“I’m here to help too. What can I do?” Jill asked, her voice continuing to struggle over the noise of the van.
Jacob turned to her and smiled, “You can cover me if I can’t do this. And by the way, thank you.”
“I got your back,” she answered, smiling, “You’re getting some color. You look better.” Jill leaned in and tapped a finger kiss on the dimple in his chin.
“Well, the first thing you can do is help me unload the equipment. We’re heeere!” Steve howled, slowing the van to a crawl, and then eventually stopping along the side of the road.
Jacob felt and heard the gravel on the road carry the van’s tires before coming to a rest in front of the missing boy’s home. His first thoughts were of the troll mites. But it was just road gravel. Nothing more.
He moved his eyes past the condensation growing on the windshield. Squeezing his eyes, he saw a low grassy hill creeping fifty yards or so to a large green tent where he guessed the search was being concentrated. Looks like an army tent, he thought as a flurry of heads bobbed up and down over the crest of the grass. Jacob was impressed with the size of the operation. People moved with a mission. A single focus. They reminded him of army ants with a hidden agenda masked in the chaos. A few yards in front of the army tent, Jacob saw a small white trailer. The front door sat at the center with stairs and a landing that looked older than the trailer. The landing was made up of lumber that had warped and faded to an ignored gray. That’s where they’ll be, he thought. The sudden thought came with a thump in his head. He shook it off and tried blinking it away.
Home? he wondered strangely as a dense cut of pain spoke up from inside his head. One of his eyes drifted down to the right. Vision in the drift eye began to die. The only images offered were shadows of red and blue. His other eye remained focused on the boy’s home as Jill and Steve started to unload the van. Light exploded from the rear doors. The open doors flushed the inside of the van with air that crossed over his face and body. He grabbed his head and with his hands he pushed against it until the pressure righted his sight.
“Jacob, you ready?” Jill asked peeking in from the back.
“Yeah, one minute. Just gimme a minute.”
Jacob opened the passenger door to the van. He swung his feet out from his seat and dropped down onto the ground. He felt the grass swallow the soles of his shoes. The rains from the night before softened where he stood, motivating his next step. He took a small step, then two. Mud tried to hold onto his loafers but fell from his shoes as he stepped again. Another few steps and he found himself at the back of the van, easing on his suit jacket while listening to Steve’s instructions. Steve talked fast. He paused short and most times it was to throw shots of tobacco-filled spit to the ground.
Jill passed Jacob a microphone for the broadcast. Jacob wrapped his fingers around the handle and stopped to look at it. Nothing wrong. No troll mites. No thumps in his head. Jill assured him the microphone was fine. But he couldn’t find a grip that felt normal. It felt awkward. As though new or unrehearsed. Instinct took over and he pulled his left hand up to hold the microphone. Jacob didn’t feel it happen. Instead, he watched it happen. With the microphone in his left hand the grip was strong. It was comfortable. OK, so I’m left-handed today, he thought, and turned around in time to see the silhouette of a woman and a young boy appear on the landing of the trailer.
20
The trailer door opened and Sara stepped out on to the small landing. Jonnie followed along at her side and the two were met by a dozen faces she did not know. Faces who didn’t know her but knew who she was. They knew that her son was lost somewhere in Croatan National Forest. And they knew why she moved to Maysville. This wasn’t their first visit.
Restlessness stirred as she moved about the landing. She didn’t like the blank faces with wanting eyes. She didn’t like the uneasiness the cameras brought with them. Resting her fingers on her wedding band, a damp breeze slipped over her bare skin and goose flesh rose on her arms. She wanted to go back inside and pull her shawl from the couch. She wanted to wrap herself up in it. To pull it tight around her as though protecting her from the words she would hear in the next minutes. An empty security, she thought, but a warm one. The cold on her arms moved to her chest and threatened to chatter her teeth. She shuffled her feet again and tried to step away from the unsettled feeling.
The eyes on the blank faces were hungry and she could see the questions forming as a few of their bodies began to move closer. She could see the questions perched on the anxious lips of their empty faces. Sara turned away from them. Not yet, she thought, I’m not quite there – not ready.
