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《The stolen Child》
C H A P T E R 1
Dont call me a fairy. We dont like to be called fairies anymore. Once upon a time, fairy erfectly acceptable catchall for a variety of creatures, but now it has taken on too many associatioymologically speaking, a fairy is something quite particular, related in kind to the na-iads, or water nymphs, and while of the genus, we are sui generis. The word fairy is drawn from fay (Old French fee), which itself es from the Latin Fata, the goddess of fate. The fay lived in groups called the faerie, between the heavenly ahly realms.
There exist in this world a range of sublunary spirits that carminibus coelo possunt deducere lunam, and they have been divided sint times into six kinds: fiery, aerial, terrestrial, watery, subterranean, and the whole class of fair-ies and nymphs. Of the sprites of fire, water, and air, I know o nothing. But the terrestrial and underground devils I know all too well, and of these, there is infinite variety and attendant myth about their behavior, , and culture. Known around the world by many different names—Lares, genii, fauns, satyrs, foliots, Robin Goodfellows, pucks, lepres, pukas, sidhe, trolls—the few that remain live hidden in the woods and are rarely seen or entered by human beings. If you must give me a name, call me hobgob-lin.
Or better yet, I am a geling—a word that describes within its own name what we are bound and inteo do. We kidnap a human child and replace him or her with one of our own. The hobgoblin bees the child, and the child bees a hobgoblin. Not any birl will do, but only those rare souls baffled by their young lives or attuo the weeping troubles of this world. The gelings select carefully, for such opportunities might e along only once a decade or so. A child who bees part of our soci-ety might have to wait a tury before his turn in the cycle arrives, when he bee a geling aer the human world.
Preparation is tedious, involving close surveillance of the child, and of his friends and family. This must be done unobserved, of course, and its best to select the child before he begins school, because it bees more pli-cated by then, having to memorize and process a great deal of information beyond the intimate family, and being able to mimic his personality and his-tory as clearly as mirr his physique aures. Infants are the easiest, but g for them is a problem for the gelings. Age six or seven is best. Anyone much older is bound to have a more highly developed sense of self. No matter how old or young, the object is to deceive the parents into think-ing that this geling is actually their child. More easily dohan most people imagine.
No, the difficulty lies not in assuming a childs history but in the painful physical act of the ge itself. First, start with the bones and skin, stret藏书网
ing." She beed her friends closer with a wave of her hand. They set three bowls before me: a salad made from dandelion leaves, watercress, and wild mushrooms; a hill of blackberries plucked from the thorns before dawn; and a colle of assorted roasted beetles. I refused the last but washed down the fruit aables with clear, cold water from a hollowed gourd. In small clusters, they watched ily, whispering to one another and looking at my face from time to time, smiling when they caught my eye.
Three of the faeries approached to take away my empty dishes; another brought me a pair of trousers. She giggled as I struggled beh the reed bla, and then she burst out laughing as I tried to button my fly without revealing my nakedness. I was in no position to shake the proffered hand when the leader introduced himself and his ies.
"I am Igel," he said, and swept back his blonde hair with his fingers. "This is Béka."
Béka was a frog-faced boy a head taller thahers.
"And this is Onions." Dressed in a boys striped shirt and short pants held up by suspenders, she stepped to the front. Shielding her eyes from the sun with one hand, she squinted and smiled at me, and I blushed to the breast-bone. Her fiips were green from digging up the wild onions she loved to eat. When I finished dressing, I pulled myself up o elbows to get a bet-ter look at the rest of them.
"Im Henry Day," I croaked, my voice raw with suffering.
"Hello, Aniday." Onions smiled, and everyone laughed at the appella-tion. The faery children began to t "Aniday, Aniday," and a cry sounded in my heart. From that time forward I was called Aniday, and in time I fot my given name, although on occasion it would e back part of the way as Andy Day or Anyway. Thus christened, my old identity began to fade, much as a baby will not remember all that happened before it is born. To lose ones name is the beginning of fetting.
As the cheering faded, Igel introduced each faery, but the jumble of names ged against my ears. They walked away in twos and threes, disap-peared into hidden holes that rihe clearing, then reemerged with ropes and rucksacks. For a moment, I wondered whether they plao tie me up to be baptized yet again, but most of them took st notiy panic. They milled about, anxious to begin, and Igel strode over to my bedside. "Were going on a sger hunt, Aniday. But you o stay here a. Youve been through quite an ordeal."
When I tried to stand up, I met the resistance of his hand upon my chest. He may have looked like a six-year-old, but he had the strength of a grown man.
"Where is my mother?" I asked.
"Béka and Onions will stay with you. Get some rest." He barked once, and in a flash, the pack gathered by his side. Without a sound, and before I could raise a word of protest, they disappeared, fading into the forest like ghostly wolves. Lagging behind, Speck turned her head and called out to me, "Youre one of us now." Then she loped off to joihers.
I lay back down and fought tears by staring into the sky. Clouds passed beh the summer sun, rolling their shadows through the trees and across the faery camp. In the past, I had ventured into these woods alone or with my father, but I had never wandered so deeply into such a quiet, lonesome place. The familiar chestnut, oak, and elm grew taller here, and the forest rimming the clearing appeared thid imperable. Here and there sat well-worn stumps and logs and the remnants of a campfire. A skink suself on the rock that Igel had sat upon. Nearby, a box turtle shuffled through the fallen leaves and hissed into its shell when I sat up to take a closer look.
Standing proved to be a mistake a me woozy and disoriented. I wao be home in bed, he fort of my mother, listening to her sing to my baby sisters,bbr>９9ｌiｂ? but instead I felt the cold, cold gaze of Béka. Beside him, Onions hummed to herself, i os-cradle in her busy fingers. She hypnotized me with her designs. Exhausted, I laid my body down, shiver-ie the heat and humidity. The afternoon drifted by heavily, indug sleep. My two panions watched me watg them, but they said nothing. In and out of sciousness, I could not move my tired bohinking ba the events that had led me to this grove and w about the troubles that would face me when I returned home. In the middle of my drowse, I opened my eyes, sensing an unfamiliar stirring. Nearby, Béka and Onions wrestled beh a bla. He was on top of her back, pushing and grunting, and she lay oomach, her face turoward mine. Her green mouth gaped, and when she saw me spying, she flashed me a toothy grin. I closed my eyes and turned away. Fasation and disgust clawed at one another in my fused mind. No sleep returned until the two fell quiet, she humming to herself while the little frog snored tentedly. My stomach seized up like a ched fist, and nausea rolled into me like a fever. Frightened, and lonesome for home, I wao run away and be gone from this strange place.
C H A P T E R 3
I taught myself how to read and write again during those last two weeks of summer with my new mother, Ruth Day. She was determio keep me inside or within earshot or in her line of vision, and I happily obliged her. Reading, of course, is merely associating symbols with sounds, memorizing the binations, rules and effects, and, most important, the spaces between words. Writing proved more difficult, primarily because one had to have something to say before fronting the blank page. The actual drawing of the alphabet turned out to be a tiresome chore. Most afternoons, I practiced with chalk and an eraser on a slate, filling it over and over with my new name. My mrew ed about my pulsive behavior, so I finally quit, but not before printing, as ly as possible, "I love my mother." She was tickled to find that later, and the gesture earned me aire peach pie, not a slice for the others, not even my father.
The y of going to sed grade quickly eroded to a dull ache. The schoolwork came easily to me, although I entered somewhat behind my class-mates in uanding that other method of symbolic logic: arithmetic. I still tussle with my numbers, not so much the basic operations—addition, subtraultiplication—as the more abstract figurations. Elementary sd history revealed a way of thinking about the world that differed from my experience among the gelings. For example, I had no idea that Gee Washington is, metaphorically speaking, the father of our try, nor did I realize that a food is the arra anisms of an ecological unity acc to the order of predation in which each uses the , usu-ally lower, members as a food source. Such explanations of the natural order felt most unnatural at first. Matters in the forest were far more existential. Liv-ing depended on sharpening instincts, not memorizing facts. Ever sihe last wolves had been killed or driven off by bounty hunters, no enemy but man remained. If we stayed hidden, we would tio endure.
Our struggle was to find the right child with whom to trade places. It couldnt be a random sele. A geling must decide on a child the same age as he was when he had been kidnapped. I was sevehey took me, and seven when I left, though I had been in the woods for nearly a tury. The ordeal of that world is not only survival in the wild, but the long, unbear-able wait to e bato this world.
When I first returhat learned patience became a virtue. My sates watched time crawl every afternoon, waiting ay for the three oclock bell. We sed graders sat in the same stultifying room from September to mid-June, and barring weekends and the glorious freedom of holidays, we were expected to arrive by eight oclod behave ourselves for the seven hours. If the weather cooperated, we were let out into the playground twice a day for a short recess and at lunchtime. Irospect, the actual moments spent together pale to our time apart, but some things are best measured by quality rather than quantity. My classmates made each day a torture. I ex-pected civilization, but they were worse than the gelings. The boys in their grubby navy bow ties and blue uniforms were indistinguishably horrid—nose-pickers, thumbsuckers, snorers, neer-do-wells, farters, burpers, the unwashed and un. A bully by the name of Hayes liked to torture the rest, stealing lunches, pushing in line, pissing on shoes, fighting on the play-ground. Oher joined his sycophants, egging him on, or would be slated as a potential prey. A few of the boys became perpetually oppressed. They reacted badly, either by withdrawing deep ihemselves or, worse, g and screaming at every slight provocation. At an early age, they were marked for life, ending up, doubtlessly, as clerks or store managers, systems analysts or sultants. They came back from recess bearing the signs of their abuse— black eyes and bloody he red welt of tears—but I ed to e to their rescue, although perhaps I should have. If I had ever used my real strength, I could easily have dispatched the bullies with a single, well-placed blow.
The girls, in their own way, suffered worse indighey, too, dis-played many of the same disappointing personal habits and lack of general hygiehey laughed too loudly or not at all. They peted viciously among themselves and with their opposites, or they faded into the woodwork like mice. The worst of them, by the name of Hines, routiore apart the shyest girls with her taunts and shunning. She would humiliate her victims without mercy if, for instahey wet their pants in class, as happened right before recess on the first day to the unprepared Tess Wodehouse. She flushed as if on fire, and for the very first time, I felt something close to sympathy for anothers misfortuhe poor thing was teased about the episode until Val-entines Day. In their plaid jumpers and white blouses, the girls relied upon words rather than their bodies to win their battles. In that sehey paled o the female hobgoblins, who were both as ing as crows and as fierce as bobcats.
These human children were altogether inferior. Sometimes at night, I wished I could be back prowling the forest, spooking sleeping birds from their roosts, stealing clothes from clotheslines, and making merry, rather than en-during page after page of homework and fretting about my peers. But for all its faults, the real world shone, and I set my mind tetting the past and being a real boy again. Intolerable as school was, my home life more than pensated. Mom would be waiting for me every afternoon, pretending to be dusting or cooking when I strode triumphantly through the front door.
"Theres my boy," she would say, and whisk me to the kit for a snack of jam and bread and a cup of Ovaltine. "How was your day today, Henry?"
I would make up one or two pleasant lies for her be.
"Did you learn anything new?"
I would recite all that had been rehearsed on the way home. She seemed inordinately curious and pleased, but would leave me at last to the dreadful homework, which I usually mao finish right before suppertime. In the few moments before my father came home from work, she would fix our meal, my pany at tableside. In the background, the radio played her favorite ballads, and I learhem all upon first hearing and could sing along when the records were invariably repeated. By act norance, I mimicked the balladeers voices perfectly and could sing tone for tone, measure for measure, phrase for phrase, exactly like Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra, Rosemary ey or Jo Stafford. Mom took my musical ability as a natural extension of my general wonderfulness, charm, and native intellect. She loved to hear me, often switg off the radio to beg me to sing it one more time.
"Be a dear boy and give us Theres a Train Out for Dreamland again."
When my father first heard my act, he didnt respond as kindly. "Where did you pick that up? One day you t carry a tune, now you sing like a lark."
"I dunno. Maybe I wasnt listening before."
"Youre kidding me? She has that racket on day and night with your Nat Cole King and all that jazz, and you take me dan sometime? As if a mother of twins .. .What do you mean, you werent listening?"
"trating, I mean."
"You should be trating on your homework and helping your mother with the chores."
"If you pay attention and listen instead of merely hearing the song, you pick up the tune in no time."
He shook his head and lit another Camel. "Mind your elders, if you please, Caruso."
I took care not to be such a perfect mimic around my dad.
Mary and Elizabeth, oher hand, were too young to know aer, and they accepted without question my budding talent for imperson-ation. Ihey begged for songs all the time, especially in their cribs, where Id trot out all the y tunes like "Mairzy Doats" or "Three Little Fishies." Without fail, however, th99lｉｂ?ey fell asleep as if knocked unscious every time I sang "Over the Rainbow." I did a mean Judy Garland.
My days with the Days quickly fell into a fortable routine, and as long as I stayed ihe house or ihe classroom, all went well. The weather suddenly grew cooler, and almost at ohe leaves turned garish shades of yellow and red, so bold that the mere sight of trees hurt my eyes. I hated those bright reminders of life in the forest. October proved a riot to the senses and climaxed those giddy last weeks before Halloween. I khat parties were involved, begging for nuts and dies, bonfires in the square, and playing tricks oownsfolk. Believe me, we hobgoblins did our share of mischief—unhinging gates, smashing pumpkins, soaping the library windows with cartoon demons. What I had not experienced was the folderol among the children and the way that even the schools had gotten into the act. Two weeks before the big day, the nuns began planning a classroom party with eai and refreshments. They hung e and black crepe paper along the tops of the chalkboards, pasted paper pumpkins and black cats on the walls. We dutifully cut out scary things from stru paper and glued together our own artistic efforts, pitiable though they were. Mothers were enlisted to bake cookies and brownies, make pop balls and dy apples. es were allowed—indeed, expected. I remember exactly my versa-tion oter with my mother.
"Were having a party for Halloween at school, and teacher says we e dressed in our trick-or-treat outfits instead of our uniforms. I want to be a hobgoblin."
"What was that?"
"You know, a hobgoblin."
"Im not sure what that is. Is it anything like a monster?"
"No."
&quhost? houl?"
"Not those."
"Perhaps a little vampire?"
"Im no bloodsucker, Mother."
"Perhaps its a fairy?"
I howled. For the first time in nearly two months, I lost my temper and screamed in my natural wild voice. The sound startled her.
"For the love of God, Henry. You scared the wits out of me, raising the dead and howling like a baherell be no Halloweenin for you."
Banshee keen, I wao tell her, they wail and weep, but they never howl. Instead, I turned oears, bawling like the twins. She drew me to her and hugged me against her stomach.
"There now, I was only kidding." She lifted my and gazed into my eyes. "I just dont know what a hobgoblin is. Listen, how about going as a pirate, youd like that now, wouldnt you?"
And thats how I ended up dressed in pantaloons and a shirt with puffed sleeves, a scarf tied around my skull, and wearing an earring like Errol Flynn. On Halloween day, I stood before a class of ghosts, witches, and hoboes, the only pirate in the school, probably the whole ty. Teacher had tapped me to sing "The Teddy Bears Piic" as part of the scary eai for our party. My normal speaking voice was a squeak like Henry Days, but when I sang "If you go out in the woods tonight," I sounded exactly like the sonorous bass of Frank DeVol on the record. The imitation shocked nearly everybody. In a back er, Caroline Hines sobbed ihrough the whole song. Most of the slack-jawed kids gaped through their masks and makeup, not quite knowing what to believe. I remember that Tess Wodehouse sat and stared without blinking, as if she realized a fual deception but could not uhe trick. But the nuns knew better. At the end of the song, they whispered together in a spiracy of penguins, then nodded in unison as they crossed themselves.
The actual trick-or-treati much to be desired. My father drove me into town at dusk and waited for me as I walked the row of houses along Main Street, spying here and there another child in pathetie. No hobgoblin appeared, although a black cat did try to y path. I hissed at the creature in perfect cat, and it turail, running away in panic to hide beh a hon-eysuckle bush. An evil grin crossed my face. It was good to know I had not yet lost all my tricks.
C H A P T E R 4
In the gloaming, the crows flew in to gather for the night in a stand of bare oaks. Bird by bird, they soared to the rookery, black shadows against the fading light. My kidnapping, still fresh in my mind, left me timid and battered, not trusting a soul ..in the woods. I missed my family, yet days and weeks passed, marked by the routine appearance of the birds. Their arrival aure provided reas-suring tinuity. By the time the trees lost their leaves and their naked limbs stretched to the sky, the crows no longer frightened me. I came to look for-ward to their graceful arrival, silhouetted against the wintry sky, a natural part of my new life.
The faeries weled me as their own and taught me the ways of the woods, and I grew fond of them all. In addition to Speck, Igel, Béka and On-ions, there were seven others. The three girls were inseparable—Kivi and Blomma, blonde and freckled, quiet and assured, and their tagalong, Chavisory, a chatterbox who looked no more than five years old. When she grinned, her baby teeth shone like a string of pearls, and when she laughed, her thin shoulders shook and twitched. If she found something truly funny or exg, she took off like a skittering bat, dang in circles and figure eights across the clearing.
Apart from the leader Igel and the loner Béka, the boys formed two pairs. Ragno and Zanzara, as I remember them, reminded me of the two sons of the Italian grocers in town. Thin and olive-skinned boys, each had a thatch of dark curls on his head and was quick to anger and quicker tive. The other set, Smaolad Luchóg, behaved as brothers, though they could not be more dissimilar. T over everyo Béka, Smaolach trated oask at hand, as oblivious and ear as a robin tugging up ah-worm. His good friend Luchóg, smallest of us all, was forever pushing ba untamable lock of night-black hair that curled across his forehead like the tail of a mouse. His eyes, blue as the summer sky, gave away his fierce devotion to his friends, even wheried to feign nonchalance.
Igel, the eldest and leader of the band, took pains to explain the ways of the forest. He showed me how to gig fs and fish, how to find water collected ht in the hollow of fallen leaves, to distinguish edible mush-rooms from deadly toadstools, and dozens of other survival tricks. But even the best guide is no match for experience, and for most of my early time, I was coddled. They kept me under stant watch by at least two others, and I was forced to stay around camp, with dire warnings to hide away at any hint of other people.
"If they catch you, they will think you a devil," Igel told me. "And lock you away, or worse, they will test to see if they are right by throwing you in a fire."
"And you will burn up like kindling>?," said Ragno.
"Ahing more than a puff of smoke," said Zanzara, and Chavisory demonstrated by dang around the campfire, cirg away to the edge of darkness.
When the first hard frost hit, a small party was sent away for an ht excursion, and they came back with armloads of sweaters, jackets, and shoes. Those of us who had stayed behind were shiverih deerskins.
"Since you are the you," Igel told me, "you have first choice of the clothes and boots."
Smaolach, who stood over the pile of shoes, beed me. I noticed that his ow were bare. I poked through the assortment of childrens saddle shoes, square-toed brogues, vas tennis shoes, and the odd unmated boot, choosing at last a pair of brand new blad-white wingtips that seemed to be my size.
"Thosell cut your ankles off."
"How about these?" I asked, holding up the tennis shoes. "I might be able to squeeze into these." My feet felt damp and chilled on the cold ground.
Smaolach rooted around and picked out the ugliest brown shoes I had ever seen. The leather creaked when he flexed the soles, and the laces looked like coiled snakes. Each toe was tipped with a small steel plate. "Trust me, these will keep you warm and toasty all winter long, and a long time in the wearing."
"But theyre too small."
"Dont you know youve been shrinking yourself?" With a sly grin, he reached into his trousers pocket and pulled out a pair of thick woolen socks. "And I found these especially for you."
The whole croed in appreciation. They gave me a cableknit sweater and an oilskin jacket, which kept me dry otest days.
As the nights lengthened and grew colder, we exged rass mats and solitary beds for a heap of animal skins and stolen blas. The twelve of us slept together in a tangled clump. I rather ehe fort of the situ-ation, although most of my friends had foul breath or fetid odors about them. Part of the reason must be the ge i, from the bounty of summer to the decay of late fall and the deprivation of winter. Several of the poor crea-tures had been in the woods for so long that they had given up all hope of human society. Indeed, a handful had no such desire at all, so they lived like animals, rarely taking a bath or ing their teeth with a twig. Even a fox will lick its hindquarters, but some of the faeries were the dirtiest beasts.
That first winter, I yearo go with the hunter-gather?ers on their m fe for food and other supplies. Like the crows that ve dusk and dawn, those thieves enjoyed freedom away from the roost. While I was left behind, I had to suffer babysitters like that toad Béka and his panion Onions, or old Zanzara and Ragno, who squabbled all day and threw nutshells and sto the birds and squirrels poking around our hidden hoard. I was bored and cold and lonesome for adventure.
On a gray m, Igel himself chose to stay behind to watch over me, and as luck would have it, my friend Smaolach kept him pany. They breot of tea from dried bark and peppermint, and as we watched a cold rain fall, I pressed my case.
"Why wont you let me go with all the others?"
"My great fear is that youll run away and try to return whence you came, but you ot, Aniday. You are one of us now." Igel sipped his tea and stared at a point far off. After a det interval, letting his wisdom sink into my mind, he tinued. "Oher hand, you have proved yourself a valu-able member of our . You gather the kindling, husk the as, and dig a new privy hole when asked. You are learning true obediend deference. I have watched you, Aniday, and you are a good student of our ways."
Smaolach stared into the dying fire and said something in a secret lan-guage, all vowels and hard sonants full of phlegm. Igel pondered over that secret sentehen chewed on his own thoughts before spitting them out. Then, as now, I was eternally puzzled over how people think, by rocess they solve lifes riddles. Their sultation el resumed his study of the horizon.
"Youre to e with Luchóg ahis afternoon," Smaola-formed me with a spiratorial wink. "Well show you the lay of the land around these parts as soon as the rest of them get back."
"You better dress warmly," Igel advised. "This rain will geover soon."
Ohe first snowflakes started mixing with the raindrops, and within minutes, a heavy snow began to fall. We were still sitting in our places when the faery troop meandered back to the camp, chased home by the sud-den inclemency. Winter sometimes came early to our part of the try, but usually we did not get a snowfall until after Christmas. As the squall blew in, I wondered for the first time whether Christmas had passed altogether, or perhaps at least Thanksgiving had slipped by, and most certainly Halloween was gone. I thought of my family, still looking for me every day in the woods. Perhaps they thought me dead, which made me feel sorry and wish that word could be sent ing my welfare.
At home, Mom would be unpag boxes of decorations, putting out the stable and the manger, running garland up the stair rail. The past Christ-mas, my father took me out to chop down a small fir tree for the house, and I wondered if he was sad now, without me to help him choose the right one. I even missed my little sisters. Were they walking and talking and dreaming of Santa Claus, w what had bee of me?
"What day is it?" I asked Luchóg as he ged into warmer clothes.
He licked his finger and held it into the wind. "Tuesday?"
"No, I mean what day of the year? What day of the month?"
"I have no idea. Judging by the signs, could be late November, early December. But memory is a tricky thing and unreliable when it es to time or weather."
Christmas had not passed after all. I resolved to watch the days from then on and to celebrate the season in an appropriate fashion, even if the rest of them did not care about holidays and such things.
"Do you know where I get a paper and a pencil?"
He struggled into his boots. "Now, what would you want them things for?"
"I want to make a dar."
"A dar? Why, you would need a store of paper and any number of pencils to keep a dar out here. Ill teach you how to watch the sun in the sky and take notice of the living things. Youll know time enough by them."
"But what if I want to draicture or write someone a note?"
Luchóg zipped up his jacket. "Write? To whom? Most of us have fot-ten how to write entirely, and those that havent, didnt learn in the first place. It is better to have your say and not be putting down in more or less a perma- way what youre thinking or feeling. That way lies danger, little trea-sure."
"But I do like to draw pictures."
We started across the ring, where Smaolad Igel stood like two tall trees, ferring. Because Luchóg was the smallest of us all, he had trouble keeping up with me. Boung along at my side, he tinued his disserta-tion.
"So, youre an artist, are ye? No pencil and paper? Do you know that the artists of old made their oer and pens? Out of animal skin and bird feathers. And ink from soot and spit. They did, and further back still, they scratched on stones. Ill teach you how to leave your mark, a you that paper if you want, but iime."
When we reached the leader, Igel clapped me on the shoulder and said, "Youve earned my trust, Aniday. Listen ahese two."
Luchóg, Smaolach, and I set off into the woods, and I looked back to wave goodbye. The other faeries sat together in bunches, huddled against the cold, ahe snow coat them, mad and exposed stoics.
I was thrilled at being out of that camp, but my panions did their best to trol my curiosity. They let me stumble about orails for a time before my clumsiness flushed a covey of doves from their rest. The birds exploded into the air, all pipes ahers. Smaolach put a fio his lips, and I took the hint. Copying their movements, I became nearly as graceful, and we walked so quietly that I could hear the snowfall over the sound of our foots??teps. Silence has its own allure and grace, heightening all the senses, espe-cially hearing. A twig would snap in the distand instantly Smaolad Luchóg would cock their heads in the dire of the sound and identify its cause. They showed me the hidden things silence revealed: a pheasant ing its o spy on us from a thicket, a crow hopping from branch to branch, a ra sn in its den. Before the daylight pletely faded, we tramped through the wet grounds to the mucky bank of the river. Along the waters edge ice crystals grew, and listening closely, we heard the crack of freezing. A single duck paddled further down the river, and eaowflake hissed as it hit the waters surface. The sunlight faded like a whisper and vanished.
"Listen"—Smaolach held his breath—"to this."
At ohe snow ged over to sleet, which ticked against the fallen leaves and rocks and dripping branches, a miniature symphony of the natural world. We walked away from the river and took cover in a grove of evergreens. Icased each of the needles in a clear jacket. Luchóg pulled out a leather pouch hanging from a cord around his neck, first produg a tiny paper and then a fat pinch of dried and brown grasslike fibers that looked like tobacco. With deft fingers and a quick lick, he rolled a thin cigarette. From another se of the pouch, he extracted several wooden matches, ted them in his palm, aurned all but oo the roof partment. His thumbnail struck the match, causing it to burst into flame, which Luchóg ap-plied to the end of the cigarette. Smaolach had dug a hole deep enough to reach a layer of dry needles and es. Carefully taking the burning match from his friends fiips, he set it in the bowl, and in short order we had a fire to toast our palms and fiips. Luchóg passed the cigarette to Smaolach, who took a deep drag ahe smoke inside his mouth for a long time. When he exhaled at last, the effect was as sudden and percussive as the punch-lio a joke.
"Give the boy a puff," Smaolach suggested.
"I dont know how to smoke."
"Do what I do," said Luchóg through ched teeth. "But whatever you do, dont tell Igel about this. Dont tell a all."
I took a drag on the glowing cigarette and began coughing and sputter-ing from the smoke. They giggled a on laughing well after the last scrap had been ihe air beh the evergreen boughs was thick with a strange perfume, which made me feel dizzy, light-headed, and slightly nau-seous. Luchóg and Smaolach fell uhe same spell, but they merely seemed tent, simultaneously alert and peaceful. The sleet began to taper off, and sileurned like a lost friend.
"Did you hear that?"
"What is it?" I asked.
Luchóg shushed me. "First, listen to see if you hear it." A moment later, the sound came to me, and though familiar, its substand in mysti-fied me.
Luchóg sprang to his feet and rousted his friend. "Its a car, little treasure. Have you ever chased an automobile?"
I shook my head, thinking he must have me fused with a dog. Both of my panions took hold of my hands and off we went, running faster than I had ever imagined possible. The world whirred by, patches and blurs of darkness where trees oood. Mud and snow kicked up, mottling our trousers as we sped on at an insanely giddy pace. When the brush grew thicker, they let go of my hands and we raced dowrail one behind the other. Branches slapped me in the face, and I stumbled and fell into the muck. Scrambling to my feet, cold a and dirty, I realized I was alone for the first time in months. Fear took hold, and I opened my eyes and ears to the world, desperate to find my friends. Fierce pains of tration shot ay forehead, but I bore down and heard them running through the snow in the distance. I felt a neowerful magi my senses, for I could see them clearly, while realizing that they should be too far ahead and out of sight. By visualizing my way, I gave chase, and the trees and brahat had -fused me before now seemed no obstacle. I whipped through the woods the arrow flies through the openings in a fence, without a thought, fold-ing up its wings at the right moment, gliding through.
When I caught up, I found they were standing behind the rough pines short of the forest edge. Before us lay a road and on that road a car had stopped, its headlights streaking through the misty darkness, broken pieces of the metal grille glistening on the asphalt. Through the open drivers door, a small light shone in the empty cab. The anomaly of the car pulled me toward it, but the strong arms of my friends held me back. A figure emerged from the darkness and stepped into the light, a thin young woman in a bright red coat. She held one hand to her forehead, and bending slowly, she reached out with her free arm, nearly toug a dark mass lying in the road.
"She hit a deer," Luchóg said, a note of sadness in his voice. She agonized over its prostrate form, pulling her hair back from her face, her other hand pressed against her lips.
"Is it dead?" I asked.
"The trick," said Smaola a quiet voice, "is to breathe into its mouth. Its not dead at all, but in shock."
Luchóg whispered to me. "Well wait until shes gone, and you in-spire it."
"Me?"
"Dont you know? Youre a faery now, same as us, and do anything we do."
The notion overwhelmed me. A faery? I wao knht away if it was true; I wao test my own powers. So I broke away from my friends, approag the deer from the shadows. The woman stood in the middle of that lonesome road, sing in both dires for another car. She did not notice me until I was already there, croug over the animal, my hand upon its warm flank, its pulse rag alongside my own. I cupped the deers muzzle in my hand and breathed into its hot mouth. Almost immediately, the beast lifted its head, shouldered me out of the way, and rocked itself up into a stand-ing position. For an instant, it stared at me; then, like a white ensign, its tail shot up a warning, and the deer bounded into the night. To say that we—the animal, the woman, myself—were surprised by this turn of events would be the most severe uatement. She looked bewildered, so I smiled at her. At that moment, my rades started calling to me in loud whispers.
"Who are you?" She ed herself tighter in that red coat. Or at least I thought those were her words, but her voice sounded alien, as if she were speaking through water. I stared at the ground, realizing that I did not know the true answer. Her face drew close enough for me to detect the beginning of a smile on her lips and the pale bluegreen of her irises behind her glasses. Her eyes were splendid.
"We must go." From the darkness, a hand grasped my shoulder, and Smaolach dragged me away into the bushes, leavio wonder if it had all been a dream. We hid in a tangle while she searched for us, and at last she gave up, got in her car and drove off. I did not know it at the time, but she was the last human person I was to enter for more than a dozen years. The tail-lights zigzagged over the hills and through the trees until there was no more to see.
We retreated bap in a cross silence. Halfway home, Luchóg advised, "You mustnt tell anyone about what happeonight. Stay away from people and be tent with who you are." On the journey, we created a necessary fi to explain our long absence, ied a narrative of the wa-ters and the wild, and oold, our story endured. But I never fot that secret of the redcoated woman, and later, when I began to doubt the world above, the memory of that bright and lonely meeting reminded me that it was no myth.
C H A P T E R 5
Life with the Day family acquired a reassuring pattern. My father would leave for work before any of us stirred from our sleep, and that golden waking hour between his departure and my march to school was a -fort. My mother at the stove, stirring oatmeal breakfast in a pan; the twins expl the kit on unsteady feet. The picture windows framed a away the outside world. The Days home had long ago been a work-ing farm, and though agriculture had been abandoned, vestiges remained. An old barn, red paint s to a dark mauve, now served as a garage. The split-rail fehat frohe property was falling apart stick by stick. The field, an acre or so that had flushed green with , lay fallow, a tangle of brambles that Dad only bothered to mow once each October. The Days were the first to abandon farming in the area, and their distant neighbors joihem over the years, selling off homesteads and acreage to developers. But when I was a child, it was still a quiet, lonesome place.
The trick of growing up is to remember to grow. The mental part of being Henry Day demanded full attention to every detail of his life, but no amount of preparation for the ging at for the swath of the subjects family history—memories of bygone birthday par?.ties and other intimacies—that one must pretend to remember. History is easy enough to fake; stick around anyone long enough and one catch up to any plot. But other acts and flaws expose the risks of assuming anothers identity. For-tunately we seldom had pany, for the old house was isolated on a small bit of farmland out in the try.
