by Dan Chaon
But when he puts his hand near Loomis’s pillow, he draws in a sudden breath. Loomis’s head isn’t there, and when he presses his hand against the lump of sleeping bag, there’s nothing but air inside it. No body. No Loomis. Disbelieving, he pats the sleeping bag harder and a tinny mechanical laugh rises up. “Heh heh heh,” a voice says. “Do it again.” He startles, lifting the bean-filled little toy by its string tail.
“Loomis?” he says. He turns in a circle around the tiny space, feeling around the circumference, clutching the sleeping bags, the pillows, as if Loomis were something tiny, like a key, that could be lost in the folds. Outside the tent, there is merely the soft, snuffling sound of the raccoons as they calmly go about their work.
34
June 5, 1997
Loomis has never been afraid of the dark, but in the woods it is harder to be brave. This is more dark than he’s ever experienced, so he tries not to think too much about it. He holds his flashlight stiffly in front of him, pretending that the pool of light it casts is a dog he’s walking. He likes this idea. A light-dog, he thinks, and it makes him feel a bit safer, even if it is make-believe.
He stops for a moment to look behind him, pointing the light at the bars of trees and tree shadows in his wake. The tent is somewhere back there in the distance, but he can’t see it anymore, and he walks his pool of light around him in a circle. Twigs, pine needles, rocks. An empty can that says Coors. He listens intently to the steady, pulsing chirp of insects. He doesn’t hear footsteps, though. He doesn’t hear Jonah calling for him, and so he turns and continues walking, trying not to step on anything that makes a snap or rustle. There are plenty of people around somewhere nearby, he tells himself—he saw them as they drove to their campsite—but right now he only wants to put distance between himself and Jonah. If Jonah comes back and finds he’s gone, Loomis imagines that he will try to catch him and make him sleep in that tent again.
——
He had slept for a little while, even though he was upset. Even though he’d started to cry, which is not something he likes to do. Some of the children in kindergarten cry over very small things, and Loomis doesn’t really approve. But he hadn’t been able to control his tears this time—he had been feeling very uncomfortable and nervous, and when Jonah said that he had telephoned Grandma Keene, he felt certain this was a lie. And then Jonah said that his dad was in jail. That was the thing that scared him the most.
At school, they teach you that Strangers, bad people, will sometimes pretend to be your friend. They might try to give you drugs, or pull you into their car and make you a prisoner. They might try to touch you in your private parts, and this is inappropriate. If this ever happens, they said, you should try to get away, and tell a grown-up that you trust, like a policeman or a teacher.
He is not really sure if Jonah is a stranger or not. All he really knows is that it is important for him to call his grandma, or his dad. He had woken up to the sound of the raccoons—five or six of them, bandits, tiptoeing and fingering through their campsite—and when he’d opened the zippered slit in their tent, he saw that Jonah had gone.
“Hello?” he said, and the raccoons ignored him, continuing their work disdainfully, as if they were aware that he was a child and they were adults. He held the flashlight in both hands, running it along the perimeter of the site. “Jonah?” he said. And when there was no answer, he hesitated for a moment.
Then he started walking.
——
He has been going forward for a while now when he pauses again. The forest is deep, he thinks, and it might be a long time before he can find a house. He thinks of fairy tales he has heard—Hansel and Gretel, Little Red Riding Hood—and though he’s not afraid of talking wolves or witches, he wonders if there’s any truth to those stories. Are there still woodsmen he could possibly encounter? Or are they extinct, like milkmen and cobblers? He pushes his light into the distance ahead of him, trying to see a pathway through the trees. He would like to meet a woodsman now, he thinks, and he imagines a man with a feather in his hat, a bow and a quiver of arrows swung over his shoulder, whistling along a path. He thinks about animals, too, about the book he had checked out of the library: Wildlife of the Mountain States. Colorado, he knows, is home to the lynx, an endangered species, and also to the black bear and the puma. The puma, also known as the cougar or mountain lion, crouches silently in the bushes or sometimes in trees when it is hunting. He can see the picture in the book, the tawny, large-eyed cat, and he can remember his grandma’s voice as she read. “Movement, especially running, triggers prey instincts in mountain lions,” and thinking of this he holds very still. He runs the beam of his flashlight along the boughs of pine trees above him, toward the star-lined lid of sky. He listens again for footsteps, for the sound of Jonah breathing. A gust of small insects passes across his face, alighting in his hair before he shakes them away.
