We entered the church to steal candles. Even in the dead of night, the slate and glass building asserted its prominence on Main Street. Bound by an iron fence, the church had been laid out in the shape of a cross, and no matter how one approached it, the symbols were inescapable. Huge chestnut doors at the top of a dozen steps, mosaics from the Bible in the stained-glass windows reflecting moonlight, parapets hiding angels lurking near the roof—the whole edifice loomed like a ship that threatened to swamp us as we drew near. Smaolach, Speck, and I crept through the graveyard adjacent to the eastern arm of the church and popped in through a side door that the priests left unlocked. The long rows of pews and the vaulted ceiling created a space that, in the darkness, pressed down on us; its emptiness had weight and substance. Once our eyes adjusted, however, the church did not seem as smothering. The threatening size diminished, and the high walls and arched ceilings reached out as if to embrace us. We split up, Smaolach and Speck in search of the larger candles in the sacristy to the right, I to find the smaller votive candles in an alcove on the other side of the altar. A fleeting presence seemed to follow me along the altar rail, and a real dread rose inside me. In a wrought iron stand, dozens of candles stood like lines of soldiers in glass cups. A coinbox rattled with pennies when I tapped my nails against its metal face, and spent matches littered the empty spaces. I struck a new match against the rough plate, and a small flame erupted like a fingersnap. At once, I regretted the fire, for I looked up and saw a woman's face staring down at me. I shook out the light and crouched beneath the rail, hoping to be invisible.
　　Panic and fear left as quickly as they had come, and what amazes me now is how much flows through the mind in such a short space of time. When I saw her eyes looking down on me, I remembered: the woman in red, my schoolmates, the people in town, the people in church, Christmas, Easter, Halloween, the kidnapping, drowning, prayers, the Virgin Mary, and my sisters, father, mother. I nearly had solved the riddle of my identity. Yet as quickly as it takes to say "Pardon me," they vanished, and with them, my real story. It seemed as if the eyes of the statue flickered in the match light. I looked upon the enigmatic face of the Virgin Mary, idealized by an anonymous sculptor, the object of untold adoration, devotion, imagination, supplication. As I stuffed my pockets with candles, I felt a pang of guilt.
　　Behind me, the great wooden doors at the center entrance groaned open as a penitent or a priest entered. We zipped out through the side door and zigzagged among the gravestones. Despite the fact that bodies lay buried there, the cemetery was not half as frightening as the church. I paused at a gravestone, ran my fingers over the incised letters, and was tempted to light a match to read the name. The others leapt over the iron fence, so I scurried to catch up, chasing them across town, until we were all safely beneath the library. Every close call thrilled us, and we sat on our blankets giggling like children. We lit enough candles to make our sanctuary shine. Smaolach crawled off to a dark corner and curled up like a fox, his nose buried under a cloaking arm. Speck and I sought out the brightness, and with our latest books, we sat side by side, the scrape of turning pages marking time.
　　Ever since she had introduced me to this secret place, I loved going to the library. Initially, I went for the books first encountered in my childhood. Those old stories—Grimm's Fairy Tales and Mother Goose, picture books like Mike Mulligan, Make Way for Ducklings, and Homer Price—promised another clue to my fading identity. Rather than help me recapture the past, the stories only alienated me further from it. By looking at the pictures and reading Aloud the text, I had hoped to hear my mother's voice again, but she was gone. After my first few visits to the library, I shelved such childish things and never again looked at them. Instead, I embarked upon a journey mapped by Speck, who chose, or helped me choose, stories to hold my adolescent interest: books like The Call of the Wild and White Fang, tales of adventure and derring-do. She helped me sound out words I could not decipher and explained characters, symbols, and plots that ran too wild or deep for my imagination. Her confidence, as she moved through the stacks and countless novels, inspired me to believe in my own ability to read and imagine. If not for her, I would be the same as Smaolach, filching comic books like Speed Carter or the Adventures of Mighty Mouse from the drugstore. Or worse, not reading at all.
　　Cozy in our den, she held on her lap a fat volume of Shakespeare, the type set in a minuscule font, and I was midway through The Last of the Mohicans. The flickering candlelight conspired with the silence, and we only interrupted each other's reading to share a casual delight.
　　"Speck, listen to this: 'These children of the woods stood together for several moments pointing at the crumbling edifice, and conversing in the unintelligible language of their tribe.'"
　　"Sounds like us. Who are these people?"
　　I held up the book to show her its cover, the title in gilt letters on a green cloth. We receded back into our stories, and an hour or so passed before she spoke again.
　　"Listen to this, Aniday. I'm reading Hamlet here and these two fellows come in. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Hamlet greets them: 'Good lads, how do ye both?' And Rosencrantz says, 'As the indifferent children of the earth.' And Guildenstern says, 'Happy in that we are not over-happy. On Fortune's cap we are not the very button.' "
　　"Does he mean they were unlucky?"
　　She laughed. "Not that, not that. Don't go chasing after a better fortune."
　　I did not understand the half of what she said, but I laughed along with her, and then tried to find my place again with Hawkeye and Uncas. As morning threatened and we packed our things to go, I told her how much I had enjoyed what she had read to me about Fortune.
　　"Write it down, boy. If you come across a passage in your reading that you'd like to remember, write it down in your little book; then you can read it again, memorize it, and have it whenever you wish."
　　I took out my pencil and a card from the stack I had filched from the card catalog. "What did they say?"
　　"Rosencrantz and Guildenstern: the indifferent children of the earth."
　　"The last of the Mohicans."
　　"That's us." She flashed her smile before going to the corner to wake our slumbering friend Smaolach.
　　
　　
　　We would snitch a few books to take home with us for the satisfaction of lying abed on a chilled winter's morning under weak sunshine and slipping out a slim volume to read at leisure. Between the covers, a book can be a sin. I have spent many hours in such a waking dream, and once having learned how to read, I could not imagine my life otherwise. The indifferent children around me did not share my enthusiasm for the written word. Some might sit for a good story well told, but if a book had no pictures, they showed scant interest.
　　When a raiding party went to town, they often came back with a collection of magazines—Time or Life or Look—and then we would huddle together under the shade of an old oak to look at the photographs. I remember summer days, a mass of knees and feet, elbows and shoulders, jockeying for a choice viewing position, their bare skin damp against mine. We stuck together like the slick pages clumped and wrinkled in the humidity. News and celebrity did not appeal to them. Castro or Khrushchev, Monroe or Mantle, none meant anything more than a passing fancy, an interesting face; but they were profoundly intrigued by images of children, particularly in fanciful or humorous situations, and any photographs of the natural world, particularly exotic animals from a zoo or circus or in the wild reaches of a faraway land. A boy on top of an elephant caused a sensation, but a boy with a baby elephant was talked about for days. Most beloved of all were shots of parents and children together.
　　"Aniday," Onions would plead, "tell us the story about the daddy and his baby."
　　A bright-eyed baby girl peeps up from a bassinet to stare at her delighted, grinning father. I read the caption to them. "'Little bundle of joy: Senator Kennedy admires his new baby daughter, Caroline, in their Georgetown home.'"
　　When I tried to turn the page, Blomma stuck her palm on the photograph. "Wait. I want to see the baby again."
　　Chavisory chimed in: "I want to see the man."
　　They were intensely curious about the other world, especially at the distance photography allows, the place where people grew up, fell in love, had children, became old, and the cycle continued, unlike our relentless timelessne............