The Shadow Year by Jeffrey Ford Page A

didn’t see Charlie anywhere. Most of the characters usually just milled around by their houses, but Charlie was no longer there.
    I was about to turn out the light and give up my search when I finally saw him. All the way on the other side of the board, beyond the school field and the woods, his figure lay on its side, directly in the center of the glittering blue waters of the lake.
    Back upstairs, I put the leash on George, and we were out the door in a flash. Down the block and around the corner we went, moving quickly toward the school. It was getting late inthe afternoon, and the temperature had dropped. The woods were somewhat forbidding to me since Charlie had gone missing, and I wasn’t supposed to enter them alone, but I hesitated for only a moment before plunging in beneath the trees.
    We took the main trail and after ten minutes of fast walking stood at the edge of the lake. All the neighborhood kids’ parents told them it was bottomless, but the older I got, the more I suspected that was just a story to keep us from swimming in it or trying to set sail on a raft.
    Its surface was littered with fallen leaves, and in those places where the water peeked through, the reflection of the surrounding trees was rippled by the wind moving over its surface. It was so peaceful. I didn’t know what I expected to find—maybe a body floating out in the middle—but it looked just like it always did in autumn. I stood there for quite a while, listening to acorns and twigs falling in the woods around me, thinking about Charlie. I imagined him resting lightly on his back at the bottom, his eyes wide, his mouth open as if crying out. His hands reached up for the last rays of sunlight that came in over the treetops, cutting the water and revealing the way through his murky nightmare back up to the world. The gathering dusk chased George and me down the path and back out of the woods.
    That night I woke from sleep shivering. The wind was blowing, and the antenna on the roof above my room vibrated with a high-pitched wail, as if the very house were moaning. I made it to the bathroom, got sick, and staggered back to bed, where I fell into feverish dreams—a tumbling whirl of images punctuated with scenes of the sewer pipe, the lake, the descending brick stairway at St. Anselm’s. Teddy Dunden paid me a visit. Charlie, his mother, the man in the white car, a pale face at the window, and Perno Shell himself chased me, befriended me, betrayed me, until it all suddenly stopped. I heard the birds singing and opened my eyes to see a hint of red through the window. There was a wet cloth on my forehead, and then I noticed the shadowy form of my father, sitting at the end of my bed, hunched forward, eyes closed, one hand lying atop the covers next to my ankle. He must have felt me stir. He whispered, “I’m here. Go back to sleep.”
    Although the fever had broken and I was feeling much better by nine o’clock in the morning, the virus bought me a day off from school. Mary didn’t go either, and my mother stayed home from work to take care of us. It was like the old days, before the drinking and the money trouble. Nan came in, and we all sat for an hour after breakfast at the dining-room table, playing cards: old maid and casino. I had a great adventure with my plastic soldiers, which I hadn’t bothered with for months, on the windowsill in the living room while the brilliant, cold day shone in around me. We watched a mystery movie on TV with Peter Lorre as the sauerkraut-eating detective Mr. Moto, and my mother made spaghetti with butter.
    Around three o’clock I lay back down on the couch and closed my eyes. Mary sat on the floor in the kitchen putting together a puzzle, while my mother sat in the rocker beside me and dozed. All was quiet save for the murmur of the wind outside.
    I thought back to when I was in fourth grade and had stayed out of school off and on for forty-five days. My