Chapter Three
Adam silently glided up the ladder attached to the wall near the west entrance of the church. He nearly flew as he leaped with one bound and slipped into the bell tower room.
Thanks Wizard.
Adam’s small hideaway, which was just below the open space where the chimes hung, had ice crystal clusters on the small window pane. All around him was silence, the achy kind that sets in when emptiness is everywhere. There, in the cold, dark, rough room is where he slept each night.
Adam knew the rooms below the belfry were warm, but people came and went from Cranberry Church at all hours. Like a honeybee hive, there was always work to be done. He had to stay out of sight, invisible. He would lie on the floor and listen to the happy voices of people as they bustled in and out just below him.
If he were eighteen, it wouldn’t matter. He could live wherever he wanted. But, that was three years away. People would never let a fifteen-year-old live alone, regardless of how well he could take care of himself. Adam could plow a straight line, plant a field, bag a rabbit and skin a deer, but he wasn’t old enough to choose where he would live.
“I don’t need to be taken care of. That’s gray-haired thinking,” he complained.
“Meddling, old fuddy-duddies who won’t mind their own business.”
Alone in the belfry, he curled up on the cold wood-plank floor but found no comfort. The bell tower’s bare floor in December was like an icy barn stall on the farm, but with no hay to cushion his head or animals’ breath for warmth. There in the belfry, he usually had only his jacket to pull over him.
Earlier that
evening, however, when there was no movement downstairs and before Alfred came,
Adam selected three blankets and a pillow from things the church members
donated to the Christmas rummage sale. The war was over and goods of all kinds
were in short supply, so the church members cleaned out their dresser drawers
and closets to help the returning vets. That holiday season, Adam would have
felt blessed, if he believed in a god who blesses.
To meet his
own needs, he found a new basketball and a small, forty-eight stared American
flag attached to a stick on the donation pile. Up in the belfry, he made up a
pallet on the floor with the pillow and
blankets, put the ball near his head so he could see it was always there, and
wedged the little flag in a chink in a rafter beam. He reviewed the nation’s
colors and a sober smile escaped his tight lips.
Adam shook
his head and yawned. He had to get to sleep. He had school tomorrow and the
hour was getting late. His room was as ready as he could make the dark, cold
space.
My own
room, Adam mocked himself.
Large,
rough, hand-hewed, hand-scraped beams provided the rafters of the old church
and long wooden pegs held all the old timbers together.
“The rustic
space is kinda pretty,” he admitted, “if you don’t mind the dark, the cold, and
the awful dampness.”
He looked around the dim space that shimmered
with air-dust the moonbeams revealed as they streamed in the window. Cobwebs
sparkled like Guatemalan Long-jawed spider webs in the rain forest. They added
a mystery that felt both intriguing and eerie.
“The heavy
cross-beams in the ceiling remind me of our old barn,” he conceded. “But, it
smells more like pigeon hooey than sweet straw or new mown hay.”
Suddenly,
Adam heard a rattle in the darkest corner of the rafter room and shuddered. He
had seen the shadows move downstairs and smelled their terrible odor. Grannie
said the spirits that smell bad can be ordered to leave.
“I command
you to get out of here,” he demanded, but there was no odor or movement.
Not the
shadows. Then, a
thought came to mind that disturbed him more than the shadow people.
“Rats!” He shrieked with disgust. He
hoped he was wrong. He hated rodents of any kind.
“Wizard?” he called to the darkness.
Either make me invisible or the rat. I don’t want to see the ugly
thing.” But, the wizard didn’t answer.
Adam heard
the ghastly flapping noise again and sniffed the air. It was too cold to
smell anything but the shadows
and that was good. The shadow people’s foul odor smelled as bad as Uncle George
did the day he walked up out of the bog and into Granny’s clean kitchen.
The noise couldn’t be demonic shadows. There was no odor to expose their
presence.
I can’t
go to sleep until I know what is trespassing in my tower. This is my
space! I am
king here!
“Take
courage my son,” the wind whispered through the thin, single-pane window.
Adam calmed.
“Yes, Wizard.”
Creak!
The old boards loudly and rudely announced Adam’s movement as he searched for the source of the noise.
What if
someone comes back into the church downstairs? He screwed up his face with each
step, as if a frown would silence the wood as he stepped. It felt like he had
anvils strapped to his feet, not clodhoppers. Wish I had taken these boots
off.
