TIME ON THE FARM IS TIGHTLY SCHEDULED. WITH SO MANY KIDS AND A skeleton staff, order and control are of utmost importance. Vacation time looks a little different, but when school is in session, the daily schedule for all school-age children goes like this:
6:45 A.M.: Breakfast
7:30 A.M.: School begins
10:00 A.M.: Morning tea
10:15 A.M.: More school
1:00 P.M.: Lunch
1:30–4:00 P.M.: Rest and free time
4:00 P.M.: Afternoon tea
4:15–6:00 P.M.: Study and free time
6:00 P.M.: Dinner
6:30–7:30 P.M.: Free time
7:30 P.M.: Kids head to hostels
8:30 P.M.: Bedtime (except for big kids)
One day after lunch, I spent the rest period with the Small Boys in their dormitory. Nine of them shared a cramped space with five bunks and two ceiling fans. The walls were painted a soothing blue with a few posters taped up for decoration. My favorite was a picture of a mansion with a Ferrari parked out front and the caption EVEN IN DARKNESS, LIGHT DAWNS FOR THOSE WHO BELIEVE.
When I entered the room, the boys were playing their favorite card game. They used a deck of collectible World Wrestling cards, each card depicting a different hulky star with various statistics printed along the bottom. Things like height, weight, chest, biceps, rank, and fight—though what “fight” is and how it is determined is one of the great mysteries of the game. To play, one boy deals the cards, then the player to the dealer’s left looks at his first card and selects the statistic he thinks will top all others. He might say “Weight: two hundred seventy” or “Fight: one twenty-two.” In the game’s purest form, all other players draw their first card without looking and see how their wrestler compares in the selected category. In a biceps battle, for example, if your wrestler has the biggest arms, you win all competing cards. It should be simple. The problem is that the boys are consummate cheaters who craftily scan their hands looking for larger chests or higher ranks, toss these ringers into the fray, then fight about them like rabid spider monkeys before moving on to the next hand.
On the day when I joined them in their room, one such cheating argument got so heated that Auntie Violet, the boys’ strict den mother, appeared in the doorway. Violet was in her early seventies, a stern Indian woman who did not tolerate commotion. “Stop this nonsense!” she ordered. “And get in your beds this instant!” The boys obeyed without protest, even though it was 2:30 in the afternoon.
I assumed this was my cue to leave, but Job grabbed my arm.
“Don’t go, Uncle,” he begged. “Rest with us. This bunk is empty.”
“Yes. Stay here,” Kamal said.
“We will make it so nice for you,” Clifford promised.
I looked at Violet and she did not forbid it, so I had a choice to make. To be honest, my first instinct was to decline. I had had a talk with Maxine just the night before and she’d told me about lice: what a constant problem they were, especially for the younger children. With this knowledge fresh in my mind, all I initially saw of the upper bunk being offered was the unwanted infestation it most certainly harbored. But as the Small Boys began scrambling around, now buzzing at the prospect of my joining their nap time, my desire to please them overcame my aversion to itching. Lice or no lice, I climbed up and lay down.
Like a sleepover at the home of the seven dwarfs, the bed I was given was ridiculously short for me, ending at the bend in my knees. To fix this, the boys built a box tower and placed pillows on the top to support my lower legs. Then they removed my sandals and gently placed them on the ground. A boy named Jackie brought me a dirty red silk sleeping mask. (What’s a few more lice among friends?) And Ikindar sprinkled powder on my neck.
“To keep you cool, Uncle. So nice, it is. Yes?” he said.
Another pillow was delivered, forced under my head. And something was placed in my shirt pocket.
“From Kamal,” Kamal whispered in my ear.
The topper to this pampering was a lullaby Job sang to me. As the boys settled into their beds, screaming at each other to be quiet and not to disturb Uncle, Job sang two lines again and again, his voice soft and high-pitched, tender as if singing to a baby:
Sweetie Sweetie, go to sleep. Have a lovely sweetie dream.
