He was in his fifties by now, and after years of deliberation he decided it was time. Standing at the entryway to the housing development where he was mostly raised, a backpack firmly attached to his shoulders, boots tightly laced, he started walking toward the mountain. Not any mountain. The Mountain. Especially to him, and the other boys who had been in the Boy Scout troop that called the mountain home. “It’s time,” he thought, “time to go back, to let go.”

If there was anything he loved in those days of his youth, it was scouting. He reveled in the idea of sleeping in the woods, in any season, of learning how to survive there. He loved the camaraderie and teamwork. His troop was known as the one to beat when different troops attended summer camp, Jamborees and especially the Klondike Derbies held in the winter at the regional Boy Scout camp. He often excelled in these contests. He had become a patrol leader as early as possible, voted in by the other boys in the patrol. He moved up the ranks: Tenderfoot, Second class, Star, Life were the names of the steps on the way to Eagle. Eagle Scout. He had all the merit badges for Eagle, had done all the projects and the last task was to meet with the troop council, made up of parents and the scoutmaster.

A boy scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent.

He remembered it all now as he often did, though less so these days. The privilege of going on an overnight with just the scoutmaster, the revered man who led the troop, brought them camping, identified birds in the field.

He remembered when two in a tent, they settled down. “Good night,” said one. “Good night,” said the other. Sometime later he felt the hands, groping.

“Was it fear?” he thought to himself as he remembered the shock and the stillness he displayed. “Was it right? Wrong?” he remembered thinking at the time. Morning broke and nothing was said. They walked back down the trail to his van. A silent ride.

Then later at the Friendly’s where the scoutmaster would take some of the troop for ice cream after a softball game, he would say to the counter person, pointing at the boy: “He gets a double scoop.”

A double scoop.

Now he was approaching The Mountain. It was an hour or so hike along the roads he had hiked as a boy, then later as a teenager, and now as a man of a certain age. He walked up the road to the trailhead at the town water tower. So many memories flooded in. Thankfully, he thought, there were many more memories than those of that night, when his body, the body of a 13 or 14-year-old, was used for the gratification of someone much older. He remembered most of all the times he spent alone on the mountain in the troop’s shack, the time he sought refuge there when he had been given an ultimatum from his father to forgo going to New York for a concert or don’t come home. He didn’t go home. He went to the shack. He knew how to live in the woods. He was happy there. The scoutmaster let him go there, perhaps as leverage for silence. Even now, so many years later, in his heart the mountain is his refuge.

He never got his Eagle Scout badge. He never went to the final meeting. To this day though he would say he was an Eagle Scout. In a strange way, he thought, that was his only regret, that he didn’t get that badge.

He knew other boys, now grown men, who were accosted. He knew that if the truth were known the situation in his troop may well have been one of the more extensive cases of sex abuse/pedophilia that occurred back then. No one caught on. The mirage and disguise of the scoutmaster was impeccable. The predator would stalk and find chaos in the homes of the prey. He would prime and placate. “That one, there, he gets a double scoop.”

What doesn’t kill you just makes you stronger, some kid told him once.

He saw he was stronger. He saw he learned forgiveness, compassion and other deep lessons as he contemplated his life. Even now on some level he felt sorry for the sad, lonely and decrepit soul that was the scoutmaster, who found satisfaction in the most heinous of ways. It is hard to strip desire from the human condition, and desire can take a dark form.

He was moving on now, back down the mountain, from the remains of the shack that had now melted into the ground.

On my honor, I will do my best to do my duty, to obey the scout law, to help other people at all times, to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight.

On my honor, I will do my best to do my duty, to obey the scout law, to help other people at all times, to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight. The Scout’s Oath.

They say write what you know. I would rather write about sugar plum fairies than a man’s journey back to the place where he was abused. But he knew it was the right time. That healing had come. The problem with problems is finding solutions. For some problems there appear to be no solution except to let them melt away.

As he got back to the main road, he thought to himself about current events, and the thought came.

“Yeah, me too.”

Joe Keenan is a roofer, baker and musician living in West Tisbury.