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He lay on his back, fully dressed, staring up at the sky. He was not in the slightest bit sleepy.
“They’ll be missing me by now,” he told himself. “They’ll be worried.”
He imagined himself coming home in a few years’ time. The delight on his family’s faces as he walked up the path to home. Their welcome. Their love…
He woke some hours later, with the bright moonlight in his face. He could see the whole world-as bright as day, like in the nursery rhyme, but pale and without colors. Above him, the moon was full, or almost, and he imagined a face looking down at him, not unkindly, in the shadows and shapes of the moon’s surface.
A voice said, “Where do you come from?”
He sat up, not scared, not yet, and looked around him. Trees. Long grass. “Where are you? I don’t see you.”
Something he had taken for a shadow moved, beside a tree on the edge of the pasture, and he saw a boy of his own age.
“I’m ru
“Whoa,” said the boy. “That must have taken a whole lot of guts.”
The Runt gri
“You want to walk a bit?” said the boy.
“Sure,” said the Runt. He moved his schoolbag so it was next to the fence post, so he could always find it again.
They walked down the slope, giving a wide berth to the old farmhouse.
“Does anyone live there?” asked the Runt.
“Not really,” said the other boy. He had fair, fine hair that was almost white in the moonlight. “Some people tried a long time back, but they didn’t like it, and they left. Then other folk moved in. But nobody lives there now. What’s your name?”
“Donald,” said the Runt. And then, “But they call me the Runt. What do they call you?”
The boy hesitated. “Dearly,” he said.
“That’s a cool name.”
Dearly said, “I used to have another name, but I can’t read it anymore.”
They squeezed through a huge iron gateway, rusted part open, part closed, and they were in the little meadow at the bottom of the slope.
“This place is cool,” said the Runt.
There were dozens of stones of all sizes in the small meadow. Tall stones, bigger than either of the boys, and small ones, just the right size for sitting on. There were some broken stones. The Runt knew what sort of a place this was, but it did not scare him. It was a loved place.
“Who’s buried here?” he asked.
“Mostly okay people,” said Dearly. “There used to be a town over there. Past those trees. Then the railroad came and they built a stop in the next town over, and our town sort of dried up and fell in and blew away. There’s bushes and trees now, where the town was. You can hide in the trees and go into the old houses and jump out.”
The Runt said, “Are they like that farmhouse up there? The houses?” He didn’t want to go in them, if they were.
“No,” said Dearly. “Nobody goes in them, except for me. And some animals, sometimes. I’m the only kid around here.”
“I figured,” said the Runt.
“Maybe we can go down and play in them,” said Dearly.
“That would be pretty cool,” said the Runt.
It was a perfect early October night: almost as warm as summer, and the harvest moon dominated the sky. You could see everything.
“Which one of these is yours?” asked the Runt.
Dearly straightened up proudly and took the Runt by the hand. He pulled him to an overgrown corner of the field. The two boys pushed aside the long grass. The stone was set flat into the ground, and it had dates carved into it from a hundred years before. Much of it was worn away, but beneath the dates it was possible to make out the words
DEARLY DEPARTED
WILL NEVER BE FORG
“Forgotten, I’d wager,” said Dearly.
“Yeah, that’s what I’d say, too,” said the Runt.
They went out of the gate, down a gully, and into what remained of the old town. Trees grew through houses, and buildings had fallen in on themselves, but it wasn’t scary. They played hide and seek. They explored. Dearly showed the Runt some pretty cool places, including a one-room cottage that he said was the oldest building in that whole part of the county. It was in pretty good shape, too, considering how old it was.
“I can see pretty good by moonlight,” said the Runt. “Even inside. I didn’t know that it was so easy.”
“Yeah,” said Dearly. “And after a while you get good at seeing even when there ain’t any moonlight.”
The Runt was envious.
“I got to go to the bathroom,” said the Runt. “Is there somewhere around here?”
Dearly thought for a moment. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I don’t do that stuff anymore. There are a few outhouses still standing, but they may not be safe. Best just to do it in the woods.”
“Like a bear,” said the Runt.
He walked out the back, into the woods that pushed up against the wall of the cottage, and went behind a tree. He’d never done that before, in the open air. He felt like a wild animal. When he was done he wiped himself off with fallen leaves. Then he went back out the front. Dearly was sitting in a pool of moonlight, waiting for him.
“How did you die?” asked the Runt.
“I got sick,” said Dearly. “My maw cried and carried on something fierce. Then I died.”
“If I stayed here with you,” said the Runt, “would I have to be dead, too?”
“Maybe,” said Dearly. “Well, yeah. I guess.”
“What’s it like? Being dead?”
“I don’t mind it,” admitted Dearly. “Worst thing is not having anyone to play with.”
“But there must be lots of people up in that meadow,” said the Runt. “Don’t they ever play with you?”
“Nope,” said Dearly. “Mostly, they sleep. And even when they walk, they can’t be bothered to just go and see stuff and do things. They can’t be bothered with me. You see that tree?”
It was a beech tree, its smooth gray bark cracked with age. It sat in what must once been the town square, ninety years before.
“Yeah,” said the Runt.
“You want to climb it?”
“It looks kind of high.”
“It is. Real high. But it’s easy to climb. I’ll show you.”
It was easy to climb. There were handholds in the bark, and the boys went up the big beech like a couple of monkeys or pirates or warriors. From the top of the tree one could see the whole world. The sky was starting to lighten, just a hair, in the east.
Everything waited. The night was ending. The world was holding its breath, preparing to begin again.
“This was the best day I ever had,” said the Runt.
“Me too,” said Dearly. “What you going to do now?”
“I don’t know,” said the Runt.
He imagined himself going on across the world, all the way to the sea. He imagined himself growing up and growing older, bringing himself up by his bootstraps. Somewhere in there he would become fabulously wealthy. And then he would go back to the house with the twins in it, and he would drive up to their door in his wonderful car, or perhaps he would turn up at a football game (in his imagination the twins had neither aged nor grown) and look down at them, in a kindly way. He would buy them all, the twins, his parents, a meal at the finest restaurant in the city, and they would tell him how badly they had misunderstood him and mistreated him. They apologized and wept, and through it all he said nothing. He let their apologies wash over him. And then he would give each of them a gift, and afterward he would leave their lives once more, this time for good.
It was a fine dream.
In reality, he knew, he would keep walking, and be found tomorrow or the day after that, and go home and be yelled at, and everything would be the same as it ever was, and day after day, hour after hour until the end of time he’d still be the Runt, only they’d be mad at him for having dared to walk away.
“I have to go to bed soon,” said Dearly. He started to climb down the big beech tree.