“CAN WE PLEASE WALK IN A GROUP?” JOB SHOUTED.
We were making our way between the rice fields behind the Farm. The other Small Boys were up ahead with Logan. We were taking them for a swim in a nearby river but I was moving slowly. I had Job and a boy named Rohit with me. Rohit had a terrible tumor on one side of his face. Even so, he was quick to smile, holding one of my hands while Job held the other.
“It’s so sad for Rohit,” Job said. “He has cansa. Uncle Rick says he will die and we shouldn’t tell him. So sad, it is.”
Rohit certainly heard all of this. The path was quiet. The word “cansa” hung in the air like a crow.
“Let’s talk about something else,” I said, squeezing Rohit’s hand. Though his tumor crowded half his mouth, Rohit smiled as best he could. He was probably twelve.
“Okay,” Job agreed. “We will talk of George Bush. You like George Bush, Uncle?”
“Not really,” I said, which was an understatement as vast as India itself.
“He is a great leader,” Job insisted. “And Obama is a baby killer.”
“What? Who told you that?”
“Auntie Maxine,” Job said as if that settled it. “He kills babies. You like this, Uncle?”
Auntie Maxine was Clifton’s mother. She was a frail woman in her late sixties with white hair and a pale complexion. Though she was confined to a wheelchair or bedridden most days, she always made time for any children who needed her, acting as surrogate mother for all the Farm kids. “I’m so unworthy to be called mother,” she told me one day with characteristic humility—though she certainly deserved the title. She was the heart at the center of the Farm, offering not only her endless supply of love but her fierce Christian faith and her rightwing conservatism where political matters were concerned. It wasn’t my way of thinking—I voted for Obama—but I wasn’t the one laying down my life to raise unwanted children.
“Let’s change the subject,” I said to Job. Arguing was futile.
“Can we please walk in a group!” Job bellowed again. The other Small Boys were getting farther and farther ahead of us. They did not reply. “Uncle is getting very angry!”
“No, I’m not!” I shouted.
We walked on, entering a tiny village. There were no more than ten houses, all made of mud. Small children were everywhere, dressed in filthy clothes but smiling and waving at me as if I were their favorite parade float.
“Why do you wear this necklace, Uncle?” Job asked, pointing at me.
“What, this?” It was a small silver Ganesh medallion on a black leather string. Ganesh, the elephant-headed Hindu god, is thought to be the remover of obstacles, but I didn’t wear the icon for that reason. I wore it because Traca had given it to me and because I liked it. I said as much.
“It is Hindu, Uncle,” Job said with contempt.
“I know. I like Hindu,” I said.
“You should take that idol from around your neck, shoot it with a gun, destroy it, and bury it in the ground.”
I looked down at Job and he smiled. It was like taking a stroll with Glenn Beck Jr.
It always amazes me to hear young people be so certain, especially where religion is concerned. When I was Job’s age, I really struggled with Christianity. Even though I, too, had it spoon-fed to me by an unwavering and faith-filled mother, I was full of questions.
I remember talking privately with my pastor after my last confirmation class. I knew all the official explanations, had grown up with the stories my whole life. But there were some parts of it I simply did not understand.
“How does Jesus dying on the cross save me from my sins?” I asked, feeling almost guilty for saying it out loud. “And what could I do in my short life that would be so bad anyway? If my soul is eternal, this life is just a blink of an eye, isn’t it? So why would God, who loves me so much, send me to hell just for being unsure?”
Beyond all of this, the big question that loomed over me was: Did I accept Jesus as my personal savior? When I was called to the front of the church the following Sunday, before the congregation and God and, most important, my mother, how would I answer? If I had doubts, shouldn’t I wait? If I wasn’t planning to take it as seriously as it was being proposed, shouldn’t I keep looking? God didn’t want a yes-man. He wanted a believer. Didn’t he?
I honestly can’t remember exactly what my pastor’s answer was, but what I heard was something like this: “Even if you have a few doubts, John, you might as well go through with it. Just in case, right?”
And so when Sunday rolled around, I stood beside the pulpit in my blue blazer and my braces, and when the big question was posed, while the rest of my confirmation class said “Yes!” in unison, I just made a nondescript sound that would look like “Yes!” to my mom sitting in her pew, but which I knew in my heart meant “Not just yet, thanks.”
At the river, the boys stripped down to their underwear and dived in. The sun was intense, the humidity was high, and the river was brown and choppy.
The first boy in was Clifford, a polite, gentle twelve-year-old, and he came up shouting. “So hot, it is,” he said, visibly uncomfortable. Indeed, when I dipped my toe in, the water felt like a bath, not refreshing at all. Worse, the surface was covered with thousands of small dead fish, a massacre that was never explained. Recent rains also had the water flowing quite fast and deep in some spots, and as the boys fanned out to play, Logan and I kept watch. To take it all in, I climbed up on a high bank and hoped my rescue services would not be needed. Not only am I a terrible swimmer—a champion sinker, in fact—but I was not eager to submerge my body in warm dead-fish murk, either.
