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The Stolen Child(17)

By:Keith Donohue


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 Trin-ity 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. Sit-ting 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 after-noon, my fingers upon the keyboard, perfecting my technique.

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 becoming a virtuoso

once again.

• C H A P T E R 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 elder-berries 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, or-dering 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 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 chin in her hands, to kiss

me on the lips, and I am a boy again. Me. But I cannot remember my name.