The Removed(40)

Sunlight brightened the room as it streamed in at an angle from the window overlooking the back deck. I could see in that stream of light the particles of dust floating in air, and they held my gaze until Ernest walked out of the room. I had an overwhelming urge to do something, but I didn’t know what.

I thought again of Edgar. In the coffee-table drawer we kept a list of phone numbers, and I looked through them for Desiree’s number. I couldn’t find her name or number anywhere. I did manage to find Edgar’s friend Eddie’s number. Eddie was also living in New Mexico. I reached for my cell phone and called him. When he answered, I immediately asked if Edgar was okay.

“Who is this?” he said.

“Eddie, this is Maria, Edgar’s mom. Is he doing okay? Have you seen him?”

“Oh,” he said. “Oh, well, I saw him a few days ago. He seemed fine to me. What’s up?”

“Did he say anything about coming home?”

“I’m not sure. I think he said he was taking a train. He seemed fine, no worries.”

I felt an enormous relief—that he wasn’t hurt, and that he was planning on coming home. “That’s good to hear, Eddie. If you see him, can you tell him to call me? He hasn’t returned my calls, and I’m a little afraid. But I’m glad you say he’s doing okay.”

“Yeah, I think him and Rae broke up, I guess. Don’t worry. If I see him, I’ll tell him you called me.”

“Thank you, Eddie.”

After we hung up, I took a deep breath and sat back in the chair, wondering if Eddie was being truthful or covering for Edgar.

IT WAS VERY POSSIBLE I was starting to believe Ernest when he said Ray-Ray’s spirit was inside Wyatt. It wasn’t so crazy to think such a thing. What mother wouldn’t long for her dead child’s spirit to be near? For years I had looked for Ray-Ray, for signs and evidence of his watching us. I once found a feather outside that held turquoise, red, pink, and yellow colors. It was unlike any feather I had ever seen, certainly not from any bird around here. Sonja said it was a gift for us from Ray-Ray, and though at the time we laughed it off, I secretly wanted it to be true, and in some ways, I actually believed it.

When Wyatt arrived home from school that day, I found myself staring at him. Something was different, either in me or in him, I wasn’t sure which. But I felt a much stronger connection to him. It was my evening to volunteer at the youth shelter, to read to the residents staying there, and when I mentioned it to Wyatt, he told me he knew some of them.

“Those kids are from my school,” he said. “I know some from the chess club. Drama Club. We’re sort of like a family, even though I’ve never had to stay there.”

A family. What an odd term for describing the others, I thought. Some of the kids came to the shelter with bruises or welts on their legs. Some came with lice, skin infections, even serious illnesses like hepatitis C. Wyatt asked if he could come along, and whether it would be possible for him to bring his notebook so he could read a story to them. Of course I let him.

When we arrived, sure enough, many of the kids already knew him, all the lost boys and girls, even the older ones in high school. They welcomed him with high fives, fist bumps, some questions about whether he was still acting president of the Youth Foundation for Nonviolence in Elementary Schools, which was news to me, something he hadn’t mentioned.

“Principal Holt said I was taking on too many extracurricular activities once I started cracking jokes about the Dewey Decimal System,” he told them. “I mean, seriously guys, do we really need to know the Dewey Decimal System? Dooo we? Dooo we?”

Laughter all around, more fist bumps. “They’re a good group of kids,” Sarah, the youth services coordinator, told me. For a while Wyatt played Ping-Pong against an older teenager named Antonio, a former gang member. Antonio spent six months in a secure lockup placement down in Altus before getting released and placed back into the state’s custody. “Angry” was how everyone described Antonio, but that had been proven false, Sarah told me; he’d been at the shelter for three months without one incident or angry outburst, even when he was told to do standard chores like cleaning the kitchen or picking up around the facility. Wyatt lost the game, joking that he let Antonio win. He said something in Antonio’s ear that made Antonio laugh so hard he doubled over.

“Dude is cray-zeeee,” Antonio said, still laughing, as everyone began to gather in the commons room. The kids gathered on the floor in front of Wyatt, all of them; even the older kids with the basketballs and Ping-Pong paddles sat down to listen to his story. Sarah and I watched, a little surprised at how natural it all seemed, Wyatt’s sway over the other kids, his easy mentorship, all of it at such a young age.

“The story is called ‘Doe Stah Dah Nuh Dey,’” he told them, but he didn’t bother translating it to English for them or, for that matter, me either. I was unfamiliar with this phrase, even though I knew some of the Cherokee language. One of the younger kids asked whether it was like the other story he used to tell them in Drama Club, “The Boy Who Never Grew Up,” a story based on Peter Pan that Wyatt had written a year or so earlier. At this point Wyatt launched into a long explanation about stories based on stories, and how sometimes the same characters appear in various forms.

“Look, look,” Wyatt said, “the stories all have something in common, right? They’re like medicine, but without the bad taste, right? It’s good for you. No painful needle in the arm or hip.” Finally, he assured them that this was a new story.