The Stolen Child (16 page)

The dark-haired, beetle-browed boy sang quietly to himself as he climbed up and swooshed off the slide over and over again. His nose ran, and every time he mounted the stairs he’d wipe the snot with the back of his hand, then wipe his hand on his greasy corduroys. When he tired of the sliding board, he sauntered over to the swings to pump and pull himself into the clear blue sky. His blank expression never changed, and the song under his breath never faltered. I watched him for nearly an hour, and in that whole time, he expressed absolutely no emotion, content to play alone until 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 interaction baffled me. Parents and children take such everyday moments for granted, as if there is an endless supply.

Had my parents forgotten me completely? The man who cried after me that long-ago morning 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 swallow appeared, chasing insects 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 knew that changing places was the natural order. His capture would mean Igel’s 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 change. He had few friends, caused neither excitement nor alarm as a student, and was so ordinary as to be almost invisible. Ragno and Zanzara, who had taken residence in the family’s attic for months, 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 watching 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 stretch on 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 change. I was running out of paper in McInnes’s 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 flinched at the possibility of freedom. His normally stoic disposition changed to a general peevishness. Kivi came to dinner once with a red welt under her eye.

“What happened to 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 can’t wait till he leaves. I am sick and tired of the old crab. Maybe the new boy will be nice.”

I stood up from the meal and stormed through the camp, looking for Igel, resolving to confront 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 gone out to spy on the boy. Nobody knew where he might be found, so I spent several hours walking in circles, until chancing upon him alone down by the river, where he was staring at his reflection in the broken surface of water. He looked so alone that I forgot my anger and quietly crouched down beside him.

“Igel? Are you all right?” I addressed the image on the water.

“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. I’m 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 change.”

“I will be glad to be rid of such fools. Have her come see me in the morning. I don’t 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                    •

M
y long-forgotten history peeked out from behind the curtains. The questions McInnes posed during hypnosis had dredged up memories that had been repressed for more than a century, and fragments of those subconscious recollections began intruding into my life. We would be performing our second-rate imitation of Simon and Garfunkel when an unexpected Germanism would leap out of my mouth. The boys in the band thought I was tripping, and we’d have to start over after a brief apology to the audience. Or I’d be seducing a young woman and find that her face had morphed into the visage of a changeling. A baby would cry and I’d wonder if it was human or a bundle of holy terror that had been left on the doorstep. A photograph of six-year-old Henry Day’s first day of school would remind me of all I was not. I’d see myself superimposed over the image, my face reflected in the glass, layered over his face, and wonder what had become of him, what had become 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 becoming a composer again even as college aspirations faded while another two 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 Oscar’s 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 echo my chaotic confusion over who I am. The unfinished compositions were tentative steps back to the past, to my true nature. I spent ages looking for the sound, reshaping it, and tossing it away, for composition was as elusive at the time as my own name.

The bar was my studio most mornings. Oscar arrived around lunchtime, and George 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. George, Jimmy, and Oscar experimented with a few chord changes 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 Love’s 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 in the threshold, numb and dumb. Setting down his horn, Oscar walked over to talk with his brother. Their conversation 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 George 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 and bent 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 police and fire and rescue are out looking for him, but they haven’t found him. He’s only eight years old, man.”

“What does he look like?” George asked. “What’s 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 turned to his brother. “I tried calling you all over the place.”

Oscar pursed his lips and shook his head. “I’m so sorry, man. I was out getting high.”

George began walking to the door. “No time for recriminations. We’ve got a missing kid to find.”

Off we went to the woods. Oscar and Lewis rode together in the cab of the pickup, and George, 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 search and rescue team had parked in a glen about a mile due west from my house, about as far into the forest as they could manage to drive the township’s sole fire engine. The 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 inspected us. Grasshoppers, panicked by our footfall, whirred ahead in the tall 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 truck until they vanished from sight.

A bloodhound bayed in the distance, taking up a scent. We trudged along single file for several hundred yards, and the dark shade cast by the canopy 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 don’t we spread out?”

Though I loathed the idea of being alone in the forest, I could not counter his logic without seeming a coward.

“Let’s meet back here at nine.” With an air of determined sobriety, Oscar studied the face of his watch, following the sweep of the second hand, counting off moments to himself. We waited and watched our own time go by.

“Four thirty,” he said at last.

“I’ve got four thirty-five,” said George.

And almost simultaneously, I said, “Twenty after.”

“Twenty-five of five,” said Jimmy.

Lewis shook his wrist, removed his watch, and held the timepiece to his ear. “That’s funny—my watch has stopped.” He stared at its face. “Seven thirty. That’s right around when I saw him last.”

Each of us looked at the others for the way out of this temporal confusion. Oscar resumed his clock watching.

“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 such an issue after all.

“Here’s the plan. Lewis and I will go this way. Henry, you go in the opposite direction. George and Jimmy, you head off opposite to each other.” He indicated by means of hand signals the four points of the compass. “Mark your trail to find your way back. Every couple hundred feet, break a branch on the same side of your path, and let’s meet back here at nine. It’ll be getting dark by then. Of course, if you find him before that, go back to the fire truck.”

