Thief River Falls

3

The fire cast a warm glow throughout the rustic den at the back of Lisa’s house. The wall surrounding the fireplace was made entirely of rough flagstones, and varnished log beams filled the other walls and stretched overhead across the ceiling. A faux fur rug was spread in front of the hearth, and the boy sat there, wrapped up in a quilt that Lisa’s mother had made several years earlier.

His blond hair shone almost white. His skin was scrubbed, pink and clean after his shower. His clothes were in the washing machine. She’d found a cut behind his ear but concluded that the injury itself wasn’t deep or serious, just a flesh wound that had bled profusely. However, the boy couldn’t tell her what had actually happened to him. He had no identification on him, nothing that would tell her who he really was.

Lisa watched from the doorway without letting him know that she was there. He seemed entranced by the flames, and he hummed, which was a comforting noise like the purr of a cat. His blond hair was wavy and unkempt and needed a cut. He had beautiful blue eyes, the kind of eyes that would make him a heartbreaker when he grew up. He was still scrawny like a little boy, all knees and elbows, his wrists as thin as matchsticks. His teeth were a little crooked and would need braces eventually.

What she noticed most about him was his serious face. He looked as if he was always thinking about things and trying to figure out their meaning. When he went into a room, his gaze moved around to every piece of furniture, every picture on the wall, every book on the shelves. He didn’t say much, but he seemed endlessly curious. Lisa could relate to that, because she’d been the same way as a girl, an introvert who noticed everything around her, like a silent spy.

She walked into the den. The boy heard her footsteps, and his head flew around, as frightened and alert as a startled rabbit on the lawn. She worried that he scared so easily, because it seemed out of character with everything else about him.

Lisa gave him a reassuring little wave. “It’s just me.”

She joined him on the deep rug and crossed her legs. She put out her hands, warming them near the fire. The boy studied her with that deep, intense stare that was full of questions.

“So can we talk a little bit?” she asked.

The boy shrugged. “Sure.”

“How’s your head? Does it hurt?”

“No.”

“I’m washing your clothes. They’ll be clean soon.”

“Okay.”

“Do you remember anything about what happened to you?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head with his mouth squeezed into a frown, as if he didn’t like disappointing her. “I don’t.”

“That’s okay. Let’s not worry about that yet. What about your name? Do you remember what your name is?”

“No. I don’t know that, either.”

“Hmm. So you’re a mystery boy, huh? Well, we need to do something about that, because everybody needs a name. You don’t want me to be saying ‘hey you’ all the time, right? Let’s give you sort of a secret agent name, at least until we find out who you really are. Okay? How about I call you Purdue?”

“Purdue,” the boy murmured. “Why would you call me that?”

“It’s from a French word that means ‘lost.’ And right now, you’re sort of a lost boy, aren’t you?”

“I guess.”

“Well, the name Purdue is very special to me. I wrote a book about a little boy who was lost, sort of like you. And his name was Purdue.”

“What happened to him?”

Lisa thought, He was buried alive.

“He was rescued by a very brave woman and lived happily ever after,” she replied. “Of course, he had a lot of adventures along the way. That’s the way my books go. But the main thing is, he ended up figuring out who he was and where he was supposed to be. I’m going to make sure that happens for you, too. Okay?”

“Okay.” The boy’s face had that same serious expression again. “Do I look like this other Purdue? The one you wrote about?”

“No, you don’t look like him at all. The boy in my book had dark hair and came from Missouri and had a southern accent. Y’all don’t talk like a boy from Missouri, now do y’all?”

This time the boy smiled. “No.”

“No, you don’t. But I don’t think my Purdue would mind if you shared his name for a little while.”

He nodded. “Okay.”

“Very good. You are now officially Secret Agent Purdue. And our mission is to figure out who you are and where you came from and where you’re supposed to be. Got it? You say you don’t remember what your name is or how you got hurt, so I guess we need to start somewhere else. The first question is, What do you remember?”

Purdue sucked in his lips and held his breath, as if he were trying to get rid of hiccups. When he finally exhaled with a loud whoosh, he shook his head in frustration and looked upset with himself. “Nothing. I can’t remember anything.”

“Well, let’s start a little closer to home and see if we can’t jog something loose. When I saw you and you saw me, you were standing in the middle of my yard. How’d you get there?”

“A truck,” Purdue answered immediately. His eyes widened, as if he’d surprised himself with the answer.

“A truck. That’s great. See, you’re remembering things already.” Lisa cocked her head. “Was it my truck? I have a pickup, and I drove home from Thief River Falls earlier this evening. Were you hiding in the back of my pickup?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Are you sure?”

“After I was in the truck, I walked a long way before I got here,” Purdue explained.

“You walked? From where?”

“I don’t know. I was in this truck, and we drove for a while. I’m not sure how long. I think I fell asleep. Then I woke up, and the truck was stopped. I got out, and nobody else was around. So I started walking.”

“Were you alone?”

“Yes.”

“Why were you in the truck?”

“I don’t know.”

“Who was driving it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you get into it yourself, or did someone put you there?”

“I don’t remember. I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have anything to be sorry about. This isn’t your fault. You said you got out of the truck, and nobody else was around. Where were you? Were there buildings nearby?”

