Chapter 22

Charlie hid behind a small palm and tried to make himself as thin as the leaves that jutted out from the narrow stems. He crouched down, received a slap in the face from a wayward branch, and stepped on a dry twig as sharp as a needle. He gasped, caught the sound before it traveled the wind toward the widow’s walk, and squeezed back a tear of pain. A trickle of blood stained his sock and cooled almost immediately from the frigid wind. He shivered more from fear than from cold, and peered out between the branches.

She paced the widow’s walk, stopping now and then to call his name half-heartedly. “Charlie. Charlie, baby. Charlieeee.”

The hair rose across his arms at the insincerity in her voice. She didn’t want him in that house.

“Charlieee?” She stopped in mid-stride and stared directly at him. “Come home, baby. I’m waiting for you.” Her voice melted with the wind and became a quiet ripple in the current. “Now, Charlie. Now.”

He ducked down, staying frozen in place until he guessed she had looked away. A quick check proved him wrong. She hadn’t moved.

The small palm was no longer safe. He held his breath and ran. Refuge came behind an oak a few yards away. He collapsed at the base of the tree and leaned heavily against it, and took breaths in deep gulps. The tree moaned, creaked then exploded with sound as a leaf-laden branch dropped in a solid heap at his feet.

Laughter filled the air around him.

He leaped to his feet then stole a glance over his shoulder at the woman on the widow’s walk. Her teeth were bared in a smile as if a puppeteer pulled a string on either side of her mouth.

Charlie ran as fast as he could make his legs go, deeper into the darkness of the woods. Adrenaline coursed through his body. His heart pounded and ached. His lungs strained with the effort as if they would burst through his chest.

He dodged a bush here, a stump there, turned left then right then left again.

He wished his daddy was here.

He wished his mommy was here. Not the lady on the walk, but his real mommy. The mommy who loved him and helped him learn how to read and gave him something to eat when he was hungry.

His legs cramped and stung with overexertion and the cutting wind.

It began to rain.

Running slowed to a lope then a walk. He turned his face up to the rain, allowing the coolness on his skin mingle with the flow of tears. He stuck out his tongue to catch a few stray drops of rain, swallowed dryly then gave in to a spasm of coughing. The cough turned into dry sobs.

He pressed his face against the rock’s side and leaned into its sturdiness and strength, and its lack of warmth. He wished he was in his bed tonight, even if it meant keeping one eye open as long as he could to check for any movement from the fuzzy green, laughing toy. But he could never go back now. Never.

He was cold. So cold.

His bed would be warm.

The rock was out in the storm.

The house would be safe.

He pressed hard against the rock and cringed at the thing that gouged his chest. The hornpipe. Running his hand over the length of the instrument, he was glad he had spotted it when he did. The electricity had come on just as he ran from the house. It was a risk to stop and pick it up outside the broken window, but one he couldn’t resist when he saw it lying in the sand.

His mother was wrong to keep Mr. Mann’s present from him, and she was wrong to make him promise things he couldn’t keep. He twisted in the hard sand for a more comfortable position. His mother had never been wrong before, she always knew what was best for him, but now things had changed. Now it was he who knew the difference between right and wrong.

Holding tight to the rock, he decided he was too little to be making grown-up decisions and be out in the cold and dark alone.

This island trip wasn’t a real vacation, no matter what his parents said. If he had any say in a vacation, he would have picked something else. He wouldn’t pick a place that separated his parents from each other, or a place where he ended up in the woods at night in a storm, alone.

Before tonight, his mother would never allow him to be by himself. If they were back home in Atlanta, she would have paid that pimply-faced baby-sitter, Ramona, to come by. He looked around the shadows of the woods and decided Ramona would be better than this. Even if she made him watch gushy love shows on TV instead of cartoons, and spent the better part of the night talking to her boyfriend on the phone while keeping a tight vigil on TV in case he changed the channel. She was better than being out in the rain. It was Ramona who once showed him a hickey on her neck and waited patiently for awe that never came. Who wanted a bruise on their neck? He had splotchy places on his legs from playing spy, and no one seemed to care, especially Ramona. If her bruise were in the shape of an animal or something, now that would be impressive.

