Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

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

    The Stolen Child

    By Carl Reader

    ()

    Read preview

    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.

    Read more from Carl Reader

    Related to The Stolen Child

    Related ebooks

    Literary Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Carrot Legs

      Sep 12, 2019

      Carrot Legs
      20 min read

    • Article

      Penny

      Jul 2, 2020

      Penny
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Education of Mrs. R.

      Sep 6, 2022

      An adolescent shriek woke her. Cockerels, she thought, cockerels, with a wry twist to the word. She lay in the dark listening. There was no use in covering her head; the screaming still came through. The soloist was suddenly submerged in the chorus.

      13 min read

    • Article

      The Portrait

      Mar 1, 2018

      I WAS BORN almost completely deaf, and by the time I was seven I had already become a prisoner to my education. In the morning, I had speech therapy and tutoring with Mr. Bishop. We sat at my family’s long dining-room table, which was always covered

      9 min read

    • Article

      Musings On My Father

      Aug 8, 2022

      Musings On My Father
      5 min read

    • Article

      Frog

      Jan 16, 2022

      Frog
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Periodic Stranger

      Mar 2, 2017

      My roots are in a hilltop village west of Matera, where rabbit and boar run riot in the fields. Figs, apricots, and pears hang in heavy clusters, at eye-level and within easy reach. There, the local girls are famous for their calves, made firm and st

      21 min read

    • Article

      The Periodic Stranger: When exile becomes home.

      Dec 12, 2013

      My roots are in a hilltop village west of Matera, where rabbit and boar run riot in the fields. Figs, apricots, and pears hang in heavy clusters, at eye-level and within easy reach. There, the local girls are famous for their calves, made firm and st

      21 min read

    • Article

      All My Tomorrows

      May 10, 2022

      It was Misha’s first day minding the shop, and already she’d broken the fifth rule. Always lock the door immediately. When you had the most valuable merchandise in the universe, you had to take the utmost precautions. She hadn’t meant to disobey. It

      13 min read

    • Article

      Six Poems

      Nov 1, 2023

      loved best. Words I have neversaid. New sentence, at 80. Of coursenot more than his children, and their children. That goeswithout saying—but I want to lay down eachelement of love’s house. First,the hole, under—apple cellar, potato cellar,cellar to

      5 min read

    • Article

      Little Gods

      Jan 8, 2020

      Little Gods
      8 min read

    • Article

      Proverbs Of A Faceless Time

      Dec 1, 2023

      Proverbs Of A Faceless Time
      9 min read

    • Article

      What The Magpie Says

      Oct 16, 2022

      What The Magpie Says
      8 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems

      Jan 1, 2024

      I’ve always been an easy crier (let it come, not ashamed, never held it back in joy or grief, and wherever … subway, teaching, grocery store, (oh the desolate grocery store during the height of Covid) but now, the welling up: that’s daily now. —Lia P

      5 min read

    • Article

      Book Extract

      Oct 24, 2020

      Book Extract
      5 min read

    • Article

      Cricket League

      Jan 1, 2019

      Lydia Rosenburg, age 10 Bellingham, WA The boy curled against the rundown brick wall, too weak to even sit up. The pain behind his eyelids had dulled to a throb, but now his world was nothing but darkness. How long ago had it happened? Day and night,

      7 min read

    • Article

      The Lucky Ones

      Feb 19, 2019

      The Lucky Ones
      12 min read

    • Article

      The Straw Hat

      Aug 2, 2018

      The Straw Hat
      6 min read

    • Article

      Alien Mark

      Sep 1, 2017

      Alien Mark
      9 min read

    • Article

      I Used to Give Men Mercy

      Feb 12, 2018

      I Used to Give Men Mercy
      12 min read

    • Article

      Reunion

      Feb 4, 2021

      Reunion
      4 min read

    • Article

      Remains

      Sep 1, 2017

      THIS IS what you think your mother’s remains will look like. The ash will be black, like all that soot in the fireplace. It will be heavy, like wet sand. There will not be too much of it. It will fit in a small urn with intricate designs on the borde

      6 min read

    • Article

      An Elephant NEVER FORGETS

      May 17, 2023

      An Elephant NEVER FORGETS
      6 min read

    • Article

      Blackberries

      Apr 5, 2023

      Blackberries
      24 min read

    • Article

      Lost Children

      Aug 4, 2022

      Lost Children
      5 min read

    • Article

      Cricket League

      Jan 1, 2020

      Ivy Lugbill, age 8 Indianapolis, IN I was so excited! My dad and I were going camping! After we packed all our stuff, my dad said, “Hop in!” I grabbed the paper towel roll binoculars I had been making and jumped into the car. It was a really . . . re

      7 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Stolen Child

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      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

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1