Sara glanced over at the Captain’s tent and at the group of volunteers helping in the search for Kyle. Half of them were in the woods while the other half remained behind to run the radios and to make the phone calls and brew the coffee. Turning back to the faces, Sara felt the eagerness growing on them. The sound of cameras and microphones and feet jockeying for a better lawn position joined the sounds of the morning. Dread began to settle in anticipation of the questions spilling from their mouths.
Some of the faces wore large dome-shaped headphones and some faces held cameras on their shoulders. Sara subconsciously wrapped a protective arm around Jonnie. She took notice of the faces that stood ready for her, the hands clutching their small pads of paper. A few were penciling scribbles she was sure would be a list of the questions they would ask. These were the folks with the microphones and hidden earpieces. Reporters, she thought, and instinctively pulled Jonnie closer to her; almost behind her.
The sun was breaking behind the trailer. It jutted morning rays through the cloudy remains of the previous night’s storms. Sara stood in the dark shadow cast by the trailer while the sun stretched its morning arms. The determined light reached just high enough over the roof of their home to visit the hollow faces looking back at her. She watched as the pushy streams of sunlight faded in and out between the resting clouds. She watched as the hunger in the faces turned to disappointment and irritation with squinting eyes. A small satisfaction bubbled inside her when the faces started raising their hands over their eyes in a struggle to see more than just the silhouettes of her and Jonnie.
“It’s okay, Jonnie, just stay close to your momma,” Sara said while rubbing his back as he passed an uncertain stare over the crowd. This wasn’t the first time Sara stood in front of reporters. Anxiety hiccupped deep inside as she brought her hands together to roll her wedding band. This was her second time. The first time included a small group of the same muted faces who were polite enough and maybe even felt for her loss. But they wanted that loss and her pain played out for their viewers. They wanted the rawness of the story, the story of the man who spoke up and died.
Sara was outside to see the Captain. She wanted to offer him her help. And as promised, she wanted to introduce the team in the big tent to Jonnie. She sat on Jonnie’s bed for a few minutes after he woke up and told him where Kyle was. When Jonnie saw Kyle’s empty bed, Sara told him that his older brother was lost in the woods. When Jonnie began to cry, she picked him up and told him to pray.
21
Kyle knew what starvation was. Sure, it was a big word, but starving to death was something he was already familiar with. At least as much as a boy his age could be. He had seen starvation and the results of it first-hand. It was last summer at his friend’s house, where his eyes first saw the bones of a skeleton. His friend said he had something cool to show him. He said that it was crazy wild and waved his hands with excitement as he spoke. Kyle remembered the smell when they entered his bedroom. It was a dead smell. A rotting smell. Not as strong as the bog’s carcass smell, but Kyle knew for certain it was death.
Kyle’s stomach turned when the smell first hit him. His friend seemed immune to it. His friend motioned him to the glass cage on the ivory wood bureau and showed him a collection of small bones with thin wispy brown and white fur. Now, the fur and bones were lying atop the pale bedding inside
a hamster cage. Kyle recognized this, barely, as Patches, his friend’s hamster. Just how long did he leave him in there, he wondered. All that was left of Patches was the thin remains of his body. An oddly perfect outline shape. Completely laid out with paws stretching to all four corners as though grasping or stretching for that final moment of life. It was a few seconds before Kyle realized what was missing. Patches’ head. At that point, his friend lifted his hand into view, and between his thumb and forefinger was the small skull of his pet.
In the corner of the hamster cage sat an empty bowl where a few shavings of the pale bedding lay shuffled around it. His friend confessed to forgetting to fill the bowl with food before he and his family left for vacation. I would have fed him, Kyle thought. But then he saw the water bottle. Kyle suspected the empty bottle with the dry steel ball was the likely cause.
You deflated him, he thought while his friend giggled and poked around Patches with a pencil. Kyle remembered wanting to punch his friend. He wanted to surprise him with a smack against his nose. One that was hard enough to bloody it up. Bloody it up bad. He wanted his friend to cry just like he felt like doing.