We went our separate ways, and the sound of my friends tramping through the brush receded. I had not dared enter the woods since changing lives with Henry Day. The tall trees hemmed in the pathway, and the humid air felt like a blanket that smelled of rot and decay. With each step I took, cracking twigs and crunching leaves, my sound reinforced my solitude. When I stopped, the noise ceased. I’d call for the boy, but halfheartedly, not expecting a reply. The stillness brought back a forgotten sensation, the memory of my wildness, and with it the ache of being trapped, timeless, in this perilous world. Twenty minutes into my search, I sat down on the fallen trunk of a scrub pine. My shirt, damp with perspiration, clung to my skin, and I took out a handkerchief to mop my brow. Far away, a woodpecker hammered on a tree, and nuthatches scrabbled down tree trunks, pipping their staccato signals. Along one limb of the dead pine, a file of ants raced back and forth, carrying a mysterious cargo in one direction as others headed back to the food source. Amid the litter of fallen leaves, small red flowers poked their pin-size heads from clusters of silvery moss. I lifted a log, and a rotting wetness lay beneath it, pill bugs curled into balls and long-legged spiders maddened at the sudden disruption of their lives. Fat, glistening worms burrowed into holes on the bottom of the log, and I tried to imagine what hidden chambers existed in the decay, what life was going on unbeknownst to me. I lost track of the time. A glance at my watch startled me, for nearly two hours had wasted away. I stood up, called out the boy’s name once, and, hearing no reply, resumed my hunt. Moving deeper into the darkness, I was entranced by the random arrangement of trunks and limbs, green leaves as plentiful as raindrops. My every step was new yet familiar, and I expected to be startled by something sudden, but it was as quiet as a deep sleep. There was nothing in the woods, no sign of my past, scant life beyond the growing trees and plants, the occasional stir of the inscrutable tiny animals hidden in the rot and decay. I stumbled upon a small creek gurgling over stones, meandering nowhere. Suddenly very thirsty, I dipped my hands into the water and drank.

The current rolled over a bed dotted with stones and rocks. On the surface, the stones were dry, dull, and impenetrable, but at the waterline and below, the water changed the stone, revealing facets and extraordinarily rich colors and infinite variety. Millennia of interplay had worn and polished the rocks, made them beautiful, and the stones had changed the water as well, altered its flow and pace, made turbulent its stilled predisposition. Symbiosis made the creek what it was. One without the other would change everything. I had come out of this forest, had been there for a long, long time, but I also lived in the world as a very real person. My life as a human and my life among the changelings made me what I was. Like the water and the rock, I was this and that. Henry Day. As the world knows him, there is no other, and this revelation filled me with warmth and pleasure. The rocks along the bottom of the creek suddenly appeared to me as if a line of notes, and I could hear the pattern in my head. Searching my pockets for a pencil to copy it down before the notes disappeared, I heard a stirring among the trees behind me, footsteps racing through the brush.

“Who’s there?” I asked, and whatever it was stopped moving. I tried to make myself short and inconspicuous by crouching in the culvert cut by the creek, but hiding made it impossible to see the source of danger. In the tension of anticipation, sounds that had gone unnoticed became amplified. Crickets sang under rocks. A cicada cried and then went silent. I was at odds whether to run away or stay and capture the notes in the water. A breeze through the leaves, or something breathing? Slowly at first, the footsteps resumed, then the creature bolted, crashing through the leaves, running away from me, the air whispering and falling quiet. When it had departed, I convinced myself that a deer had been startled by my presence, or perhaps a hound that had picked up my scent by mistake. The disturbance unnerved me, so I quickly traced my way back to the clearing. I was the first one there, fifteen minutes ahead of our planned rendezvous.

George arrived next, face flushed with exertion, his voice less than a rasp from calling for the boy. He collapsed in exhaustion, his jeans emitting puffs of dust.

“No luck?” I asked.

“Do you think? I am dragging and didn’t see a damn thing. You don’t have a square on you?”

I produced two cigarettes and lit his, then mine. He closed his eyes and smoked. Oscar and Lewis showed up next, similarly defeated. They had run out of ways to say so, but the worry slackened their pace, bowed their heads, clouded their eyes. We waited for another fifteen minutes for Jimmy Cummings, and when he failed to appear, I began to wonder if another search party was in order.

At 9:30, George asked, “Where is Cummings?”

The residual twilight gave way to a starry night. I wished we had thought to bring flashlights. “Maybe we should go back to where the police are.”

Oscar refused. “No, someone should wait here for Jimmy. You go, Henry. It’s a straight shot, dead on.”

“C’mon, George, go with me.”

He raised himself to the standing position. “Lead on, Macduff.”

Up the trail, we could see red and blue lights flashing against the treetops and bouncing into the night sky. Despite his aching feet, George hurried us along, and when we were nearly there, we could hear the static shout over the walkie-talkies, sense something wrong in the air. We jogged into a surreal scene, the clearing bathed in lights, fire engines idling, dozens of people milling about. A man in a red baseball cap loaded a pair of bloodhounds into the back of his pickup. I was startled to see Tess Wodehouse, her white nurse’s uniform glowing in the gloom, embracing another young woman and stroking her hair. Two men lifted a dripping canoe to the roof of a car and strapped it down. Patterns emerged as if time stood still, and all could be seen at once. Firemen and policemen, their backs to us, formed a half ring around the back of the ambulance.

The chief pivoted slowly, as if averting his gaze from the somber paramedics invalidated reality, and told us carefully, “Well         .         .         .         we have found a body.”