Read Online The Shadow Year by Jeffrey Ford - Free Book Online Page B

if we could track him there. On the way we passed a lot of parents and kids from the neighborhood either in cars or on bikes out looking for him, too.
    Jim told me, “He must have just gotten lost somewhere and couldn’t remember how to get home. You know Charlie.”
    I didn’t say anything, as my imagination was spinning with images of myself, lost, unable to find my way home, or worse, being tied up and taken away to a place where I would never see my family or home again. I was frightened, and the only thing that prevented me from running back to the house, besides the daylight, was that we had George with us. I said, “Maybe the prowler took him.”
    We were, by then, at the entrance to the school, and Jim stopped walking. He turned and looked at me. “You know what?” he said. “You might be right.”
    â€œDo you think they thought of it?”
    â€œOf course,” he said, but I remembered the hatbox in the garbage can and had my doubts.
    Our tour of the woods was brief. It was a beautifully clear and cool day, the trees all turning red, but the idea that the prowler was now doing more than just peeping kept us on edge.We ventured only as far as the bend in the stream before giving up. Once out from under the trees, we peered into the sewer pipe, inspected the basketball courts, gazed briefly down into the sump, and followed the perimeter of the fence around the school yard back to the entrance.
    â€œI have thirty cents,” said Jim. “You want to go to the deli and get a soda?”

Is That You?
    There were cops all over the neighborhood for the next week or so, interviewing people about the disappearance of Charlie Edison and trying to piece together what might have happened to him. The story was on the nightly news, and they included a shot of East Lake in the report. It looked different in black and white, almost like some other school a kid would want to go to. Then they flashed a photo of Charlie, smiling, from behind his big glasses, and I had to look away, aware of what he’d been through since I’d known him.
    There had been honest grief over his absence and the anguish it caused his family, but at the end of the second week the town started to slip into its old ways, as if some strong current were pulling us back to normalcy. It distressed me, though I couldn’t so easily put my finger on the feeling then, how ready everyone was to leave Charlie behind and continue with the business of living. I can’t say I was any different. My mind turned to worrying about Krapp’s math homework and the troubles of my own family. I suppose the investigation into Charlie’s disappearance continued, but it no longer entranced the neighborhood.
    Even though the hubbub surrounding the tragedy was quickly receding, I’d still get a chill at school whenever I’d look over to Charlie’s desk and see his empty chair, or when out onmy bike I’d pass his mother, who had certainly lost her mind when she lost her son. Every day she’d wander the neighborhood, traipsing through people’s backyards, inspecting the Dumpsters behind the stores downtown, staggering along the railroad tracks. She was one of the youngest mothers on the block, but the loss had drained her, and overnight she became haggard, her blond hair frizzed, her expression blank.
    In the evenings she’d walk around the school yard and stand by the playground calling Charlie’s name. One night, as darkness fell and we were eating dinner, my mother, quite a few glasses of sherry on her way to Bermuda, looked up and saw, through the front window, Mrs. Edison heading home from East Lake. She stopped talking and got up, walked through the living room and out the front door. Jim and Mary and I went to the window to watch. She met Mrs. Edison in the street and said something to her. Then she stepped in close, put her arms around the smaller woman, and held her. They stood