Sweetie Sweetie, go to sleep. Have a lovely sweetie dream.
I actually did fall asleep. Even with both ceiling fans swirling overhead, the room was hot and I was tired. For one hour I was just another Small Boy, resting on orders from Auntie Violet, dreaming of that Ferrari in the poster on the wall.…
When I woke up, I was sweating, looking through red silk, delirious. I sat up in bed and pulled my mask off, careful not to have my head lopped off by the fan above me. With my legs bent over the edge, they nearly touched the floor, and I looked down. Job was sleeping on the bare concrete beside my bed, curled up like a puppy.
My plan was to just slip out and let the boys sleep, but they all sparked to life at my smallest movement. “Please stay, Uncle,” they said. “Tell us a story. Sing us a song.” So I grabbed Clifton’s guitar from his office and we sang Christmas songs in the baking heat of the late Indian summer. “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing.” “Deck the Halls.”
“Clap hands!” Job ordered after every song—and everyone clapped.
“You have a song for Logan?” Ikindar asked during one break in the Christmas medley. It was a strange request, but the Small Boys all hushed, eager to hear my answer. They all missed Logan now that he was gone. Some even wrote stories at school in honor of his visit. One such story was titled “The Story of Family” and it began with the line There was a best friend and his name was Logan and Ikindar.
Turns out I did have a song for Logan, something I wrote for him when he was small, something I’ve sung to him hundreds of times to get him to fall asleep. It was about drifting on the ocean, asleep without a care, totally safe as the wind gently carried you home. I sang it for the boys:
… So goodnight, my Logan
I know where you’re going
And I’ll have the wind take you there.
Off you go now, my Logan
You’re heading for home
And when you awake you’ll be there.
“Clap hands!” Job said, and everyone clapped.
Then it was time for the question.
It took me by surprise, as it always did, though I suppose I should have been used to it by then; I’d been bombarded with the question ever since we’d arrived. I usually avoided giving an answer or changed the subject, but the Farm kids were persistent. It was something they were desperate for me to answer “correctly,” so I guess until I did, they needed to keep asking. With sincere conviction, leaving me not an inch of wiggle room, Job sat up straight on the floor in front of me, looked me in the eye, tipped his head slightly to the left, and asked, “You are a Christian, Uncle?”
I shook my head and decided to answer honestly for once. I spoke as gently as I could. “Actually,” I said, “I believe in what Jesus taught. And the example he gave us. But I also believe, and I’m not saying I know, but after meeting so many wonderful people from many different religions, I just feel in my heart that there must be more than one way to get to God.”
There was silence in the room, all boys looking at me, not one of them buying it for a second.
“Then we cannot listen to you, Uncle,” Ikindar said.
“Yes. Auntie Maxine says you are wrong,” Kamal added.
They were not angry with me, just telling me the truth. And as I looked from face to face, the simple certainty I found struck me like a slap. It was a supremely humbling moment for me, an “aha moment” (as Oprah would say) when I finally fully realized who I was talking to. Faith for these boys was not something to debate or deny. It was something to hold on to, a lifeline for them when the world had tossed them aside. It was their lullaby. In a very real sense, it was their Father. Who cared what I thought? For me to cast any doubt into their lives, these boys whom I had come to love, filled me with a sense of shame that made me blush and sweat and backpedal with every ounce of sincerity in my body. “Actually,” I stammered, “I think that what you believe is … one hundred percent correct.”
“Yes. It is,” Job agreed, and we left it at that.
It was four o’clock: time for tea.
As I walked to the dining room alone, I remembered the gift Kamal had placed in my pocket before my nap. Pulling it out, I found a pink plastic Easter egg with a smaller green plastic egg inside. Inside the green egg was a small blue marble, scratched and chipped from use but still—like a child’s faith—clear and brilliant in the afternoon light.