The Boy Who Wanders The Fields

The Boy Who Wanders the Fields

There is a boy who wanders in the fields of crops on the outskirts of farmland surrounding the town. Sometimes he is seen in the mornings, during the week, when other children would be in school. On Saturdays, he may be seen wandering from field to field as long as the sun is shining. Usually he can be reliably spotted sprinting from the walnut grove on the hill, down to the sunken wood on the edge of the cow pasture. There is a large sinkhole there, with an ancient fence surrounding it, put up ages ago to protect cattle from stupidly falling in. The dilapidated boards do little to prevent young boys from adventuring there.

No one knows whose child he is, but he looks about ten or eleven years old, healthy, but poorly dressed, with a veritable mop of unkempt tawny hair on his head. Sometimes, he is seen in the distance, seemingly in conversation with a small animal, which may be a feral cat. The cat is always seated upon a large rock, once a boundary marker, but long since fallen into disuse and ignored. The boy and the cat look into each other's faces, and gesture to one another, sometimes for hours. It is a peculiar animal, black furred with narrow orange stripes, long, oversized ears which have a bluish lump of wrinkled flesh on the base between them, just above the large yellow eyes, and a very peculiar growth near the end of the whiplike tail, as though the tail were forked upward at an angle. Some folks have glimpsed the cat hunting rabbits in their gardens, and know it on sight, as it makes them feel uneasy with it's strangeness.

The boy is also cause for concern among the farmers. They are all certain that he is up to no good, although none of them can name a spot of trouble the boy has actually caused. They fear him because he is something unknown to them, and they are stupid people who hate what they do not know. Sometimes when they catch sight of the boy in the fields, they will go out with dogs and guns to catch him, but he always manages to disappear before they can reach him. Once, a chicken farmer shot at the boy, and the next day all of his chickens lay slain and gutted in his yard. The strange cat greeted the farmer with a yowl from the top of a chicken coop, causing him to soil his overalls. He never lifted a gun toward the boy again.

Children have been born and raised to adulthood, having known the sight of the boy who wanders the fields. Those grown children have had children of their own, who have also seen the boy. He lives forever in those fields, with the cat, visiting the sinkhole, from generation to generation, never changing, but always making the locals nervous when he is seen in their fields. But then, perhaps the fields truly belong to the boy, as they are his home. Perhaps that possibility is what truly makes the folks so nervous.