Lost Richard -Part 4
I thought it best to take the path Richard had originally taken. I might have found a clue to his whereabouts anywhere along the route. The forest was thick with brown and gray trees, the different shades of bark making stripes on the landscape. The trees on the outside of the forest were still fairly leafy, as they got more sun, but the trees in the woods were just about naked for winter. Very few people were walking along the path because the sky was gray and rumbling, but I had given myself a few hours of research and knew I had to keep looking for Richard. The leaves crackled under my feet as I strayed on and off the path searching for a bit off color among the trees. There was very little other noise. I peered into the ravines and behind large trees, occasionally looking up into the bare branches, but the only bit of color I saw was a cardinal.
The sky gave one last rumble before a lightning crack signaled the large drops of rain. I opened the umbrella I was carrying and trudged onward. With the rain, came the usual cold wind and you feel as if there is no way you can stay warm and dry. I never really liked that feeling of a thunderstorm; it’s too hopeless, especially for my current job. If the weather got worse, I promised myself, I would go home. But if I could help it, I would search the forest until I was positive Richard was not there.
I could see the leafy trees at the edge of the forest when a shape caught my eye. I almost passed it up for a rock, but it was shivering and sobbing softly. I walked over to it and knelt down.
“What’s wrong?”
The figure shot up like a rocket, brown eyes wide in surprise. Then the boy calmed down and swallowed hard before standing up. I stood up as well. The boy was about a head taller than me and skinny as a rail. He was dressed in a tee shirt and jeans and soaking wet from lying in the rain. His face and hair were dirty and his jeans had dirt on the knees and the bottom hem. His sneakers were splattered with mud and the leather was scratched. He had a few bruises and blood was caked on his lower lip, but there was no serious injury that I could tell.
“I got lost in the forest on my way home,” he said.
“Would you like me to take you back?”
“Yes, please,” the boy said, mustering a smile. “I’m Allen Williams, by the way.”
“Sarah Smyth. Where do you live?”
“Oh, I just need to get out of the forest and then I’ll be fine.”
“All right.”
I moved my umbrella so the boy could share it and started back towards the path. I didn’t let my guard down, though. It was strange for someone to by lying on the ground when it was pouring rain. Suddenly it hit me: Richard was a good liar. The rain lessened until it was just a mist by the time we made our way to the well-worn snake of leaves and dirt.
“So, what were you doing in the forest?” I asked. I was hoping to catch him off guard.
“Oh… I was trying to find some leaves for a school project.”
“But didn’t you know it was going to rain?”
“I thought I could do it before it did. Apparently I was wrong.” He smiled. “What were you doing there?”
“Just taking a stroll.”
As we walked a short rhythmic jingle accompanied our steps. The boy put his hand in his jeans pocket and the sound stopped, but he needn’t have, I knew what it was right away. I glanced at the boy’s pocket. It bulged quite a bit on the side I was looking at and the wet jeans hugged a circular object. It rattled very quietly as the boy walked. He shoved his hand into his other pocket to seem congruent, I suppose, but he had to stop just above where the object was.
We were almost at the edge of the forest and the line of blue sky was a single vertical stripe. My companion seemed a little on edge, as if one spurt of energy and he could get free, but he would also give away his position.
“What’s in your pocket?” I asked.
“Oh, just…” his hand felt around the curve while he searched for an answer. He was obviously extremely nervous and if I hadn’t nonchalantly stepped in front of him, he would have taken off like a rocket.
“May I see it?”
“Huh? Oh sure, I guess.” He pulled out the bronze compass fit for a ship’s captain. The letters—S, N, W, and E—were illuminated in red and blue. The gold arrow pointed behind them to a number 20 between the S and W. The boy’s hand shook.
“Heh, didn’t know it was in there,” he laughed nervously.
“Richard, you need to go home.”
“What? How’d you know…No Way! I can’t go back!”
“Your mother is worried sick about you and she hired me to find you. If I have to, I can use force, but I don’t want to and I’m not going to if you’ll just go back home.”
“She isn’t my mother! She lied to me!”
“And you lied to me; I’m not getting upset.”
“But…” he paused. “I’ve always thought of her as a mother and she’s not. Why didn’t she just…why didn’t my real mom want…”
Richard dropped the compass and visually swallowed back tears. I wasn’t sure what to do, but I didn’t think trying to convince him to come back would be such a good idea at the moment.
“Why would I want to go back to someone who doesn’t even love me? Why didn’t she just tell me herself? Too afraid how I would react? Wouldn’t it have been better if she had told me instead of waiting until I found out?” He left his train of thought and turned to me. “You don’t have a right to tell me what I should and should not do. You’re not part of the police.”
“And if I was?”
I let the question hang in the air. “If we get to town, I can use a pay phone and call the police to get you home.”
“You wouldn’t do that.”
“I might. It’s your choice.”
Richard stared at me in thought for a moment before relaxing his grip. He walked quickly down the path but once he was at the edge of the street, glanced at me, and started to run. There was nothing else to do, but to run after him.
Besides being a good liar, Richard was also a good runner and he was far ahead of me when I got to the street. It seemed like Richard kept getting farther and farther away as we ran into town. If he hadn’t tripped, I wouldn’t have caught up with him. I was lucky.
I realized then, when I had his arms pinned behind his back, my mistake. My car was in front of the house while I was here. I wasn’t sure what I was thinking when I did this, as I was sure he wouldn’t come voluntarily, but that didn’t change the fact that it was there, and I was here.
“I’ll give you one more chance to just come home,” I said. I was bluffing, sure, but it was worth a shot.
He started to cry, but he was doing his best not to let me know. “Just tell me one thing, why would anyone think its better to be left in ignorance?” I let go of one of his arms and he turned to face me.
“I can’t say, for sure, but she might have just wanted you happy with a mother thinking she was your own than knowing you…well…”
“Weren’t wanted.” He sighed. “I don’t know where to go; I don’t know who to call mom or where to call home. I don’t know what to do.”
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s get you to your house and your room and you can talk it over with your mother. You need to think and be rational about what you’re going to do next. Maybe you have to just let it sit until you’re out of high school before looking for your mother. What if you wrote her a letter? These are just suggestions, but running away didn’t seem to solve anything. You have to find it inside yourself.”
“Yeah. Well, thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.”
I took him the rest of the way home; Charlotte seemed ecstatic that he was back. Richard smiled half-heartedly and went inside while she ran down the steps to pay and thank me. I told her it wasn’t a problem before walking back to my car. I don’t know why, but I glanced out the window of my car to the house as I put the key in the ignition and saw Richard waving to me from his bedroom window. He didn’t wear a big smile, but it was still there. I suppose he thought it was a necessary gesture because he continued waving as I drove off down the street and out of sight.
This entry was posted on Sunday, October 21st, 2007 at 10:30 am and is filed under End of Childhood, Fiction Prose, Mystery, Realistic Fiction, Short Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.