by R. Jean Reid
“Hi, kids,” she greeted them.
“Are you here as my mom or a reporter?” Josh asked.
“A bit of both,” she answered, considering it the best way to mollify him. That way he would feel that he was worried about, but not too publicly worried about. “Who saw Joey last?” she asked.
“I did,” Josh replied. “He couldn’t have gone too far. He was just a little in front of me. There was a dead snake and I stopped to look at it. Then I sped up to catch up with him, but he wasn’t waiting for me.”
“About where was this on the ride?”
“Well, we were going to meet at the uprooted oak tree and wait for everyone else to catch up … but Joey wasn’t there, so I went a little further,” Josh admitted.
“I was already at the tree,” Bryan, the oldest boy in the class, said. “I was back in the trees, swigging water when you guys came riding by.”
“I didn’t see you,” Josh said.
“Yeah, well, I saw you,” Bryan countered.
“What did you see, Bryan?” Nell asked.
“Well, just Josh and Joey riding by.”
“Together?”
“Uh … no, I guess not. I saw Josh, and Joey’s usually with him.”
“Did you see Joey separately from Josh?”
“Uh … I think so.” But his hesitancy made Nell suspect he wasn’t sure.
“How long were you there before Josh arrived?”
“Uh … I think about ten or fifteen minutes.”
“Seconds, more like,” Josh interjected.
“Hey, I can’t help it if you’re slow.”
“How long after Josh went by before the others arrived?” Nell wanted to keep the conversation on what had happened.
“Uh … maybe another ten minutes or so.”
She guessed his estimated times were on the high side. Two minutes can seem like ten for a young boy just sitting. Still, it told her that there’d been a noticeable gap of time between when Josh passed him and the others got there.
“What happened then?” Nell asked. “When did anyone notice that Joey was missing?”
“I was the one,” Josh said. “I couldn’t seem to catch up with him. I kept going, but when I hit half a mile, I stopped and started wondering if he’d pulled one over on me. So I doubled back to the meeting point.”
Nell knew that Josh had some kind of meter thing on his bike, so the half-mile distance would be fairly accurate.
“But at this point you weren’t sure whether he was lost or fooling with you?”
“Well, he didn’t come back to join us,” Bryan said, grabbing Nell’s attention away from Josh. “I watched you buzz by and only you came back.”
“About how long were you all waiting before Josh returned?” Nell asked.
“Ugh … I guess, maybe another ten minutes,” Bryan answered.
“So Joey was gone for a total of about twenty minutes from when he first passed by you?”
“Uh … twenty minutes?”
“You guessed about ten minutes between when Josh passed and the rest of the group arrived, and then another ten minutes before Josh returned,” Nell explained.
“Ten and ten makes twenty,” Josh added.
“I can count,” Bryan said. “Yeah, I’d say twenty minutes is about right.”
“Josh, about how long were you past the tree before you realized Joey wasn’t ahead of you?”
“I was just past it; I only meant to go up the road for a little. Maybe an eighth of a mile, tops. So, that would mean I went about three eighths of a mile past the turn-around point before giving up and coming back.”
Nell would ask later, without Bryan around to contradict things, how long it would take to ride that distance. She wasn’t sure what she wanted to learn from these questions, but experience told her it was possible to know too little but not to know too much.
“Did anyone notice anything unusual? Any people not from the group? Any tracks, like from bike or car tires?” Nell noticed that Kate, her phone call made, had joined them and was standing behind Josh, listening to her questions.
“I did,” said one of the two girls. Susan, Nell thought her name was. “I heard a gunshot.”
All the children turned to look at her.
“You did not,” Bryan said.
“You didn’t. I did,” Susan said firmly.
“When did you hear it?” Nell asked.
“Just before Josh came back. Everyone else was there. I heard the shot and then Josh appeared. It was real faint, I barely heard it.”
“How do you know it was a gun?” Bryan demanded. “Could have been a firecracker or something.”
“No, I know what guns sound like. My mom’s in the Air Force and she teaches people how to shoot.”
That stopped Bryan’s questioning.
“So you barely heard the shot?” Nell asked, wanting to see if she could tease any more details out of Susan.
“Yeah, like it was far away.”
“Maybe a hunter,” Nell suggested.
“Maybe. But it sounded more like a pistol that a rifle,” Susan said. “But people do target shooting sometimes.”
“It’s not terribly unusual to hear gunshots out here,” Kate said. “No one should be hunting—or target shooting—in the park, but it happens.”
“Was it just one shot?” Nell asked.
“I only heard one. But I only heard it ’cause there was a quiet moment. Then Josh arrived and people started talking and stuff.”
“Did anyone hear anything else?” Nell asked.
There was silence, heads either turning to look to see who might speak or staring down at the table as if trying to remember.
Finally, it was Susan who said, “I heard a motor.”
“You heard everything, didn’t you?” Bryan said. “Next it’ll be an airplane. Or aliens landing.”
Susan gave Bryan a look that Nell suspected she’d watched her mother use with new Air Force recruits, then continued. “I did. I heard a motor. It was when we were getting ready to ride back here. Kate had called us all together, and we got quiet to listen to her.”
