Blessed Child (9 page)

The boy's face suddenly wrinkled with sorrow. A wet tear slipped from his eye and left its trail down his cheek. He closed his eyes, lifted his chin, and opened his mouth in a long, sustained, quiet cry.

Jason felt as though his chest had been caught in a vise. Caleb's hands slowly lifted and he cried quietly before the cross while the congregation looked on in stunned silence. Jason thought Father Nikolous might interrupt the scene, but he, too, was immobilized.

The boy fell quiet and seemed to become aware of the surroundings. It might have been the first time since entering that he'd removed his eyes from the cross. He looked at the Father and smiled softly. Nikolous did not return the smile.

“Mama, what's happening?” a young voice from across the room asked aloud.

“Shhhhh!”

Jason saw a mother bend over her child on the far front pew. He looked to be about Caleb's age, all dressed up in shorts with suspenders and a bow tie. His hair was slicked back above glazed white eyes.

The boy was blind.

It was why he'd asked the question.
Mama, what's happening?
What kind of disease would turn a boy's eyes white at the age of ten?

Caleb had turned his head to the boy. The congregation still hadn't found themselves in the moment, and now it appeared that Caleb hadn't either. He was walking toward the mother and her boy.

A slight murmur ran through the crowd. Caleb approached the boy and stopped within arm's reach. The mother had a dumb look on her face, a mixture of anxiety and wonder. Her mouth opened when Caleb reached for the blind boy's hand, but she said nothing. Caleb leaned forward and whispered in the child's ear, then stood and took a step back.

The child looked in his mother's direction for a moment, and then stood. The mother watched her son, frozen in the moment. Caleb smiled and gently pulled the boy along, toward the center aisle. They walked like two brothers sharing some innocent secret, oblivious to the crowd—the one child because his eyes were blinded by a white tissue, and Caleb because his might as well have been.

Caleb held the other's hand and guided him back to the spot before the platform. Together they turned toward the front with Caleb's guiding hand. They stood in silence, facing the cross.

Some of the parishioners shifted uncomfortably in their seats. For an awkward moment nothing moved.

A gasp suddenly filled the room. Jason thought it might be the boy's mother, finally come to herself. But it wasn't. It was the blind boy. And now he was crying. He was standing with his hand in Caleb's, with his back to the audience, and his shoulders were shaking with sobs.

Cries of protest erupted from the sanctuary. Half a dozen men stood, and for a few seconds what could only be described as bedlam in such a stately place broke out.

“Quiet! Be quiet!” Father Nikolous had his hand raised to the crowd, but his eyes were fixed on the boy, who was now raising his hands with his fingers spread wide, as though grasping at the air. The congregation fell quiet.

The boy suddenly began to bob up and down, still sobbing. The bounce became a short vertical hop and the cry grew to a wail. Chills broke down Jason's spine. Beside the boy Caleb only smiled.

Then Jason understood the boy's words. “I can see!” he was screaming. “I can see; I can see; I can see the cross!”

The boy whirled around and faced the crowd. His eyes flashed with delight and not a spot of white covered them.

Leiah's gasp beside him was lost in a hundred others. She instinctively grabbed Jason's arm. The priest stared dumbfounded. The boy's mother stumbled across the auditorium, mouth wide open.

The boy spun to Caleb and threw his arms around him, nearly knocking him over in the process. He was blubbering unintelligibly now. The congregation dissolved into pandemonium. Some shouted for order and respect; others cried out their confusion; no less than twenty stormed the front to get a closeup look at the boy, whom they called Samuel.

“Sit down! Sit down, everybody!” Father Nikolous thundered.

It took him ten minutes to return his flock to a semblance of order. The blind boy, Samuel, who could now clearly see, had calmed down, but he couldn't stop looking around. His eyes flittered over the sanctuary's bright colors and then over his hands and then they would settle on Caleb for a few seconds before returning to the drapes or some other brightly colored object.

Caleb sat on the front pew beside Jason and Leiah, head bowed, staring at his hands. The commotion in the church had pushed him into a withdrawal of some kind. The incense had stopped its smoldering, and the Father stood before them all with a frown plastered on his face.

