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it.
Dead. Survived by his wits and many friends. The boys of Cluding Deacon, in their thirties and their forties now, many of them men, gather in their first and one true home, to meet in the place where those years of his life that were spent indoors prepared Kenneth so well for the other two.
There was a rule at Cluding Deacon that no boy could be picked by a young unmarried man unless a young unmarried man willing to part with fifty dollars asked if he could pick a boy.
At last, a young unmarried man availed himself of this longstanding exception to the rule. He chose a one-year-old boy whose last name was Carson. His real first name was unknown at Cluding Deacon, so the man called him Deacon after half of the orphanage because he was so small. The man, whose name was Landish Druken, liked the sound of Deacon Carson Druken.
The much-cherished but yet-to-be-enacted ritual called “Let Us All Delight in the Good Fortune of a Boy Who Has Been Picked Instead of Us” was at last enacted, after which the boy was hustled from Cluding Deacon by his new guardian, who was himself celebrated by the many older boys he might have picked but didn’t.
    Landish looked at the boy.
    “I ransomed you, but you were no bargain. I didn’t pay a king’s ransom or even a prince’s. Fifty dollars. The going price, they said. They told me I could ask around but they couldn’t guarantee you wouldn’t be snapped up while I was gone.”
    It wasn’t easy for a man who was an only child and had never known a human being younger than himself to raise a boy. Landish wondered if Deacon Carson Druken cried too much. It seemed to him that it was not unreasonable to expect that, over the course of a month, the average child would stop crying at least once, even if only to catch its breath.
    Deacon Carson Druken cried when he was hungry. He cried when he was eating. He cried when he was finished eating. He cried when Landish picked him up. He cried when Landish put him down. The urge to pee made him cry. The satisfaction of the urge to pee made him cry. He cried before, during and after a bath. Tears seeped from Deacon Carson Druken’s eyes while he was sleeping.
    He cried so much that Landish worried he would die of thirst.
    Landish tried to write while Deacon cried. He paid fair ladies who were used to being paid for something else to watch over Deacon while he went out for a walk, for a drink. He thought about spending time in the attic with a fair lady who did exactly what she was used to being paid for doing. He looked at the boy and thought against it.
    Seemingly for no reason, Deacon Carson Druken ceased to cry.
    The boy looked at him as if there was nothing Landish could tell him that he hadn’t heard before.
    Man and boy slept.
    “This is your homo supine period,” Landish said to Deacon. “All you do is lie on your back.”
    Then came homo suprone when he lay on his belly and his back.
    Then came homo repine when he sat up, spat up, crawled and bawled and Landish repined for the days when he was cribbed.
    Then came “the great uprising” when Deacon stood up.
    Then what Landish called his “first pittance of an utterance,” a “word” that seemingly had neither vowels nor consonants.
    No others followed for a while. A long while. It seemed that the boy’s first pittance of an utterance would be his first and only one. Landish could see that the boy understood him when he spoke. He didn’t doubt that the boy was able to speak. He had seemed about to many times. Landish wondered what he was waiting for, this boy who was now almost three.
    Landish made up many stories for Deacon. There was one about “a boy who lived inside a hollow iceberg, a great palatial shell of ice, through the walls of which the sun sometimes shone so brightly the boy had to cover his eyes to keep from being blinded. The boy was called the ‘bergy boy’ and lived alone in the Palacier. He was ravenice for licorice, the gathering of which was very