Pop - Snap! ... Pop - Snap! …Pop, Snap!
Over and over Anna heard the splintering of wood echo the air throughout the woods, and it only got louder the closer she walked towards Logan's encampment.
Pop - Snap!
She tried to keep the leaf rustling between and under her footfalls to a minimum by following well-trafficked rabbit trails and footpaths. After a while, she could just hear the soft beats of drums, the minuscule splashes of cymbals, and the raspy recorded voice of a man singing over the rhythm of a guitar.
Poking her head around a tree, Anna could just spot Logan with his naked hairy back facing her. Before him was a stump and on either side were stacks near as tall as him of split wood. She watched him set a roughly sawed chunk of wood on the stump before him, raise his dark iron axe high above his head, and then bring it down with the force of an executioner. The wood split like a knife to butter, and Logan pulled the sharp tip of the axe blade out of the stump with a single swift tug.
After, he stood to his full height and slowly cracked his neck to either side. His back and shoulders expanded as he took in a long breath of the cold air. Anna could see now that the music, sounding as if it was recorded in a can lined with duct tape, was being played off an old record player nearby.
Logan reached past the stand where the record player sat and grabbed a sweating bottle of blue Flavor-aid. The label had been peeled off leaving only white scraps of paper stuck to the remaining adhesive on the bottle. He sucked down several mouthfuls of the stuff and dropped the bottle back where found it when he was done.
"You gonna come out or am I gonna have to drag you out?" Logan's voice was even more raspy than usual. Like his smoking habit had picked up chewing tobacco as a hobby.
Anna left her hiding spot behind the tree and walked over. "What gave me away?"
He didn't turn to face her. Instead, he set up another block of wood to split. "You were upwind." He raised his axe and followed through with another loud "Snap"!
Walking the well-tread earth of Logan's camp, she found it not anywhere near the peaceful oasis she left it once before. Multiple coats with strange colors and patches were laid over the single foldout chair resting before a flagstone firepit littered with wrappers and other trash. Leaves, twigs, and other random debris from the surrounding trees were scattered upon the formerly well-maintained walkway leading to Logan's quaint log cabin, and the weathered green tent where Logan kept his yard equipment was scattered with tools as if he had been looking for something.
She then spotted the old olive green Jeep Logan kept around. Her eye froze on four long gouge marks that ran the broad side of the car between the front and back wheels. These markings weren't rusted like some of the other dings and scratches on the Jeep. These gouges were recent. "What happened to your Jeep?"
"Scraped a pine tree."
She glanced at the fat black wheels and saw nearly all of them were flat. Anna eventually turned to look at the man himself. His body was coated in a thick layer of sweat and grime, and his hair was longer and more gray than she remembered. His lips were chapped and she spotted patches of dried blood crystalized on his bottom lip. His arms were covered in scratches and his knuckles were a beet-red color.
"You come to say something to me or just to gawk?" Logan set another oddly shaped piece of wood - Snap!
Anna slipped off the hood to her green hoodie. The cold immediately started to nip at her ears. "None of us have seen you for nearly a week."
"Notice that did you?" Snap!
"Of course we did. So you wanna tell me why you're being so weird?"
"I already told you, Anna. I like my alone time." Snap!
"It's just 'Anna' now? No 'kid'? No 'Skunk Head'?" Anna crossed her arms. "God, I knew something was wrong but I didn't think it was terminal."
Logan drove his axe deep into the wood of the stump and rested both of his leathery hands on the hilt. He lowered his face and lightly panted. "Next I raise my head and look in your direction, I'd better see you walking away."
"I'm not going anywhere till I get an answer about any of this from anyone!"
"And what, exactly, makes you think you deserve an answer?"
"When statues start flying around in the middle of the night in my own house! That's when!"
Logan snickered, pulled the axe out of the stump with one hand, and set up another piece of wood. "You're house, huh?" He mumbled
"Our house. What the hell ever! When stuff starts getting thrown around, I think us kids get to know why!"
"Let me give you a little insight. That house ain't your house, it ain't our house, it's Xavier's mansion." The stink he put on the word 'mansion' was enough to peel the bark off the trees. He raised his axe and drove its blade straight through the readied wood - Snap!
