Salvation City (26 page)

HE SAT ON THE STAIRS, listening to Tracy. She was in the kitchen, cooking dinner and talking on the phone to her sister.

“Don’t that beat all? And I tell you, Taffy, you could train every tot in Indiana on that potty-mouth of hers. And right in front of the boy, too. But I could tell he was used to it. Can you imagine having to send him back to live with folks like that? Well, yes, yes, it could! That’s why I say, you got to start praying, we got to get everyone praying right away. You know, Wyatt himself spent a good four hours on his knees today. He’s upset now Cole will think he’s a liar. But I talked to the boy myself a little while ago, and I explained. We prayed night and day on this matter, we prayed and we fasted, and the Lord’s message was clear. And Cole was doing just peachy before that witch flew in on her broom. Now Wy’s afraid she’s gonna make some kind of scandal, you know, with her wild accusations and such. Says she’s probably got a whole mess of lawyers and self-called child experts on the case. I always knew this day might come, but I just about throw up if I even think about Cole leaving this house. Far as Wyatt’s concerned, that’s his son. And you know Cole being here has been such a help in keeping him steady, too. Full moon don’t affect him like it sometimes can. Drink don’t tempt him. I have talked to Cole, and I think he gets it. I told him Wyatt loves him more than he loves hisself. I told him how sometimes a person can seem like a he-man on the outside but inside they’re really like a child, and he looked at me like he knew what I was talking about. That boy is
sharp
.

“I know what Satan is up to. But Jesus created us a family here, and he can’t mean for Cole to be snatched away just to be corrupted and lost all over again. How can that be? Imagine, a woman like that. Mouth like that. Even a roach’d think twice before crawling in there.

“That’s right. That’s what I keep telling myself. We just got to hang on a little longer. And you know, Taff, the whole time the boys were gone I had that feeling I was telling you about. That whirlpool-stomach feeling? Like something’s about to happen? Something big? Now I got it all the time.

“Ouch! Darn near chopped my own finger off. Hey, listen, that’s Jesus telling me to quit gabbing and focus on my task. Wyatt should be home any minute and he’s gonna need my full attention. What? Of course! Starlyn’s welcome any day of the week and twice on Sunday, you know that. We’re blessed she seems to like it here more and more. But I don’t want you to be jealous about that, you hear?”

MEMORY DREAMS. Dr. Hassan had told Cole that they might happen. People with amnesia sometimes dream of things they actually experienced but can’t remember at all, not even after being told about them. “And then sometimes, perhaps triggered by the dreams, the waking memory of those events comes back to them.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

He dreams. He remembers.

 

 

 

Now an old story comes back to him, a story his mother liked to tell—and one he liked to hear—about a man who saved a younger man from being run over by a subway train. A seizure had sent the younger man sprawling onto the tracks. The other man had only seconds to decide what to do. He jumped onto the tracks and lay down, protecting the convulsing man with his own body. The train rolled just inches above his hunched back.

Once, the story came up when his parents were having some friends over for dinner. The others laughed when his mother confessed that she thought about the Subway Superman all the time. He was the person she most wanted to be.

“Don’t laugh, it’s true. I’d rather pass a test like that than win the lottery. Maybe it’s because I’m the kind of person who’s afraid of everything and can’t imagine ever doing such a thing myself. But just think, with something like that on your résumé, you could be at peace with yourself. It wouldn’t matter what mistakes you’d made, or whatever stupid, shameful, petty things you might’ve done. Anytime you started to be down on yourself, you could look back to the day you proved to the world you were a good human being. How could you ever hate yourself again? Plus, everyone would have to treat you with respect, no one could say they were better than you.

“And think about his kids.” (The man’s two little girls had been with him that day.) “How lucky for them to know this about their father. Anyway, if it was me, even if I never accomplished another thing in life, I’d die happy. I’d have given my son a reason to be proud for the rest of his life.”

Her voice had wobbled a bit as she finished, and Cole’s father addressed the table in a stage whisper: “I think my wife’s had a little too much wine.” And though his mother laughed along with everyone else, Cole knew that later, after the guests were gone, his parents would fight.