Wind shook the trees and startled Kyle. He pulled his mind from the place where his friend showed him the little hamster skull. He pulled his mind from a place where Patches was still alive and running back and forth and throwing backflips from the top of his wheel. Kyle sighed in resignation of being in the woods. He crumpled the images in his head like a frustrated artist, and tossed them out of reach.
“Bye Patches,” Kyle mumbled, only it came out in a broken foreign language he no longer thought sounded funny. He rubbed his belly to the groan and stir of hunger. His belly was complaining less. It was far quieter than it had been earlier. The cold water of the spring he’d found filled him good, but stayed brief.
When Kyle moved his eyes past his belly to his feet, he saw just one sneaker. At some point the other Nike must have decided to walk off on its own. Kyle wasn’t sure if maybe the bog mud kept it as a token like an award or remembrance. Or, maybe he lost it when the tree snapped his eyes shut and threw him to the ground.
What he did know was that the shoe he was wearing was at least a size too small. And the small size was doing some bad things to his foot. In his mind, he saw the shoe growing smaller, like an odd scene from Alice in Wonderland. The real problem wasn’t a fable from Alice in Wonderland, but that he was growing faster than his Mom could afford. It would be a while before they had enough money, or even any money, for a new pair of sneakers.
Kyle tried to stretch his foot, but it felt cramped. Maybe the bog mud shrunk my shoe, he thought. Something squishy ran between his toes and he wondered if a skin blister popped. He wanted to blame his Mom. He wanted to stir up some of the anger that he stored away. But now he only felt shame and embarrassment when he thought about the shoe and why it was too small. He understood why. He knew how fast he went through things like clothes, and he knew how little money they had.
From above him, a scream cut the sound of the woods. The scream made him jump where he stood, leaving him to forget for a moment about his shoe. A second and then third scream hollered out. Kyle searched the trees around him and found the source. Halfway up a nearby pine, a hawk was perched, staring down at him in seeming condescension. He didn’t know the type, but it was smaller than the ones he’d seen on their drives into town. Those were the big ones. They sat on phone poles and road-signs. Waiting and watching the ground. Once in a while, Kyle saw what they were waiting for. He’d see them dive onto the ground, pounce on something. They’d lift up into the air as if on a magic carpet, a freshly picked meal hanging from their talons. Kyle’s stomach growled at the thought of food.
The hawk that hollered at him was a mini version. It was tiny enough to fly through the pines and fit its wings between the tight trees.
“What d’ya want?” Kyle yelled up to the hawk.
And as if it understood, the hawk bent forward, bobbed its head up and down, and sounded off to him something he couldn’t understand.
Amused, Kyle sounded back, “I’n just sitting here.”
“Think I’n gonna call you George … how’s that?” Kyle laughed.
George straightened up, then yelled again. Kyle looked at George and the attentive monarch-orange and black in his eyes. He admired the coat of feathers. They looked warm. Bright yellow talons clutched the branch George stood on and stung the dark of the wood. George slowly pulled one up into his coat of feathers, leaving only a glimpse of a toe.
“You resting?” Kyle asked, and saw a quiet innocent nudge from George’s feathered face.
“OK then, you can keep ne conpany.”
After dropping onto his rear, Kyle tried to decide whether to keep the remaining shoe on or to take it off.
“Eeny ngeeny nginy one … you can sing along ih you wanna George,” Kyle offered.
George looked on intrigued as Kyle waved his hand between his feet while whispering the counting rhyme. While he tired of his broken words, Eeny meeny, did sound funny. He tried not to laugh and quickly staved off the giggles when pain woke up his swollen face.
“Eeny ngeeny nginy noe, catch a tiger dy da doe.”
“If he hollers let hin doe.”
“Eeny ngeeny nginy noe!”
Kyle saw George’s head following his finger as it bounced back and forth. For a moment he wondered if the bird might attempt a raid on him. He thought of the annoying seagulls that attacked your lunch tables at the shore. Not wanting to lose a finger, Kyle slowed the motion of his hand. George lost interest and turned to what sounded like a pine cone drop.
