Baby blue
Was the color of her eyes
Baby blue
Like the color of old skies
Like a breath of spring, she came and went
And I still don't know why
So here's to you and whoever holds
My baby blue tonight
--
from Baby Blue by George Strait

That afternoon, I took Isaac to the orphanage in the small town we had come upon -- Hemmingford. I had taken careful steps to make sure he was clean and presentable; he'd been changed into a new pair of pants and a shirt, his hair brushed and his face wiped off. I thought when I left him there he'd make another scene, but Isaac went along quietly with the social worker. He sent one last miserable glance over his shoulder at me, and I waved tearfully. That was the last time I ever saw my baby.

Right after dropping Isaac off, I limped back to Swedholm and turned myself in. I told them that Isaac had run away, that I couldn't find him. They believed me -- or maybe they didn't. Either way, the people back home didn't want a witch hunt; they just wanted to bury the dead and get on with life. I got 1 year in a minimum security prison, but ended up with only 6 months for my good behavior. By the time I turned 18, I had worked up enough money to buy a one-way bus ticket to Chicago. That's what I did, and that's where I still am today.

I checked up with Hemmingford's orphanage a year later. Isaac had been adopted by a nice couple called the Chroners. His new father was a preacher who lived in the nearby town of Gatlin, and from what the social workers told me, Isaac was only in the orphanage for three days before the Chroners had found him. Almost as if he had got there just in time.

But that was ten years ago. I'm 25 now, a struggling writer living in a dingy apartment in the Windy City. Isaac is 15, and it was just the other day that I was wishing that I knew what he looked like as a teenager. Then this morning I got out of the shower and sat down at the table to read the newspaper. The headline read this: BOY PREACHER LEADS CHILDREN TO MURDER PARENTS IN CORNFIELDS OF NEBRASKA. It went on to say such things as "one of America's most twisted massacres", "Bible Belt has never seen such horrors", "surviving children insist the corn was responsible". But that wasn't what I noticed. What I saw was the picture next to the article, a black-and-white photo of a man in a preacher's uniform, a woman in an apron, and a dark-haired teen in all black. My Isaac.

I went on to read that a traveling couple had come into Gatlin to find it deserted; nothing else past that mattered until I read that the supposed ringleader of the children -- Isaac Chroner -- had been killed in a freak accident that supposedly ended Gatlin's horror. There were no other details. He was dead, and that was all that seemed to matter to the media.

I know that for everyone else who read that paper, he was just another disturbed teen who'd seen too many horror movies. Just another self-righteous preacher. Just another casualty of the news. But not for me. Because it wasn't just a boy whose death I read about this morning, it was Isaac.

My baby.