"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 didnt notice them before, but up he scooted, like climbing a ladder."
My mother sat hard in the chair. Staring at the plate of fried chicken, she seemed lost in abstraction, reconciling what she knew to be true with what she had just heard. The twins one-upped each other with hypotheses too absurd to believe. Too nervous to eat, I retired to the porch for a smoke and contemplation. On my second Camel, I heard the noise of an approaching car. A cherry red Mustang veered off the road and barreled up our drive, kicking up gravel and fishtailing to a stop. The twins rushed out to the porch, the screen door slapping shut twice, before Cummings got out of the car. Hair pulled back into a ponytail, a pair of rose-colored glasses perched on his nose, he flashed the two-finger V and broke into a broad grin. Mary and Elizabeth greeted him with their own peace signs and smiled coyly back at him. Jimmy loped across the yard, took the porch stairs in two bounds, and stood directly in front of me, expecting a heros welcome. We shook hands.
"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 looked out the window. The storm had abated. Where had they gone?
My sisters stopped mid-bite, their forks suspended in the air, and stared at her. I asked my mother to repeat the message, and in so doing, she realized the implications of her sentences.
"Morning comes, so now I see where I am, which is still stuck in a hole. But give myself a skosh more room on the left, all I have to do is twist and down I go. Turns out I was only a foot or two off the 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—"
"I should say not." My mother pursed her lips.
He chose not to go through with the change. I tried to remember who that might be.
"I think I have that dream every morning," said Mary.
Elizabeths fork fell and clattered on the plate.
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.
"They walked out of the woods together. Hes alive. He found him in a hole. Little Oscar Love."
"No, man. Do you think Im crazy? Maybe its99lib.net 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 hadnt heard from Oscar all day. Just when I think maybe hes dead, here he crawls in like a mole and pops his head up. The thing of it is—and I didnt notice this at first because of all the dirt and grime—he was naked as a jaybird."
"I was jammed inside, man. My arms are trapped up against the sides of the hole. Worse is, my feet arent on the bottom of the pit, but dangling there, at the top of a bottomless pit. Or maybe somethings down at the bottom, going to get me." He lunged out at the girls, who screamed and giggled.
"Lew starts shaking my hand, and Libby says Bless you about a thousand times. And Oscar, big Oscar, came in a few minutes later, then he goes through the whole routine with his nephew, and man, is he glad to see me, too. The questions start flying, and of course I already told the whole story to the firemen and the cops. They brought us to the hospital on account of him being out there for three days. Near as they can tell, there isnt a thing wrong with the boy. A little strung out, like hed been tripping, and we were pretty tired and dirty and thirsty."
The strangeness and sorrow surrounding this discovery were compounded by the vanishing act of Jimmy Cummings. With the rest of the searchers, he had gone into the woods that night but had not returned. When Jimmy did not show up at the hospital, we all assumed he had gone home early or found another exit, and not until the next evening did George begin to worry. By the third day, the rest of us were all anxious about Jimmy, desperate for any news. We planned to go back to the woods that evening if the weather held, but just as I sat down with my family for dinner, the phone rang in the kitchen. Elizabeth and Mary both sprang from their chairs, hoping a boy might be trying to reach them, but my mother ordered them to sit.
"At the bottom of this hole," Jimmy continued over the rumbling, "tunnels 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, unbelievably 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 tunnels. It just now occurs to me that I saw something like this on TV with Cronkite. Like the VC. Maybe its a Vietnamese camp?"
Mary put forward her own theory. "Maybe it was his double. Daddy used to say that everybody has one."
"Well ... there must be a mistake."
"As Im fixing up dinner, Oscar starts poking around the edges of this camp, exploring while Im 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 wouldnt believe the stuff thats 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 dont want those types around our town."
Mom had the last word on the subject. "Sounds like the fairies to me."
"All the kids ran away, except for one girl, who said she would help him home. But when she heard a dog barking, she ran away too. When nobody came for him in the morning, he was scared and all freaked out, and thats when he heard me. I dont believe a word of it, but it does explain a lot of things. Like the childrens old clothes."
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.
They all laughed, but I knew better. I pressed my forehead against the cool windowpane and searched the landscape for those I have tried to forget. The puddles in the yard were sinking slowly into the earth.
"Theres 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, Im asleep and having the strangest dreams. Hallucinations. Bad acid. A voice from far away, a little boy calling and calling Mama, but I cant see him, and Im 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 its really going off beside your bed? Only you think its just a dream, so you dont 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?"
"All the doctors and nurses freaked out, too. Speaking of nurses, Henry, theres a nurse there who said she saw you the other night when they brought up that other boy."
That was no boy.
"Its a miracle. That was Oscar Love. Jimmy Cummings is okay, and he found ９９lｉｂ•neｔhim alive."
Elizabeth asked the not-so-rhetorical question we were all wondering about. "So whos that in the morgue?"
