Lost and Found

But it was the next afternoon before the promised search was under way.

Beth held her son’s hand as they picked their way down the alley. It was no easy task with Randy pulling the bright red wagon behind him. They’d already spent hours navigating a blur of New York alleyways.

“Are you sure this will work, honey?”

Randy didn’t answer as he concentrated on his task. One more carefully placed fruit and the wagon sat empty. What he had created was a sight. Dozens of bright shiny red apples dotting the alleyways of New York City—calling cards to Albert, a veritable Taj Mahal for Godzilla. And tucked beneath each offering was a note written in big mom-assisted letters: “MEET ME AT SIMBA’S. YOUR FRIEND, RANDY.”

More than ten hours later, Beth cradled her restless son in her arms. She had waited as long as she could, sitting with him near the theater as he desperately scanned the crowd with eyes and heart full of hope. “He’ll come, Mom,” he repeated every few minutes. But the hours dragged by, and Albert didn’t come.

Randy’s heartbreak overwhelmed the once happy journey. This trip was meant to be all joy and laughter. It was to be Randy’s journey to OZ, the sweetest memory of a lifetime. But now, the little man with an old soul and a big heart talked only of a boy in a box.

Randy and his mom returned to the limo only to languish in a snarl of traffic barely half a block from where they’d started. Beth tried to coax her son to close his eyes and rest, but his attention remained on the busy street that he continued to scan through the tinted glass. A heartbeat later Randy catapulted from his mom’s arms with a squeal.

There, in the shadows of the Lion King marquee, stood a small boy with an armload of apples.

* * * * *

Albert’s head snapped up at the sound of his name being shouted over and over, and he shivered as he watched Randy and the lady run toward him. He almost bolted. Almost. Instead he forced himself to stand his ground. When he’d asked the stranger to read the apple note to him, he’d felt something move inside that he didn’t really understand. Yet he wavered for hours, torn between hiding in a safe pile and running to the theater. Finally, for the first time in his life, he decided to trust someone besides his mama, and with a bundle of the precious fruit safe in his arms, he went.

Fear threatened his resolve, but he held fast, clutching his kingdom’s worth of bright red apples, the tiny Godzilla already burrowing into a new home in his pocket.

“Albert, you came!” Randy shouted as he barreled into his friend, catapulting the apple treasure from the taller boy’s grasp.

Albert righted himself as the apples hit the pavement and rolled away, but he made no attempt to retrieve them. He couldn’t have moved if he had wanted to, for his feet were glued to the concrete and his eyes were riveted to the lady now towering over him.

“Hello Albert. I’m so happy to meet you. I have much to thank you for.”

The lady’s gentle words wrapped around the motherless boy like warm afternoon sunshine. But try as he might to speak bravely, all that came out was a softly stammered “oh.”

When Beth knelt, it was with a heart near to bursting for the dirty, skinny boy she faced. Randy’s passionate discourse about the box, the departed mom living with Jesus, the soon-to-be-homeless Godzilla, and Albert’s growling belly had all been so unthinkable.

Slowly she opened her arms and gently pulled both boys into them. Randy just grinned, but Albert, the boy who needed nobody to take care of him, the boy who stuck to the safe piles and outsmarted the world to follow his mama’s instructions, the boy who had all but forgotten the touch of another living soul, collapsed into those open arms, uncoiling endless hours of pain and isolation amidst loud sobs. Scared to believe, and more scared not to, he threw his dirty hands around Beth’s neck and held on. He never wanted to let go.

* * * * *

“Is it my turn now, Mama?”

Beth felt the squeeze of the small hand tucked snugly in her own and said yet another silent prayer before kneeling on the damp earth. Gently she dabbed a scrap of tissue against the tears on the ravaged face staring up at her.

“Yes, son, it’s your turn,” she told him softly.

Nodding, Albert slipped his hand from hers and bravely approached the small casket perched over the freshly dug grave. Flowers in all the colors of the rainbow wove a thick fragrant tapestry over the young body resting beneath them.

Albert cried harder as he lifted the small bag of treasures he’d carried all day and held them to his heart with both hands.

“You don’t worry bout nothin, Randy,” he whispered to his brother. “Just like I promised, I’ll always take care of our mama, and Rex too, and I’ll be sure to smile real big at Mama every day, just like you told me. And you’ll find my other mama up there in Heaven and she’ll take good care of you. I’m being brave ‘cause I said I would, but, but…. “

Albert’s shoulders jerked as he choked on his sobs, but he wouldn’t run away. Not today. Not ever. He would never run to a safe pile again. And he wouldn’t have to.

Since that warm hug beneath the Lion King marquee, the two boys had been inseparable, living the life of a single soul with two beating hearts. And now every citizen of the small town stood on the damp marshy soil as the pain radiated from the boy with the only remaining heartbeat.

Drowning in sorrow, but standing proud, Albert gently laid two shiny red apples and a hunk of a lion’s tail on young Randy’s casket. And as if a gossamer thread had stitched together the thoughts of every last person in the cemetery, the people collectively remembered one very special day last April.

It had been Spring Carnival, and Banesville’s only park had been chocked full of booths and rides, bake sales, contests, and laughter. The mayor had come upon the boys once again regaling their story, this time to the man running the ferris wheel, and at the carney’s look of amazement, Mr. Mayor had affectionately patted the heads of both boys, and proclaimed loudly, “I see you’ve met Lost and Found. They’re quite a pair, aren’t they?”

From that day forward, Randy and Albert had been addressed by one and all as Lost and Found, for on one day of destiny a year or so ago, under the spell of Simba and New York City, and in a world of bright lights, cardboard houses and squished apples, one precious little boy was lost. . .and one precious little boy was found.