I taught myself how to read and write again during those last two weeks of summer with my new mother, Ruth Day. She was determio keep me inside or within earshot or in her line of vision, and I happily obliged her. Reading, of course, is merely associating symbols with sounds, memorizing the binations, rules and effects, and, most important, the spaces between words. Writing proved more difficult, primarily because one had to have something to say before fronting the blank page. The actual drawing of the alphabet turned out to be a tiresome chore. Most afternoons, I practiced with chalk and an eraser on a slate, filling it over and over with my new name. My mrew ed about my pulsive behavior, so I finally quit, but not before printing, as ly as possible, "I love my mother." She was tickled to find that later, and the gesture earned me aire peach pie, not a slice for the others, not even my father.
The y of going to sed grade quickly eroded to a dull ache. The schoolwork came easily to me, although I entered somewhat behind my class-mates in uanding that other method of symbolic logic: arithmetic. I still tussle with my numbers, not so much the basic operations—addition, subtraultiplication—as the more abstract figurations. Elementary sd history revealed a way of thinking about the world that differed from my experience among the gelings. For example, I had no idea that Gee Washington is, metaphorically speaking, the father of our try, nor did I realize that a food is the arra anisms of an ecological unity acc to the order of predation in which each uses the , usu-ally lower, members as a food source. Such explanations of the natural order felt most unnatural at first. Matters in the forest were far more existential. Liv-ing depended on sharpening instincts, not memorizing facts. Ever sihe last wolves had been killed or driven off by bounty hunters, no enemy but man remained. If we stayed hidden, we would tio endure.
Our struggle was to find the right child with whom to trade places. It couldnt be a random sele. A geling must decide on a child the same age as he was when he had been kidnapped. I was sevehey took me, and seven when I left, though I had been in the woods for nearly a tury. The ordeal of that world is not only survival in the wild, but the long, unbear-able wait to e bato this world.
When I first returhat learned patience became a virtue. My sates watched time crawl every afternoon, waiting ay for the three oclock bell. We sed graders sat in the same stultifying room from September to mid-June, and barring weekends and the glorious freedom of holidays, we were expected to arrive by eight oclod behave ourselves for the seven hours. If the weather cooperated, we were let out into the playground twice a day for a short recess and at lunchtime. Irospect, the actual moments spent together pale to our time apart, but some things are best measured by quality rather than quantity. My classmates made each day a torture. I ex-pected civilization, but they were worse than the gelings. The boys in their grubby navy bow ties and blue uniforms were indistinguishably horrid—nose-pickers, thumbsuckers, snorers, neer-do-wells, farters, burpers, the unwashed and un. A bully by the name of Hayes liked to torture the rest, stealing lunches, pushing in line, pissing on shoes, fighting on the play-ground. Oher joined his sycophants, egging him on, or would be slated as a potential prey. A few of the boys became perpetually