Near my first Christmas, while my mother atteo the g twins upstairs and I idled by the fireplace, a knock came at the front door. On the porch stood a man with his fedora in hand, the smell of a ret cigar mixing with the faintly medial aroma of hair oil. He grinned as if he reized me at once, although I had not seen him before.
"Henry Day," he said. "As I live and breathe."
I stood fixed to the threshold, searg my memory for an errant clue as to who this man might be. He clicked his heels together and bowed slightly at the waist, then strode past me into the flang furtively up the stairs. "Is your mother in? Is she det?"
Hardly anyone came to visit in the middle of the day, except occasion-ally the farmers wives nearby or mothers of my sates, driving out from town with a fresh cake and new gossip. When ied on Henry, there was no man other than his father or the milkman who came to the house.
He tossed his hat on the sideboard and turo face me again. "How longs it been, Henry? Your mamas birthday, maybe? You dont look like youve grown a whisker. Your daddy not feeding you?"
I stared at the stranger and did not know what to say.
"Run up the stairs and tell your mama Im here for a visit. Go on now, son."
"Who shall I say is calling?"
"Why, your Uncle Charlie, a-course."
"But I dont have any uncles."
The man laughed; then his brow furrowed and his mouth became a se-vere line. "Are you okay, Henry boy?" He bent down to look me in the eye. "Now, Im not actually your uncle, son, but your mamas oldest friend. A friend of the family, you might say."
My mother saved me by ing dowairway unbidden, and the moment she saw the stranger, she threw her arms into the air and rushed to embrace him. I took advantage of their reunion to slip away.
A close call, but not as bad as the scare a few weeks later. In those first few years, I still had all my geling powers and could hear like a fox. Prom any room in the house, I could eavesdrop on my parents during their un-guarded versations, and overheard Dads suspis during one such pillow talk.
"Have you noticed anything odd about the boy lately?"
She slips into bed beside him. "Odd?"
"Theres the singing around the house."
"Hes a lovely voice."
"And those fingers."
I looked at my hands, and in parison with other childrens, my fin-gers were exceedingly long and out of proportion.
"I think hell be a pianist. Billy, we ought to have him at lessons."
"And toes."
I curled up my toes in my bed upstairs.
"And he seems to have grown not an inch or put on not a pound all winter long."
"He needs some sun is all."
The old man rolls over toward her. "Hes a queer lad, is all I know."
"Billy ... stop."
I resolved that night to bee a true boy and begin paying closer at-tention to how I might be sidered normal. Once such a mistake had been made, nothing could be done. I couldnt very well shorten my fingers and toes and invite further skepticism, but I could stretch the rest of me a bit eaight and keep up with all the other children. I also made it a point to avoid Dad as much as possible.
The idea of the piano intrigued me as a way to ingratiate myself with my mother. When she wasnt listening to ers on the radio, she might dial in the classics, particularly on a Sunday. Bach sent my head spinning with buried reveries, juring an echo from the distant past. But I had to figure away to mention my i without Mom realizing that her private versa-tions could be heard no matter how quiet or intimate. Fortunately, the twins supplied the answer. At Christmas, my distant grandparents sent them a toy piano. No bigger than a bread basket, it produced but a tinny octave of notes, and from New Years Day the keys gathered a dusty coat. I rescued the toy and sat in the nursery, playing nearly reizable tunes from distant memory. My sisters, as usual, were ented, and they sat like two entranced yogis as I tested my memory on the pianos limited range. Dust rag in hand, my mother wandered by and stood in the doorway, listening ily. From the er of my eye, I watched her watg me, and when I ended with a flourish, her applause was not pletely ued.
In the fleeting time between homework and dinner, I picked out a tune of sorts, and gradually revealed my native talent, but she needed more encement than that. My scheme was casual and simple. I let drop the fact that a half-dozen of the kids in school took music lessons, when, in truth, there may have been one or two. On car trips, I pretehat the panel below my window was a keyboard and fingered measures until my father ordered me to cut that out. I made a point of whistling the first few bars of something famil-iar, like Beethovens Ninth, when helping Mom dry the dishes. I did not beg, but bided my time, until she came to believe the idea as her own. My gambit played out when, ourday before Henrys eighth birthday, my parents drove me into the city to see a man about piano lessons.
We left the twin toddlers with the neighbors, and the three of us sat up front in my fathers coupe, embarking early that spring m in our Sun-day clothes. We drove past the town where I went to school, where we shopped ao Mass, and onto the highway into the city. Shiny cars zipped along the asphalt as we picked up speed, joining a ribbon of pure energy flowing in both dires. We went faster than Id ever gone in my life, and I had not been to the city in nearly one hundred years. Billy drove the 49 De Soto like an old friend, one hand on the wheel, his free arm thrown across the seat behind my mother ahe old quistador stared at us from the steering wheels hub, and as Dad made a turn, the ex-plorers eyes seemed to follow us.
On our approach to the city, the factories oskirts appeared first, great smokestacks exhaling streams of dark clouds, furnaces within glowing with hearts of fire. A bend in the road—then all at once, a view of buildings stretched to heaven. The downtowns sheer size left me breathless, and the closer we came, the greater it loomed, until suddenly we were in the car-choked streets. The shadows deepened and darkened. At a cross street, a trol-ley scraped along, its pole shooting sparks to the wires above. Its doors opened like a bellows, and out poured a crowd of people in their spring coats and hats; they stood on a crete island ireet, waiting for the light to ge. In the department store windows, refles of shoppers and traffiingled with displays of new goods: womens dresses and mens suits on man-nequins, which fooled me initially, appearing>.. alive and posing perfectly still.
"I dont know why you feel the o e all the way downtown for this. You know I dont like ing into the city. Ill never find parking."
Mht arm shot out. "Theres a space, arent we lucky?"
Riding up in the elevator, my father reached inside his coat pocket for a Camel, and as the doors opened on the fifth floor, he lit up. We were a few minutes early, and while they debated over whether or not to go in, I walked to the door aered. Mr. Martin may not have been a fairy, but he was very fey. Tall and thin, his white hair long in a shaggy boys cut, he wore a worn plum-colored suit. Christopher Robin all grown up and goo gen-teel seed. Behind him stood the most beautiful mae I had ever seen. Lac-quered to a high black finish, the grand piano drew all of the vitality of the room toward its propped-open lid. Those keys held in their serenity the pos-sibility of every beautiful sound. I was too dumbstruck to answer his inquiry the first time.
"May I help you, young man?"
"Im Henry Day, and Im here to learhing you know."
"My dear young man," he replied, sighing, "Im afraid thats impossi-ble."
I walked to the piano and sat at the bench. The sight of the keys un-locked a distant memory of a stern German instructor me to in-crease the tempo. I stretched my fingers as far apart as possible, testing my span, and laid them upon the ivory without elig an actal tone. Mr. Martin glided behind me, overlooking my shoulder, studying my hands. "Have you played before?"
"Once upon a time ..."
"Find me middle C, Mr. Day."
And without thinking, I did, pressing the single key with the side of my left thumb.
My mother and father ehe room, announg themselves with a polite ahem. Mr. Martin wheeled around and strode over to greet them. As they shook hands and made introdus, I played scales from the middle outward. Tones from the pianered powerful synapses, resurreg scores that I knew by heart. A voi my head demanded heissblütig, heissblütig—more passion, more feeling.
"You said he was a beginner."
"He is," my mother replied. "I dont think hes ever even seen a real piano."
"This boy is a natural."
For fun, I plinked out "Twiwinkle, Little Star," the way I would play it for my sisters. I was careful to use only one finger, as if the grand were but a toy.
"He taught himself that," Mom said. "On a tiny piano that you might find in a fairy orchestra. And he sing, too, sing like a bird."
Dad shot me a quick sideways glaoo busy sizing up my mother, Mr. Martin did not notice the wordless exge. My mother rattled on about all of my talents, but nobody listened. In measures too slow and far apart, I practiced my Chopin, so disguised that even old Martin did not dis-cover the melody.
"Mr. Day, Mrs. Day, I agree to take on your son. My minimum require-ment, however, is fht weeks of lessons at a time, Wednesday afternoons and Saturdays. I teach this boy." Then he mentioned, in a voice barely above a whisper, his fee. My father lit another Camel and walked toward the window.
"But for your son"—he addressed my mother now—"for Henry, a born musi if I ever heard one, for him, I will require only half the tuition, but you must it to sixteen weeks. Four months. We will know how far we go."
I picked out a rudimentary "Happy Birthday." My father finished his smoke and tapped me on the shoulder, indig we were to leave. He walked over to Mom and grabbed her lightly by the fleshy part of her arm above the elbow.
"Ill call you Monday," he said, "at three-thirty. Well think it over."
Mr. Martin bowed slightly and looked me straight in the eye. "You have a gift, young man."
As we drove home, I watched the city recede in the mirror and disap-pear. Mom chattered incessantly, dreaming the future, planning our lives. Billy, hands locked on the wheel, trated on the road and said nothing.
"Ill buy some laying hens, thats what Ill do. Remember when you used to say you wao turn our place bato a real farm? Ill start a brood of chis, and well sell the eggs, and that will pay the bill, surely. And imagine, well have fresh eggs ourselves every m, too. And Henry take the school bus to the streetcar, and the streetcar into town. You could drive him to the streetcar Saturdays?"
"I could do chores to earn the fare."
"You see, Billy, how much he wants to learn? He has a gift, that Mr. Martin said. And hes so refined. Did you ever see such a thing in your life as that piano? He must shi every day."
My father rolled down his window about an inch to let in a roar of fresh air.
"Did you hear him play Happy Birthday to You, like hes been at it forever? Its what he wants; its what I want. Sweetheart."
"When would he practice, Ruth? Even I know you have to play every day, and I might be able to afford piano lessons, but I certainly t afford a piano in the house."
"Theres a piano at school," I said. "Nobody uses it. Im sure if I asked, theyd let me stay after...."
"What about your homework and those chores you said you would do? I dont want to see yrades slipping."
"imes nine is eighty-one. Separate is spelled S-E-P-A-R-A-T-E. Oppenheimer gave us the bomb, which took care of the Japs. The Holy Trin-ity is the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost, and it is a holy mystery that no one figure out."
"All right, Einstein. You try it, but fht weeks. Just to be sure. And your mother will have to raise the egg money, and you have to help care for the chis. They teach you that in that school of yours?"
Ruth studied his face, a rare look of love and wonder in her gaze. Both grinned a private, sheepish half-smile, the meaning of which eluded me. Sit-tiween them, I basked in the warmth of the moment, lag any guilt over the fact that I was not their child. We drove on, the happiest of happy little families.
As we crossed a high bridge over the river not far from our house, a otion flashed along the riverbank far below. To my horror, I saw a line of gelings walking through a clearing in single file, blending in with the budding trees and bushes, then vanishing in a blink. Those strange children moved like deer. My parents were oblivious, but at the thought of those creatures down there, I flushed and broke into a sweat, which as quickly turo a chill. That they still existed alarmed me, for I had nearly fottehat they could expose my past made me ill, and I was about to beg my father to pull off the road. But he lit up anarette and opened his window wider, and the fresh air alleviated my nausea, if not my fear.
Mom broke the spell. "Didnt Mr. Martin ask us to it to four months?"
"Ill call him Monday and work out a deal. Lets try two months, actually, at first. See if the boy likes it."
For the eight years, I took piano lessons, and it was the happiest time of all my lives. If I came in early to school, the nuns were glad to let me practice at the upright in the lun. Later on, they let me into the church to learn the an, and I was the you substitute anist the parish ever had. Life became orderly, and the discipline a joy. Each m, my ha uhe warm bellies of the chis, colleg eggs, and each after-noon, my fingers upon th..e keyboard, perfeg my teique. On Wednes-days and Saturdays, the trip into the city proved a tonic, away from farm and family and into civilization. No longer something wild, but a creature of cul-ture, on my way to being a virtuoso once again.
C H A P T E R 6
Iing down these recolles of my early years so far removed from their unfolding, I am fooled, as all are, by time itself. My parents, long gone from my world, live again. The redcoated woma only once, abides more persistently in mind than what I did yesterday or whether I had thistles and honey or elder-berries for breakfast. My sisters, now grown into their middle years, are ever infants to me, two matg cherubs, ris of curls, chubby and helpless as cubs. Memory, which so founds our waking life with anticipation a, may well be our orue earthly solatioime slips out of joint.
My first nighttime foray into the woods left me exhausted. I burrowed beh a heap of coats and blas and furs, and by midday, a fever burned. Zanzara brought me a cup of hot tea and a bowl of nasty broth, or-derio "drink, drink, sip it." But I could not stomach a single swallow. No matter how many layers they heaped upon me, I could not get warm. By nightfall, I shook untrollably with chills. My teeth rattled and my bones ached.
Sleep brought strange, horrible nightmares where everything seemed to happen at once. My family invaded my dreams. Hands joihey stand in a half circle around a hole in the ground, silent as stones. My father grabs me around the ankle and pulls me from the hollow tree where I lie hidden as me on the ground. Then he reaches in again and yanks each twin by the ankles and holds them aloft, the girls giggling in fear and pleasure. And my mother admonishes him: "Dont be so hard on the boy. Where have you been, where have you been?"
Then I am on the road, in the arclight streaming from an old Ford, the deer supine on the pavement, its breathing shallow, and I synize my res-piration with its rhythms and the redcoated woman with the pale green eyes says: "Who are you?" And she bends to my face, taking my in her hands, to kiss me on the lips, and I am a boy again. Me. But I ot remember my name.
Aniday. A wild child like myself, a girl named Speck, leans over to kiss my forehead, and her lips y hot skin. Behihe oak leaves turn into a thousand crows that take off in unison, flying away in a great twisting, singing tornado of wings. Sileurns after the drumming flock escapes to the horizon and m breaks through. I give chase to the birds, running so fast and so hard that my skin splits a seam on both sides and my heart drums against my ribs until halted by the deathly appearance of a roiling black river. trating with my entire mind, I see to the other side, and there on the bank, holding hands around a hole in the ground, are my father and mother, the woman in the red coat, my two sisters, and the boy who is not me. They stand like stones, like trees, staring into the clearing. If I summon ce to jump into the water, I may reach them. Blackwater once carried me away, so I stand on the bank, calling out in a voice that ot be heard, with words no one uand.
I dont know how long I was delirious with fever. ht, a day or two, a week, a year? Or longer? When I awakened under a damp steely sky, I felt snug and safe, although my arms ahrobbed with stiffness and my insides felt scraped raw and hollow. Attending me, Ragno and Zanzara played cards, using my belly as a table. Their game defied logic, for they had not mao swipe a full deck. Mixing remnants from many different packs, they ended up with nearly a hundred cards. Each of them held a fistful, and the remainder sat in a jumble on my stomach.
"Do you have any que?&quno asked.
Zanzara scratched his head.
Holding up five fingers, Ragno shouted at him, "que, que."
"Go fish."
And fish he would, turning over card after card until he found a match, which he would then hold up triumphantly before g his turn to Zan-zara.
"You are a cheater, Ragno."
"And you are a bloodsucker."
I coughed, making my sciousness known.
"Hey look, kid, hes awake."
Zanzara put his clammy hand against my forehead. "Let me get you something to eat. A cup of tea, maybe?"
"You been asleeping a long time, kid. Thats what you get foing out with those boys. Those Irish boys, theyre no good."
I looked around the camp for my friends, but as usual at midday, every-one else was gone.
"What day is it?" I asked.
Zanzara flicked out his toasting the air. "Id say Tuesday."
"No, I mean what day of the month."
"Kid, Im not even sure what month it is."
Ragno interrupted. "Must be getting toward spring. The days are grow-ing longer, inch by inch."
"Did I miss Christmas?" I felt homesick for the first time in ages.
The boys shrugged their shoulders.
"Did I miss Santa Claus?"
"Who he?"
"How do I get out of here?"
Ragno poio a path obscured by two evergreens.
"How do I go home?"
Their eyes glazed over, and, holding hands, they turned around and skipped away. I felt like g, but the tears would not e. A fierce gale blew in from the west, pushing dark clouds across the sky. Huddled under my blas, I observed the ging day, aloh my troubles, until the others came skittering home on the wind. They took no more notie than any other lump on the ground one passes every day. Igel started a small fire by striking a flint until a spark caught the kindling. Two of the girls, Kivi and Blomma, uncovered the nearly depleted pantry and dug out our meager fare, ..ly skinning a partially frozen squirrel with a few deft strokes of a very sharp knife. Speck crumbled dried herbs into our old teapot and filled it with water drawn from a cistern. Chavisory toasted pis on a flat griddle. The boys who were not engaged in cooking took off their wet shoes and boots, exging them for yesterdays gear, now dry and hard. All of this domestic routine proceeded without fuss and with st versation; they had made a sce of preparing for the night. As the squirrel cooked on a spit, Smaolach came over to chee, and was surprised to discover me awake and alert.
"Aniday, youve e back from the dead."
He reached for my hand, pullio my feet. We embraced, but he squeezed me so hard that my sides ached. Arm around my shoulder, he led me to the fire, where some of the faeries greeted me with expressions of wonder and relief. Béka gave me an apathetieer, and Igel shrugged at my hello and tinued waiting to be served, arms crossed at his chest. We set to the squir-rel and nuts, the meal barely curbing the growling appetite of all assembled. After the first stringy bites, I pushed away my tin plate. The firelight made everyones face glow, and the grease on their lips made their smiles shine.
After supper, Luchóg motioned for me to e closer, and he whispered in my ear that he had stashed away a surprise for me. We walked away from camp, the last rays of pink sunlight illuminating the way. Clamped be-tween twe stones were four small envelopes.
"Take them," he gruhe top stone heavy in his arms, and I whisked out the letters before he dropped the cap with a thud. Reag inside his shirt to his private pouch, Luchóg extracted but the nub of a sharp pencil, which he presented with being modesty. "Merry Christmas, little treasure. Something to get you started."
"So it is Christmas today?"
Luchóg looked around to see if anyone was listening. "You did not miss it."
"Merry Christmas," I said. And I tore open my gifts, ruining the pre-cious envelopes. Over the years, I have lost two of the four letters, but they were not so valuable in and of themselves. One was a me stub with pay-ment enclosed, and at his ey, Luchóg received the check to use as rolling paper for his cigarettes. The other lost piece of correspondence was a rabid letter to the editor of the loeer, denoung Harry Truman. Cov-ered both front and back with crabbed handwriting that scuttled from margin tin, that paper proved useless. The other two had much more white space, and with ohe lines were so far apart, I was able to write between them.
Feb. 2, 1950
Dearest,
The ht ment so mue that I t uand why you have not phoned or written sihat night. I am fused. You told me that you loved me and I love you too, but still you have not answered my last three letters and nobody ahe telepho your home or even your work. I am not in the habit of doing what we did in the car, but because you told me that you loved me and you were in such pain and agony as you kept saying. I wao let you know that I am not that kind of girl.
I am that kind of girl who loves you and that kind of girl who also expects a Gentleman to behave like a Gentleman.
Please write bae or better yet call me on the phone. I am not angry so much as just fused, but I will be mad if I do not here from you.
I love you, do you know that?
Love,
Martha
At the time, I sidered this letter to be the truest expression of real love that I had ever known. It was difficult to read, for Martha wrote in cur-sive, but thankfully in big letters that resembled printing. The sed letter baffled me more than the first, but it, too, used only three-quarters of the front side of the page.
2/3/50
Dear Mother and Father,
Words ot begin to express the sorrow and sympathy I send to you at the loss of dear Nana. She was a good woman, and a kind one, and she is now in a better place. I am sorry that I ot e home, but Ive not enough money for the trip. So, all my heartfelt grief must be shared by this most insuffit letter.
Winter draws to a cold and unhappy close. Life is not fair, since you have lost Nana, and I, near everything.
Your Son
When they learned of the two messages, the girls in camp insisted they be shared aloud. T?hey were curious not only about their substa about my professed literacy, for almost no one in camp bothered to read or write any longer. Some had not learned, and others had chosen tet. We sat in a ring around the fire, and I read them as best I could, not fully prehending all of the words or uanding their meanings. "What do you think of Dearest?" Speck asked the group after I had finished.
"He is a cad; he is a rotter," Onions said.
Kivi pushed back her blonde curls and sighed, her face bright in the firelight. "I do not uand why Dearest will not write baartha, but that is nothing pared to the problems of Your Son."
"Yes," Chavisory jumped in, "perhaps Your Son and Martha should get married, and then they will both live happily ever after."
"Well, I hope Mother and Father find Nana," added Blomma.
Into the night the bewildering versation flowed. They fabricated poetical fis about the other world. The mysteries of their sympathies, s, and sorrows perplexed me, yet the girls had a wellspring of empathy for matters outside our knowing. I was anxious, however, to have them go away, so that I might practice my writing. But the girls lingered until the fire collapsed into embers; then they led uhe covers together, where they tiheir discussion, p the fate of the writers, their sub-jects, and their intended readers. I would have to wait to use the pages. The night became bitterly cold, and soon all twelve of us were huddled together in a tangle of limbs. When the last of us wiggled uhe mat, I suddenly remembered the day. "Merry Christmas!" I said, but my greetings brought only derision: "Shuddup!" and "Go to sleep." During the long hours before dawn, a foot hit me on the , an elbow knacked me in the groin, and a knee banged against my sore ribs. In a dark er of the pack, a girl groaned when Béka climbed upon her. Enduring their fitfulness, I waited for m, the letters pinned against my chest.
The rising sun reflected against a bla of high cirrus clouds, c them in a spectrum that began in brightness on the eastern edge and fanned out in soft pastels. Branches of the trees broke the sky intments, like a kaleidoscope. When the red sun rose, the pattern shifted hues until it all dis-sipated into blue and white. Up and out of bed, I savored the light growing strong enough for drawing and writing. I took out my papers and pencil, put a cold flat stone in my lap, and folded the me statement into quarters. I drew a cross along the folds and made panels for four drawings. The pencil was at once odd and familiar in my grasp. In the first panel, I created from memory my mother and father, my two baby sisters, and myself, full-body portraits lined up in a straight row. When I sidered my work, they looked crude and uneven, and I was disappointed in myself. In the panel, I drew the road through the forest with the deer, the woman, the car, Smaolad Luchóg in the same perspective. Light, for example, was indicated by twht lines emanating from a circle on the car aending outward to opposite ers of the frame. The deer looked more like a dog, and I dearly wished for an eraser on the yellow pencil. Ihird panel: a flattened Christmas tree, lavishly decorated, a pile of gifts spread out on the floor. In the final panel, I dreicture of a boy drowning. Bound in spirals, he sinks be-low the wavy line.
When I showed my paper to Smaolach later that afternooook me by the hand and made me run with him to hide behind a wild riot of holly. He looked around in all dires to make sure we were alohen he care-fully folded the paper into quarters and ha bae.
"You must be more careful with what you draw in them pictures."
"Whats the matter?"
"If Igel finds out, then youll know whats the matter. You have to real-ize, Aniday, that he doesnt accept any tact with the other side, and that woman ..."
"The one in the red coat?"
"Hes a-scared of being found out." Smaolach grabbed the paper and tucked it into my coat pocket. "Some things are better kept to yourself," he said, then wi me and walked away, whistling.
Writing proved more painful than drawing. Certaiers—B, G, R, W—caused my hand to cramp. In those early writings, sometimes my K bent backward, S went astray, an F actally became an E, and other errors that are amusing to me now as I look bay early years, but at the time, my handwriting caused me much shame and embarrassment. Worse than the alphabet, however, were the words themselves. I could not spell for beans and lacked all punctuation. My vocabulary annoyed me, not to mention style, di, senteructure, variety, adjectives and adverbs, and other such mat-ters. The physical act of writing took forever. Sentences had to be assembled nail by nail, and onplete, they stood er than a crude approxima-tion of what I felt or wao say, a woebegone fence across a white field. Yet I persisted through that m, writing down all I could remember in whatever words I had at my and. By midday, both blank sides of the paper taihe story of my abdu and the adventures as well as the vaguest memories of life before this place. I had already fotten more than I remembered—my own name and the names of my sisters, my dear bed, my sy books, any notion of what I wao be when I grew up. All that would be given bae in due course, but without Luchógs letters, I would have been lost forever. When I had squeezed the final word in the last available space, I went to look for him. Out of paper, my mission was to find more.
C H A P T E R 7
At age ten, I began to perform in front of ordinary people. In appreciation of the nuns who allowed me use of the school piano, I agreed to play as prelude to the annual Christmas show. My music would usher the par-ents to their seats while their children shed coats and scarves for their elf and wise-man es. My teacher, Mr. Martin, and I put together a program of Bach, Strauss, ahoven, ending with part of "Six Little Piano Pieces" in honor of Arnold Sberg, who had passed away the year before. We felt this last "modern" piece, while not overly familiar to our audience, displayed my rahout being overly ostentatious. The day before the Christmas show, I went through the thirty-minute program for the nuns after school, and the choices brought nothing but frowns and scowls from beh their wimples.
"Thats wonderful, Henry, truly extraordinary," the principal said. She was the Mother Superior of the gang of crows that ran the joint. "But that last song."
"Sbergs?"
"Yes, very iing." She stood up in front of the sisters and paced to and fro, searg the air for tact. "Do you know anything else?"
"Else, Mother?"
"Something more seasonal perhaps?"
"Seasonal, Mother?"
"Something people might know?"
"Im not sure I uand."
She turned and addressed me directly. "Do you know any Christmas songs? A hymn? Silent Night perhaps? Or Hark! The Herald Angels—I think thats Mendelssohn. If you play Beethoven, you play Mendels-sohn."
"You want carols?"
"Not only hymns." She walked on, hitg down her habit. "You could do Jingle Bells or White Christmas. "
"Thats from Holiday Inn," one of the other nuns volunteered. "Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire and Marjorie Reynolds. Oh, but youre too young."
"Did you see Bells of St. Marys?" the third-grade teacher asked her fel-low sisters. "Wasnt he good in that?"
"I really liked that Boys Town—you know, the oh Mickey Rooney."
Rattling the beads on her rosary, Mother Superior cut them off. "Surely you know a few Christmas songs?"
Crestfallen, I went home that night and learhe fluff, practig on a paper-cutout keyboard fashioned by my father. At the show the eve-ning, I trimmed half my inal program and added a few carols at the end. I kept the Sberg, whieedless to say, bombed. I played the Christmas stuff brilliantly and to a thunderous ovation. "Cretins," I said under my breath as I accepted their adulation. During my repeated bows, loathing swelled over their loud clapping and whistling. But then, looking out at the sea of faces, I began tnize my parents and neighbors, all happy and cheerful, sendiheir sincere appreciation for the holiday warmth geed by the vaguely predictable strains of their old favorites. No gift as wele as the expected gift. And I grew light-headed and dizzy the lohe applause went on. My father rose to his feet, a real smile plastered on his mug. I nearly fainted. I wanted more.
The glory of the experience rested in the simple fact that my musical talent.. was a humahere were no pianos in the woods. And as my magic slowly diminished, my artistry increased. I felt more and more removed from those who had taken me for a hundred years, and my sole hope and prayer was that they would leave me alone. From the night of the first perfor-ma was as if I were split in two: half of me tinuing on with Mr. Martin and his emphasis on the of classics, pounding out the old -posers until I could hammer like Thor or make the keys whisper uhe ge pressure. The other half expanded my repertoire, thinking about what audiences might like to hear, like the ballads ed on the radio adored by my mother. I loved both the fugues from The Well-Tempered Clavier and "Heart and Soul," and they flowed seamlessly, but being adept at popular song allowed me to accept odd jobs when offered, playing at school dances and birthday parties. Mr. Martin objected at first to the bastardization of my talent, but I gave him a sob story about needing money for lessons. He cut his fee by a quarter on the spot. With the money we saved, the cash I earned, and my mothers increasingly lucrative egg and chi business, we were able to buy a used upright piano for the house in time for my twelfth birthday.
"Whats this?" my father asked when he came home the day the piano arrived, its beautiful maery housed in a rosewood case.
"Its a piano," my mother replied.
"I see that. How did it get here?"
"Piano movers."
He slid a cigarette from the packet and lit it in one swift move. "Ruthie, I know someone brought it here. How e it is here?"
"For Henry. So he practice."
"We t afford a piano."
"We bought it. Me and Henry."
"With the money from my playing," I added.
"And the chis and eggs."
"You bought it?"
"On Mr. Martins advice. For Henrys birthday."
"Well, then. Happy birthday," he said on his way out of the room.
I played every ce I could get. Over the few years, I spent hours each day at the keys, enthralled by the mathematics of the he music seized me like a river current pushing my scious self deeper into my core, as if there were no other sound in the world but one. I grew my legs an inch lohan necessary that first summer in order to better reach the pedals on the upright. Around the house, school, and town, I practiced spreading my fingers as far apart as they would go. The pads of my fiips became smooth aher-sensitive. My shoulders bowed down and forward. I dreamt in wave after wave of scales. The more adept my skill and uanding grew, the more I realized the power of musical phrasing in everyday life. The trivolves getting people to listen to the weak beats and seemingly insignifit silences between he absence of tones between tones. By phrasing the matter with a ruthlessly precise logie play—or say—anything. Music taught me great self-trol.
My father could not stand to hear me practice, perhaps because he real-ized the mastery I had attained. He would leave the room, retreat into the farthest ers of the house, or find any excuse to go outside. A few weeks after Mom and I bought the piano, he came home with our first televisio, and a week later a man came out and installed an antenna on the roof. In the evenings, my father would watch You Bet Your Life or The Jackie Gleason Show, me to keep it down. More and more, however, he simply left alto-gether.
"Im going for a drive." He already had his hat on.
"Youre not going drinking, I hope."
"I may stop in for oh the boys."
"Dooo late."
Well after midnight, hed stagger in, singing or muttering to himself, swearing wheepped on one of the girls toys or barked his shin on the piano bench as he passed. Weather permitting, he worked outdoors every weekend, replag shutters, painting the house, rewiring the chi coop. He was absent from the hearth, unwilling to listen. With Mary and Elizabeth, he played the doting father, still dandling them on his knees, fussing over their curls and dresses, fawning at the latest primitive drawing or Popsicle-stick hut, sitting down at the table for tea parties and the like. But he regarded me coldly, and while I ot read min..ds, I suspect he felt at odds with my passion for music. Maybe he felt art corrupted me, made me less a boy. When we spoke, he would chastise me for a ed chore or chide me for a less than perfect grade on a test or essay.
As he drove me home from the trolley statiourday, he made an effort to engage and uand. On the radio, a football game between the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame and Navy unfolded. One of the teams scored a touchdown in a spectacular fashion.
"How about that? Did you hear that?"
I looked out the windoing out with my right hand a melody on the armrest.
"Do you even like football?" he asked.
"I dunno. Its okay."
"Do you like any sport at all? Baseball? Basketball? Would you like to go hunting someday?"
I said nothing. The very thought of being aloh Billy Day and a shotgun frightened me. There are devils out in the woods. We let a few silent miles pass beh us.
"Hows e its nothing but the piano night and day?"
"I like musid Im good."
"You are that, but holy, did you ever stop to think you could try something else for a ge? Dont you know theres more to life than music?"
If he had been my true father, I would have beeernally disappointed in him. The man had no vision, no passion for life, and I was grateful that we were not actually related. The car passed through the shadows of trees, and the glass in the window darkened. I saw in my own refle the mirrored image of Henrys father, but I only appeared to be his offspring. Once upon a time, I had a real father. I could hear his voice: "Ich erkenne dich! Du willst nur meinen Sohn!" His eyes danced wildly behind his owlish spectacles, and then the phantom memory disappeared. I sensed Billy Day was watg me from the er of his eye, w what oh happened? How did I get this for a son?
"Im thinking that Im starting to like girls," I volunteered. He smiled and tousled my hair. He lit another Camel, a sure sign he was tent with my ahe subjey masity never came up again.
