Beneath The Whispering Pines

When alone in the pine grove, along with just me and my thoughts, I would open the Walkman and pop out the goopy acrid batteries inside, then violently rub them against the granite stones and roll them around in my hands. Popping them back into the Walkman, I would watch LeeAnn Rimes spin in the tiny window on the device. This CD was my favorite, not only because LeeAnn looked much like Kailin, but her voice was soothing and hopeful. My manual recharge of the spent batteries would last a song or two. I’d dance goofily around the grove to the music, pinching the left headphone cord in my hand to fix a growing short in the wire. In those moments, I lived in exile and I lived worldly. At least, I did for a few minutes—before I detected peering eyes and quickly tossed all the contraband back under the rocks as crunching leaves and popping twigs confirmed my suspicion that I had been followed into my hiding spot. “What are you doing, Eli?” A young voice peeped, just as Mark emerged from the hawthorn thickets. “Uh…Just, st-st-stacking these rocks,” I stuttered, struggling to think of a rational explanation for my strange behavior. “What are you doing out here, Mark??” “Bored,” he wantonly shrugged. “W-w-well,” I stammered. “G-go find your own place to play. I am playing here.” He examined me from my blonde hair to my tattered jeans and dirty bare feet from trotting in the dirt under the pines. Then he looked over at the rock pile, suspiciously. “Do you have Pokémon in them rocks?” He pointed his little 7-year-old finger at them. “What? N-no!” I scolded. “W-w-why would I have those?! You know them are the devil!” I snapped my head back at him. “Liar! I seen your Charizard! In your backpack!” I glared at the kid, unsure what else to say. “Well, it wasn’t mine!” “It was!!” He screamed at me now. “I saw you trade your lunch money for it with Travis and he has –he has ALL the cards!!” I shook my head. “Nope!” Mark stopped yelling and then just marched up to me as if to tell me a secret, pulling something from his pocket, hands clasped. I leaned into his stand and looked down at his hand as he slowly peeked it open. “Holographic Blastoise!” I exclaimed and then snatched the card from him. “Whoa!” I held the card up in the air as if to see it better against the sun. He watched my excitement in total amusement as I clasped the card with both hands reading over the stats printed on the card as if I were actually going to play the battle card game. “So, do you keep them in there?” He asked again, pointing to the rock rubble. I looked back at him, then at the card, and then at the rubble. My heart started to pound out of my chest at the risk I was about to take in him knowing about the contraband. “Swear. You can’t say anything,” I swallow hard. “Top secret, Mark.” “Top secret,” he nodded. “I want to see!” He rushed over to the hoard of items then stopped dead in his tracks as if he had just seen a ghost. “What?” “Harry Potter!?” He finally exclaimed, ripping the book from the rubble. “This is witchcraft!! Eli!!!” He clasped his small hands over his face as if to withhold a scream, dropping the book back into the rocks. “Y-y-you swore. You can’t say anything,” I reminded him. “What’s in the CD player? Where did you get it?” He began to field questions after collecting himself, making me more uncomfortable with my decision to share in him the horde. I pull all the Pokémon cards out of the book, ignoring his question. “I have 147 now,” I explained to him. “Well, assuming I can have this Blastoise.” He hunched over the cards and started to go through them. “Yulp. I knew that Charizard was yours. This is the one I seen, alright.” I pulled the cards back from him, “you can’t tell anyone about this stuff. Any of it.” He nodded again. “Swear.” “Th-th-they’re just paper,” I explained to him as well as to myself. “Ink and paper. Like school books. They mean nothing, really.” He nodded, then looked at the Walkman and then at me. “You know those are forbidden, Eli. Only music that pleases—” “—Only music that pleases the Lord,” I finished for him. Mark looked at the horde and pulled a sleeve of CDs from the rubble. “Uhm,” I blushed. “It’s fine.” “Then why hide it?” He quipped, knowing I was lying through my teeth. “L-l-listen, Mark, I just like to listen to music out here while looking at my cards. The music is allowed,” I elude, pulling the CD sleeve from his hands. “An’ it’s about supper time, noways. We have to head back to the house soon.” “Yeah, let’s go,” Mark agreed, and then started to stack the rocks back into their places with me. “Yeah,” I nodded. I quickly helped collect all the contraband and crammed it back under the rocks and then whisked the kid away from my hiding spot, I looked over my shoulder back at the rock monolith making a mental note to relocate all the contraband soon so it’s never discovered by Papa.