One of the huge webs in the corner
suddenly glowed with crystal green dust.
“No, no, not
a wish. Just a thought,” he gasped. “I did not wish for help from Mr.
O’Shaughnessy.”
But, his steps would not be silenced.
Did he really run silently across the basement floor
just minutes ago or did he imagine it? As he neared the
corner of the belfry, he stopped and
waited. He knew there was something in the darkness. Nasty old
things, rats.
“Where’s Grandpa’s shotgun when I need
it?” he wondered Then he laughed at
himself. “The blast would reverberate
across the ice and snow like a civil war canon. Right! Sneak around in the
dark, then blast away at a mouse with a machine gun. Good
thinking Shoemaker.”
“Courage
does not need a gun, my son,” the wizard encouraged him.
Suddenly,
something darted at him from the peak of the roof like a dive bomber from a
corner of the black sky. “Bats!” he shrieked without a thought or care to who
might hear him. He swung wildly, his arms flailed in the air around his head
and shoulders. “Get off me!” he ordered
as he smacked at the space within his reach. “Wizard!” he bellowed
again.
Thud!
Just as quickly as the winged menace lunged at him, the thing dropped to the
hard floor, in a puddle of green sparkle from the web.
Adam hoped
he didn’t have Mr. O’Shaughnessy to thank. He had called on the Wizard. The
leprechaun may have downed the beast, but Adam hadn’t summoned him.
Adam
squinted in the meager beams of moonlight that streamed through the small
window and strained to see if the creature was a bat or a Cooper’s hawk that
had attacked him. It had to be huge.
There on the
wood-plank floor lay a little ruby-throated hummingbird. The tiny bird did not
move but lay there at the tip of his black leather shoes.
“A
hummingbird? You’re supposed to be gone by now, Little One,” Adam whispered as
he scooped up the small green feathered creature with its bright red throat.
“You must be a boy with all those bright feathers.”
He stroked
the little bird’s ruby fluff and blew short puffs of breath over its green
head. “You should have left in September along with the rest of them,” he
whispered. Grandpa planted sweet honeysuckles along the orchard fence for you.
Grandpa and Grandma, Moms and Pops are all gone from the place now. Guess the
flowers are gone too,” he whispered.
Despair
crept into his voice as he thought of all he had lost. Frozen ice droplets
touched the window glass and clung there like the hard, clear glue drops Pops
got all over Moms’ good dish when he tried to mend it. Adam smiled faintly as
he remember a time when he had a family. Moms was in the hospital and his
grandparents had died in an automobile accident. Pops was
drafted in the war, then he was listed as missing. Now the
farm lay empty and fallow. Adam had
no one, nothing. He hung his head and rounded his shoulders,
the picture of a defeated boy.
He could
have stayed in the Schumacher farmhouse. The family had lived there for
generations, but he would be too far from town. Besides, he couldn’t stand to
be alone on the farm. Not because of fear. Just the unbearably loneliness. Now
that winter was here, the house would be cold. The empty coal bin, lack of food
in the cupboards, and no electricity made the farm house uninhabitable.
He wouldn’t
be able to get to town. The key to the old truck was in Pops’ cuff link box but
it would do him no good until he got his driver’s license in four months. To
get to the sanatarium where Moms’ was being treated, he had to walk ten miles.
People would notice a teenage boy who lived alone in a cold, empty house.
Someone would call the Child Welfare League who cared for war orphans and other
abandoned kids.
The mayor
had even started a Christmas-at-Home program for families to enjoy the holiday
season for the first time since the end of the war. All that joy had escaped
Adam.
“Adam,” the
wizard called on a drafty waft of air, “cover the little bird with your hand.”
The wizard was so close he seemed to whisper in the boy’s ear. The breath of
his words filled young Shoemaker with hope.
Adam placed
his hand over the little guy just as the wizard instructed. The belfry hovered
around Adam like a warm presence while the tempest outside buffeted small twigs
against the window. Beams of light shimmered and focused on the bird he held in
his hands. The glow was not green this time, but more the color of hope. Adam
stared at the tiny hummer with trance-like
vision. The little bird appeared to be dead. Then suddenly,
like a second life, the hummingbird
began to move.
The boy
didn’t know if the miracle he saw was from the wizard’s wise words, Mr.
