Little Lost Boy

I tried several times in several ways to disappear permanently in the first decade of my life. This is just one of the most memorable: It was 1956, and I was 5 years old. I got to spend every weekday with my grandparents, since both my parents worked in town. My uncle Tommy still lived at home then, and one day in late summer he and some of his friends decided to cut firewood. There would be just enough time for it to dry out and cure before cold weather set in, and wood was the only source of heat then. Big shot that I was, I tagged along. Either they forgot to bring water, I made a nuisance of myself, or they wanted to do something that they didn’t want a big-mouthed witness around to see, because it wasn’t too long before Tommy asked me if I’d go back to the house for some water. He pointed out the roof of my grandpa’s barn, which we could see through the trees. All I had to do was go down the path, through a little hollow, and back up the hill to the barn, which was only about 100 feet from the house. No problem. I set out. I’m not real sure when I figured out that I should have turned left at Philadelphia (apologies to W.C.Fields), but when I got to a small creek I knew that something was wrong. We hadn’t crossed any creeks on our way to the woods. I turned around to go back the way I had come, but after a while nothing looked familiar to me, so I went back to the creek. I figured that if I followed it far enough, I’d come to a road or something. It meandered around back and forth, and a couple of times I crossed it on logs that had fallen, but it sure seemed like I had walked a long time. I did try calling out for help a few times, but my voice didn’t carry very well in the middle of a swamp, with brush and trees all around. In fact, it sounded small and weak. I knew no one was going to hear me, and by then I was pretty scared, so I just kept walking. It started to get late in the afternoon. Every time I caught a glimpse of the sun, it had gone lower and lower. I got the idea that if I followed the sun I could come out on the road that my grandparents lived on, sooner or later. Nothing else had worked, and I had been walking a long time, so I took off towards the sun. Finally, I saw a tin roof, and this time I kept my eyes on it until I came out of the woods and into an open area. It was a barn all right, but not the one I had set out for. It was a little scary, but I was tired, hungry and thirsty, and ready to be home, so I headed for the barn. Surely there would be a house nearby. As I got closer, though, I spotted a big red rooster, who had already spotted me, and was walking my way. I already had scars on both legs that summer from my grandmother’s rooster. He was a mean one, and flogged me soundly every time he caught me too far from her back door. I did the only thing that felt right – I turned around and ran right back into the woods, and kept running until the barn and the rooster were far behind and out of sight. I had run out of plans, and didn’t really know what to do. It was late, the shadows were long, and it would soon be dusk, then dark. I didn’t want to be in the swamp at night, with no light and without a grownup. I had heard too many stories about the things that lived in Terrible swamp. Suddenly I heard Tommy call my name, and I answered him. He has always maintained that he asked me where I was going, and that I told him I didn’t have time to talk, because I had to get home before dark. He took me, put me on his shoulders and headed for home. I wasn’t real sure why he was crying, but he did all the way back to my grandparents’ house. He almost ran with me, and it took a long time for us to get there. There were a whole lot of people gathered around, and they all carried on when they saw us. My grandfather cried even harder than Tommy had, and everyone else was laughing and talking. There were no cell phones, so no one had known until we walked into the yard that I had been found. In fact, not many people in our county even had phones. Someone had driven into town when they realized that I was lost, and almost the entire town had closed down and come out to search for me. Tommy and his friends had spent the day diving into all the deep holes in the creek (it’s called Terrible Swamp, and the creek is named Terrible Creek), certain that I’d fallen in and drowned. Somehow they had managed to keep all of this from my mom. My dad had forbidden anyone to tell her I was lost. When the two of them drove into the yard after work, and found a crowd of people milling around, half laughing, half crying, he didn’t know I’d been found, and she had no idea what was going on. Small towns being what they are, I have never gone back to Collins, even as an adult without someone sticking their head out of a store or a car on Main Street, and yelling, “Why, it’s the little lost boy, back for a visit.” It happened so often that I had to ‘fess up to my own children how dumb I had been when I was their age. My few hours of fame have lasted over half a century.