The Boy on the Lawn

Stevie’s eyes rolled back in his head. “Take cover! Take cover! Fire from the sky!”

I grasped his shoulders and squeezed. I’d seen his eyes roll back that way before, the other few times he’d had his weird visions. Usually they were touched off by the presence of someone around him, but it was just the two of us. “Stevie, are you okay?”

Just then, the bells of the Dairy Whip ice cream truck recorded song sounded in the distance. Stevie’s eyes rolled forward, back to normal. Now, his iron-rod one-pointedness shifted to the ice cream. “The truck is coming! Mikey, get money!”

I stood there a moment as the Dairy Whip’s tinkling song grew louder. What was it about those recorded bells that had people salivating and running to catch the colorfully-painted truck before it passed by? Stevie was no exception. He got so excited each time, it was the one time he ever let me out of the invisible emotional radius he had me tethered to. As long as I was only gone long enough to get the money.

“Stevie, I can’t leave you here. You just had one of your things.”

“Please, Mikey! We’ll miss it!” Stevie’s hands were balled into fists. The tension gripping his nerves was palpable to me. The usual driver, Harold, an older white guy in his sixties with graying hair puffing out from under the Dairy Whip cap made to look like the old fashioned hats worn by milk delivery men from the 1950s, knew the two of us always met the truck and so I saw him wave briefly and begin slowing near our house. He always pulled right up to the curb and served us before moving on.

“He’s almost here, Mikey!” Veins in my brother’s temples now surfaced, like eerie snakes under his perspiring flesh.

Dammit. “All right. When he gets here, meet me at the truck, okay?” I released him and raced for the kitchen door steps. “I’ll be right back!”

The change had already been set out on the kitchen counter. I grabbed it. I could hear Grandma in the background. The lament in her tone told me that her friend had obviously gotten the cancer diagnosis and it was bad. Grandma’s voice faded in the growing noise of the plane passing over our neighborhood.

Back outside, the noise was, for sensitive ears, thunderous. The Dairy Whip’s song emanated from the truck at the curb, providing an eerie backdrop to the plane’s engines. I expected to see Stevie at the curb by the truck, hands plastered to his ears to block out all the sounds. He wasn’t there.

Harold was at the window. “What can I get you?”

“Um, I don’t know. My brother should have been here to tell you already.” In spite of Stevie’s regularity, he insisted on giving his order himself. I’d made the mistake of ordering for him once. Only once.

“He’s not here. I can wait a few seconds while you get him. I saw him over by the trees as I drove up the street.”

“Okay, thanks.” The truck’s song tinkled on in the background, free now of the airplane’s cacophonous engines. “Stevie!” I called and ran over to the spot where we’d been playing. Stevie’s glove lay on the ground. Weird. I listened to hear if he was screaming nearby, due to my being a distance away from him, but all I could hear was the Dairy Whip truck. Now my heart felt like a fist had gripped it.

I ran back over where Harold was waiting at the window. There were no other kids on this street but us so I knew he’d need to move on. “I can’t find him. I need to look.”

“I’m sure he’s just poking around in the yard next door. I saw him on hands and knees, looking for something.”

Stevie wouldn’t have been doing that, but I didn’t bother correcting Harold. With a wave I turned and jogged back over to the tree line, heart pounding. I could hear it in my ears, feel my blood forcing its way through my veins as if chased by terror. Harold was already around the corner and the truck’s theme song loop was growing softer.

“Stevie!” I called out. Shielding my eyes from the afternoon sun, I peered around the small front yard of my parents’ craftsman cottage.

No answer. The sunny day with its soft breeze and plethora of blooming flowers everywhere, on the bushes and trees of our and all the neighbors’ yards belied the sudden darkness that shrouded my world.

I dropped to my knees and crawled through the border of trees that separated our small yard from the house next door. A narrow swath of dirt led to a back concrete walkway that serviced the back of the house. No one had lived here for a number of years, although the yard was always tended.

A profusion of rhododendrons to my left filled the back corner of the property. “Stevie?” I pulled the outermost branches aside and peered in. Nothing. Backing out I started down the pathway that skirted the house. Reaching a small doghouse side entrance, I tried the door but it was locked. “Stevie?” I called again. No answer.

I peered into the small sunset pattern of windows on the door, firmly locked against my tugs. The house was dark. Empty. I pressed my ear to one of the little squares of glass but only silence answered. I turned away and continued my way around the house. I’d only been gone a few seconds so he couldn’t be farther away then here.

At the front porch, I dropped to my knees and peered through the lattice skirting behind the front shrubs in case Stevie had crawled under the house to escape the loud noises. “Stevie? Are you there? Please answer.” My heart was racing now. He’d never run away from me so I knew that even though I was searching for him, if he wasn’t answering my calls, he wouldn’t be here. “Stevie!” I said louder, as if a higher volume would somehow cause him to produce himself. Nothing.

I dashed up the front porch steps and pounded on the door. Why I thought anyone would answer after years of the house sitting vacant was only my mounting panic. “Hello? Is anyone there? Stevie? Someone?” I pounded again and yanked in vain on the locked door before peering into the windows, similarly blocked by interior blinds.

A frustrated huff escaped me and I left the front porch and continued scrutinizing the perimeter of the house. I tried peering into any other windows low enough to reach, but the blinds were all drawn from inside, blocking any view to the inside. “Oh my God,” I muttered to myself, over the crashing of my heart. “Stevie, where the hell did you go?”