Superman's Cape (11 page)

“We’ll be setting up shop off to the side of your home facing the yard. We want to put up a sort of command and control center where we can coordinate across the various agencies and perform our search effort from,” he explained before extending a hand to take Sara’s.

“Certainly … yes, anything. Just please help me get my son home,” she pleaded, and by now was begging in her mind that they leave. Needing for them to be out of her home. She was sure to fall and collapse to the wet floor in front of them and cry, and she didn’t want any more police seeing that.

“We have a half dozen officers and volunteers at the face of the woods with flashlights and radios, but with these rains becoming heavy I expect we will have a long night before we can really get in there and find your boy,” Captain Saunders said turning toward the door.

“I’ll put on some coffee,” Sara offered, holding her hands in a tight ball. She held her fingers close in attempt to relax the shaking.

As the Officers turned, Sara eased the trailer door closed behind them. With a small lift, she adjusted the handle to kick it past the sticking frame. When she heard the door’s latch collapse and settle, Sara turned around, leaned her back against the door, and sat down with her knees up to her chin and her face in her hands. Quiet tears followed her hands and then down her arms. Then came the racking sobs as her mind flashed more images of Kyle in the woods -- wet, hungry, alone and scared.

It was all a dream, just a dream. A bad one. A nightmare, in fact. The kind you wake from and let sit in front of your eyes. After a moment or two, you might try to shake the remains out of your head. If you’re lucky, the nightmare will leave. Sometimes luck is just a fable and the nightmare is your reality – and the nightmare is the start and the end of your day.

Kyle lay in his old bed. He was home in the house his little brother was born into. The familiar smell of his sheets and pillow came with each breath. He stirred a sleepy smile to the sounds of the squirrels and the songbirds outside his window. He heard their busy preparations for another game of capture the flag around the backyard feeders.

He dreamed of his dad and the burn hole that began to bleed. He dreamed of Jonnie’s blue blanket, Superman’s Cape, and how it faded to red and then to gray and then to black before falling to the ground in a pile of bones and ash. Kyle’s smile thinned as his lips pressed to a narrow line. A dream. All of it. Even the trailer’s stack of moving boxes and Beasty who moved the boxes. All of it, just a dream. A bad dream.

The nightmare was his being lost. Lost in woods he did not recognize. Lost in woods that hid the sun during the day, and turned winter cold at night. The nightmare was his legs being eaten by muddy brackish waters. A bog mud that devoured little boys in a swamp where animals with rotting flesh could choose to save your life or let you join them in a tidal eternity.

Kyle refused the urge to open his eyes. He wasn’t ready to leave the dream where he was home in his old bed. Home, under sheets and a blanket that were his accomplices in stealing just five more minutes before starting the day. Large drops of rain teased his eyes. At first they fell at random, their bodies hitting the pine needle floor around him and seeming to join the tail end of his dreams. The rain grew to become a steady pace. One after the other. Each making fun of him until he was left with no other choice but to wake up.

Kyle opened his eyes. And when he could see nothing, when the world around remained black, he tried rubbing the sleep out of them. Mud on his hands and arms yanked his mind from his sleep and his dreams. The roughness of the ground upon which he sat and the cold that swept over his skin jerked him awake faster.

Sleepy images came into focus as the rain drops fell a little harder. Squinting, he could see trees and ground and the clearing that almost took his life. “None of it was a dream,” he muttered and closed his hands around the pine needles on the ground.

Kyle was waking up. He opened his eyes wider to take in as much of the available light he could. He listened to what was around him. He took in the air and searched past the faint smell of sea salt. He looked at everything and for anything that might help him.

The sounds were almost distracting. The chatter among the trees and the swamp were louder than he expected. Above him, he heard wings flapping. The tangled sounds of tree leaves and pine needles stirred from the ground. He thought maybe it was a field mouse or a stray cat who knew the woods better than he did.

