“Who’s there?” I asked, and whatever it was stopped moving. I tried to make myself short and inconspicuous by crouching in the culvert cut by the creek, but hiding made it impossible to see the source of danger. In the tension of anticipation, sounds that had gone unnoticed became amplified. Crickets sang under rocks. A cicada cried and then went silent. I was at odds whether to run away or stay and capture the notes in the water. A breeze through the leaves, or something breathing? Slowly at first, the footsteps resumed, then the creature bolted, crashing through the leaves, running away from me, the air whispering and falling quiet. When it had departed, I convinced myself that a deer had been startled by my presence, or perhaps a hound that had picked up my scent by mistake. The disturbance unnerved me, so I quickly traced my way back to the clearing. I was the first one there, fifteen minutes ahead of our planned rendezvous.
George arrived next, face flushed with exertion, his voice less than a rasp from calling for the boy. He collapsed in exhaustion, his jeans emitting puffs of dust.
“No luck?” I asked.
“Do you think? I am dragging and didn’t see a damn thing. You don’t have a square on you?”
I produced two cigarettes and lit his, then mine. He closed his eyes and smoked. Oscar and Lewis showed up next, similarly defeated. They had run out of ways to say so, but the worry slackened their pace, bowed their heads, clouded their eyes. We waited for another fifteen minutes for Jimmy Cummings, and when he failed to appear, I began to wonder if another search party was in order.
At 9:30, George asked, “Where is Cummings?”
The residual twilight gave way to a starry night. I wished we had thought to bring flashlights. “Maybe we should go back to where the police are.”
Oscar refused. “No, someone should wait here for Jimmy. You go, Henry. It’s a straight shot, dead on.”
“C’mon, George, go with me.”
He raised himself to the standing position. “Lead on, Macduff.”
Up the trail, we could see red and blue lights flashing against the treetops and bouncing into the night sky. Despite his aching feet, George hurried us along, and when we were nearly there, we could hear the static shout over the walkie-talkies, sense something wrong in the air. We jogged into a surreal scene, the clearing bathed in lights, fire engines idling, dozens of people milling about. A man in a red baseball cap loaded a pair of bloodhounds into the back of his pickup. I was startled to see Tess Wodehouse, her white nurse’s uniform glowing in the gloom, embracing another young woman and stroking her hair. Two men lifted a dripping canoe to the roof of a car and strapped it down. Patterns emerged as if time stood still, and all could be seen at once. Firemen and policemen, their backs to us, formed a half ring around the back of the ambulance.
The chief pivoted slowly, as if averting his gaze from the somber paramedics invalidated reality, and told us carefully, “Well . . . we have found a body.”
? CHAPTER 18 ?
Mistakes were made, despite our careful planning. I am troubled to this day by my part, however minor, in the series of misfortunes and errors that led to his death. I am even more sorry about the changes wrought by those two days in June, which consequences confounded us for years. That none of us intended any harm matters not at all. We are responsible for our actions, even when accidents occur, if only for the steps we omitted or neglected. In retrospect, perhaps we overplanned. They could have sneaked into the Loves’ house, snatched Oscar while he slept, and innocently tucked Igel under the covers. The boy always was left alone to play for hours at a time. We could have grabbed him in broad daylight and sent in a changed Igel for dinner. Or we could have skipped the purification by water. Who still believes in that old myth? It did not have to end in such a heartbreaking way.
Oscar Love came out to play on a June evening, dressed in blue shorts and a shirt with writing across the chest. He wore sandals, dirt caked between his toes, and kicked a ball back and forth across the lawn. Luchóg and I had climbed a sycamore and sat in the branches for what felt like hours, watching his mindless game and trying to attract him into the woods. We broadcast a menagerie of sounds: a puppy, a mewing kitten, birds in distress, a wise old owl, a cow, a horse, a pig, a chicken, a duck. But he took scant notice of our imitations. Luchóg cried like a baby; I threw my voice, disguised as a girl’s, then a boy’s. Oscar was deaf to all that, hearing instead the music in his mind. We called out his name, promised him a surprise, pretended to be Santa Claus. Stumped, we descended, and Luchóg had the bright idea to sing, and the boy immediately followed the melody into the forest. As long as the song continued, he sought its source, dazed by curiosity. In my heart, I knew that this is not the way fairytales should be, bound for an unhappy ending.
Hidden behind trees by a creek, the gang lay in ambush, and Luchóg lured the boy deeper into the woods. Oscar stood on the bank considering the water and the stones, and when the music stopped he realized how lost he was, for he began to blink his eyelids, fighting back the urge to weep.
“Look at him, Aniday,” Luchóg said from our hideaway. “He reminds me of the last one of us to become a changeling. Something wrong with him.”
“What do you mean, ‘wrong’?”