Ramona and her hickey. He’d settle for both of them right now.

He ran his hand over the surface of the hornpipe, brought it tentatively to his lips, and blew. A tight, shrill sound crept out from the end and blended with the wind. Taking a deep breath, he covered some of the holes and blew harder this time. The sound deepened, became full and melodious. He stopped, examined the instrument, and noticed a louder sound independent of the hornpipe shift to a higher octave.

Peering into the woods for the source, he dismissed the sound as a quirk of the wind and hoped one day he could play the hornpipe for Grandma. She deserved a little something fun, too. Then when he was a famous hornpipe player, he would save up his allowance and buy her some pink mittens so she wouldn’t worry anymore, even though he never remembered seeing her with any.

The rain picked up. He pulled some fallen leaves and a small branch over himself in a makeshift sleeping bag. Cold water soaked through his clothes and stuck to his skin. He tucked his feet up under him and wished he had on shoes or had a blanket. Even pink mittens.

Pink was a girl color, not for an almost-man like himself. Pink could be for grandmothers, too, like clothes and stuff. Why did Grandma talk so much about the mittens all of a sudden? It was as if she couldn’t think of anything else.

Maybe her mind was wired different like his, and it made her think about mittens and talk about things that didn’t make any sense. Suppose her wires got messed up, and she forgot about him? Worry surrounded him like a shroud, and then fear stole its place. If she didn’t know who he was anymore, it would mean he was all alone. In the dark, in the cold, he’d be by himself with no place to go.

Grandma was alone, so was his mother and father in their way, but secluded just the same. So if growing up meant he’d be isolated, he’d stay a kid forever and ever and hope that someone would always be there for him.

A pang of guilt nagged him. He should be there for Grandma, taking care of her. Without him, she had no one to talk to and no one to listen to her stories.

He would have to go back.

He couldn’t go back.

The wind whipped around him so that he could almost hear the laughter and the pacing from the widow’s walk. But he had to know Grandma was okay and see for himself she was safe. He would tell her he was sorry for leaving her in the first place; then he would make her something to eat.

His stomach rumbled then fell silent. Wind and rain stung his skin like burning needle pricks. The smallest of morning light filtered through the trees and underbrush. Maybe that meant the storm was going away. He looked up at the dark clouds and doubted it, but was at a loss of what to do next, or where to go.

Scanning the unfamiliar surroundings, he wondered if he could find his way to Uncle Winston and Auntie Sybil’s house. Suppose he got even more lost and went so deep into the woods that no one could ever find him again, then what? He leaned against the rock and tried to stretch his stiff muscles, but they cramped in protest.

He dug his hands into his pockets for warmth, and felt the coin he’d found in the sand. It was different enough from his piggy bank money and might be from a place far away, like one of the yellow states on his map puzzle at home. Or maybe the coin came from a green state.

Running his thumb over the surface of the coin, he wondered if he could use it to buy a candy bar or gum. On second thought, he would keep it to bring to Grandma as a present. She would like it, and might even be able to tell him where it came from. The candy bar could wait. Grandma would have the coin as a present from him.

The rain came harder, stung more. It was time to take his chances in the woods. A quick brush over his clothes moved the leaves and small branch aside. He stood on legs tight with cold and damp and turned to the rock he had leaned against. His eyes widened, his jaw slackened.

There was a name carved in the rock.

His name.

Next to his name was today’s date.

He licked his dry lips and stared unseeing at a far off point. Darkness tugged at the back of his mind. It turned him inward and beckoned to a safe place where he was more than willing to go now. His eyes rolled up into his head; the eyelids fluttered with myriad thoughts. There was nothing left to do and nowhere else to go but inward.

Inside the dark, he would be safe from the laughter on the wind and from rocks that held his name. It promised him safety from anything that could hurt him.

The darkness opened its arms to him.

He went to it.