“Did it sound close or far away?” Nell asked.
“Different from the gun. Not close, but a different direction. Maybe from the water. I just thought it was a boat motor, but I don’t know why I thought that.”
In an eerie echo of her words, the sound of several cars reached them. No one said anything as they listened to their approach.
It was the sheriff and several of his deputies. The children looked first at each other, then at Kate, as if seeking either an explanation or some reassurance that this wasn’t as serious as it appeared to be.
“I called Sheriff Hickson,” Kate said. “It’s possible that Joey had a wreck and twisted his ankle or something.”
“Or he was kidnapped by the mysterious monster of the woods,” Bryan offered.
“That’s not funny,” Josh shot back. The worried look on his face told Nell he was scared something really had happened to his friend.
“Joey’s probably okay,” Nell said. “But he could be lost and frightened or even, as Kate suggested, he could have had a wreck and possibly hurt himself.”
“He was wearing a helmet,” Josh said. “He shouldn’t be hurt too bad.”
“No,” Kate replied. “But if his bike’s wrecked, he may have to walk out to here, and that can take time. We’re worried he may even have a broken arm or leg. He’ll be okay—but we do need to find him.”
Nell was impressed with Kate’s explanations. It was both reassuring and honest. She hadn’t been sure how to talk about it without overly worrying the children.
Sheriff Hickson got out of his car and approached Kate. Nell noticed there were two cars of deputies, along with a truck containing a dog on a leash
and his handler. The sheriff gave Nell a pointed look, and she put her hand on Josh’s shoulder so Hickson would know she was here as a mother, not as a reporter. Or at least, not officially as a reporter.
He didn’t address her, just turned to Kate. “So what’s going on, Miz Ryan?”
Kate gave him a quick rundown of what had happened, including the fact that the two fathers riding with the group were still out searching for Joey.
“When do you expect them back? No need for us to miss each other and hunt up and down the woods when the boy’s been home for hours.”
“Aaron has a cell phone and we’ve been keeping in touch that way,” Kate answered.
It was only then that the sheriff noticed the phone she was holding in her hand. He was probably so used to his radio that he forgot civilians had advanced communication these days.
“Can you call them up and let me speak to them?”
Kate did as he requested, and after a brief hello she handed the phone to Sheriff Hickson. He gingerly took it, the small thing looking out of place in his meaty hand.
“You found the boy yet?” Then there was a long pause, punctuated only by a few grunts from the sheriff. Then he said, “Now, don’t go messing nothin’ up. You find anything like clothes or bloodstains, you leave them be.”
Nell had to restrain herself from shouting at him not to say those things right where the children could hear them. She felt the muscles in Josh’s shoulder tense under her hand at the sheriff’s words.
His conversation finished, Hickson handed the phone back to Kate. “You got something of the boy’s?” he asked her, with a nod at the dog.
“I do,” Josh said. “He gave me a pair of his old cycling shorts, the kind with real chamois in it.” He sprang up and ran to his bike. A moment of rummaging through his handlebar bag produced the black shorts. He ran back to the sheriff, proffering the limp cloth as if it were a prize.
Sheriff Hickson didn’t reach down to take them, just asked, “They been washed? No good if they’re washed.”
“No, not yet. Joey got a new pair the other day and he took these off and gave them to me,” Josh said, his embarrassment at having the dirty shorts overcome by their newfound usefulness.
Still not taking the proven dirty shorts, Sheriff Hickson nodded to the deputy with the dog.
As the dog was doing his business of sniffing, another car arrived. Nell recognized the woman getting out as Joey’s mother. Although Joey and Josh were good friends, his mother and Nell knew each other only as the “dropping off/picking up” mother. It took her a moment to remember the woman’s name; she was so used to thinking of her as Joey’s mother. Aline, that was it.
Aline hastily searched the area with her eyes. Once, twice, quickly; then the third time slowly, as if not wanting to believe her son wasn’t here yet.
“Mrs. Sayton,” Kate said. “I’m sorry, Joey hasn’t returned yet. Bryan’s dad and Susan’s step-dad are out looking for him. I called Sheriff Hickson to help because I wanted to make sure that Joey was found before it got dark.”
The sheriff took over. “Don’t you worry, Aline, it’ll take about ten minutes with Mitch and Sixer to find your boy. He probably took the wrong turn and couldn’t find the right turn to get back.”
Aline Sayton just nodded, her eyes again looking round the picnic area, seeing all the children there except for hers. “It’s not like Joey to get lost,” she said very softly.
“Now, ma’am, boys will be boys,” the sheriff said. “Just seems when they get a certain age, they pull stunts. Hell, he might be sitting in the woods right now watching us and enjoying the commotion.”
Aline nodded slowly, not so much in agreement, it seemed, but because it was something she wanted to believe.
“Mrs. Sayton,” Kate said gently, “do you think that Joey might do something like that? Play this sort of a joke?”
“He never has before …” she said slowly.