O’Shaughnessy’s response to a foolish wish, his grandfather’s knack of healing
animals on the farm, or the warmth of his own hands, but the hummingbird’s
wings moved slightly. Who knows why the bird fluttered, except those who
believe in miracles. Another amazing thing—the little bird with the long bill
didn’t try to fly away. He lay there in Adam’s palm nearly motionless. Then an
idea came to the boy.
Adam had
watched from a distance the other day when BeeBee Brumble donated the
funny little woven wicker basket she carried as her purse.
The boy had stifle a laugh when
he saw it.
“Beatrice
Bianca Brumble,” Adam overheard BeeBee’s husband say. “I have taken all the
jibs and snickers I can tolerate. The time has come to put that purse to rest.
I am tired of the guys asking if I’ve trapped anything yet.” That morning, they
plopped the purse in the donation box.
Adam was
thankful his mother didn’t carry a humiliating pocketbook. He would have
disowned her.
“My mother?
No, she’s not my mom,” he would say. “Moms is a country lady, not too fancy and
not too dumpy—just right.”
The boy had
determined that he could not lay the bird down for fear the little beauty might
try to fly before it had healed. The hummer had to be protected. Adam would get
that basket from the mission pile. He wanted to keep the little bird around for
a while and the protective basket-purse was all he could think of.
“What have
you been eating, Little One?” He smiled at the little hummingbird. “All the
flowers have been gone for weeks.”
He slipped
back down the ladder with the bird in his partially open hand. Silently, he
moved into the fellowship hall, a not-so-easy task under any circumstances. A
delicate bird in his hand and steel-plated shoes on his feet did not make his
silent shuffle easy. Adam Shoemaker also had that toed-in athletic stride that
was as agile as a thoroughbred on the basketball court and as clumsy as a new
born colt everywhere else.
“Guess
you’ve been scrounging for food, the same as me. But, I don’t eat a steady diet
of flower nectar.” He looked with surprise down at the tiny bird. The little
fellow seemed satisfied to stay in the palm of his hand. Finally, he reached
the rummage table that boasted items which included BeeBee Brumble’s basket-purse. As he
carefully placed the bird in the basket and closed the lid, he whispered,
“Grandpa taught me all about you little guys and you should be down Mexico
way.”
Adam was
careful not to swing the basket too much as he carried the make-shift birdcage
back up the ladder to the belfry. He paused at the top, next to the trap door,
and listened for any sound in the rooms below.
“Just for
tonight,” he whispered to the bird, “considering your injury and all, I’m going
to leave the trap door open so we can get some heat up here.” He sat the basket
on the floor beside the bed he had made. “Don’t get used to a warm bed though,
Little Hummer. It won’t be safe to leave the trap door open all of the time. If
folks saw the opening, we would soon be found. You
wouldn’t have a comfortable basket to sleep in then and I
wouldn’t have this glorious mansion to
call home.”
Adam rolled
over onto his back and stared into the blackness above and around him. The
darkness made him feel even more alone. The lonely nights would soon roll into
Christmas, with all the memories of a
time when his family was real. Adam knew he would not be celebrating the
holidays this year. There would be no iced cookies or brightly lit tree and no
presents under the branches in his life. His world was no longer predictable or
full of the sameness he was used to. He thought of the still bird that laid in
his hand and the new breaths the hummer finally took. Will the wizard
breathe new breath into my life too?
As thoughts
danced in his head, he pictured Fritzy Breman again. She sat near him in
English class and he wondered what her Christmas would be like. He imagined
that Coach Breman’s family would have a wonderful celebration, complete with
golden roast turkey and warm pecan pie.
He smiled to
himself as he thought about Fritzy. She had talked to him more than usual
recently and there was something different about her words
and the crinkles around her eyes.
“God,” Adam
prayed as he had each night for four months, “I’ve prayed a lot lately, but the
truth is, I don’t really think you’re there. But, Moms says you are and
something happened with that bird that I don’t understand. Maybe you are. If
you haven’t died in the war, please help Moms. She’s sick and needs your
healing. She’s at the West Slope Tuberculosis Hospital. I know you can find the
large white building. There’s a Christmas star on top for the holidays and you
know all about Christmas stars. Her name is Bridget Schumacher, but she might
be going by Bertha Shoemaker now. I know I’ve changed my last name and Pops
always called her Bertha.