A basic truth had escaped by act. Girls hovered on the surface of every situation. I noticed them in school, ogled them in church, played to them at every cert performance. As if they jumped from the shadows, girls arrived, and nothing was ever the same. I fell in love ten times a day: an older erhaps in her mid-twenties in a gray coat on a gray street er; the raven-haired librarian who came every Tuesday m to buy a dozen eggs. Ponytailed girls jumping rope. Girls with charming ats. Girls in bobby socks and poodle skirts. In the sixth grade, Tess Wodehouse trying to hide her braces behind her smiles. Blondie in the funny pages; Cyd Charisse; Paulette Goddard; Marilyn Monroe. Anyone curved. Allure goes beyond appearao the way they grace the world. Some women propel themselves by means of an internal gyroscope. lide through life as if on ice skates. Some women vey their tortured lives through their eyes; others encircle you in the music of their laughter. The way they bee their clothes. Redheads, blondes, brues. I loved them all. Women who flirt with you: whered you get such long eyelashes? From the milkman. Girls too shy to say a word.
The best girls, however, were those who liked music. At virtually every performance, I could pick out from the crowd those who were listening, as opposed to the terminally bored or merely disied. The girls who stared banerved me, but at least they were listening, as were the ones with their eyes closed, s cocked, i on my playing. Others in the audience would be ing their teeth with their nails, digging in their ears with their pinkies, crag their knuckles, yawning without c their mouths, cheg out the irls (or boys), or cheg their watches. After the perfor-mances, many in the audienvariably came up to have a few words, shake my hand, or stand near me. These post-performanters were most rewarding and I was delighted to receive pliments and answer questions for as long as I could while unmasking the enthusiasms of the women and girls.
Unfortunately, the certs aals were few and far between, and the public demand for my performances of classical music at parties and shows diminished as I neared puberty. Many afiados had been ied in a ten-year-old prodigy, but the y died when I was all elbows and ae as a teenager. And to be ho, I was sick of the Hanon and y exercises and the same insipid Chopiude that my teacher fussed over year after year. gi again, I found my old powers ebbed as my hormones raged. As if ht, I had gone from wanting to be just a boy to wanting to be a grown man. Midway through my freshman year in high school, following months of soul-searg and sullen fighting with my mother, it hit me that there was a way to bine my passion for musid my i in girls: I would form my own band.
CHAPTER 8
"I have something for you." The last bitter days of winter imprisohe whole band. A snowstorm and freezing temperatures made travel outside of camp impossible. Most of us spent night and day under cover in a drowse caused by the bination of cold and hunger. Speck stood above me, smiling, a surprise hidden behind her back. A breeze blew her long black hair across her face, and with an impatient hand, she brushed it aside like a curtain.
"Wake up, sleepyhead, and see what I found."
Keeping the deerskin ed tight against the cold, I stood. She thrust out a single envelope, its whiteness in relief against her chapped hands. I took it from her and opehe envelope, sliding out a greeting card with a picture of a big red heart on its front. Absentmindedly, I let the envelope slip to the ground, and she quickly bent to pick it up.
"Look, Aniday," she said, her stiff fingers w along the seams to carefully tear the seal. "If you would think to open it up, you could have two sides of paper—nothing but a stamp and address on the front, and on the back, you have a blank sheet." She took the card from me. "See, you draw on the front and back of this, and ioo, go around this writing here." Speck bounced ooes in the snow, perhaps as much out of joy as to ward off the chill. I eechless. She was usually hard as a stone, as if uo bear iion with the rest of us.
"Youre wele. You could be mrateful. I trudged through the snow t that back while you and all these lummoxes were nid cozy, sleeping the winter away."
"How I thank you?"
"Warm me up." She came to my side, and I opehe deerskin rug for her to snuggle in, and she ed herself around me, waking me alert with her icy hands and limbs. We slid ihe slumber party uhe heap of blas and fell into a deep sleep. I awoke the m with my head pressed against her chest. Speck had one arm around me, and iher hand she clutched the card. When she woke up, she blinked open her emerald eyes to wel. Her first request was that I read the message ihe card:But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restored and sorrows end.
Shakespeare, So 30
There was no nature, no addressee, and whatever names had been inked on the envelope had been smudged into oblivion by the wet snow.
"What do you think it means?"
"I dont know," I told her. "Who is Shakespeare?" The name seemed vaguely familiar.
"His friend makes all his troubles end, if he but thinks about him ... or her."
The sun rose above the treetops, warming our peaceful camp. The aural signs of melting began: snow sloughing off firs, ice crystals breaking apart, the thaw and drip of icicles. I wao be aloh the card, and my pencil burned like an ember in my pocket.
"What are you going to write?"
"I want to make a dar, but I do not know how. Do you know what day is today?"
"One day is like another."
"Arent you curious about what day it is today?"
Speck wriggled into her coat, biddio do the same. She led me through the clearing to the highest poihe camp, a ridge that ran along the northwestern edge, a difficult passage over a steep slope of loose shale. My legs ached when we reached the summit, and I was out of breath. She, oher hand, tapped her foot and told me to be quiet and listen. We were still and waited. Other thahawing mountains, it was silent.
"What am I supposed to hear?"
"trate," she said.
I tried, but save for the occasional laugh of a nuthatd the creak of twigs and branches, nothing reached my ear. I shrugged my shoulders.
"Try harder."
I listened so ily that a fierce headache knocked inside my skull: her even, relaxed breathing, the beating of her heart, and a far-off rhythmic vibration that at first sounded like the rasp of a file but soon took on a more fixed character. A hum of alternating speeds, a low splash, the occasional horn, tires on pavement, and I realized we were listening to distant traffic.
"," I told her. "Cars."
"Pay attention. What do you hear?"
My head litting, but I focused. "Lots of cars?" I guessed.
&quht." She grinned. "Lots and lots of cars. Traffi the m."
I still did.
"People going to work. Iy. Schoolbuses and kids. Lots of cars in the m. That means its a workday, not a Sunday. Sundays are quiet and not so many cars speeding by."
She held her bare fio the air and then tasted it in her mouth for an instant. "I think its a Monday," she said.
"Ive seen that trick before. How you tell?"
"All those cars make smoke, and the factories make smoke. But there arent so many cars on the road and the factories are closed on Sundays. You hardly taste any smoke at all. Monday, a bit more. By Friday night, the air tastes like a mouthful of coal." She licked her finger again. "Definitely a Monday. Now, let me see your letter."
I handed over the valentine and envelope, which she ied, pointing to the postmark over the stamp. "Do you remember what day is Valentines Day?"
"Fe.bruary fourteenth." I felt proud, as if I had given the correswer in math class. An image flashed of a woman, dressed in blad white, writing numbers on a chalkboard.
"Thats right, and you see this?" She poio the date on the postmark, which ran in a semicircle: MON FEB 13 50 AM. "Thats when your Shakespeare put it in the mailbox. On a Mon. That means Monday m is wheamped it."
"So, today is Valentines Day? Happy Valentines Day."
"No, Aniday. You have to learn to read the signs and figure it out. Dedu. How could today be Valentines Day if today is a Monday? How we find a letter the day before it is lost? If I found the letter yesterday, and today is Monday, how could today be Valentines Day?"
I was fused and tired. My head ached.
"February thirteenth was last Monday. If this card had been out for more than a week, it would be ruined by now. I found it yesterday and brought it to you. Yesterday was a quiet day—not many cars—a Sunday. Today must be the Monday."
She made me question my ability to reason at all.
"Its simple. Today is Monday, February 20, 1950. You do need a dar." She held out her hand for my pencil, which I gladly ceded her. On the back of the card, she drew seven boxes in a row and labeled S-M-T-W-T-F-S for the days of the week. Then she printed all the months of the year in a n on the side, and then on the opposite side, the numerals from 1 to 31. As she drew them, she quizzed me on the proper number of days in each month, singing a familiar song to help me remember, but we fot about leap years, which would throw me off in time. From her pocket, she took three roual circles to demonstrate that if I wao keep track of time, all I would have to do would be to move the disks to the spa the dar each m, remembering to start over at the end of the week and month.
Speck would often show me roved to be the obvious answer, for whiobody else had the clarity of imagination and creativity. At suents of insight, her eyes fixed ohe tremor in her voice disappeared. A single hair escaped now, biseg her face. She gathered her mah her twh red hands and pushed it behind her ears, smiling all the while at my stare. "If you ever fet, Aniday, e find me." She walked away, moving through the forest, across the ridge and away from camp, leaving me aloh my dar. I spied her figure progressing among the trees until she blended into the natural world. When she vanished, all I could think of was the date: February 20, 1950. I had lost so much time.
Far below, the others in camp slumbered beh a mat of stinking blas and furs. By listening to the traffid following the o its source, I could be back among the people, and one of those cars was bound to stop and take me home. The driver would see a boy standing by the side of the road and pull off on the berm ahead of me. I would wait for her, the woman in the red coat, to e save me. I would not run away, but wait there and try not thten her as before. She would lower herself to eye level, sweeping her hair back from her face. "Who are you?" I would summon up the fay parents and my little sister, tell the woman with the pale green eyes where I lived, how to get home. She would bid me climb into her car. Sitting beside her, Id tell her my tale, and she would put her hand around the bay head, saying everything would be all right. Id jump from that car as we stopped before my house, my mother hanging laundry on the clothesline, my sister waddling toward me in her yellow dress, her arms aflutter. "Ive found your boy," the woman would say, and my father would pull up in a red fire engine. "Weve been looking all over for you for a long time." Later, after fried chi and biscuits, wed e back to the woods and rescue my friends Smaolach, Luchóg, and Speck, who could live with us and go to school and e home warm, safe, and sound. All I had to do was to trate and follow the sounds of civilization. I looked to the horizon as far as possible, but saw no sign. I listened, but heard nothing. I tried to remember, but could not recall my name.
Pocketing my three tokens, I turned over the dar ahe Shakespeare aloud to myself: "But if the while I think on thee, dear friend ..." The people sleeping down below in the hollow were my friends. I took out my pencil and began to write all I could remember. Many a year has passed between then and now, and I have written this story more than once, but that was the beginning, aloop the ridge. My fingers stiffened in the cold. As I walked down to the camp, the bedcovers called out to me with the promise of warm dreams.
Not long after Specks valentine, anift landed in my lap. Luchóg brought it back from one of his pirating expeditions, unpag his sack like Santa at the Christmas tree. "And this, little treasure, is for you. The sum-all and be-all of your earthly desires. Enough space here for your every dream. Mirairacles, and dry, too. Paper."
He handed me a bound blaotebook, the kind schoolchildren use for their lessons, the pages lio ehe proper plat of words aences. On the front was the name of the school and the title RULED POSITION BOOK. On the back was a small box with this printed warning: In the event of atomic attack: close the shades, lie down under your desk. Do not paniside, the author of the book, Thomas Mes, had written his name on the flyleaf.
The weathered pages were filled with his virtually indecipherable penmanship, the ink a rusty brown. As far as I could tell, it was a story, or part of a story, because on the last page, the writing ends mid-senteh the rather cryptic See Other Book written on the inside back cover. Over the years, I tried to read it, but the point of the story eluded me. The beauty of the position book for me stemmed from Mess self-indulgence. He had written on only one side of the eighty-eight sheets of paper. I turhe book upside-down and wrote my trary story in the opposite dire. While that journal is in ashes now with so much else, I attest to its basitents: a naturalists journal rec my observations of life in the forest, plete with drawings of found objects—a diary of the best years of my life.
My icle and dar helped me track the passing time, which fell into an easy rhythm. I kept up hope for years, but no one ever came for me. Heartbreak ran like an undercurrent of time, but despair would e and go like the shadow of clouds. Those years were mixed with the happiness brought by my friends and panions, and as I aged inside, a casual nothing drowhe boy.
The snows stopped by mid-March most years, and a few weeks later the ice would melt, green life would bud, is hatch, birds return, fish and frogs ready for the catg. Spring instantly restored our energies, the lengthening light corresponding to our i in exploration. We would throw off our hides and ruined blas, shed our jackets and shoes. The first warm day in May, nine of us would go down to the river and bathe our stinking bodies, drown the vermin living in our hair, scrape off the caked dirt and scum. Once, Blomma had stolen a bar of soap from a gas station, and we scrubbed it away to a splinter in a single renewing bath. Pale bodies on a pebbly shore, rubbed pink and .
The dandelions blossomed from nowhere, and the spring onions sprouted in the meadows, and our Onions would ge herself, eating the bulbs and grass, stainieeth and mouth green, reeking, i, until her skin itself smelled pu and bittersweet. Luchóg and Smaolach distilled the dandelions into a potent brew. My dar helped track the parade of berries strawberries in June, followed by wild blueberries, gooseberries, elderberries, and more. In a patch of forest over the ridge, Sped I found a red army of raspberries invading a hillside, and we spent many a July day gathering sweetness among the thorns. Blackberries ripened last, and I am sad every time to see the first potful at our evenis, for those black jewels are a harbinger of summers end.
The i-eaters among us rejoiced at the abundance of the warm season, although bugs are a decidedly acquired taste. Each of the faeries had their own peculiar pleasures and preferred capturing teiques. Ragno ate only flies, which he plucked from spiderwebs. Béka was a gourmand, taking anything that crawled, flew, slithered, led his way. He would search out a y of termites in a rotting log, a party of slugs in the mire, or a maggoty carcass, and dig in ahose disgusting creatures raw. Sitting patiently by a small fire, he snatched moths out of the air with his tongue when they flew too close to his face. Chavisory was another notorious bug-eater, but at least she cooked them. I could tolerate the grubs and queens she baked on a heated rotil they popped, as brown and crispy as ba. Cricket legs tend to sti your teeth, and ants, if not roasted first, will bite your tongue and throat on the way down.
I had never killed a living thing before ing to the woods, but we were hunter-gatherers, and without an occasional bit of protein in the diet, all of us would suffer. We took squirrels, moles, mice, fish, and birds, although the eggs themselves were too great a hassle to steal from the . Anything bigger—such as a dead deer—wed sge. I do not care for things that have been dead a long time. In late summer and early fall, in particular, the tribe would diogether on an unfortunate creature roasted on a spit. Nothis a rabbit under a starry night. But, as Speck would say, every idyll succumbs to desire.
Such a moment in my fourth year in the woods stands above all the rest. Sped I had strayed from camp, and she showed me the way to the grove where honeybees had hidden their hive. We stopped at an old gray dogwood.
"Climb up there, Aniday, and reaside, and youll find the sweetest ar."
As anded, I shinnied up the trunk, despite the buzzing of the bees, and ioward the hollow. From my purchase in the branches, I could see her upturned face, eyes aglow with expectation.
"Go on," she hollered from below. "Be careful. Dont make them mad."
The first sting startled me like a pinprick, the sed and third caused pain, but I was determined. I could smell the honey before I felt it and could feel it before I saw it. Hands and wrists swollen with venom, my fad bare skied red, I fell from the limb to the forest floor with handfuls of honeybs. She looked down at me with dismay and gratitude. We ran from the angry swarm and lost them on a hillside slaoward the sun. Lying in the long new grass, we sucked every drop of honey and ate the waxy bs until our lips and s and hands gummed up. Drunk ouff, the ar heavy in our stomachs, we luxuriated in the sweet ache. When we had licked the honey, she began to pull the remaining stingers from my fad hands, smiling at my every wince. When she removed the last dagger from my hand, Speck tur over and kissed my palm.
"You are su idiot, Aniday." But her eyes betrayed her words, and her smile flashed as briefly as lightning rending the summer sky.
CHAPTER 9
"Listen to this." My friend Oscar put a record ourntable a down the needle with care. The 45 popped and hissed; then the melody line rose, followed by the four-part doo-wop, "Earth Angel" by The Penguins or "Gee" by The Crows, and hed sit ba the edge of the bed, close his eyes, and pull apart those different harmonies, first singing tenor and so on through the bass. Or hed put on a new jazz riff by Miles or maybe Dave Brubed pick out the terpoint, cog his ear to the nearly inaudible piano underh the horns. All through high school wed spend hours in his room, idly listening to his vast eclectic record colle, analyzing and arguing over the more subtle points of the positions. Oscar Loves passion for music put my ambitions to shame. In high school, he was niamed "The White Negro," as he was so alien from the rest of the crowd, so cool, so in his head all the time. Oscar was su outsider, he made me feel normal by parison. And even though he was a year ahead of me, he weled me into his life. My father thought Oscar wilder than Brando, but my mother saw beh the facade and loved him like a son. He was the first person I approached about f a band.
Oscar stuck with me from its beginning as The Henry Day Five through every version: The Henry Day Four, The Four Horsemen, Henry and the Daylights, The Daydreamers, and lastly, simply Henry Day. Unfortunately, we could not keep the same group together for more than a few months at a time: Our first drummer dropped out of high school and enlisted in the MarineCorps; our best guitarist moved away when his father was transferred to Davenport, Iowa. Most of the guys quit because they couldnt cut it as musis. Only Oscar and his clari persisted. We stayed together for two reasons: one, he could play a mean li any horn, particularly his beloved stick; two, he was old enough to drive and had his own car—a pristine 54 red and white Bel Air. We played everything from high school dao weddings and the occasional night at a club. Discriminating by ear and not by any preceived notion of cool, we could play any kind of music for any crowd.
After a jazz performance where we particularly killed the crowd, Oscar drove us home, radio blaring, the boys in a great mood. He dropped off the others, and late that summer night we parked in front of my parents house. Moths danced crazily in the headlights, and the rhythmic cricket song underscored the silehe stars and a half-moon dotted the languid sky. We got out and sat on the hood of the Bel Air, looking out into the darkness, not wanting the night to end.
"Man, we were gas," he said. "We slayed them. Did you see that guy when we did Hey Now, like he never heard a sound like that before?"
"Im bout worn-out, man."
"Oh, you were so cool, so cool."
"Youre not bad yourself." I hitched myself farther up on the car to stop skidding off the hood. My feet did not quite reach the ground, so I swung them in time to a tune in my head. Oscar removed the cigarette he had stashed behind his ear, and with a snap from his lighter he lit it, and into the night sky he blew sms, eae breaking its predecessor.
"Whered you learn to play, Day? I mean, youre still a kid. Only fifteen, right?"
"Practice, man, practice."
He quit looking at the stars and turo face me. "You practice all you want. Practice dont give you soul."
"Ive been taking lessons for the past few years. Iy. With a guy named Martin who used to play with the Phil. The classid all. It makes it easier to uand the musieath it all."
"I dig that." He handed me the cigarette, and I took a deep drag, knowing he had laced it with marijuana.
"But sometimes I feel like Im being torn in two. My mom and dad wao keep going to lessons with Mr. Martin. You know, the symphony or a soloist."
"Like Liberace." gled.
"Shut up."
"Fairy."
"Shut up." I punched him on the shoulder.
"Easy, man." He rubbed his arm. "You could do it, though, whatever you want. Im good, but youre out of this world. Like youve been at it all your life or you were born that way."
Maybe the dope made me say it, or maybe it was the bination of the summer night, the post-performance high, or the fact that Oscar was my first true friend. Or maybe I was dying to tell someone, anyone.
"Ive got a fession, Oscar. Im not Henry Day at all, but a hobgoblin that livebbr>..d in the woods for a long, long time."
He giggled so hard, a stream of smoke poured out of his nostrils.
"Seriously, maole the real Henry Day, kidnapped him, and I ged into him. We switched places, but nobody knows. Im living his life, and I guess hes living mine. And once upon a time, I was somebody else, before I became a geling. I was a boy in Germany or somewhere where they spoke German. I dont remember, but it es bae in bits and pieces. And I played piano there a long time ago, until the gelings came and stole me. And now Im back among the humans, and I hardly remember anything about the past, but its like Im part Henry Day and part who I used to be. And I must have been one usi way back when, because thats the only explanation."
"Thats pretty good, man. So wheres the real Henry?"
"Out in the woods somewhere. Or dead maybe. He could be dead; it happens sometimes. But probably hiding out in the woods."
"Like he could be wat us right now?" He jumped off the car and whispered into the darkness. "Henry? Is that you?"
"Shut up, man. Its possible. But theyre afraid of people, that much I know."
"The whosits?"
"The gelings. Thats why you never see them."
"Why they so afraid of us? Seems like we should be afraid of them."
"Used to be that way, man, but people stopped believing in myths and fairy tales."
"But what if Henrys out there, watg us right now, wanting to get his body back, and hes creeping up, man, to get you?" And he reached out quickly and snatched my ankle.
I screamed, embarrassed to be fooled by such a simple joke. Oscar sprawled on the hood of the car, laughing at me. "Youve been watg too many horror movies, man."
"No, the truth is ..." I socked him on the arm.
"And theres pods in your cellar, right?"
I wao punch him again, but then I realized how ridiy story sounded, and I started laughing, too. If he remembered that night at all, Osever again brought up the matter, and maybe he thought I was halluating. He drove off, cag to himself, and I felt empty after the truth had been told. My impersonation of Henry Day had succeeded so well that no one suspected the real story. Even my father, a natural skeptic, believed in me, or at least kept his doubts hidden deep in his soul.
The ground floor of our house was as dark and silent as a cave. Upstairs everyone slept soundly. I turned o light and poured a drink of water. Attracted to the brightness, moths crashed and flapped up against the window s. They scritched up and down, a sound menag and foreboding. I turned off the lights, and they flew away. In the new darkness, I searched for a moving shadow, listened for footsteps among the trees, but nothing stirred. I crept upstairs to chey sisters.
When the girls were young children, I often feared that Mary and Elizabeth would be snatched away by the hobgoblins and two gelings would be left in their place. I kheir ways, their tricks aions, and also khey could strike the same family twice, or, ihree times. Not far from here, the stoes, ba the 1770s, the Church family had seven children stolen and replaced by gelings, one by one, each at age seven, until there were no Churches at all, only simulacra, and pity those poor parents with an alien brood. My sisters were as susceptible, and I watched for the telltale ges in behavior or appearance—a sudden winsomeness, a certaiat from life—that would reveal a possible switch.
I warhe twins to stay out of the woods or any shadowy places. "Dangerous snakes and bears and wildcats wait near our patch of land. Do not talk ters. Why go out to play," Id ask, "when there is something perfectly good and iing on television?"
"But I like expl," Elizabeth said.
"How will we ever find our way bae if we never leave home?" Mary added.
"Did you ever see a timber rattler? Well, I have, and copperheads and water mocs. Oe and youre paralyzed, your limbs go black, then youre dead. Do you think you outrun or outclimb a bear? They climb trees better than cats, and they would grab y and gobble you up. Have you ever seen a ra foaming at the mouth?"
"I never get to see anything," Elizabeth cried.
"How we ever avoid danger if we dont know what danger is?" Mary asked.
"Its out there. Yo藏书网u could trip and fall over an old log and break y and nobody would ever find you. Or you could be caught in a blizzard with the wind blowing every which way until you t find your own front door, and then theyd find you the m, frozen like a Popsicle, not te from home."
"Enough!" They shouted in unison a off to watch Howdy Doody or Romper Room. I knew, however, that while I was at school or rehearsing with the band, they would ign..ore my cautions. Theyd e home with grass stains on their knees and bottoms, ticks on their bare skin, twigs in their curls, frogs in their overalls, and the smell of danger on their breath.
But that night they were sleeping lambs, and two doors down my parents snored. My father called out my name in his sleep, but I dared not a such a late hour. The house grew preternaturally still. I had told my darkest secret with no sequences, so I went to bed, safe as ever.
They say that one never fets ones first love, but I am chagrio admit that I do not remember her name or much else about her—other than the fact that she was the first girl I saw naked. For the sake of the story, Ill call her Sally. Maybe that actually was her name. After the summer of my fession to Oscar, I resumed my lessons with Mr. Martin, and there she was. She had departed at the end of the school year aurned a different creature— someoo be desired, a fetish, an obsession. I am as guilty of anonymous lust as anyone, but it was she who e. Her affes I gratefully accepted without pause. I had been notig her curves for months, before she gathered the ce to speak to me at the winter recital. We stood together backstage in our formal wear, enduring the wait for our individual turns at the piano. The you kids went first, fony is best served as an appetizer.
"Where did you learn to play?" Sally whispered over an agly slow mi.
&quht here. I mean with Mr. Martin."
"You play out of this world." She smiled, and, buoyed by her remarks, I gave my most inspired recital. In the weeks and months that followed, we slowly got to know each other. She would hang around the studio listening to me play the same piece over and over, Mr. Martin whispering gruffly, "Adagio, adagio." We arrao have lunch together on Saturdays. Over sandwiches spread out on waxed paper, wed chat about that days lessons. I usually had a few dollars in my pocket from performances, so we could go to a show or stop for an ice cream or a soda. Our versatioered around the kinds of subjects fifteen-year-olds talk about: school, friends, unbelievable parents, and, in our case, the piano. Or rather, I talked about musiposers, Mr. Martin, records, the affinities of jazz with the classics, and all sorts of nattering theories of mi was not a versation, more like a monologue. I did not know how to listen, how to draw her out, or how to be quiet and enjoy her pany. She may well have been a lovely person.
When the sun began to heat up the spring air, we took a stroll to the park, a place I normally avoided because of its resemblao the forest. But the daffodils were in flower, and it seemed perfectly romantic. The city had turned on the fountain, ann of spring, a by the waters edge, watg the cascade for a long time. I did not know how to do what I wao do, how to ask, what to say, in what manner even to broach the subject. Sally saved me.
"Henry?" she asked, her voice rising an octave. "Henry, weve been taking walks and having lunch together and going to the movies for over three months, and in all that time, Ive wondered: Do you like me?"
"Of course I do."
"If you like me, like you say, how e you ry to hold my hand?"
I took her hand in mine, surprised by the heat in her fingers, the perspiration in her palm.
"And how e youve ried to kiss me?"
For the first time, I stared her straight in the eyes. She looked as if she were trying to express some metaphysical question. Not knowing how to kiss, I did so in haste, a now not having lingered awhile, if only to remember the sensation. She ran her fihrough my brilliantined hair, which produced an ued rea, and I copied her, but a riddle percolated through my mind. I had no idea what to do . Without her sudden discovery of a o catch a streetcar, we might still be sitting there, stupidly staring into each others faces. On the way baeet my father, I took apart my emotions. While I "loved" my family by this point in my human life, I had never "loved" a stranger. Its voluntary and a tremendous risk. The emotion is further fused by the matter of lust. I ted the hours between Saturdays, anxious to see her.
Thank goodness she took the initiative. While we were neg in the dark baly of the Pener, she grabbed my hand and placed it on her breast, and her whole body fluttered at my touch. She was the one who suggested everything, who thought to nibble ears, who rubbed the first thigh. We rarely spoke when we were together anymore, and I did not know what Sally was scheming or, for that matter, if she was thinking at all. No wonder I loved the girl, whatever her name was, and when she suggested that I feign an illo get out of Mr. Martins class, I gladly plied.
We rode the streetcar to her parents home on the South Side. Climbing the hill to her house in the bright sunshine, I started to sweat, but Sally, who was used to the hike, skipped up the sidewalk, teasing that I could not keep up. Her home was a tiny perch, ging to the side of a rock. Her parents were gone, she assured me, for the whole day on a drive out to the try.
"We have the place to ourselves. Would you like a lemonade?"
She might as well have been wearing an apron, and I smoking a pipe. She brought the drinks and sat on the couch. I drank mine in a single swig and sat on her fathers easy chair. We sat; we waited. I heard a crash of cymbals in my minds ear.
"Why dont you e sit beside me, Henry?"
Obedient pup, I trotted over with a wagging tail and lolling tongue. Our fingers interlocked. I smiled. She smiled. A long kiss—how long you kiss? My hand on her bare stomach beh her blouse triggered a pent-up primal urge. I circled my way north. She grabbed my wrist.
"Henry, Henry. This is all too much." Sally panted and fanned herself with her fluttering hands. I rolled aursed my lips, and blew. How could I have misinterpreted her signals?
Sally undressed so quickly that I almost failed to notice the transition. As if pushing a button, off came her blouse and bra, her skirt, slip, socks, and underwear. Through the whole act, she brazenly faced me, smiliifically. I did love her. Of course, I had seen pictures in the museum, Bettie Page pinups and French postcards, but images lack breadth ah, and art isnt life. Part of me pulled forward, desperate to lay my hands upon her skin, but the mere possibility held me back. I took a step in her dire.
"No, no, no. Ive showed you mine; now you have to show me yours."
Not since a young boy at the swimming hole had I taken off my clothes in front of anyone else, much less a stranger, and I was embarrassed at the prospect. But it is hard to refuse when a naked girl makes the request. So I stripped, the whole time watg her watg me. I had progressed as far as my boxers when I noticed that she had a small triangle of hair at the notch of her, and I was pletely bare. Hoping that this dition eculi?ar to the female species, I pulled down my shorts, and a look of horror and dismay crossed her face. She gasped and put her hand in front of her mouth. I looked down and then looked back up at her, deeply perplexed.
"Oh my God, Henry," she said, "you look like a little boy."
I covered up.
"Thats the smallest one Ive ever seen."
I angrily retrieved my clothes from the floor.
"Im sorry but you look like my eight-year-old cousin." Sally began to pick up her clothes off the floor. "Henry, dont be mad."
But I was mad, not so much at her as at myself. I knew from the moment she spoke what I had fotten. In most respects, I appeared all of fifteen, but I had ed one of the more important parts. As I dressed, humiliated, I thought of all the pain and suffering of the past few years. The baby teeth I wrenched out of my mouth, the stretg and pulling and pushing of bones and muscle and skin to grow into adolesce. But I had fotten about puberty. She pleaded with me to stay, apologized for laughing at me, even saying at one point that size didnt matter, that it was actually kind of cute, but nothing she could have said or done would have relieved my shame. I never spoke tain, except for the most basic greetings. She disappeared from my life, as if stolen away, and I wonder now if she ever fave me or fot that afternoon.
Stretg remedied my situation, but the exercise pained me and caused ued sequehe first was the curious sensation that typically ended in the same messy way, but, more iingly, I found that by imagining Sally or any other alluring thing, the results were a fone clusion. But thinking on unpleasant things—the forest, baseball, arpeggios—I could postpone, or avoid altogether, the de. The sed oute is somewhat more discerting to report. Maybe because the squeaking bedsprings were beginning to annoy him, my father burst into my room and caught me one night, red-handed so to speak, although I was pletely under cover. He rolled his eyes toward the ceiling.
"Henry, what are you doing?"
I stopped. There was an i explanation, which I could not reveal.
"Dont think I dont know."
Know what? I wao ask.
"You will go blind if you keep at it."
I blinked my eyes.
He left the room and I rolled over, pressing my face against the cool pillow. My powers were diminishing over time. Farsightedness, distance hearing, speed of foot—all had virtually disappeared, and my ability to manipulate my appearance had deteriorated. More and more, I was being the human I had wao be, but instead of rejoig iuation, I sagged into the mattress, hid beh the sheets. I punched my pillow and tortured the in a vain effort to get fortable. Any hopes for pleasure subsided along with my ere. In pleasures place, a ragged loneliness ebbed. I felt stu a never-ending childhood, doomed to living uheir trol, a dozen suspicious scowls each day from my false parents. In the forest, I had to mark time and take my turn as a geling, but the years had seemed like days. In the ay of adolesce, the days were like years. And nights could be endless.
Several hours later, I woke in a sweat and threw off the coing to the window to let in the fresh air, I spotted out on the lawn, in the dead of night, the red ash of a cigarette, and picked out the dark figure of my father, staring into the dark wood, as if waiting for something t out from the shadows between trees. Wheuro e baside, Dad looked up at my room and saw me framed in the windowpanes, watg him, but he never said a word about it.
CHAPTER 10
The full mooed a halo behind Igels head and evoked the memory of saints and is in the church I could barely remember. By his side stood Luchóg. Both were dressed for travel in jackets and shoes to ward off the frost.
"Aniday, get up a dressed. Youre ing with us this m."
"M?" I rubbed the sleep from my eyes. "Its the middle of the night."
"The sunll be up in no time. Youd best be quick," Luchóg advised.
We stole along the hidden trails through the forest, leaping like rabbits, scrambling through brambles, c ground with great speed and no pause. Clouds passed beh the moon, first hiding and then revealing the landscape. The trail led across empty roads, our feet sounding on the pavement. We darted through open spaces, through a field of stalks that rustled and hummed as we rolled between rows, past a barn big against the dark sky and a farmhouse yellow in the skittish moonlight. Iall, a cow lowed at our fleeting presence. A dog barked once. Past the farm, another patch of trees, another road, and then we were crossing a stream from the dizzyi of a bridge. On the far side, Igel led us into a ditch that paralleled the road, and we crouched low in its cover. The sky began to lighten to a deep violet. An engine coughed and soon a milk truck passed by on the road above.
