Blessed Child (18 page)

Leiah walked toward Caleb and Jason followed, but he saw that something had already changed about the boy. It was what had stopped Nikolous. The sight of the girl passing by in the wheelchair hadn't just diverted Caleb's attention; it had frozen him stiff.

Leiah pulled up five feet from the boy—she'd seen it too. “Caleb?”

The boy glanced at her and then looked toward a young man, maybe twenty, who hobbled along with the aid of an aluminum walker to his left. One of his legs appeared bent below the knee.

Jason pulled up behind Leiah. A quiet settled on them. Moving closer to the boy somehow felt pretentious.

Leiah had one hand reaching out to Caleb, but he ignored it and jerked his eyes to another attendee, this one a very old woman in an ancient wheelchair. She had removed the leg rests and slowly eased herself along, using her feet to inch the wheelchair forward. Her skin sagged from her bones as if it were slowly melting. She turned a baggy face toward Jason. Her lower lip drooped to her chin, and the bags under her eyes hung impossibly low. She looked as if she were about to cry, and Jason knew it was how she always looked.

He faced Caleb. An expression of anguish gripped the boy's face now. Near panic. Glistening tears slid down his cheeks and he was breathing quickly. It struck Jason that the boy's sheltering had prevented him from ever seeing such a scene. He swallowed. Leiah was crying beside him now, softly, under her breath, but the sound of it made Jason's knees weak.

Caleb suddenly whirled to the young girl in the wheelchair, now rolling away from him. His little hands knotted into fists and he tore after her. When he reached the wheelchair, he grabbed the armrest and spun around it to face the girl. She uttered a sharp cry of surprise. For a moment their eyes locked, and Caleb's face wrinkled with grief. He began to speak quickly in a high-pitched voice. Jason recognized the familiar Ge'ez dialect. The boy was praying.

He reached out as if to pluck a flower from the girl's hair, and he touched her lightly on the cheek. An endearing touch that lingered and then was gone.

Caleb whirled, acquired sight of the young man with the bent leg, and ran for him.

But their eyes were on the blond girl; Jason knew they were because he himself couldn't remove his eyes from her. The girl's legs hung a foot off the ground, supported by two leg rests. She turned her head and looked after Caleb dumbly. Then she looked into her lap. She turned to him again, just as he ran in front of the young man with the bad leg. Then it was back to her knees again.

Her back was toward them, so Jason couldn't see exactly what was happening to her legs, but clearly they had arrested her attention. She seemed confused and looked to Caleb once more for clarity. But the boy was gazing into the eyes of the young man who'd stopped as a matter of necessity.

Something about her legs made the little blond girl decide to try standing. She couldn't have understood a word Caleb had spoken over her; not even Jason could understand but a word or two. She suddenly leaned forward, pushed a lever that allowed the leg rests to swing free, and slipped out of her seat.

A shriek ripped through the air. A woman raced toward them in high heels, an ice-cream cone wobbling in each hand. The girl's mother had returned from the ice-cream stand behind her to find her daughter collapsed on the ground.

But she hadn't collapsed. She was standing on the concrete looking at her toes, with her hands hanging by her sides. The mother dropped the cones and rushed toward her daughter in a full shriek. And then suddenly she swallowed the scream, because her little girl took one quiet step forward.

The mother slid to a stop, bug-eyed.

The blond girl stood for a few moments, eyes still glued on her feet, and then took another step forward. She wore spotless white shoes with white lace ties, and she placed both feet together and looked up. Her body began to tremble all over. Jason stopped breathing.

The girl stood with her arms neatly at her side and her feet together at the heels, shaking from head to foot. And then it all burst from her and she shrieked. A higher-pitched, slightly quieter version of her mother's shriek, but no less intense. She lifted her arms above her head and began to turn in circles with short shuffle steps. Her mother approached now, her hands spread wide, palms out. Her mouth hung open and she began to circle her daughter, as though grappling for a thread of reason.

Jason jerked his eyes to Caleb, who was grinning now, running for the old woman, who had stopped her pedaling in favor of watching the commotion. Her face still looked like something from the grave.

