Keith Donohue_The Stolen Child

that sheltered them from the rough weather.

"But you had to know, man, so I got in my ride and drove right over here."

He drank his iced tea in a single gulp, and my mother refilled his glass at once. She, like the rest of us, grew anxious for the beginning, and I was won-dering if his story would beat the rain. No longer able to wait, she asked, "So, how did you find little Oscar?"

"Hey, Henry, did I tell you that I saw that nurse, Tess Wodehouse? You should give her a call, bro.

That night, I got so caught up looking for that kid that I lost track of the time. My watch stopped dead around half past seven. Which freaked me out because it must have been after nine. Not that I believe in ghosts or anything like that, just that it was dark."

I checked my watch and studied the approaching storm, trying to calcu-late its tempo. If one or two of them were away from camp when the rain hit, they would have to look for a cave or a hollow tree to wait out the worst.

"So I was really, really lost. And at that point, I'm concerned about find-ing my own way out. I come to this clearing in the woods, and it's starlit and spooky. There's these mooshed-down places in the grass and leaves, like maybe deer bed down there. Then I see these flat ovals in a ring around the edges of the clearing, and I figure this is where a herd sleeps for the night, right?"

On fair summer nights, we slept above ground. We read the skies each morning for any hint of foul weather. As Jimmy paused for a breath, I thought I heard the notes from the stones in the river again.

"There's this circle of ashes and burnt sticks from a campfire that some freakin' hunters or backpackers left, and if I have to stay the night in the woods, this might be a good place since, obviously, someone had stayed here before. I made myself a small fire, and the flames hypnotize me, for next thing I know, I'm asleep and having the strangest dreams. Hallucinations. Bad acid. A voice from far away, a little boy calling and calling 'Mama,' but I can't see him, and I'm too tired to get up. You ever have one of those dreams where you think your alarm clock is going off in your dream, but it's really going off beside your bed? Only you think it's just a dream, so you don't get up to shut if off, then you oversleep, and then you remember when you do get up that you had a dream about it ringing?"

"I think I have that dream every morning," said Mary.

"Dig it. I can't see him, but I can hear little Oscar crying out for his Mama, so I start looking for him. 'Oscar? Your mama and daddy sent me here to find you.' So he starts calling out, 'I'm under here!'

Under where? I can't see him, and what he's under? 'Keep calling me' ... and I try to follow the sound of his voice. That's when I fall into the freakin' hole. Crashing right through branches and stuff that someone had laid over the opening like it's a trap. I'm struck in this hole up to my armpits in the dead dark of night with the boy crying his eyes out nearby. A bad scene, man, a bad scene."

The girls stopped swinging. My mother leaned forward. I forgot about the gathering storm and concentrated on the elusive melody, but it receded in the swale of talk.

"I was jammed inside, man. My arms are trapped up against the sides of the hole. Worse is, my feet aren't on the bottom of the pit, but dangling there, at the top of a bottomless pit. Or maybe something's down at the bottom, going to get me." He lunged out at the girls, who screamed and giggled.

"I stayed still, considering my situation, Mrs. Day, and I shout out to Little Oscar to be cool with the yelling 'cause he was getting on my nerves. And I says, 'I'm stuck in a hole, but I will get you as soon as I can figure out a way to get out.' And he says he thinks it's a tunnel. So I tell him to crawl around and if he sees a pair of big feet in the middle of the air, they're mine and could he help me get out?"