Part 6 (1/2)
Sam ended abruptly. So abruptly that Kate felt an almost physical pain. It might have been only a fairy tale, but it seemed to her that he'd instilled in it an intimate view of himself-a view that made her want to cry. Then, however, he spoke in a matter-of-fact, nearly lighthearted tone, and the tightness in her throat gradually lessened.
”Has your dad ever taken you up with him in the Mentor?” he asked Francis. ”Maybe not, huh? You're a little young yet. But I'll bet you've got a plane somewhere in this toy box, haven't you? I mean, what decent toy box hasn't got at least one plane in it? Let see. . . . Ah! I knew it.”
Hearing the clatter of Sam rummaging through the toy hamper, then his satisfied declaration, Kate smiled.
”A P-51 Mustang,” he announced, sounding positively reverent. ”This is one neat little fighter, buddy. A mite slow by today's standards, but back in World War Two, it was a real razor blade in a fight. Like this, see? Brrrr. . . .”
Impressed with the authenticity of Sam's audio effects, she could almost see the plane climbing, banking, diving through the air. But she blinked, then frowned in puzzlement when Francis added his own buzzing drone-a second engine to Sam's single-engine plane.
”Hey, that's the idea,” Sam said. ”Here. You take the controls. Come on, now, there's a German Bf 109 at two o'clock! Go for it! Brrr . . .”
How odd, she thought. And how disappointing. For a minute it had seemed as if . . . But, no. Francis obviously thought Sam was playing a spitting game, blowing out air and letting his lips vibrate. The child was quick to mimic actions, and in this case the noise simply followed by accident. Yet as Sam continued to vary the pitch of the toy plane's flight, Francis promptly followed his lead, duplicating Sam's noises almost exactly.
Exactly . . . Too exactly.
”Look out! We're hit, we're hit. And we're leaking fuel! Brr . . . brr-” Sam choked out a vivid rendition of engine cough.
”Brr . . . brr-” came the high-pitched voice of the younger pilot in a nearly perfect counterpoint.
Kate swung around the corner into the living room, her heart suddenly racing. Sam was sitting cross-legged on the floor, and Francis, plane in hand, was running around him in circles. Her gaze was glued to her nephew when Sam spoke.
”Hey, there, Katie. All finished upstairs?”
Her gaze flickered to him briefly. Then, seeing that Francis hadn't yet noticed her, she called loudly, ”Francis!”
It was as if the child were attached to a rope and she'd jerked it. He nearly fell over trying to stop as he cast his startled, almost frightened gaze around the room. When he saw her, some of the confusion left his features, but he looked as if he might cry, and she forced herself to give him a rea.s.suring grin and a wave. He looked at her a moment longer, then his expression cleared, and he returned the smile and the wave before taking off with his airplane again.
She didn't believe it. Lifting her foot, she slipped off her flat, leather shoe, waiting until Francis's back was turned, then tossed it across the room. It hit the wall and landed with a clatter on the bare floor-and Francis whirled, his startled gaze shooting across the room, searching for the source of . . . of the noise.
Kate's first impulse was to yell for Cressie. Instead she drew a steadying breath and told herself to stay calm. She didn't want to frighten Francis with any more loud noises. The very thought that she could frighten him that way was staggering.
Slowly, her gaze s.h.i.+fted to Sam.
”He heard me,” she said, her voice weak with shock.
Sam unfolded his lanky form from the floor and strolled toward her, his hands stuck in his back pockets. ”We've been having a fine time,” he said. ”You're right, this is one smart kid. He doesn't miss a trick, and -”
”Sam, I said he heard me! He heard me call him, and he heard my shoe hit the wall! He heard your airplane noises, too, and he imitated them. But how could he?” She shook her head, glancing once more at Francis, who had abandoned the plane and was busy constructing a block tower.
Sam shrugged. ”So? I know you said he had some problems with his hearing, but-”
”I said he was deaf. Permanently, totally deaf.”
”Well, you sure could have fooled me.”
