I first saw him the day I moved to town. I had driven from Hartford with a last carload of my belongings—boxes crammed with God-knows-what, a basket of unwashed laundry. I was reeling from job hunting, a sour breakup, the sale of one house and the purchase of another here in Bethel. A little town of 5,000 souls. I was due at my new job the next day, and I was exhausted.

            The baby appeared as if dropped from the sky. Diapered, barefoot, his bowlegs pumped a chunky waddle as he ran down a sidewalk on Greenwood Avenue, just outside the center of town. A toddler, no more than three, blue shirt hoisted up over his belly. He turned, looked back as if escaping from someone. He laughed. I couldn’t hear the laughter, but there was no mistaking it—the broad-cheeked grin of babies when they’ve discovered the joy of being chased. I slowed the car, waited for a mom or dad to appear, loping to catch up. No one. The baby faced forward, ran, his legs bowed like a little ape. He turned back again, laughed.

            I pulled over, stopped my car. The baby ran up a retaining wall, stumbled over tree roots that had broken through the sidewalk. I jumped out, turned my head—just for a second—to cross against traffic. When I turned back, no baby. There one instant, gone the next. Evaporated.

            I searched the yard of the house that fronted the sidewalk, ran to the next house, then the next. Banged on doors. No one answered.

***

            This was pre-Google, or rather, Google had just reared its helpful, ugly head, but only if you had a computer on you. It took me twenty minutes to locate the police station, where a cop asked for my name and address. I could not for the life of me remember my new address. The cop scratched behind his ear, pursed his lips. He thinks I’m crazy, I thought.

            “He was running,” I said. “A baby in a diaper. Couldn’t have been more than two or three. Along the sidewalk. All alone.”

            The cop looked up from his pad, and for the first time, his eyes met mine.

            “I know,” he said. “He’s always giggling.”

***

That was years ago. Since then, I’ve seen the disappearing baby a dozen or so times, but really, I’ve lost count.

I’ve now lived in Bethel long enough to have gained the confidence of its lifelong inhabitants. Spoken with the owner of Stony Hill Hardware, gossiped across the fence with the farmer whose pasture borders my property. I’ve learned about the town’s tolerance of Dante Vaugn, who sees flying saucers and describes them, endlessly, to anyone who’ll listen; of the bitter divorce between the Gallaghers whose thousands of dollars in lawyers’ fees resulted in joint custody of a tabby cat, a cat who—its veterinarian admitted under oath—was indifferent to everything but its food bowl; of Betty Boski’s only son Albert, who died in Vietnam not in battle, but from a drug overdose. And of Betty herself, who sits every morning at the Come Back! Cafe, coffee cup before her, eyes tear-bright as she thumbs through old polaroids of Albert in diapers, a graduation gown, jungle fatigues.

I’ve learned a little about this child, too, the disappearing baby. He materializes most often after hard winters and harsh summers, on sunny days in spring and autumn. A mirage, perhaps, a trick of the light. But to residents of this town, he is no surprise.

            He has appeared enough to have woven a communal history, real or imagined. I have a theory. I think of the disappearing baby as a bone graft, meant to repair something damaged or broken, either in the individual who sees him, or collectively in the town. How can he not help but heal: a toddler alone, trotting half naked along the sidewalk on Greenwood Avenue, diaper drooping, laughing a riotous, baby-toothed laugh?