited at the beginning of the weekly Den meeting of boys that are wolves that are cubs that are scouts. Our Den met every Wednesday after school in a classroom at Leaper Elementary School, Leaps Forever!, where I went to school. Specifically, Room 13 of Leaper Elementary School, at the farthest bottom end of the big kids hall.

* * *

Den meetings were about routine We always read from the Book of Wolf Cub Scouts with special emphasis on the opening fable in the first few pages.

The Wolf Cub Scout Book begins with a fable to set the tone and to lay down lessons and principles from the very beginning. The story is The Jungle Book, by Mr. Rudyard Kipling. You remember Mowgli and Baloo and that panther, Bagheera, and the menace that is the Bengal tiger, Shere Khan? Well, the Wolf Cub Scout Book begins with their story in very short form. But it is not the story of the animated movie that we all know and love, but a boring book based on the movie and written by Mr. Kipling. For instance, in the movie the bear Baloo sings a catchy song about the Bare Necessities while Mowgli dances with him and Bagheera, perched high in the tree above, looks on. In the book there is no such song and the song never appears in the opening fable for the Wolf Cub Scout Book either, which goes like this.

In the opening fable in the Wolf Cub Scout Book the wolves who find what they call a man-cub, our Mowgli, keep citing the Law of the Jungle to guide them on what to do now, where all the laws seem not to be really of the jungle, or laws, at all.

For instance, Akela, the Father Wolf and Chief of the Pack, declares that the Law of the Jungle forbids Shere Khan to poach on our hunting ground. He has no right, says the Wolf. Perhaps, however, Father Wolf is thinking of private property and the institutions that establish and enforce ownership.

The Law of the Jungle forbids animals to kill Man, says the Wolf. Yet man is made of meat, says hungry Nature, and does man not always encroach on hunting grounds not his own thinking they all belong to him?

Thus, on the question of Mowgli, the Law of the Jungle allows the man-cub to join the Pack of Wolves, says Akela, but only if a bear and a panther speak up on his behalf. This is a complicated process and an odd one for wolves to have especially since panthers don’t speak English, but it’s soon all settled and Mowgli is welcomed into the Pack of Wolves.

Having joined the Pack of Wolves, Akela declares that the bear Baloo and the panther Bagheera shall now teach the man-cub to be a cub that becomes a wolf. Now take him away, commands Akela.

So off into the jungle go Mowgli and Baloo and Begheera while the wolves, having just adopted him, trot off in the other direction or just hang out. It’s hard to tell because the fable goes silent here.

This is the end of the story while being just the beginning of scouting. And so off into the wild we ventured, where the wild was always Room 13 of Leaper Elementary School, Home of the Leaps!

* * *

A Den meeting would last for one hour and then one half of one hour, so approximately 90 minutes in total. The Den meetings were led by a leader of the Den, a Den Leader who was not a boy nor a cub nor a wolf in the same way that Baloo and Begheera were neither cubs nor wolves. Unlike Baloo or Begheera the Den leader was not a wise and world-weary panther or a fun-loving but ultimately nurturing and caring and protective bear, either. The Den leader was a teacher who taught bigger kids in Room 13 during the school day and then just stayed in his classroom to lead the Den afterward.

Each Den meeting began with the Cub Scout Promise. Building on the Promise, we would then practice the Motto, which in some ways is the kernel of the Promise. Do Your Best, was the motto. That’s it and that’s everything, is it not?

Then there was the sign and the salute and the handshake of the cub that is a scout, all built on the index and middle fingers extended and pressed tightly together and all the other fingers folded into the palm of the hand. This sign was held high as the sign of being a cub that scouts. Scouts that are cubs lift the sign to your right brow in salute or to the tip of the cap that cubs wear. The handshake meant wrapping fingers that tuck into your hand for the salute around the wrist of your fellow scout while the two signalling fingers extended all the way up his arm. With the handshake there was always the secretive whisper. Sunrise, the first leans in. Sunset, the second replies. Swiftly, flow the days.

This would take about one hour with maybe even a quarter of one hour added to that first hour, and so a total of 75 minutes, for extra practice. The Den leader called these the fundamentals and you can never practice them too much. Practice practice practice. And so we would. We would show the cub sign and then salute each other and then clasp hands over and over and over and over again while the Den leader read the newspaper at his desk and drank from a thermos stored in the bottom drawer of his teacher’s desk. Do your best, we would yell. And again, he would say, without looking up. And salute sharply we would. And again, he would say. And again we would salute. Again, he would say. And salute we would again and again.

The final quarter of one hour was dedicated to activities set forth in the Wolf Cub Scout Book. The Wolf Cub Scout Book was among other things a catalogue of sanctioned activities that defined the art and science and spirit of scouting.

Each activity was meant to build skills as learning and then knowing how to do something. These skills demonstrate achievement and achievement shows abilities that deepen and widen skill upon skill. Abilities deep and wide only build character within the principles of the motto and the promise that knows how best to use abilities that add up to doing meaningful things in the world. Doing your best such that you do so it is done.

Each page of this catalog of activities in the Wolf Cub Scout Book presents one activity including the title of the activity at top in big letters and then the details and requirements necessary to complete it in checklist form. To make a pencil holder, for instance, you open a large tin can of Eager Salmon, emptying its contents into the trash can near the teacher’s desk, rinsing it out thoroughly, placing it on the desk open end up, and putting pencils in it. The pencil holder will always carry the whiff of fish flesh and the soft wood of your pencils will pick up the scent and carry it with them wherever they go, but your new pencil holder will always hold pencils and will last a lifetime. That pencil holder will be holding pencils long after you and I are gone, the Den Leader would say.

The activity of tying a necktie was more challenging because most kids do not have neckties to tie and because the Den leader did not know how to tie a tie either and could not understand the instructions. So we improvised, which is a skill within and all around skills, by using a rope instead. A square knot cinched tightly around the neck is a ready substitute. A clove hitch winding around adds a touch of class. A simple loop knot with the rope draped over the head fitting loosely around the neck for that casual look.

Improvise. Adapt. Overcome.

The instructions for the activity of operating a wheelbarrow include the following:

To operate a wheelbarrow first approach wheelbarrow from behind with the stealth and intent of a hungry wild animal. Reach out and place one hand around each of the handles at the back. They are extending out just for you though they do not yet know it. Grip tightly. Do not leave them hanging.

Now lift, letting the weight of the barrow fall to the single solitary wheel at front.

Now push, letting the wheel roll and the contents of the barrow roll along with it.

To empty the contents of the wheelbarrow from the wheelbarrow stop the wheelbarrow by just literally stopping. Grip the handles even tighter now using an underhanded grip and heave up and topple over that goddamn wheelbarrow so everything spills out the front. It should feel like a vomit, but a little bit of vomit will always remain in the throat. You will shake and twist that wheelbarrow to make sure everything coughs up and out and the more stubborn that final chunk clings to the sides of the barrow the more violent you will become. Do not stop until the wheelbarrow is empty, devoid of material within and all around other than itself.

Set the wheelbarrow back down gently.

Now, just chill.

