By Cynthia Pitman

The boy went missing. Only three years old and lost in the Appalachian Mountains. His mother told the rangers she only looked away for a minute, just a minute, to take a photo of the view from the trail in the right light for her painting. When she looked up, he was gone. She called for him. And called. And became more and more frantic. The search teams came out – rangers, police, hikers, strangers, dogs, helicopters –, and they all scoured the hills. She was instructed to stay at the spot where he disappeared. The sounds overwhelmed her: the shouting of his name by the searchers, the flapping of the helicopters, the barking of the dogs. When night set in, spotlights shone down from the helicopters onto the dark, vast forest below. On the third day they found a single red sneaker, unlaced. This find gave them hope, but nothing came of it. By day five the mother could no longer stand it; she picked up her canvas and began to paint. For days more the helicopters swept over endless miles of peaks and valleys. At night, their spotlights beamed down and disappeared into the dark. They searched the mountains until the steep ground finally drove them back. After eight days the search slowly tapered off. By ten days, they were all gone – all except his mother. She pitched a tent and stayed, returning only for fresh canvases.
 

The boy is a legend now. The young hikers coming up the hill don’t know if the story is true or not, but anyone serious about hiking the trail respects the superstitions of the Appalachian Mountains. When they encounter the boy’s mother, she is intent on her painting. Her hair is gray and pulled back behind her ears as her brush sweeps over the canvas. No one speaks. The hikers  just leave her tokens for good luck – food, water, flashlight batteries, blankets – , hoping these gestures will protect them from being swallowed by the hills themselves. She pays them no mind. Then the hikers make their way up the trail, and the old woman continues, painting meticulous landscapes of the scene before her, including every stick, every branch, every fallen leaf, every piece of bark on every tree, only to discard each finished painting and begin again. What no one knows is that she always hopes the next brushstroke will reveal her boy’s face.

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Cynthia Pitman has been published in Vita Brevis anthologies Pain and Renewal, Brought to Sight & Swept Away, Nothing Divine Dies, What is All This Sweet Work?, in journals Amethyst Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Third Wednesday (One Sentence Poem finalist), Saw Palm: Florida Literature and Art (Pushcart Prize fiction nominee), Red Fez (Story of the Week) and others, including three books of poetry: The White Room, Blood Orange, and Breathe.