“Did you recognize them, though?”
I shrugged. How many gangs of feral scouts can there be?
Her eyes bloated with tears. “They’re just little kids, Marlene.”
Here we go, I thought, the floodgates are open.
I took the pickax and a garden fork a little way into the field and started to dig a grave. The quicker I got it done, the quicker I could get back in the car and look for Billy. My digging the grave was supposed to make amends for not helping Joni prepare a funeral. We were having a funeral, even though we didn’t know the boy’s name or anything about him. And our own two kids were still missing. There would be a trail of ashes to the grave and a natural shroud for the body and some kind of poetry. Joni didn’t need me—spiritual welfare was her racket, not mine—but she insisted on my attendance. I couldn’t tell if it was intended to be therapy or punishment.
If Joni was right, and the Wild Things would run away now and take Billy and Lola with them, or punish them in revenge, or come after us at the camp—if, basically, I had fucked up to an even greater degree than a kid’s dead body in my car would already suggest—then I had to get back out there and find them. Joni could stay here if she liked, weeping over Lola and David, consoling herself with rituals, but I would dig this grave and go out searching again. I knew in that moment, I would never stop searching. The idea made me feel better and infinitely worse.
Charlie came out from the forest and picked up the fork.
“Mummy?”
I thunked the pickax into the rain-soaked sod and stopped.
“What was the boy’s name, Mummy?”
I didn’t know. I had never met him before.
“Did he take Billy?”
I didn’t know. Maybe. No.
“Oh.” Charlie looked confused.
I seesawed the pickax out of the earth, swung it once more, and very nearly put it through my own foot. I stopped again and crouched down. Charlie backed up and tried to sit on my lap, sending us both sprawling to the ground. I put my arms around him and pressed my face into the back of his neck as the wet grass swabbed my skin.
“It was an accident, Charlie.”
“I know, Mummy. It’s okay.”
His hair smelled of oxygen, and I took a deep breath. “It’s not, though, is it?”
“No, not really. The boy’s dead because you ran over him with your big car.” Charlie dabbed his fingers over the bruise on my head. “Does it hurt?”
I nodded.
“What will happen to the boy?” he asked.
“Which boy?”
“The one who’s dead.”
“Nothing. He’s dead. Nothing happens to him now. That’s the point.”
“But where will he go?”
I took a deep breath. “Well, Charlie, some people think that when we die we go to heaven. Where people are always happy.”
“Joni says there’s no such thing as heaven. We just go back into nature, she said. Like molecules and that.”
“Oh. Well. That’s probably true.”
“I think so.” Charlie got back to his feet and started pulling the broken turf away from the grave with the fork, exposing the rich earth beneath.
When the grave was finished—a pitifully small gash of humid darkness amid the late-summer green pasture, as though we were planting a tree, not burying a life that had never been lived—I packed a bag with all the things I needed to return to the hunt. Peter and Charlie were coming with me. I promised to be back in time for the funeral. I promised to find Billy and Lola. I promised not to lose Charlie and Peter in the process. I intended to keep the second two promises.
“Come on, boys,” I called. “Get in the car; time to go.”
But Peter was missing from his sentry post. I heard him shouting farther up the dirt track. “Charlie! Mrs. Greene! Charlie!”
“Now what . . .” I trudged down to the gate to see what he was up to.
Peter was racing toward a small figure who was trotting down the path on a little cloud of dust: a boy, singing to himself as he made his way home. It was Billy.
“Mum-may?” Billy touched the purple-black rings of exhaustion and damage on my face. His hand came away wet with watery grime and blood, and his smile faded as the world wobbled with the realization that Mummy was not in a state of authoritative perfection.
“It’s okay, everything’s okay.” I kissed my muck off his hand and tried for a laugh, but hysteria wrestled it into a grotesque, damp sob. I held Billy tight against me with one arm, while my other hand groped his body, feeling for evidence of harm. He laughed into my neck when my fingers found the ticklish spots.
I pushed him to arm’s length and looked hard into his eyes.
“Did someone hurt you, Billy?”
His mouth twitched into a nervous smile, but his eyebrows bunched together. Confusion? Fear? Trauma? I always thought I could translate every nuance of his body language. But this left me dumb.
“Billy? Where have you been?”
He tried to shrug, but I was holding his shoulders too tight.
“You’re scaring him,” said Joni. She glanced up the track, looking out for Lola, and I felt a pang of guilt that only my nightmare was over. But not enough to keep my attention from Billy. I looked into his eyes for a few more seconds, and his blue gaze tried to make sense of this curious turn of events. Then I began tearing off his clothes: first his jacket and shirt, turning him round and stroking a flat palm over the bum-fluff of his back, lifting and lowering his unresisting arms; then his trousers and underpants, running my hands down the length of his legs from hip to ankle, which had no more than the usual toddler grazes. Then I pulled off his shoes and socks, and he stood naked in the morning chill.
“Marlene, he’s okay.” Joni’s hand was on my shoulder now, as though I were the one who needed to be consoled. “He’s not hurt.”
I whipped Billy into the air and laid him flat on the stony dirt, pulling his legs apart to check between and behind. He giggled and moved his hands to cover himself. I pulled him up to his feet again.
“Did anyone touch you, Billy? You can tell me. Even if they told you not to tell me, you can tell me anything. I won’t be angry. You’re not in trouble.” I took my hands off his shoulders and placed them flat on my own thighs, because I was shaking him. “Just tell us what happened, Billy.”
“Ice cream.”
“What?”
“Yummy, yummy, in my tummy.” Billy looked from my face to Joni’s and then, with an air of triumph, settled on his great rival, Maggie. “The man gave me ice cream. And there’s none left for you.”