——
He has been thinking a lot about his dad and mom. It has been a long time since they’ve spoken, but he thinks of them often. Dreams of them. Grandma Keene doesn’t seem to know much about where they are. His mother, she says, had to go on a long trip, somewhere far away, and his father got into trouble. He can remember the night when the men, the police, came into his house, how he’d tried to hide under the bed as they pounded through the rooms. He can remember the bedskirt pulling back, the man saying “Come out from under the bed, sir,” and the thick hand closing around his ankle. “Come out from under the bed, sir,” the man had bellowed, and when he’d cried out they’d fired a gun at him. He remembers the sound, vibrating against the walls, and the way he’d curled up and stiffened, his rigid body pulled along the dusty floor like a mop as they dragged him out.
“Oh, geez,” said the man. “It’s a kid.” And he could hear his father crying. His dad crying. “It’s okay, Loomis, it’s okay,” his dad said, and he’d kept his eyes squeezed tightly shut.
He’d known—his grandma had told him—that his dad had been arrested, and had to go away for a while.
But he wasn’t in jail! Like a robber or a killer. He had known that Jonah wasn’t telling the truth, but that was the lie that was the worst. That was the lie that made him realize Jonah was trying to trick him, and a mixture of fear and outrage looped around in the pit of his stomach. Maybe Jonah wasn’t his uncle after all, Loomis thought. He didn’t want to be on vacation. He didn’t want to sleep in a tent. He thought of that terrible and frightening movie, The Wizard of Oz, which he swore he would never watch again. He remembered the moment when the girl was locked in a castle, and she saw her grandmother in a crystal ball. “Dorothy!” the grandmother was shouting. “Dorothy! Where are you?” It was the most frightening thing he’d ever witnessed—that poor grandma, trapped inside the ball, blind and plaintively calling—and he thought of this as he and Jonah sat there by the fire. He knew, suddenly, he knew in his heart, that his own grandmother didn’t know where he was. She was looking for him. He couldn’t help himself then; he began to cry.
He stands there as these memories pass through his mind. Then, very faintly, he hears a voice in the distance. “Looooomis!” someone is calling, and he tightens his grip around the flashlight.
And despite what he knows about the pumas, he begins to run.
——
When he comes at last to the clearing, the voice has fallen away into the distance. The beam of the flashlight has been rattling in front of him, bouncing off the ground and the trunks of trees, careening through leaves and the shadowy mouths that sprang out after them, shapes bending and elongating and tilting themselves when the light struck them, and Loomis fell a few times, tripping over a root or a branch and then pulling himself up to run some more.
“Loomis!” the voice says in the distance. “Where are you?”
He stops when the trees open up onto the campsite. There is a fire there, still high and flickering, and a larger tent, a kind of A-frame construction with poles that hold up an awning. The people are
sitting in lawn chairs next to the fire. A man and a woman, both with their hair plaited into braids, both of them blond and darkly tanned, their skin almost leathery. The man seems to be dozing, and the woman points her feet toward the fire, sleepily. She puts a little pipe to her mouth, and draws deeply on it. After a moment, a long, curling stream of smoke trails from her mouth and nose and drifts into the air.
Loomis hesitates at the edge of a tree, watching as the woman stares at the fire. Then her eyes settle on him. They look at each other, both of them blinking, considering, like a cat and bird staring at each other through the glass of a window. Loomis watches as she touches her fingers to one ear and then another, as if adjusting them.
“Randy,” the woman says, and the man stirs uncertainly. “Open your eyes for a minute. I think I see a little boy standing over there.”
——
For a moment, Randy doesn’t open his eyes, and Loomis doesn’t move. It would maybe be possible for him to melt back into the shadows, to slip behind a tree, but instead he just freezes.
