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    The Stolen Child
    The Stolen Child
    The Stolen Child
    Ebook118 pages2 hours

    The Stolen Child

    By Carl Reader

    ()

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    About this ebook

    The Stolen Child is a novella of one day in the life of a boy in the 1950s, a day that defines his existence from then on. It begins with a kiss from a girl and ends with a devastating insight into his mother's life, a life that has veered tragically off-course after the death of a soldier in World War II. He gets to know about love, loss, death, war and tragedy all in the course of that one day.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCarl Reader
    Release dateDec 5, 2010
    ISBN9781452369938
    The Stolen Child
    Author

    Carl Reader

    Carl Reader trained as a journalist at Temple University and has worked as a reporter, photographer and editor in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Montana. He's published short stories in literary magazines and on the Internet and has self-published a children's Christmas story called THE TWELFTH ELF OF KINDNESS.That book was partially published in Russia under the Sister Cities program. He's also self-published a novella called THE PERSECUTION OF WILLIAM PENN, which has been well-received in several college libraries. He works as a professional photographer and freelance writer.

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      Book preview

      The Stolen Child - Carl Reader

      The Stolen Child

      By

      Carl Reader

      Smashwords Edition

      Copyright 2010 Carl Reader

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. All characters in these stories are purely fictional. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is strictly coincidental.

      Come away, O human child!

      To the waters and the wild

      With a faery, hand in hand,

      For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

      William Butler Yeats

      The Stolen Child

      Nathan knew something was about to happen, just because he loved Sally Anne, and he knew love could make anything happen. He stood fidgeting at the leafy edge of the canopy of the willow tree in the sunlight, while the girls stood underneath it deciding what to do with him.

      What are you waiting for? Go ahead, Carrie said. Kiss him.

      Sally Anne looked up at Nathan and smiled with her blue eyes gleaming. She walked straight toward him through the green-leafed branches, from the shadows of the willow into the morning. Her hands, held together as though in prayer, split the curtain of leaves. Smiling with her eyes rising to rest on him, she emerged from inside the tent formed by the tree. She blinked in the brightness and opened her arms, waiting for him to come to her. Nathan saw her blond and slender, with the same brightness and feel of the sky in her blue eyes, with the sun now on her red and white plaid dress, like the sun on a table cloth at a picnic. He could look only at her. He said quickly, I have to go to work, but he knew he wasn't going to run away just yet. He stepped into her arms and embraced her with relief.

      Is this how, Callie? I don't know how. What do we do next?

      How should I know how? I can't help you. I'm his sister. I'm not going to kiss him for you.

      I love you, Sally Anne whispered and closed her eyes. I really love you.

      Nathan was quivering and waiting. He loved her, too, and he looked up to see her eyes were closed. She was taller and older than Nathan, and her lips were elevated in the air. He had to rise on his toes to make their lips meet. Giggles from his sisters interrupted, and Sally Anne broke away to run back under the willow tree to hide. She looked hurt as the other girls laughed at her. He stood feeling empty and alone without Sally Anne.

      It was like Hawaii.

      Like on TV.

      Just like Hawaii on TV.

      Callie moved forward to the curtain of willow and imitated Sally by bringing her hands together and splitting the down-hanging branches with them. She hummed a hula song and emerged from the leaves, her lips elevated in the air, too, and her hips swaying back and forth, but she stayed back near the leaves and merely kissed the air.

      Try it, Polly.

      The little girl was dark-skinned, with large round dark eyes, a smaller version of what Nathan looked like, he knew, with the same huge eyes baby animals have. She looked up from her fingers, which she had been twisting round and round, to do as she was told. Severe and questioning in her look, tiny Polly stepped forward and walked through the green branches, splitting them incompletely so that they fell in her mouth and eyes, so annoyed by them that she panicked and stood and fought them, flailing her arms about to get them off of her.

      I can't! Don't make me!

      Try it.

      No! I can't.

      She immediately turned and walked back through the cover of leaves, spitting and annoyed, beaten by her failure even to kiss the air. She entered into a circle of girls, embracing the two in the shade for comfort and still spitting out leaves though there were none in her mouth, and now the three chanted their motto.

