Red Cap Tombstone

Snow melts when it touches skin but settles on ice-cold dead skin. That's why the boy's body was hard to see. His baseball cap peak, a small red tombstone revealing his burial in the forest.

I found him on a Tuesday. The forecast suggested he would be hidden till at least Thursday. I decided to tell no one. I wanted him to be my secret.

I spent most of Wednesday reading him a book about King Arthur and the Knights of the Roundtable by a British author whose name I can’t remember. He looked about my age. An 11-year-old boy had gone missing from the next town the previous week.

I checked that evening. He was wearing a red cap in the photo on the newspaper's front page. It was him. His name was Jimmy Ford.

On Thursday, I was woken by the thawing drip of icicles from our porch. I dressed quickly and headed out. His duvet of snow had melted to reveal a plaid shirt and white crew neck T-shirt. He looked like he was asleep. But he wasn't getting up.

I had left a note for my Mom telling her what I’d found and where to find us. I laid down next to him in the snow, held his hand and waited for her and the police to arrive. Forty years on, when I close my eyes at night, I still feel the cold of that snow and the even colder sensation of his skin. So cold.