The Stolen Child

by Keith Donohue

  “Mr. Day, Mrs. Day, I agree to take on your son. My minimum requirement, however, is for eight weeks of lessons at a time, Wednesday afternoons and Saturdays. I can 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 musician if I ever heard one, for him, I will require only half the tuition, but you must commit to sixteen weeks. Four months. We will know how far we can go.”

  I picked out a rudimentary “Happy Birthday.” My father finished his smoke and tapped me on the shoulder, indicating we were to leave. He walked over to Mom and grabbed her lightly by the fleshy part of her arm above the elbow.

  “I’ll call you Monday,” he said, “at three-thirty. We’ll 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 disappear. Mom chattered incessantly, dreaming the future, planning our lives. Billy, hands locked on the wheel, concentrated on the road and said nothing.

  “I’ll buy some laying hens, that’s what I’ll do. Remember when you used to say you wanted to turn our place back into a real farm? I’ll start a brood of chickens, and we’ll sell the eggs, and that will pay the bill, surely. And imagine, we’ll have fresh eggs ourselves every morning, too. And Henry can 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 he’s so refined. Did you ever see such a thing in your life as that piano? He must shine it 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 he’s been at it forever? It’s what he wants; it’s 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 can’t afford a piano in the house.”

  “There’s a piano at school,” I said. “Nobody uses it. I’m sure if I asked, they’d let me stay after. . . .”

  “What about your homework and those chores you said you would do? I don’t want to see your grades slipping.”

  “Nine times 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 Trinity is the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost, and it is a holy mystery that no one can figure out.”

  “All right, Einstein. You can try it, but for eight weeks. Just to be sure. And your mother will have to raise the egg money, and you have to help care for the chickens. 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. Sitting between them, I basked in the warmth of the moment, lacking 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 commotion flashed along the riverbank far below. To my horror, I saw a line of changelings 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 turned to a chill. That they still existed alarmed me, for I had nearly forgotten them. That 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 another cigarette and opened his window wider, and the fresh air alleviated my nausea, if not my fear.

  Mom broke the spell. “Didn’t Mr. Martin ask us to commit to four months?”

  “I’ll call him Monday and work out a deal. Let’s try two months, actually, at first. See if the boy likes it.”

  For the next 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 lunchroom. Later on, they let me into the church to learn the organ, and I was the youngest substitute organist the parish ever had. Life became orderly, and the discipline a joy. Each morning, my hand went under the warm bellies of the chickens, collecting eggs, and each afternoon, my fingers upon the keyboard, perfecting my technique. On Wednesdays 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 culture, on my way to becoming a virtuoso once again.

  • CHAPTER 6 •

  In setting down these recollections 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 woman, met only once, abides more persistently in mind than what I did yesterday or whether I had thistles and honey or elderberries for breakfast. My sisters, now grown into their middle years, are ever infants to me, two matching cherubs, ringlets of curls, chubby and helpless as cubs. Memory, which so confounds our waking life with anticipation and regret, may well be our one true earthly consolation when time slips out of joint.

  My first nighttime foray into the woods left me exhausted. I burrowed beneath a heap of coats and blankets and furs, and by next midday, a fever burned. Zanzara brought me a cup of hot tea and a bowl of nasty broth, ordering me to “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 uncontrollably 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 joined, they 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 and sets 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: “Don’t 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 synchronize my respiration with its rhythms and the redcoated woman with the pale green eyes says: “Who are you?” And she bends to my face, taking my chin in her hands, to kiss me on the lips, and I am a boy again. Me. But I cannot remember my name.

  Aniday. A wild child like myself, a girl named Speck, leans over to kiss my forehead, and her lips cool my hot skin. Behind her, the oak leaves turn into a thousand crows that take off in unison, flying away in a great twisting, singing tornado of wings. Silence returns after the drumming flock escapes to the horizon and morning 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. Concentrating 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 courage 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 cannot be heard, with words no one can understand.

  I don’t know how long I was delirious with fever. Overnight, 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 and legs throbbed 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 managed to swipe a full deck. Mixing remnants from many different packs, they en
ded 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 cinque?” Ragno asked.

  Zanzara scratched his head.

  Holding up five fingers, Ragno shouted at him, “Cinque, cinque.”

  “Go fish.”

  And fish he would, turning over card after card until he found a match, which he would then hold up triumphantly before ceding his turn to Zanzara.