Kyle’s finger landed on his stocking foot and a wave of relief lifted him a little. He wanted to keep his remaining shoe. For some reason keeping it just a little longer helped him feel less disconnected from home. It was something familiar. Even if it was just a little bit. He’d keep the sneaker, but had to take it off and dry his foot. Kyle wrapped his hand behind the heel of the shoe and pushed. When the shoe didn’t move he pushed harder.
“You just gonna stare at ne, George?” he asked frustrated.
The shoe didn’t slip off his foot. It didn’t move, it was stuck. It was frozen in place with caked mud sandwiched between layers of shoe leather and sock. The bog mud, he thought and an image of the rotting animal carcass teased his mind.
“Dahgg Nudd,” he said grabbing at the laces and tugging them back out through their holes. The pace to remove the shoe quickened as more images of the bog mud played back in his mind. The smell of the animal carcass came off his foot. Next it was the image of the rotting flesh. The flesh formed a mouth that was gross and mutant. It mouth spewed maggots as it spoke. The maggots crawled around the rotten lips. It told him, “I’ve got your shoe. I almost had you. At least I got your shoe.”
As Kyle pushed and pulled on his shoe he started to feel dizzy. He felt faint. The images in his head were a waking dream and he thought he would fall over onto the ground and sleep. George called out and shocked him awake. He thought George was scolding him. He thought it sounded like a warning. Wake up, George said, it isn’t the right time. Not now. No sleep for you. Kyle responded and nodded.
“Ny neaker,” he mumbled and then started again to free his foot. Kyle felt raw skin above his heel. Blood blotted through his sock. Being a size too small, the butt of his shoe cut him. Hours passed since he swam with the maggots and the dead chess pieces. The idea of that same water in his shoe scared him.
A loud suctioned vacuum of air sounded as his shoe lifted and released his foot. George jumped. He fluffed his wings in a stretch and then rested back on the branch. Kyle tore at the sock. Rolling it down from the top until he could ease it off.
The sock was wet. Soaked. And it smelled like the bog mud. It smelled like the rot of animal flesh. His stomach turned thinking that part of him stewed in those juices all night. His foot looked alien. It was whiter than white with craters of lifts and folds. Skin fell broken in small sheets. Large
open sores revealed pink skin that vomited electricity to the touch of his fingers. Sitting up, he tried to rub his foot. He didn’t press. He didn’t scratch. He didn’t want to see any more skin falling off.
“I can’t walk on dis foot George … got any ideas?” Kyle asked, turning his good eye towards the bird.
“I can’t walk. But I need to. I need to get outta here.”
Kyle continued to rub his foot. A hunger pain was brief and interrupted for a moment.
“You’re lucky. You can just fly outta here,” Kyle mumbled. George bobbed his head up and down but didn’t call back. Kyle couldn’t help but stare. He didn’t remember ever having a hawk near him – never this close. Kyle started to fade. He locked his eyes on George. Kyle kept his eyes on the monarch-orange colors that watched him.
Kyle disappeared from the place on the ground. He disappeared from the place where a waterlogged foot began to tingle. He disappeared from the nagging memories and wounds of the day. He imagined soaring through the sky in flight with George. His companion. His friend. They flew above the trees from a great height where Kyle could see his old home. He could see his Dad and his Mom and Jonnie playing on the lawn. He could see a younger version of himself running around the For Sale sign. The words ‘Sold’ written across the front. Kyle and George flew on further, rounding the flight to come back and watch the family on the green lawn play some more.
The hawk was there to rest. And while resting it had some company, a young two-legger. Just a near baby in two-legger years. The boy straddled the ground and mended some wounds. The hawk was there to watch a small show. A show of something his woods rarely saw. The show of a boy that was a fish out of water. A country stir fry lost in a big city. A boy trying to survive another day. Trying to survive on feet that looked like the dead rind of fallen fruit. A little boy. Weak and hungry. Whose face was a mass of cuts and bruises. The young two-legger’s arm attracted late summer flies. They liked the skin around the wound on his arm. It was aged and it festered an infection the boy could not see. The flies used the boy’s arm to lay their eggs so their young could feed.
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