After Dachau Read Online Free Page A

backyard, but when he bought the place it was no longer in use, having cracked one winter back in the sixties or seventies. Considering it an eyesore and not worth fixing, he’d had it ripped out.
    There was no boy named Perry living across the street, but there was an old man of that name living there, in a house that had been in the Schuylkill family for something like four generations.
    The Tuckers found Perry Schuylkill to be a pleasant and well-preserved eighty-six-year-old with a full head of white hair and a farmer’s ruddy complexion (though he wasn’t a farmer). He listened to their tale with bright-eyed interest and evident puzzlement, glancing back and forth between mother and son. When they were done, he said, “Well, this is a hell of a thing. I don’t know what to think.”
    He stared at the boy for a long time, then began his own tale.
    “There was a family that boarded across the street back in 1920 or so. I guess I was twelve or thirteen, so that wouldput it back in 1919 or 1920. I don’t remember their name—I mean their family name. It might have been Dickens or Pickens or something like that. I can’t think what business Mr. Pickens was in, but I know they didn’t have a lot of money. There was a boy and a girl, though I only remember the girl, who was my age or a year or two younger. My goodness, I do remember that girl, Rita May, because she was the first love of my life, and I had the biggest crush on her you’d ever want to see. I spent a whole summer trying to impress her, and I guess maybe I did.” Here Perry Schuylkill gave Eddie another long look.
    “It was for her I made that nifty little boat. I remember I got the wood from a drawer-bottom of a cast-off bureau of some kind. And that coin. I remember making that for her too. She took hold of it and said, ‘It feels funny, sort of slick, like it’s got oil on it.’ ”
    “I remember that,” Eddie said. “And you said, ‘That’s just from the process,’ or something like that.”
    Mr. Schuylkill nodded, and Eddie’s mother burst into tears, for no reason she could ever cogently explain.
    At the end of the summer, Mr. Schuylkill went on, Rita May fell ill. He thought it might have been rheumatic fever but couldn’t be sure. “I didn’t care what it was,” he said. “I just wanted it to go away. But it didn’t, and my precious love passed away in a little room under the fourth-floor eaves of that house right over there. I can show it to you if you like. I’m sure Mr. Boyle wouldn’t mind.”
    But Eddie’s mother wanted no part of that.
    After their visit to O’Neill, Eddie dredged up a few more details of his life as Rita May Pickens, but he later admittedthat even he wasn’t sure whether he’d dredged them up or made them up.
    It took two years for rumors of the case to reach our ears—a usual sort of interval—but Perry Schuylkill was still alive and alert, as were all the others. It all checked out. All the principals and witnesses seemed guileless, earnest types who had nothing to gain from deceiving me or anyone else.
    It was a classic, but what did it actually amount to? Having a fish pond in the backyard was hardly unique to that one house. It would have been different if it had been a pagoda or a pyramid. The loose brick was no longer there to be counted, so it all comes down to a toy boat, a counterfeit coin, and a recollection of being sick in a town with a name that, to my surprise, proved to be unique. I was unable to find even one more O’Neill (or anything like it) anywhere else in the world.
    It wasn’t much, but I’d seen the glint of gold with my own eyes and could no longer doubt its existence. I wanted to see more—and in extractable, weighable, usable amounts.
    The obsession was finally upon me.
    Seven more years flew by, and by the time I next saw gold everyone had gotten used to writing year dates starting with 20 instead of 19.

AFTER A HUNDRED DISAPPOINTMENTS , you learn not to let your