On the day we were to learn to operate wheelbarrows the Den leader forgot to bring in a wheelbarrow. Not to be deterred, we simply imagined wheelbarrows and pushed them around the classroom emptying them onto an ever growing mound starting at the center of the classroom. Each emptied barrow mounded up and out from the center toward every corner of Room 13. As the Wolf Cub Scout Book predicted, we rolled up to the mound and tipped over the wheelbarrow except that a little vomit always remained inside and the shaking and thrusting of the barrow atop the wheel only grew more and more violent and the scouts that were cubs that were wolves became only more enraged with twisting and gnashing and sweat dripping and white knuckles and bodies heaving to get that last chunk out of that wheelbarrow and onto that growing mound.

Finally, when all the wheelbarrows were emptied for the last time with the mound piled high to the rafters and filling the entire classroom and burying everything in it we set the wheelbarrows back down gently and just chilled for the rest of the Den meeting.

* * *

The Wolf Cub Scout Book is replete with activities.

Activity 15: Turning a light switch on and off. Up for on and down for off, says the book, unless one light is governed by two switches so that being on means both up and down and being off means being both down and up, unless being on requires being down and or up and up, and similarly with being off.

Activity 32: Tying up brown paper packages with string.

Activity 33: Bathing.

Activity 57: Collecting butterflies and pinning their blackened little bodies to the page in the manner of words.

Activity 88: Learning to sing songs like I Have a Dog and The Train Song:

I hear the train a comin’. It’s rollin’ down the bend….

Down below the title of an activity and the details and requirement to complete it, at the very bottom of the page, was the allure of the paw print formed with thick black lines and empty inside. An empty paw print meant that that activity was still to do. The empty paw print was an invitation. A whisper. A calling. Here I am. Complete me.

When an activity was completed, as with the pencil holder clearly holding pencils, it was time for the most satisfying part of the activity which was the filling in of the empty paw print with a heavy ink pen making the activity and achievement certified and permanent. It was your activity to have and hold on to forever.

According to the rules of the Wolf Cub Scout Book the Den leader was supposed to fill in the empty paw print for you for it to be certified. But we quickly learned that our Den leader did not have a steady hand and had trouble staying within the lines. He would slash the ink pen back and forth like a broken windshield wiper and the neat empty paw print would scrawled on and torn open. Soon we started to neatly fill in the paw print ourselves and then show him for approval. He liked this in the manner of an art critic appraising art and artist and attesting to their meaning and value even though he could not himself either stay within the lines or paint outside them in the manner of an artist.

Soon filled-in paw prints start adding up to tracks that lead to new ranks and badges as a scout that is a cub that is a wolf. The first rank of being a wolf that is a cub is becoming a Bobcat. Once a wolf is a Bobcat you start making tracks to become a Bobcat that is a wolf that becomes a Wolf. Soon after becoming a Wolf that is a Bobcat that is a wolf that is a cub you will become a Bear. Each empty paw print leading to the next rank will take the shape of the animal you are making tracks to become.

A Bobcat track consists of a center pad with four small pads radiating from it, but with no claw marks. Bobcats retract their claws into their paws when they walk in the manner of a house cat like a tabbie with a raccoon tail such that that raccoon tail belongs to nothing less than a cat.

A Wolf track is more impressive. It is larger and more bent and menacing with paw pads crowned by long deep claw marks.

Then the claw marks of the Bear paw print are simply a force of nature with claws even longer and sharper that says I can slash and slice up a human body just to munch on. You are on the hunt, say the paw prints, and you are becoming increasingly dangerous.

The last Den meeting of each month was always set aside for the handing out of badges earned that month from all the tracks we made. But with the full schedule of practicing the handshake and saying the motto and saluting we often ran out of time and the Den leader would just hand us the new diamond-shaped badge embroidered with the new animal that we had just become for you sew it onto your U.S. Calvary uniform.

The problem was that there was no sewing activity in the Wolf Cub Scout Book, perhaps because wolves do not know how to sew because they have paws and no opposable thumbs and don’t wear clothes in the manner of wolves that are cubs that are boys. So to add each new badge to my uniform I would use safety pins which worked fine enough except that badges would curl up in places where they were not pinned down. Moreover, the Den leader never told us where to place the new badges on our uniforms so their location on the shirt became solely according to the judgment of an 8 year old boy. I looked like I was sprouting badges and coming undone from every which way.

Improvise. Adapt. Overcome.

* * *

Once you reach the rank of Bear you come to learn the true aim of a boy that is a wolf that is a cub that scouts, which is to become an Indian boy that is a young warrior. As the Indian boy becomes older and wiser, explains the book, he gradually exchanges clothes and tools and manner of being a boy in the world for those of a young warrior in the wild.

For a time this was exciting. The change of clothes consisted of replacing the bright yellow neckerchief with a neckerchief in Tartan print, with sett of red and blue and green laced with yellow. In this spirit, activities saw us learning how to dress like a true Indian. We made a headdress of feathers with cut out from the pages of newspapers and painted brightly and taped on a long strip of leather from a faux. To complete the outfit we constructed ankle bands from shorter strips of faux and attached tiny bells with safety pins so they would jingle when we walked.

At other Den meetings we would set up a real live Indian camp. A teepee was made from three broom sticks lashed together at the top with a sheet wrapped around it. Then a long slit was cut up one side by the Den leader so you could slip inside the teepee and sit Indian style on the cold classroom floor. Next to the teepee an Indian campfire was made from sticks piled up into a miniature teepee with a flashlight placed inside. Then we turned on the flashlight with the light being the flame of the fire and we all stood around it to warm ourselves.

My favorite activities were the making of the weapons of a warrior. A tomahawk with cardboard cut out in the shape of the blade, affixed with masking tape. A bow strung with cotton string and arrows tipped with arrowheads made of cardboard and affixed with masking tape. A young warrior’s first knife made from a small section of broom handle and a cardboard blade secured to it with masking tape.

We learned Indian sign language where the signs signified English words that signified Indian words so that we could communicate in Indian language without speaking on hunts or raids or ambushes, which are themselves basically hunts, just hunting humans, mostly U.S. Cavalrymen who terrorize the plains.

Then there were activities for celebrating coup around the flashlight of the campfire after a successful raid. We made tom-tom drums and rattles and those ankle bells jingled pleasantly as we danced like savages.

Finally, we learned the secret word and the motto that was to be a secret within scouting. And the word was Webelos. Webelos, we learned, was the name of the Indian tribe of which we were young warriors. The chief was Akela. And Webelos meant just one thing. We’ll Be Loyal Scouts (We – Be – Lo – S). And this one thing meant just one thing and that was tribe and within tribe loyalty as obedience and courage and fidelity and sacrifice and leadership.

Actually, Webelos meant two things. The one thing was We – Be – Lo – S. The other was the Way of the Webelos who was a wolf who was a cub who scouted as a boy become a young warrior as a Webelos, and that ethic can be summarized in three words. And those three words are, Leave No Trace. Being a young warrior in the world is more fun when you Leave No Trace.

A young warrior tracks and stalks his prey by observing and following all the secret signs while leaving no track or trace himself. He kills. He vanishes. He was never there.

Killing, of course was a catch-all. You don’t just have to kill so as to Leave No Trace. You can Leave No Trace all the time and everywhere you weren’t, if you get my meaning. And so as Webelos we would practice Leaving No Trace. Sweeping up our footsteps in the snow and tracking off on the rocks where we would Leave No Trace. Breaking camp so that there was no teepee and no campfire and all the desks were put back into their rows and columns so no one would even know we were there Thursday morning. Sitting at those desks with our heads down visualizing Leaving No Trace because the Den leader needed a moment.

