The others took it up. Pa looked at Ma in the rearview. When she shrugged and nodded, he pulled FURTHER into the lot and parked beside a dusty Mazda with New Hampshire license plates.
The Pranksters (all wearing Ball of Twine souvenir T-shirts and all smelling of superbud) piled out. Pa and Ma, as the eldest, were the captain and first mate of the good ship FURTHER, and the other five-MaryKat, Jeepster, Eleanor Rigby, Frankie the Wiz, and Twista-were perfectly willing to follow orders, pulling out the barbecue, the cooler of meat, and-of course-the beer. Jeepster and the Wiz were just setting up the grill when they heard the first faint voice.
“Help! Help! Somebody help me!”
“That sounds like a woman,” Eleanor said.
“Help! Somebody please! I’m lost!”
“That’s not a woman,” Twista said. “That’s a little kid.”
“Far out,” MaryKat said. She was cataclysmically stoned, and it was all she could think to say.
Pa looked at Ma. Ma looked at Pa. They were pushing sixty now and had been together a long time-long enough to have couples’ telepathy.
“Kid wandered into the grass,” Ma Cool said.
“Mom heard him yelling and went after him,” Pa Cool said.
“Maybe too short to see their way back to the road,” Ma said. “And now-”
“-they’re both lost,” Pa finished.
“Jeez, that sucks,” Jeepster said. “I got lost once. It was in a mall.”
“Far out,” MaryKat said.
“Help! Anybody!” That was the woman.
“Let’s go get them,” Pa said. “We’ll bring ’em out and feed ’em up.”
“Good idea,” the Wiz said. “Human kindness, man. I’m all about the human fuckin’ kindness.”
Ma Cool hadn’t owned a watch in years, but was good at telling time by the sun. She squinted at it now, measuring the distance between the reddening ball and the field of grass, which seemed to stretch to the horizon. I bet all of Kansas looked that way before the people came and spoiled it all, she thought.
“It is a good idea,” she said. “It’s going on for five thirty, and I bet they’re really hungry. Who’s going to stay and set up the barbecue?”
There were no volunteers. Everyone had the munchies, but none of them wanted to miss the mercy mission. In the end, all of them trooped across Route 400 and entered into the tall grass.