It felt like a moment of gravity, one in which the Father should make a grand announcement. What that announcement would be, Jason had no clue, because he had no earthly idea what had just happened. Some would undoubtedly call it a miracle for lack of better understanding. Or perhaps some psychic phenomenon, triggered by Caleb. But in any case, the occasion of a blind boy finding his sight in the blink of an eye needed a few words of commemoration.

But Father Nikolous said nothing of the kind. He simply stood there in his white robes, looked from Samuel to Caleb, and closed the service with a “Let us pray.”

It was the end of the liturgy for the Holy Ascension Greek Orthodox Church that day.

“So you came to our church because the boy has been assigned to the orphanage?” Father Nikolous asked, looking up from the INS forms Jason had given him.

Jason sat next to Leiah, watching Caleb, who looked lost in the overstuffed chair they'd set him in. It had taken them ten minutes to dodge a host of questions, escape the auditorium, and find their way to the Father's office at his request. The boy would not make eye contact. He was clearly shaken by the attention.

Jason nodded. “He wanted to go to church.”

“And you say his life is at risk?”

“Father Matthew seemed to think so. Not now, of course, but we were chased several hundred miles in Ethiopia. His Temporary Protective Status was granted on the grounds that he might have citizenship rights.”

“Yes, that much I can read.” He turned to the boy and frowned.

Father Nikolous did not strike Jason as the kind of man who would rise in the middle of the night to fetch a bottle of milk for a crying child. But he had the proper staff in place to run the orphanage. He was tall and wore a black mustache, which generally followed the frown on his lips. His brown eyes were cupped by large dark bags, and his nose was perhaps the largest Jason had seen—definitely not the perfect picture of Mother Teresa.

“We have taken several Orthodox refugees in from Ethiopia, although never an orphan. Orphan refugees to the United States are rare, you know.”

“He's not an ordinary boy,” Leiah said.

“Of course not. He's of mixed race and raised in an Ethiopian monastery.”

“It's more than that. You saw it yourself.”

Father Nikolous dipped his head and looked at her carefully. “And what did I see, my dear?”

She didn't answer.

“You tell us, Father,” Jason said. “What did we just see out there?”

Nikolous faced the boy. Caleb had picked up a magazine from the end table by his chair—a
National Geographic
with the caption “The Wonders Down Under”—and was engrossed in its contents.

“You say he speaks English?”

“Yes. At least some.”

Nikolous waited a moment, as if he expected the boy to offer an explanation on his own. “Well, what about it, young man? What happened out there?”

Jason knew the boy had heard, because his eyes strayed from the page for a brief second. But he refused to acknowledge the priest.

“Leave him alone,” Leiah said, standing suddenly. She walked over to stand beside him. “Can't you see that he's in shock? I don't see how pushing him on things he himself probably doesn't understand can help him.”

She was right, Jason thought. The loving mother.

“We'll give him the care he needs,” Nikolous said. He picked up a pen and pulled the INS form closer.

“What are you going to do with him?” Leiah asked.

“We're going to take him into the orphanage, my dear. Isn't that why you brought him?”

“No. We brought him because he insisted on attending a service. But we had no intention of just signing him over to you.” She glanced at Jason for support.

“Well, well, miss. I do have a form in front of me that states otherwise. The boy has been granted Temporary Protective Status and his care assigned to World Relief by his former guardian, this Father Matthew. You see, his signature is right here.” He looked down at the paper. “Right beside this statement stamped by the immigration officer at LAX, which orders the boy into the care of the Sunnyside Orphanage
,
as assured by World Relief.” He looked up and grinned condescendingly. “The Sunnyside Orphanage. That would be me.”

“Yes, but you just can't
take
him!”

Nikolous kept the snotty smile on his face and turned slowly to Jason. He might be right on technical grounds, but he was pushing the wrong buttons. Leiah looked at Jason, her eyes begging him to say something that would contradict the Father.

“A little less sarcasm wouldn't hurt,” he said to Nikolous.