It was all great fun until it dawned on me. There was no real tribe called the Webelos and we were not learning to be young warriors let alone Bobcats or Wolves or Bears in the wild. A cub does not learn solely in the safety of the Den, just as the teepee is not the true classroom for the young warrior, just as the paw prints you make as tracks should mean travel in the wilderness and not just circling around in the safety of the Den. But once we entered the Den we never left it until the meeting was over. And during that time of being a boy that is a wolf that is a cub that is a Bobcat or Wolf or Bear that is a Webelos as a young warrior we simply played at being, as if any of it. The tin cup pencil holder was real but that was about it and you could never get that faint fishy smell out of anything. Surely this was not the true way of the Webelos.

* * *

The truest moment of being a cub that scouts was never in the Den. It was always only in the moments leading up to and just after the Den meetings on Wednesdays. It was the journey to and from Room 13 in the big kids hall.

As a third grader my classroom was in Room 8 in the first hall of the capital letter H that is Leaper Elementary School. At the end of the school day the bell rings for us as if to say, It is time to go now. For most kids this is the call to get up and gather Trapper Keepers and Star Wars lunch boxes and get in line to file out of the classroom and down the hall and out the front doors they came in in the morning.

On Monday and Tuesday and on Thursday and Friday this is what I would do, too. But Wednesday was different. While the other kids got up I was told to stare at the chalkboard and wait quietly. Wait until all the other kids had gone. Wait until teachers had fled building and raced to their cars and squealed out of the parking lot burning rubber. Wait until the hall outside grew peaceful and still. Wait until the school felt devoid of human life except for the sound of my little heart beating.

Only then could I lift the lid of my desk and take out of the paper bag with my uniform bundled up inside. Only now could I get out of my desk and begin to change. Over a Snoopy t-shirt where Snoopy was really Joe Cool or vice-versa would go that navy blue shirt with patches and ribbons and pins. The yellow neckerchief would be rolled and wrapped around my neck and cinched up with the metal neckerchief slide. A little blue cap with a Wolf patch on the front panel would press down over my thick black hair only to lift up immediately because of my hair was that black and thick. The old blue jeans I wore to school that day would became buckskin pants with fringes on it and dirty sneakers turned to brown leather moccasins decorated with colorful beads sewn in in the shape of thunderbirds. Now the school had cleared out and now I was in uniform and now I was ready. The task was to get from Room 8 in the first hall of the capital letter H to Room 13 in the big kids hall on the other side of the school.

To emerge from Room 8 into the first hall of the capital letter H was to step into the familiar of a world in negative. Everything was the same. Big letters of the English language and cutouts of the Arabic numbering system still danced along the wall. Works of first and second and third grade art from our annual art contest still filled in the gaps in between. But the hall lights had been turned off and what I knew during the bright of day was casted only in shadow by the small inner light of the display case.

Traveling through the hall was different, too. Instead of proceeding in a line, marching single file, safety style, which is how we went everywhere during the school day, I was all by myself, left to move noiseless and alone through the shadows so as not to awaken anything that should just stay sleeping.

Turning down the center hall and traveling to the center of center hall the cafeteria, with doors always propped open, maybe to vent the smells of each day’s meal, was now dark and the kitchen that bustled during the school day in the far back was abandoned and hidden from sight even as refrigerators loaded with small cartons of milk stared back at me with red and yellow eyes.

The heavy doors to the gym were now locked and the lights were off and looking through the small windows in the doors that one place in school that was always fun to go to now seemed so remote and cavernous and lonely.

Past these two sets of doors at the center of the center hall, what lay beyond was unknown territory. Forbidden. Hostile. Younger kids were never allowed even to approach the big kids hall let alone travel freely into it. This was a region I did not belong in, and yet I needed to make my way through it and down to Room 13.

I stood in the emptiness and unsympathy of what during the school day buzzed with familiar life that was safe and sure. All of that dissolved and fell away now and I was left here alone. Something like real terror crept in and that deep urge to run away. I could turn back. Take off my uniform and stuff it in the brown paper bag and go out the front doors I came in through in the morning and never look back. This way I would never have to venture through the shadows down this path alone. I stood fixed while my mind raced and my little heart beat faster and faster. In that moment I couldn’t go back but I couldn’t go forward. Time rolled on and still I remained rooted. Rooted yet roiling and churning inside. Then from within and all around a coalescence. A summoning. A quickening. A step. I took a step. I stepped forward. I stepped and then stepped again so as to feel I was starting to uproot. Then another step forward, slow and tenuous. And more steps. Steps that drove me forward. Steps as uprooting. Steps that ventured toward leaving a trail of roots behind.

* * *

The big kids hall was darker than the dark of the halls I had traveled through and even with my eyes already adjusted I blinked to adjust still deeper to this deep darkness. Now all my senses were activated, heightened beyond anything I had known before. It’s like that final scene in To Kill a Mockingbird (1963) where Scout, played by Miss Mary Badham, who was 10 years old at the time of filming, picks her way through the dark and windy woods dressed like a ham she can barely see out of. The way you feel for Scout dressed as that ham with no arms because hams to do not have arms and the real danger you know she is in as the wind blows and the trees creak and someone stalks her from the behind the trees is the way I felt about myself with all my senses alert to detect what may be lurking in the silence of the darkness and just behind closed classroom doors down the big kids hall.

With my buckskin pants with fringes and on them and wearing padded leather moccasins with beads sewn in in the shape of thunderbirds my steps become softer and quieter. My ears perked up to catch any rustling in the trees. Any snap of a twig. I sampled the air with my nose to search for the scent of anything that spelled danger. My eyes worked hard to pierce the darkness to detect the slightest movement as I slowly made my way to the far end of the hall. The door of Room 13 was closed but a feint light casted out from inside. This is where I needed to get to to be, I thought to myself.

Moving down the big kids hall everything looked almost the same as the first hall of classrooms in the capital letter H except that everything looked different. There were no colorful cutouts on the walls with those childish numbers and letters. There was no display case with an inner light to cast shadows from within and all around.

Instead the walls were plastered with painted murals up and down all throughout. The paintings were obviously done by big kids. More mature and meaningful than the younger kids art hanging in the younger kids hall, but still with everything being somehow askew and not quite in proportion and just off in the manner of paintings still done by kids.

Stepping into the big kids hall from the center hall the first mural I came to was of three ogres standing around a large black kettle lit by a campfire. One ogre stirred the kettle with a rough wooden paddle. Another ogre sharpened his knife on a long metal rod. The blade sparkled at the tip with a few sparks sprinkled in along the edge of the blade. The third ogre clutched a fork and spoon and there was a stained and dirty napkin tied around his neck. A long string of drool dangled from his juicy ogre mouth and it’s not clear that he knew about it. Peering into the kettle you could see little arms and legs and small heads poking out of the boiling water even as the first ogre pushed them back under with the paddle. Carrots and onions and potatoes bobbed all around.

Turning right, down the hall toward Room 13, I came to another mural painted in gauzy hues. In this mural a wise old man in a white robe with a crown of laurel leads a smaller, more timid man through the forest. This is a pathless wood for there is no trail. The guide leads on while the smaller man crouches and cowers and follows close behind. All around them the trees rising up from the forest floor drip blood from their bark and branches to water the soil and they cry out in muffles that stop short of forming true words.