      Three times three, we are nine in three, you and you and you are really me and me and me!

      We're all together! We love Nathan!

      The three girls giggled, in both sunlight and shade, cool under the tree as the sun rode higher and warmer into the sky to bake the flat earth with flames. Sally's strand of blondest hair was lit by sun beams as she danced. Nathan saw her cool lips pink in the shade and felt them again on his warm ones. His heart beat stronger, like horses running faster, and the air rushed into his lungs like wind from over the horizon. His face was flushed. The girls danced and sang, and he could not join them, due to the work he had promised to do with his father.

      They barely noticed him now. His sneakers, tied tight around his ankles, brought him around to a sight of the red-brick house beyond the swamp pines after he had turned away, and the feeling of horses in his chest and wind in his lungs stayed with him. It was nearly too strong to endure. He had to stop to catch his breath.

      I have to go to dad. We have work to do.

      He walked under the apple tree with its white blossoms without a response from them, while the girls chanted and laughed behind him. By now, dragging his feet through the dew on the grass had soaked them, and he felt that coolness. The horses in his chest galloped on, and he raised his eyes through the protective shade of the Macintosh tree to stare into the blue and watch the apple's leaves and white blossoms shake in the wind and smile and catch more breath. How could anybody be unhappy? He slowed his pace to walk under the apple tree, reining in the horses, and then made his way to the first swamp pine and its shade slowly and rolled through its umbra to the sunlight and dew of the side lawn. On the concrete driveway where it sloped down slightly toward the garage, he saw the wooden steeple, bare bones like a trellis and painted silver, a model for the real steeple that would one day top the church his father was building. The tip of the wood steeple rose higher than his father's head, for he saw him now, bent next to the model of the steeple with his gray felt hat down over his eyes. He had on a white, short-sleeved shirt and loose dark gray pants held up by a narrow belt, and his strong thick hands were testing first that part of the lower end of the steeple and then another, all with a great calm and surety. His tests were for the strengths and weaknesses of the steeple. He shook its supports and braces to make certain it could one day soar into the sky. As he sensed Nathan's approach, his father stood straight up, becoming as tall as the steeple, and at first there was a look of surprise that his father gave him. The look fled quickly.

      I didn't see you coming.

      I was with the girls.

      Ready? Are the girls okay?

      Yes.

      Always take care of the girls.

      Nathan walked to his father's side and bent immediately to help him lift the model of the steeple by its bottom piece. He smelled the talc and pine wood on the man, and brushed against the white cotton of his shirt as both stood up in unison, his father growing taller as they rose and Nathan trying very hard not to strain under the load of the steeple and trying to be just as tall and strong as the older man. They had the steeple in the air, balanced between them in the golden sunlight, and the silver paint of it was not yet dry and came off in Nathan's hands as he blinked in the bright light under the strain. It was a strain for Nathan to carry the skeleton of the trellis in unison with his father over the concrete toward the bed of the bright yellow pickup truck, but he persevered and was rewarded when he lifted the steeple into the back of the truck and heard his father speak again.

      Good work.

      His father jumped up onto the bed of the truck and lay down the steeple by tipping it from the top onto the flat wooden boards of the bed of the truck. Nathan stood watching him. He saw how cleverly and expertly his father reached for the tip of the steeple, held its base in place with his foot and then pulled it over gently with the muscles rippling in his arm while bending at the knees to lay the steep down. He remembered how that looked, how good and clever that looked, and he smelled talc and pine wood again.

      Let's go. Are the girls all right?

      I think so. They're playing.

      The yellow Chevy truck had a rump like a hip over its back wheel, and Nathan let his hand slide over it as he walked to the passenger side door, gripped the shiny silver door handle and pushed on the round knob that popped the latch. He pulled, and the interior of the truck opened to him, its dark red-brown plastic seat asking him to sit and the brown dashboard helping him up into the truck when he placed his hand on it and stepped up. His father jiggled the gearshift on the steering column to check for neutral and then stepped on the gas pedal with his heel and the bulging starter button on the floor with

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