“Shhhhhhh!” whispers Turkel Mudge as we tiptoe down muddy path in a foggy November woods.  “It’s gotta be right up over that ridge.”

We’re 15 years old and playing Capture the Flag with our buddies.  Turk and I have left Lyle Pratt back at home base to guard our flag—an old tee shirt. We’ve crept ahead to try to steal the flag of our competitors, Rooster Croft, John L and Mercury.

Turk’s guess is that Rooster and Mercury won’t have the patience to stay and guard their flag, and that John L is so quick-footed it would be crazy not to send him up to search for our flag and try to steal it, so they must have left their flag totally unguarded.

If we can find it, steal it, and get it back to our home base before they can find where Lyle is hiding with our flag, we’ll be the winners.

We know that Lyle has patience and won’t give away his location.  In fact, we know that one minute after we left him, he fell sound asleep, since he was up at 5:00 a.m. milking cows and doing chores on his dad’s farm and he’s a world-class sleeper under the best of circumstances.  We have him hidden in a little hollow where a tree blew over, and covered up with branches and leaves, so he can sleep peacefully.

“The only way they’ll find him is to step on him,” I whisper to Turk.

“Shoot, that won’t wake Lyle up.  The only way they’ll find him is if they call him for supper,” Turk whispers back.

Up on the ridge, we see Mercury flit from one tree to another on his way towards our end of the battlefield---a half-mile-long band of woods bordered by Bean Creek on one side and farm fields on the other and maybe a quarter-mile wide.

We wait until he is out of view and then sneak over the crest of the ridge and crouch behind a fallen log to reconnoiter.  No one is in sight. We wait.

“There,” whispers Turk. “See that beech tree about three o’clock?”

“Yup,” I say.

“Someone’s behind it,” he says. “I can see his breath.”

Sure enough, I see it too.  We wait.  If we were to have gone forward, whoever it is behind the tree could tag us and take us prisoner, and the only way we could be released would be if Lyle could somehow get to us and tag us himself, but that would mean he’d have to wake up, and also leave the flag unguarded.

We don’t have to wait long before we see John L dash out from behind the beech tree and head in the direction of our flag. 

We separate and start looking for the enemy flag, and it’s not long before Turk is by my side, holding it proudly.  “Found it way up in a tree!” he whispers excitedly.

Now, we make our way back toward our base. 

“You go first,” he says.  “I’ll hang back along the river bank.  You kinda sneak along, over there by the fields, but make a little noise, and stick your head up some so they’ll go over and try to capture you, and then I’ll make a dash for home base while they’re after you.”

That’s just what we do, and it works out perfectly.  I get captured, after a good chase by Mercury and Rooster, but Turk manages to slip in behind the commotion and dive into the hole under the brush with John L on his heels and hold up both flags and we declare victory.

Later on, at the Hot Bog Joint over an RC Cola, we all decide that Turk is a military mastermind.

“Hardest part of the game is waking Lyle Pratt!” says Rooster.

There is a long silence.  We all scramble to our feet and grab our muddy jackets,   run out the door to head back toward the woods.  It’s dark now.  Past time for Lyle to do the evening milking.  His dad will be mad at him.  Too bad we forgot to wake him up earlier.

                                                   Jim Whitehouse

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