  “You are a cheater, Ragno.”

  “And you are a bloodsucker.”

  I coughed, making my consciousness known.

  “Hey look, kid, he’s 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. That’s what you get for going out with those boys. Those Irish boys, they’re no good.”

  I looked around the camp for my friends, but as usual at midday, everyone else was gone.

  “What day is it?” I asked.

  Zanzara flicked out his tongue, tasting the air. “I’d say Tuesday.”

  “No, I mean what day of the month.”

  “Kid, I’m not even sure what month it is.”

  Ragno interrupted. “Must be getting toward spring. The days are growing 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 pointed to 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 crying, but the tears would not come. A fierce gale blew in from the west, pushing dark clouds across the sky. Huddled under my blankets, I observed the changing day, alone with my troubles, until the others came skittering home on the wind. They took no more notice of me 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, neatly 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 pine nuts on a flat griddle. The boys who were not engaged in cooking took off their wet shoes and boots, exchanging them for yesterday’s gear, now dry and hard. All of this domestic routine proceeded without fuss and with scant conversation; they had made a science of preparing for the night. As the squirrel cooked on a spit, Smaolach came over to check on me, and was surprised to discover me awake and alert.

  “Aniday, you’ve come back from the dead.”

  He reached for my hand, pulling me to 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 apathetic sneer, and Igel shrugged at my hello and continued waiting to be served, arms crossed at his chest. We set to the squirrel 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 everyone’s face glow, and the grease on their lips made their smiles shine.

  After supper, Luchóg motioned for me to come 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 between two large stones were four small envelopes.

  “Take them,” he grunted, the top stone heavy in his arms, and I whisked out the letters before he dropped the cap with a thud. Reaching inside his shirt to his private pouch, Luchóg extracted but the nub of a sharp pencil, which he presented with becoming 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 precious 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 mortgage stub with payment enclosed, and at his entreaty, 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 local newspaper, denouncing Harry Truman. Covered both front and back with crabbed handwriting that scuttled from margin to margin, that paper proved useless. The other two had much more white space, and with one, the lines were so far apart, I was able to write between them.

  Feb. 2, 1950

  Dearest,

  The other night ment so much to me that I can’t understand why you have not phoned or written since that night. I am confused. You told me that you loved me and I love you too, but still you have not answered my last three letters and nobody answers the telephone at 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 wanted to 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 back to me or better yet call me on the phone. I am not angry so much as just confused, 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 considered this letter to be the truest expression of real love that I had ever known. It was difficult to read, for Martha wrote in cursive, but thankfully in big letters that resembled printing. The second 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 cannot 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 cannot come home, but I’ve not enough money for the trip. So, all my heartfelt grief must be shared by this most insufficient 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. They were curious not only about their substance but 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 to forget. We sat in a ring around the fire, and I read them as best I could, not fully comprehending all of the words or understanding 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 understand why Dearest will not write back to Martha, but that is nothing compared 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 conversation flowed. They fabricated poetical fictions about the other world. The mysteries of their sympathies, concerns, 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 nestled under the covers together, where they continued their discussion, pondering the fate of the writers, their subjects, 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 under the 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 chin, an elbow knacked me in the groin, and a knee banged against my sore ribs. In a dark corner of the pack, a girl groaned when Béka climbed upon her. Enduring their fitfulness, I waited for morning, the letters pinned against my chest.

  The rising sun reflected against a blanket of high cirrus clouds, coloring 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 into fragments, like a kaleidoscope. When the red sun rose, the pattern shifted hues until it all dissipated 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 mortgage 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 considered my work, they looked crude and uneven, and I was disappointed in myself. In the next panel, I drew the road through the forest with the deer, the woman, the car, Smaolach and Luchóg in the same perspective. Light, for example, was indicated by two straight lines emanating from a circle on the car and extending outward to opposite corners of the frame. The deer looked more like a dog, and I dearly wished for an eraser on the yellow pencil. In the third panel: a flattened Christmas tree, lavishly decorated, a pile of gifts spread out on the floor. In the final panel, I drew a picture of a boy drowning. Bound in spirals, he sinks below the wavy line.

  When I showed my paper to Smaolach later that afternoon, he took me by the hand and made me run with him to hide behind a wild riot of holly. He looked around in all directions to make sure we were alone; then he carefully folded the paper into quarters and handed it back to me.