Sourland

almost hear the audience laughing — you could almost see the ugly contorted faces. Tod was crying, he’d become so frightened. He knew — he believed he knew — that his father was only joking yet there was something so terrible — so final-sounding — in the daddy’s words and the wild-white-haired old man’s rejoinders that Tod couldn’t stop his tears. To his distress, his nose was running. He no longer had the big wad of tissue the daddy had given him and so had to wipe his nose on the sleeve of his jacket and the daddy looked at him in disgust.

“Christ son it’s a joke, why are you so literal. Like your prig of a mother is so fucking literal. Can’t think outside the fucking box.”

The daddy had the power to make you cry and when you cried the daddy was disgusted and angry with you so that you cried harder which was really upsetting to the daddy.

Even a child of four felt this injustice. As his father and the old white-haired man hurtled jokes at each other like lightning bolts Tod crept away like a wounded dog. As soon as he was out of his father’s sight he began to run along the trail — wasn’t sure in which direction he was going, ahead or back the way they’d come — the trail was overgrown, brambles tore at his clothes and scratched his face — the little blue triangles on trees were nowhere to be seen.

Very bad. Spoiled. Brat!

Was that the daddy calling after him? Tod stopped to listen — the daddy’s voice was so faint, Tod couldn’t tell if the daddy was angry with him or sorry. Tod was frightened of the daddy and did not ever want to see the daddy again! He ran, until his breath was ragged. He ran, until his heart beat like a crazed little toad inside his rib cage. He ran, until he came to another clearing, that looked as if part of a hill had slid down in a heap. Here the earth was pocked with stones — you couldn’t run here, you would turn your ankle and hurt yourself. It was a place of rust-colored rocks and boulders and a deep ravine inside which, some thirty feet below, Tod saw something slithery and gleaming that might have been a shiny snake, or trickling water.

He was so tired! He’d been sobbing and was so tired, he could only just crawl now. Amid the rust-colored boulders was a fallen tree sprawling in all directions and Tod hid behind the trunk, panting and shivering and anxious that the daddy would find him and give him to the wild-white-haired old man.

The daddy was calling faintly and fearfully — “Tod? Christ sake son where are you?”

The daddy could not see Tod, evidently. For a long time it had seemed that both the daddy and the mommy could see Tod even if he was hiding as they could hear his thoughts inside his head but recently Tod had come to believe that this was not so. The way the daddy called “Tod? Tod?” — you could tell that the daddy didn’t know how close Tod was.

In surprise Tod saw a smear of blood on his hand — a smear of blood on his jacket. There must have been blood on his face — he’d struck his nose, falling. He’d slipped on the rocks, and fallen. Sometimes when he stuck a furtive forefinger into his nose his nose began to bleed as if in derision or accusation and so now Tod’s nose began to bleed, he would be terribly shamed if the daddy saw.

“Tod? Where are you? You’ve gotten us both lost.”

Tod peeked through the desiccated old leaves of the fallen tree and saw his father making his way along the trail slowly. And now in the rock-strewn clearing. The daddy was climbing the hill — there was a hill here — slowly and wincing as if his legs hurt. The daddy was yet ruddy-faced like something skinned. Looking for Tod — where he thought Tod might be hiding — the daddy blinked in frustration and helplessness as if peering into a bright blinding sun.

“Tod? We’re lost, son. That’s what you’ve done — you’re to blame — we are fucking lost.”

The daddy’s voice was petulant, furious. The daddy’s voice sounded as if it might break into sobs. Tod believed it must be true — the daddy was lost — the little blue triangles on the trees had vanished utterly.

Such disgust he felt for the daddy! — he rocked back on his heels. He was thinking he would not go back to the daddy — he would not show the daddy where he was — not ever! He would find the river by himself if it took the remainder of the day and all of the next. He would find the river and he would find the medical center, he would find his mother though he wasn’t sure of her name — her doctor-name, that would be in a clip-thing on her white jacket.

The mommy would smile at him in surprise. The mommy would not ask Where is your father? How on earth did you get here? The mommy would drive them home just the two of them, in the mommy’s car.

At home the house would be empty, awaiting them.

The kitchen where the Formica counters were yet sticky, and the air smelled of egg-batter scorch. This room like the others empty and yet Tod’s mother would not say Oh but where is your father? What have you done with Daddy?

In the quiet of the house they would laugh together. Tod would tell his mother about swinging on the swing — in the park — swinging so high, he’d swung over the top — and she would want to hear, every word. She would feed him, and she would bathe him, and she would read to him out of his favorite storybook until he fell asleep in his bed.

So clearly Tod knew this would happen, it was as if it had already happened. Not once but many times.

Here was danger! — the daddy was approaching Tod’s hiding place behind the fallen tree. The daddy could have no idea where his son was hiding yet blindly tramping along the overgrown trail the daddy was blundering near — Tod could hear him panting, cursing under his breath.

“Christ sake son where are you! Your daddy never meant to scare you! God damn obey me.”

The daddy must have fallen, his khaki pants were muddy and torn at the knees. The daddy’s mouth was the mouth of a panting dog that is furious but baffled where to attack.

With the desperation of a wounded snake Tod crawled behind the fallen tree, to the very tip of the tree where limbs and branches were spread out in all directions and where he couldn’t make his way any farther. The desiccated leaves through which Tod crawled made a harsh rattling noise but the daddy who was only a few yards away seemed not to hear. How labored the daddy’s breathing, and how distraught the daddy was! Nearby was one of the huge rust-colored boulders and beneath the boulder was a hollow place into which Tod could force himself — like a rabbit hole it was, a burrow, a small creature could crawl into, where a larger predator could not follow.

The daddy was pleading, half-sobbing they were lost. For God’s sake where was Tod, where was the son, the daddy had to rescue them from this fucking place before dark.

Tod took a deep breath — crawled beneath the boulder — slipping sideways inside — the hardest part was to force his head inside, and under — into a kind of carved-seeming cavity — here was a smell of the dark, dank earth — a smell of rock — the danger was, the immense boulder might loosen, fall and crush the child but this was a risk worth taking.

Here was a strange thing: the daddy couldn’t know that Tod had crawled beneath the rust-colored boulder yet as if by instinct the daddy was drawn to the boulder — “Tod? Are you under this? Tod for Christ sake — where are you?” The daddy was begging. The daddy was very angry. The daddy made grunting noises sprawling flat on his stomach pressing his length against the boulder, that he might grope beneath it with his right hand. The daddy thrust his arm as far beneath the boulder as he could, spreading his fingers that were scratched now, and bleeding. The daddy’s fingernails were broken and bleeding. The daddy tried to peer beneath the boulder but could see nothing — only just shadowy shapes that appeared to be inanimate. For here was a rock-cemetery, here was the end of all life. The daddy’s breath came quickly and shallowly hurting him like knife-blades in his lungs. If his son was beneath the terrible boulder, if his son was alive yet, and breathing, the daddy could not hear him, in the exigency of his distress. By this time the son had crawled halfway beneath the boulder, that measured approximately nine feet at its widest point. Now the son’s way was blocked, he could crawl no farther. Nor had the son who was only four years old begun to calculate how he would turn his small body to crawl out again.

In his burrow-space, the son was safe. In the cunning of animal panic the son lay very still. Like a dazed creature that has been injured but knows not to move, scarcely to breathe, to preserve its life. As if far distant on the surface of the earth the daddy lay pressed against the boulder, the daddy’s arm extended beneath the boulder to the shoulder-socket. In tight, constricted circles the daddy’s hand moved clumsily. If there was futility in the daddy’s gesture yet there was determination, zeal. There was the wish not to give up — not