Mary asked her twin, “There’s another Oscar Love? That’s so cool.”
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 hero’s welcome. We shook hands.
“Welcome back from the dead, man.”
“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.
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.
“Tell us all about it,” my mother said. “Would you like a drink? Let me get you an iced tea.”
While she busied herself in the kitchen, we arranged ourselves on the rattan. Unable to decide upon a sister, 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.
“Have you ever seen anyone come back from the dead, Mrs. Day?”
“Oh, angels and ministers of grace defend us.”
“That’s 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 couldn’t 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 dead 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.”
Two identical beings, one dead, the other living—the changeling and the child.
“All the doctors and nurses freaked out, too. Speaking of nurses, Henry, there’s a nurse there who said she saw you the other night when they brought up that other boy.”
That was no boy.
“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 isn’t a thing wrong with the boy. A little strung out, like he’d been tripping, and we were pretty tired and dirty and thirsty.”
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.
“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 wondering 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 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.