Lost and Found

(this short story is multiple pages)

Editors' Choice Award

“Wow! That was great, Mom! Can we get ice cream now?”

It was Randy’s first trip to the big city, and to his fresh eyes, New York was as grand as outer space. Clutching his autographed theater program in one hand and a shopping bag of Lion King souvenirs in the other, the Banesville, Illinois five-year-old could barely keep his feet on the cracked sidewalk. He whirled for one more look at the spectacular theater where he’d met Simba and Mufasa and Zazu, then focused once more on getting that double dip of Chunky Monkey onto a big brown waffle cone.

“Mom, come on, let’s go,” he prodded, his cornflower blue eyes crinkling from excitement and exhaustion.

Pointing to a sea of yellow taxis blurting impatient honks and jockeying for a scrap of pavement to call their own, Randy’s mom directed his attention to the street.

“Okay, honey, watch for our limousine. We’ll be off in a jiff.”

Visions of melting ice cream danced in his head, and Randy frowned at the never-ending rows of creeping taxis. “Gee, our big car won’t ever get through all the yellow ones.”

Beth smiled down on the capped head of her son as it bobbed like the hanging noggin of a rear window deck puppy. He was running on fumes, but he was fighting it. She changed plans.

“Okay, we won’t wait. Want to take a cab, my man?”

“Yeah!” The boy’s face brightened at the prospect of another new adventure. Cabs were cool. Banesville didn’t have cabs. Banesville didn’t even have a traffic light.

Beth fished her purse for her cell phone as she jostled her way through the sidewalk throng. She needed to contact the limo driver marooned somewhere in the crush of traffic and tell him to join them at Ben & Jerry’s.

Dialing and waving at the cabs, she lost track of Randy for a second. It was only a second, one single solitary second, she would later tell the policemen through a torrent of tears. Randy. Lost in New York City.

*****

Randy realized he couldn’t see his mom, but he wasn’t all that worried. It wasn’t until the pack dispersed two street corners later that fear grew in his belly.

“Mom?” he called out, only to have his young voice pulverized by the metallic clang of a big truck bullying a couple of imports. Several more times he shouted for his mom, but he didn’t move. He wasn’t about to ignore her “if we ever get separated stay put, go only with a policeman, and don’t be afraid” instructions.

There weren’t any policeman he could see, and the staying put part was okay. Even though it was nighttime, the lights on the buildings were brighter than a thousand full moons. But the don’t be afraid part, well, Randy hoped that wasn’t such an important instruction, because with each passing minute, he was getting closer to violating it.

“Whatcha doin’?”

Spinning toward the voice, Randy came face to face with a barefoot boy sporting grimy, ragged clothes and gobs of matted hair that corkscrewed from his head like broken bed springs.

Randy couldn’t take his eyes off that clumpy head as he answered simply, “I’m lost.”

“My name’s Albert. Where you s’posed to be?”

“I’m Randy. My mom and I just saw The Lion King at a theater place. You been there? I met Simba! And I got all this stuff,” he boasted proudly, holding up his treasure haul for Albert to see.

“Naw. Ain’t never been, but I got a hunk of Scar’s tail. Wanna’ see it?”

Randy’s eyes popped and New York City blurred around him. “Really? Yeah!”

“’kay! Follow me.”

Randy trotted after Albert, his bag of treasures and his program held at arm’s length like the lopsided wings of a prop plane. He kind of knew he was supposed to be doing something else, but at that moment, whatever it was just flew away like a bad dream shooed by the flick of the light switch. Forgotten.

When Albert finally came to a halt in an alley strewn with discarded bottles, boxes, and piles of unrecognizable junk, Randy’s chest heaved and his legs were near to folding up beneath him.

“What’s the matter?” Albert gave the wheezing Randy a healthy slap on the back. It was supposed to help him breathe, but to Randy’s frail body it was close to a deathblow. He crumpled.

“God a’mighty!” Albert blurted as he shoved two thin arms under Randy’s even thinner ones and hauled him over the alley’s carpet of dirty debris.

The scrawny rescuer was near to collapsing himself by the time he got Randy tucked into his house, yet he darted right back out, returning a moment later with a well-used Styrofoam cup half full of tepid water.

“You breathin’ Randy?” Albert all but tossed the cup at his wobbly guest, hurrying to strike a match. With a practiced hand he held the flame to the wick of a short fat candle stuck to an upturned mustard lid.

“Yeah,” Randy muttered, sitting up and warily eye both the flickering flame and the dirty brown offering in the cup. He set the water aside and took in his surroundings.

“This place your clubhouse?”

“Naw, it’s my real house!” Albert crowed.

“Your house? Wow! I never lived in a box, and I’d never, ever, get to have a candle in my room. Your mom must be the coolest!”

The innocent use of the word “mom” brought Randy up short as he remembered he’d lost his mom somewhere.

Albert fared no better. He folded his sparse form over dirt-encrusted toes and sank to the cardboard floor beneath him. “I ain’t got no mama now,” he whispered.

“No mom?”

Albert’s dark face contorted in the candlelight, his lips disappearing between long unwashed teeth.

“Nope. She up and died on me. Gone to Heaven to live with Jesus.”

Albert’s sorrowful eyes made Randy’s heart hurt. “Then who takes care of you?”

“Nobody. Don’t need nobody to take care of me. I take care of me!” Albert vowed, his back as taut as a bowstring.

Randy’s eyes nearly popped from their sockets. “But. . . but. . . how old are you?”

“I’m, uh. . . seven, I think.”

The candle flame sputtered as Randy leaned past it. “Golly, Albert, aren’t you lonely with no mom?”

Albert opened his mouth to answer only to have the words stolen by the loud rumblings of persistent hunger.

“Hey, you got any food in that bag?”

“No, sorry,” Randy answered sadly, his head bent over his bag anyway as if Skittles might magically appear if he looked hard enough. He felt bad that his belly was full but Albert’s wasn’t.

Albert merely shrugged. He was all too familiar with an ever-gnawing hunger that rarely got fed. “That’s okay. Wanna’ see the tail now?” Not waiting for Randy’s response, he reached beneath the flea infested old backpack he used for a pillow and grabbed the hairy prize.

As Albert snagged the tail, Randy spied a lopsided apple perched on a big rock and stretched for the fruit.

“Hey Albert! Did you forget you had this apple?” His hand was nearly around the fruit when Albert screamed.

“NO! Don’t touch it!”

Albert’s roar rivaled Mufasa’s, and Randy snatched back his hand as if the old lion himself was about to bite it off.

“What? What’s wrong?”

With the apple safe in his own grasp, Albert slowly curled back to a cross-legged position and ever so gently extended his arm.

“See there?”

Randy craned his neck to get a better view of the dark hole next to Albert’s pointing finger and saw a little green worm peeking out.

Albert’s voice was near a whisper as he explained. “I can’t eat this apple. It’s his home. Wouldn’t be right to eat somebody’s home.”

Randy nodded his complete understanding. Albert was right. You shouldn’t eat nobody’s home.

“His name’s Godzilla, but I’m worried ‘cause this here apple don’t look too good anymore. I got to find him a new one.”