It’s amazing more things didn’t go wrong at the Farm. With a hundred kids to take care of, a certain hands-off attitude was necessary, a solid faith required to get through the day. There were no hovering soccer moms, no antibacterial soap, no mosquito nets, limited medical care—though supplies were on hand if necessary and a hospital was not far away. And unlike American parents who worried about unlikely dangers like H1N1 flu and child abductors, the Farm kids had real dangers to contend with every day.
One afternoon, a large snake found its way into the Older Boys’ hostel. It just crawled under the door gap and curled up in the corner, coiled and ready to strike. I was in my room when Ikindar, one of the Small Boys, burst in. “Uncle! Uncle! Get your camera! There is a cobra!”
I ran across the courtyard toward a tight group of boys, ready to snap a few pictures of this legendary Indian menace … but I was too late. Ikindar apologized for what I found. “Sorry, Uncle,” he said. “We already killed it, but I thought you would like to see.” Sure enough, the snake was dead, its head smashed to a bloody pulp.
This was just another day in the life of these kids. There were elephants, tigers, and leopards in the jungle, spiders, scorpions, God only knows what else—but all they could do was dive into each day. Sink or swim. No arm floaties for these guys.
“Uncle! Come. We have such an insect,” Kamal shouted.
I was standing at my makeshift lifeguard perch. Off to my right, Kamal, Clifford, Job, and Rohit were huddled around some bug big enough to warrant their attention. Sonny, Ikindar, and Gordon were out in front, sitting in the rushing water. Amir was off to my left.
“Can you watch Amir?” I asked Logan. I could tell Logan, like me, was less than eager to take a dip in that hot brown broth of a river.
“I guess so,” he said hesitantly, which I knew meant “If I have to.”
He had to. Amir was unpredictable.
He was a tall, gangly boy with some kind of learning disability. His hands and arms made jerky palsy motions and his speech was slow, almost like a stammer but more like simple repetition. If I asked him to please stop slapping me on the back, Amir would just smile. “No no no no no no no no no,” he’d say before winding up one of his oddly cocked arms and swinging again. He lacked coordination and almost certainly could not swim. Of all the boys, he was the one I was most worried about.
“Uncle! Job is trying to kill this insect!” Clifford yelled.
“I am not killing,” Job protested, and I could hear the confrontation level rising.
So I climbed off my perch, scrambled along the bank, and hopped down to see what all the insect commotion was about. Turns out it was a very large grasshopper. I’m not sure if it was a locust, but that’s what came to mind. Best of all, it was iridescent green with impressive horns and yellow spots. The group was divided as to its fate.
“Do not let them hurt it,” Clifford said, very worried.
“I will splat it with my chappal,” Job said, raising his rubber sandal more to frighten Clifford than to threaten the locust.
It was just an ordinary moment. Four boys in the sun. One mostly motionless insect. A riverbank.
That’s when it happened.
I didn’t see any of it. I was looking down at the bug, admiring it, when Amir went under. He must have waded out from shore to where the current was deeper and then lost his footing. Considering he was clumsy even on solid ground, this was not hard to imagine. Logan was looking in my direction when Ikindar screamed to him.
“Brother bhai-ya,” he said, “Amir is drowning!”
By the time Logan turned, Amir was mostly under. All Logan saw was a flash of Amir’s brown smiling face, his flightless arms flapping, and then he was swallowed by the brown current. Gone.
Reacting more than thinking, Logan dived in and swam through the fish, the murk, the potential disaster of that moment. The water was over his head and he had to struggle, but he somehow managed to find Amir, hook him with one arm, and haul him to the surface. Then he swam as hard as he could for shore, kicking, pulling, and finally dragging Amir up and onto the bank.
“I don’t think he had any idea what was happening,” Logan told me when I’d rejoined him and he’d described the rescue to me. By then, the danger was long past.
“Are you okay?” I asked him, holding him by his wet shoulders, sizing him up.
“Yeah,” Logan said, trembling, the reality of what he’d just done finally hitting him.
I looked down at Amir, who was still sitting on the muddy bank. He was drenched, wiping his eyes, a huge smile on his face. Thank God.
Later, we walked back through the jungle, Job and Rohit and now Amir at my side. We passed water buffalo grazing off the path and approached a large puddle that was blocking our way.
“Stop!” Job ordered me. “We will make steps for you. Find stones!” he shouted, and Rohit and Amir began looking immediately.
I didn’t want him building me a stepping-stone path, but there was no stopping him. I wasn’t in a hurry, either.
“Can we please go?” I asked.
“Just a moment, Uncle. This will be much nicer,” Job insisted, back in security guard mode.
As I waited for the rocks to be arranged, I looked up and saw the Small Boys walking with Logan. His clothes were drying in the sun and he was safe. They were all safe. In that moment, I said a humble prayer of thanks to whoever was watching over us.
“God is love,” Job told me often, and I have no doubt he is right. He is the love that creates orphanages when the need for them arises. The love that dives in and rescues a boy who does not even realize he needs rescuing. He is the even the love that carefully gathers stones so a friend’s feet don’t get wet.
“We are falling farther behind,” I said, and Job looked up, annoyed.
“Can we please walk in a group!”