“Hello,” the woman says in a soft voice, such as you might use to speak to a rabbit wearing human clothes. She doesn’t look exactly like his mother. His mother had never worn braids, he thinks, but he steps a little forward anyway. There is something about her face—the turn of her mouth, the way her eyelids droop in a dreamy, unconcerned, smiling way—that reminds him of his mom.
It has been one year and three months since he last saw her—he knows because he has kept a record of it in his mind—and sometimes he is afraid that he will forget what she looks like. But he remembers her very clearly right now, and he looks at the woman hesitantly.
“Hello,” Loomis says, still holding his flashlight-dog firmly, making it heel beside him. “I’m trying to find a telephone,” he says as politely as he can. “I need to call my grandmother and tell her where I am.”
The two of them, the man and the woman, exchange glances, and Loomis sees the man widen his eyes with amusement at the woman. He knows that they think he’s funny—adults often do—because he is small for his age but doesn’t talk like a baby, because he has a good vocabulary, because he doesn’t act spastic, like some of the kids at kindergarten.
“No telephone here, little guy,” the man named Randy says, and grins. “Kinda late to be out wandering around by yourself, don’t you think?”
Loomis doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t like this person very much; he reminds him a little of his uncle Ray, who always wants to swing Loomis on his shoulders or wrestle with him even though Loomis has told him that he doesn’t like to roughhouse, who teases him and calls him Little Professor Man, as if it is a joke to want to know things about the world. This Randy is of the same sort, and Loomis turns his attention back to the woman.
“Can you tell me where I could find a telephone?” he says, hopefully. “I’m a little upset right now, and I really need to talk to my grandmother.”
“You’re upset?” the woman says, and chuckles, gently. “Oh, you poor thing. Where’s your mom and dad, sweetie?”
“I don’t know,” Loomis says. “That’s why I need to call my grandmother. I’m living with her, and she takes care of me for right now.”
“Okay . . .” the lady says, doubtfully, and she and the man named Randy give one another that private, bemused look again. “Are you camping around here somewhere?” she says, and Loomis is silent. He is aware that if they take him back to Jonah, Jonah will tell them the same lies. He will not be allowed to call his grandmother.
“Do you think there’s a day camp around here somewhere?” the woman says to Randy. “Boy Scouts or something?”
“Escaping the Boy Scouts,” Randy says, and chortles. “On the run. A refugee. He makes his way toward freedom.”
“Stop it,” the woman says, but Loomis can tell that she thinks Randy is funny. But she is at least kindly when she looks at him again. “Where did you come from, sweetie? Are you camping with somebody? Are you with a group?”
“My address is 508 Foxglove Road, St. Bonaventure, Nebraska,” Loomis says. “The phone number is . . .”
“Name, rank, and serial number,” Randy says.
“Shut up, Randy,” the woman says, wrinkling her forehead. She sits up and gestures for Loomis to come closer. But he doesn’t move.
“You can sit over here,” the woman says. “It’s all right. What’s your name, honey?”
“Loomis,” he says, and shifts from foot to foot. “Loomis Timmens.”
“Loomis,” she says. “That’s an interesting name.”
“Thank you,” he says. He takes a step toward her, then thinks better of it. She seems nice, but he doesn’t quite trust Randy.
“Loomis,” she says, and he watches her cautiously as she stands up. “How did you get here, in Colorado, if your home is in Nebraska?”
Loomis hesitates. He looks down at the faithful spot his flashlight’s beam is casting. “Somebody brought me here,” he says carefully. “But I don’t think he asked my grandma for permission, and that’s why I want to call her. I’m afraid she might be worried about me.”
“Oh, geez,” the woman says, and her face darkens a little.
And then, not far away, the voice of Jonah drifts out of the trees. “Loooomis,” he is calling, and Randy sits up, cupping a hand to his mouth.
“He’s over here!” Randy bellows.
