Day 7
JASON SAT ON THE WOOD BENCH near the entrance to the L.A. convention hall, watching the scattered traffic of conventioneers coming and going midmorning. Leiah sat beside him, unhappy at being here, he thought. Unhappy because she was a doer, and there was clearly nothing she could do here except watch.
It had been three days since Caleb’s last outing to the park, and in that time they had entered a kind of stalemate. They’d visited him each afternoon for an hour without learning more or reshaping the boy’s situation. Leiah clearly lived each of the other twenty-three hours for that one with Caleb.
A boy maybe twelve purred by in an electric Everest and Jennings wheelchair, his head tilted and his lips loose. A paperback novel jostled on his lap— Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game. Jason wondered how the boy managed to lift the book for reading. Some new contraption would service it, no doubt. A woman, presumably his mother, walked beside him confidently, with her chin lifted and her left hand resting on the back of the chair. They passed by, maneuvered easily around the large junipers growing from their holes in the concrete, and disappeared into the hall.
For every visibly handicapped person, there were at least two professional attendees to the convention, dressed in suits, come to scope out how the latest in technology might fatten their wallets, no doubt. Others walked by as well, caretakers, but they were dressed more casually and generally lacked the hawk eyes of those in suits. The scene rolled past in stark contrast to what Jason had become accustomed to on the streets of Addis Ababa. The lame were no fewer in number in Ethiopia to be sure, and more often than not, they were victims of leprosy or some such illness. But they were simply cast into the pot with hordes of outcasts rather than cared for as they were here. This alone was a reason to love this bastion of capitalism called America, Jason thought.
Jason glanced up, thinking it would be another hot day, even though it was already October. The sun had come out in regular Southern California fashion, diffused by a haze that hung over the city. You’d think having lived in Africa all these years he’d be accustomed to the heat, but in reality he’d spent most of his time above five thousand feet, where the air was usually clear and cool.
“You’d think if the old buzzard insisted we be here by ten, he’d be here by ten,” Jason said.
Leiah glanced at him and nodded, and then returned her gaze to a small child hobbling past on forearm crutches thirty yards away.
“You know what he has in mind, don’t you?”
“I think I have it pretty much figured out. And if this isn’t exploitation, I don’t know what is.”
“You’re right.” Leiah had taken to wearing scarves or wide chokers when she wasn’t wearing a turtleneck, and she wore them with style, he thought. Today she wore a yellow scarf to accent a white blouse and her standard-fare jeans. Even her choice of black work boots blended with style. Her look was less cowboy and more steelworker, but then again, they weren’t in Texas. If they had been in Texas, he had no doubt she’d be wearing cowboy boots and looking like a regular ranch hand. Although regular was not a word that did any justice to Leiah.
She faced him with flashing blue eyes. “Is it just me, Jason, or does this not feel right?”
“No, it’s not just you. This doesn’t feel right.”
“Then why are we sitting by while this maniac drags Caleb around?”
She did have her way with words. No confusion permitted. “We’re not just sitting here, Leiah. We’re doing what we can.”
“And you know as well as I do that it’s not enough.”
“Maybe not. But you have to look at the bright side. He seems happy, doesn’t he? If there were things going on that should concern us, Caleb would tell us, wouldn’t he? And I don’t know about you, but on both of our last two visits he seemed just plain happy.”
“Come on, Jason. What do you expect from a child in his situation? He’s lost. He doesn’t know any better. All he knows is happy because that’s who Caleb is.”
“You’re saying he’s too stupid to know that if someone beats him it’s not a good thing?”
“No! Of course not. And I didn’t say the old bat is beating him. But he’s good to the bone, and part of being good is seeing the best in others. If he’s happy, it’s because he finds contentment where most ordinary people never would. But that doesn’t mean it’s healthy for him. They have him locked up in his room all day—you think that’s reasonable?”
“No.”
“And when will it end?”
“Nikolous is isolating—”
“I know what Nikolous is doing. And today he’s going to march Caleb out here to see if he can pull off a few more tricks. He’s turning the child into a circus attraction,” she said.
Jason considered her argument. The simple fact was Nikolous hadn’t damaged the boy in any visible way. Unless or until he did, their hands were tied by the court order. He understood Leiah’s love for Caleb; he felt it himself. They had talked of little else for hours on end over this last week. But this was not Africa, for goodness’ sakes. You couldn’t just muscle your way past the system if you expected to stay a free man.
“Look, I swore to both Caleb and his father that I wouldn’t let any harm come to him. I intend to keep that promise.” He met her eyes and was struck by the impulse to reach out and brush her hair from her face. “I’ll do whatever is reasonable. But doing something halfcocked won’t necessarily do Caleb any favors, right?”
She kept her eyes on his, searching his soul, it seemed. Truthfully he felt exposed.
“Whatever is reasonable? How about whatever’s necessary?”
He thought about it and then nodded. “Whatever’s necessary.”
She smiled gently, and it seemed to seal more than he had promised.
They waited another five minutes before Jason saw Donna. She approached them from the street, wearing a wide smile. Nikolous had said nothing about her coming.
“Well, well look who’s here,” Jason said, nodding in her direction.
Leiah looked at the news correspondent and then glanced back at Jason. He shrugged. “Trust me, I didn’t invite her.”
Donna walked up smiling. “Hello, Jason. Leiah. Are they here yet?”
Jason stood instinctively; he did so alone.
“No.”
“We’re early anyway. He said he’d be here at ten-thirty.”
“And what brings you here?” Leiah asked. She crossed her legs and folded her arms. “Here to make Caleb famous, is that it?”
“Maybe. That really depends on him.”
“Maybe it depends more on you. You’re the one with the camera.”
“What camera? I don’t see a camera. Not today,” Donna shot back. “Listen, I know you don’t approve of the whole idea of bringing the boy into the public eye; for that matter it’s quite obvious you don’t approve of me either. But like it or not, this isn’t your private little party. You have no idea how much good the boy might bring the world. Try to think beyond yourself on this one, will you?”
Jason felt the sting from her words himself. Leiah didn’t have a selfish bone in her body. But neither was she spineless.
“It was the boy I had in mind,” she said.
Donna looked at her, nearly said something in response, but chose to dismiss Leiah with a nod and turn to Jason instead.
“So what did you make of his statement at the press conference?” she asked. Before them the number of attendees entering or leaving the building had dwindled to sporadic bunches. Donna hardly seemed to notice them.
“I agree with Leiah, Donna. Caleb is our first concern here, not what he can or cannot do. He’s a child. And as for Crandal, the man makes me cringe.”
Donna smiled. “Point taken. He makes you cringe, huh? That’s power for you. And believe me, he’s got more than the rest combined.”
“It’s more than power,” Leiah said. “The man is dangerous. I think Caleb saw that.”
“Maybe. I ran a search on Tempest and found nothing. But that doesn’t mean much, considering where the man’s been. Either way, you can’t ignore his power. He’s pulling away in the polls, and I can’t see anything getting in his way. Won’t be long and we’ll be calling him Mr. President. So what does the boy say?”
“About Tempest? Nothing. He doesn’t know. But he obviously spooked Crandal. Tempest is more than some incidental trinket from his past. Did you get it on camera?”
She shook her head. “We were using directional mikes to cut crowd noise.”
Leiah suddenly stood and Jason followed her eyes. They were forty feet away, the Greek and the boy, stopped on the concrete. Nikolous had his eyes on the boy, and Caleb was fixed on a blond-headed girl all dressed for Sunday, wheeling past him in a wheelchair.
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.