Across from this mural and toward the light at the end of the hall a final mural depicted what looked like a beautiful angel with wings wrapped tightly around his body just sitting on a rock while the rock soars through space. The angel has traveled up from a distant land and across the abyss and now he sits, chilling on that rock. That’s it. Just an angel sitting there contemplating something as the rock he sits on hurtles onward.

Taking it all in I take a few more steps and there I am, face to face with a door at the end of the hall. The door opens and I enter the brightness of Room 13 just as the Den meeting is about to begin. I had made it!

* * *

Leaving the Den meeting in Room 13 and walking up the full length of the big kids hall to go out their front doors felt much different. The hall was deeper and darker at this later hour of the day but now everything felt still and peaceful and a touch familiar. Like a young warrior traveling in unfriendly forest there was never no need to be alert, but I could also enjoy the quiet moment wandering in a land that was now traversed and so known so as to be just a little bit my domain. Walking up the hall I entered the upper part I had not ventured down, but I was not afraid. Now I felt free to stop at the murals in the upper part of the big kids hall closer to the front doors with the time and attention I thought they might deserve.

One mural was just a big painted picture frame. A frame that is painted that is supposed to frame a painting. The paint frame was painted in a copper brown bronze color with heavy ornate strokes and it seemed that everything you could imagine was sprouting out of it: flowers, festoons, corn on the cob, an entire fruit basket, grapevines wending their way around the whole thing with eels bubbling up to wend their way around the grapevines. There was a lot going on in the frame. The painting itself was just two word in big letters. It was an odd combination of words I had never heard together before and have never read since. The first word was HUMAN and then the other word was HUNGER. But the painting was not just a painting. It stood center stage as a rapt audience crowded around it. One man with spectacles and a pipe looked impressed by its anti-painting painting yet painting anti-paintingness. Ladies in cocktail dresses sip flutes of Champagne while pointing and absolutely raving about it. A mysterious figure in a red beret and dark cape darts frantically about the room. He grasps at something though I can’t tell what. From the rafters one bright light shines down on HUMAN and another wanders the room shining on this person or that before it moves on.

The final mural, which is the first mural when you walk through the big kids doors in the morning consisted of a big blue and green planet. Every square inch of land is dotted with puffs of dust like tiny mushroom clouds and the seven seas are peppered with splashes just as tiny. It was hard to know just what was happening. I stepped closer so I was looking straight into the mural and by squinting and scrunching up my face I saw something new. In the atmosphere high above and all around earth a swarm of little babies in diapers, some holding rattles and others bottles, orbiting like vultures. To each baby’s chest is strapped what looks like a baby-sized time bomb made from sticks of dynamite with curly wires sprouting out and a timer that already seemed to be counting down. Miniature rockets taxied up and shuttled babies to the surface non-stop, night and day, crashing down on land or splashing into water, it didn’t seem to matter. The mural was titled, Crash Splash Crash.

I stepped back to take it all in. Big kids are weird, I remember thinking to myself. They may be bigger, but they are also weird. This was a discovery that I squirreled away as I arrived at the front doors of the big kids hall, which seemed bigger on this side of Leaper Elementary School. I glanced down to take one more look at my soft-padded moccasins with beads sewn in in the shape of thunderbirds and my buckskin pants with fringes on them. I couldn’t have done it without them. Then I pushed open the doors and walked out and started the trek back from whence I came that morning.

* * *

With each passing week the journey from Room 8 in the first hall of the capital letter H that was Leaper Elementary School to the Den meeting in Room 13 down at the very bottom of the big kids hall became less a journey of terror and overcoming and venturing forth and more an interlude of solitude and enchantment and the freedom to roam the halls.

I still tread noiselessly and alertly with my buckskin pants with fringes on them and soft padded leather moccasins with colorful beads sewn in in the shape of thunderbirds. But instead of sneaking I started to wander through the deep dark woods with increasing confidence and reverie. I stopped and looked through the windows of the closed doors of classrooms that were not my own. As a younger kid at Leaper Elementary School you not only did not go into the big kids hall but you never poked your nose into classrooms that weren’t your own even in the younger kids hall on this side of the capital H of the school. But now with everybody gone and the lights turned off I would stop at doors and peek into classrooms through the windows out of curiosity, not intrusion, just to see what they were like. It was here that new worlds opened up. Desks were arranged in strange new configurations. I only knew rows and columns, but here was a double semi-circle and there was a cluster formation of desks grouped in perpetual breakout session. Sometimes the teacher’s desk was up front and other times at the far back. One classroom had the teacher’s desk at the very center of the room while younger kids desks practically radiated from it.

Each classroom had its own decorations and projects and special features. Paper lanterns or kites hung from the ceiling, which made me feel a little envious since my classroom ceiling was always barren except for the banks of florescent lights above. One classroom had a brightly lit aquarium with bits of pink and white corral and a sunken pirate ship at the bottom. The water teemed with angel and tiger and jet black and golden fishes and those suction fish that scour the surface of the glass so you can see directly into their suctioning mouths. On a long wooden table in another classroom paper mache volcanoes rose up rumbling and ready to erupt. In one classroom the whole back wall was filled with stacks of newspapers that rose into towers, week after week. Each classroom was its own world and wandering through the darkened hall I felt I was let in on secret realms that only I knew existed.

Travel through the center hall was different too. Passing by the dark cafeteria the red and yellow refrigerator lights still stared and followed at me but now I lifted my hand in respect and acknowledgement. In peace, said my waive, and the lights would blink back. Then I turned to the gym. Out of respect I never jiggled the handles of classrooms doors. I was not there to sneak in. I was always content just to see what they’re like from the outside. The gym was different. It was my favorite room at Leaper Elementary School, and for one hour of one school day each week of school it was the place that was bright and welcoming where I was allowed to go and play. And so one day on my way to the Den meeting in Room 13 I decided to jiggle the handle again just in case. I jiggled the handle. The handle turned. I paused for a moment with my hand on the turned handle to make sure the handle had really turned. It had. Then I pulled and the door opened wide. How could this be? I was thrilled. I was amazed. I just walked in.

A blast of air rushed out as I stepped onto the bright polished wood of the gym floor. The cavern was dim instead of being well lit but the smell was the same. Popcorn for some reason. The gym always smelled like popcorn. But now instead of hot popcorn cheering from everywhere when you entered the scent was one of popcorn cool and comforting and also a little sad. The gym always welcomed you with endless possibilities to play and I was always sorry when gym class was over, but now standing there alone in the dark the room felt different. There was nothing to do. No game, no hockey sticks or big red rubber balls set out, and no one to play with. What do you even do in a gym with no gym class? It was a new question I had never even wondered about before. I could have run around the floor of the gym wildly with my head cut off but that seemed a little childish. Instead I walked to the center circle and sat down Indian style looking around taking everything in. Then I laid down on the gym floor that is cool at first but warms up to warm you from the heat that radiates from within. Laying down I stared at the ceiling with its high beams and huge lantern lights now dark. Then I closed my eyes and listened. I breathed and relaxed. Silence within met with silence all around and for a moment I slipped gravity. For a moment I floated just above the floor. For a moment I fell asleep forever.

Passing by the cafeteria each week I paid respect to the red and yellow lights blinking at me and then I would glance at the gym doors. Most of the time I kept walking. There was no need to go into the gym every time even if it is unlocked. But once in a while I would feel a little calling to step into the cool of that quiet room. And so I would jiggle the handle. Most of the time the doors were locked. But every once in a while the handle turned and I pulled and the door opened wide.