”This isn't possible,” Kate insisted. ”It just isn't.”
”Who says so?”
She shot him a quick look. ”Some very good doctors and audiologists say so. It has to be a mistake.”
He snorted. ”Right, and I bet it's those 'very good doctors' who made it.”
”No, you don't understand-”
”Katie, let me tell you something.” Crossing his arms, he leaned a shoulder against the door frame. ”Four days after I crashed that plane, I woke up to find out the right side of my body was more or less wasted. Besides the burns and a concussion, I had a broken back, a crushed leg, a slew of cracked ribs, and a punctured lung. I was missing a kidney, part of the liver, and various pieces of intestines. Just about everything else was being held together with sutures. They waited until my head stopped spinning, mostly. Then the neurologist and the orthopedist told me, if I made it, I probably wouldn't walk again.”
In the face of her shock, he noted calmly, ”But they were wrong. So, I'm sorry it if offends you, but I don't put much stock in what doctors say. I'd be in a wheelchair, looking at life through a cloud of painkillers, if I'd listened to them.”
No, Kate thought, if he'd listened to them, he'd be dead. The Sam Reese she was coming to know wouldn't have tolerated such extensive disability. If he hadn't been able to will himself to walk, she suspected he simply would have willed himself to die. As her gaze skimmed over his tall, straight, and obviously healthy form, it occurred to her to wonder how on earth he could have recovered, not only so well but so quickly. A year ago, he said it had happened, and yet . . . dear Lord, yesterday he'd carried her a good quarter of a mile without so much as a grimace.
It seemed impossible, inconceivable. And yet everybody had heard at least one story of someone who'd defied a bad prognosis to prove the doctors wrong; made-for-TV movies and women's magazine articles about athletes were full of such inspirational tales. ”They said he'd never walk again,” the stories always began. So, Sam's story wasn't impossible. It was only extremely unlikely.
Hearing loss from nerve damage was a different matter.
She gave her head a quick shake. ”Sam, it's almost too amazing to be true, and I'm really glad you had the persistence not to give up after hearing the worst. But this isn't the same thing. Nerve deafness is a medical fact-not something you can just overcome.”
”Is that so?” He looked at Francis. ”Well, I guess somebody better check those facts again. But, listen” -his gaze dropped to his watch-”it's getting close to lunchtime, and I have to pick up the gla.s.s for that window. Why don't you go tell Cressie the good news, so she can get over being excited- and so you can see to it that Francis gets to hold his sister, which I know you're going to want to do-and we can get out of here sometime before dinner?”
Clearly, Kate thought, his own nearly miraculous recovery had jaded him. He must believe that if he could get better, so could everyone else. Regardless, why was she standing here arguing?
With another quick look at Francis, Kate turned and ran toward the stairs, calling for Cressie.
Five.
An hour later, when they started to town, Sam settled behind the wheel and let out a sigh. ”That baby's a real doll, isn't she?”
With a smile flirting at the corners of her lips, Kate agreed. ”She sure is.”
”It's hard to believe people are ever that little.”
”It is pretty amazing.”
”You know, Katie, it was a pleasure seeing you with those kids this morning. You're really good with them.”
”You're pretty good yourself.” She eyed him thoughtfully. With his jacket discarded, one arm draped over the steering wheel, the other resting loosely on the stick s.h.i.+ft, and a warm breeze whipping through the open Jeep to ruffle his sun-streaked hair, Sam looked young, almost carefree-not so tough and hard. A result of his time with Francis, she figured. It seemed the tough guy was a sucker for kids. And she was rapidly becoming a sucker for tough guys.
”I like kids,” Sam told her. ”But liking isn't the same as understanding. And you really seem to understand them, if you know what I mean.”
”I think so,” she replied. ”But, heavens, don't compare yourself to me on that score. I've had a lot of practice.”
”Yeah, Ruth Davenport told me you're the oldest of six.”
”That's right.”
”Do any of them besides Cressie live around here?”