"Okay…" Anna rubbed her numbing nose. "Look, I found you're claw marks in the wall behind the bust that broke. We all know you did it. I just want to know why. What's going on with you?"
"It's nothing you need to worry about."
"Well, a little inside look on how I work, all this -" She gestured at him, "is making me worry about it!"
Logan grunted and jabbed the top end of the axe blade into the stump like the tip of a sword. He took his time wiping the sweat from his brow with the length of his forearm and looked out into his humble encampment. Eventually, he turned and looked at Anna for the first time since the whole painful interaction had started. His face was stone-hard at first glance. Then, after a beat, it seemed to soften after an exchanged look between them. Something like a smile turned the corner of his lip.
"You remind me of myself at your age. Thinking I was ready to take on anything the world could throw at me. Thinking that there wasn't nothin' I hadn't seen. Nothin' I couldn't handle." He sunk the axe blade into the stump and walked into the tent where his record player was singing. He opened the glass case, pulled the needle off the vinyl record, found a metal folding chair, and nearly fell into it.
"Listen to me, and I want you to open up those ears and actually try to pull what I'm about to say into that skull of yours. There are things in this world you ain't ready for. You, the other kids, you've dealt with a lot, and your time will come when you need to deal with more. For now, shut your trap, drop it, and enjoy what you got."
Anna felt her cheeks go hot. "I'm sorry, the hell did you just say to me? You want me to 'shut my trap?' What, is it because I'm annoying you, Logan? You don't like when I don't fall exactly in line with what bullshit is fed to me by either you or Xavier? I'm just supposed to pretend that everything is fine when you won't even come into the house?"
Logan lowered his head while she talked and when she was done, he raised it again, his lips drawn to a fine line. "Yes, you are. Kid, you don't know what lurks out there in those shadows! You're safe here. Protected. It stays that way because you listen to us! You'll get your chance to wrestle with the demons and devils out there, but right now you ain't ready yet! You are still a child!" He curled his elbow and jabbed a finger in her direction. "So when I tell you to shut your mouth and drop it, it's what you're going to do!"
"What shadows are there you guys aren't already making us face? We've already fought The Brotherhood and their superpowered assholes. Kurt already almost got his face caved in by one of them -"
"And The Brotherhood is the least of what you should be afraid of!"
"Who else then, Logan? The Sentinals?"
Logan paused as if something had stolen the breath out of his chest. "Where the hell did you hear about that?"
"You! You and Xavier. The first week I was here I overheard you guys talking about it. Before I came here that Magneto guy mentioned them too."
He sifted his jaw. "Then if you already heard about them, then you know there is a greater boogie man than The Brotherhood out there."
"Was it over those things you and Xavier fought about that night? These Sentinals?"
He stared into her eyes and rolled his shoulders. "I never said we had a fight."
"I'm not stupid despite what you might think. Kitty and I found the smashed statue and Xavier rolled out looking like hell a minute later."
Logan stretched his jaw and walked back towards his log pile. "I never said you were stupid either, Anna." He grabbed the axe by the hilt and pulled it free of its stump.
"Then when are you going to stop treating me like I am?"
"When you stop acting like me at your age."
Anna felt the space between her brows crinkle as she looked down. She turned her back to him.
He sighed. "Things between me and Xavier will blow over. We'll… work it out… Sometimes Mom and Dad have different ideas on how to parent, alright?"
"That right?"
"Maybe I shouldn't have left you kids hanging so long, and maybe I shouldn't have pulled a disappearing act. I'm figuring out this whole 'mentor' thing as I go. Understand?" When she said nothing he straightened his posture. "But you need to listen to me when I'm telling you to drop this. What Xavier and I get into is between me and him. You have to accept that there are a lot of things going on that don't need your involvement. So don't go around acting stupid thinking you know what you're doing. Alright?"
Anna raised her head. She caught another glimpse of the long uneven scratches in the Jeep.
"Are you hearing me?" He called to her again.
She turned and pulled her hood tight around her face. "Crystal clear." She didn't spare the man another look as she brushed past him and back into the woods. A few breaths later she heard her exit followed up by a few more: Pop, Snap!... Pop, Snap!... Pop, Snap!