I’ll give you my whole set of army men, and I’ll throw in my electric football game too.”

That was my best friend, Piggy, speaking. He was sitting on a stump and looking at the skinny boy who was standing at the edge of the creek, backing up, hesitating, and then stepping forward again.

“I’ll give you all that and my kingdom as well, if you can jump across without getting wet; nothing, not even your shoe laces!”

“You haven’t got a kingdom,” replied Lamar, the skinny kid.

“And his football game doesn’t work,” I added.

“Be that as it may,” Piggy said with a note of authority, as he stood up and shook out his shoulders—“be that as it may, you are wasting my time, and that of this entire group of noble young men. Now jump! Unless, of course, you’re a chicken.”

That did it. None of us like to be called chicken. So, Lamar backed up one more time, as far as he could against the ferns behind him, rose up on his toes and charged toward the creek.

Running full speed, he set down his last step perfectly, one centimeter from the stream’s edge, and sprung into the air. He jumped high and long. And Lamar could jump as high and long as any boy his age. Yet, as soon as his feet left the ground, we all could see he was not going to make it, not by a long shot.

Soaked Shoes and Socks

Well, as you may have guessed, Lamar did not make the jump. He landed with a big splash about a foot short of the other side, in about six inches of water, enough to get his tennis shoes, socks, and pant cuffs totally soaked.

Lamar climbed out of the water to the jeers of a gloating Piggy and the laughter of the rest of us.

Chihuahua scoffed, “Jack, be nimble, Jack is quick, but Lamar just got his shoes all wet.”

Ignoring the mockery, Lamar sat down on a rock to take off his soggy shoes and socks. He hung the socks on the branch of a dogwood tree. He laid the shoes upside down on the rock to drain.

Meanwhile, the rest of us were throwing stones in the water and scaring the minnows which darted about excitedly. Others of us were digging with sticks around the rocks and mud trying to stir up crayfish.

“Hey,” said Dusty, finally getting bored, “why don’t we head over to the tree shack?”

It all started when Piggy showed us his discovery. Deep in the woods he had found a wonderful tree shack. It was too well-made to be built by a kid. Surely, the owner had built it for his children to enjoy. Yet, no one ever seemed to play in it. What was the point of constructing a nice tree house, if it never got used? So, our gang had adopted it as our own and called it our club house.

As we left the creek bottom, made our way through the tall grass, and then began ascending the path that goes up the side of the cliff, Lamar was leading the way.

As we reached the top of the cliff, the path we were on joined another one, which we called the Cliff Trail, because it ran along the edge of the cliff parallel to the creek far below. Cliff Bottom Creek was also called West Creek, because it ran along the west side of town. It eventually dumped into the river, which was south of town.

As we walked along the edge of the cliff, we soon came to a divide. Cliff Trail continued straight ahead, but another path diverged to the left. We took this one, which headed back into the woods.

For some time, we walked on the level, but then the ground began to rise, which signaled we were getting close to our destination. The trees began to thin out. And then, abruptly, we came out of the woods into a large clearing. There stood the giant Live Oak Tree at the top of the hill. We paused to look at the stately arbor. It stood like a wise old grandfather, watching over all the other trees of the forest, as if they were his children and grandchildren around and below him. There, in the bows and branches of that large Live Oak Tree, sat our club house.

The Tree Shack

It was fifteen to twenty feet up in the branches and was the shape of a little house. It was small, but large enough for all of us to fit inside. Whoever built it probably had never heard of the Shaky Woods Gang or even knew we boys existed, but we had adopted it and spent hours and hours of pure enjoyment up there.

I was awakened from my daydream when the rest of the gang took off running for the tree and began climbing up the wood boards nailed to its trunk. I dashed after my friends and also began climbing. At the top of the first ladder, some got off on the platform and took turns sliding down the rope. Others continued up the next flight of steps and entered the little house. A few crawled out on the extending limbs.