With the war and all, there are too many bad feelings about
names like ours. And God, I know you don’t have pockets full of money up there,
but I’ve got to get some cash real soon. If I can pay the deposit on a load of
coal, I can get heat back in the farm house and Moms can come home. But the
hard part is, we’ll still need an indoor bathroom. Well, if you’re there God,
help Moms and thank you for the blankets and pillow. And—let the little hummer
live. Another living thing would be nice to have around here when I get home
from school every day.”
The
blustering snow outside the building blew in around the small window and
deposited icy flakes on the windowsill and frosted the inside of the pane. Adam
closed his eyes and hoped that God was still there. But, he didn’t see how that
could be possible. He had absolutely nothing left of his life. Would God allow
that to happen? But, he had to admit, his life had just gotten a little better. He had a few things: some
blankets and a pillow and a little bird that flew in from
the cold. Would they be able to stay warm together?
“Sleep well,
young one,” the familiar voice whispered into the cold night as Adam’s
breath formed an icy wreath around his head. “And
remember—take courage.”
Adam looked
around for the source of the voice. In the moon light, a comic book with a
muscle man in blue and a red cape gazed at him intently from the cover.
“Not tired
my son?” the voice asked.
“I don’t
know. But, I wish―”
“One day,
you’ll know who you are and you won’t have to wish,” the wizard whispered
softly.
“Wizard,
what is your name?” Adam had wanted to know but had been afraid to ask.
“My name?
What do you call me?”
“I’ll call
you Shaddi. Pops said Shaddi means all powerful.”
“That is
close, young one. That is close,” the one with the new name answered
calmly while the snow storm outside
continued to rage.
Adam
squinted in the dark and hoped to get a glimpse of the wizard. “Shaddi, maybe I
don’t know who I am yet but I wish I had the power of Superman.” Then he
remembered that wishes came from Mr. O’Shaughnessy. “Shaddi, I’m not wishing,
I’m asking.”
“You will
have all you need, when you need it,” Shaddi answered as he seemed to drift
away on the rhythm of the blowing wind.
All I
need when I need it? Adam wondered if that would be true, but he
would trust the wise one who whispered in his ear. If Shaddi were really a wizard,
like his name said, then somehow, Adam would have Superman powers when he
needed them.
Chapter Four
Aoogha! The next morning, a car horn in the street announced reveille. The
snowstorm had stopped during the night and sound carried on the thin crystal
clear air for blocks.
“Hey
Barbara, get a wiggle on!”Aoogha! There was urgency in the insistent car
horn.
“Okay,
okay,” Adam answered reveille’s call. “Great, another day already,” he moaned
as he resisted opening his eyes to his dank existence.
Aoogha!
Another blast of his wake-up alarm horn.
The day
broke like most other days in recent months, fragile and jagged. At least for
Adam, his mornings startled rather than started. At any time, he could be moved
away from all he knew, away from Moms, away from his school. His life would
change forever if he were found.
He heard the
chimes of the grandfather clock in the Honeywell Lounge downstairs and wondered
why the clock couldn’t be loud enough to awaken him in the morning. Why did
everything have to be so hard? Then he listened again. From high up in the
belfry the tones sounded more like a funeral dirge than a cheery wake-up call.
Adam decided to stick with his original plan. Hoping for change for change’s
sake never works out Grandpa had said.
In spite of
his Spartan living, Adam had worked out a weekday plan. Each school day,
Charlie Baker picked up Barbara James out in front of her
house, across from the Cranberry Street Church, long before school started.
Charlie and Barb liked to spend time at the soda fountain in Crammer’s Drug
Store before school.
Charlie’s
rooster crow was predictable enough to give Adam time to wash up in the men’s
room of the church and hurry out the back entrance before Alfred came in the
front door.
That
morning, Adam slid down the ladder like a fireman on a firehouse pole with a
foot on each side of the rails. He grabbed a dish out of a cabinet in the
church kitchen. The whole second shelf smelled like vanilla extract and rich
spices. He put a small amount of water in the saucer and sprinkled a bit of
sugar over the surface and stirred in the sweetness.
“I think I
saw‒” he thought out loud. “There it is.” He fished around behind the salt box
and brought out a small bottle. He removed the lid, tipped it up and added a
few drops of red food coloring to the
homemade nectar. “Flowers are colorful,” he reasoned, “so the bird might be
more attracted to the sugar water if the liquid was bright.”
