What the Boys Found

By Peter Bowden


The bat was no bigger than a plum and clung like a scrap of dusk to the bark of the pecan tree. The boys found it just after breakfast, when the air was already warming and the leaves whispered about summer. One of the boys spotted it first. The younger one, quicker with his hands, brought the jar.

It was one of those old peanut butter jars with a silver lid punched through with a kitchen nail. They worked carefully, gently, talking soft and low, as if their voices might frighten the tiny thing to death. Its wings were folded tight as secrets, and its face looked like a crumpled raisin, eyes barely open, heart ticking fast beneath velvet fur.

Inside the house, they laid a blanket on the living room floor. The TV was off. The ceiling fan spun above them like a slow planet. They placed the jar between them and lay belly-down, elbows pressing into the soft fabric, watching. Waiting. For movement, for a stretch, for some sign of life. The bat did not move. They whispered questions, theories, plans—would it grow big? Could it be trained? Should they give it sugar water? But mostly they waited.

That evening, under the hush of twilight, they took the jar out back and unscrewed the lid. The older boy held it up like an offering. The bat clung to the lip for a moment, then dropped into the dusky air, flitted once, twice, and vanished above the tall grass. They stood a while longer, watching the stars come out, listening for wings that made no sound.


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