Lost In a Busy World

“Hey, kid. You lost?” John Worth, one of the Westbrook Shopping Mall’s security guards, noticed the small child standing alone near the Little Critter Pet Store.

The boy took his thumb out of his mouth and in a low voice answered, “No, Mama is lost. Can you find her ‘cause I have to pee…real bad.” He appeared to be no older than three, and he began crying when the front of his pale denim shorts began to darken.

John, spotting the spreading dampness, realized a trip to the men’s room no longer was needed. He bent down on one knee to ask, “Can you tell me your name or your mama’s name?” Seeing the child shake his head, John gave a sigh. Another lost child. Just what I need. Resigned to meeting a frantic mother looking for her child, John took the little boy’s hand and brought him to the Customer Service Office located in the middle section of the mall.

For the next hour, shoppers listened as the PA system repeated the same announcement every five minutes. “Will the mother of a young boy found alone near the Little Critter Pet Store please come to Customer Service located next to the Foot Locker store. The missing child appears to be around three years old, has dark skin and is wearing light-blue denim shorts, a T shirt with a kitten design on it, and white sneakers. Thank you.”

When another hour passed with no frantic or even a calm woman coming to claim the child, the teenage clerk made a call to the local police department. After hanging up the phone and noticing the long line in front of her counter, the busy girl gave an annoyed expression at the child standing quietly behind her. “Go sit over there until the police come for you,” she ordered, pointing to an up-ended empty box.” Seeing him settled in, she immediately forgot him and returned to helping the impatiently waiting customers.

Miles away from the mall, the dispatcher had promised to send an officer when one became available to collect the child. Two more hours pass with no sight of the police arriving at the mall. With winter over, many of the city’s police were attending outdoor classes run by the local fire department. They were learning the latest technique in safely escorting homeowners from any fire, whether minor brush or raging inferno. Because of the two-year drought throughout the state, even the hills surrounding Springfield were brown instead of the usual green. The fire season had begun earlier this year, in the early spring rather than midsummer.

All remaining officers were surrounding a home where an armed man had taken the homeowners hostage. The overworked dispatcher nearing the end of her shift was busy with calls back and forth with those officers and misplaced the message she’d written from the mall clerk. She finally noticed it after learning the armed man eventually committed suicide by cop. Crumpling up the paper and tossing it in the waste bucket, she eased her conscience by thinking, The mother no doubt already has the boy at home and in bed after a good scolding for running away. With that, she gave a quick turnover of the shootout to her replacement and hurried home.

Around nine that evening, the clerk made one last PA announcement. “The stores are now closing. We want to thank you for shopping at Westbrook Shopping Mall and look forward to seeing you again.” With that daily duty out of the way, she spent the next half hour finished the paperwork her job required. With a sigh of relief that her work day was finally over, she turned off the light over her counter and slowly made her long way out to the large parking lot. All around her, customers and staff were getting into their own cars.

Running through her mind as she walked toward her car, all the while trying to avoid cars speeding by her, was, I hope the 7-11 has milk in stock. I forgot Mom asked me to get some earlier today. Only when she was at her small Honda Fit and unlocking the front door did she remember the boy. She hurried back, just in time to see the night shift guard locking the main door.

“Let me in, Doug.” she yelled through the door’s thick glass. “I forgot something.”

“Sorry, Gwen. You’ll have to get it tomorrow.” Smiling apologetically at the girl, Douglas Swenson finished locking the last entrance to the mall. He then turned his back on her and walked away whistling. Behind him, Gwen shrugged and decided the little boy no longer was her responsibility. With a clear conscience, she once again returned to her car in the now empty parking lot.

Inside the mall, the dim emergency lights cast shadows throughout the deserted main area. On both sides of the middle section, all the various stores were dark with locked doors. Douglas walked down on side of the area to verify each shop’s door was secure. Reaching the end of the long middle area, he began walking back along the other side. All was quiet around him except for the muted sound of puppies barking coming from inside the pet shop.

A few stores later, Doug heard another sound he had never heard before in his months of night guard duty. “What the heck?” he said, peering in through the locked glass door. What he saw looking back at him had him swearing as he frantically fumbled on his heavy key ring to find the one for this door. Two brown eyes in the face of a crying child had looked out at him, and Doug realized what Gwen had forgotten.

It took him a couple tries to turn the key and open the door, but eventually Doug managed to do this. “Child, what are you doing here?” he whispered, trying not to scare the boy any more than he was.

For the second time that day, the boy had been deserted by somebody. This was done first by his mother and then by the busy teenage clerk. After all those hours sitting in the dark and scary office, he was hungry, thirsty, and more than a little sleepy. He opened his mouth to answer the guard, but nothing came out.

