When my little brother, Paul was about
six years old, that kid wasn’t afraid of anything!
Not strangers, animals, snakes, the dark, noises, nothing
bothered him. He would even go out in the middle of a
furious thunderstorm to play in the rain. When most
kids his age would have been terrified, he’d be happy
as ever.
 As a result of his fearlessness, he’d come up missing
every now and then and the search would be on.
And that kid could really get lost!
 All the scolding, pleading, begging and warnings
about the dangers of snakes, bears, alligators, and
such fell on deaf ears, as Mom used to say.

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 These weren’t just threats to scare him, they were real
possibilities, for all these things were, and still are a
part of natural wildlife where we lived.
 Sometimes we’d find him curled up behind an old oak
tree, sometimes across the road under an orange
tree, sometimes under an old cardboard box in the middle
of the front or back yard. We even found him under the
house a few times.
 Calling his name, yelling till we’d make our throats
hurt, I don’t remember him ever answering when we
were searching for him. That little kid loved nothing
better than to sneak off and hide somewhere  for a
nice long nap.
 I’m sure you must be thinking about how scared for
him we had to be when this  happened, and you’re
absolutely right. Mom was always worried most, I think,
but everybody knows how mothers are, especially when
it involves their own child being lost.
 One day when we discovered that Paul was missing again,
we searched every where we could think of that he may have
gone to have his nap. We looked in all the usual places where
we’d found him before, but with no luck.
 The search widened from the house to the north, across the
road into the orange grove.