“He might have ducked out on me to play a joke,” Josh interjected. “But he wouldn’t stay away like this. Joey’s not a … he doesn’t have the patience to hide like this.”
“Well, sometimes you just don’t know,” Sheriff Hickson said. “Let’s go find the boy and get this over with ’fore it gets any darker.” With that, he nodded at Mitch and his dog. All the men conferred, looking at a rough map of the area that someone had drawn. They decided to use an old logging road to get close to the place where Joey was last seen. Then the sheriff, Mitch and Sixer, and one of the other deputies got in the truck and drove off. The other two deputies started walking in along the trail, in case Joey was on his way back.
And then there was nothing to do but wait. Conversation seemed impossible. Every fifteen minutes or so, Kate would get a call from Frank and Aaron, but the calls were always the same—nothing to report, and they would keep on looking. The only variation was when they finally met up with the sheriff and his men. But still no Joey.
Several of the parents came and took their children home. Nell knew that Josh wouldn’t want to leave, so she didn’t suggest it, even when the numbers had dwindled down to him, Kate, Aline, and herself still there.
When the sun was slanting low in the sky, a rich golden color that seemed mockingly out of place, Kate spent several minutes on the phone with the sheriff. Nell over heard enough of the conversation to know they hadn’t found him yet and the sheriff wanted to intensify the search.
As darkness approached, another, larger search team arrived. Nell recognized a number of them; most of the fire department was there, as well as a number of volunteer firefighters from the smaller towns in the area. They brought lamps and more dogs and several different types of off-road vehicles, from scruffy Motocross bikes to fancy four-wheeled things.
For about half an hour, the picnic clearing was ablaze with lights and voices. For another half an hour, they listened as the lights and voices receded into the forest. Several women, wives and mothers and sisters, remained behind, setting up one of the picnic tables with sandwiches, a big pot of coffee, and an ice chest full of water and soft drinks.
Somewhere along the way, Nell had turned into a reporter, taking a notebook from her car and scribbling down notes for a story—one she desperately wanted a happy ending for.
Kate had gone into the woods with the second wave.
Aline’s husband had come and insisted she come wait at home. He’d been kind about it, as if he wanted to protect her from what might emerge from the woods. If Joey was okay, he would be okay—if not, then he didn’t want her to witness it. He finally won her over by pointing out that the searchers might not come back to this place and they’d be much closer to other meeting points, like the hospital or the sheriff’s office, from their house.
Nell finally used the same argument with Josh. They couldn’t help Joey by sitting in the dark, and Kate would certainly call them when he was found. She also wondered if she, too, was protecting her son from what might come out of the woods. She knew something had happened to Joey—he was five hours overdue, and she doubted that a boy his age would continue a practical joke through hours of darkness in the woods.
“This just isn’t like Joey,” Josh said as they got in the car. “He might fool around, but not worry everyone like this. Do you think he’s going to be in a lot of trouble with his parents?”
Nell could see that Josh was still holding to the belief that nothing could happen to his friend, his world still so young and new that it wasn’t familiar with those sharp turns that can change an ordinary moment into a haunted one.
“Hard to tell. It might depend on why he’s been gone. I doubt they’ll be upset with him if he couldn’t get back because he broke his leg,” Nell answered.
“But if he broke his leg, why can’t they find him?” Josh asked the question that had been haunting her for the last few hours. “He couldn’t have gone that far from where I
last saw him.”
“Do you think maybe he, say, broke the bike and hurt himself and tried to get out another way? He might have gone one direction while everyone else was going another,” Nell offered. It was the most reasonable explanation she could come up with.
“The quickest way back was the way we came,” Josh said. “Unless he crossed the water.”
“You were close to the water?”
“Yeah, there’s a bayou that runs into the park. It’s pretty near where we were. You think they’re checking the bayou?”
“Where does it go? The bayou?”
“Straight out to the sound. It’s about a few hundred yards from the mouth of the harbor.”
Nell decided not to ask Josh how he was so familiar with the meandering of the bayou. She suspected it was from an unauthorized exploration, because she knew she’d never given her son permission to go boating—or worse, swimming—in the myriad inlets and bayous that dotted this part of the coast.
“That’s what must have happened,” Josh said, his voice animated with relief. “Joey messed up his bike and decided not to walk the long way out, but take the water way.”
“Swimming?” Nell asked. It was late enough that few other cars were out. She turned on the high beams, wanting to light the shadows that loomed on the sides of the road. “Or was there a boat there?”
Josh hesitated for a moment, as if realizing he was going to have to admit he’d been doing something he shouldn’t. “Well, sometimes there are some rowboats or canoes back there. I guess he might have borrowed one. But it’s really not that far of a swim from there to the mouth of the harbor.
“Have you done it?” Nell asked.
Josh again hesitated.
Time to be a mother, Nell thought. “Josh, if you’ve done it, you’ve done it. We both know you aren’t supposed to be exploring the bayous around here by yourself or with friends your own age. But this time, there will be no lecture, no scolding, okay? All I ask is that you tell me what you know. And that you don’t do it again.”
