Saint Peter’s Wolf (43 page)

He meant: stay here. Stay with me.

It was like the night before, with the porpoises. The other children had gathered around, and I saw myself as they saw me. The sweatshirt was too big, the sweatpants baggy, and yet I sensed their eyes: awe, and delight in me, as though each one felt that they had seen me before, and known me, on television, or even better, in a dream. I was that father, that friend, that hero they had forgotten they had met. And here I was, come back to pay a visit.

Johanna waited, watching, and I sensed her thought: play with them. Play with them like you played last night. We have time for that, Benjamin.

One of the children gave me the ball, and I looked down at it, this plump orb stained with grass. I don't know why I tossed the ball a few times, and then let it fall. It was the only thing to do, the only right thing, and I could sense the children's wonderment. What is this visitor, this man so full of life, about to do?

The ball fell, and I kicked it. I did not simply propel it with my foot. I kicked it straight up into the air, so high it shrank to a dot, and then to a mere thought. When it was a grain of pollen, a speck that might not be there at all, we all sensed it slowing down, gradually slowing its climb, and then we could sense, like wondering if a distant cry is a word, that the ball was about to return.

Return: that one thing we pray for more than any other. That breath return to the lungs, and the worker to his home at night.

None of us moved. None of us could do anything but watch, and yet I had a moment in which I could gaze at Carliss, and what I saw there was more than joy. He seemed to see the sky for the first time.

It did not take long. The ball came into focus, spinning slowly, whistling airily, a noise like a long sigh. I caught it in my arms.

“Do it again,” the children cried. “Kick it again!”

“Shall I?” I asked Carliss. “Shall I kick it again?”

He blinked.

“One more time,” I added. “And then.…” I could barely complete the thought. “And then I have to go.”

They had been waiting and now they were here. A gray car swerved to a stop in the distance. Another car joined it, and doors jerked open, spilling gray-suited figures. One of the distant men spoke into a radio, like a man talking to his fist. Another felt toward his hip to reassure himself that his pistol was still there. The children could not see them, these men spreading out, stepping deliberately, hoping that I had not seen them.

Then their path was deflected. They began to trot, running like men afraid to make a mistake. They were scattering off to my right, hunters intent on something else which had caught their eyes.

Johanna. She was no longer standing in the safety of the bottlebrush plant. She was standing far off, where a copse of eucalyptus bordered the playing field. Her sole, blond human figure was a beacon.

Here I am, she said. Come and get me.

Carliss touched my hand, a touch so much like Johanna's that I could not move or even speak for a moment. “Yes,” he said.

He jumped up, high, and cried, “Kick it again,” and all the children cheered.

And so I kicked it, so far into the sky that it vanished.

As I ran, I could hear them cheering it. And then I began to really run, covering ground in that stride no human could imagine. My paws barely touched earth as I streaked so fast no merely human vision would see anything but a blur, a half-thought, a creature too quick to be real.

I bounded the chain-link fence, and was among the eucalyptus when I turned. The ball had gone beyond human sight, and now it was coming back again. They cheered it as it punched the ground, and they hurried to kick the ball themselves, running through the sunlight in the perfect spheres of their lives.

The men in gray stumbled, groping for their weapons, gasped, out of breath.

And we ran.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1991 by Michael Cadnum

Cover design by Kat JK Lee; photograph courtesy of the author

ISBN: 978-1-5040-2365-8

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