But the young man—the young man was trembling over his walker. This time Jason saw the changing before his own eyes. It was quite simple really. The young man's leg had become rubber, and now it slowly straightened. The man was watching it and yelping at the same time. A short
“Iap! Iap!”
sound, like someone caught between fear and desire.

He was still trembling when the violent shakes of his body pushed the walker beyond his grasp. Jason doubted it was intended, because the man staggered and caught himself with a giant step forward. Like the girl, he remained fixated on his toes. But only for a few moments. Then he began to hoot and dance a strange dance that reminded Jason of an old Fred Astaire movie he'd seen once.

The little girl was jumping up and down now. Jumping up and down and watching her own legs and crying with delight. Her mother was doing short vertical hops with her, crying buckets.

A faint whoop came from the direction of the baggy lady, and Jason spun to face her. She was out of her wheelchair, wearing a great toothless grin. Her cheeks bunched under bright gray eyes. It was the last straw for Jason. A flood seemed to rise through his chest and he began to cry. Not for sorrow, heavens no. Looking at the old lady baring her gums with such joy, he could not help but join her.

Caleb had run off, to find another perhaps. By now several dozen curious onlookers had run to the scene attracted by the mother's screams. A middle-aged man still clinging to an old cane skipped through the gathering, silent and stunned. Another recipient of Caleb's touch. The three who had been healed first were all hopping, and now the girl's mother had her arms raised to the sky, crying, “Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus!”

Whistles suddenly shrilled, and three white-clothed security officers angled through the crowd, waving their hands.

“Okay, let's break this up, folks. What seems to be the problem here?”

Nikolous moved for the first time. He swooped down on Caleb, who'd just approached a lady in red with a Seeing Eye dog. The large man grabbed Caleb's shoulder, spun him around, and snatched up his hand.

The wide smile on Caleb's face faded, and he stumbled after Nikolous. The Greek led the boy quickly toward his black Mercedes, still parked in a handicapped-loading zone on the front apron. Leiah cried and ran after them but too late; Nikolous shoved the boy into the car, slammed the door, and was striding back before she reached him. She grabbed his arm, demanding to talk to the boy, but he just shrugged her off.

“Excuse me.”

Jason spun to face the baggy woman who'd walked up to him. Behind her the crowd was beginning to disperse, but a number of them cried uncontrollably, maybe relatives and friends of the little girl who skipped around with fists still raised above her head.

“Did you see where the boy went?” the old lady asked. Her skin seemed twice what her face required, but it curved in infectious arcs now.

“I'm sorry; he's gone,” Jason said.

She closed the flaps that were her lips and then smiled uncontrollably, showing her gums. “I haven't walked in ten years, you know?”

Jason didn't know what to say.

“He has the breath of God. That boy has God's breath.” A tear broke from her left eye and then she turned from him and sauntered off aimlessly on thin legs.

Jason and Donna were left standing like innocent bystanders caught on the perimeter. Small pockets still gathered around the girl and the young man, but they'd drifted toward the edge at the officer's encouragement. Behind Jason, Nikolous's shoes clacked on the cement and he turned. But it was Donna the Greek approached, not him. A grin split his face.

“So you will agree to do it?” he asked.

Donna stared at him and blinked. “How could I not?”

“You will come, then?”

“I'll be there with lights blazing, sir.”

He nodded, glanced at Jason, and then turned about. He took in a stern glare from Leiah and strode for his car.

Y “You'll be where?” Jason asked Donna. His head had cleared quickly, and he wasn't sure he wanted to hear what she would say.

“I'm going to shoot an event he's putting together for national broadcast.”

“You're
what?”
Leiah demanded, stepping up from behind.

“Did you just see what happened here? It was incredible! You can't hide this from the world!”

“Maybe, but you're moving a bit fast, aren't you?” Jason asked. “Television? When's the event?”

“One week.”

“One week.”

“Next Saturday night in the Old Theater on Figueroa Street.”