This was the biggest lesson I learned as a boy that was a cub that scouted. I learned how to take the first step in fear and trembling so as to journey all alone. Always alert. Learning what lies behind and beyond. Never leaving a trace.

Den meetings, on the other hand, were more and more disappointing. You can only say Do Your Best so many times with more and more feeling, louder and louder, until it actually stops meaning anything and becomes more like screaming. You can only salute and salute and salute until you start to become a wind-up toy that can only do one thing. You only need so many pencil holders or bells to tie around your ankles to do war dances around flashlight fires in Room 13. You can only do so much of it. So much for the Webelos way, I began thinking to myself.

Then it happened. I was in my room sitting at the flame of the kerosene lamp reading page 64 of the Wolf Cub Scout Book on how to hammer a nail into a wooden board when the rotary phone rang.

Ring ring, said the rotary phone.

I shuffled to the kitchen and answered. Hello, I said. Who is this? Silence. Hello? Hello?

Be at the Rec Center this Sunday at 9:00 am, a voice hissed.

A long pause. Silence. My mind raced. Was this it? It couldn’t be. And it couldn’t have come at a better time.

Okay, I said.

Click, said the rotary phone.

And that was that. I was called up to be a boy that is a scout that is a boy. I’d heard rumors.

Sometimes a note will appear tucked away in your desk and it’s just there one morning when you arrive for school. The note will be written with Indian pictures that stood for Indian words that stand for English words that you have to decode from your Wolf Cub Scout Book.

Sometimes a van drives by slowly as you walk home from school and someone inside will do secret Indian sign language through the big window on the sliding passenger side door of the van and you better know your signs because the van then speeds off and it doesn’t circle back.

The call-up just depended on the Troop that is calling you. A Troop is the new Pack for boys who are scout who are now boys. A Troop watches and monitors the progress of Packs of boys that are wolves that are cubs that are Bobcats or Wolves or Bears that are scouts who follow Webelos ways and when they think you are ready to Be Prepared, which is the motto of scouts who are boys, they reach out and touch you.

I heard that smoke signals were once the standard way to summon a boy that is a cub to be a scout that is a boy but common house fires could send errant messages to kid who would show up at all manner of places like the middle of the river or an empty cemetery at midnight. So that was discontinued in favor of more precise Indian forms of communication. Or, at other times they just picked up the phone and called.

I was beside myself. Everything would be new and better now. New uniform as if we were off to the Boer Wars. A new motto. New laws and slogans and oaths to memorize and say and do. And real adventures in scouting.

I already had the handbook, The Boy Scout Handbook (9th ed.). I had been saving up for a year for all the things I would need and this was the first thing I got to try to see what I was in store for when I became a boy who scouted who was a boy. Next I would need to be that brand new uniform, though it might still be a little while before I had saved enough. That was okay. Be Prepared, I thought to myself. Every cub that scouts already knew the motto. It was legendary. Be Prepared, indeed. I was prepared and preparing. Boy, was I. It was all too exciting. So long, Do Your Best. Hello, Be Prepared. Finally I could put away those Webelos ways at Leaper Elementary School, Home of the Leaps!, so as truly to follow the Way of the Webelos, Via Webelorum, starting at 9 o’clock on this coming Sunday morning.

I pulled the Handbook down from the shelf and began to leaf through the pages, already ruffled from times spent imagining what it would be like to become a boy that scouts that is a boy. The time for imagining was over now, I thought to myself as I smiled to myself. I settled in, closed the book, then reopened it turning to the first page. I began to read.

* * *

The Boy Scout Handbook is handsomely illustrated with paintings of scouting by boys by Mr. Normal Rockwell, that American master of Saturday Evening Post notoriety. If you want to know what scouting looks like and what it means you can simply peruse the paintings of Mr. Rockwell scattered through the pages of the Handbook for boys that scout. On the very cover of the Boy Scout Handbook, in fact, we see scouts who are boys out in nature camping by a lake, cooking over a real live open fire, climbing into a canoe, pointing, waiving, waiving back. This painting is exactly what I scouted for and now I’d get to do it. All of it!

When you open the Handbook and begin to read you are welcomed by a letter. The letter is from a Mr. J. L. Tarr who says he is chief executive of boys who scout. He looks old, as in looking like a very old man, and he wears a suit and tie — a very nice tie tied very nicely, if I do say — and not the uniform of a boy who scouts. So I assumed he was not a scout that was himself a boy. Welcome, begins the letter. Welcome to the adventure that is scouting.

I was hooked.

This handbook, the letter continues, will be your constant companion, even becoming part of you, silently guiding you with information and sound advice.

A book that becomes a part of me? Silence guiding me? How exciting!

This book will answer all manner of vital questions, the welcome letter assures, up to and including, How am I going to spend the rest of my life?

What wizardry, what elixir could this book possibly contain?, I wondered to myself.

No other book has more good information about so many subjects that a boy wonders about than the Boy Scout Handbook, the letter concludes. No other book, except the Bible, can point you in the right direction better than your Handbook. Keep it with you always.

I had to set the Handbook back down just to take it all in. The promise of adventure. A treasure trove of information on every page. A guide to navigating the world and human life itself. I could get behind all that. But the Handbook being a book second only to the Bible? Now this was a bold claim, I remember thinking to myself. That can’t possibly be true. Surely there are other books better at being a bible that is not the Bible than The Boy Scout Handbook (9th ed.).

The first book that sprang to mind was a book that teaches you how to be a good and excellent person in a full and complete life. There is no way the Handbook is better than this book. But then I leafed through the pages of that book in my mind and tried to remember all the ways of being excellent that promise to make you a good person. There was Courage, of course. And Moderation. Generosity. Friendliness. I came up with 5 or 6 in all the pages of that book, plus everyone’s favorite, Shame, as being quasi-excellent, as when a good man knows he has been bad.

Then I turned to the Boy Scout Handbook and arrived at the first requirements to becoming a boy that scouts. It is called the Boy Scout Law and it goes like this, in a sing-song kind of way, building speed as you run down it.

A Scout is:

Trustworthy
Loyal
Helpful
Friendly
Courteous
Kind
Obedient
Cheerful
Thrifty
Brave
Clean
And, Reverent.

I went back to count them up. That was 1, 2, 3, 4 … 12 … twelve laws of being a boy that scouts. Twelve ways of being and becoming excellent. That’s twice as many as that famous book could come up with, not counting Shame, though I think we can picture Shame as being between the lines of the pages of the Boy Scout Handbook as when a good scout knows he’s done bad and becomes ashamed of it. Now that famous book on all they ways that you can be excellent started to seem a little skimpy.

The Handbook goes on to explain that each single word expressed in the Scout Law has a, quote, deep meaning, unquote, that requires other words to explain it so that single words speak for themselves and yet are spoken for. That is also the case with that famous and now more suspect book. The words that matter most, says that book, are the most difficult to capture and pin down except for by using other well-chosen words pinned down to fully capture what that one word truly means. Sharpened words hunting words down to stuff and mount on the wall. Now I wondered, Was that other book just a copycat of the Boy Scout Handbook and a poor one at that?