“But hold on,” one of the guests said then. “I know what you’re saying, Serena, but I’m not so sure a single incident like that would change a person’s whole life. My guess is people who do heroic things still have the same problems and negative feelings about themselves as they had before.”

“Yeah,” said someone else. “And for some people, like soldiers and firemen, it’s a job, something they do all the time—”

“But that’s different,” Cole’s mother said, her voice rising. “This was just an ordinary guy. It wasn’t his job to run toward danger, and there were other people on the platform that day who did nothing. It’s a whole other level of sacrifice, in my book. Remember that pilot who landed the plane in the Hudson? That was admirable, of course. But I wouldn’t call him a true hero like this other man. I mean, the pilot acted to save himself, too. He wasn’t risking his life for a stranger.”

“This might sound weird,” said a third guest, Cole’s mother’s friend Shireen (the only other woman at the table). “But I’m thinking about what you said about the kids. I can imagine being one of his daughters, or his wife, say, and actually
resenting
what he did. Like, you’re right, look at the risk he took. Didn’t he stop to think what it would mean to those girls if he were crushed before their eyes? I’ll bet his wife thought of that. I mean, he made a choice, and if he’d gotten killed saving that guy his family might have ended up hating him. Like, how could you put a total stranger ahead of
us
? I think it would be perfectly natural for them to feel some kind of anger.”

 

 

 

Addy was right, thought Cole. His mother
had
been brave. But at the time he hadn’t been proud of her. He’d been angry and frustrated and hurt. Even though she never left him alone for more than an hour or two, and even though during that time he’d usually just sleep—still, he hated her for going. He only had to tell her if he wanted her to stay, she kept saying, but he didn’t
want
to have to tell her, he wanted her to
know
how he felt
without
being told and then
just do what he wanted
. He was deathly ill, but his stubborn streak was thriving. He didn’t care how bad things were at the clinic. He didn’t care about the other sick people, he cared only about himself. Once when he was alone he woke up dying of thirst. His mother had left a full pitcher of ice water by his bed, but when he went to lift it his arm was too weak and he sprained his wrist, spilling the water all over himself. He had lain there howling in rage and pain and thirst, and he had cursed her over and over. Miles across town she must have heard, for there she was, running up the stairs, taking him into her arms and rocking him, begging forgiveness and promising him he’d be all right. He remembered how hot her body was because her fever had started. And he would blame her for that, too. If she hadn’t insisted on volunteering at the clinic, maybe she wouldn’t have got sick and died.

He hadn’t understood before how much he was still holding all this against her. He’d been told that this was a natural response, but it was hard not to feel ashamed. Whenever he looked back now he hated the boy he had been, especially the way he had treated his parents. In almost every memory he appeared selfish, spiteful, mean. He saw how difficult he had made it for them to love him. He had been heartless and unfair. And then he would think that he had no right to miss them, no right to feel sorry for himself. He who had wished so many times that he were an orphan. Who had cursed his mother over and over. He had not honored his father and mother. He had not loved them enough. They had died at the moment when he was feeling most alienated from them, when he had barely been speaking to them. It was a terrible punishment—like the kind visited upon one of the many bad sons in the Bible stories he was coming to know so well.

In this way, though, he had always understood his mother: he wanted to be the Subway Superman, too.

Later the night of the dinner party, while his parents had fought (“You humiliated me!” “You humiliated yourself!”), he’d logged on to YouTube and watched a video about the man, whose name was Wesley Autrey—the first of many views. Cole had even used Wesley Autrey’s story to create one of his first comic strips. But like everything else that had once belonged to him, it had somehow been lost. In fact, he’d forgotten all about it.

Not just Wesley Autrey’s story but other true-life stories of heroism obsessed him.

In Iowa, a group of Boy Scouts is caught in a tornado. Though injured and in severe pain, one boy struggles to pull his scout mates from under the rubble. Why couldn’t something like that happen to
him
? For there seemed no end of such stories on the Net, and the population of heroes his own age was surprisingly large. Here a boy rescued not one but
two
people from drowning. There a boy helped his mother to give birth. In his neighborhood in Chicago there’d been a boy called Major who’d stopped a whole gang of kids from torturing a dog. The dog, scarred and lame from its ordeal, dragged everywhere behind Major like a broken tail.