A ‘queenk, queenk, queenk’ came from the trees and from the muddy bog area where he envisioned the fallen chess pieces moving in approach to the solid grounds. Fleetingly, he wondered if the chess pieces would ever escape. But then forgot about them when he recognized what the ‘queenk, queenk, queenk’ sounds were. “Tree Frogs,” he mumbled. He knew the chirps to be Tree frogs. He remembered hearing them during a late afternoon fishing trip.
They call out when it gets dark or after it rains,
his father told him.
Get a lot of them together and the chorus can be deafening
. These tree frogs were loud. The ‘queenk, queenk, queenk’ was all around him. It needled his ears. The sound was getting into his head, and while he’d only been awake a few minutes, he thought the sounds might make him scream.

The rain was coming down harder. He glimpsed a streak of blue-white racing over the tree tops. A moment later, a shallow roll of thunder interrupted the tree frogs. Heavy drops showered him of the bog mud. It was on his arms and legs and covered most of his pants and shirt. He was caked in the mud. It made his skin feel tight and he found himself wishing he had buckets of rain water to wash it off.

Instead, he was left with a clouded drizzle that touched his lips and chin. He could taste the foulness of the mud. He could taste the remains of the rotting animal flesh. Kyle’s stomach turned over. Remains of dried vomit loosened from his shirt and fell onto his hands. He stabbed the floor of the woods to try and clean his palms.

Sheets of cold rain came; a downpour he welcomed. It was a chance to wash it away. He wanted to wash it all away. He started from his head, scrubbing his hair then worked his hands down over his face. Using his fingers, he tried to clean the imaginary maggots from the holes in his ears and nose. The smell of vomit and rotting animal stayed on his shirt. Kyle wanted the shirt off of him. The dead smell and vomit was too much. With the ends of his shirt scrunched in his hands, he stopped. He wasn’t bashful about having his shirt off. It wasn’t like gym period his first day of middle school when all the kids changed quickly. It wasn’t shame or even fear; he was cold. Very cold.

Kyle stopped. He dropped his arms when he heard the first footsteps. Then he heard another, and by the time he turned, he heard a few more. Someone or something was approaching him. Kyle narrowed his eyes against the darkness. A large figure stood there.

“Mom,” he said impulsively.

He heard a cough or a bark or what might have been a snort. It wasn’t human. It was animal. And it knew he was sitting there on the ground, soaked in rot and vomit and rain water.
Keep it on or you’ll get stung,
he thought, regretting his having cried out ‘momma.’ No sooner had the words left his mouth when the animal snorted again. Louder.

The animal’s snorting turned into a chant, maybe expecting Kyle to respond. Kyle was terrified. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t tell if it was a dog or a coyote or a wolf. He didn’t want to know. Even in the faded light, he could see it was bigger than him. It was rounder and it was larger and heavier and it snorted indignation to Kyle for having called out for his momma.

Kyle was frozen. Electrical charges from the base of his brain shorted every fiber of his muscles. He tried to stand up and run, but he remained. Frozen. Locked to the ground and unable to move. The animal kicked his front foot and snorted twice more. Kyle recognized the figure.
It’s a Boar
. “Oh my God, it’s a boar … a wild pig,” he whispered. This wasn’t the bacon on his 8 a.m. plate. This was a wild animal with fangs or tusks or whatever they were called. It was a lot bigger and faster than him and it could kill. It liked to Kill (at least that is what he told himself).

Kyle could see the ears that stood tallest above its body. Another snort and Kyle made out the boar’s penny eyes – black holes that locked a stare on him. He could see the legs, with one in the front clapping the ground with its cloven foot. Another grunt sounded from its trumpet snout.

The boar was charging him. At some point the wild pig decided Kyle must be an intruder. It made the decision that Kyle shouldn’t be there. That Kyle was in the wrong place. This was his place, and as a keeper of the bog mud flats, he had the right to charge. To attack. To kill. The pace of the hooves were getting quicker. Kyle pushed his eyes to focus. He could feel the hooves from the ground radiating through the palms of his hands. His heart thumped hard in his chest. The blurred figure was closing the distance between them.

The shirt
, Kyle thought. Even with a coating of rot and vomit – it was bright. Very bright. And in this light it might as well have been glowing like a hallway nightlight at midnight. The type he used to have when he was little. The one that helped him pace the shadows of his feet during late journeys to the bathroom. Unlike those days when his stuffed wubby was there to keep him company, the wild pig wasn’t here to comfort him. It wanted to kill him.