I needed confirmation by random sampling that the Handbook was truly better. I closed the Handbook and then let it fall open again. The page began: How to turn your denim blue jeans into a flotation device if you are in deep water and far from shore. The answer is that while treading water take your blue jeans off. First tie the legs into a knot. This will seal that end. Next, hold the waste of your jeans just above the surface of the water with the top facing down. Now plunge the waste into the water and the entire jeans will follow. Quickly seal off the waste trapping air instead. This is your flotation device that will save your life. Brilliant!

Then I turned to that other book in my mind’s eye and scanned the pages. As I suspected. It says nothing about making a flotation device out of your blue jeans if you fall from a boat and the boat speeds on without noticing or you suddenly appear in the middle of a lake. That settled it. The Boy Scout Handbook was at least seven times better than the once-famous but now-discredited book on what to do with your life and how to do it.

But I still wasn’t convinced that the Handbook was second only to the Bible. So I thought of another famous book depicting the good and great lives of famous people like generals and heroes and statesmen and emperors and even the founders of civilization itself and how the stories were meant to be guides on who you should become and how you should spend the rest of your life.

But then I wondered, Are these stories true and not shrouded in doubt about accuracy and nothing more than idealized and wishful thinking about the lives we should lead and not necessarily about the lives they truly led? And is the Boy Scout Handbook not a roadmap to finding your own way, I continued thinking to myself, and becoming your own hero or founder or whatever in truth and not in fiction? The best you can do, says the Handbook, is to inspire the scout to learn for himself. That’s the way it’s done in Scouting. That’s the Scouting Way. You have to learn yourself by yourself. You may not get fire the first time you try, says the book. But if you persevere from a fire within you will begin to set fire all around. Full Stop!

I was almost entirely sold. Was there anything more that would confirm what I was already starting to really believe? I turned to the new slogan of boys who scout. Do a Good Turn Daily, says the Handbook. No more Doing Your Best. Do so it is done. Simple enough. Then I thought of an actual letter written by one of those famous people who was both general and king of practically the whole world at the time that he wrote it and when he looked in front of him he saw nothing left to conquered and rule over and so he wept. And yet he also declared, To-day I was no a king for I did not help anybody, and with that the general wept again as a good man who does not do a good turn daily and knows it. He wept! And I wept with him.

Holy snot! I exclaimed to myself. This king would have made a good boy who scouts. And double holy snot! The Handbook is better than that made up book because it’s about real boys and not imaginary ones or real ones reimagined.

Finally I gathered both books together in my mind’s eye to see if I could make one bigger book that’s better than the Handbook. The Bible itself is nothing but a bunch of books collected into two larger books collected to make one book whole and complete, I thought to myself. Would two books added up be more of a bible than the Handbook is to the Bible?

Thumbing through the pages of this bigger book or book of books I noticed something obvious yet hidden and revealed in the Handbook in a double sense. The Handbook says that words on the printed page that tell you about one thing or another are some of the best ways to learn. But showing you is even better. Tell but show. Show don’t just tell.

Well, the Handbook not only tells you what some things are, like a third-degree burn, but shows you what it is, and the Handbook not only tells you how to do something, like Indian Sign Language, where you can combine words like Brave and Good and Know and Sunset and Great Mystery , but it shows you what each of these signs made by an Indian with two black pig tails looks like making them. How is that even possible? That, I can tell you in one word. Illustrations!

Above and beyond the paintings of Norman Rockwell each page of the Handbook practically teems with illustrations showing you the very same thing it’s telling you about. These illustrations are very different from the paintings by Mr. Rockwell. I would call them rough and ready instead of refined and elegant. If you have ever seen the music video of the song Take On Me, by the Norwegian band called A-ha, where the video plays on Mtv, or Music Television, where a pretty young lady is sitting in the booth of a diner looking like a painting by Mr. Rockwell looking at a very large book of comic strips, titled A-ha, and then gets sucked into the comic book for her own adventure where she becomes these roughly penciled sketches of herself with scratched and scribbly lines for shapes and contours that spring to life of their own accord so instead of being flesh and blood she is animated within the pages, this is what the illustrations in the Boy Scout Handbook look like. Rough and ready, scratchy and scribbly and yet they really do show you what a thing is, like the coming together of a timber hitch, or the leafy plant with a pretty white flower called bloodroot, and they really show you how to do something, like finding direction without a compass, for instance.

Practically everything that’s told about it shown. Were there any illustrations in those other books?, I asked myself. I don’t remember any, I quickly and confidently answered, because there weren’t any! None! None whatsoever. Just words telling you in boring black and white. That settled it. The Boy Scout Handbook truly was second only to the Holy Bible in pointing me in the right direction. Showing me and not merely telling about it.

* * *

Getting ready for my first meeting of boys who scout who are boys I was filled with butterflies fluttering within and all around. There was so much to do so as to be able to say scouting things and in saying things scouting truly knowing scouting ways and in knowing the ways of scouting truly doing what a scout knows and says and does.

The motto was of course Be Prepared. Always Be Prepared. Semper Preparedness. This was easy. Everybody knew it already anyway.

The new handshake and salute were super easy too. Just add one finger to each. That’s it. Instead of just raising your index and middle fingers, tucking in all the rest, add that finger that is the least dexterous on the same hand and hold it straight up with the other two, tucking in whatever remains of fingers.

Then, to shake the hand of a scout that is a boy reach out with that new scout sign and grasp his wrist and shoot the sign up his arm just like you did when you were a cub but now with three fingers instead of two. I’m not sure what will happen if you whisper, Sunrise. I guess we’ll find out.

Handshake and salute … check and check!

Then there was the Scout Troth. There were six lines in the Scout Troth to memorize so this was a little more involved. The Scout Troth goes like this:

On my honor I will do my best
To do my duty to God and my country;
And to obey the Scout Law.
To help other people at all times;
To keep myself physically strong,
Mentally awake and morally straight.

It took me many tries over several days after that call and before my first meeting of boys who scout at the Rec Center on Sunday morning beginning at 9 o’clock to get to where I could rattle off the Scout Troth with no problem except for a stumble here and there and only once in a while.

So over and over I recited the Troth for Scouts. As I recited the Scout Troth over and over and over again the words and phrases rattling around in my head started to find a rhythm in parts and on the whole. A good Troth is music to thine ears. And so I rattled on and as it settled in and I listened for the tune it played.

Now, I could say the Troth was a good enough tune and leave it at that, but how good a tune would I say the Troth truly is? Let’s look more closely to find out. Let’s begin with the first half of the Troth, consisting of three lines.

Line 1 goes like this. On my honor I will do my best

That’s easy enough. Not a full thought but a good start.

Now Line 2: To do my duty to God and my country

These lines go together like peanut butter and jelly. The beginning of the second line flows so naturally from the end of the first. Do my best … to do my duty, where do is a note played and then quickly played again to set both phrases in the key of doing so it is done, one spread smoothly right on top of the other. This is where the Troth picks up steam and really starts to roll.

The second line, in and of itself, enjoys a lovely balance and wholeness, emphasized by to, used first in the infinitive and next as a preposition, both leading and linking their respective phrases, direct, spare, complete. To do my duty … to what? … to God and my country. Bam!

Line 3: And to obey the Scout Law.

Now honestly, line 3 is a letdown. It feels both rushed and tacked on even as it would seem to integral to a Scout Troth by which one truly troths to be a scout. Let’s see what we can do to give it a bit more fullness and heft. Starting again:

On my honor I will do my best
To do my duty to God and my country.

At this point let’s add a line to start a whole nother thought bounded to the first whole thought and flowing into the second.

