parts moving together and then away to become individuals. Riley rolled away, and Adam held a third something, person? He forced the animal or person—someone small—against the trunk of an apple tree. Reaching up, Adam jerked down one of the streamers from the tree above Riley’s bed. Quickly Riley secured whatever man or beast it was to the trunk. Still the person or baboon kicked his feet, but Adam stood out of reach of his thrashing, and Riley knelt at one side.
When I got closer, my taper illumined dark splotches on Riley’s shirt and dark smears around his mouth. His eyes were wide, terrified and outraged.
“He tried to make me eat something!” Riley exclaimed. “It’s still in his hand.”
Adam continued to kneel beside the boy—for the beast was a boy with a long and shaggy head of hair—who kicked to no avail all the harder. As I approached, and my firebrand brightened the scene, I could see color. Riley’s face was smeared with blood.
Quickly Adam took the light and held it close to the boy’s face. His bowed head was a shock of straight black hair that curtained his features.
“Sit on his legs, Riley,” Adam said, and Riley moved over—careful of his incompletely healed ankle, I noticed. His weight was enough to quiet the struggling legs of the boy, who was small. I thought him about twelve or thirteen. His chest was bare and hairless, but hair straggled from his armpits. Like Adam, he wore no clothing. The boy’s pubis was shockingly dark with hairy growth.
Holding the lighted stick well back, with his other hand, Adam gently gathered the hair from around the boy’s face. Suddenly Adam sprang back.
“I know him.”
I was stunned.
Adam handed the torch to me, and I moved closer as he knelt down beside the boy.
“Hello,” Adam said, carefully and quietly.
The boy glared at him.
“I remember you,” Adam said gently. “You took care of me. When they threw me out of the truck, you fed me.” He stopped and touched Riley’s shoulder. “My friend was trying to take care of you. He was trying to feed you.”
“Not goddamn likely,” Riley said, as I stared at the blood smeared on his face.
“He doesn’t understand us, of course,” Adam said. He held out both his hands in front of the boy. Slowly he opened one of his hands and brought it to his own mouth to mimic eating, then pointed at the boy and then at himself. “You fed me,” he said, pointing again at the boy and then himself, and then making the gesture of eating. “You fed me,” he said again. “Thank you.”
Adam stood up. “Lucy, do we have anything left we could offer him to eat?”
“No,” I answered.
“We have to untie him,” Adam said, “and let him go.”
“What in God’s name was he trying to stuff down my gullet?” Riley asked. He rolled off the boy’s legs.
Slowly the boy flexed his knobby knees. Like a frightened animal, he began to pant. Adam went behind him and untied his hands. The boy jumped up, his chest heaving. With his fists still clenched, he parted his own unruly hair with a finger from each hand and looked first at Riley, defiantly, and then at Adam, sullenly. He only stood as high as their shoulders, about my height. To him, the two men must have looked like giants. One of the boy’s clenched fists was oozing blood.
Adam opened his own hand and pointed to the boy’s hand.
Slowly the boy opened his hand.
“What the devil is that?” Riley said.
At first, I thought the boy held a mouse, skinned, bloody, and raw. When I looked at Adam, I thought he might be about to vomit. He averted his eyes, gagged, then made himself look again.
“It’s the heart of a lamb,” Adam said softly.
The boy started to move away, but he looked back at Adam and moved his head in a gesture that surely meant we, at least Adam, were to follow him. The boy was slight, but his body looked wiry and agile. Though he moved quickly, like a purposeful animal, the boy was not running away. Adam followed closely behind him. I followed slowly, realizing Riley had picked up his crutch and was trying to join us.
The wild boy led us into the garden, past the vegetables and the iris, to the roses, the garden in the heart of the garden. On the ground, a woolly lamb lay on its back. The white woolly arms and legs were stretched out