The Returned. Jason Mott

you or may you? Mama taught me that.” He looked up at his mother; her face was caught somewhere between surprise and approval.

      Bellamy grinned. “Indeed,” he said. “Okay, may I ask you a harder question?”

      “I suppose,” Jacob said. Then: “Do you want to hear a joke?” A sudden focus and clarity came to his eyes. “I know a lot of good jokes,” he said.

      Agent Bellamy folded his arms beneath him and sat forward. “Okay, let’s hear it.”

      Again Lucille prayed silently—Please, Lord, not the one about the beaver.

      “What do you call a chicken crossing the road?”

      Lucille held her breath. Any joke involving a chicken had the potential to turn very vulgar very quickly.

      “Poultry in motion!” Jacob answered before Bellamy had much time to consider the question. Then he slapped his thigh and laughed like an old man.

      “That’s funny,” Bellamy said. “Did your father teach you that one?”

      “You said you had a hard question for me,” Jacob said, looking away. He watched the window as if expecting someone.

      “Okay. I know you’ve been asked this before. I know that you’ve probably been asked this more times than you care to answer. I’ve even asked you myself, but I have to ask again. What’s the first thing you remember?”

      Jacob was silent.

      “Do you remember being in China?”

      Jacob nodded and, somehow, his mother did not reprimand him. She was as interested as everyone else in the memories of the Returned. Out of habit, her hand moved to gently nudge him into talking, but she checked herself. Her hand returned to her lap.

      “I remember waking up,” he began. “By the water. By the river. I knew I’d get in trouble.”

      “Why would you get in trouble?”

      “Because I knew Mama and Daddy didn’t know where I was. When I couldn’t find them, I got scared some more. Not scared of getting in trouble anymore, but just scared because they weren’t there. I thought Daddy was somewhere around. But he wasn’t.”

      “What happened then?”

      “Some people came. Some Chinese people. They spoke Chinese.”

      “And then?”

      “And then these two women came over talking funny, but talking nice. I didn’t know what they were saying, but I could tell they were nice.”

      “Yes,” Bellamy said. “I know exactly what you mean. It’s like when I hear a doctor or nurse telling me something in all that hospital talk. I don’t understand a thing they’re saying most of the time but, from the way they’re saying it, I can tell they mean it in a nice way. You know, Jacob, it’s amazing how much you can tell about a person just by how they say things. Wouldn’t you agree?”

      “Yes, sir.”

      They then talked more about what had happened after Jacob was found by the river in that small fishing village just outside Beijing. The boy was delighted to tell it all. He saw himself as an adventurer, a hero on a heroic journey. Yes, it had been painfully terrifying for him, but only in the beginning. After that, it had actually become rather fun. He was in a strange land with strange people and they fed him strange food, which, thankfully, he quickly acclimated to. Even now, as he sat in the office with the man from the Bureau and his lovely mother, his belly rumbled for authentic Chinese food. He had no idea of the names of anything he had been fed. But he knew the scents, the tastes, the essences of them.

      Jacob talked at great length about the food in China, about how kind they had been to him. Even when the government men came—and the soldiers with them—they still treated him kindly, as if he were one of their own. They fed him until his stomach simply could not hold any more, all the while watching him with a sense of wonder and mystery.

      Then came the long plane ride, which he held no fear of. He’d grown up always wanting to fly somewhere; now he was given almost eighteen hours of it. The flight attendants were nice, but not as nice as Agent Bellamy when they met.

      “They smiled a lot,” Jacob said, thinking of the flight attendants.

      All these things he told his mother and the man from the Bureau. He did not tell them in such an eloquent form, but he said them all by saying, simply, “I liked everyone. And they liked me.”

      “Sounds like you had yourself quite a good time in China, Jacob.”

      “Yes, sir. It was fun.”

      “That’s good. That’s very good.” Agent Bellamy had stopped taking notes. His grocery list was complete. “Are you about tired of these questions, Jacob?”

      “No, sir. It’s okay.”

      “I’m going to ask you one last question, then. And I need you to really think about it for me, okay?”

      Jacob finished his lollipop. He sat up straight, his small, pale face becoming very serious. He looked like a little, well-dressed politician—in his dark pants and white, collared shirt.

      “You’re a good boy, Jacob. I know you’ll do your best.”

      “Yes, you are,” Lucille added, stroking the boy’s head.

      “Do you remember anything before China?”

      Silence.

      Lucille wrapped her arm around Jacob and pulled him close and squeezed him. “Mr. Martin Bellamy isn’t trying to make anything difficult and you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to. He’s just curious, is all. And so is your old mama. But I’m less curious and more just plain ol’ nosy, I suppose.”

      She smiled and poked a tickling finger into his armpit.

      Jacob giggled.

      Lucille and Agent Bellamy waited.

      Lucille rubbed Jacob’s back, as if her hand against his body might conjure whatever spirits of memory were contained within him. She wished Harold were there. Somehow, she thought this moment could be helped if Jacob had his father rubbing his back and showing his support, as well. But Harold had launched into one of his rants about “the damn fool government” and was being generally disagreeable today—he behaved the way he did when Lucille tried to drag him to church during the holidays—and it was decided he should just stay in the truck while Lucille and Jacob spoke with the man from the Bureau.

      Agent Bellamy placed his notepad on the table beside his stool to show the boy that this wasn’t simply about the government’s need to know. He wanted to show that he was genuinely interested in what the boy had experienced. He liked Jacob, from the first time they’d met, and he felt that Jacob liked him, too.

      After the silence had gone on so long as to become uncomfortable, Agent Bellamy spoke. “That’s okay, Jacob. You don’t have to—”

      “I do as I’m told,” Jacob said. “I try to do as I’m told.”

      “I’m sure you do,” Agent Bellamy said.

      “I wasn’t trying to get into trouble. That day at the river.”

      “In China? Where they found you?”

      “No,” Jacob said after a pause. He pulled his legs into his chest.

      “What do you remember about that day?”

      “I wasn’t trying to misbehave.”

      “I know you weren’t.”

      “I really wasn’t,” Jacob said.

      Lucille was weeping now, silently. Her body trembled, expanding and contracting like a willow in March wind. She fumbled in her pocket and found tissues with which she dabbed her eyes. “Go on,” she