New line: To stand for what’s right, never to do what I know is wrong,

Now the finish: And to obey the Scout Law.

And together we get:

On my honor I will do my best
To do my duty to God and my country.
To stand for what’s right, never to do what I know is wrong,
And to obey the Scout Law.

Much better. So overall the first half generated a decent flow and balance with a let down in the end that we punched up a bit with minimal invasiveness. Take a breath. Second half:

To help other people at all times;
To keep myself physically strong,
Mentally awake and morally straight.

End of Troth

Honestly, the start of the second half doesn’t have the same snappiness as the start of the first half, and it seems to be missing a nice new second line to complete the sentiment of the first line. Let’s see what we can do.

To help other people all all times
New Line: No matter the cost or reward.

New we have deepened the helping in its double meaningfulness by adding a selflessness of the helper in the helping of others.

Then the finish of the Troth flows so nicely.

To keep myself physically strong,
Mentally awake and morally straight.

So the second half of the Troth begins weak and ends strong while the first half is the mirror image. Funny how that works. Let’s put it all together, now in stanzas to let it breath a little especially with the added weight.

On my honor I will do my best
To do my duty to God and my country.
To stand for what’s right, never to do what I know is wrong,
And to obey the Scout Law.

To help other people all all times
No matter the cost or reward.
To keep myself physically strong,
Mentally awake and morally straight.

Much better! This was to be my Troth that I would say to myself with the extra lines added and said really fast with my inner voice even as I said the normal version aloud.

I’m sure if we kept at it we could come up with an even better Scout Troth, because And to obey Scout Law seems like the vital beginning for ultimately doing your duty to God and my country, perhaps the very foundation, but it comes across as being separate and somewhat unrelated. I think the And is the problem. A different even simpler solution is to change And to By.

On my honor I will do my best
To do my duty to God and my country
By obeying Scout Law.

Now we see a direct connection, one built on the other. We could also add a By to the second half of the Troth to go something like this:

To help other people all all times
By keeping myself physically strong,
Mentally awake and morally straight,

You see where I’m going with this. But enough of that. We are not here to rewrite the Handbook.

* * *

Sunday morning came quicker than I thought with all I wanted to prepare for, and it felt like an eternity to get there with so much excitement building up.

Without my new uniform I didn’t know what to wear so I decided put on my old uniform of navy blue with badges pinned on here and there. For some reason I went with the bright yellow neckerchief instead of the Webelos one of Tartan though I regretted the choice half way to the meeting. I already felt a little silly and out of place because I was there to be a boy who scouts who is a boy, not a scout who was once a cub, with or without that Webelos neckerchief. But it was the best I could think of doing at the time. I felt better when I reached for my buckskin pants with fringes on them, and I felt as ready as I could be once I slipped on my padded moccasins with colorful beads sewn in in the shape of thunderbirds.

At 8 o’clock in the morning on the appointed day I set off for the Rec Center on the other side of town almost at the very edge before giving way to unfarmed fields and hills become forests rising to mountains and craggy heights that always loom whether you look up or not from where the river flows down past town and onward to the sea.

* * *

To approach the Rec Center, or, more formally, the Recreation Center, or, officially, the Eggnog Center for Recreating, is first and foremost to spy the main building of the Rec Center. The main building of the Eggnog Center for Recreating was designed in the manner of a corrugated chocolate yule log with wavy strips of metal fitted together and stretched out the entire length of the building and then painted into something that from a distance looks delicious.

The main entrance to the Rec Center is located at the business end of the log through doors painted in a pinkish swirled whipped cream color. Entering the doors the first thing that meets your eyes is the gray of the lights. The lights are not dimmed or turned off. They are fully on. They are simply gray so you can still see everything but always grayly.

The next thing you notice is the smell. You might it call the opposite of a mix of cocoa and vanilla and nutmeg. I don’t know what that opposite smell is called. Maybe mold? Maybe rotting flesh? It was hard to tell.

The layout of the main building of the Rec Center was simple. Beyond the front desk where you check in if you are a member of the Rec Center, which I was not, is the game room with one foos ball table, one ping pong table, one small-sized pool table and a few round tables with chairs where you can play board games like Life or Monopoly or card games like UNO™.

All along the curved yule walls were couches with dull dirty cushions that you sunk into because they had no spring left in them. The carpet, once an appetizing buttercream color, now matched the cushions, dirty and worn out and in places torn and gaping to expose grey concrete underneath.

Because the Rec Center was closed on Sundays the room was empty and this is where the main meeting of the Troop would start with boys seated around tables and sitting on tables and sunk into smelly couches and sitting on the dirty carpet Indian style.

The game room opened up into the big room of the Rec Center which was the basketball court. The basketball court was not made of warm polished hardwood with bright colored lines. The basketball court at the Rec Center was made of that same smooth concrete that you saw through the holes in the carpet in the game room.

Cracks ran through the court and the lines were faded from being trampled on and scuffed up. A slight layer of dust always settled on the floor no matter how often you ran that long sweeper mop up and down the court. This condition made it dangerous to play basketball but ideal to run and slide on with your wore down sneakers, which everyone did when they entered the big room.

The basketball court was also sized a little smaller than a regular court to fit the width of Rec Center, which you would not call Large Yule Log in size, but more of a budget size log for families that want yule but cannot afford much of it.

The baskets themselves were also proportionally lower on account of the curvature of the building and the low ceiling that just kept getting lower and lower until it disappears into the ground and proceeds on into what is assumed to be the depths of the earth.

To fit as much basketball court as possible into a room this size the lines ran almost up to the side walls that curved down so during a game anyone not playing had to stand up against a wall curving in on them.

Spectators stood just beyond the end lines with just as much space between the lines and the walls, but these walls stood straight up and down so they were a little more comfortable, except toward the ends which curved down, so that in the end almost everyone watching a basketball game was bent or hunched or stooping at some angle to one degree or another.

That’s the extent of the main room and the main building. Then there’s the outdoor part of the Rec Center. At the far end of the basketball court past the end line is a set of doors that opens up into the back of the Rec Center with two large partitioned fields and the track that surrounds them.

To step outside is to step immediately onto the track made of packed dirt that rings the fields, which are side by side and divided by a short chain link fence. To cross the track towards the right you arrive at a baseball diamond and to cross toward the left you enter an open field with nothing but dried grass and dandelions. While the track rings the field area in its entirety the track is not in fact a ring or even an oval. It is a rectangle. This means that the four corners of the track are really corners so when there is a race and lanes are marked with chalk the runners have to make four left hand turns to travel the full distance of one lap, which is 551 yards.

Along the sides of the fields and track roads runs up and down, and at the very very back and across the street is the town’s only nursing home, called Evermore Gardens.

More specifically, across the street from the fields is the back patio of the nursing home because the front entrance faces the complete other way that you have to get to from a whole next cross street. Old people congregate in the back and stay away from the entrance as much as possible. The entrance is where the ambulances pull in to pick someone up to drive off with which happens every few days. If you are playing out in the field you can see the ambulance race by with lights and sirens. The ambulance disappear down the block but the sirens blare on and turn down the street and into the nursing home parking lot stopping underneath the portico at the entrance. The sirens go silent. Wait 10 minutes. Then that same ambulance drives back down the road it came up on but in less of hurry with lights and no siren, probably so as not to awaken what should remain asleep.