They both stared at her without responding.

“Oh, lighten up. You can't favor a single boy over the lives he can touch. Look at what he just did for that little girl, for goodness' sake. And that man! Go tell them it was all a bit fast.” She shook her head and glanced at her watch. “I've gotta run. I'm sure I'll see you soon enough. Please, Jason, don't take this personally. I work for the people; it's my job. He'll be fine; you'll see.”

With that she turned from them, and they watched her walk to her car.

They left the convention hall in a kind of dull shock. It took them an hour to dissect in detail what they'd seen. The boy's power was seemingly at his whim. And now it was clear that Nikolous wasn't finished.

It took them another hour of discussing the matter to agree that they should put a stop to Nikolous now before he hurt Caleb. Dragging a boy into public like a dog to perform tricks and then throwing him back in his cage until the next act could easily be interpreted as abuse. Or at the very least exploitation.

The situation was spiraling out of control. It had to be stopped. Jason agreed to go to the court first thing Monday and ask for a temporary restraining order until a child psychiatrist had the opportunity to examine Caleb and offer an informed opinion on the effect Nikolous's scheme would have on him.

And if they weren't granted a restraining order?

Then they would go back to the Immigration Service.

Whatever is necessary, Leiah reminded him.

Jason only nodded. In reality he didn't need reminding, but he let her play the mother. She was born for it.

14

Day 9

S
TEWART
L
ONG SAT ACROSS FROM HIS WIFE
, forking mashed potatoes into his mouth, thinking that despite his wife's altercation with the doctor, on balance his day had been pretty decent.

“Well, I don't care what Dr. Franklin says,” Barbara said. “I'm not going to let them take a knife to Peter's legs. And that's final. They can experiment on someone else's legs.” She said it with a firm jaw, and Stewart knew that it was the end of the matter.

To say that the Longs were just an ordinary mother-father-and-son family who lived on an ordinary suburban street in an ordinary Southern Californian town like Altadena would miss the true flavor of the matter entirely. Not that any of this was untrue, no. But no amount of ordinary detail could strip away the extraordinary nature of walking through life with muscular dystrophy.

Or in little Peter's case
not
walking through life with muscular dystrophy.

They lived about fifteen minutes from the Rose Bowl, just ten minutes north of the 210 freeway, and not more than eight minutes from Brookside Memorial Hospital, but in their hearts the Longs lived a thousand miles from the rest of the world. It hardly mattered that Stewart spent his days minding the streets as a bona fide policeman, saving humanity from itself in every way imaginable. It mattered even less in some ways that Barbara carried the credentials of a registered nurse around in her purse. Peter had come into their lives ten years ago and made such facts subservient to this other one—the one that had pushed them into their own personal hell. The one called muscular dystrophy.

At least that's how Stewart saw it. But then that was unfair, because they had actually started to make some sense of life this last year, hadn't they?

“He's been through too much as it is,” Barbara added after some silence.

Stewart looked at his son. Apart from the braces on either leg, his body looked slight and perhaps even frail, but otherwise he looked quite normal. “Is that how you feel, Peter?”

The boy lifted his eyes. “Our most important thoughts are those which contradict our emotions,” he said. “What do my feelings have to do with it?” Stewart recognized it as a quote he'd heard from his son before. Peter's body might be frail, but his mind was far from it, and he had no problem retreating there at the flip of some invisible switch. He often showed his genius through these quotes of his, memorized and put into perfect context at will.

“Who's that one from?” Stewart asked, testing.

“Knowledge can be communicated, Father, but not wisdom,” his son responded.

“Please, dear . . .”

“It's okay, Barbara. Indulge him.”

“Yes, indulge me, Mom. We've all had a hard day. Let's give ourselves a break.”

For a moment Stewart thought the conversation could go either way: to heaven or to hell. And in truth he could hardly influence its course. It was Barbara and Peter who had suffered the most—she in forfeiting not only her career but most of the last decade, and he in his disability—and through their suffering they had earned certain rights, it seemed. Engaging each other as they saw fit was one of them.