"We started too late," Igel said. "Hell have to be more careful now. Aniday, this m we will test how far youve e to being one of us."
Looking down the road, I spied the milk truck stopping at a dreary bungalow oskirts of藏书网 tow door stood a small general store with a single gasoline pump out front. The milkman, all in white, desded from his perd carried his basket to the side door, returning briskly with two glass empties that ked against the wire. Caught up in the se, I nearly fot to follow my rades as they slithered ahead. I reached them in a culvert not ten yards from the gas station, and they were whispering and pointing in dire spiracy. The object of desire began to take shape ihering light. Atop the pump, a coffee mug shone like a white bea.
"Go get that cup," Igel ordered. "Dont be seen."
The rising sun pushed away the deeper hues of the night, and aation on my part risked discovery. It was a simple task to sprint across the grass and pavement, grab the cup, and dash back to our hiding place. Fear held me back.
"Take off your shoes," Igel advised. "Theyll never hear you."
I slipped off my brogans and ran to the pump, its red-winged horse vaulting toward the heavens, and I grasped the mug and turo go, when an ued noise froze me to the spot. Glass on glass. I imagihe station owner reag into the milk box, deteg a peculiar motion at the gas pump, and h to stop me. But no such thing happened. A s door whined and closed with a bang. I swallowed and trotted bay rades, holding up the mug in triumph.
"You done well, little treasure."
"While you dallied in the open"—Igel stared down—"I went ahead for the milk."
The bottle was already open. Without shaking down the half-inch of cream, Igel poured me some first, and we washed down the half-gallon like three drunkards, toasting the dawn. ilk settled into my stomach, swelling my belly, causio swoon and drowse away the m with my fellow thieves in a ditch.
At midday, we woke from our slumber and moved closer to town in measured steps, hiding among the shadows, halting at the hint of any people. Stopping only at places that appeared to be empty, homes with nobody inside, we pried, snooped, and huhe three of us clambered over a low stone wall and stole armloads of fruit from a pear tree. Each bite was a sweet sin, aook far more than we could eat. I hated to abandon the pears, but we tossed most of them back over the wall and into the orchard, leaving them to rot in the sun. From a clothesline laundry, we each took a , fresh shirt, and I swiped a white sweater for Speck. Luchóg pocketed one sock from a hanging pair. "Tradition." He grinned like the Cheshire Cat. "The mystery of the missing sock from every washing day."
As daylight began its slow fade, the children appeared with their books and satchels, and an hour or two later came the fathers in their big automobiles. We waited for sundown, and after that, lights on and lights out. Good-nights begot goodnights, and houses popped into darkness like bubbles in a . Here and there a lamp burned, betraying perhaps some lonesome soul reading past midnight or a wandering insomniac or fetful bachelor. Like a battlefield general, Igel studied these signs of time before we moved out into the streets.
Years had passed since Id last looked through the storefront window of the toy shop or felt the rough surface of brick ers. The tow other-worldly, yet I could not pass by a single place without experieng a flood of associations and memories. At the gates of the Catholic church, I heard Latin raised by a phantom chorus. The motionless dy e in front of the barbershht back smells of witch hazel and the clip of scissors. Mailboxes on the er reminded me of valentines and birthday cards. My school jured a picture of children streaming out by the dozens from its doubledoors, screaming for summer. For all their familiarity, however, the streets uled me with their ers and straight lihe dead weight of walls, the clear boundaries of windows. The repetitive architecture bore down like a walled maze.The signs and words and admonitions—STOP, EAT HERE, SAME DAY DRY ING; YOU DESERVE A COLOR TV—did not illuminate any mystery, but only left me indifferent to reading their stant messages. At last, we came to our target.
Luchóg climbed up to a window and slipped through a space that seemed muall and narrow. He collapsed like a mouse going uhe door. Standing in the alleyway, Igel and I kept lookout until he heard the soft click of the front lock; he guided us up the stairs to the market. As he opehe door, Luchóg gave us a wan grin, and Igel tousled his hair. Silently, we proceeded down the row of goods, past the Ovaltine and Bosco, cereal in bright boxes, s of vegetables, fruit, fish, a. Every new food tempted me, but Igel would not allow any delay, and he ordered me in a whisper to "e here right now." They crouched by bags otom row, and Igel ripped one open with a slice of his sharp thumbnail. He licked his fiip, dipped it in the powder, then tasted it.
"Bah ... flour."
He moved a few paces aed the procedure.
"Worse ... sugar."
"That stuff will kill you," Luchóg said.
"Excuse me," I interrupted, "but I read. What are you looking for?"
Luchóg looked at me as if the question was the most preposterous thing hed ever heard. "Salt, man, salt."
I poio the bottom shelf, that even without the gift of language, one might reize the picture of the old-fashioned girl under her umbrella, leaving behind ９9ｌｉb?rail of salt. "When It Rains, It Pours," I said, but they seemed uo take my meaning. We loaded our rucksacks with as much as could be carried ahe store by the front door, a deflatiure, sidering the smasbord inside. Our ade the journey home longer and more arduous, and we did not reach camp until daybreak. The salt, as I would later discover, was used to preserve meat and fish for the lean months, but at the time, I felt as if we had searched the wide seas for treasure and sailed into port with a chest filled with sand.
When she was hahe new sweater, Specks eyes widened with surprise and delight. She peeled off the tattered jersey she had worn for months and lifted the sweater over her head, sliding her arms inside like two eels. The brief sight of her bare skin uled me, and I looked away. She sat on a bla, curled up her legs beh her bottom, and bade me sit beside her.
"Tell me, O Great Hunter, about your visit to the old world. Ret your mishaps and brave deeds. Give us a story."
"Theres not much to say. We went to the store for salt. But I saw a school and a church, and we swiped a bottle of milk." I reached into my pocket and brought out a soft, overripe pear. "I brought this back, too."
She set the pear on the ground. "Tell me more. What else did you see? How did the world make you feel?"
"Like I was remembering and fetting at the same time. When I stepped into lamplight, my shadoeared, sometimes several shadows, but oside the circle, they all disappeared."
"Youve seen shadows before. Brighter lights throw harder shadows."
"It is a strange light, and the world is full of straight lines and edges. The ers of their walls looked as sharp as a k is unreal and a bit scary."
"Thats just a trick of your imagination. Write your impressions in your book." Speck fihe hem of her sweater. "Speaking of books, did you see the library?"
"Library?"
"Where they keep the books, Aniday. You didhe library?"
"I had fotten all about it." But as we talked, I could recall the stacks of well-worn books, the hushing librarian, quiet men and i women bowing forward, reading. My mother had takehere. My mother. "I used to go there, Speck. They let me take home books and bring them back when I was finished. I got a paper card and signed my name on a slip at the back of the book."
"You remember."
"But I dont remember what I wrote. I didnt write Aniday."
She picked up the pear and ied it for soft spots. "Get me a knife, Aniday, and Ill cut this in half. And if yood, Ill take you to the library to see the books."
Rather than leaving in the middle of the night as before, we walked out of camp at noon on a crisp October day without so much as a fare-thee-well. Luchóg, Speck, and I followed the same trail into town, but we took our time, as if strolling through the park, not wanting to reach the streets until dusk. A broad highway severed the woods, and we had to wait for a long break iraffic. I sed the cars on the ce that the lady in the red ight drive by, but our vantage point was too far from the road to make out any of the drivers.
At the gas station on the edge of town, two boys circled the pump on their bicycles, trag lazy arcs, enjoying their last fun in the remnant sunlight. Their mother called them for dinner, but before I could see her face, she vanished behind a closing door. Luchóg leading, we moved across the road in single file. Halfway across the asphalt, he froze and pricked his ears to the west. I heard nothing, but in my bones sehe ele>ric approach of danger moving quickly as a summer storm. A moments indecision, and we lost our advantage. Springing from the darkness, the dogs were nearly upon us before Speck grabbed my hand and shouted, "Run!"
Teeth snapping, the pair split to chase us in a melee of barks and growls. The bigger dog, a muscular shepherd, went after Luchóg as he sprioward town. Sped I raced back to the woods, a hound yelping in pursuit. When we reached the trees, she yanked me forward and up, so that I was six feet off the ground before realizing I was climbing a sycamore. Speck turned and faced the dog, which leapt for her, but she stepped to the side, grabbed the beast by the scruff of the neck, and flung it into the bushes. The dog cried in the air, snapped branches when it landed, and scrambled to its feet i pain and fusion. Looking back over its shoulder at this girl, he tucked his tail between his legs and slunk away.
ing down the road from the other dire, the German shepherd trotted alongside Luchóg as if he were a longtime pet. They stopped as one in front of us, and the dog wagged its tail and licked Luchógs fingers. "Do you remember the last geling, Speck? The German boy?"
"Youre not supposed to mention—"
"He came in handy with this bloody e. I was running for my life when I suddenly remembered that old lullaby our mao sing."
"Guten Abend?"
He sang, "Guten Abend, gut Nacht, mit Rosen bedacht," and the dog whimpered. Luchóg stroked the shepherd between the ears. "Turns out music doth soothe the savage beast."
"Breast," she said. "The quote is: Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast."
"Dont tell him," Luchóg burst out. "Auf Wiedersehen, Schatzi. Go on home." The dog trotted off.
"That was scary," I said.
Feigning nonchalance, Luchóg rolled a cigarette. "Could have been worse. Could have been people."
"If we meet somebody, play dumb," Spestructed. "Theyll think were a bunch of kids and tell us to go on home. Nod your head when I talk and dont say a word." I looked around the empty streets, half hoping for an enter, but all the people seemed to be i dinner, bathing the childreing ready for bed. In many homes, ahly blue glow emanated from within.
The library squatted stately in the middle of a tree-lined block. Speck moved as if she had passed this way many times before, and the problem of locked doors was easily circumvented. Luchóg led us around the back to a staircase and pointed out a gap where the crete had separated from the main wall.
"I dont think I fit through that. My heads too big, and Im not that skinny."
"Luchóg is a mouse," Speck said. "Watd learn."
He told me the secret of softening ones bohe gist is to think like a mouse or a bat, simply realizing ones own flexibility. "It will hurt the first time, lad, like every good thing, but theres no trick to it. A matter of faith. And practice."
He disappeared into the crack, and Speck followed him, exhaling a single drawn-out sigh. Pushing through that narrow space hurt more than I say. The abrasions on my temples took weeks to heal. After softening myself, I had to remember to keep my muscles tense for a while or risk an arm or a leg going limp. But Luchóg was right—with practice, squeezing became sed nature.
Underh the library, the crawlspace was dark and foreboding, so when Speck struck a match, the flame glowed with hope. She touched the flame to a dlewick, and with the dle lit a hurrie lamp that smelled of must and kerosene. Each successive illuminatiht the dimensions aures of the room into sharper focus. The back of the building had been built on a slight slope, so that the floor ined from our entranceway, where one could stand quite fortably, rising to the opposite wall, where one could rest only by sitting. I t te9９lｉｂ.ll you how many times I bumped my head on the ceiling by that far wall. The chamber had been made actally, a sort of hollow beh a new addition to the old library building. Si did not rest on the same foundation, the room was hotter than outside during the summer and bone-cold in the winter. By lamplight I could see that someone had added a few homey touches—a brace s, a few drinking vessels, and, in the northwest er, a sort of easy chair fashioned from salvaged blas. Luchóg began fiddling with his cigarette pouch, and Speck ordered him out, if he must smoke. Grumbling, he scooted through the crack.
"So what do you think, Aniday? A bit rustic, but still ... civilization."
"Its grand."
"You havehe best part. The whole reason I brought you here." Speck motioned me to follow, and we scuttled up the ine to the back wall. She reached up, turned out a knob, and a panel dropped from the ceiling. In a flash, she hoisted herself up through the hole and was gone. I k on the spot, waiting for her return, looking up through the empty space. All at once, her face appeared in the frame.
"Are you ing or not?" she whispered.
I followed her into the library. The pale light from our chamber below dissipated in the room, but I could still make out—my heart leapt at the sight—row after row, shelf above shelf, floor to ceiling, a city of books. Speck turo me and asked, "Now, what shall we read first?"
CHAPTER 11
The end, when it arrived, proved both timely and apt. Not only had I learned everything Mr. Martin had to offer, but I was sick of it all—the practice, the repertoire, the discipline, and the ennui of eighty-eight keys. By the time I turned sixteen, I began looking for an excuse to quit, a way out that would not break my mothers heart. The truth is that while I am a very good pianist, great even, I was never sublime. Yes, by far the best in our remote hamlet, no doubt our er of the state, maybe the best from border to border, but beyond that, no. I lacked the passion, the ing fire, to be a world-class pianist. Looking forward, the alternative was dreadful. To end up like old Mr. Martin himself, teag others after a sed-rate career? I would rather play in a bordello.
Over breakfast one m, I opened with this gambit: "Mom, I dont think Im going to get aer."
"Better than what?" she asked, whipping eggs.
"At the piano, at music. I think its as far as I go."
She poured the mess into a skillet, the eggs sizzling as they hit butter and hot iron, and said nothing while she stirred. She served me a plate of eggs and toast, and I ate them in silence. Coffee cup in hand, she sat across the table from me. "Henry," she said softly, wanting my attention. "Do you remember the day when you were a little boy and ran away from home?"
I did not, but I nodded in the affirmative between bites.
"It was a bright day and hot, hotter than Hades. I wanted a bath to cool off. The heats ohing I t get used to. And I asked you to mind Mary and Elizabeth, and you disappeared into the forest. Do you remember that?"
There was no way I could remember, but I nodded my head as I swallowed the last slug e juice.
"I put the girls to bed and came back down, but you were gone." Her eyes welled up as she reted the experience. "We looked over hill and yon but couldnt find you. As the day wore on, I called your father to e home, and theelephohe polid the firemen, and we were all looking for you for hours, calling out your o the night." She looked past me, as if reliving the experien her minds eye.
"Any mgs, Mom?"
She waved her spoon toward the stove, and I helped myself. "When it grew dark, I grew afraid for you. Who knows what lives out in that forest? I knew a woman on Donegal whose baby was stolen from her. Shed go to pick blackberries a her child sleeping on a bla on a bright summer day, and when she came back, the baby was gone, and they never did find it, poor thing, not a trace. All that remained was an impressio on the grass."
I peppered my eggs and dug in.
"I thought of you lost and wanting your mother, and I couldo you, and I prayed to God that youd e home. When they found you, it was like a sed ce. Quitting would be throwing away your sed ce, yod-given gift. Its a blessing and you should use your talent."
"Late for school." I mopped the plate with a heel of bread, kissed the top of her head, aed. Before I made it down the front steps, I regretted not being more forceful. Most of my life has been ruled by indecision, and I am grateful when fate intercedes, relieving me from choid responsibility for my as.
By the time of the winter recital that year, just the sight and sound of the piano made my stomach . I could not disappoint my parents by quitting Mr. Martin altogether, so I pretehat all was well. We arrived early, at the cert hall, and I left my family at the door to find their seats while I moped about backstage. The folderol surrounding the recitals remained unged. In the wings of the theater, students milled about, mentally preparing for their turns, practig their fingering on any flat surface. Mr. Martin paced among us, ting heads, reassuring the stage-frightehe inpetent, and the relut. "You are my prize pupil," he said. "The best Ive ever taught. The only real piano player in the whole bunch. Make them cry, Henry." And with that, he pinned a ation on my lapel. He swirled and parted the curtains to the brightness of the footlights to wele the assemblage. My performance was the grand finale, so I had time to duck out the bad smoke a Camel pinched from my fathers pack. A winters night had fallen, clear and cold. A rat, startled by my presen the alley, stopped and stared at me. I showed the vermin my teeth, hissed and glowered, but I could not scare it. Once upon a time, such creatures were terrified of me.
That frozen night, I felt entirely human ae the thought of the warm theater. If this was to be my farewell performance, I resolved to give them something to remember me by. I moved like a whip, crag the keys, thundering, floating, the right pressure on all the partial notes. Members of the aubbr>藏书网dience began rising from their seats to lead the applause before the strings stopped humming. Ented, they showered their huzzahs, so much so that I almost fot how much I hated the whole business. Backstage, Mr. Martied me first, tears of joy in his eyes, squealing "Bravo," and theher students, half of them barely masking their rese, the other half ed with jealousy, aowledging with grudging gracioushat I had outshoheir performances. In came the parents, siblings, friends, neighbors, and assorted music lovers. They clumped around the players, but I drew the largest crowd, and I did not notice the woman in the red coat until most of the well-wishers had vanished.
My mother was wiping lipstick from my cheek with a wet handkerchief when the woman meandered into my peripheral vision. She appeared normal and pleasant, about forty years old. Her deep brown hair framed an intelligent face, but I erplexed at the way her pale green eyes had fixed upon me. She stared, scrutinized, studied, and pondered, as if dredging up an inner mystery. She was an utter strao me.
"Excuse me," she said. "But youre Andrew Day?"
"Henry Day," I corrected her.
&quht, Henry. You play wonderfully."
"Thank you." I turned bay parents, who intimated that they were ready to go.
Maybe she saw my profile, or perhaps the simple act of turning away set off something in her brain, but she gasped and drew her fio her mouth. "Youre him," she said. "Youre the little boy."
I squi her and smiled.
"You are the one I saw in the woods that night. On the road? With the deer?" She started to raise her voice. "Dont you remember? I saw you on the road with those other boys. It must have bee or nine years ago by now. Youre all grown up and everything, but youre that little boy, no doubt. I was worried about you."
"I dont know what you are talking about, maam." I turo go, but she grabbed my arm.
"It is you. I cracked my head on the dashboard when I hit the deer, and I thought you were a dream at first. You came out of the forest—"
I yelped a sound that hushed the room, a pure raw cry that startled everyone, myself included. I did not realize my capacity for su inhuman ill existed. My mother intervened.
"Let go of my son," she told her. "Youre hurting his arm."
"Look, lady," I said, "I dont know you."
My father stepped into the middle of the triangle. "What is this all about?"
The womans eyes flashed in anger. "I saw your boy. One night I was driving home from the try, and this deer jumped right onto the road in front of my car. I swerved to miss her, but I clipped her with my bumper. I didnt know what to do, so I got out of the car to see if I could help."
She shifted her attention from my father and began addressing me. "From the woods es this boy, about seven ht years old. Your son. Aartled me more than the deer did. Out of nowhere, walks right up to the deer like the most natural thing in the world; then he bent down to its mouth or nose or whatever you call it. Hard to believe, but he cupped his hand over her muzzle, and breathed. It was magic. The deer rolled off her side, unfolded her legs, stood, and sprang off. The most incredible thing thats ever happeo me."
I realized then that she had experienced an enter. But I knew I had not seen her before, and while some gelings are willing to inspire wild animals, I never engaged in such foolishness.
"I got a real good look at the boy in my headlights," she said, "although not so good at his friends in the forest. It was you. Who are you really?"
"I dont know her."
My mother, riveted by her story, came up with an alibi. "It t be Henry. Listen, he ran away from home when he was seven years old, and I did him out of my sight for the few years. He was never out by himself at night."
The iy melted from the womans voice, and her eyes searched for a sign of faith. "He looked at me, and when I asked him his name, he ran away. Sihat night Ive wondered ..."
My father spoke in a geone he seldom used. "Im sorry, but you must be mistaken. Everybody has a double in the world. Maybe you saw someone who looked a bit like my son. Im sorry for your troubles." She looked into his eyes, searg for affirmation, but he offered only the solace 藏书网
of his calm demeanor. He took the red coat from her arm and held it open for her. She slipped i, thehe room without a word, without looking back. In her wake trailed the remnants of anger and ay.
"Did you ever?" my mother asked. "What a story. And to think that shed actually have the o say it."
From the er of my eye, I could see my father watg me, and the sensation unnerved me. " we go now? we get out of here?"
When we were all in the car and out of the city, I announced my decision. "Im not going back there. No more recitals, no more lessons, no more strangers ing up to me with their wild stories. I quit."
For a moment, I thought my father would drive off the road. He lit a cigarette a Mom take over the versation.
"Henry, you know how I feel about quitting...."
"Did you hear what that lady said?" Mary chimed in. "She thought you lived in the woods."
"You dont even like to stao a tree." Elizabeth laughed.
"This isnt about your feelings, Mom, but mine."
My father stared at the white line in the middle of the road.
"You are a sensitive boy," my mother tinued. "But you t let one woman with oory ruin your life. You doo tell me yoing to quit eight years of work on the basis of a fairy tale."
"It isnt the woman in the red coat. Ive had enough. Gone as far as I go."
"Bill, why dont you say something?"
"Dad, Im tired of it. Sick of practice, practice, practice. Tired of wasting my Saturdays. I think I should have a say over my own life."
He drew a deep breath and drummed his fingers oeering wheel. The rest of the Days uood the signal. Quiet all the way home. That night I could hear them talking, make out the ebb and flow of a loud aional frontation, but I had lost all ability to eavesdrop from a distance. On a while Id hear a "goddam" or "bloody" explode from him, and she may have cried—I suppose she did—but thats it. Near midnight, he stormed out of the house, and the sound of the car pulling away left a desolation. I went downstairs to see if Mom had survived the ordeal and found her calmly sitting i, a shoebox open oable before her.
"Henry, its late." She tied a ribbon around a bundle of letters a in the box. "Your father used to write once a week while he was over in North Africa." I khe story by heart, but she unwound it again. Pregnant, with a husband overseas at war, all of een at the time, she lived with his parents. She was still alo the time of Henrys birth, and I was now almost as old as she had been through the whole ordeal. ting my life as a hobgoblin, I was old enough to be her grandfather. Untamed age had crept into her heart.
"You think lifes easy when youre young, and take almost anything because your emotions run s. When youre up, youre iars, and when youre down, youre at the bottom of the well. But although Ive grown old—"
She was thirty-five by my calculations.
"That doesnt mean Ive fotten what its like to be young. Of course, its your life to do with what you choose. I had high hopes for you as a pianist, Henry, but you be whatever you wish. If its not in your heart, I uand."
"Would you like a cup of tea, Mom?"
"That would be grand."
Two weeks later, during the afternoon before Christmas, Oscar Love and I drove into the city to celebrate my newly won independence. Ever sihat episode with Sally, Id had a question or two about my capability to have intercourse, so the trip was not without apprehension. When I lived in the forest, only one of those monsters could do the trick. He had been captured too late in his childhood, at the cusp of puberty, and he gave the poor females nothing but trouble. The rest of us were not ready physically to perform the act.
But I was ready to experience sex that night. Oscar and I tipped back a bottle of cheap wihus fortified, roached the house at dusk as the girls were opening up shop. I would like to report that losing my virginity was both exotid erotic, but the truth is that it was mainly dark, rough, and over much more quickly than I had expected. She was fair-skinned and past her glory, the of platinum hair a e-on and a ruse, and among her several rules for the duration, no kissing. When I displayed a tentative uainty as to where and how to go about the act, she grabbed me with her hand and pushed me into position. A short time later, all that remained was to get dressed, pay the bill, and wish her merry Christmas.
When m came with gifts around the tree and the family lounging in pajamas and robes, I felt on my way to a brand-new life. Mom and the twins were oblivious to any ge as they went about their cheerful tasks, genuine affe and sideration of one another. My father, oher hand, may have suspected my debauch of the night before. Earlier that m, when I came home around two oclock, the living room smelled of Camels, as if he had been waiting up for me and only goo bed when Oscars car pulled into the driveway. Throughout that drowsy holiday, my father moved about the house the way a bear moves through its territory when it smells the presence of another male. Nothing said, but wayward glances, brusqueness, a snarl or two. For the rest of our time together, we did not get along. A year and a half remained in my high school career before I could get away to college, so we circled one another, barely exging a senten our rare enters. He treated me like a stranger half of the time.
I recall two occasions wheepped out of his inner world, and both times were uling. A few months after the se at the winter recital, he brought up the matter of the woman in red araory. We were tearing down my mothers henhouse, having sold the birds and gotten out of the egg and chi business after turning a handsome profit. His questions arrived iervals between the prying crowbar, squealing nails, and tearing lumber.
"So, you remember that lady aory about the boy and the deer?" He ripped another plank from the frame." What do you make of that? Do you think such a thing could happen?"
"Sounded incredible to me, but I suppose it might have happened. She seemed pretty sure of herself."
Grunting with effort, he tugged away at a rusty nail. "So it might be true? How do you explaihinking it was you?"
"I didnt say it was true. She seemed vi happened, but it isnt likely, is it? And anyway, suppose something like that did happen to her, she is wrong about me. I wasnt there."
"Maybe it was someone who looked like you?" He threw his weight into it, and the rest of the wall crashed down, leaving only the skeleton stark against the sky.
"Thats a possibility," I said. "I reminded her of someone she saw once upon a time. Didnt you tell her that everyone has a double in the world?
Maybe she saw my evil twin?"
He eyeballed the frame. "Thisll tumble down with a few good kicks." He knocked down the frame, loaded it up in the back of a truck, and drove away.
The sed occasion occurred about a year later. His voie at first light, and I followed the sound from my bedroom and through the back doorway. A feathery mist rose from the lawn aood, his bae, in the middle of the wet grass, calling out my name as he faced a stand of firs. A dark trail of footsteps led into the woods te in front of him. He was stuck to the spot, as if he had startled a wild animal that fled away in fear. But I saw no creature. By the time I drew near, the diminuendo of a fey calls of "Henry" lingered in the air. Then he fell to his knees, bent his head to the ground, and quietly wept. I crept bato the house, and preteo be reading the sports page when he came in. My father stared at me hunched over the neer, my long fingers ed around a coffee cup. The wet belt of his robe dragged along the floor like a . Soaked, disheveled, and unshaven, he seemed much older, but maybe I had not noticed before how he was aging. His hands trembled as if palsied, aook a Camel from his pocket. The cigarette was too wet to light despite his repeated attempts, so he crumpled the whole pad tossed it irash . I set a cup of coffee in front of him, aared at the steam as if I had handed him poison.
"Dad, are you all right? You look a mess."
"You." He pointed his fi me like a gun, but thats all he said. The word hung in the air all m, and I do not think I ever heard him call me "Henry" again.
CHAPTER 12
We ehe church to steal dles. Even in the dead of night, the slate and glass building asserted its prominenain Street. Bound by an iron fehe church had been laid out in the shape of a cross, and no matter how one approached it, the symbols were inescapable. Huge chestnut doors at the top of a dozen steps, mosaics from the Bible iained-glass windows refleg moonlight, parapets hiding angels lurkihe roof—the whole edified like a ship that threateo s us as we drew near. Smaolach, Speck, and I crept through the graveyard adjat to the eastern arm of the churd popped in through a side door that the priests left unlocked. The long rows of pews and the vaulted ceiling created a space that, in the darkness, pressed down on us; its emptiness had weight and substance. Once our eyes adjusted, however, the church did not seem as sm. The threatening size diminished, and the high walls and arched ceilings reached out as if to embrace us. We split up, Smaolad Spe search of the larger dles in the sacristy to the right, I to find the smaller votive dles in an alcove oher side of the altar. A fleeting presence seemed to follow me along the altar rail, and a real dread rose inside me. In a wrought iron stand, dozens of dles stood like lines of soldiers in glass cups. A box rattled with pennies when I tapped my nails against its metal face, and spent matches littered the empty spaces. I struck a new match against the rough plate, and a small flame erupted like a fingersnap. At once, I regretted the fire, for I looked up and saw a womans face staring down at me. I shook out the light and crouched beh the rail, hoping to be invisible.
Panid fear left as quickly as they had e, and what amazes me now is how much flows through the mind in such a short space of time. When I saw her eyes looking down on me, I remembered: the woman in red, my sates, the people in town, the people in church, Christmas, Easter, Halloween, the kidnapping, drowning, prayers, the Virgin Mary, and my sisters, father, mother. I nearly had solved the riddle of my identity. Yet as quickly as it takes to say "Pardon me," they vanished, and with them, my real story. It seemed as if the eyes of the statue flickered ich light. I looked upon the enigmatic face of the Virgin Mary, idealized by an anonymous sculptor, the object of untold adoratioion, imagination, supplication. As I stuffed my pockets with dles, I felt a pang of guilt.
Behihe great wooden doors at the ter entrance groaned open as a pe or a priest entered. We zipped out through the side door and zigzagged among the gravestones. Despite the fact that bodies lay buried there, the cemetery was not half as frightening as the church. I paused at a gravestone, ran my fingers over the incised letters, and was tempted to light a match to read the he others leapt over the iron fence, so I scurried to catch up, chasing them across town, until we were all safely beh the library. Every close call thrilled us, a on our blas giggling like childre enough dles to make our sanctuary shine. Smaolach crawled off to a dark er and curled up like a fox, his nose buried under a cloaking arm. Sped I sought out the brightness, and with our latest books, we sat side by side, the scrape of turning pages marking time.
Ever since she had introduced me to this secret place, I loved going to the library. Initially, I went for the books first entered in my childhood. Those old stories—Grimms Fairy Tales and Moose, picture books like Mike Mulligan, Make Way for Dugs, and Homer Price—promised another clue to my fading identity. Rather than help me recapture the past, the stories only alienated me further from it. By looking at the pictures and reading Aloud the text, I had hoped to hear my mothers voice again, but she was gone. After my first few visits to the library, I shelved such childish things and never again looked at them. Instead, I embarked upon a journey mapped by Speck, who chose, or helped me choose, stories to hold my adolest i: books like The Call of the Wild and White Fang, tales of adventure and derring-do. She helped me sound out words I could not decipher and explained characters, symbols, and plots that ran too wild or deep for my imagination. Her fidence, as she moved through the stacks and tless novels, inspired me to believe in my own ability to read and imagine. If not for her, I would be the same as Smaolach, filg ic books like Speed Carter or the Adventures of Mighty Mouse from the drugstore. Or worse, not reading at all.
Cozy in our den, she held on her lap a fat volume of Shakespeare, the type set in a minuscule font, and I was midway through The Last of the Mohis. The flickering dlelight spired with the silence, and we only interrupted each others reading to share a casual delight.
"Speck, listen to this: These children of the woods stood together for several moments pointing at the crumbling edifice, and versing in the unintelligible language of their tribe."
"Sounds like us. Who are these people?"
I held up the book to show her its cover, the title in gilt letters on a green cloth. We receded bato our stories, and an hour or so passed before she spoke again.
"Listen to this, Aniday. Im reading Hamlet here and these two fellows e in. Rosentz and Guildenstern. Hamlet greets them: Good lads, how do ye both? And Rosentz says, As the indifferent children of the earth. And Guildenstern says, Happy in that we are not over-happy. On Fortunes cap we are not the very button. "
"Does he mean they were unlucky?"
She laughed. "Not that, not that. Dont go chasing after a better fortune."
I did not uand the half of what she said, but I laughed along with her, and then tried to find my place again with Hawkeye and Uncas. As m threatened and we packed our things to go, I told her how much I had enjoyed what she had read to me about Fortune.
"Write it down, boy. If you e across a passage in your reading that youd like to remember, write it down in your little book; then you read it again, memorize it, and have it whenever you wish."
I took out my pencil and a card from the stack I had filched from the card catalog. "What did they say?"
"Rosentz and Guildenstern: the indifferent children of the earth."
"The last of the Mohis."
"Thats us." She flashed her smile befoing to the er to wake our slumbering friend Smaolach.
We would snitch a few books to take home with us for the satisfa of lying abed on a chilled winters m under weak sunshine and slipping out a slim volume to read at leisure. Between the covers, a book be a sin. I have spent many hours in such a waking dream, and once having learned how to read, I could not imagine my life otherwise. The indifferent children around me did not share my enthusiasm for the written word. Some might sit food story well told, but if a book had no pictures, they showed st i.
When a raiding party went to town, they often came back with a colle of magaziime or Life or Look—and then we would huddle together uhe shade of an old oak to look at the photographs. I remember summer days, a mass of knees a, elbows and shoulders, jockeying for a choice viewing position, their bare skin damp against mine. We stuck together like the slick pages clumped and wrinkled in the humidity. News and celebrity did not appeal to them. Castro or Khrushchev, Monroe or Mantle, no anything more than a passing fancy, an iing face; but they were profoundly intrigued by images of children, particularly in fanciful or humorous situations, and any photographs of the natural world, particularly exotiimals from a zoo or circus or in the wild reaches of a faraway land. A boy on top of an elephant caused a sensation, but a boy with a baby elephant was talked about for days. Most beloved of all were shots of parents and children together.