Kyle pulled his hands from the ground and grabbed his shirt. He whipped it up and over his head. The boar’s feet were loud.
A stampede,
he thought. The image of the boar was clearer. He could see it. He thought he could even smell it. The snorting of breath shuffled between strides of hooves pounding the ground. Kyle was somewhat aware of crying. His crying. Fear loosened his bladder. The warm flow of urine ran down his leg.

The boar’s hit threw him flat onto his back. In an instant, his lungs collapsed as every bit of air escaped him. The coarse hairs of the animal ran against his right shoulder. A sharp tusk brushed the face of his right arm, knocking him onto his back and leaving his legs pinned beneath. Kyle tried to heave in air as he rolled over onto his belly. He picked his face up, lifting his chin to see where the boar was. In the dark, Kyle saw his shirt parading above the ground like a night-time Halloween decoration twirling in the wind. His shirt jumped and ran and flailed around in waves. It was stuck on the boar’s tusk and covered its eyes.

Kyle heard the wet sounds of suction as the boar’s stomping slowed. It was becoming stuck in the bog mud.
The tide must still be up
, he thought with some relief. The ground was thin and loose. The bog mud was still hungry and willing to eat up anything daring to move too close to it. Kyle saw the boar’s legs slow as it tried to turn. He saw it struggling to pull them, all the while waving and snorting at the nightlight glow of his shirt.

A warm rush of wet flowed over his arm. The smell of blood was strong. And he felt the first whispers of something wrong. Whispers turned to screams as pain bloomed in him. He was bleeding. The Boar’s tusk left a deep gash that ran ragged like a lightning bolt. The lightning strike cut from below his shoulder down to his elbow. Black blood covered his arm like a sleeve. Kyle was scared. In his life he’d never seen so much blood – especially his own.
So much blood from the cut
, he cried, and could feel it pouring from his fingers as it dripped to the ground. Images of himself without an arm ran through his mind. The nightmare images were interrupted by grunts and screams from the pig struggling to get hold of solid ground.

The Boar stayed blind to where Kyle was. He could see the Boar’s legs began to sink less and less. He could tell the Boar was regaining its footing on solid ground.
Tide is going out, ground isn’t as soft. Run,
he thought. And past the pain of cramps and exhaustion, past the rapid theft of air from his lungs, Kyle staggered to his feet. He ran.

Kyle’s feet picked up air and his knees threw higher than he thought he was capable of. His body was feeding on the pig’s attack. The lightning bolt torn into his arm acted like a drug. Lightning coursed through his veins and fear accelerated his heart. He drew the air deep into his lungs then threw it. Kyle turned to see the Boar freeing itself of the bog mud. He saw that his shirt had come loose and fallen to the ground. The Boar could see again. It could see him.

Kyle’s feet flew over the pine needles. He felt he could run faster than the Boar. He even dared it to take chase after him. Kyle turned once more to see that the Boar was free of the bog. Instead of pursuing him, the Boar started to walk away. The Boar left without offering protest or award for winning back his grounds.

Kyle fled further and faster. He flew over the pine needles, high on adrenaline. His heart lifted him off the ground. He turned back from the Boar in time to see the tree he was meant to run past. He turned just in time to wish he’d turned back sooner. Kyle felt no pain. He felt no fear. Instead, there was only the raw interruption of his flight as his body ran head first into a waiting pine. The tree knocked him to the ground and gifted him with an immediate, non-negotiable absence of all his senses.

Rain drummed on the canvas of the command center tent. A thunderclap rumbled a heavy breath that ended with the sound of something falling to the ground. Captain Saunders’ attention left the command center table. Wind from the storm threatened a collection of papers spread corner to corner over a large map. Sipping from his thermos cup, his eyes followed the trees lining the Connely’s yard. He thought for a second that he heard something in the woods. Turning his head back again, he wasn’t sure if it was anything at all.

Since arriving, he’d become accustomed to the sounds around him. An interruption, any interruption, was something that could be a twelve year old boy. It could be Kyle. The Captain thought how easy and at the same time how awful it would be if Kyle was walking along the lip of these woods never knowing he was just yards from the safety of his home.