And so the old people at the nursing home stay away from the entrance and instead gather under the covered patio out back. They sit at round tables and play UNO™ or sit in rows of heavy patio furniture with walkers parked in front of them and stare across at the Rec Center. They watch kids playing baseball or us scouts wandering around the open field with compasses. Or they watch the ambulance race up the road and then return slowly and solemnly.

Some adventurous old people cross the road to walk the track or shuffle around it with their walkers or roll in rectangles in their wheelchairs. They circle slowly while the kids play while back on the patio old people sit at round tables playing card games like UNO and you really can’t blame them.

Nothing is more thrilling in a game of play than playing the Reverse UNO card. Some people throw it down. Others press it into the pile with a smart snap. The thrill is just the same. To play the Reverse UNO card feels like nothing less than reversing the order of things. To drag the setting sun up by the collar and send it back across the sky the way it came. To catch the flow of the river and cast it all the way up to its very source. To walk into the ocean and roll the tide upon itself and on out to sea. To crank the handle that turns the wheels of the solar system backwards such that the rotation and the very orbit of the planets undo what they have done for eons. To command the ever-expanding universe to collapse upon itself and into from whence it came. This is the power felt in playing the Reverse UNO card. To reverse the very order of things.

Some will point out that reversing the order of things in the game of UNO falls squarely within the order of things in the game of UNO where the order of things is called the rules, and they point to the Reverse UNO cards themselves as being nothing more than some of all cards in a full and complete and official deck of cards in the game of UNO as even more evidence of being well within the order of things.

Others will add that the reversal of the order of things can itself be reversed by a Reverse UNO card, effectively negating that power by that very power.

Still others will point out that reversing a reversal can itself be reversed, thus negating the negation and affirming the reversing of the order of things.

Some of the previous others will point to the absurdity of this very argument over the Reverse UNO card in that none of the other rules change on how the game is played when a Reverse UNO card is played, no matter how many times. The game proceeds with all rules en force just in the opposite direction of the way it was going, whichever way that was, and on this particular question it doesn’t matter which way at all. Then, they cross their arms to close their case by showing that the case never should have been encased in the first place.

And some of the previous others not already previously othered and not ready for a closed case point out the number of Reverse UNO cards in a full and complete deck of cards of UNO and that number is 4. There are 4 Reverse UNO cards which means that the order of things ultimately is to resume the order of things within the order of things when all of these reversals of the order of things are played.

None of this settled anything and nothing can diminish the true feeling of playing the Reverse UNO card and how fondly the playing of the Reverse UNO card is remembered in contrast to actually winning a game of UNO where you simply say aloud the name of the game that everybody already knows you are playing and which nobody remembers a single instance of. Who cares about that compared with playing the Reverse UNO card thereby reversing the very order of things.

Interestingly, the game of UNO was created by a man named Juan de la Cruz who moved to town from parts unknown and with a mysterious past. One day Juan was walking through town and he spied a moose who was also walking through town. Meeting up and coming face to face they proceeded to walk together for a time and then parted ways. The moose returned up the hill and into the forest to wander the wild. Juan stood there for a moment. Then, he had an epiphany. That moose, thought Juan, only cares about One Thing. Wandering the wild. If only people cared for only just One Thing, the true thing, instead of all the other things they think they care about that care nothing for them. I must tell people. But how?

Now Juan knew nothing about mooses or what they care about. But this was his epiphany. So Juan set to work on how to tell people that only One Thing matters in life. He worked ceaselessly in the dark of the night just sitting by the river thinking as the water flowed down from the mountains and by. He was like a tree planted there, just thinking and wondering. Finally, after just sitting there thinking, the tree he had become yielded one fruit and that fruit was the game called UNO. The One Thing. This was to be Juan’s message to the world carried urgently and conscientiously by way of one game and that one game was called, UNO. Care only about One Thing, UNO, the game said, and let the rest fall by the wayside.

The game was a smash hit and sold like hot cakes. The problem was that Juan was as good at messaging to the world the true meaning of the game as he was at knowing what a moose truly cares about. So the moral got lost and all anyone cared about was playing that truly inspired part of the game, the Reverse UNO card, which makes you feel like you are reversing the very order of things. And no one got the true message, sadly, except for maybe the old people on the back patio of the nursing home across the street from the fields of the Rec Center, who play UNO relentlessly until they get a Reverse UNO card in hand and then they play it and then they wait for a moment, pausing expectantly, to see what will happen.

But UNO is just a silly game, say some.

But silly games are ways for kids to learn lessons for low stakes so that when the stakes are high you are truly ready to play.

That’s right!, exclaimed the Roast Beast. Isn’t a game of Tag on the playground nothing but learning to pursue and evade?

And if you add the Freeze to Tag, added the Pillowy Potatoes stewing merrily alongside the Roast Beast, now you learn to keep what you’ve captured and to come to the rescue of those in captivity.

In a game of Red Rover, the Tea Cup chimed in, you search for soft spots in the opposing line to break through. And, reminded the Saucer on which the Tea Cup set, you work together to close gaps and shore up sections of your own line that are stretched too thin.

And is Capture the Flag not a cumulative game?, sang the Big Chair we were sitting in. A game of games where you become the flag and the flag embodies you, added the Gravy Boat with Gravy already in it.

That is an excellent point!, we all exclaimed.

Board games are no different, said the one uneaten Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookie. We all know what the game of Monopoly does to people. What you become when you play, mourned the Plate of Cookie, or what you have always been in your heart of hearts that now shows for everyone else to see when you play it.*

And of course the point of the game of Life is to get to the end before anyone else so you can pick up the pieces and put the game away, interjected both Potatoes and Roast Beast. Also, stick a fork in us for we are done!

Great timing! Let me finish telling you about the Rec Center and then let’s eat!!

The final feature of the Rec Center is the outdoor swimming pool that you get to through a cutout in the side curvature of the game room. This is a door, per se, though in function if not form. The opening is more or less that section of corrugated metal cut out and then reattached with hinges that swings out and open up into the town’s only public pool, now drained and cracking and sloughing off under the hot sun. A few large red balls like berries litter the bottom of the shallow pool, for the pool was was only 2 feet deep, and massive holly leaves of corrugated metal painted green lay in a heap off to the side.

Now you may be wondering why the Recreation Center was too small for its own good and in such state.

That is exactly what we were wondering, said the room in unison as the fire looked on.

Well, you see, the town was once a big bathtub filled with warm soapy salmon where the tap never shut off and everyone felt bright and clean except that that new factory down river was the plug in the bathtub we didn’t know we even had and when the plug was pulled the whole town just kind of drained away. Instead of fish flowing up and into our laps people flowed out of town and down river and out to sea. Those who stayed floundered. As the bathtub drained and cracked so too the swimming pool at the Eggnogg Center for Recreating.

But why the small size of the Rec Center? If you are going to have a real life Rec Center why not make it full-sized?

Well, that is another story. A story of tragedy and heartache. Not the right kind of story for the dinner table. Come, let us eat. And if you will permit, I can continue with the Story of Suicide Beyond Suicide, which, in case you forgot, is what I was telling you before your telling me to tell you the story of scouting. Maybe we can pick up the rest of the scouting story later, if time permits. How does that sound?

Everyone was in agreement and pushed themselves up to or plated themselves upon the dinner table, which was draped in red and white checkers with a single candle burning atop though the room was not cast in shadow for the fire burned brightly.

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