"Aniday," Onions would plead, "tell us the story about the daddy and his baby."
A bright-eyed baby girl peeps up from a bassio stare at her delighted, grinning father. I read the caption to them. "Little bundle of joy: Senator Kennedy admires his new baby daughter, Caroline, in their Geetown home."
When I tried to turn the page, Blomma stuck her palm on the photograph. "Wait. I want to see the baby again."
Chavisory chimed in: "I want to see the man."
They were intensely curious about the other world, especially at the distance photography allows, the place where people grew up, fell in love, had children, became old, and the cycle tinued, unlike our releimelessness. Their ever-ging lives fasated us. Despite our many chores, a persistent boredom hung around the camp. For long stretches, we did nothing but allow time to pass.
Kivi and Blomma could spend a day braiding each others hair, unraveling the plaits and starting all ain. Or they played with the dolls they had stolen or made from sticks and scraps of cloth. Kivi, in particular, became a little mother, holding a rag doll to her breast, tug her toy baby in a cradle fashioned from a fotten piic basket. One baby was posed of the lost or broken limbs of four other dolls. As Kivi and Blomma bathed their dolls at the creeks edge one humid m, I joihem on the bank and helped to rihe nylon hair till it lay plastered against the dolls plastic scalps.
"Why do you like playing with your babies so much?"
Kivi did not look up from her task, but I could sehat she was g.
"ractig," said Blomma, "for when our turn es along to be gelings. ractig to be mothers someday."
"Why are you sad, Kivi?"
She looked at me, the brightness now drained from her eyes. "Because it takes so long."
I did. For while we all grew older, we did not ge physically. We did not grow up. Those who had been in the forest for decades suffered most. The truly mischievous fought the monotony by creating trouble, solving imaginary problems, or by pursuing aerprise that, on the surface, appeared worthless. Igel had spent the past decade in camp digging an elaborate system of tunnels and underground warrens for our prote. Béka, the in line, was on a stant prowl to caty unsuspeg female and drag her into the bushes.
Ragno and Zanzara attempted to cultivate grapes nearly every spring in hope of replag our fermented mash with a homegrown wine. Of course, the soil resisted every enrit, the days lacked suffit sun, mites and spiders and is invaded, and my friends had no luck. A vine or two would sprout, twist and meander along the trellis Ragno had built, but never a grape in all those years. e September, they cursed their lud tore down the remnants, only to begin again when March teased such dreams. The seventh time I saw them breaking the hard ground, I asked Zanzara why they persisted in the face of tinued failures. He stopped digging and leaned against the cracked and a spade.
"When we were boys, every night we had a glass of wi supper. Id like to taste it again."
"But surely you could steal a bottle or two from town."
"My papa grees and his before him and bad bad back." He wiped his brow with ah-caked hand. "One day well get the grapes. You learn to be patient here."
I passed much time with Luchóg and Smaolach, who taught me how to fell A tree and not be crushed, the geometry and physics behind a deadfall trap, the prle of chase to catch a hare on foot. But my favorite days were spent with Speck. And the best of all were my birthdays.
I still kept my dar and had chosen April 23—Shakespeares birthday—as my own. In my tenth spring in the woods, the date fell on a Saturday, and Spevited me to go to the library to spend the night quietly reading together. When we arrived, the chamber had been transformed. Dozens of small dles suffused the room with an amber glow remi of the light from a campfire uhe stars. he crack at the entranceway,. she had chalked a birthday greeting in a scrolled design of her own devising. The general shabbihe cobwebs, dirty blas, and threadbare rugs—had been cleared away, making the place and cozy. She had laid in a small feast of bread and cheese, locked away against the mice, and sootle boiled cheerfully, with real tea in our cups.
"This is incredible, Speck."
"Thank goodness we decided today is your birthday, or I would have goo all this fuss for nothing."
At odd times that evening, I would look up from my text to watch her reading nearby. Light and shadow flickered across her face, and like clockwork she brushed a stray lock from in front of her eyes. Her presence disturbed me; I did not get through many pages of my book and had to read maences more than once. Late that night, I awoke in her embrace. Instead of the usual kig or shouldering away when I woke up with someone all over me, I led into her, wanting the moment to last. Most of the shorter dles had burned down, and sadly I realized that our time was nearly over.
"Speck, wake up."
She murmured in her sleep and pulled me closer. I pried away her arm and rolled out.
"We have to go. Dont you feel the air on your skin ging? The dawns about to begin."
"e back to sleep."
I gathered my things together. "We wont be able to leave unless we ght now."
She lifted herself up by the elbows. "We stay. Its Sunday and the librarys closed. We stay all day and read. Nobody will be here. We go back when its dark again."
For a fleeting sed, I sidered her idea, but the very thought of staying in town during daylight hours, g discovery with people up and about, filled me with a holy terror.
"Its too risky," I whispered. "Suppose someone happens by. A poli. A wat."
She dropped back down to the bla. "Trust me."
"Are you ing?" I asked at the door.
"Go. Sometimes you are such a child."
Squeezing through the exit, I wondered if it was a mistake. I did not like arguing with Speck or leavihere by herself, but she had spent many days on her own away from camp. My thoughts bounced bad forth betweewo choices, and perhaps my worries over Speck affected my sense of dire, for I found myself quite lost soon after abandoning her. Eaew turn brought unfamiliar streets and strange houses, and in my haste to escape, I became more hopelessly disoriented. At an edge of town, a grove of trees invited me into its warm cloak, and there I picked a trail from three options, following i藏书网
ts twists and turns. In hindsight, I should have stayed put until the sun had fully risen, so that it could serve as pass, but at the time, my thoughts were clouded by questions. What had she been thinking, planning, doing for my birthday? How was I to grow older, be a man, stuck eternally in this small, useless body? The waning sliver moon dipped and disappeared.
A small creek, not more than a trickle, bisected the path. I decided to follow the water. Trag a creek at dawn be a peaceful experience, and those woods had appeared so often in my dreams as to be as familiar to me as my own he creek itself rah a stony road, and the road led me to a solitary farmhouse. From the culvert, I saw the roof and circled round to the back as the first sunrays bathed the por gold.
Some trick of light gave the house an unfinished appearance, as if caught in a dream between night and day. I half expected my mother to e through the door, calling me home for dinner. As the light brought it into focus, the house took on a more weling character, its windows losing their menag stare, its door less and less like a hungry mouth. I stepped out of the forest and onto the lawn, leaving a dark wake behind me o grass. The door swung open suddenly, petrifying me on the spot. A man came dowairs, pausing on the o-bottom step to light a cigarette. ed in a blue robe, the figure took oep forward, then lifted his foot, startled by the moisture. He laughed and cursed softly.
The specter still did not notice me, though we faced each other—he at the edge of the house, and I at the edge of the forest. I wao turn around and see what he was looking for, but I stood frozen as a hare as the daybreak lifted around us. From the lawn, a chill rose in wisps of fog. He drew closer, and I held my breath. Not a dozen steps between us, he stopped. The cigarette fell from his fingers. He took one more step toward me. His brow creased with worry. His thin hair blew in the breeze. Ay passed as his eyes danced in their sockets. His lips trembled when he opened his mouth to speak.
"And we? Envy?"
The words ing to me did not make sense.
"Is a chew? Atchoo? a bee, Houston?"
The sounds he made hurt my ears. At that moment, I wished to be sleeping in Specks arms again. He k on the damp grass and spread out his arms as if he expected me to run to him. But I was fused and did not know if he meant me harm, so I turned and sprinted, as fast as I could go. The monstrous gargle from his throat followed me deep into the forest until, as suddenly, the strange words stopped, yet I kept running all the way home.
CHAPTER 13
The ringing phone began to sound like a mad song before someone mercifully answered. Far down the hall, I was in my dorm room that night with a coed, trying to stay focused on her bare skin. Moments later, a rap on my door, a curious pause, and then the knotensified to a thundering, which scared the pirl so that she nearly fell off of me.
"What is it? Im busy. t you see the ie on the doorknob?"
"Henry Day?" Oher side of the door, a voice cracked and trembled. "Its your mother oelephone."
"Tell her Im out."
The voice lowered an octave. "Im really sorry, Henry, but you o take this call."
I pulled on pants and a sweater, opehe door, and brushed past the boy, who was staring at the floor. "Someoerve died."
It was my father. My mother mentiohe car, so naturally, in my shock, I assumed there had been an act. Upourning home, I learhe real story through a word here, raised eyebrows, and innuendo. He had shot himself in the head, sitting in the car at a stoplight not four blocks away from the college. There was no note, nothing explained. Only my name and dorm room number on the back of a business card tucked in a cigarette pack with one remaining Camel.
I spent the days before the funeral trying to make sense of the suicide. Sihat awful m when he saw something in the yard, he drank more heavily, though alcoholics, in my experience, prefer the long and slow pour rather than the quid irreversible bang. It wasnt the drink that killed him, but something else. While he may have ha?9９liｂ? moved the piano from my mothers house. A couple of guys from the area were good enough to round out a band. Jimmy Cummings played the drums, with Gee Knoll on bass uitar. We called ourselves The Coverboys, because thats all we played, and when I wasnt pretending to be Geney or Frankie Valli, I would tend bar a few hts of the week. The gig at Oscars Bar got me out of the house; plus, the few extra dollars enabled me to help out the family. My old friends would drop in, applaud my return to playing piano, but I loathed perf. That first year back. Tess showed up with Brian irl-friend a couple of times. Seeihere reminded me of the dreams I had deferred.
"You were a mystery man," Tess told me one night betwees. "Or mystery boy, I should say, ba grade school. As if you were somewhere totally different from the rest of us."
I shrugged my shoulders and played the first measures from "Strangers in the Night." She laughed and rolled her eyes. "Seriously, though, Henry, you were a stranger. Aloof. Above it all."
"Is that right? I certainly should have been o you."
"Oh, go on." She was tipsy and grinning. "You were always in another world."
Her boyfriend beed, and she was gone. I missed her. She was about the only good thing that happened as the result of my forced homeing, my relut return to the piano. Late that night, I went home thinking about her, w how serious her relationship was and how to steal her away from the guy with the deja vu face.
Tending bar and playing pia me out late at night. My mother and sisters were long asleep, and I ate a cold dinner alo three in the m. That night, something stirred in the yard outside the kit window. A flash through the glass, visible for an instant, that looked sort of like a head of hair. I took my plate into the living room and turned oelevision to The Third Man oe, late movie. After the se where Holly Martins first spies Harry Lime in the doorway, I fell asleep in my fathers chair, only to wake up in the depths before dawn, sweating and cold, petrified that I was ba the forest again amid those devils.
CHAPTER 14
Looking far ahead oh, I spied her returning to camp, which set my mind at ease. She appeared betweerees, moving like a deer along the ridgelihe i at the library had left me eager to apologize, so I took a shortcut through the forest that would allow me to cut her off along her route. My mind buzzed with the story of the man in the yard. I hoped to tell her before the important parts vanished in the fusion. Speck would be mad, rightfully so, but her passion would mollify any anger. As I drew near, she must have spotted me, for she took off in a sprint. Had I not hesitated befiving chase, perhaps I would have caught her, but the rough terraied speed. In my haste, I snagged my toe on a fallen brand landed facedown in the dirt. Spitting leaves and twigs, I looked up to see Speck had already made it into camp and was talking with Béka.
"She doesnt want to speak with you," the old toad said upon my arrival, and clamped his hand on my shoulder. A few of the elders—Igel, Ragno, Zanzara, and Blomma—had sidled o him, f a wall.
"But I o talk to her."
Luchóg and Kivi joihe others. Smaolach walked toward the group from my right, his hands ched and shaking. Onions approached from my left, a menag toothsome smile on her faine of them encircled me. Igel stepped ihe ring and jabbed a fi my chest.
"You have violated our trust."
"What are you talking about?"
"She followed you, Aniday. She saw you with the man. You were to avoid any tact with them, yet there you were, trying to unicate with one of them." Igel pushed me to the ground, kig up a cloud of rotten leaves. Humiliated, I quickly sprang bay feet. My fear grew as the others hollered iives.
"Do you know how dangerous that was?"
"Teach him a lesson."
"Do you uand we ot be discovered?"
"So he wont fet again."
"They could e and capture us, and then we will never be free."
"Punish him."
Igel did not strike the first blow. From behind, a fist or a club smashed into my kidneys, and I arched my back. With my body thus exposed, Igel punched me squarely in the solar plexus, and I hunched forward. A line of drool spilled from my ope９９ｌｉb?n mouth. They were all upo once like a pack of wild dogs bringing down wounded prey. The blows came from all dires, and initial shock gave way to pain. They scraped my face with their nails, ripped hunks of hair from my scalp, sank their teeth into my shoulder, drawing blood. A ropy arm choked my neck, shutting off the flow of air. I gagged a my ge rise. Amid the fury, their eyes blazed with frenzy, and sheer hatred twisted their features. One by ohey peeled off, sated, and the pressure lessened, but those who remained kicked at my ribs, tauntio get up, snarling and growling at me to fight back. I could not muster the strength. Before walking away, Béka stomped on my fingers, and Igel delivered a kick with each word of his final admonition: "Do not talk to people again."
I closed my eyes and stayed still. The sun shone down through the branches of the trees, warming my body. My joints ached from the fall, and my fingers swelled and throbbed. One eye ainted blad blue, and blood oozed from cuts and pooled beh plum bruises. My mouth tasted of vomit and dirt, and I passed out in a rumpled heap.
Cool water on my cuts and bruises startled me awake, and my first vision was of Speck bent over me, wiping the blood from my face. Directly behiood Smaolad Luchóg, their faces pinched with . Drops of my blood left a red pat Specks white sweater. When I tried to speak, she pressed the wet cloth to my lips.
"Aniday, I am so sorry. I did not want this to happen."
"Were sorry, too," Smaolach said. "But the law has a ruthless logic."
Chavisory poked out her head from behind Specks shoulder. "I took no part in it."
"You should not have left me, Aniday. You should have trusted me."
I sat up slowly and faced my tormentors. "Why did you let them?"
"I took no part," Chavisory said.
Luchóg k beside Sped spoke for all. "We had to do it, so that you will not ever fet. You spoke to the human, and if he caught you, you would be gone forever."
"Suppose I want to go back."
No one looked me in the eye. Chavisory hummed to herself while the others kept silent.
"I think that might have been my real father, Speck. From the other world. Or maybe it was a monster and a dream. But it wanted me to e into the house. I have been there before."
"Doesnt matter who he was," said Smaolach. "Father, mother, sister, brother, your Aunt Fannys uncle. None of that matters. Were your family."
I spat out a mouthful of dirt and blood. "A family does up one of its own, even if they have a good reason."
Chavisory shouted in my ear, "I didnt even touch you!" She danced spirals around the others.
"We were following rules," said Speck.
"I dont w>..ant to stay here. I want to go bay real family."
"Aniday, you t," Speck said. "They think yohese past ten years. You may look like youre eight, but you are almost eighteen. We are stu time."
Luchóg added, "Youd be a ghost to them."
"I want to go home."
Speck fronted me. "Listen, there are only three possible choices, and going home is not one of them."
&quht," Smaolach said. He sat down on a rotting tree stump and ted off the possibilities on his fingers. "One is that while you do not get old here, net deathly ill, you die by act. I remember one felloent a-walking a wintry day. He made a foolish calculation in his leap from the top of the bridge to the edge of the riverbank, and his jump was not jumpy enough. He fell into the river, went right through the ice, and drowned, frozen to death."
"Acts happen," Luchóg added. "Long ago, you could find yourself eaten. Wolves and mountain lions prowled these parts. Did you ever hear of the one from up north who wintered out inside a cave and woke up springtime o a very hungry grizzly? A man die by any ce imaginable."
"Two, you could be rid of us," Smaolach said, "by simply leaving. Just up and saunter off and go live apart and alone. We disce that sort of attitude, mind you, for we need you here to help us find the child. Tis harder than you think to pretend to be someone else."
"Besides, it is a lonesome life," said Chavisory.
"True," Speck agreed. "But you be lonely with a dozen friends beside you."
"If you go that way, youre more likely to meet with a singular fate," Luchóg said. "Suppose you fell in a ditd could up? Then where would you be?"
Said Smaolach, "Them fellows usually succumb, dont they, to some twist in the road? You lose your way in a blizzard. A black widow nips your thumb as you sleep. And no oo find the ae, the cowslip or the boiled frogs eggs."
"Besides, where would you go thats aer than this?" Luchóg asked.
"I would go crazy being just by myself all the time," Chavisory added.
"Then," Luchóg told her, "you would have to make the ge."
Speck looked beyooward the treeline. "Thats the third way. You find the right child oher side, and you take her place."
"Now youre fusing the boy," said Smaolach. ?"First, you have to find a child, learn all about him. All of us watd study him. From a distance, mind."
"It has to be somebody who isnt happy," Chavisory said.
Smaolach scowled at her. "Never mind that. We observe the child in teams. While certain people take down his habits, others study his voice."
"Start with the name," said Speck. "Gather all the facts: age, birthday brothers and sisters."
Chavisory interrupted her. "Id stay away from boys with dogs. Dogs are born suspicious."
"You have to know enough," Speck said, "so you make people believe you are one of them. A child of their own."
Carefully rolling a cigarette, Luchóg said, "Ive betimes thought that Id look for a large family, with lots of kids and so on, and then pick the one in the middle that nobodyll miss or notice theyre gone for a bit. Or if I fet some detail or am slightly off in my imitation, nobody is the wiser. Maybe number six of thirteen, or four of seven. Not as easy as it once was, now that mums and dads arent having so many babies."
"Id like to be a baby again," said Chavisory.
"Once you have made the choice," said Smaolach, "we go in and grab the child. He or shes got to be alone, or youll be found out. Have you ever heard the tale of them ones in Russia or thereabouts, where they caught the lot of them stealing a tiny Cossack lad with pointy teeth, and them Cossacks took all our boys of the woods and burnt them up to a crisp?"
"Fire is a devil of a way to go," said Luchóg. "Did I ever tell you of the faery geling caught snooping around the room of a girl she wished to replace? She hears the parents e in, and leaps in the closet, making the ge right there in the room. At first, the parents thought nothing of it, when they opehe door and there she laying in the dark. Later that day, the real girl es home, and what do you think? Theres the two of them side by side, and our friend would have made it, but she had learned how to speak like the little girl. So the mother says, Now whie of you is Lucy? and the real Lucy says, I am, and the other Lucy lets out a squawk to rais藏书网e the dead. She had to jump out the sed-floor window and start all ain."
Smaolach looked perplexed during his friends story, scratg his head as if trying to recall an importaail. "Ah, theres a bit of magic, of course. We bind up the child in a web and lead him to the water."
Spinning on her heels, Chavisory shouted, "And theres the intation. You mustnt fet that."
"In he goes like a baptism," Smaolach tinued. "Out he es, one of us. o leave except by one of three ways, and I would not give you my shoes for the first two."
Chavisory drew a circle in the dust with her bare toe. "Remember the German boy who played the piano? The one before Aniday."
With a short hiss, Speck grabbed Chavisory by the hair and pulled the poor creature to her. She sat on her chest and threw her hands upon her face, massaging and kneading Chavisorys skin like so much dough. The girl screamed and cried like a fox in a steel trap. When she had finished, Speck revealed a reasonable copy of her ow fa the visage of Chavisory. They looked like twins.
"You put me back," Chavisory plained.
"You put me back." Speck imitated her perfectly.
I could not believe what I was seeing.
"Theres your future, little treasure. Behold the geling," laid Smaolach. "Going back to the past as yourself is not an option. But when you return as a ged person to their world, you get to stay there, grow up as one of them, live as one of them, more or less, grow old as time allows, and youll do that yet, when your turn es."
"My turn? I want to go hht now. How do I do it?"
"You dont," Luchóg said. "You have to wait until the rest of us have goheres a natural order to our world that mustnt be disturbed. One ch９9ｌiｂ?ild for one geling. When your time es, you will find another child from a different family than what you left behind. You ot go back whence you came."
"Im afraid, Aniday, youre last in the line. Youll have to be patient."
Luchóg and Smaolach took Chavisory behind the honeysuckle and began to manipulate her face. The three of them laughed and carried on through the whole process. "Just make me pretty again," and "Lets get one of them magazines with the womens pictures," and "Hey, she looks like Audrey Hepburn." Eventually, they fixed her face, and she flew from their clutches like a bat.
Speck was unusually kind to me for the rest of that day, perhaps out of misplaced guilt for my beating. Her gentleness reminded me of my mothers touch, or what I thought I remembered. My own mht as well have been the phantom, or any other fi to be jured. I was fetting again, the distin between memory and imagination blurring. The man I saw, could he be my father? I wondered. He appeared to have reized me, but I was not his son, only a shadow from the woods. In the dead of night, I wrote dowory of the three ways in Mess notebook, hoping to uand it all iure. Speck kept me pany while the others slept. Iarlight, her cares had vanished from her face; even her eyes, usually so tired, radiated passion.
"I am sorry they hurt you."
"It doesnt hurt," I whispered, stiff and sore.
"Life here has its pensations. Listen."
Low in a flyway, an owl swept betweerees, unrolling its wings on the hunt. Speck tehe fine hairs on her arms bristling.
"You will never get old," she said. "You wont have to worry about getting married or having babies or finding a job. No gray hair and wrinkles, h falling out. You wont need a e or a crutch."
We heard the owl desd and strike. The mouse screamed ohen life left it.
"Like children who never grow up," I said.
"The indifferent children of the earth." She let her sentence linger in the air. I fixed my eye upon a siar, hoping to sehe earth or see the heavens move. This trick of staring and drifting with the sky has cured my insomnia many times over the years, but not that night. Those stars were fixed and this globe creaked as if stu its rotation. Eyes lifted, pointing to the moon, Speck sidered the night, though I had no idea what she was thinking.
"Was he my father, Speck?"
"I ot tell you. Let go of the past, Aniday. Its like holding dandelions to the wind. Wait for the right moment, and the seeds will scatter away." She looked at me. "You should rest."
"I t. My mind is filled with noises."
She pressed her fio my lips. "Listen."
Nothing stirred. Her presence, my own. "I t hear a thing."
But she could hear a distant sound, and her gaze turned inward, as if transported to its source.
CHAPTER 15
Moving bae from college brought a kind of stupor to my daily life, and my nights became a waking dread. If I wasnt pounding out yet another imitation on the piano, I was behind the bar, tending to the usual crowd with demons of their own. I had fallen into a routi Oscars whera of them all arrived and ordered a shot of whiskey. He slid the glass against the rail and stared at it. I went on to the er, poured a beer, sliced a lemon, and came back to the guy, and the drink was sitting undisturbed. He ixy fellow, , sober, in a cheap suit and tie, and as far as I could tell, he hadnt lifted his hands from his lap.
"Whats the matter, mister? You havent touched your drink."
"Would you give it to me on the house if I make that glass move without toug it?"
"What do you mean, move? How far?"
"How far would it have to move for you to believe?"
"Not far." I was hooked. "Move it at all, and you have a deal."
He reached out his right hand to shake on it, ah him, the glass started sliding slowly down the bar until it came to a halt about five io his left. "A magi never reveals the secret to the trick. Tom Mes."
"Henry Day," I said. "A lot of guys e in here with all sorts of tricks but thats the best I ever saw."
"Ill pay for this," Mes said, putting a dollar on the bar. "But you owe me another. In a fresh glass, if you please, Mr. Day."
He gulped the sed shot and pulled the inal glass ba front of him. Over the several hours, he suckered four people with that same trick. Yet he ouched the first glass of whiskey. He drank for free all night. Around eleven, Mes stood up to go home, leaving the shot on the bar.
"Hey, Mac, your drink," I called after him.
"ouch the stuff," he said, slipping into a raincoat. "And I highly advise you not to drink it, either."
I lifted the glass to my nose for a smell.
"Leaded." He held up a small mag he had cealed in his left hand. "But you khat, right?"
Swirling the glass in my hand, I could now see the iron filings at the bottom.
"Part of my study of mankind," he said, "and our willio believe in what ot be seen."
Mes became a regular at Oscars, ing in four or five times a week over the few years, curiously i on fooling the patrons with ricks or puzzles. Sometimes a riddle or plicated math game involving pig a number, doubling it, adding seven, subtrag ones age and so forth, until the victim was right back where hed started. ame involving matches, a deck of cards, a sleight of hand. The drinks he won were of small sequence, for his pleasure resulted from the gullibility of his neighbors. And he was mysterious in other ways. On those nights The Coverboys performed, Mes sat close to the door. Sometimes betwees hed e up to chat with the boys, a it off with Jimmy Cummings, of all people, a fine example of the artless thinker. But if we played the wrong song, Mes could be guarao vanish. Whearted c The Beatles in 63 or 64, he would walk out each time at the opening bars of "Do You Want to Know a Secret?" Like a lot of drunks, Mes became more himself after hed had a few. He never acted soused. Not more loquacious or morose, merely more relaxed in his skin, and sharper around the edges. And he could e mass quantities of alcohol at a sitting, more than anyone I have ever known. Oscar asked him one night about his strange capacity for drink.
"Its a matter of mind over matter. A cheap trick hinged upon a small secret."
"And what might that be?"
"I dont holy know. Its a gift, really, and at the same time a curse. But Ill tell you, in order to drink so much, there has to be something behind the thirst."
"So what makes you thirsty, you old camel?" Cummings laughed.
"The insufferable impudence of todays youth. I would have tenure now were it not for callow freshmen and the slippery matter of publication."
"You were a professor?" I asked.
"Anthropology. My specialization was the use of mythology and theology as cultural rituals."
Cummings interrupted: "Slow down, Mac. I never went to college."
"How people use myth and superstition to explain the human dition. I articularly ied in the pre-psychology of parenting and oarted a book about rural practices in the British Isles, Sdinavia, and Ger-many."
"So you drink because of some old flame, then?" Oscar asked, turning the versation back to its ins.
"I wish to God it was a woman." He spied the one or two females in the bar and lowered his voice. "No, women have been very good to me. Its the mind, boys. The relehinking mae. The incessant demands of tomorrow and the yesterdays piled up like a heap of corpses. Its this life and all those before it."
Oscar chewed on a reed. "Life before life?"
"Like reination?" Cummings asked.
"I dont know about that, but I do know that a few special people re-member events from the past, events from too long ago. Put them under a spell, and youd be amazed at the stories that e out from deep within. What happened a tury ago, they talk about as if it were just yesterday. Or today."
"Under a spell?" I asked.
"Hypnosis, the curse of Mesmer, the waking sleep. The transdent trance."
Oscar looked suspicious. "Hypnosis. Another one of your party tricks."
"Ive been known to put a few people under," said Mes. "Theyve told tales from their own dreaming minds too incredible to believe, but with such feeling and authority that one is vihat they were telling the truth. People do arahings when theyre under."
Cummings jumped in. "Id like to be hypnotized."
"Stay behind after the bar is closed, and Ill do it."
At two in the m after the crowd left, Mes ordered Oscar to dim the lights and asked Gee ao stay absolutely quiet. He sat o Jimmy and told him to close his eyes; then Mes started speaking to him in a low, modulated voice, describiful places and peaceful circumstances in such vivid detail that Im surprised we all didnt fall asleep. Mes ran a few tests, cheg oher Jimmy was under.
"Raise yht arm straight out in front of you. Its made of the worlds stro steel, and no matter how hard you try, you ot bend it."
Cummings stuck out his right arm and could not flex it; nor, for that matter, could Oscar ee or I wheried, for it felt like a real iron bar. Mes ran through a few more tests, thearted asking questions to which Cummings replied in a dead monotone. "Whos your favorite musi, Jimmy?"
"Louis Armstrong."
We laughed at the secret admission. In his waking life, he would have claimed some rock drummer like Charlie Watts of the Stones, but never Satchmo.
"Good. When I touch your eyes, youll open them, and for the few minutes youll be Louis Armstrong."
Jimmy was a skinny white boy, but when he popped open those baby blues, the transformation came instantaneously. His mouth twisted into Armstrongs famous wide smile, which he wiped from time to time with an imaginary handkerchief, and he spoke in a gravelly skat voice. Even though Jimmy never sang on any of our numbers, he did a passing fair rendition of some old thing called "Ill Be Glad When Youre Dead, You Rascal You," and then, using his thumb as a mouthpied his fingers as the horn, blatted out a jazz bridge. Normally Cummings hid behind his drums, but he jumped up on a table and would be eaining the room still, had he not slipped on a slick of beer and fallen to the floor.
Mes raced to him. "When I t to three and snap my fingers," he said to the sloug body, "youll wake up, feeling refreshed as if you have slept soundly eaight this week. I want you to remember, Jimmy, that when you hear someone say Satchmo, youll have the untrollable urge to sing out a few bars as Louis Armstrong. you remember that?"
"Uh-huh," Cummings said from his trance.
"Good, but you wont remember anything else except t?９９ｌib.his dream. Now, Im going to snap my fingers, and youll wake up, happy and refreshed."
A goofy grin smeared on his face, he woke and bli eae of us, as if he could not imagine ere all staring at him. Upon serial questioning, he recalled nothing about the past half-hour.
"And you dont remember," Oscar asked, "Satchmo?"
Cummings began singing "Hello, Dolly!" and suddenly stopped himself.
"Mr. Jimmy Cummings, the hippest man alive," Gee laughed.
We all gassed Cummings over the few days, w in "Satchmo" now and again until the magic words wore off. But the events of that night played over in my imagination. For weeks afterward, I pestered Mes for more information on how hypnosis worked, but all he could say was that "the subscious rises to the surfad allows repressed inations and memories free play." Dissatisfied with his answers, I drove over to the library in town on my days off and submerged myself in research. From the sleep temples of a Egypt through Mesmer and on to Freud, hypnosis has been around in one form or another for millennia, with philosophers and stists arguing over its validity. A piece from The Iional Journal of ical and Experimental Hypnosis settled the debate for me: "It is the patient, not the therapist, who is in trol of the depth to which the imagination reaches the subscious." I tore the quote from the page and tucked it into my wallet, reading the words now and again as if repeating a mantra.
vihat I could manage my own imagination and subscious, I finally asked Mes to hypnotize me. As if he khe way back to a fotten land, Mes could tap into my repressed life and tell me who I was, where I came from. And if it was merely truthful and revealed my German roots, the story would be derided by anyone who heard it as a fantastical delusion. We had all heard it before: In a former life, I was Cleopatra, Shakespeare, the Genghis Khan.
What would be harder to laugh off or explain was my life as a hobgoblin in the forest—especially that awful August night when I became a geling and stole the boy away. Ever since my time with the Days, I had been carefully erasing every vestige of the geling life. It could be dangerous if, under hypnosis, I would not be able to recall anything about Henry Days childhood prior to age seven. My mothers tales of Henrys childhood had been so ofteed that I not only believed she wbbr>as talking about me, but at times thought I remembered that life. Such created memories are made of glass.
Mes knew my halt-story, what he had gathered from hanging around the bar. He had heard me talk about my mother and sisters, my aborted college career. I even fessed to him my crush on Tess Wodehouse one night when she came round with her boyfriend. But he had no clue about the other side of my tale. Anything I actally divulged would have to be rationalized away. My desire for the truth about the German boy trumped my fear of being unmasked as a geling.
The last drunk staggered away for the night, and Oscar closed the cash register and hung up his apron. On his way out, he threw me the keys to lock the doors while Mes turned off all the lights except for a lamp at the end of the bar. The boys said their good-byes, and Mes and I were alone in the room. Panid apprehension clawed at me. Suppose I said something about the real Henry Day and gave myself away? What if he tried to blackmail me or threateo expose me to the authorities? The thought crossed my mind: I could kill him, and nobody would even know he was gone. For the first time in years, I felt myself reverting to something wild, an animal, all instinct. But the moment he began, panic subsided.
