Look at your skin where it hurts
By Travis Duprey
First Place Short Story, December 2011

Age Five.

There was a creek back there. Behind a few other trailer homes and down a trail, around trees still young enough to let light through, before the path dipped abruptly into the creek’s companion basin. It was darker there. Wetter. Deeper sounds of rushing water strong with melted snow.

But the boy wasn’t outside. He’d chased his airplane into the corner by the bay window and behind the couch when—as often happens with airplanes thrown by children—it veered violently left. He didn’t decide to hide. He found himself sitting and decided to stay.

Mom grew more worried as the sun set. She’s seen him after noon playing with sticks by the shed, but she lost track of time with laundry and the million other things she had to do. She called out: first outside, then inside, then outside again. He heard, but after awhile a name is just a sound in air. 
 
He heard food falling into a hot pan and sneakers on linoleum and the snare drum slap of their loose screen door—then voices outside:  Mom’s and the neighbor’s mom’s. Working each other up to higher and higher pitches.

After the neighbor, Mom marched right back inside in tears and called the police. Because she didn’t trifle with her son’s safety. And because she knew he could drown in that creek.

He knew that if you followed the water’s curve to the north there was a fallen tree bridge, and one could—with wits and courage—cross over to the more exotic and less explored.