The — Curious Case Of Benjamin Button -2008- Hdri...

Daisy Fuller was seven years old, the granddaughter of a wealthy cotton broker who summered in the Garden District. She came to Queenie's boarding house once with her grandmother to deliver old clothes to the poor. While the adults talked, Daisy wandered into the courtyard where Benjamin sat in a rocking chair, wrapped in a quilt, watching a moth die on a lantern.

On the morning of April 15, 2003, Daisy woke to find the baby silent. His eyes were closed. His chest was still. She held him for a long time, rocking back and forth, humming a blues song Mr. Daws had taught him sixty years ago.

"Daisy," he said. "It's me. Benjamin."

He looked up. "Daisy," he said. His voice was high and sweet, like a boy's. "I spelled Mississippi."

At seventeen, Benjamin looked forty. He had grown taller—or rather, his spine had straightened—and his hair was now a distinguished salt-and-pepper. He could walk without a cane, though his knees still ached. Queenie, who had raised him as her own, finally allowed him to leave the boarding house for work. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button -2008- HDRi...

In the summer of 1918, as the Great War bled to a close, a blind clockmaker named Monsieur Gateau received a commission from the New Orleans Union Station. They wanted a grand timepiece, something to celebrate the boys coming home. Gateau, whose own son had marched off to the trenches and never returned, worked in silence for a year. When the clock was unveiled, the crowd gasped. It ran backward.

At fifty, he looked ten. He could not drive. He could not work. He found his way back to Queenie's boarding house, but Queenie had died three years earlier. The building was now a laundromat. Daisy Fuller was seven years old, the granddaughter

At forty-two, Benjamin looked twenty-five. Daisy looked forty-five. Strangers began to mistake them for mother and son. Then for grandmother and grandson. The looks on the street, the whispers in the grocery store—they became a slow poison.