“A house, I think.”

“This house? My house?”

He shook his head. “No. It was somewhere else.”

“Was anyone home? Did you ring the doorbell?”

“No. I was scared. I didn’t know what was going on. My head hurt. I just felt like — I just felt like I had to get away. I had to run. If I didn’t run, something bad was going to happen to me.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Something bad.”

“Okay, so you started walking. Where did you walk? Were you on a road?”

“No. I went through the fields. The rain was pouring down, so it was all muddy. I walked for a long time, and I was really cold. It was dark so I couldn’t see where I was going. Then I saw lights, so I went that way. It was your house. And there you were in the window.”

“That’s all you remember?”

“Yes.”

Lisa sat back, trying to make sense of it, but there was no sense to be made. This boy had sprung from nowhere. He was truly perdu. She saw no deception in his face to suggest that he was lying or hiding the truth. His life had begun on a truck, with no past that he could remember, and he’d wandered through the rain in the middle of the night until he found himself at the home of Lisa Power. Amid the cold remoteness out here, he was lucky to be alive.

“You’ve done really well, Purdue,” she reassured him. “You already remember a lot more than you thought you did. With time, I’m sure more will come back. You’ve got a life. You came from somewhere. We’ll figure it out.”

Purdue surprised her by reaching out and hugging her tightly with his skinny arms around her neck. He was warm from the fire, and he smelled of the lavender aroma of her soap and shampoo. “Thank you, Lisa.”

“You’re welcome, Purdue.”

He sat back, cuddled up in the quilt again. “What happens now?”

“Well, I’ve cleaned up that wound on your head, and it doesn’t look too bad, but I’m worried about the fact that you don’t remember anything. You’re okay on the outside, but I want to make sure there’s nothing wrong on the inside, too. So what I’d like to do is take you to the hospital so they can run some tests and make one hundred percent sure that you’re okay.”

Purdue’s hand shot out and squeezed her wrist. He shook his head frantically. “No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t want to go to the hospital. People die there.”

“Well, sure, but people get better there, too. I was a nurse for years before I started writing books, and I worked with some great people at a hospital about an hour south of here. I’d like to take you there.”

The boy shook his head again, even more firmly than before. “No. No, we can’t. Please don’t take me there. Please. You can take care of me! I’m safe here with you.”

Lisa sighed. She didn’t want to agitate the boy any more than he was. “Tell you what, you’ve had a long day. You must be really tired. Your clothes are probably dry by now, so I’ll go get them, and then you can sleep for a little while and get your strength back. I’ve got a friend who can help us decide what to do next, and we can talk about it in the morning. Okay?”

Relief flooded across his face. “Yes. Thank you!”

“I’ll be right back with your clothes,” she said.

Lisa pushed herself to her feet. She could feel that her face was flushed from the heat in the room. She left the boy by the fire and headed back to the doorway that led to the rest of the house, where the air was cooler. Before she left, however, she thought of another question and turned back.

“Hey, Purdue?”

He looked up at her with big eyes. “Yes?”

“I know you may not remember, but can you think of any reason why the police might be looking for you? I mean, is it possible that someone took you who wasn’t supposed to do that? Like maybe the person who was driving the truck?”

She saw a shadow flicker across his face. “I don’t know.”

“It’s just that the police came to my house earlier,” she said. “I didn’t know why, but now I wonder if it could be because of you.”

“The police were here?”

“Yes. They left, but they’ll be back in the morning. I can talk to them and find out what’s going on.”

Purdue said nothing. The shadow returned to his face, and this time it stayed.

“Anyway, I’ll be right back,” Lisa said.

She gave the boy another smile and then wandered through the house to the wrought iron stairs and climbed to the laundry room adjacent to her bedroom. She opened the dryer door and bundled up the boy’s clothes in her arms. She brought them back to the den, but when she came through the doorway, she saw that the quilt had been left in a crumpled pile on the floor. The fire still crackled, but no one sat in front of it. The boy was gone.

“Purdue?” Lisa called. She dropped the clothes on the rug and crossed the room to the glass door that led to her back porch. It was ajar, with cold wind rushing in. She headed onto the deck under the moonlight and called again. “Purdue, where are you? What’s wrong?”

At first, she heard nothing to tell her where he was. Then, under the murmur of the wind in the fields, her ears honed in on a low, desperate whimper. He was crying. The noise came from behind her. She turned around and squinted into the farthest shadows of the deck, which was crowded by patio furniture and the square body of an outdoor spa. She spotted Purdue huddled next to the wall of her house, his hands wrapped around his knees. He was barely visible, naked and cold in the darkness.

When she got closer to him and reached out her hand, he cringed, as if he was afraid of her now, too.

“Purdue,” she murmured. “What’s wrong? Why did you run?”

Tears dripped from his eyes, and mucus dripped from his nose. “Don’t give me to the police, Lisa. Please.”

“Why not?”

His hair fell across his face, and his low voice gurgled from the back of his throat when he tried to speak. “Kill the boy.”

“What?”

“I heard men talking,” Purdue told her. “They were policemen, and that’s what they said. Kill the boy.”