The Stolen Child(64)

bottom. But my feet are asleep, and my arms are aching, and I have to take a leak—pardon my French,

Mrs. Day. I was dog-tired, but that boy—"

We jumped at a loud boom of thunder and a wraith of light that filled the horizon. The air smelled of

electricity and the coming deluge. When tto first fat drops lashed the ground like coins, we scurried

inside. Cummings sat between Mary and Elizabeth on the sofa, and Mom and I perched in the

un-comfortable chairs.

"At the bottom of this hole," Jimmy continued over the rumbling, "tun-nels in three different

directions. I shouted down each one, but no reply. I was beginning to wonder whether Oscar was at the

other end of any one of them or did I dream up the whole thing. You should see these tunnels, man,

unbe-lievably cool. Lord knows who or what made them. Or why. As you crawl along, they get real

skinny, like maybe kids made them. You snake on your belly until you come to the end and another

chamber, sometimes big enough where even I could squat. And at each of the chambers, there were

more tun-nels. It just now occurs to me that I saw something like this on TV with Cronkite. Like the VC.

Maybe it's a Vietnamese camp?"

"Do you really think," I asked, "that the Vietcong have invaded America and set up camp in the

middle of nowhere?"

"No, man. Do you think I'm crazy? Maybe it's where they train our guys to go into the tunnels to

find their guys? Like a beehive. A freakin' maze. I went back and forth, trying not to get lost, when

suddenly I realized that I hadn't heard from Oscar all day. Just when I think maybe he's dead, here he

crawls in like a mole and pops his head up. The thing of it is—and I didn't notice this at first because of

all the dirt and grime—he was naked as a jay-bird."

"What happened to his clothes?" Mom asked.

The changelings stripped him, wrapped him in a caul of spiderwebs, and threw the body in the river

to make him their own. That's what they thought they were doing.

"Mrs. Day, I have no clue. First thing we had to do was get up out of the earth, and he showed me

these holes along each of the walls where these handgrips and foot ledges had been carved. I didn't

notice them before, but up he scooted, like climbing a ladder."

I had spent the better part of a month carving out those handholds, and I could almost picture the

hobgoblin who was constantly digging in the warren.

"It was late when I found him, and the kid was tired and hungry, and in no condition to tramp back

through the woods. And I was sure everyone was still looking for us. So we're sitting there wondering

what to do next, when he asks me if I'm hungry. He marches right over to the edge of the ring and rolls

back an old dirty blanket that's lying there. Underneath is a whole stash of food. Like a grocery store in

the middle of the freakin' woods. Peas, pears, applesauce, baked beans, a bag of sugar, a box of salt,

dried-out mushrooms, raisins, apples. Like finding a buried treasure."

I looked out the window. The storm had abated. Where had they gone?

"As I'm fixing up dinner, Oscar starts poking around the edges of this camp, exploring while I'm

trying to find a way to open the cans. The kid comes back wearing these groovy old-time pants like

knickerbockers and a dingy white sweater. He says he found a whole pile of things. You wouldn't

believe the stuff that's out there—clothes and shoes, and gloves, hats, mittens. We go around uncovering

all this junk—buttons, a pouch of primo weed—excuse me, Mrs. Day—a rock collection, and old cards

and newspapers with stuff written on them, like a kid practicing his ABCs. Someone had saved a ball of

string, a hair comb, a pair of rusty scissors. This freakin' mixed-up doll baby. Like a commune out there,

man. When I told the cops, they said they were going to go up and investigate, because they don't want

those types around our town."

"I should say not." My mother pursed her lips.

Elizabeth barked at her. "What's wrong with communing with nature?"

"I didn't say anything about nature."

"Whoever lives out there," Jimmy continued, "must have split before I got there, because they were

gone, man. Over supper, Oscar tells me how he came to be naked in a hole in the ground in the middle

of the forest. This group of children, pretending to be pirates, kidnapped him and tied him to a tree.

Another boy put on a mask that looked exactly like him and made him jump into a hole. He took off all

his clothes, and then he made Oscar take off all his clothes. I'm getting kind of freaked out, but the other

kid says for Oscar to forget it all happened, and he climbs out, puts a lid on the tunnel."

He chose not to go through with the change. I tried to remember who that might be.