“He's been in the country for less than twenty-four hours, for goodness' sake,” Leiah said. “You can't just take him away from us!”

“Ah, you have grown fond of him.” The priest's lips fell flat. “Well, he's not an object we grow fond of and toss around as if he were a ball. He's a refugee and an orphan, and he belongs in a facility that cares for refugees and orphans. The sooner the better. You think dragging him around Los Angeles for another day will do him any favors?”

“Maybe not, but surely we don't
have
to turn him over now. He could spend the day with us,” Leiah said.

The flat grin returned to the Father's face. “You know, you are quite right.” He lowered his head, abruptly signed the form on his desk, slapped the pen down, and looked up. “And now you are quite wrong. You will kindly leave the boy in my charge.”

“Jason?”

Fingers of heat already spread over Jason's head. The Father had no right to take such an offensive tone. He ignored Leiah and addressed Nikolous.

“You're pushing it, pal. If anyone's treating him like a ball, it's you, snatching him away with the stroke of your pen. Where's your decency?”

“Forgive me, perhaps I did speak with a touch of cynicism. But I do know orphans, and there is good reason why this boy was assigned to us.”

“Okay,” Leiah said. “Then let me ask you: please can we keep Caleb until the morning? We won't haul him all around Los Angeles; we won't even take him out of the house. We just want to say good-bye to him. He saved our lives and yes, we have grown fond of him. Surely a little love won't hurt him.”

“He saved your lives?” the Father asked with a raised brow. “I was under the impression that you saved
his
life.”

Leiah glanced at Jason, who cut in. “Yes. We did save his life. Either way, I think Leiah's request is reasonable. It's the least you can do.”

Father Nikolous sighed and straightened the paperwork on his desk. “Yes, perhaps you're right. But I'm going to deny the request.”

They both blinked at him. Leiah stared at Jason, dumbstruck.

“Now if you wouldn't mind, I have plenty to do. I thank you for bringing him safely into the country; God will reward you. We will see to the boy from here.”

“Just like that?” Leiah asked.

The priest only looked at her with a raised brow.

“But—”

“Leiah, please,” Jason interrupted. “He's right. He may not be going about it in the most respectful way, but he does have this right.”

“And what of the boy's rights?”

“That's enough!” Father Nikolous snapped. “Now you're confusing him, and I can promise you that will do him no good. Please leave us. Now!”

Jason stood. “Come on, Leiah.” He had an inkling to take the priest by his mustache and shake some sense into him, but he shoved the notion aside. Instead he walked over to the boy and laid a hand on his shoulder.

“You take care, Caleb, you hear?” The boy lowered the magazine and looked at him with those round aqua eyes. A sadness lingered deep in them, Jason thought.
What are we doing?

He knelt and pulled the boy's head to his shoulder. “You'll be okay,” he whispered. “I promised your father I wouldn't allow any harm to come to you. I won't let you down. I promise.”

When he pulled back, there were tears in the boy's eyes.

Jason stood and Leiah immediately stooped to the boy. She held the boy tight, swallowing visibly. “I love you, Caleb,” she said in his ear. She wiped her cheeks quickly as she stood.

Leiah faced Father Nikolous with fire in her eyes. “Now you listen to me, Mr. Religion. If you hurt one hair on his body, you'd better pray to your God to strike me dead, because I will become your worst nightmare, you understand?”

Nikolous looked at her and frowned.

Jason finally took her arm. “Come on, Leiah.”

He led her to the door and turned for one last look at Caleb. The boy was staring at them, lost and innocent. But there were tears running down his face.
Goodness, what have we done?
Jason swallowed the lump in his throat and faced Nikolous.

“For a Father, you're quite a jerk, you know that? Someone needs to teach you some manners.”

He pulled the door closed and walked Leiah from the office.

7

T
HE NEW PEOPLE PUT HIM IN THE BIG HOUSE
behind the church.

Caleb didn't know why Miss Leiah and Jason had to leave, but he was sure that they did. He also knew that Father Nikolous was very different from Dadda.