Seeing he wasn’t going to get an answer, Doug put in a call to the local police department. This time the night dispatcher followed through on a missing child, and within a half hour a black and white pulled up in front of the now unlocked main door. Doug was inside waiting and holding the hand of the scared child.

“I think he was found sometime during the day,” explained the guard to the police officer, once he brought the child outside into the night air. “The girl who left him in her area probably can give you more information tomorrow.” After he helped the silent child into the front passenger seat, he added as the police officer got into the patrol car, “I’ll leave a note for her to call you tomorrow when she comes on duty.” Nodding he understood, the officer started the car and drove away leaving a relieved guard wondering who the boy was and why his family had not come looking for him.

Arriving at the Springfield Police Station a few minutes later, the officer took the silent child inside and explained his history at the mall to the man on desk duty. With that done, he returned outside to resume patrolling the streets of the small city. Quickly forgotten was the child now sitting on a plastic chair on one side of the squad room, out of the way of the busy police officers.

Hours passed as various officers with their suspected criminals came and went through the room. Some officers returned outside while others took their suspects behind the desk clerk’s counter to the holding cells in another room. Police and their prisoners passed back and forth before the child during the remainder of the night shift. Once again he was forgotten and overlooked by busy adults. None of them paid any attention to the small boy huddled on the chair. He was too scared by all the noise and confusion around him to move.

The sun was just coming up over distant foothills when an incoming police woman spotted the child. He was sleeping on the chair, the room slowly filling with officers beginning their day shift. “Whose kid is this?” When nobody answered, the woman leaned down and gently shook him awake. Because the officer on the night desk had already left to go home, nobody was able to identify the boy or even remember who brought him in.

Once again the boy asked, “Is Mama here yet?” Those were the last words anybody heard from him that day or for years after. With no clue as to the boy’s name, the police sent his picture to the local TV station. For days and then weeks, the picture was shown of a small boy with brown skin, short black hair, and sad brown eyes. When nobody came to claim the child, the boy was returned to the town where he was originally found. He lived in various Westbrook foster homes where he was unable or unwilling to speak for the next 10 years.

One early spring morning, his foster mother discovered the boy gone from her crowded home. “No skin off my nose he’s gone,” muttered the woman. She quickly decided to not notify the social worker one of her foster children had disappeared during the night. “Why give up the state’s check just ‘cause the kid is gone.” Months after that went by without the busy social worker coming by to check on the four foster children he’d placed over the last year in this woman’s home. When the overworked man finally arrived, he believed the lie the foster mother told about the fourth child staying overnight at a friend’s home. Once again in his short life, he was overlooked by a busy person.

Unknown by either the woman or the social worker, during that first night he walked the half dozen miles back to the Westbrook Shopping Mall. Seeing the long building dark and deserted, the 13-year-old wandered aimlessly around empty streets, waiting for the mall to open. A garbage worker driving his route through town discovered the boy around 5 a.m. The teenager would not say a word, just sat stiff as a statue on the front seat of the garbage truck until the sun rose an hour later.

When the garbage man left the boy at the town’s orphanage, the manager, Stella Farrell, decided to name the young child Paul. This was a name she had always wanted for her own son. Since she never married nor had a son, she gave her bountiful matronly love to the boy whom no one ever came to claim.

Paul never explained what he was doing out in the dark that night or even where his foster family lived. He also never shared anything about his life before coming to Westbrook, not even his real name. Sadly, it was like Paul was born that night with no past, no family, no one but Stella to care about him. In fact, Paul only spoke to Stella, and then rarely.

The doctor in town who first saw him at the orphanage had diagnosed him with selective mutism. The limited funds of the town had not allowed for any type of therapy for this, and Paul stayed locked in his own silent world. After the building containing the orphanage was deemed too dangerous for children to live in, he once again was shuttled to live temporarily with a family in town.

Paul’s life changed for the better when he and the few other orphans found a new and final home. To honor a young child murdered in the 19th century and then buried on his property, a generous multibillionaire named William Walker had decided to replace the town’s condemned orphanage with a brand new one on his extensive estate. Once built, Paul and the other children who had been farmed out to families in town came to live in what soon was called Hannah’s Home.

Of all the decisions adults made for Paul during his short life, the last one was finally from a caring person. Over the next few years, Paul experienced what life should be like for all children while living at Walker’s orphanage officially named Hannah Edgeworth’s Home For Found Children.

Because of this safe haven, along with the unstinting love of Stella Farrell, the once abandoned child slowly emerged out of his silent shell. Now in his late teen years, Paul’s story as an adult is still unwritten with the hope he will never be too busy to help a child.