scuffing through the aisles between the cars. Slow, deliberate scans in every direction. Poking my head into the vehicles and noting the hundreds of North American lives in recreational progress—the dope-smoking kids, gluttonous adults, the couples slumped under comforters in the backs of pick-up trucks.
But no Sam.
For the first time the idea of calling the police comes to mind. Yet it remains only an idea. Sam’s been gone three minutes at most. He has to be here. What might be happening is not happening. It can’t be. It can’t.
"Sam!"
My son’s name comes to me from someone else. An alarmed third party.
"Sam!"
I start to run. As fast as I can at first. Then, realizing I won’t make it the length of a single row, slow it to a jog. A pushing-forty man trotting his way through the parked cars in the middle of the main feature, rubbernecking this way and that. It’s the sort of thing people notice. A teenager in his dad’s convertible wolf whistles as I go by, and the girls bunched into the front with him offer an ironic wave. Without thinking, I wave back.
When I finish zigzagging all the rows, I start around the perimeter of the lot. Peering into the shadowed fields. Each line of corn another chance of seeing Sam standing there, hiding, waiting for me to find him. This anticipated image of him becomes so particular that I actually spot him a couple of times. But when I stop for a second look, he’s gone.
I make it to the back of the lot where the light from the screen is dimmest, everything bathed in a deep-sea glow. The corn rows seem wider here, and darker. The roof of a distant farmhouse the only interruption on the horizon. No lights in its windows. I try to blink it into better focus, but my eyes are blurred by tears I hadn’t felt coming.
I thought you were a ghost.
I was a ghost. But ghosts don’t get to do things. It’s much better being the monster. The kind you don’t expect is a monster until it’s too late.
I bend over and put my hands on my knees. Sucking air. A pause that lets the panic in. The horrific imaginings. Who he’s with. What they will do. Are doing. How he will never come back.
I saw someone. Looking in the window.
Did you see who it was?
A man. A shadow.
I have already started to run back toward the concession stand when I see it.
A figure disappearing into the stands of corn. As tall as me, if not taller. There. And then not there.
I try to count the rows between where I was and where the figure entered the field. Seven? Eight? No more than ten. When I’ve passed nine I cut right and start in.
The fibrous leaves thrash against my face, the stalks cracking as I punch my way past. It looked like there was more room in the rows from outside, but now that I’m within them there’s not near enough space for a man my size to move without being grabbed at, tripped, cut. Not so much running as swallowed by a constricting throat.
How is whoever I saw going any faster than me? The question makes me stop. I lie down flat and peer through the stalks. Down here, the only light is a grey, celestial dusting. With my open mouth pressed against the earth, it’s as though the moonlight has assumed a taste. The mineral grit of steel shavings.
I teach my body to be still.
The thought occurs to me that I have gone mad between the time I left Sam and now. Sudden-onset insanity. It would explain crashing through a corn field at night. Chasing something that likely wasn’t there in the first place.
And then it’s there.
A pair of boots rushing toward the far end of the field. A hundred feet ahead and a couple rows to the left.
I scramble to my feet. Moaning at my locked knees, the muscles burning in my hips. I use my hands to pull me ahead. Ripping out ears of corn and tossing them to thud like another’s steps behind me.
Every few strides offers a peek at the farmhouse in the distance, and I cut sideways to stay in line with it. As if I know this is where the figure is going. As if I have a plan.
I lift my head again, scanning for the gabled roof, and catch the figure instead. Rushing rightto-left across the gap. A glimpse of motion through the silk-topped ears. Darker than the night stretched tight over the corn.
I launch forward. Blinking my eyes clear to catch another sight of it down the rows. But what was it? Neither identifiably man nor woman, no notable clothing, no hat, no visible hair. No face. A scarecrow hopped off its post.
Now when I shout I’m no longer addressing Sam but whatever it is that’s out here with me.
"Bring him back! Bring him back!"
There’s no threat in it. No promise of vengeance. It’s little more than a father’s winded gasps shaped into words.
All at once I break through into the farmhouse’s yard. The grass grown high around a rusted swing set. Paint chipping on the shutters. Smashed-out windows.
I go around the back of the place. No car parked anywhere. No sign that anyone has come or gone since whatever bad news ushered out the people who lived here last.
I stop for a second to think of what to do next. That’s when my legs give out. I fall to my knees as though moved by a sudden need to pray. Over the pounding of my heart I listen for retreating footfall. Not even the movie voices can reach me. The only sound the electric buzz of crickets.
And the only thing to see is the Mustang’s screen. An ocean of cornstalks away, but still clearly visible. A silent performance of terror so much more fluid and believable than my own.
It’s as I watch that it comes to me. A truth I could never prove to anyone, but no less certain for that.
I know who has done this. Who has taken my son. I know its name.
I kneel in the high grass of the abandoned farmyard, staring at its face. Forty feet high and towering over the harvest fields, lips moving in silence, directly addressing the night like a god. A monstrous enlargement made of light on a whitewashed screen.
The part all actors say is the best to play. The villain.
VALENTINE’S DAY, 2003
"Love cards!"
This is Sam, my four-year-old son. Running into my room to jump on the bed and rain crayoned Valentines over my face.
"It’s Love Day,” I confirm. Lift his T-shirt to deliver fart kisses to his belly.
"Who’s your Valentine, Daddy?"
"I suppose that would have to be Mommy."
"But she’s not here."
"That doesn’t matter. You can choose anyone you like."
"Really?"
"Absolutely."
Sam thinks on this. His fingers folding and unfolding a card. The sparkles stirred around in the still wet glue.
"So is Emmie your Valentine?” I ask him. Emmie being our regular nanny. "Maybe someone at daycare?"
And then he surprises me. He often does.
"No,” he says, offering me his paper heart. "It’s you."
Days like these, the unavoidable calendar celebrations—Christmas,