——
Loomis doesn’t know what to do when he sees Jonah coming through the trees, into the circle of campfire light. He thinks that maybe he should try to run, but instead he just stands there, feeling mixed up—scared, but also oddly guilty at the sight of Jonah’s stricken, concerned face. He has never tried to run away before, and a part of him can’t help but feel that he has been a bad boy.
“Loomis!” Jonah says, and looks nervously from the man to the woman. “I’m so glad I found you! I was really worried about you. You shouldn’t wander off like that—you could get lost!” He lets out a sigh, and shakes his head humorously at Randy. “Wow!” he says. “What a relief! Thank you guys for finding him.”
“No problem,” Randy says, proudly, as if he’d casually saved Loomis from drowning.
“He’s a little upset,” Jonah says, and he tries to smile but a shudder runs down his face and across his shoulders, so that the smile doesn’t seem quite real. “I’m his uncle, and I guess . . . I didn’t realize that he’d get so scared. I just thought he’d like to go camping, you know? To go on a little vacation. Because, well, he’s had a very hard time. His parents are gone, and . . . and his grandma passed away a few days ago, so . . .”
Loomis feels these words hit him sharp, deliberate blows, like slaps. He takes a step backward, clutching the flashlight to his chest. “You’re lying!” he says loudly. He can’t believe that someone would lie in such a way, and his mouth trembles with outrage. “You took me here,” he says. “And you didn’t tell my grandma! And she’s worried about me.” He wipes his face, aware that they are all staring at him.
Jonah’s hand trembles as he puts it up to his face, up to his scar. The man named Randy lifts an eyebrow, uncertainly, his eyes moving from Loomis to the woman. But she is staring at Loomis, as if trying to make a decision.
“He’s confused,” Jonah says, but his voice wavers. “It was quite a shock.”
“You’re lying,” Loomis says again, and he gazes up at the woman, because he knows that she will see in his face that he’s telling the truth. She will not believe Jonah, he thinks. She will help him find a telephone. He watches her mouth growing small as she thinks. The woods seem to freeze for a moment. The darkness settles over the small circle of firelight like a lid over a box.
35
December 18, 2002
Troy wakes up to a gray light that could be dawn or dusk or afternoon, a pale cloudy day outlining the edges of the window shade. He sits up. Today is Little Man’s twelfth birthday, he thinks, and though he knows it’s a fact he has a moment of uncertainty, a free-floatin
g gust of Rip van Winkle time in which he can imagine his son, aged four or six, asleep in the next room, his cheeks still soft and peach-shaped, his face solemn, pressed against the pillow, dreaming hard. “Little Man,” he thinks: an old nickname they haven’t used in years and years, coming back to him out of the past. He rubs his hands over his eyes. Hard to believe that his child will soon be a teenager; hard to believe that they’re still here, in this same old house that Troy had grown up in, that they’ve managed, after all, to stay together.
He opens the shade and looks out to where a light snow is falling and imagines that it is probably near the end of morning, the beginning of afternoon. He was up very late, and he pads blearily down the hall, glances into Loomis’s room. Loomis—Loo, as he calls himself now—has left for school already, of course. The days of shaking him gently by the shoulder to wake him, the days of packing lunches and making breakfast are long gone, and though he’d never relished pulling himself out of bed after a late night at work, he does miss that morning ritual a little. These days, Loo is like a considerate roommate. He rises to his own alarm clock long before Troy is even aware of morning, and most often he’s already asleep when Troy comes home at night, his homework stacked neatly on the kitchen table, the dishes washed, the clothes taken out of the dryer and folded. It makes Troy nervous to think of Loomis growing up, moving away, growing distant.
He stares at himself in the bathroom mirror. Though he is only thirty-six, his dark hair has already begun to show some gray.
He is not crazy about the way time moves forward. Thirty-six is not old, he knows, but five years, ten years, seems like less than it used to. Loomis is in middle school now, and in ten years he will have graduated from college. You ought to make the time precious, he thinks, and he is pleased to see that Loomis has opened the presents that he left out on the kitchen table the night before—some books, shirts and pants, a new watch. A laptop computer—he’d had to juggle the finances a little for that one—and he smiles, imagining the look on Loomis’s face when he unwrapped it.
