The Stolen Child(49)

curiously intent on fooling the patrons with new tricks or puzzles. Sometimes a riddle or complicated

math game involv-ing picking a number, doubling it, adding seven, subtracting one's age and so forth,

until the victim was right back where he'd started. Or a game involving matches, a deck of cards, a

sleight of hand. The drinks he won were of small consequence, for his pleasure resulted from the

gullibility of his neighbors. And he was mysterious in other ways. On those nights The Coverboys

performed, McInnes sat close to the door. Sometimes between sets he'd come up to chat with the boys,

and he hit it off with Jimmy Cummings, of all people, a fine example of the artless thinker. But if we

played the wrong song, McInnes could be guaranteed to vanish. When we started covering The Bea-tles

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, McInnes became more himself after he'd 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 consume 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.

"It's a matter of mind over matter. A cheap trick hinged upon a small secret."

"And what might that be?"

"I don't honestly know. It's a gift, really, and at the same time a curse. But I'll 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 today's 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 condition. I was particularly interested

in the pre-psychology of parenting and once started a book about rural practices in the British Isles,

Scandinavia, and Ger-many."

"So you drink because of some old flame, then?" Oscar asked, turning the conversation back to its

origins.

"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. It's the mind, boys. The relentless thinking machine. The

incessant demands of tomorrow and the yesterdays piled up like a heap of corpses. It's this life and all

those before it."

Oscar chewed on a reed. "Life before life?"

"Like reincarnation?" Cummings asked.

"I don't 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 you'd be amazed at the stories that come out from

deep within. What happened a century 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 transcendent trance."

Oscar looked suspicious. "Hypnosis. Another one of your party tricks."

"I've been known to put a few people under," said McInnes. "They've told tales from their own

dreaming minds too incredible to believe, but with such feeling and authority that one is convinced that

they were telling the truth. People do and see strange things when they're under."

Cummings jumped in. "I'd like to be hypnotized."

"Stay behind after the bar is closed, and I'll do it."

At two in the morning after the crowd left, McInnes ordered Oscar to dim the lights and asked

George and me to stay absolutely quiet. He sat next to Jimmy and told him to close his eyes; then

McInnes started speaking to him in a low, modulated voice, describing restful places and peaceful

circumstances in such vivid detail that I'm surprised we all didn't fall asleep. McInnes ran a few tests,

checking on whether Jimmy was under.

"Raise your right arm straight out in front of you. It's made of the world's strongest steel, and no

matter how hard you try, you cannot bend it."

Cummings stuck out his right arm and could not flex it; nor, for that matter, could Oscar or George

or I when we tried, for it felt like a real iron bar. McInnes ran through a few more tests, then he started

asking questions to which Cummings replied in a dead monotone. "Who's your favorite musi-cian,

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.