Bentley Little: The Collection

"What do we do now?" Bill asked.

"Search around." Steve started walking, following the wall, keeping his left hand in constant contact with the smooth concrete.

"Are we going to be able to find our way back?" Seun asked.

"Don't worry about it," Steve said.

There was not so much rubble on the floor here, and the ground seemed much softer beneath their feet. It felt like dirt. Steve pointed his flashlight up for a second and he could see no ceiling.

They kept walking.

The four boys wandered past a series of doors. Steve turned in one of them and the rest followed. They were in a much smaller room, and the walls on both sides could be made out with their flashlights. They walked out of the room through another door and found themselves in a cavernous space with an endlessly high ceiling. Their footsteps echoed as they walked.

Steve was no longer following any kind of wall, and he swung his beam back and forth across the ground in front of him to make sure he knew what was up ahead. The light touched upon an ancient rotting box in a slimy pool of water, moved across several chunks of wood and plaster, and stopped on something small and smooth and brown.

A baby.

Steve stood in place, staring at the infant trapped in his beam, and Seun ran into his back. Jimmy and Bill, walking side by side, ran into Seun.

The baby was obviously Mexican and obviously dead. It lay scrunched and unmoving, half in and half out of a pud­dle of stagnant water. A trail of small ants wound around its folds of fat and entered its open, toothless mouth. Steve moved slowly forward and tentatively touched the baby's skin. It was cold and soft and spongy and gave a little at the poke of his finger. Immediately he drew back.

"What is it?" Seun asked. His voice was more hushed than usual, whether from awe or fear Steve could not tell.

"It's a baby."

"How did it get here?"

Steve shook his head. He did not know himself. Had the baby been born in the warehouse and abandoned by its mother to die in the darkness of the deserted building? Had the baby been born dead and left there? Had it been brought by illegal aliens trying to sneak into the country and left be­hind accidentally?

Steve walked carefully around the dead infant. It was small, and there was no hair on its body. It did not look more than a week or so old.

The beam of his flashlight touched the baby's white eyes and was reflected back.

He knelt down silently in front of the infant and stared into its face, gazing raptly at its pure innocent expression. He had never seen anything like it. The infant's dead eyes stared back, seeing nothing, seeing everything, knowing all.

Jimmy knelt down next to Steve and gazed at the Mexi­can baby to see what was so fascinating.

Bill, captured by the look of hope on the infant's face, so incongruous in these terrible circumstances, bent down as · well.

Seun, dropping silently to his knees, completed the semi­circle.

The low benches, stolen from the barbecue sets of moth­ers and fathers, were arranged like pews in front of the altar. Candles of various sizes and colors, also stolen, burned dimly in their makeshift holders. In front of the benches, on the altar itself, the baby sat upright in a Coca-Cola crate, staring out into the darkness. The crate had been spray painted gold.

A single beam from a flashlight perched on top of a card­board box shone into the baby's white eyes and was re­flected back.

There were more than four of them now. Nearly twenty kids, all approximately the same age, sat silently on the benches staring at the dead infant. None of them spoke. None of them ever spoke.

Steve knelt before the baby, lost in thought. He saw an ant crawl slowly up the baby's fat brown arm, and he flicked it off. The ant went flying into the darkness.

There was a rustling sound from the area off to Steve's left, and he turned to see what caused the noise. A new kid— a girl—emerged from the depths of the warehouse. Her nice blue dress was dirty and sweat rolled down her face. It was obvious that she had been stumbling around in the dark for some time, trying to find them.

Steve smiled at her. He said nothing, but she understood.

She knelt down next to him in front of the baby. Her face was filled with rapture.

A few minutes later, the girl withdrew from her small purse a dead lizard. She held it gingerly by the tail and dropped it into the round fishbowl in front of the baby. There was a split-second flash of glowing luminescence, and the lizard dissolved in the bubbling liquid inside the bowl.

Steve patted the girl's head and she smiled, proud of her­self.

They sat in silence, staring at the baby.

One of the candles burned all the way down and after a few last gasps of life, a few final flickers of fire, was extin­guished.

They sat in silence, staring at the baby.

One by one, the candles surrounding the benches and the altar went out. When the last one had finally flickered out of existence, the kids on the benches stood up and walked silently, in single file, into the blackness. The girl, too, stood up, moved away from Steve's side, and started back the way she'd come. Jimmy and Bill and Seun walked up to the altar where Steve still knelt. They bent down for a moment them­selves, then stood up as one.

They covered the baby's crate with a black cloth.

Walking back through the labyrinthian warehouse toward the outside, Steve wondered how he could have ever been afraid of the building. Now it was more friendly than home, and even little Seun traversed the way without a light. The whole tone of the place had changed.

And all because of the baby.

As always, the bright light of the afternoon hurt their eyes as they stepped out of the warehouse. The other kids were gone, already starting home, and there was no sign of them. Steve squinted in the direct sunlight, trying to keep his eyes from watering. "What time is it?" he asked.

Bill smiled. "After lunch and before dinner."

Steve scowled at him. "Anybody have a watch?"

"It's about three," Jimmy said.

They started walking. Bill picked up a stick and threw it into the bushes. Overhead, a plane sailed through the clear blue sky a few seconds ahead of its noise, leaving a trail of jet white in the air behind it.

"He seems so alone," Seun said.

Steve looked at him. "What?"

"He seems so alone. Don't you ever feel that way? I mean, what does He do when we're not there? He's all alone."

Steve stared at Seun. He had been thinking the same thing while he had been kneeling in front of the baby. He picked up a rock and looked at it. The rock resembled a frog. He held it between his thumb and forefinger and threw it. It whizzed through the air and hit a tree. "He is alone," he said.

"He doesn't have to be."

"What can we do about it?" Jimmy asked.

"Follow me." Seun ran down the path through the ravine and up the hill toward his house. He looked back at Steve as he ran. "I been saving this." He led the way through the wall of oleanders into his back yard. He pulled open the secret door to the clubhouse. The clubhouse had sat there virtually unused ever since they'd found the baby. The other three followed him in.

"Look," Seun said.

In the center of the floor, in a gold Coke crate, lay a little baby girl. She was dead. At her feet, Seun had poured out a jarful of black ants he had caught, hoping they would crawl up her body, but instead they had crawled onto the floor and were busily trying to find a way out of the clubhouse.

Steve knelt down in front of the baby. "Who is she?"

"Mindy Martin."

"Mrs. Martin's daughter?"

Seun nodded.

Steve looked up at him. "How did you get her?"

Seun smiled. "That's my business."