Lamar, however, climbed to a higher platform which had been built onto the tree six feet above the roof of the house. Some of the boys were scared to go that high, but not Lamar. He was like a monkey when it came to tree climbing. There he settled himself as a sentry, scanning the ground below.

All of a sudden, Lamar whistled a short, shrill whistle, which made us stop what we were doing and look his way. He was leaning halfway off the platform and pointing with excitement to some bushes below.

“Did you see what I saw?” he hollered.

“What?” we asked in unison.

“A man,” he replied.

I saw a man!” he said again, as he scrambled down the branch and into the house with the rest of us.

“He was an old man, with glasses and white hair. He was standing behind that clump of bushes!”

“Where?” we asked, peering out the windows of the tree house.

“Right there, at the edge of the clearing.” Lamar pointed again at the bushes.

We looked, but there was no one there. We stood silent for a moment.

Is Lamar Seeing Things?

Then Chihuahua spoke. “I don’t see anything. It must be your imagination.”

Those words angered Lamar.

“I’m not imagining it,” he scowled. “I saw an old man, just as plain as I’m seeing you. And he was looking up, watching us. And I’ll tell you, he looked scary, REALLY scary!”

We did not have much time to ponder Lamar’s words. It was getting toward dusk and too late to stay out in the woods. We needed to get to our homes for supper. So, the whole gang climbed down the wooden boards on the trunk of the big oak tree and started back the way we had come. As we went, Lamar and Chihuahua continued to argue, while some of us joined in occasionally, just to make things interesting.

“You’re making it all up,” said Chihuahua. “I know you are.”

“No, I’m not. I’m not lying.”

I wasn’t sure whether to believe Lamar, or not. Some people lie all the time, while others hardly ever do. All of us sin and do wrong. That’s for sure. But sin comes out in different ways in different people. It depends partly on how you were raised.

For example, I’ve known a few kids who lied more than they told the truth. They were what you call perennial liars. (Perennial means all the time.) You might think they were worse than other children, but you need to also consider their upbringing.

In many cases, growing up, they had learned that they could get what they wanted by lying. So, they kept it up, and soon falsehood became a way of life for them.

The same could happen to you and me, if our parents were gullible. (Gullible means believing everything you’re told.) Or it could happen, if your parents just let you get away with lying; if they didn’t nip it in the bud. If they were wise parents, however, they stopped it the first time it happened, the first time they caught you lying. Like when you just broke your sister’s jewelry box, and told them, “No, I didn’t break it!”

The parent who nips lying in the bud is doing his child a favor. At first, lying seems to get you what you want, but pretty soon, people learn that you do that regularly, and they stop believing anything you say.

Anyway, Lamar was not one to tell lies on a regular basis, so it seemed right to believe him. But maybe he was just mistaken. Tree branches or bushes blowing in the wind could look like an old man with white hair. Maybe it was an optical illusion.

Anyway, what would an old man be doing out in the woods this close to dusk? Was he spying on us? Why would he do that? Did he own the tree shack? If so, he might call the police on us for trespassing. Or maybe he was some kind of a maniac, a crazy person, who had escaped from a mental institute.

My parents told me about a little girl who was abducted by a stranger on her way home from school. Abducted means taken away by someone. My mom and dad emphasize that we should never go anywhere with someone we don’t know. “Never get near them. Don’t climb into their car—never, NEVER! Run away as fast as you can. Scream for help.” That’s what my parents told us.

But back to this mystery. I was puzzled by what Lamar had seen, or thought he had seen. Who was the man? If there was a man at all. And what was he doing near our tree shack? I kept wondering, what was what? And why was why? But I wasn’t coming up with any answers.

A white-haired man didn’t sound like a stranger who would try to steal children. He seemed more like a patient at a hospital or elder care home. Maybe he had wandered off without anyone seeing him go. He might be forgetful and senile and not know how to find his way back. Maybe we should go back and try to find the white-haired man and take him back to where he lived.

As we were sitting down to supper that evening, I was about to ask my dad what he thought. But then I decided this was a mystery that our gang ought to try and solve all by ourselves.