There is a little town in Kansas. It is very small, with only one narrow main street and old, dusty farm roads.
The people in this little town are farmers, and not much else. There are two churches in the town, and on Sunday, nary a soul is found at home (except for the old and invalid, who can't get to church regular-like).
Outside of town is an old abandoned farm, and past the old barn with the rotted boards and the smell of decomposing hay is a fallow field
. In the field is a great hole in the ground, thousands of feet deep, thousands of feet wide. It is a scary place, and none of the townpeople or farmers go near this old place.When I went to Kansas to visit the people of this town, I asked Job (the barber) why no one went near the hole. He looked at me funny-like.
"Why would some fool body go near the hole in that ole' fallow field?" he asked.
I said someone might want to take a picture of the hole, and send it into a magazine, and get some money.
"Well, that's jus' foolish talk," Job said. He went back to clipping Mr. Harper's hair. Mr. Harper is the banker of this little town in Kansas.
Mr. Harper cocked his head and adjusted the paper napkin clipped to his collar.
"You, young lady," he said to me, "need to go for a walk about this little town."
So, I went for a walk along the little road. It was very empty and sad and forlorn. The people who lived in town were all far older than me, by about twenty years or so. There were no children. There were hardly any men in the town at all, save for the old and invalid. I walked outside of town and down a dusty road. I saw the farmhomes, most of them in need of paint and love. I saw the thin looking horses and the old plows stuck in the fields, because there were not enough hands to work the wheat. I saw the silos, standing alone in the fields like sad missles. I saw the empty sky blow hollow clouds across the land. I felt very sad for this little town in the middle of Kansas.
I kept walking, and by and by, I found the old farm, and the deserted farmhouse, and the fallow field. So I walked nearer the fallow field and stared into the great hole in the ground. I looked at its great big depth and black, black soil, and how it seemed nearly bottomless. Nearly. And I saw, way on the opposite side of the hole, a little figure.
I began to walk around the great hole in the ground. It took a long time, because that hole was so big. But that figure never moved.
Finally, I got to the figure. It was a little woman, older than me by about twenty years. She was sitting in a camping chair. She wasn't doing a thing but sitting by that great big hole in the ground, in the middle of a fallow field, in the middle of Kansas.
I sat down next to her. She didn't speak, and neither did I. We both stared at the hole in the ground.
"They aren't coming back," the lady said after awhile.
"Who isn't coming back?" I asked.
"The children," she said, and she sat some more.
I crossed my legs and looked at the bleak sky and the bleak hole and thought about the little town with the tiny schoolhouse and the sad looking old people.
"Why, " I asked after a while, "aren't the children coming back?"
The woman started to cry a little, in a way that showed she'd cried a lot about the children.
"Well, we was all told two, three years ago a big monster lived in the hole in the ground," she said. "And all the politicians came to our town and had a big meeting and gave out funnel cake, and they told the younguns', like my children, they all needed to go down the hole and find the monster and kill it. And if they did this, the politicians and all the high and mighty folks would congratulate the children, and give them medals and certificates and better jobs. So, the children started to leave. One by one, they went down the hole."
The little lady adjusted herself in the chair.
"And the preachers said it was the right thing to do, because it was Satan's monster, and we had to protect our town and our old folks and our ways 'round here. So, the children kept going. Husbands went, then wives, then teens. The school just about is closed, now, because there ain't no teenagers left, and no teachers to teach 'em, seeing how they all went down into the hole in the ground."I leaned toward the little woman in the chair and saw the wrinkles in her face, like little iron lines in linen. The little woman kept talking.
"Both of my boys went down the hole. My daughter did, too, and that was last year."
"No one came back?" I asked.
"Nope, " the woman said, "not a one. Now, the politicians come to town time to time, and the preachers stand up with them, and they all tell us that the children will come back, but they are still fighting that monster in the hole in this here ground. And they tell us the children will come back sometime, but no one knows when. The children have to stay there until the monster is killed."
"What did the monster do?" I asked. The little lady just looked at me and said,
"I've been trying to figure that out a peice, while I've been sitting here. And so far, I can't quite remember what he done. But it was bad, according to the preachers and the politicians. And like I says, the politicians say the monster would make our life real bad, and we had to protect our little town and our ways, and that's why the children had to go."
We sat a little while longer. When the sun hit the back of the old abandoned barn and glowed like a warhead exploded about us, the old lady turned into a silouhette, and she took my hand. The night got cooler and that hole seemed to get blacker. The sky turned into pinpoints of light, where the stars shined. And we waited some more.
"The funny thing is," the lady said, "is that ever since those children went into the hole, everything has changed. Now, I knew that monster wasn't up to much good, but he ain't never bothered us. In fact, mos' of the town reckons they ain't never seen the monster. But now the children are gone, and our whole town has changed. Changed for the worse. And we can't seem to get our children back. Ever."
Soon enough, I had to leave the hole in the ground so I could go back to the hotel and pack my bags and go on to Nebraska, where I went to school for awhile. But I tell you what, while I wandered the untended farms of that little town, and looked at the faces of the old and invalid, I thought about those children. They still haven't come back. In fact, the politicians don't talk much about the monster anymore, hoping that everyone in the little town will forget about the missing children.
But people don't forget about missing children. Not ever.
