Chapter 17 CHAPTER 17

My 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. -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 wed have to start over after a brief apology to the audience. Or Id be seducing a young woman and find that her face had morphed into the visage of a changeling. A baby would cry and I 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 Days first day of school would remind me of all I was not. Id 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 iter. 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 Oscars 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 barrel, 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 Loves green pickup truck pulled up outside, and a moment later the bar door swung open, sending in a crush of humid air. 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 havent found him. Hes only eight years old, man." "What does he look like?" George asked. "Whats 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 pursued 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. Weve 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 townships 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. a tangle of wild raspberries and poison ivy remind ed 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.

"Lets 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. "Thats funny—my watch has stopped." He stared at its face. "Seven thirty. Thats 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. "Heres 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 name side of your path, and lets 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. Id call for the boy, but halfheartedly, not expecting a reply. 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 madded 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 startedled me, for nearly two hours had wasted away. I stood up, called out the boys name once, and, hearing no reply, resumed my hunt. 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, meaning 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 patter n 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.

"Whos 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. , 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, 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 didnt see a damn thing. You dont 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. Its a straight shot, dead on." "Cmon, 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 nurses 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. , 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."