Compass

The boy was lost. Surrounded by dying elms, scraggled firs, red-orange maples and dense brush thick with itch weed, he’d looped around again to the point of decision. Twice he’d chosen the wrong path. Once more and he was certain to be out well past dark. Hungry. Cold. Afraid. He wondered if he would die.

Whatever lived out there in the dark would be watching. His Uncle James once talked of a bear that had wandered down from Minnesoda all the way to Keyokuk County before a farmer shotgunned it. There could be other bears, or even a cougar up from Missoura.

Ran had not wandered so far into the woods before. He had not been in the woods at all since that thing with his sister. It was so long ago that he could not remember where he had found her or what she had looked like.

“Ran!”

That was Mamma’s voice, faint, distant.

“Ran!”

He knew that the sun went down in the west and he imagined the points on his compass as he crossed himself, Nana Squishes Early Worms. North, South, East, West. Father, Son, Holy, Ghost.

“Ran!”

West must be that way, to his left now, toward the little bit of daylight that remained. West was where Mamma’s voice was calling him to dinner. He walked toward the voice until she stopped calling, then he just walked toward the quickly fading light.