"Dig it. I cant 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, Im under here! Under where? I cant see him, and what hes under? Keep calling me ... and I try to follow the sound of his voice. Thats when I fall into the freakin hole. Crashing right through branches and stuff that someone had laid over the opening like its a trap. Im 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."
I checked my watch and studied the approaching storm, trying to calculate 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.
"Welcome back from the dead, man."
"But you had to know, man, so I got in my ride and drove right over here."
"Oh, angels and ministers of grace defend us."
"And that boy they found in the river," Mom said.
Despite being underwater for a day, the body was identified as that of young Oscar Love. The sheet pulled back, the shocking bloat of the drowned, and sure enough, it was him, although the truth is, none of us could bear to look closely. Had it not been for the strange netting around the waterlogged corpse, maybe no one would have thought it anything other than a tragic accident. He would have been laid to rest under two yards of good earth, and his parents left to their private grief. But suspicions were raised from the moment that they gaffed him from the river. The corpse was transported twelve miles to the county morgue for a proper autopsy and inquest. The coroners searched for cause but found only strange effects. To all outward appearance he was a young boy, but when they cut him open, the doctors discovered an old man. The weirdness never made the papers, but Oscar later told me about the atrophied internal organs, the necrosis of the heart, the dehydrated lungs, liver, kidneys, spleen, and brain of a death-defying centenarian.
"What happened to his clothes?" Mom asked.
"Man, you know already? Have you heard the news?" His eyes were bloodshot, and I could not tell if he was drunk or stoned or just worn-out.
"Maybe thats what he thought he saw," Elizabeth said. "Maybe that boy kinda looked like him, and thats why Oscar thought he was wearing a mask."
"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 九_九_藏_书_网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. Im 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."
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.
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 wondering if his story would beat the rain. No longer able to wait, she asked, "So, how did you find little Oscar?"
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 uncomfortable chairs.
"Isnt he dead?" I asked.
"Youre kidding. Alive?" Mary said.
Two identical beings, one dead, the other living—the changeling and the child.
"Have you ever seen anyone come back from the dead, Mrs. Day?"
"Tell us all about it," my mother said. "Would you like a drink? Let me get you an iced tea."
"I dont like your friends calling in the middle of meals." Mom picked up the receiver from its cradle on the wall, and after she said hello, her face was a palette of surprise, shock, disbelief, and amazement. She half turned to finish her discussion, leaving us to stare at the back of her head. As she hung up the phone with her left hand, she crossed herself with her right, then turned to share the news.
The changelings stripped him, wrapped him in a caul of spiderwebs, and threw the body in the river to make him their own. Thats what they thought they were doing.
"Thats a helluva mistake, Mom," Mary said.
Mary asked her twin, "Theres another Oscar Love? Thats so cool."
"So I was really, really lost. And at that point, Im concerned about finding my own way out. I come to this clearing in the woods, and its starlit and spooky. Theres 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?"
"Do you really think," I asked, "that the Vietcong have invaded America and set up camp in the middle of nowhere?"
While she busied herself in the kitchen, we arranged ourselves on the rattan. Unable to decide upon a siste９９ｌiｂ•ｎｅtr, Jimmy slumped onto the settee, and the twins bunched together on the porch swing. I kept my post at the railing, and when she returned, Mom sat beside Jimmy, beaming at him as if he were her own son.
"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 were sitting there wondering what to do next, when he asks me if Im hungry. He marches right over to the edge of the ring and rolls back an old dirty blanket thats 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."
A big storm darkened in the western skies. In the forest, the creatures would be scrambling for cover. The hobgoblins had created an underground warren in their ancient campsite, a maze of tunnels that sheltered them from the rough weather.
"Thats what the Loves thought when they saw him," Jimmy said. "As if Oscar might have come from the airs of heaven, or been blasted out of hell. They couldnt believe what their own eyes were telling them. Cause they were all set to take the body to the funeral home, thinking Little Oscar was dread and fit to be buried, when I come in with their son, holding his hand, Lewis looked as if he was having a heart attack, man, and Libby walked up and said, Are you real? Can I touch you? What are you? Can you speak to me? And the boy ran to her and wrapped his arms around her waist, and she knew he was no ghost."
Distracted, Mom fretted with the bobby pins at her temples. She stood behind her chair, thinking.
Elizabeth barked at her. "Whats wrong with communing with nature?"
In the distance, the low rumble of thunder. I hopped off the porch and ran down to roll up the windows of his car. The hobgoblins would be huddled, all elbows and knees, worried about a sudden wrack of lightning. The song had slipped my mind again.
Mom burst through the door and threw her arms around my friend, bear-hugging him until his face turned red. Not able to restrain themselves a moment longer, my sisters joined in, nearly tackling him in their enthusiasm. I watched them unpeel one by one.
"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, Im 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 its a tunnel. So I tell him to crawl around and if he sees a pair of big feet in the middle of the air, theyre mine and could he help me get out?"