In the dark ay bar, we sat across from each other at a small table and listening as Mes droned on, I felt made of stone. His voice came from a distance above and beyond me, and he trolled my as and feelings with his words, which shaped my very existence. Giving in to the voice was a bit like falling in love. Submit, let go. My limbs were pulled by tremendous gravity, as if being sucked out of spad time. Light disappeared, re-placed by the sudden snap of a projected beam. A movie had begun on the white wall of my mind. The film itself, however, lacked both a narrative and any distinct visual style that would allow oo draw clusions or make inferences. No story, no plot, just character aion. A face appears, speaks, and I am scared. A cold hand s around my ankle. A shout is followed by discordant notes from the piano. My cheek pressed against a chest, a hand hugging my head close to the breast. At some scious level, I glimpsed a boy, who quickly turned his face from me. Whatever happened resulted from the clash of iia and chaos. The major chords were altogether ignored.
The first thing I did when Mes snapped me out of the trance was to look at the clock—four in the m. As Cummings had described the sensation, I, too, felt curiously refreshed, as if I had slept fht hours, yet my sticky shirt and the matted hair at my temples belied that possibility. Mes seemed totally worn and wrung-out. He pulled himself a draft and drank it down like a man home from the desert. In the dim light of the empty bar, he eyed me with incredulity and fasation. I offered him a Camel, a smoking in the dead of m.
"Did I say anything revealing?" I asked at last.
"Do you know any German?"
"A smattering," I replied. "Two years in high school."
"You were speaking German like the Brrimm."
"What did I say? What did you make of it?"
"Im not sure. Whats a Wechselbalg?"
"I never heard of the word."
"You cried out as if something terrible was happening to you. Something about der Teufel. The devil, right?"
"I never met the man."
"And the Feen. Is that a fiend?"
"Maybe."
"Der Kobolden? You shrieked when you saw them, whatever they are. Any ideas?"
"None."
"Entführend?"
"Sorry."
"I could not tell what you were trying to say. It was a mash of languages. You were with your parents, I think, or calling out for your parents, and it was all in German, something about mit, mit—thats with, right? You wao go with them?"
"But my parents arent German."
"The ones you were remembering are. Someone came along, the fiends or the devils or der Kobolden, and they wao take you away."
I swallowed. The se was ing bae.
"Whoever or whatever it was grabbed you, and you were g out for Mama and Papa and das Klavier."
"The piano."
"I never heard anything like it, and you said you were stolen away. And I asked, When? and you said something in German I could not uand, so I asked you again, and you said, Fifty-nine, and I said, That t be. Thats only six years ago. And you said, clear as a bell, No ... 1859. "
Mes blinked his eyes and looked closely at me. I was shaking, so I lit anarette. We stared at the smoke, not saying a word. He finished first and> ground out the butt so hard that he nearly broke the ashtray.
"I dont know what to say."
"Know what I think?" Mes asked. "I think you were remembering a past life. I think you may have once upon a time been a German boy."
"I find that hard to believe."
"Have you ever heard of the geling myth?"
"I dont believe in fairy tales."
"Well ... when I asked you about your father, all you said was, He knows." Mes yawned. M was quite nearly upon us. "What do you think he knew, Henry? Do you think he knew about the past?"
I knew, but I did not say. There was coffee at the bar and eggs in a miniature refrigerator. Using the hot plate in the back, I made us breakfast, settling my wayward thoughts by trating on simple tasks. A kind of hazy, dirty light seeped in through the windows at dawn. I stood behind the ter; he sat in front on his usual stool, ae our scrambled eggs and drank our coffee black. At that hour the room looked worn and pitiful, and Mess eyes tired and vat, the way my father had appeared the last time we met.
He put on his hat and shrugged into his coat. An aause between us let me know that he would not be ing back. The night had been too raw and strange for the old professor. "Good-bye, and good luck."
As his hand turhe knob, I called out for him to wait. "What was my name," I asked, "in this so-called former life of mine?"
He did not bother to turn around. "You know, I hought to ask."
CHAPTER 16
When a gun goes off on a cold winters day, the retort echoes through the forest for miles around and every living creature stops to look and listen. The first gunshot of hunting season startled and put the faeries o. Scouts fanned out along the ridge, searg fe or camouflage vests or hats, listening for the trudge of men seeking out deer, pheasant, turkey, grouse, rabbit, fox, or black bear. Sometimes the hunters brought their dogs, dumb aiful— mottled pointers, feathery setters, blueticks, blad-tans, retrievers. The dogs could be more dangerous than their owners. Unless we masked our st along every path, the dogs could smell us out.
My great fear iing out alone is the eeting up with a stray or worse. Years later, when we were fewer in number, a pack of hunting dogs picked up our trail and surprised us at rest in a shady grove. They raced our way, a stream of flashing sharp teeth and howling menace, and we moved as one by instinct, scrambling toward the safety of a bramble thicket. With each stride we took ireat, the dogs gaiwo in pursuit. They were an army with knives drawn, h a primal battle cry, and we escaped only by sacrifig our bare skin to the tangle of thorns. We were lucky wheopped at the edge of the thicket, fused and whimpering.
But on this winter day, the dogs were far away. All we heard was the yelp, the random shot, the muttered curse, or the kill. I once saw a duck fall out of the sky, instantly ging from a stretched-forward silhouette to a pinwheel of feathers that landed with a clap oer. Poag had disappeared from these hills and valleys by the middle of the decade, so we had to worry only during the hunting season, which corresponded roughly with the late fall and winter holidays. The brightness of trees gave way to bareness, then to bitter cold, and we began to listen for humans in the glens and the crack of the gun. Two or three of us went out while the other faeries hunkered down, buried beh blas under a coat of fallen leaves, or in holes, or hid in hollow trees. We did our best to bee unseeable, as if we did . The early arrival of night or drippi days were our only respite from the tense boredom of hiding. The odor of our stant fear mingled with the rot of November.
Back to back to ba a triangle, Igel, Smaolach, and I sat watch upon the ridge, the m sun buffered by low dense clouds, the air pregnant with snow. Ordinarily, Igel wanted nothing to do with me, not sihat day years before when I nearly betrayed the by trying to speak with the man. Two sets of footsteps approached from the south; one heavy, crashing through the brush, the other soft. The humans stepped into a meadow. An air of impatience hung about the man, and the boy, about seven ht years old, looked anxious to please. The father carried his shotgun, ready to fire. The sons gun was broken apart and awkward to carry as he struggled out of the brush. They wore matg plaid jackets and billed caps with the earflaps down against the chill. We leaned forward to listen to their versation iillness. With practid tratiohe years, I was now able to decipher their speech.
"Im cold," said the boy.
"Itll toughen you up. Besides, we havent found what we came for."
"We havent even seen one all day."
"Theyre out here, Osk."
"Ive only seen them in pictures."
"When you see the real thing," said the man, "aim for the little buggers heart." He motioned for the boy to follow, and they headed east into the shadows.
"Lets go," said Igel, and we began to trail them, keeping ourselves hidden at a distance. When they paused, we paused, and at our sed such stop, I tugged on Smaolachs sleeve.
"What are we doing?"
"Igel thinks he may have found one."
We moved oing agaihe quarry paused.
"One what?" I asked.
"A child."
They led us on a circuitous route aloy pathways. No prey appeared, they never fired their ons, and they hadnt said more than a few words. Over lunch, they maintained an unfortable silence, and I could not uand how these two were of any i at all. The sullen pair headed back to a green pickup parked on the slope beside the road, and the boy stepped into the passengers side. As he crossed the front of the truck, the father muttered, "That was a fug mistake." Igel scrutihe pair with savage iy, and as the truck pulled away, he９９ｌｉb? read out the lise plate numbers, itting them to memory. Smaolad I lagged behind Igel as he marched home, i on his private ruminations.
"Why did we track them all day? What do you mean, he found a child?"
"Them clouds are ready to burst." Smaolach studied the darkening sky.
"You smell it ing."
"What is he going to do?" I yelled. Up ahead, Igel stopped in his tracks and waited for us to catch up.
"How long have you been with us, Aniday?" Igel asked. "What does your stone dar say?"
Ever sihat day wheurned on me, I had been wary of Igel, and had learo be deferential. "I dont know. December? November? 1966?"
He rolled his eyes, bit his lip, and tinued. "Ive been looking and waiting since you arrived, and its my turn now and that boy may be the one. When you and Speck are in town with your books, keep a for that green truck. If you see it again, or the boy or the father, let me know. If you have the ce to follow them and find where he lives oes to school, or where the father works, or if he has a mother, sister, brother, friend, you let me know."
"Of course I will, Igel. Id be happy to spy on him at the library."
He bade Smaolach to walk with him, and I brought up the rear. A bitterly freezing rain began to fall, and I ran the last few moments to escape from being drehe warren excavated by Igel and Luchóg over the years proved an ideal shelter on such blustery nights, although most of the time claustrophobia forced me out. The cold and damp drove me into the tunnels, and with my palms I felt along in the darkness until I sehe presence of others.
"Whos there?" I called out. No answer, only a furtive muffled sound.
I called out again.
"Go away, Aniday." It was Béka.
"You go away, you old fart. Ive just e in from the rain."
"Go back the way you came. This hole is occupied."
I tried to reason with him. "Let me pass by, and Ill sleep somewhere else."
A girl screamed and so did he. "She bit my damn finger."
"Who is there with you?"
Speck shouted out in the darkness. "Just go, Aniday. Ill follow you out."
"Vermin." Béka cursed a her go. I reached out in the darkness and she found my hand. We crawled back to the surface. Stinging rain gathered in her hair and flatte against her skull. A thin layer of ice caked over her head like a helmet, and the drops collected on our eyelashes and streamed down our faces. We stood still, uo say anything to each other. She looked as if she wished to explain or apologize, but her lips trembled aeeth knocked and chattered. Grabbing my hand again, she led me to the shelter of aunnel. We crawled in and crouched o the surface, out of the rai not in the cold earth. I could not stand the silence, so I yammered on about the father and son we had followed and Igels instrus. Speck took it all in without speaking a word.
"Squeeze out that water from your hair," she said. "It will dry faster that way and stop dripping down your nose."
"What does he mean, he found a child?"
"Im cold," she said, "and tired and sid sore. t we talk about this in the m, Aniday?"
"What did he mean that hes been waiting since I got here?"
"Hes . Hes going to ge places with that boy." She pulled off her coat. Even in the darkness, her white sweater threw baough light to allow me a better sense of her presence.
"I dont uand why he gets to go."
She laughed at my é. "This is a hierarchy. Oldest to you. Igel makes all the decisions because he has seniority, as to go ."
"How old is he?"
She calculated in her mind. "I dont know. Hes probably been here about one hundred years."
"Youre kidding." The number nearly fried my brain. "How old are all the others? How old are you?"
"Will you please let me sleep? We figure this out in the m. Now, e here and warm me up."
In the m, Sped I talked at length about the history of the faeries, and I wrote it all down, but those papers, like many others, are in ashes now. The best I do is re-create from memory what we recorded that day, which was far from truly accurate to begin with, since Speck herself did not know the full story and could merely summarize or speculate. Still, I wish I had my notes, for the versation was years ago, and my whole life seems to be nothing more than restrug memories.
That my good friends could one day leave profoundly saddened me. The cast of characters, in fact, stantly revolves, but so slowly over time that they seemed perma players. Igel was the oldest, followed by Béka, Blomma, Kivi, and the twins, Ragno and Zanzara, who came late in the eenth tury. Onions arrived in the auspicious year of 1900. Smaolad Luchóg were the sons of two families who had emigrated from the same village in Ireland in the first decades of the tweh tury, and Chavisory was a French adian whose parents had died in the great influenza epidemic of 1918. Besides myself, Speck was the baby, having been stolen as a four-year-old in the sed year of the Great Depression.
"I was a lot youhan most of the others when I made the ge," she said. "Except for the twins. From the beginning, there have been twins in this line, and theyre impossible to take unless very young. And we ake babies. Too much trouble."
Vague memories stirred the sauy thoughts. Where had I known twins before?
"Luchóg named me, because I eck of a girl when they snatched me. Everyone else is ahead of me in line for the ge, except you. Youre the bottom of the totem pole."
"And Igel has been waiting for his turn for a whole tury?"
"Hes seen a dozen make the ge and had to bide his time. Now were all in line behind him." The mention of such a wait caused her to shut her eyes. I leaned against a tree trunk, feeling helpless for her and hopeless for myself. Escape was not a stant thought, but occasionally I allowed myself to dream of leaving the group and rejoining my family. Dejected, Speck hung her head, dark hair c her eyes, her lips parted, drawing in air as if each breath was a chore.
"So what do we do now?" I asked.
She looked up. "Help Igel."
I noticed that her once-white sweater was fraying at the collar and the sleeves, and I resolved to look for a replat as we searched for the boy.
In glowing red letters, the sign out front read OSCARS BAR, and alone i behind the building, Béka found the hunters green pickup. He and Onions jumped into its bed and rode, ued by the drunken driver, to the mans house out in the try. She laughed when she read the name off the mailbox: LOVES. They memorized the location, sharing the good news with us later that night. With the information in hand, Igel set in motion our reaissand assigned shifts of teams to watch the boy and his family to learn their movements and habits. He instructed us to pay close attention to the boys character and demeanor.
"I want a detailed at of his life. Does he have any brothers or sisters? Uncles or aunts? Grammy and Gramps? Does he have any friends? What sort of games does he play? Any hobbies or spare-time activities? Find all there is to know about his relationship with his parents. How do they treat him? Is he ined to daydream? To wander about by himself in the woods?"
I transcribed his words in Mess position book and wondered how we might uake such a task. Igel walked over and stood in front of me, glaring down at my scribbling.
"You," he said, "will be our scrivener. I want a plete record. You are to be his biographer. Everyone else tell Aniday what they learn. Dont e pesterih every detail. Wheory is plete, you tell it. This will be the most perfect ge in our history. Find me a new life."
Before I saw the child again, I felt as if I knew him as well as myself. Chavisory, for instance, found out that h..e was named after his uncle Oscar. Smaolach could do a passing imitation of his voice, and Kivi had applied an unknown calculus to plot out his height, weight, and general body type. After years of mere self-preservation and maintehe faeries industry aion to the task bordered on the fanatic.
I was assigo watch for him at the library, but I rarely bothered to look for him there, and it is by ce that he appeared at all. His mother had dragged the poor child along a him alone on the small playground out front. From my hiding place, direct observation was impossible, so I watched his refle in the plate-glass windows across the street, which distorted his appearance, making him smaller and somehoarent.
The dark-haired, beetle-browed boy sang quietly to himself as he climbed up and swooshed off the slide over and ain. His nose ran, and every time he mouhe stairs hed wipe the snot with the back of his hand, then wipe his hand on his greasy corduroys. Wheired of the sliding board, he sauntered over to the swings to pump and pull himself into the clear blue sky. His blank expression never ged, and the song under his breath never faltered. I watched him for nearly an hour, and in that whole time, he expressed absolutely ion, tent to play aloil his mother came. A thin smile creased his face when she arrived, and without a word he jumped down from the swing, grabbed her hand, and off they went. Their behavior and iion baffled me. Parents and children take such everyday moments franted, as if there is an endless supply.
Had my parents fotten me pletely? The man who cried after me that long-ag surely had been my father, and I resolved to go see him, my mother, and my baby sisters one day soon. Perhaps after we had abducted the poor misfortunate bastard from the playground. The swing stopped, and the early June day faded. A swalloeared, chasing is in the air above the iron bars, and all of my desires were tipped by the wings as the bird scissored away into the milky dusk. I felt sorry for the boy, although I khat ging places was the natural order. His capture would mean Igels release and one more step toward the head of the line for me.
The child was an easy mark; his parents would barely be aware of the ge. He had few friends, caused her excitement nor alarm as a student, and was so ordinary as to be almost invisible. Ragno and Zanzara, who had taken residen the familys attionths, reported that aside from peas and carrots, the boy ate anything, preferred chocolate milk with his meals, slept on rubber sheets, and spent a lot of time in the living room watg a small box that let one know when to laugh and how to schedule bedtime. Our boy was a good sleeper, too, up to twelve hours at a stret 藏书网weekends. Kivi and Blomma reported that he liked to play outdoors in a sandbox by the house, where he had set up an elaborate tableau of small plastic dolls in blue and gray. The doleful fellow seemed satisfied to go on living life as it is. I envied him.
No matter how we pestered him, Igel refused to hear our report. We had been spying on Oscar for over a year, and everyone was ready for the ge. I was running out of paper in Mess book, and one more dispatch from the field would not only be a waste of time, but a waste of precious paper as well. Haughty, distracted, and burdened by the responsibilities of leadership Igel kept to himself, as if he both yearned for and fli the possibility of freedom. His normally stoic disposition ged to a general peevishness. Kivi came to dinner oh a red welt under her eye.
"What happeo you?"
"That son of a bitch. Igel hit me, and all I asked him was if he was ready. He thought I meant ready to go, but all I meant was for dinner."
No one knew what to say to her.
"I t wait till he leaves. I am sid tired of the old crab. Maybe the new boy will be nice."
I stood up from the meal and stormed through the camp, looking fel, resolving to front him, but he was not to be found in his usual places. I poked my head into the entranceway of one of his tunnels and called out, but no answer. Perhaps he had go to spy on the boy. Nobody knew where he might be found, so I spent several hours walking in circles, until g upon him alone down by the river, where he was staring at his refle in the broken surface of water. He looked so alohat I fot my anger and quietly crouched down beside him.
"Igel? Are you all right?" I addressed the image oer.
"Do you remember," he asked, "your life before this life?"
"Vaguely. In my dreams, sometimes my father and mother and a sister, or maybe two. And a woman in a red coat. But no, not really."
"I have been gone so long. Im not sure I know how to go back."
"Speck says there are three choices but only one ending for us all."
"Speck." He spat out her name. "She is a foolish child, almost as foolish as you, Aniday."
"You should read our report. It will help you make the ge."
"I will be glad to be rid of such fools. Have her e see me in the m. I dont want to talk to you, Aniday. Have Béka make your report."
He stood up, brushed dirt from the seat of his pants, and walked away. I hoped he would disappear forever.
CHAPTER 17
My long-fotten history peeked out from behind the curtains. The questions Mes posed during hypnosis had dredged up memories that had been repressed for more than a tury, and fragments of those subscious recolles began intruding into my life. We would be perf our sed-rate imitation of Simon and Garfunkel when an ued Germanism would leap out of my mouth. The boys in the band thought I was tripping, and wed have to start over after a brief apology to the audience. Or Id be sedug a young woman and find that her face had morphed into the visage of a geling. A baby would cry and Id wonder if it was human or a bundle of holy terror that had bee on the doorstep. A photograph of six-year-old Henry Days first day of school would remind me of all I was not. Id see myself superimposed over the image, my face reflected in the glass, layered over his face, and wonder what had bee of him, what had bee of me. No longer a monster, but not Henry Day either. I suffered trying to remember my own name, but that German boy stole away every time I drew near.
The only remedy for this obsession was to substitute another. Whenever my mind dwelled on the distant past, I would force myself to think of music, running alternative fingerings and the cycle of fifths in my mind, humming to myself, pushing dark thoughts away with a song. I flirted with the notion of being a pain even as college aspirations faded while awo years slipped by. In the seemingly random sounds of everyday life, I began to abstract patterns, which grew to measures, which became movements. Often I would go back to Oscars after a few hours sleep, put on a pot of coffee, and scribble the notations resonating in my head. With solely a piano available, I had to imagine an orchestra in that empty barroom, and those early scores ey chaotifusion over who I am. The unfinished positioentative steps back to the past, to my true nature. I spent ages looking for the sound, reshaping it, and tossing it away, for position was as elusive at the time as my own name.
The bar was my studio most ms. Oscar arrived around lunchtime, and Gee and Jimmy usually showed up midafternoon for rehearsal and a few beers—barely enough time for me to cover up my work. Halfheartedly, I plunked away at the piano before our practice was to begin on an early summer afternoon in 67. Gee, Jimmy, and Oscar experimented wit藏书网
h a few chord ges and rhythms, but they were mostly smoking and drinking. The area kids had been out of school for two weeks and were already bored, riding their bicycles up and down Main Street. Their heads and shoulders slid across the view through the windowpanes. Lewis Loves green pickup truck pulled up outside, and a moment later the bar door swung open, sending in a crush of humid air. His shoulders slumped with exhaustion, Lewis stopped ihreshold, numb and dumb. Setting down his horn, Oscar walked over to talk with his brother. Their versation was too soft to be overheard, but the body gives away its sorrows. Lewis hung his head and brought his hand to the bridge of his nose as if to hold back tears, and Gee and Jimmy and I watched from our chairs, not knowing quite what to say or do. Oscar led his brother to the bar and poured him a tall shot, which Lewis downed in a single swig. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve a over like a question mark, his forehead resting on the rail, so we crowded around our friends.
"His son is missing," Oscar said. "Since last night. The polid fire and rescue are out looking for him, but they havent found him. Hes o years old, man."
"What does he look like?" Gee asked. "Whats his name? How long has he been gone? Where did you last see him?"
Lewis straightened his shoulders. "His name is Oscar, after my brother here. About the averagest-looking kid you could find. Brown hair, brown eyes, about so high." He held out his hand and dropped it roughly four feet above the ground.
"When did he disappear?" I asked.
"He was wearing a baseball shirt and short pants, dark blue—his mother thinks. And high-top Chuck Taylors. He was out back of the house, playing after dinner last night. It was still light out. And then he vanished." He turo his brother. "I tried calling you all over the place."
Oscar pursed his lips and shook his head. "Im so sorry, man. I was out getting high."
Gee began walking to the door. "No time for recriminations. Weve got a missing kid to find."
Off we went to the woods. Oscar and Lewis rode together in the cab of the pickup, and Gee, Jimmy, and I sat in the bed, where there was the residual odor of manure baking in the heat. The truck bumped and rattled along a firebreak cut through the timberline, and we ground to a stop in a cloud of dust. The seard rescue team had parked in a glen about a mile due west from my house, about as far into the forest as they could mao drive the townships sole fire ehe captain of the fire department leaned against the big rig. He pulled on a bottle of cola in enormous gulps, his face like an alarm against his starched white shirt. Our party got out of the pickup, and I was overwhelmed by the sweet smell of honeysuckle nearby. Bees patrolled among the flowers, and as we walked toward the captain, they lazily ied us. Grasshoppers, panicked by our footfall, whirred ahead iall grass. Along the edge of the clearing, a tangle of wild raspberries and poison ivy reminded me of the double-edged nature of the forest. I followed the boys down a makeshift path, looking over my shoulder at the captain and his red trutil they vanished from sight.
A bloodhound bayed in the distaaking up a st. We trudged along single file for several hundred yards, and the dark shade cast by the opy gave the appearance of dusk in the shank of the afternoon. Every few moments, someone would call out for the boy, and his name hung in the air before dissipating in the warm half-light. We were chasing shadows where no shadows could be seen. The group halted when we reached the top of a small rise.
"This is getting us nowhere," Oscar said. "Why dont we spread out?"
Though I loathed the idea of being alone in the forest, I could not ter his logic without seeming a coward.
"Lets meet back here at nine." With an air of determined sobriety, Oscar studied the face of his watch, following the sweep of the９9ｌib? sed hand, ting off moments to himself. We waited and watched our own time go by.
"Four thirty," he said at last.
"Ive got four thirty-five," said Gee.
And almost simultaneously, I said, "Twenty after."
"Twenty-five of five," said Jimmy.
Lewis shook his wrist, removed his watch, ahe timepiece to his ear. "Thats funny—my watch has stopped." He stared at its face. "Seven thirty. Thats right around when I saw him last."
Each of us looked at the others for the way out of this temporal fusion. Oscar resumed his clock watg.
"Okay, okay, on my signal, set your watches. It is now four thirty-five."
We fiddled with the stems and dials. I wondered if the time was su issue after all.
"Heres the plan. Lewis and I will go this way. Henry, you go in the opposite dire. Gee and Jimmy, you head off opposite to each other." He in..
hem.
"I dont know why," Onions said. "It was the most horrible thing I have ever seen. I circled around behind the men and could see Kivi and Blomma when the lights hit them right in the face. They looked as if they were waiting for it to happen. The poli said, He was right. There is someone here. And the other said, Freeze. Kivi squeezed her eyes shut, and Blomma raised one hand to her forehead, but they didnt look afraid at all. Like they were happy, almost."
Onions wriggled through the door and escaped, not b with the stolen goods. Instinct set in, and she ran through the empty streets, heedless of all traffiever looking back. The fog disoriented her, and she ran all the way through town to the other side. Once she had found a hiding pla a yellow barn, she waited nearly all day to return home, taking a route that skirted the streets. When Ragno and Zanzara found her, she was exhausted.
"Why did the man say that?" Béka asked her. "What did he mean, This is where he said they would be?"
"Somebody must have told the poli where we were." Onions shuddered. "Somebody who knows our ways."
Béka took her by the hands and lifted her up from the ground. "Who else could it be?" He was looking straight at me, as if acg me of a heinous crime.
"But I didnt tell—"
"Not you, Aniday," he spat out. "The one who took your place."
"Chopin," said Chavisory, and one or two laughed at the name before catg their emotions. We trudged home in silence, remembering our missing friends Kivi and Blomma. Each of us found a private way to grieve. We took their dolls out of the hole and buried them in a single grave. Smaolad Luchóg spent two weeks building a , while Chavisory and Speck divided our departed friends possessions among the nine of us left behind. Only Ragno and Zanzara remaioid impassive, accepting their share of clothing and shoes but sayio nothing. Through that summer and into the fall, our versations revolved around finding meaning in the girls surrender. Onions did her best to vince us that a betrayal had occurred, and Béka joined in, affirming the spiracy, arguing that the humans were out to get us and that it was only a matter of time before Kivi and Blomma would fully fess. The men in the black suits would return, the army men, the polid their dogs, and they would hunt us down. Others among us took a more thoughtful view.
Luchóg said, "They wao leave, and it was only a matter of time. I only hope that the poor things find home in the world a sent off to live in a zoo or put uhe microscope by a mad stist."
We never heard of them again. Vanished, as if an airy nothing.
More than ever, Béka insisted we live in darkness, but he did allow us nights away from the diminished . When the ce arose over those few years, Sped I would steal away to sleep iive pead luxury beh the library. We threw ourselves into our books and papers. We read the Greeks in translation, Clytemra in her grief, Antigones honor in a thin coating of earth. Grendel prowling the bleak Danish night. The pilgrims of terbury and lives on the road. Maxims of Pope, the rich clot of humanity in all of Shakespeare, Miltons angels and aurochs, Gulliver big, little, yahoo. Wild ecstasies of Keats. Shelleys Fraein. Rip Van Winkle sleeping it off. Spesisted on Auste, Emerson, Thoreau, the Brontes, Alcott, t, Rossetti, both Brownings, and especially Alice down the rabbit hole. We worked our way right up to the present age, chewing through the books like a pair of silverfish.
Sometimes, Speck would read aloud to me. I would hand her a story she had never before seen, and almost without a beat, she made it hers. She frightened me from the word On Poes "The Raven." She brought me to tears over Ben Jonsons drowned cat. She made the hooves thunder in "The Charge of the Light Brigade" and the waves roar in Tennysons "Ulysses." I loved the music of her void watg her face as she read, season after season. In the summertime her bared skin darkened, and her dark hair brightened in the sunshine. During the cold part of the year, she disappeared beh layers, so that sometimes all I could see was her wide forehead and dark brows. On winter nights in that dlelit space, her eyes sho from the circles beh her eyes. Although ent twenty years together, she secreted away the power to shock or surprise, to say a word and break my heart.
CHAPTER 25
I had a name, although at times Gustav Ungerland was no more real to me than Henry Day. The simple solution would have been to track down Tom Mes and ask him for more details about what had been said under hypnosis. After finding the article in the library, I tried to locate its author but had no more to go on than the address in the magazine. Several weeks after receiving my letter, the editor of the defunct Journal of Myth and Society replied that he would be glad to forward it on to the professor, but nothing came of it. When I called his uy, the chairman of the department said Mes had vanished on a Monday m, right in the middle of the semester, a no f address. My attempts at tag Brian Ungerland proved equally frustrating. I couldnt very well pester Tess for information about her old boyfriend, and after asking around town, someoold me that Brian was at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, with the U.S. Army, studying how to blow things up. There were no Ungerlands in our local phone book.
Fortunately, other things occupied my thoughts. Tess had talked me into going back to school, and I was to begin in January. She ged when I told her my plans, became more attentive and affeate. We celebrated registering for classes by splurging on dinner and Christmas shopping iy. Arm in arm, we walked the sidewalks downtown. In the windows of Kaufmanment Store, miniature animatronic ses played out in an endless loop. Santa and his elves hammered at the same wooden bicycle. Skaters circled atop an icy mirror for all eternity. We stopped and lingered before one display—a human family, baby in the bassi, proud parents kissing uhe mistletoe. Our own images reflected on and through the glass, superimposed over the meicals domestic bliss.
"Isnt that adorable? Look at how lifelike they made the baby. Doesnt she make you want to have one yourself?"
"Sure, if they were all as quiet as that one."
We strolled by the park, where a ragtag bunch of children queued up to a stand selling hot chocolate. We bought two cups and sat on a cold park bench. "You do like children, dont you?"
"Children? I hink about them."
"But wouldnt you want a son to take camping irl to call your own?"
"Call my own? People dont belong to other people."
"Youre a very literal person sometimes."
"I dont think—"
"No, you dont. Most people pick up on subtleties, but you operate in another dimension."
But I knew what she meant. I did not know if having a real human baby ossible. Or would it be half human, half goblin, a monster? A horrid creature with a huge head and shrunken body, or those dead eyes peering out beh a sunbo. Or a misery that would turn on me and expose my secret. Yet Tesss reseny arm had a curious tug on my sce. Part of me desired to unpack the burdens of the past, to tell her all about Gustav Ungerland and my fugitive life in the forest. But so much time had passed sihe ge that at times I doubted that existence. All of my powers and skills learned a lifetime ago had disappeared, lost while endlessly playing the piano, faded in the fort of warm beds and cozy living rooms, in the reality of this lovely woman beside me. Is the past as real as the present? Maybe I wish I had told everything, and that the truth had revised the course of life. I dont know. But I do remember the feeling of that night, the mixed sensation of great hope and bottomless foreboding.
Tess watched a group of children skating across a makeshift ice rink. She blew on her drink a a fog of steam into the air. "Ive always wanted a baby of my own."
For once, I uood what another person was trying to tell me. With the music of a calliope harmonizing with the sound of children laughing uhe stars, I asked her to marry me.
We waited until the end of sprier and were married in May 1968 at the same church where Henry Day had been baptized as an infant. Standing at the altar, I felt almost human again, and in our vows existed the possibility for a happy ending. When we marched down the aisle I could see, in the smiling faces of all our friends and family, an unsuspeg joy for Mr. and Mrs. Henry Day. During the ceremony, I half expected that when the double doors opeo the daylight there would be a retinue of gelings waiting to take me away. I did my best tet my past, to dismiss the thought that I was a fraud.
At the reception, my mother and Uncle Charlie were the first to greet us, and they had not only paid for the party but even made us a gift of a honeymoon in Europe. While we were away in Germany, they would elope together, but that afternoon it assing strao see him where Bill Day should have been. Nostalgia for my father was fleeting, for we were leaving behind the past and claiming life. So much would ge over the few years. Gee Knoll would leave town a few weeks after the wedding to wander across the try for a year, and he ended up in San Francisco, running a sidewalk bistro with an older woman from Spain. With no Coverboys, Oscar would buy a jukebox that fall, and the ers would still flo for drinks and pop music. Jimmy Cummings took my old job behind the bar. Even my baby sisters were growing up.
Mary and Elizabeth brought their latest boyfriends, a couple of long-haired twins, to the reception, and at the ter of the party, Uncle Charlie regaled the crowd with his latest scheme. "Those houses up on the ridge are only the beginning. People are not merely going to move out of the cities; theyre going to be moving as far away as they . My pany is sitting on a gold mine in this ty."
My mother sidled up to him, a his arm around her waist aed his hand on her hip.
"When I first heard about the trouble up in the woods and sending iional Guard, well, my first thought was that when the gover was through, land would be dirt cheap."
She laughed so willingly at his pun that I fliess squeezed my arm to prevent me from saying what I was thinking.
"try living. Moderately priced, safe and secure, perfect for young couples looking to start a family." As if on cue, he and my mother stared right at Tesss belly. Already they were full of hope.
