By the light of the moon

corner where ten-year-old Shep rocked
back and forth, murmuring. 'Rat, Mole, Mr. Toad.'
    This was not what Dylan might have expected to hear his brother
chanting, but it did not mystify him.
    After the complete works of Dr. Seuss and others, the first
story for older children that their mother read to Shep was Kenneth
Grahame's The Wind in the Willows . Shep had so adored the
tale of Rat, Mole, Toad, Badger, and the other colorful characters
of the Wild Wood that he had insisted she read it to him again and
again during the year that followed. By the time he was ten, he'd
read it at least twenty times on his own.
    He wanted the company of Rat, Mole, and Mr. Toad, the story of
friendship and hope, the dream of life in warm and secure burrows,
in deep lamplit warrens, in sheltered glades, wanted the
reassurance that after fearful adventures, after chaos, there would
be always the circle of friends, the firelit hearth, quiet evenings
when the world shrank to the size of a family and when no heart
beat in a stranger.
    Dylan couldn't give him that. In fact, if such a life could be
lived in this world, the likelihood was that it could be enjoyed
only by characters in books.
    In the downstairs hall, the mirror by the front door shattered.
If memory served, it had been broken with the vase that had stood
on the small entry table.
    From the living-room doorway, Jilly called to Dylan, 'He's going
upstairs!'
    'Let him go. I know what he does. Sacks the master bedroom and
steals Mom's jewelry... I guess to make it look like a robbery. Her
purse is up there. He empties it, takes the money from her
wallet.'
    Jilly and Shepherd joined him, gathering behind the long-ago
Shepherd in the long-ago corner.
    This was not where Shep had been found on the night of February
12, 1992. Dylan wanted to remain in this time until he knew if Shep
had been spared bearing witness to what was yet to come.
    From upstairs echoed the hard crashes of drawers being pulled
out of the bureau and thrown against the walls.
    'Rat, Mole, Mr. Toad,' said the younger Shepherd, and the older
Shep, armoring himself against a scary world and perhaps speaking
also to his ten-year-old self, said, 'Shep is brave, Shep is
brave.'
    After a minute, the noises of destruction ceased upstairs.
Proctor had probably found the purse. Or he was loading his pockets
with her jewelry, none of which had great value.
    Head bowed in his posture of eternal supplication, the younger
Shep moved out of the corner and shuffled to the dining-room door,
and the older Shep closely followed him. Like processional monks,
they were, in a brotherhood of the genteel estranged.
    Relieved, Dylan would have followed them anyway, but when he
heard Proctor's footsteps thundering as hard as knocking hooves on
the stairs, he stepped after his brother more quickly, pulling
Jilly with him, out of the living room.
    Ten-year-old Shep rounded the table and returned to his chair.
He sat and stared at his puzzle.
    The golden-retriever puppies in the basket revealed a moment of
peace and charm that couldn't possibly exist in this violent fallen
world, that must instead represent a glimpse into a burrow in the
Wild Wood.
    Shepherd stood across the table from his younger self, flanked
by Jilly and Dylan, watching.
    In the living room, Proctor began to overturn furniture, tear
paintings from the walls, and smash bibelots, further developing
the scenario that would lead the police away from any consideration
that the intruder might have been other than a common drug-pumped
thug.
    Younger Shep selected a piece of the jigsaw from the puzzle box.
He scanned the incomplete picture. He tried the fragment in a wrong
hole, another wrong hole, but inserted it correctly on his third
try. The next piece he placed at once. And the next, faster.
    After the loudest of the crashes, the living room grew
quiet.
    Dylan tried to focus on the gracefulness with which ten-year-old
Shep turned chaos into puppies and a basket. He hoped to block from
his mind images of the final bit of scene-setting in which Proctor
must be now engaged.
    Inevitably, he failed.
    To suggest that the initial intentions of the murderous intruder
had included rape as well as robbery, Proctor would tear open Blair
O'Conner's blouse, popping the buttons from throat to belt line. To
suggest that the victim had fought back before she could be
sexually assaulted, and that she'd been shot accidentally during a
struggle or on purpose by a man enraged when rejected,