Free The Night In Question by Tobias Wolff Page B

high as the sides and heaped to a peak in the middle. Ivan had been clearing out the woods behind the house. Most of it was gone by now, nearly an acre of trees turned into a stumpy bog crisscrossed by tire ruts filled with black water. Behind the bog stood the house of a family whose pale, stringy daughters quarreled incessantly with their mother, screaming as they ran out the door, screaming as they jumped into the souped-up cars of their boyfriends. The father and son also drove hot rods, maintaining them on parts cannibalized from the collection of wrecks in their backyard. They came out during the afternoons and weekends to crawl under the cars and shout at each other over the clanging of their wrenches. Freddy and I used to spy on the family from the trees, our faces darkened, twigs stuck in our hair. He wouldn’t have to steal up on them now; they’d be in plain view all the time.
    Ivan had been hard at work, turning trees into firewood. Firewood was cheap. Whatever he got wouldn’t be worth it, worth all the green and the birds and the scolding squirrels, the coolness in summer, the long shafts of afternoon light. This place had been Iroquois wilderness to me, Englishforest and African jungle. It had been Mars. Gone, all of them. I was a boy who didn’t know he would never build a jet, but I knew that this lake of mud was the work of a fool.
    “I’ll bet you can drive it out without unloading,” Clark said.
    “Already tried.” Ivan lowered himself onto a stump and looked around with a satisfied air. “Sooner you fellows get started, sooner you’ll be done.”
    “A stitch in time saves nine,” I said.
    “No time like the present,” Freddy said.
    “There you go,” Ivan said.
    Clark had been standing on a web of roots. He stepped off and walked toward the truck. As he got closer the ground turned soupy and he went up on tiptoe, then began hopping from foot to foot, but there was no firm place to land and every time he jumped he went in deeper. When he sank past his ankles he gave up and mucked ahead, his sneakers slurping, picking up more goop with each step. By the time he reached the truck they looked like medicine balls. He crouched by one rear tire, then the other.
    “We can put down corduroy tracks,” he said.
    Ivan winked in our direction. “Corduroy tracks, you say!”
    “That’s what they used to do when covered wagons got stuck,” Clark said. “Put logs down.”
    “Son, does that look like a covered wagon to you?”
    “Also artillery pieces. In the Civil War.”
    “Maybe we should just unload the truck,” I said.
    “Hold your horses.” Ivan put his hands on his knees. He studied Clark. “I like a boy with ideas,” he said. “Go on, give it a stab.”
    “Never hurts to try,” Freddy said.
    “That’s it exactly,” Ivan said.
    Freddy and I walked up to the barn for a couple of shovels. We cut wide of the ruts and puddles but the mudstill sucked at our shoes. Once we were alone, I kept thinking how thin he’d gotten. I couldn’t come up with anything to say. He didn’t speak either.
    I waited while Freddy went into the barn, and when he came back outside I said, “We’re going to move.” No one had told me any such thing, but those words came to mind and it felt right to say them.
    Freddy handed me a shovel. “Where to?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “When.”
    “I’m not sure.”
    We started back.
    “I hope you don’t move,” Freddy said.
    “Maybe we won’t,” I said. “Maybe we’ll end up staying.”
    “That would be great, if you stayed.”
    “There’s no place like home.”
    “Home is where the heart is,” Freddy said, but he was looking at the ground just ahead of him and didn’t smile back at me.
    We took turns digging out the wheels, one resting while the other two worked. Ivan laughed whenever we slipped into the mud, but otherwise watched in silence. It was impossible to dig and keep your feet, especially as we got deeper. Finally I gave up and knelt