Feigning innoce, Elizabeth asked, "How about you two, Uncle Charlie?"
Tess squeezed my bottom, and I let out a tiny whoop just as Jimmy Cummings stepped up to speak. "I wouldnt want to live up there, man."
"Of course not, Jimmy," Mary said. "After all you went through in those woods."
"Theres something up there," he told the party. "Did you hear the rumor about those wild little girls they found the ht?"
The guests began to drift off in pairs and start new versations. Since his rescue of young Oscar Love, Jimmy had acquired a reputation for tiresome repetitions of the story, exaggeratiails until it became a tall tale. When he launched into another yarn, he was bound to be dismissed as merely aoryteller, desperate for attention. "No really," he said to the few of us remaining. "I heard the local fuzz found these two girls, bout ..six or seven, I hear, who had broken into the drugstore in the dead of night and smashed everything in sight. The cops were scared of those girls, said they were spooky as a pair of cats. Man, they could barely speak a word of English or any language known to man. Put two and two together. They were living up in the woods—remember that place I found Oscar? Maybe there are others up there. Put your mind around that. Like a whole lost tribe of wild children. Its a trip, man."
Elizabeth was staring at me when she asked him, "What happeo them? Where are those two girls?"
"t firm or deny a rumor," he said, "and I didnt actually see them with my own two eyes, but I dont have to. Did you know the FBI came and took em away? To Washington, Dd their secret labs, so they could study them."
I turo Oscar, who stood slack-jawed, listening to Jimmy. "Are you sure you want this boy tending bar for you, Oscar? Seems like hes been hitting the bottle a bit too much."
Jimmy came right up to my fad said sotto voce, "Know the trouble with you, Henry? You lack imagination. But theyre up there, man. You better freakin believe it."
During the flight to Germany, dreams of gelings interrupted what sleep I could manage on the airplane. When Tess and I landed in damp and overcast Frankfurt, we had two different expectations for our honeymoon. Poor thing, she wanted adventure, excitement, and romawo young lovers traveling through Europe. Bistros, wine and cheese, jaunts on motorbikes. I was looking fhost and evideny past, but all I knew could be written on a cocktail napkin: Gustav Ungerland, 1859, Eger.
Immediately bewildered by the city, we found a small room in a pension on Mendelssohnstrasse. We were dazed by the sooty black elephant of the Hauptbahnhof, disg trains by the hour, and behind it the resurrected city, eel and crete skyscrapers rising from the ashes of the ruins. Ameris were everywhere. Soldiers fortunate enough to have drawn duty guarding agaiern Europe rather than fighting inam. Strung-out runaways in the Konstablerwache shooting up in broad daylight ging for our spare ge. Our first week together, we felt out of place between the soldiers and the junkies.
On Sunday we strolled over to the R?merberg, a papier-m?ché version of the medieval Alstadt that had been mostly bombed out by the Allies in the final months of the war. For the first time on our trip, the weather was bright and sunny, and we enjoyed a springtime street fair. On the carousel in the middle of the festival, Tess rode a zebra and I a griffin; then we held hands after lun the cafe as a strolling quartet played a song for us. As if the honeymoon had finally enced, when we made love that night, our tiny room became a cozy paradise.
"This is more like it," she whispered in the dark. "How I imagined we would be together. I wish every day could be like today."
I sat up and lit a Camel. "I was w if maybe tomorrow we could go our own ways for a while. You know, have time to ourselves. Just think how much more well have to talk about when were back together. Theres stuff Id like to do that might not be iing to you, so I was thinking maybe I could get up a bit earlier and go out, and Id be back, probably, by the time you woke up. See the National Library. You would be bored to tears."
"Cool out, Henry." She rolled over and faced the wall. "That sounds perfect. Im getting a little tired of spending every miogether."
It took all m to find the right train, then the right streets, and the address to the Deutsche Bibliothek, and another hour or so to find the map room. A charming young librarian with workable English helped me with the historical atlas and the seemingly thousands of alterations and border ges brought about by hundreds of years of eace, from the final days of the Holy Roman Empire through the Hessian principalities’ Reichstag to the divisions at the end of both world wars. She did not know Eger, could not I mil anyone in Referehat had heard of the town.
"Do you know," she finally asked, "if it is East Germany?"
I looked at my watd discovered it was 4:35 iernoon. The library closed at 5:00 P.M., and a furious new wife would be waiting for me.
She scoured the map. "Aow I see. Its a river, not a town. Eger on the border." She poio a dot that read Cheb (Eger). "The town you are looking for isnt called Eger now, and it isnt in Germany. Its in Czechoslovakia." She licked her finger and paged back through the atlas to find another map. "Bohemia. Look here, in 1859 this was all Bohemia, from here to here. And Eger, right there. I have to say I much prefer the old name." Smiling, she rested her hand on my shoulder. "But we have found it. One place with two names. Eger is Cheb."
"So, how do I get to Czechoslovakia?"
"Unless you have the right papers, you dont." She could read my disappoi. "So, tell me, what is so important about Cheb?"
"Im looking for my father," I said. "Gustav Ungerland." The radiance melted from her face. She looked at the floor between her feet. "Ungerland. Was he killed in the war? Sent to the camps?"
"No, no. Were Catholics. Hes from Eger; I mean, Cheb. His family, that is. They emigrated to Ameri the last tury."
"You might try the church records in Cheb, if you could get in." She raised one dark eyebrow. "There may be a way."
We had a few drinks in a cafe, and she told me how to cross the lihout beied. Making my way baendelssohnstrasse late that evening, I rehearsed a story藏书网 to explain my long abseess was asleep when I came in after ten, and I slid into bed beside her. She woke with a start, then rolled over and faced me on the pillow.
"Im sorry," I said. "Lost in the library."
Lit by the moon, her face looked swollen, as if she had been g. "Id like to get out of this gray city ahe tryside. Go hiking, sleep uhe stars. Meet some real Germans."
"I kno9９liｂ?lace," I whispered, "filled with old castles and dark woods he border. Lets sneak across and discover all their secrets."
CHAPTER 26
The m is perfe memory, a late-summer day when blue skies foretold the ing autumn crispness. Sped I had awakened o each other in a sea of books, thehe library in those magically empty moments between parents going off to work, or children off to school, and the hour when stores and businesses opeheir doors. By my stone dar, five long and miserable years had passed since our dimiribe took up our new home, and we had grown weary of the dark. Time away from the mine iably brightened Specks mood, and that m, when first I saw her peaceful face, I loo tell her how she made my heart beat. But I never did. In that sehe day seemed like every other, but it would bee a day unto its own.
Overhead, a jet trailed a string of smoke, white against the paleness of September. "We matched strides and talked of our books. Shadows ahead appeared briefly betweerees, a slender breeze blew, and a few leaves tumbled from the heights. To me, it looked for an instant as if ahead oh Kivi and Blomma were playing in a patch of sun. The mirage passed too quickly, but the trick of light brought to mind the mystery behind their departure, and I told Spey brief vision of our missing friends. I asked her if she ever wondered whether they really wao be caught.
Speck stopped at the edge of cover before the exposed land that led to the mirahe loose shale at her feet shifted and ched. A pale moon sat in a cloudless sky, and we were wary of the climb, watg the air for a plahat might discover us. She grabbed me by the shoulder and spun me around so quickly that I feared immi peril. Her eyes locked on mine.
"You dont uand, Aniday. Kivi and Blomma could not take it another moment. They were desperate for the other side. To be with those who live in the light and upper world, real family, real friends. Dont you ever want to run away, go bato the world as somebodys child? Or e away with me?"
Her questions poured out like sugar from a split sack. The past had eased its claims on me, and my nightmares of that world had stopped. Not until I sat down to write this book did the memories return, dusted and polished new again. But that m, my life was there. With her. I looked into her eyes, but she seemed far away in thought, as if she could not see me before her but only a distant spad time alive in her imagination. I had fallen in love with her. And that moment, the words came falling, and fession moved to my lips. "Speck, I have something—"
"Wait. Listen."
The noise surrounded us: a low rumble from ihe hill, zigzagging along the ground to where we two stood, vibratih our 99lｉｂ?feet, then fanning out into the forest. In the instant, a crad tumble, muffled by the outer surface. The earth collapsed upon itself with a sigh. She squeezed my hand and dragged me, running at top speed, toward the entrance of the mine. A plume of dirt swirled from the fissure like a ey gently smoking on a winters night. Up close, acrid dust thied and choked off breathing. We tried to fight through it but had to wait upwind until the fog dissipated. From inside, a reedy sound escaped from the crack to fade in the air. Before the soot settled, the first person emerged. A single hand gripped the rim of rock, theher, and the head pushed through, the body shouldering into the open. In the wan light, we ran through the cloud to the prostrate body. Speck tur over with her foot: Béka. Onions soon followed, wheezing and panting, and lay down beside him, her arm roped over his chest.
Speck leaned down to ask, "Is he dead?"
"Cave-in," Onions whispered.
"Are there any survivors?"
"I dont know." She brushed back Békas dirty hair, away from his blinking eyes.
We forced ourselves into the mines darkness. Speck felt around for the flint, struck it, and sparked the torches. The firelight reflected particles floating in the air, settling like sediment stirred in a glass. I called out to the others, and my heart beat wildly with hope when a voice replied: "Over here, over here." As if moving through a snowy nightmare, we followed the sound down the main tuurni into the chamber where most of the slept eaight. Luchóg stood at the entranceway, fine silt ging to his hair, skin, and clothes. His eyes shone clear and moist, and on his face tears had left wet trails in the dirt. His fingers, red and raw, shook violently as he waited for us. Ashes floated in the halo created by the torchlight. I could make out the broad baaolach, who was fag a pile of rubble where our sleeping room oood. At a frantic pace, he tossed stoo the side, trying to move the mountain bit by bit. I saw no one else. We sprang to his aid, lifting debris from the mound that ran to the ceiling.
"What happened?" Speck asked.
"Theyre trapped," Luchóg said. "Smaolach thinks he heard voices oher side. The roof came down all at once. Wed be uhere, too, if I hadnt the need for a smoke when I woke up this m."
"Onions and Béka are already out. We saw them outside," I said.
"Are you there?" Speck asked the rock. "Hold on, well get you out."
We dug until there appeared an opening big enough for Smaolach to stick his arm through to the elbow. Energized, we pounced, clawing away stones until Luchóg shihrough the spad disappeared. The three of us stopped and waited for a sound for what seemed like forever. Finally Speck shouted into the void, "Do you see anything, mouse?"
"Dig," he called. "I hear breathing."
Without a word, Speck left abruptly, and Smaolad I tio enlarge the passageway. We could hear Luchóg oher side, scrabbling through the tunnel like a small creature in the walls of a house. Every few minutes, he would murmur reassurao someohen exhort us to keep burrowing, and we desperately worked harder, muscles enflamed, our throats caked with dust. As suddenly as she had disappeared, Speck returned, aor hand to throw more light upon our work. Her face taut with anger, she reached up and tore at the stone. "Béka, that bastard," she said. "Theyve gone. o a himself."
After much digging, we made the hole wide enough for me to crawl through the rubble. I nearly landed on my face, but Luchóg broke my fall. "Down here," he said softly, and we crouched together over the supine figure. Half buried uhe ruins lay Chavisory, still and cold to the touch. Covered by ash, she looked like a ghost and her breath smelled mortally sour.
"Shes alive." Luchóg spoke in a whisper. "But barely, and I think her legs are broken... I t move these heavy ones by myself." He looked stri with fear and fatigue. "Youll have to help me."
Stone by stone, we unburied her. Straining uhe weight of the last debris, I asked him, "Have you seen Ragno and Zanzara? Did they get out okay?"
"Not a trace." He motioned back toward our sleeping quarters, now buried under a ton of earth. The boys must have been sleeping ihe roof collapsed, and I prayed that they had not stirred a from sleep to death as easily as turning over in their bed. But we could not stop to think of them. The possibility of another collapse urged us on. Chavisory moaned when we removed the last rock off her left ankle, a greenstick fracture, the bones and skin raulpy. Her foot flopped at a siing angle when we lifted her, and the blood left a viscous sli our hands. She cried out with every step and lost sciousness as we struggled up to the tunnel, half pulling, half pushihrough. When he saw bbr>her leg, bone pierg the skin, Smaolach turned and threw up into the er. As we rested there before the final push, Speck asked, "Is anyone else alive?"
"I dont think so," I said.
She closed her eyes for a moment, then issued orders for our quick escape. The most difficult part involved the exit of the miself, and Chavisory awoke and screamed as she ihrough. At that moment, I wished we had all been inside, asleep o one another, all of us buried food and out of our own private miseries. Exhausted, we placed her dowly on the hillside. None of us knew what to do or say or think. Inside another implosion shuddered, and the mine puffed out one last gasp like a dying dragon.
Spent and fused by grief, we waited fhtfall. None of us thought that the collapse might have been heard by the people in town or that it might possibly draw the humans to iigate. Luchóg spotted the dot of light first, a small fire burning down by the treeline. With ation or discussion, the four of us picked up Chavisory, our arms linked in a gurney, and headed toward the light. Although worried that the fire might belong ters, we decided it would be better, in the end, to find help. We moved cautiously over the shale, causing more pain for poor Chavisory, yet hopeful that the fire would give us a place to stay out of the creeping cold for the night, somewhere we might tend her wounds.
The wind creaked through the bones of the treetops and shook the upper branches like clag fingers. The fire had been built by Béka. He offered no apologies or explanations, just grunted like an old bear at our questions before shuffling off to be alone. Onions and Speck crafted a splint for Chavisory s broken ankle, binding it up with Luchóg’s jacket, and they covered her with fallen leaves and lay o her all night to share the warmth from their bodies. Smaolach wandered off aurned much later with a gourd filled with water. We sat and stared at the fire, brushing the caked dirt from our hair and clothing, waiting for the sun to rise. In those quiet hours, we mourhe dead. Ragno and Zanzara were as gone as Kivi and Blomma and Igel.
In place of the prior ms brilliant glow, a gentle rain crawled in aled. Only the occasional whistle from a lonesome bird marked the passing time. Around midday, a fierce yell of pain punctuated the stillness. Chavisory awoke to her o..t>rdeal and cursed the rock, the mine, Béka, and us all. We could not silence her anguished cries until Speck took her hand and willed her through steadfasto be quiet. The rest of us looked away from her, stealing gla one anothers faces, masks of weariness and sorroere now seven. I had to t twice to believe it.
CHAPTER 27
Tess dido be talked into sneaking across the border, and the very idea ressio aic jolt into our honeymoon. The closer we got to Czechoslovakia, the livelier the sex became. On the day ed our secret passage to the other side, she kept me in bed until mid-m. Her desires fed my own curiosity about my hiddeage. I o know where I had e from, who I had been. Every step along the way brought the sensation of returning home. The landscape looked familiar and dreamlike, as if the trees, lakes, and hills lay embedded, but long dormant, in my sehe architecture of stone and exposed timber was exactly as I had pictured, and at inns and cafes, the people we met bore familial traces in their sturdy bodies, fine chiseled features, clear blue eyes, and sweeping blonde hair. Their faces enticed me deeper into Bohemia. We decided to cross into the forbidden land at the village of Hohenberg, which sat on the German line.
Si was first dedicated in 1222, the castle at the ter of town had beeroyed and rebuilt several times, most retly after World War II. On a sunny Saturday, Tess and I had the place to ourselves except for a young German family with small children who followed us from building to building. They caught up to us outside, he uneven white walls that ran along the citys rear border, a fortress against attack from the forest and the Eger River beyond.
"Pardon me," the mother said to Tess in English, "you are Ameri, right? Would you a photograph take? Of my family, on my camera?"
I bla being so easily reizable as Ameris. Tess smiled at me, took off her backpack, and laid it on the ground. The family of six arrahemselves at the base of one of the inal parapets. The children looked as if they could have been my brothers and sisters, and as they posed, the notion that I once art of such a family lingered and then receded iher. Tess took a few steps backward to squeeze them all into the frame, and the small children cried out, "Vorsicht, der Igel! Der Igel!" The boy, no more than five, ran straight at Tess with a mad expression in his blue eyes. He stopped at her feet, reached between her ao a small flower bed, and carefully scooped up something in his small hands.
"What do you have there?" Tess bent to meet his face.
He held out his hands and a hedgehog crawled out from his fingers. Everybody laughed at the minor drama of Tess nearly stepping on the prickly thing, but I could barely light a smoke due to the shakes. Igel. I had not heard that name in almost twenty years. All of them had names, not quite fotten. I reached out to touch Tess to help put them out of mind.
After the family left, we followed the map to hiking trails behind the castle. Along oh, we came across a miniature cave, and in front, signs of an encampment, what looked to me like an abandoned ring. I led us away quickly, headi and downhill through the black woods. Our trail spilled out to a two-lane road devoid of traffic. Around the bend, a sign saying EGER STEG poio a dirt road to the right, and we came upon mild rapids across a narrow river, no more than a wide but shallow stream. On the opposite bank lay the Czechoslovakian woods, and in the hills behind, Cheb. Not another soul was in sight, and perhaps because of the river or the rocks, no barbed-wire fence protected the border. Tess held my hand and we crossed.
The rocks above the waterline provided safe footing, but we had to watch our step. When we reached the Czech side, a thrill, sharp as a razor, went through me. Wed made it. Home, or as close to it as possible. At that instant, I was ready to vert—or revert—and lay claim to my identity. Tess and I had disguised ourselves as best we could that m, affeg a European indiffereo our hair and clothing, but I worried that others might see through the ruse. In hindsight, I should not have worried so, for 1968 was the year of the Prague Spring, that open window when Dubcek tried t "socialism with a human face" to the benighted Czechs and Slovaks. The Russian tanks would not roll in until August.
Tess loved the danger of our trespass and skulked along the leafy floor like an escaped prisoner. I tried to keep up with her, hold her hand, and assume an air of silent ing. After a mile or so on our hike, an itent sprinkle fell through the green leaves, and then a shan in ear. The raindrops hit the opy above and dripped down with a steady beat, but underh that rhythm, an irregular sound of footsteps became audible. It was too dark to make out any figures, but I heard them marg through the brush, cirg around, following us. I grabbed her arm and pushed on faster.
"Henry, do you hear that?" Tess s eyes darted about, and she turned her head from side to side. They kept on ing, and we began to run. She took one last look over her shoulder and screamed. Catg me by the elbow, Tess stopped our progress and wheeled me around to face our tormentors. They looked forlorn in the falling rain. Three cows, two brindles and one white, stared back at us, indifferently chewing their cuds.
Soaked, we fled the wet forest and found the road. We must have been a pitiable sight, for a farmers truck stopped, and the driver indicated with his meaty thumb that we could hitch a ride in the back. Tess shouted "Cheb?" to him through the rain, and when he nodded, we got in and rode atop a mountain of potatoes for a half-hour all the way to the quaint Czech village. I kept my eyes on the reg woods, the winding road, sure that we were being followed.
Like flowers in a spring garden, the houses and stores were painted in pale pastels, the old buildings in white and yelloe and verdigris. While many parts of Cheb seemed ageless, the buildings and landmarks struo chords in my memory. A black sedan with a red glass siren sat parked at a crazy angle before the town hall. To avoid the police, we walked in the opposite dire, hoping to find someone who could uand our fractured German. We shied away from the pink Hotel Hvezda, spooked by a severe poli outside who stared at us for a full thirty seds. Across the square, past the sculpture of the Savage Man, sat a ramshackle hotel he Oh?e e River. I had hoped and expected the landmarks ter memories of Gustav Ungerland, but nothing was familiar. My vaulted expectations, jured along the journey, proved too high a hope. It was as if I had never been there before, or as if childhood in Bohemia had never existed.
Inside a dark and smoky bar, we bribed the manager with Ameri dollars to let us dine on sausages and boiled potatoes, and a dank half-bottle of East German wine. After our meal, we were led up a crooked staircase to a tiny room with no more than a bed and a basin. I locked the door, and Tess and I lay on our backs in our jackets and boots ohreadbare covers, too teired, aed to move. Darkness slowly stole the light, and the silence was broken only by the sounds of our breathing and wild, rag hearts.
"What are we doing here?" she finally asked.
I sat up and began undressing. In my former life, I could have seen her in the dark as clearly as break of day, but now I relied on imagination. "Isnt it a kick? This town was once part of Germany, and before that of Bohemia?"
She took off her boots, slipped out of her jacket. I slid uhe woolen blas and coarse sheets as she undressed. Shivering and ess moved in close, rubbing a cold foot against my leg. "Im scared. Suppose the secret polie knog on the door?"
"Dont worry, baby," I told her in my best James Bond. "Ive got a lise to kill." I rolled over on top of her, and we did our best to live for the danger.
Waking late the m, we hurried over to the grand old Church of St. Nicholas, arriving late for a Mass in Czed Latin. he altar sat a few elderly women, rosaries draped in their folded hands, and sprinkled here, small families sat in clumps, dazed and wary as sheep. At the entranceway, two men in dark suits may have been watg us. I tried to sing along with the hymns, but I could only fake the words. While I did not uand the service, its rites and rituals mirrored those long-ago Masses with my mother—is above dles, rich vestments of the priests and pristiar boys, the rhythm of standing, kneeling, sitting, a secration heralded by the hells. Although I knew by then it was just?? a romantic folly, I could picture my former self done up in Sunday clothes beside her on the pew with my relut, sighing father and the twins squirming in their skirts. What struck me most of all was the an musi the loft above, casg like a river over rocks.
As the parishioners exited, they stopped to share a few words among themselves and to greet the wizened priest standing in the bright sunshine beyond the door. A blonde girl turo her nearly identical sister and poio us, whispered in his ear, and then they ran hand in hand from the church. Tess and I liaking in the elaborate statues of Mary and St. Nicholas flanking the entrance, and we were the final pair to leave the building. When Tess held out her hand to the priest, she found herself captured in his grasp and drawn closer.
"Thank you for ing," he said, then turo me, a strange look in his eyes, as if he knew my history. "And God bless you, my son."
Tess broke into a beatific grin. "Ylish is perfect. How did you know we are Ameris?"
He held her hand the whole time. "I was five years in New Orleans at the St. Louis Cathedral back when I was first ordained. Father Karel Hlinka. Youre here for the festival?"
"What festival?" Tess brighte the prospect.
"Pra?ké Jaro. The Prague Spring Iional Music Festival."
"Oh, no. We knew nothing about that." She leaned in and said in a low, fidential voice, "We snuck across the border."
Hlinka laughed, taking her remark as a joke, and she swiftly ged the subject, asking him about his Ameri experiend the cafe life of New Orleans. As they chatted and laughed, I went outside, stood in a er to light a cigarette, and sidered the blue smoke curling to the sky. The two blonde sisters had circled back, this time leading a group of other children gathered from the streets. Like a string of birds on a telephone wire, they stood just beyond the gates, a dozen heads peeking over the low wall. I could hear them babbling in Czech, a phrase that sounded like podvr?ené dítě popping up like the leitmotif of their chattering song. With a gla my wife, who was holding Father Hlinka in rapt attention, I started to walk over to the children, who scattered like pigeons when I came too close. They flew in again when I showed them my back, and ran off, laughing and screaming, when I turned around. When I stepped outside the gate, I found one girl c behind the wall. We spoke in German, and I told her not to be afraid.
"Why is everyone running away and laughing?"
"She told us there was a devil in the church."
"But I am not a devil .. .just an Ameri."
"She said you are from the woods. A fairy."
Beyond the towns streets, the old forest bristled with life. "There are no such things as fairies."
The girl stood up and faced me, hands on her hips. "I dont believe you," she said, and turo race off to her panions. I stood there watg her go, my mind twisted in knots, worried that I had made a mistake. But we had e too far for me to be frightened by mere children or the threat of the police. In a way, they were no different from other people. Suspi was a sed skin for me, and I felt perfectly capable of hiding the facts from everyone.
Tess bouhrough the gates and found me on the sidewalk. "How would you like a private tour, baby?"
Father Hlinka was at her side. "Frau Day tells me that you are a musi, a poser. You must try out the pipe an here. Best in Cheb."
In the loft high above the church, I sat at the keyboard, the empty pews stretg out before me, the gilt altar, the enormous crucifix, and played like a man possessed. To work the fool pedals ahe right tone from the massive an, I had to rod throw my weight against the mae, but once I figured out its plexities of stops and bellows and was in the flow of the music, it became a kind of dance. I performed a simple piece from the Berceuse by Louis Vierne, and for the first time in years felt myself again. While I laying, I became a thing apart, not aware of anyone or anything else but the music, whifused me like hot id fell over me like wondrous strange snow. Father Hlinka and Tess sat in the gallery with me, watg my hands move, my head bob, and listeo the music.
Wheired of the violent sound, Tess kissed my cheek and wandered dowaircase to look over the rest of the church. Aloh the priest, I quickly broached the reason for my visit to Cheb. I told him of my researto family history and how the librarian ba Frankfurt had advised me to check the church records, for there was little hope of getting access to the tral gover archives.
"Its a surprise for her," I said. "I want to trace Tess’s family tree, and the missing link is her grandfather, Gustav Ungerland. If I could just find his birthday or any information about him, I will make up a family history for her."
"That sounds like a wonderful thing to do. e baorrow. Ill dig through the archives, and you play the musie."
"But you t tell my wife."
He winked, and we were co-spirators.
Over dinner, I told Tess about the musical half of Father Hlinkas offer, and she was happy for me to have the ce to go back to the an loft. On Monday afternoon, she sat below in the middle pew, listening for the first hour or so, but the off on her own. After she left, Father Hlinka whispered, "I have something for you." He crooked his finger, beio follow him into a small alcove off the loft. I suspected that he had found some record of the Ungerlands, and my anticipation grew when the priest lifted a woodeo the top of a rickety desk. He blew dust off the lid and, grinning like an elf, opehe box.
Instead of the churents I had expected, I saw music. Score after score of music for the an, and not just on hymns, but symphonic masterworks that gave life and preseo the instrument—a raft of Handel, Mahlers Resurre, Liszts Battle of the Huns, the Fantasie Symphonique by Francois-Joseph Fétis, and a pair an-only solos by Guilmant. There were pieces by Gigout, Langlais, es, and Poulencs certan, Strings, and Timpani. Record albums of Aaron Coplands First Symphony, Barbers Toccata Festiva, Rheinberger, Franck, and a bakers dozen of Bach. I was stunned and inspired. To simply listen to it all—not to menti my hand at the grand keyboard—would take months or even years, and we had but a few hours. I wao stuff my pockets with loot, fill my head with song.
"My only vid passion," Hlinka said to me. "Enjoy. We are not so different, you and I. Strange creatures with rare loves. Only you, my friend, you play, and I but listen."
I played all day for Father Hlinka, who ied old parish ledgers of baptisms, weddings, and funerals. I dazzled him with indesd extravagance, leaning into the extra octave of bass, and hammered out the mad finale from Joseph Jongens Symphonie certante. A ge came over me at that keyboard, and I began to hear positions of my own ierludes. The music stirred memories that existed beyond the town, and on that glorious afternoon I experimented with variations and was so carried away that I fot about Father Hlinka until he retury-ha five oclock. Frustrated by his own failure to find any records of the Ungerlands, he called his peers at St. Wenceslas, and they got in touch with the archivists of the aba. Bartholomew and St. Klara churches to help scour through the records.
I was running out of time. Despite the relative freedom, we were still in danger of being asked for our papers, and we had no visa for Czechoslovakia. Tess had plained over breakfast that the police were spying on her when she visited the Black Tower, followi the art ter on the Ru?ov? kope?ek. Schoolchildren poi her oreets. I saw them, too, running in the shadows, hiding in dark ers. On Wednesday m, she groused about spending so much of our honeymoon alone.
"Just one more day," I pleaded. "Theres nothing quite like the sound in that church."
"Okay, but Im staying in today. Wouldnt you rather go back to bed?"
When I arrived at the loft late that afternoon, I was surprised to find the priest waiting for me at the pipe an. "You must let me tell your wife." He grinned. "We have found him. Or at least I think this must be her grandfather. The dates are somewhat off, but how many Gustav Ungerlands there be?"
He handed me a grainy photocopy of the passenger list from the German ship Albert, departing 20 May 1851 from Bremen to Baltimore, Maryland. The names and ages were written in a fine hand:
212 Abram Ungerland42Musikant Eger Boheme
213 Clara Ungerland40""
214 Friedrich "14""
215 Josef "6""
216 Gustav "?""
217 Anna "9""
"Wont she be delighted? What a fine wedding gift."
I could not begin to answer his questions. The names evoked a rush of memory. Josef, my brother—Wo in der Welt bist du? Anna, the one who died in the crossing, the absent child who broke my mothers heart. My mother, Clara. My father, Abram, the musi. o go along with my dreams.
"I know you said he was here in 1859, but sometimes the past is a mystery. But I think 1851 is right for Herr Ungerland, not 1859," said Father Hlinka. "History fades over time."
For a moment, the six came alive. Of course I did not remember Eger or Cheb. I was a baby, not yet one year old, when we came to America. There was a house, a parlor, a piano. I was taken from there and not from this place.
"No records in the churches, but I thought we should try emigration archives, no? Wont Mrs. Day be thrilled? I ot wait to see her face."
I folded the paper and stuck it in my pocket. "Of course, Father, yes, you should be the oo tell her. We should celebrate ... tonight if you like."
The pleasure of his smile almost made me regret lying to him, and I was equally heartbroken to leave the magnifit an behind. But I hurried from St. Nicholass, the history in my pocket against my heart. When I found Tess, I made up a story about the poliiffing around the church for two Ameris,.９９lｉｂ. and we slipped away, retrag our steps to the border.
When we reached the forest he river crossing, I was shocked to see a young boy, perhaps as old as seven, standing by himself beside a large tree. He did not take notice of us, but remained quite still, as if hiding from someone. I could only imagine what might be in pursuit, and part of me wao rescue him. We were nearly upon him before he flinched, and putting a fio his lips, the child begged us to be quiet.
"Do you speak German?" Tess whispered in that language.
"?９9ｌiｂ.;Yes, quiet please. They are after me."
I looked from tree to tree, anticipating a rush of gelings.
"Who is after you?"
"Versteckspiel," he hissed, and hearing him, a young girl burst from the green background to chase and tag him on the shoulder. Wheher children emerged from their hideaways, I realized they were playing a simple game of hide-and-seek. But as I looked from boy to girl, from face to face, I could not help but remember how easily they could alter their appearaess thought them cute and wao linger awhile, but I hurried her onward. At the river, I hopped from stoo stone, f the water as quickly as I could. Tess was takiime, frustrated and ahat I had not waited for her.
"Henry, Henry, what are you running from?"
"Hurry, Tess. Theyre after us."
She labored to jump to the rock. "Who?"
"Them," I said, a back to pull her from the other side.
After our honeymoon trip, life rapidly grew too plicated to tinue my resear the Ungerlands or to find another pipe an. We had one last busy semester of school, and as graduation drew near, our versations turo new possibilities. Tess lay ihtub, tendrils of steam curling up from the hot water. I leaned on the edge of the hamper, ostensibly reading a draft of a new score, but actually for the sheer pleasure of watg her soak.
"Henry, Ive good news. The job with the ty looks like it will e through."
"Thats great," I said, and turhe page and hummed a few bars. "What is it, exactly, that youll be doing?"
"Casework at first. People e in with their troubles, I take them down, and then we make all the right referrals."
"Well. I have an interview at that new middle school." I put down the position and stared at her half-submerged naked form. "Theyre looking for a band director and music teacher for seventh ah grades. Its a pretty good gig and will leave me time to pose."
"Things are w out for us, baby."
She was right, and that was the moment I decided. My life was ing together. Against all odds ae the interruption caused by my father s death, I would finish school, and a new career was about to start. A beautiful young woman lounged in my bathtub.
"What are you smiling about, Henry?"
I started unbuttoning my shirt. "Move over, Tess, Ive got something to whisper in your ear."
CHAPTER 28
The most merciless thing in the world is love. When love flees, all that remains is memory to pensate. Our friends were either going oheir ghosts the best our poor minds could jure to fill loves absence. I am hauo this day by all those who are missing. Losing Kivi, Blomma, Ragno, and Zanzara proved heartbreaking for Speck, too. She went about her tasks grim aermined, as if by staying busy she could keep phantoms at bay.
