Chapter 16 The Lilac Boy
Big Bobby Sullivan tells the story at the bar of the Dew Drop Inn sometimes, when they’ll let him, and when he’s had his third or fourth drink.
He was shooting grouse out of season one early fall when he saw the face in the tree.
It had been a poor day for grouse, but Bobby hadn’t come up here for the kill, more for the crisp air and to be alone on the mountain with his thoughts and the whispering trees.
And away from his wife, with whom he’d had an argument that morning.
There had been snow a couple of days before.
It hadn’t stayed; the weather warmed straight after and everything smelled fresh-turned, like the earth was alive.
Bobby stopped by a lilac tree to eat his sandwich.
It was a meat-ball sandwich; his wife made the best meatballs in Ault.
Everyone said so. He ate it sitting by the lilac tree, which was in full bloom.
The scent was heavy, making him kind of sleepy; lilac always did that to him for some reason.
There was a rustling in the tree and Big Bobby took up his gun again, thinking of bears.
They travelled this way around this time of year.
He peered into the purple and green but couldn’t see anything.
But he had the prickle in his skin that told him eyes were watching.
The sun went behind a cloud and it felt later in the day, suddenly, than it had a moment before.
He realised that his watch had stopped. Bobby felt very alone all of a sudden.
He thought about home and a beer and these seemed like great things.
Just because he needed a little while away from home didn’t mean he didn’t love it.
And he wanted to get off the mountain. He couldn’t remember why he’d wanted to come out here so badly.
He struck out through the forest back towards the main trail.
A few moments later he stopped. He realised he had left half his meatball sandwich on the ground by the tree. He groaned aloud.
Bobby was raised near the mountain; he knows that you never leave food out like that, not in wild places.
The bears find it. They learn to like human food.
After that they are unstoppable. A couple of years before, tourists had got into the habit of leaving food out in clearings by parking spots, and then retreating to their cars to watch the bears come.
The bears learned quickly. When tourist season ended and there was no more food they started coming closer to town.
Some of them learned to knock the lids off trash cans.
Eventually a black bear was caught on camera, delicately letting herself into a kitchen by turning the handle on the porch door.
After that of course the Park Service had to shoot her.
Bears cannot start to like human stuff. Just like people mustn’t let the wild get inside them or it might take over.
Bobby likes a bear, in its place, and he didn’t want his sandwich to lead to all that so resignedly he began to retrace his steps to retrieve it.
He pushed through some scrub and the lilac tree was there, ten feet or so away.
Bobby caught his breath. There was a face in the blossom.
It looked up and its eyes drove holes into him.
I never got so close to screaming like a girl, he said later.
The eyes he looked into were black tunnels.
The small face was scarred with smears of orange-red blood.
The thing opened its mouth and screamed.
Bobby saw pieces of half-chewed meatball on the pink tongue.
A scent of caries and decay filled the air and he clapped a hand over his nose and mouth.
Then the face disappeared, and there was a commotion of blooms and leaves and a thump. A small body fell to earth and Bobby heard, unmistakably, the sound of a child crying.
His fear vanished – he had two boys himself and he recognised that tone – just a hungry child who had been pushed too hard. Bobby said, gently, ‘It’s all right, son.’
The boy looked up at Bobby. Tears made tracks through the dirt on his face.
He clutched Bobby’s sandwich to his chest. The red stuff on his mouth was meatball sauce.
‘You hold on to that now,’ Bobby said. ‘I’ve been looking for someone to help me finish it, so I’m glad you came along.
Now, why don’t we get somewhere warm? Maybe brush your teeth and give you a bath. How about some pyjamas?’
He offered his hand. The boy looked at it and bared his teeth. Big Bobby held his breath; he thought about that rotting mouth closing on his tender palm.
‘Dead,’ said the boy, fast and low. ‘All dead – dead, dead, dead.’
Bobby was shaken. But he held his hand out still, in offering. After a moment the boy put his small filthy hand in Bobby’s and they walked slowly, carefully through the forest and all the way down the mountain.
‘So I knew someone had loved him, once,’ Big Bobby says always, at this point in the story. Someone claps him on the back and they all pretend not to see as he quickly wipes his eyes.
The little boy was never identified. Bobby took him to the police station and he seemed ok with that. He could read, Bobby thought, because he gave a little nod when he saw the ‘police’ sign at the door. But he wouldn’t talk. His injury was substantial. Who would do that to a child?
His clothes were in tatters. Some of the labels were from companies that went out of business years ago. No one had reported a boy missing matching his description. In the local paper they called him the Lilac Boy.
‘I know how it sounds,’ Bobby would say. ‘But I think he came out of the mountain.’ He’ll sometimes pause here and wipe his eyes again. ‘How long had he been up there? How many years?’
The boy was taken by the state, and later Bobby heard he was adopted. Somewhere far away. That was good, he thought. Get him away. Give him a chance to get the mountain out of him.
Big Bobby could never find that particular lilac tree again though he looked and looked. He was never the same after that day. Though who is exactly the same after any day that passes? Still, the mountains do things to people, mind and body.
It’s because of stories like this that in Ault they say, don’t go nowhere alone. It’s kind of a pun, but it’s not a joke.