"We think that Doug killed him." He pinwheeled his
round arms and then clapped his hands to his face, sobbing. Frederick
put a hand on his arm. He, too, was crying.
#
Once upon a time, Alan's mother gave birth to three sons in three
months. Birthing sons was hardly extraordinary -- before these three
came along, she'd already had four others. But the interval, well, that
was unusual.
As the eldest, Alan was the first to recognize the early signs of her
pregnancy. The laundry loads of diapers and play clothes he fed into her
belly unbalanced more often, and her spin cycle became almost
lackadaisical, so the garments had to hang on the line for days before
they stiffened and dried completely. Alan liked to sit with his back
against his mother's hard enamel side while she rocked and gurgled and
churned. It comforted him.
The details of her conception were always mysterious to Alan. He'd been
walking down into town to attend day school for five years, and he'd
learned all about the birds and the bees, and he thought that maybe his
father -- the mountain -- impregnated his mother by means of some
strange pollen carried on the gusts of winds from his deep and gloomy
caves. There was a gnome, too, who made sure that the long hose that led
from Alan's mother's back to the spring pool in his father's belly
remained clear and unfouled, and sometimes Alan wondered if the gnome
dove for his father's seed and fed it up his mother's intake.
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