After the disaster in the mine, we deposed Béka with his sent, and the diminished elected Smaolach our new leader. We lived above ground for the first time in years, bound to one small clearing in the forest by Chavisorys immobility. The impulse to go bae ate at us all. Five years had passed since we had left our camp, ahought it might be safe to return. The last time anyone had seen our former home, the grounds had been denuded, but surely new growth had begun—where black ash had been, saplings should be ing up amid the wildflowers and fresh grass. Just as nature reclaims its ruins, the people, too, would have fotten about that boy lost in the river and the two faeries found in the market. Theyd want life to remain as they thought it had been.
With it safe to travel again, Luchóg, Smaolach, and I set out, leaving the other three behind at our makeshift camp to watch over Chavisory. Although the wind blew cold that day, our spirits quied at the prospect of seeing our old haunts again. We raced like deer along the trails, laughing as one passed the other. The old camp shimmered in inations as a promise ht redemption.
Climbing the western ridge, I heard distant laughter. We slowed our puce, and as we reached the lip, the sounds below piqued our curiosity. The valley came into view through the broken veil of tree limbs and branches Rows of houses and open lawns snaked and curled along ribbons of roadways. On the exact spot where our camp had been, five new houses faced an open circle. Another six sat oher side of a wide road cut through the trees. Brang off from that trail, more streets and houses flowed down the sloping hill to the main road into town.
"Be it ever so humble," Luchóg said.
I looked far ahead and saw bustling activity. From the back of a station wagon, a woman unloaded packages tied up with bows. Two boys tossed a football. A yellow car, shaped like a bug, chugged up a winding road. We could hear a radio talking about the Army-Navy game, and a man muttering curses as he nailed a string of lights beh the eaves of his roof. Mesmerized by all I saw, I failed to notice as day gave way to night. Lights went on in the homes, as if on sudden signal.
"Shall we see who lives on the ring?" Luchóg asked.
We crept down to the circle of asphalt. Two of the homes appeared empty. The other three showed signs of life: cars in the driveways, lamplit figures crossing behind the windows as if rushing off on vital tasks. Glang in each window, we saw the same story unfolding. A woman in a kit stirred something in a pot. Another lifted a huge bird from the oven, while> in an adjoining room a man stared at minuscule figures playing games in a glowing box, his face flushed iement er. His -door neighbor slept in an easy chair, oblivious to the noise and flickering images.
"He looks familiar," I whispered.
Covered to his toes in blue terrycloth, a young child sat in a small cage in the er of the room. He played distractedly with brightly colored plastic toys. For a moment, I thought the sleeping man resembled my father, but I could not uand how he could have another son. A woman walked from one room into the other, and her long blonde hair trailed behind like a tail. She sched up her mouth into a bow before bending down and whispering something to the man, a name perhaps, and he looked startled and slightly embarrassed to be caught sleeping. When his eyes popped open, he looked even more like my father, but she was definitely not my mother. She flashed a crooked smile and lifted her baby over the bars, and the child cooed and laughed and threw his arms around his mothers neck. I had heard that sound before. The man switched off the sole, but before joining the others, he came to the window, cleared a circle with his two hands against the damp panes, and peered out into the darkness. I do not think he saw us, but I surely had seen him before.
We circled bato the woods and waited until the moon was high in the night sky and most of the lights popped off goodnight. The houses in the ring were dark and quiet.
"I dont like this," I said, my breath visible in the violet light.
"You worry your own life away like a kitten worries a string," Smaolach said.
He barked, and we followed him down to the cul-de-sac. Smaolach chose a house with no car in the driveway, where we were not likely to enter any humans. Careful not to wake anyone, we slipped inside easily through the unlocked front door. A row of shoes stood off to the side of the foyer, and Luchóg immediately tried on pairs until he found a fit. Their boy would be dismayed in the m. The kit lay in sight of the foyer, through a smallish dining room. Each of us loaded a rucksack with ed fruits aables, flour, salt, and sugar. Luchóg jammed fistfuls of tea bags into his trouser pockets and on the way out copped a package of cigarettes and a box of matches from the sideboard. In and out in minutes, disturbing no one.
The sed house—where the baby in blue lived—proved stubborn. All of the doors and downstairs windows were locked, so we had to shimmy uhe crawlspad into a closetlike room that sheltered a maze of plumbing. By following the pipes, we eventually made our way into the interior of the house, ending up in the cellar. To make ourselves quieter, we look off our shoes and tied them around our necks before sneaking up the steps and slowly opening the door to the kit. The room smelled of remembered bread.
While Smaolad Luchóg raided the pantry, I tiptoed through the rooms to locate the front door and an easy exit. On the walls of the living room hung a gallery of photographic portraits that read mainly as uing shadows, but as I passed by one, illuminated by a white shaft of moonlight, I froze. Two figures, a young mother and her infant child, lifted to her shoulder to face the camera. The baby looked like every other baby, round and smooth as a button. The mother did not stare directly into the lens but watched her son from the ers of her eyes. Her hairstyle and clothing suggested another era, and she, with her beguiling smile and hopeful gaze, appeared hardly more than a child with a child. She lifted her , as if preparing to burst out laughing with joy at the babe in arms. The photograph triggered a rush of chemicals to my brain. Dizzy and disoriented, I knew, but could not place, their faces. There were other photographs—a long white dress standio a shadow, a man in a peaked cap—but I kept ing back to the mother and child, put my fingers on the glass, traced the tours of those figures. I wao remember. Foolishly, I went to the wall and turned on the lamp.
Someone gasped i just as the pictures on the wall jumped into clarity. Two older people with severe eyeglasses. A fat baby. But I could see clearly the photograph that had so entranced me, and beside it another which disturbed me more. There was a boy, eyes skyward, looking up in expectation of something unseen. He could not have been more than seven at the time the picture was taken, and had the snapshot not been in black) and white, I would have sooner reized his face. For it was mine, and me, in a jacket and cap, eyes awaiting—what? a snowfall, a tossed football, a V of geese, hands from above? What a strahing to happen to a little boy, to end up on the wall of this unfamiliar house. The man and woman in the wedding picture offered no clues. It was my father with a different bride.
"Aniday, what are you doing?" Luchóg hissed. "Hush those lights."
A mattress creaked overhead as someo out of bed. I snapped off the lights and scrammed. The floorboards moaned. A womans voice muttered in a high, impatient tone.
"All right," the man replied. "Ill go check, but I didnt hear a thing." He headed for the upper stairway, took the steps slowly one by one. We tried the bac..k door out of the kit but could not figure out the lock.
"The damhing wont budge," Smaolach said.
The approag figure reached the bottom landing, switched on the light. He went into the living room, which I had departed seds earlier. Luchóg fussed with a rotating bar and unlocked the deadbolt with a soft click. We froze at the sound.
"Hey, whos there?" the man said from the other room. He padded our way in his bare feet.
"Fuck all," said Smaolach, aurhe knob and pushed. The door opened six inches but hung fast by a small metal above our heads. "Lets go," he said, and we ged to squeeze through the gap one by one, scattering sugar and flour behind us. I am sure he saw the last of us, for the man called out "Hey" again, but we were gone, rag across the frosty lawn. The floodlight popped on like a flashbulb, but assed its circle of illumination. From the top of the ridge, we watched all his rooms light up in sequeill the windows glowed like rows of jack-o-lanterns. A dog began to yowl madly in the middle of the village, aook that as a sign to retreat home. The ground chilled our bare feet, but, exhilarated as imps, we escaped our treasures, laughing uhe cold stars.
At the top of the ridgeline, Luchóg stopped to smoke one of his purloined cigarettes, and I looked bae last time at the ordered village where our home used to be. This is the place where it had all happened—a reach for wild honey high in a tree, a stretch of roadway where the car struck a deer, a clearing where I first opened my eyes and saw eleven dark children. But someone had erased all that, like a word or a line, and in that space wrote another sentehe neighborhood of houses appeared to have existed in this space fes. It made one doubt ones own story.
"That man back there," I said, "the sleeping one. He reminded me of someone."
"They all look alike to me," Luchóg said. "Someone I know. Or knew."
"Could it be your long-lost brother?"
"I havent one."
"Perhaps a man who wrote a book you read in the library?"
"I do not know what they look like."
"Perhaps the man who wrote that book you carry from place to place?"
"No, not Mes. I do not know Mes."
"A man from a magazine? A photograph in the neer?"
"Someone I knew."
"Could it be the fireman? The man you saw at the creek?" He puffed on his cigarette and blew smoke like an old steam engine.
"I thought it might be my father, but that t be right. There was that strange woman and her child in the blue suit."
"What year is it, little treasure?" Luchóg asked.
It could have been 1972, although in truth, I was no longer sure.
"By now, you must be a young mahe end of thirty years. And how old was the man in the picture window?"
"Id guess about the same."
"And how old would his father be?"
"Twice that," I said, and smiled like an idiot.
"Your father would be an old man by now, almost as old as I am."
I sat down on the cold ground. So much time had passed since I had last seen my parents; their real age was a revealed mystery.
Luchóg sat down beside me. "After awhile, everyone fets. I ot paint you a picture of my dear youth. The old memories are not real—just figures in a fairytale. My mammy could walk right up to me this very minute and say, Sonny-boy, and I would have to say, Sorry, I dont know you, lady. My father may as well be a myth. So, you see, in a way, you have no father or mother, or if you did, you wouldnt know them any longer, nor they you, mores the pity."
"But the fellow falling asleep in the armchair? If I try hard, I recall my fathers face."
"Might as well be anyone. Or no o all."
"And the baby?"
"Theyre all oo me. A bother with h but all the time hungry. t walk, t talk, t share a smoke. You have them. Some say a gelings best bet is a baby—theres less to learn—but thats moving backward across time. You should be going forward. And heaven help us if we ever had a baby to look after for a whole tury."
"I do not want to steal any child. I just wonder whose baby that is. What happened to my father? Where is my mother?"
To make it through the cold season, we en blas and a half-dozen childrens coats from the Salvation Army store, ae small meals, subsisting mainly oeas brewed from bark and twigs. In the dull light of January and February, we often did not stir at all, but sat alone or in clumps of two or three, drippi or stone cold, waiting for the sun and the resumption of our lives. Chavisrew stronger by and by, and when the wild onions and first daffodils appeared, she could take a few steps with brag assistance. Each day, Speck pushed her one painful pace forward. When she was well enough for us to move, we fled that miserable dungheap of memories. Despite the risks, we found a more suitable hidden home near water, a mile or so north of the new houses. On windy nights, the noises from the families carried as far as our ne, and while not as secluded, it afforded us adequate prote. As we dug in that first day, restlessness swept over me. Smaolach sat down beside me and draped an arm ay shoulders. The sun was falling from the sky.
"Ní mar a síltear a bítear," he said.
"Smaolach, if I live to be a thousand years, Ill never uand your old language. Speak English to me."
"Are you thinking of our friends, late and lameheyre better off where they are and not suffering this eternal waiting. Or is there something else on your mind, little treasure?"
"Have you ever been in love, Smaolach?"
"Ond only ohank goodness. We were close, like every mother and son."
"Luchóg said my mother and father are gone."
"I dont remember much of her. The smell of wool, maybe, and a harsh soap. Mint on the breath. A huge bosom upon which I laid my ... No, thats nht. She was a rake of a woman, all skin and bones. I dont recall."
"Every place we leave, part of me disappears."
"Now ... my father, there was a strapping fellow with a big black moustache curled up at the ends, or maybe it was my grandfather, e to think of it. Was a long time ago, and Im not really sure where it was or when."
The darkness was plete.
"Thats the way of life. All things go out and give way to one aisnt wise to be too attached to any world or its people."
Mystified by Smaolachs philosophy, I tottered off to my new bed, turned over the facts, and looked at what crawled beh. I tried to picture my mother and father, and could not recall their faces or their voices. Remembered life seemed as false to me as my hese shadows are visible: the sleeping man, the beautiful woman, and the g, laughing child. But just as much of real life, not merely read about in books, remains unknown to me. A mother s a lullaby to a sleepy child. A man shuffles a deck of cards and deals a hand of solitaire. A pair of lovers unbutton one another and tumble into bed. Unreal as a dream.
I did not fess to Smaolach the reason for my agitation. Speck had all but abandoned our friendship, withdrawing into some hard and lonesome core. Even after we made the move, she devoted herself to making our ne feel like home, and she spent the sunlit hours teag Chavisory to walk again. Exhausted by her efforts, Speck fell into a deep sleep early eaight. She stayed in her burrow on cold a March days, trag out an intricate design on a rolled part, and when I asked her about her drawing, she stayed quiet and aloof. Early ms, Id see her at the western edge of camp, clad in her warmest coat, sturdy shoes on her feet, p the horizon. I remember approag her from behind and plag my hand on her shoulder. For the first time ever, she fli my touch, and wheuro face me, she trembled as if shaking off the urge to cry.
"Whats the matter, Speck? Are you okay?"
"Ive been w too hard. Theres one last snow on the way." She smiled and took my hand. "Well steal off at the first flurries."
When the snow finally came days later, I had fallen asleep under a pile of blas. She woke me, white flakes gathering in her dark hair. "Its time," she whispered as quietly as the delicate susurrus through the pines. Sped I meandered along familiar trails, taking care to be hidden, and waited at the edge of the forest he library for dusk to arrive. The snowfall obscured the sun’s dest, and the headlights of the few cars on the road tricked us into going too soon. We squeezed into our spaly to hear footfall overhead as the librarians began to close for the night. To stay warm and quiet, we huddled beh a bla, and she quickly fell asleep against me. The rhythm of her beati and respiration, and the heat from her skin, quickly lulled me to sleep, too, and we woke together in pitch black. She lit the lamps, and we went to our books.
Speck had been reading Flannery Oor, and I was wading in deep Water with Wallace Stevens. But I could not trate on his abstras, and instead stared at her between the lines. I had to tell her, but the words were ie, inplete, and perhaps inprehensible—a nothing else would do. She was my 藏书网closest friend in the world, yet a greater desire for more had apanied me around for years. I could not rationalize or explain it away for another moment. Speck was engrossed in The Violent Bear It Away. A bent arm propped up her head, and she was lying across the floor, her hair obsg her face.
"Speck, I have something to tell you."
"Just a moment. One more sentence."
"Speck, if you could put down that book for a sed."
"Almost there." She stuck her finger between the pages and closed the novel.
She looked at me, and in one sey mood swung from elation to fear. "I have been thinking for a long, long time, Speck, about you. I want to tell you how I feel."
Her smile collapsed. Her eyes searched my relentless gaze. "Aniday, " she insisted.
"I have to tell you how—"
"Dont."
"Tell you, Speck, how much I—"
"Please, dont, Henry."
I stopped, opened my mouth to form the words, and stopped again. "What did you say?"
"I dont know that I hear that right now."
"What did you call me?"
She covered her mouth, as if to recapture the escaped name.
"You called me Henry." The whole story unraveled in an instant. "Thats me, Im Henry. Thats what you said, isnt it?"
"Im so sorry, Aniday."
"Henry. Not Aniday. Henry Day."
"Henry Day. You werent supposed to know."
The shock of the name made me fet what I had plao tell her. Myriad thoughts aions peted in my mind. Images, solutions to assorted puzzles and riddles, and unanswered questions. She put down her book, crossed the room, and wound me in her embrace. For the loime, she held on to me, rog and soothing my fevered imagination with the lightest touch, caressing away the chaos.
And theold me my story. The story told in these pages was all she could remember. She told me what she knew, and my recolles of dreams, visions, and enters filled in the rest. She told me why they kept it all secret for so long. How it is better not to know who you really are. Tet the past. Erase the name. All this revealed in a patient and heavenly voice, until everything that could be answered was answered, no desire left unsatisfied. The dles burned out, we had talked so long, and into darkhe versation lasted, and the last thing I remember is falling asleep in her arms.
I had a dream that we ran away that night, found a place to grow up together, became the woman and the man we were supposed to be. In the dream, she kissed my mouth, and her bare skin slid beh my fiips. A blackbird sang. But in the m, she was not where I expected her to be. In our long friendship, she had never written a single word to me, but by my side, where she should have been, lay a note in her handwriting. Every letter is etched in mind, and though I will not give it all away, at the end she wrote, "Goodbye, Henry Day."
It was time for her to go. Speck is gone.
CHAPTER 29
The first time I saw him, I was thteo say anything and too awestruck to touch him. He was not a freak or a devil, but perfe every way, a beautiful boy. After the long wait to meet him, I found myself overe by the sudden ge, not so much his physical presence, his arrival after being hidden away, but the ge io something more sublimely human. Tess smiled at my fusion and the look in my eyes as I beheld him.
"You wont break him," she said.
My son. Our child. Ten fingers, ten toes. Good creat lungs, a natural at the breast. I held him in my arms and remembered the twins in their matg yellow jumpers, my mother singing to me as she scrubbed my ba the bathtub, my father holding my hand when we climbed the bleachers at an autumn football game. Then I remembered Clara, my first mother, how I loved to crawl uhe billows of her skirts, and the st of witch hazel on my father Abrams cheek, his feathery moustache as he pressed his lips against my skin. I kissed our boy and sidered the ordinary miracle of birth, the wonder of my wife, and was grateful for the human child.
We named him Edward, ahrived. Born two weeks before Christmas 1970, he became our darling boy, and over those first few months, the three of us settled into the house that Mom and Charlie had bought for us in the new development up in the woods. At first, I could not bear the thought of living there, but they surprised us on our sed anniversary, and with Tess pregnant and the bills mounting, I could not say no. The house was larger than we needed, especially before the baby came, and I built a small studio, moving in the old piano. I taught music to seventh graders and raudent orchestra at Mark Twain Middle School, and in the evenings and on weekends, when I didnt have to mind the baby, I worked on my music, dreaming of a position that evoked the flow of one life into another.
For inspiration, I would sometimes unfold the photocopy of the passenger list and study the names. Abram and Clara, their sons Friedrich, Josef, and Gustav. The legendary Anna. Their ghosts appeared in fragments. A doctor listens to my heartbeat while Mother frets over his shoulder. Faces bend to me, speaking carefully in a language I ot uand. Her dark green skirt as she waltzes. Tang of apple wine, sauerbraten in the oven. Through a frosted window, I could see my brothers approach the house on a wind e and why.
Tess came in and laid her hand on my back. "Shall we call the police? Is there anything missing?"
I could not answer, for my heart ounding wildly and an overwhelming dread fixed me to the spot. We had not checked on our son. I sprinted up the stairs to his room. He lay asleep, knees drawn up to his chest, dreaming as if nothing had ever happened. Watg his i face, I k ohat he was blood of my blood. He almost looked like the boy I still see in my nightmares. The boy at the piano.
CHAPTER 30
I tucked her letter into my book ao look for Speck. Panic overwhelmed logid I ran out onto the library lawn, hoping that she had left only moments before. The QOW had ged over to a cold rain, obliterating any tracks she might have made. Not a single soul could be seen. No one answered when I called her name, and the streets were curiously empty, as church bells began t out another Sunday. I was a fool to ve into town in the middle of the m. Following the labyrinth of sidewalks, I had no idea which way to go. A car eased around a er and slowed as the driver spotted me walking in the rain. She braked, rolled down the window, and called out, "Do you need a ride? Youll catch your death of cold."
I remembered to make my voiderstandable—a siroke of fortune on that miserable day. "No, thank you, maam. Im going home."
"Dont call me maam," she said. She had a blonde ponytail like the woman who lived in the house we had robbed months before, and she wore a crooked smile. "Its a nasty m to be out, and you have no hat loves."
"I live around the er, thank you."
"Do I know you?"
I shook my head, and she started to roll up her window.
"You havent seen a little girl out here, have you?" I called out.
"In this rain?"
"My twin sister," I lied. "Im out looking for her. Shes about my size."
"No. I havent seen a soul." She eyed me closely. "Where do you live? What is your name?"
I hesitated and thought it best to end the matter. "My name is Billy Speck."
"Youd better go home, son. Shell turn up."
The car turhe er and motored off. Frustrated, I walked toward the ri９9lｉｂ?ver, away from all the fusing streets and the ce of another human enter. The rain fell in a steady drizzle, not quite cold enough to ge ain, and I was soaked and chilled. The clouds obliterated the sun, making it difficult to orient myself, so I used the river as my pass, following its course throughout the pale day and into the slowly emerging darkness. Frantic to find her, I did not stop until late that night. Under a stand of evergreens crowded with winter sparrows and jays, I rested, waiting for a break in the weather.
Away from the town, all I could hear was the river lapping against the stony shores. As soon as I stopped searg, the questions I had kept at bay began to assault my mind. Unanswerable doubts that would torment me in quiet moments for the few years. Why had she left us? Why would Speck leave me? She would not have taken the risk that Kivi and Blomma had. She had chosen to be alohough Speck had told me my real name, I had no idea of hers. How could I ever find her? Should I have kept quiet, or told all and given her a reason to stay? A sharp pain swelled behind my eyes, ping my throbbing skull. If only to stop obsessing, I rose and tio stumble through the wet darkness, finding nothing.
Cold, tired, and hungry, I reached the bend in the river in two days walk. Speck had been the only other person from the who had e this far, and she had somehow forded the water to the other side. Sapphire blue, the water ran quickly, breaking over hidden rocks and snags, whitecaps flashing. If she was oher side, Speck had crossed by dint of ce. On the distant shore, a vision appeared from my deep mad memories—a man, woman, and child, the fleet escape of a white deer, a woman in a red coat. "Speck," I railed across the waters, but she was nowhere. Past this point of land, the whole world unfolded, toe and unknowable. All hope and ce left me. I dared not cross, so I sat on the bank and waited. Ohird day, I walked home without her.
I staggered into the camp, exhausted and depressed, hoping not to talk at all. The others had not worried for the first few days, but by the end of the week, theyd grown anxious and uled. After they built a fire and fed me le soup from a copper pot, the whole story poured forth—except for the revelation of my name, except for what I had not said to her. "As soon as I realized she was gone, I went to look for her and traveled as far as the river-bend. She may be gone food."
"Little treasure, go to sleep," Smaolach said. "Well e up with a plan. Another day brings a different promise."
There was no new plan or promise the m or any other. Days came a. I read every tense moment, every crad creak, every whisper, every m light as her return. The others respected my grief and gave me wide berth, trying to draw me bad theing me drift away. They missed her, too, but I felt any other sorroaltry thing, and I reseheir shadowy reminisces and their failure to remember properly. I hated the five of them for not stopping her, for takio this life, for the wild hell of my imagination. I kept thinking that I saw her. Mistaking each of the others for her, my heart leapt and fell wheurned out to be merely themselves. Or seeing the darkness of her hair in a ravens wing. On the bank of the creek, watg the water play over stone, I came upon her familiar form, feet tucked beh her. The image turned out to be a fawn pausing for a rest in a window of sunshine. She was everywhere, eternally. And never here.
Her absence leaves a hole in the skin stretched over my story. I spent ay trying tet her, and arying to remember. There is no balm for such desire. The others knew not to talk about her around me, but I surprised them after an afternoon of fishing, bumbling into the middle of a versation not intended for my ears.
"Now, not our Speck," Smaolach told the others. "If shes alive, she wont be ing back for us."
The faeries stole furtive gla me, not knowing how much I had heard. I put down my string of fish and began to shave the scales, pretending that their discussion had no effee. But hearing Smaolach gave me pause. It ossible that she had not survived, but I preferred to think that she had either goo the upper world or reached her beloved sea. The image of the o brought to mind the intense colors of her eyes, and a brief smile crossed my face.
"Shes gone," I said to the silent group. "I know."
The following day we spent turning over stones in the creek bed, gathering the hidis and salamanders, to cook together in a stew. The day was hot, and the labor took its toll. Famished, we enjoyed a rich, gooey mess, full of tiny bohat ched as we chewed. Whears emerged, we all went to bed, our stomachs full, our muscles taxed by the long day. I awoke quite late the m and drowsily realized that she had not once crossed my mind when we were fing the previous day. I took a deep breath. I was fetting.
Specks presence was replaced by dullness. I would sit and stare at the sky or watts march, and practice driving her out of my mind. Anything that triggered a memory could be stripped of its personal, embedded meanings. A raspberry is a raspberry. The blackbird is a metaphor for nothing. Words signify what you will. I tried tet Henry Day as well, and accept my place as the last of my kind.
All of us were waiting for nothing. Smaolaever said so, but I knew he was not looking to make the ge. Ached no plans to steal another child. Perhaps he thought our oo few for the plex preparations, or perhaps he sehe world itself was ging. In I gels day, the subject came up all the time with a certailess energy, but less so under Béka, and never under Smaolao reaissance missions into town, no searg out the lonesome, ed, or fotten. No face-pulling, no tortions, s. As if resigned, we went about our eternal business, sanguihat another disaster or abando awaited.
I did not care. A certain fearlessness filled me, and I would not hesitate to run into town alone, if only to swipe a carton of cigarettes for Luchóg or a bag of sweets for Chavisory. I stole unnecessary things: a flashlight and batteries, a drawing pad and charcoals, a baseball and six fishing hooks, and o Christmas, a delicious cake in the shape of a firelog. In the fines of the forest, I fiddled with idle tasks—whittling a fierce bat atop a hickory CUM laying a st around the circumference of our camp, searg for old turtle shells and crafting the shards into a necklace. I went up aloo the slag hillside and the abandoned mine, which lay undisturbed, as we had left it, and placed the tortoiseshell necklace where Ragno and Zanzara lay buried. My dreams did not wake me up in the middle of the night, but only because life had bee a somnambulant nightmare. A handful of seasons had passed when a ter finally made me realize that Speck was beyond fetting.
We were tending to delicate seedlings planted on a sun-drenched slope a few hundred yards from camp. Onions had stolen new seeds, and within weeks up came the first tender shoots—snap peas, carrots, scallions, a watermelon vine, and a row of beans. Chavisory, Onions, Luchóg, and I were weeding in the garden on that spring m, when the sound of approag feet caused us to rise like whitetail, to sniff the wind, ready to flee or hide. The intruders were lost hikers, off the trail and headed in our dire. Sihe housing development had risen, we had a rare traveler pass our way, but our cultivated patch might look a bit peculiar to these strangers out in the middle of nowhere. We disguised the garden under pine brush and hid ourselves beh a skirt of trees.
Two young men and a young woman, caps upon their heads, huge backpacks strapped at the shoulders, walked on, cheerful and oblivious. They strolled past the rows of plants and us. The first man had his eye on the world ahead. The sed person—the girl—had her eye on him, and the third man had his eye on her backside. Though lost, he seemed i on the ohing. We followed safely behind, and they eventually settled down a hill away to drink their bottled water, un their dy bars, and lighten their loads. The first man took out a book and read something from it to the girl, while the third hiker went off behind thbbr>藏书网e trees to relieve himself. He was gone a long time, for the man with the book had the ot only to finish his poem but to kiss the girl, as well. When their small interlude ehe threesome strapped on their gear and marched away. We waited a det spell before running to the spot they had vacated.
Two empty water bottles littered the ground, and Luchóg snatched them up and found the caps nearby. They had discarded the cellophane ers from their snacks, and the boy had left his slim volume of poems lying on the grass. Chavisave it to me. The Blue Estuaries by Louise Bogan. I leafed through a few pages and stopped at the phrase That more things move/Than blood in the heart.
"Speck," I said to myself. I had not said her name aloud in ages, iuries.
"What is it, Aniday?" Chavisory asked.
"I am trying to remember."
The four of us walked back to the garden. I turo see if my rades were following the same path, only to discover Luchóg and Chavisory, walking step by giep, holding hands. My thoughts flooded with Speck. I felt an urgency to find her again, .9９ｌib?if only to uand why she had goo tell her how the private versations of my mind were still with her. I should have asked her not to go, found the right words to vince her, fessed all that moved in my heart. And ever hopeful that it was not too late, I resolved to begin again.
CHAPTER 31
I would not want to be a child again, for a child exists in uainty and danger. Our flesh and blood, we ot help but fear for them, as we hope for them to make their way in this life. After the break-in, I worried about our son all of the time. Edward is not who we say he is because his father is an imposter. He is not a Day, but a gelings child. I passed on my inal genes, giving him the fad features of the Ungerlands, and who knows what other traits leapt the geions. Of my own childhood, I know little more than a name on a piece of paper: Gustav Ungerland. I was stolen long ago. And when the gelings came again, I began to believe they saw Edward as one of their own and wished to reclaim him. The mess they left i was a subterfuge for a more sinister purpose. The disturbed photographs on the wall indicated that they were searg for someone. Wiess hovered in the background and crept through the woods, plotting to steal our son.
We lost Edward one Sunday in springtime. On that gloriously warm afternoon, eo be iy, for I had discovered a passable pipe an in a chur Shadyside, and after services the musiister allowed me an hour to experiment with the mae, trying out what new sounds coursed through my imagination. Afterward, Tess and I took Edward to the zoo for his first face-to-fater with elephants and monkeys. A huge crowd shared our idea, and the walkways were crammed with couples pushing strollers, desultory teenagers, even a family with six redheaded children, staggered a year apart, a spiracy of freckles and blue eyes. Too many people for my taste, but we jostled along without plaint. Edward was fasated by the tigers and loitered in front of the iron fence, pulling at his cotton dy, r at the beasts to ence them out of their drowsiness. In its blad-e dreamsbbr>, oiger twitched its tail, annoyed by my soreaties. Tess took advantage of Edwards distra to front me.
"Henry, I want to talk to you about Eddie. Does he seem all right to you? Theres been a ge lately, and something—I dont know—not normal."
I could see him over her shoulder. "Hes perfectly normal."
"Or maybe its you," she said. "Youve been different with him lately. Overprotective, not letting him be a kid. He should be outdoors catg polliwogs and climbing trees, but its as if youre afraid of him being out of yht. He he ce to beore indepe."
I pulled her off to the side, out of our sons hearing. "Do you remember the night someone broke into the house?"
"I k," she said. "You said not to worry, but youve been preoccupied with that, havent you?"
"No, no, I just remembered, when I was looking at the photographs on the walls that night, it made me think of my own childhood dreams—years at the piano, searg for the right music to express myself. I have been looking for the answers, Tess, and they were right under my fiips. Today in the church, the an sounded just like the o St. Nicholass ihe an is the ao the symphony. an and orchestra."
She ed her arms around me and pulled herself against my chest. Her eyes were full of light and hope, and in all of my several lives, no one had shown such faith in me, in the essence of who I sidered myself to be. I was so in love with her at that moment that I fot the world and everything in it, and thats when I noticed, over her shoulder, our son was gone. Vanished from the space where he had been standing. My first thought was that he had tired of the tigers and was now underfoot or nearby, ready to beg us to let him in froup hug. That hope evaporated and was replaced by the horrible notion that Edward had somehow squeezed through the bars and been instantly eaten by the tigers, but a quick gla their cage revealed nothing but two i cats stretched out asleep in the languid sunshine. In the wilderness of my imagination, the gelings appeared. I looked back at Tess and feared that I was about to break her heart.
"Hes gone," I told her, moving apart. "Edward."
She spun around and moved to the spot we had seen him last. "Eddie," she cried. "Where in the world are you?"
We went dowh toward the lions and bears, calling out his name, her voice rising an octave with each repetition, alarming the other parents. Tess stopped an elderly couple heading in the opposite dire. "Have you seen a little boy all alohree years old. Cotton dy."
"Theres nothing but children here," the old man said, pointing a thin fio the distance behind us. A line of children, laughing and hurrying, chased something down a shady pathway. At the front of the pack, a zoo-keeper hustled along, attempting to hold back the children while following his quarry. Ahead of the mob, Edward raced in his ear and clumsy jog, chasing a blackfooted penguin that had escaped his pen and now waddled free and oblivious, heading back to the o, perhaps, or in search of fresh fish. The keeper sprinted past Edward and caught up to the bird, which brayed like a jackass. Holding its bill with one hand and cradling the bird against his che藏书网st, the keeper hurried past us as we reached our son. "Such a ruckus," he told us. "This one slips out of the exhibit and off he goes, wherever he pleases. Some things have such a will."
Taking Edwards hands in our oere determio never let go.
Edward was a kite on a string, always threatening to break free. Before he started schooling, Eddie was safe at home. Tess took good care of him in the ms, and I was home to watch him on weekday afternoons. Wheurned