The boy was maybe ten, and though younger than Johnny, he was taller, having brown straight hair that looked neat as if he’d just combed it. He wore the clothes of a young lad off to school, clothes maybe his mother had laid out for him after he’d fallen asleep on his bed populated with stuffed animals, something she didn’t do much anymore because he was such a big boy now. His long-sleeved light blue oxford, which still held the shape ironed into it, was tucked into chinos a little big on him, his mother no doubt in the habit of buying her sprawling son’s clothes two sizes ahead now that his spurts seemed unceasing. His tennies had seen some wear but no time out in this recent rain.
Though he had the voice of a normal child, there came a resonance with it, as if his voice were not simply on the cusp of acquiring preteen depth, but that it wanted to go straight to a young adult’s. It had a disquieting flange vocal effect to it, as if two voices issued out at once but at a slight timing difference so that it twined around itself. Twined and swirled. It sounded… wet, and made me dizzy.
“Are you going to hurt me?” he asked. The layered voices entwining tighter. His voice made me want to scream.
I shook my head. “No,” I said, clearing my voice. He blinked at me with inquisitive calm. Oh—he unnerved me.
Maggie, though rigid with fury, had no inclination to move. A standoff, us three.
The boy broke first, his hands relaxing at his sides, and as he stepped more into the light of the office, I noticed deep indentations on the bridge of his nose. Only then did it occur to me that not one kid I’d seen since the morning of, other than Simon, wore glasses. In looking at them through binoculars, something else had bugged me. That was it. No glasses. Mr. Fleming had mentioned this as well in his note.
The boy glanced down at Maggie. With effort, he lifted his chin and looked back at me. He hid his terror of her deep in his blue eyes. His nostrils flared, venting his pent fear.
“Your dog?” he asked, his voice normal now.
“Now she is. I saved her, brought her here with me.”
“You came from one of the cities.” Though I preferred this voice to the other, the result of his deception was coldness. I nodded.
Maggie stifled her growl. You felt the air move from her throat’s oscillations. I know the kid felt it.
“How long have you been here?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Where are you from?”
He shook his head. The dogs in the other part of the house made a scuffling noise and the boy shot his eyes in their direction. “You don’t know where you came from, how you got here. Where are your parents?” Me, the interrogator.
“I don’t know.”
He said this honestly, not seeming to comprehend they were dead. His ironed shirt made me sad for him.
“Do you know what’s happened? Out there?” I gestured to the window. “Do you even remember your parents?”
“I remember everything, but it seems so far away, a long time ago. Whenever I try to remember something, like my parents, or where I used to live, it’s cloudy. It’s muffled. As soon as I start thinking about back then, it feels like my head gets filled with cotton and it starts to hurt, so I quit trying.” Cotton made me think of the white stuff. He started to cry, and when he did that, his voice went wet and flangey again and while I wanted to comfort him, what I really wanted was for his throat to quit making that noise.
“Hey, it’s okay.” I took a reluctant step forward. I put my hand on his shoulder. The moment my hand rested there, he stepped into me, put his nose to my collar bone and sobbed. That awful flange unabated closer to my ear now. “Hey, hey, hey it’s going to be okay, all right? Settle down.”
I glanced back at Maggie. She hadn’t moved.
“Have you eaten anything?” I asked. He shook his head in my chest. “You hungry?” He nodded and stepped back.
“Very,” he said, and I thought a smile was about to emerge from his face now red with crying.
“You couldn’t make yourself a sandwich?”
His voice normalized again, he said, “I’ve been too afraid to even leave this room.” Dog tussle noises within the house made him blink and wince.
“The dogs?”
“Not just them.” He looked into the middle distance over my shoulder. “They know everything, feel all movement. They feel me and I feel them, no matter how far away, though it’s less and less the farther you go.”
“The farther you go from whom?”
“The kids I was born with.”
“Born with?” Even Maggie perked an ear and tilted her head.
“Yes.” Wetness to it—yessss. My mind reeled.
“You mean you’ve been hiding around here since…?”
He shrugged.
“Jesus…”
The boy looked at the floor, rubbed his nose with his palm, then back at me. “That’s what one of the girls yelled when they grabbed her and dragged her out. ‘Oh, Jesus .’”
“Who dragged her?”
“The ones I came with.”
“You stayed behind?”
He nodded.
“Why?” I asked.
He shrugged.
“The dogs. What did they do?”
“They’re why the kids couldn’t stay.”
I turned and grabbed the Polaroid selfie of Chris and showed it to him. “And him?”
He took in the photo, glanced back at me.
“What happened to him?”
“Walked out the door. I didn’t follow.”
We walked into the kitchen. The kid moved slowly as if every step registered somewhere creating a beacon on which to be honed in. The dogs inside left, shouldering through the screen door. I grabbed the one package of bread that had been twisted airtight, waved away flies, pulled open drawers for a knife. “What’s your name?”
He sat down gingerly at the varnished knotty pine table in front of a large window looking out onto the pens. I pulled up the blinds quick and loud. He blinked and squinted. “Nate.”
The dogs sat out there looking at us. They sat out there in the rain and made not a sound, yet all their faces were directed at us and all their ears were perked.
“Hi, Nate.”
“Hi.” I was starving too, so I quickly made up PB&Js with the J I’d pulled out of the fridge just holding on to the last of its cold. I popped open a couple of warm sodas and set them before us. We took big bites and ate in famished quiet for a minute. Then I repeated, “Do you know what happened?”
His cheeks full, he looked up at me and shook his head and I believed him. His eyes fell upon the gun at my ribs as I leaned over to take a last bite, my shirt falling open a bit. His eyes remained there even as I continued.
“Do you miss your parents?” I buttoned my shirt one more up the chain.
He swallowed and nodded. “When I think of them, my head gets cloggy and it hurts.”
“Nate what?” I asked around smacks and strained gulps.
“Huhm?” Breadcrumbs on his face stood out in the shifting light. The rain plowed down now. Maggie sat patiently equidistant from us. Crust awaited. Nate tossed her one and she made it disappear in a snap. He smiled a mouth-full smile.
“What’s your last name?”
He stopped chewing, toggled his eyes upward to recall it. “Dyer,” he managed.
“Does it hurt even to remember that?”
“Sort of,” in muffled chewing.
“I know it hurts, but can you try to remember some things if I ask you?”
He swallowed. “I can try,” he said with a solemn look. He looked up from his crumbs and empty can. “Why do you need to know?”