He hurried
back up to his space, held his breath, and opened the basket. “Oh please
Shaddi,” he whispered. The hummer had to be okay. Adam wouldn’t be able to
handle the loss of something else.
The little
bird lay motionless in the basket. Adam’s chest gripped tight with fear.
Everything inside and out was so still it felt like Adam was standing in a
magic void. Then, the tiny bird fluffed his feathers and stood up. To the boy’s
surprise, the hummingbird didn’t try to fly or escape. Adam held out his hand
and the little hummer hopped up and perched on his
finger, midway between his first and second knuckle. The
bird’s trust was amazing. How could the little thing warm up to him so quickly?
After seeing
the bright eyes and colorful feathers, Adam didn’t want to leave the little
fellow and go to school. If he had a choice, he would have chosen differently,
but he had learned to take care of responsibilities first and play second, if
there was any time lift.
Adam placed
the synthetic nectar in the basket, closed the led and looked around the
belfry. The space looked different in the daylight. Every corner was lit in
light and the shadows were gone. It was still cold and damp and colorless, but
the light added interesting accents of brightness against the dull. He slid
down the ladder again and darted out the back door just as a key turned in the
front lock.
Adam loped
through the alley, past the back of Donley’s Furniture Store. It was harder
walking back there but he thought the short cut was worth it. Suddenly, a
souped-up pale blue coup skidded up behind him and sent heavy cold snow down
his collar.
“Sorry,
Schumacher,” Ernie Clifford mocked out the jalopy window. “Hey, has your Daddy
come home from Germany yet? Or did he decide to stay in the Mother Land?”
“What did
you say to me?” Adam bellowed. As he clenched his fist in the air, his rage
foamed within him.
“You heard
me, Kraut!” Ernie shouted back as he sped off.
Shadow
people, the color of Adam’s anger, darted out of the shack behind Donley’s
store. They were as black as bitter-weed, puffed up and mean.
“We will
lock his brakes and make him crash,” they seethed.
Adam refused
to look at them and jerked his eyes to the frozen ground. The sun slipped out
and tried to shine through the ever present clouds to burn a hole in his
emptiness and bring some joy to his life. The brightness of the sun on the
fresh clean snow drove the demons
back into the gloom of the shed.
Adam shook
his shoulders and arms and tried to dissipate the tension and anger that had
strangled his body. Shaddi, get the rage away from me.
He kept his
focus on the icy rocks and gravel in the alley and kept moving until he came
out at Norman Avenue. His head down to brace himself against the cold and the
dark influences that were around him, he chose to think about the hummingbird
and smiled.
A lone
cardinal twittered from the top branch of a maple tree, the only spot of color
in the all-white world around him. He thought of the hummingbird and wondered
if Ruby would be a good name. But, he’s a boy. I’ll call him
Rudy.
“Shaddi,
take care of the little hummer,” Adam whispered. “You’re always in the belfry
when I need you. Be there for the little guy too. Right now, Shaddi, the little
hummer is all I have.”
Out on
Norman Avenue, the whole town looked like a cover from The Saturday
Evening Post. The curbs were camouflaged in deep white drifts so he
couldn’t tell the sidewalk from the street. Normally, school would have been
cancelled due to a snow storm like the one the previous night. It was so close
to Christmas, however, Adam figured that the school superintendent wanted to
plow on, so they could get in as many school days as possible before the
holiday break.
“Good
morning, Adam Shoemaker,” Frederica Breman called as she hurried out her door
as Adam passed. “Who were you talking to?”
“Just the
bats in my belfry I guess,” he smoothed over the slip. Right big-mouth, walk
around talking to yourself. That’s impressive.
They hit a
patch of ice and teetered in their balance. “Careful there Fritzy. The sidewalk
has gotten very icy and the curbs have disappeared altogether.”
“You would
pick me up if I fell, wouldn’t you Adam?”
“Your pa
wouldn’t like that very much.”
“Well, he
wouldn’t want me to lie in the snow on the cold, hard ice, would he?” she
giggled as she took wider strides to keep up with the tall, long-legged boy.
He said
nothing as he trudged through the deep snow but his smile was evidence enough
of his feelings for the girl. More words could have produced silly giggles to
accompany the grin—and a truly awkward moment.
“How’s your
mother, Adam?” Fritzy asked.
“Doctor says
Moms has to stay in the hospital another couple of months, ‘til the
weather warms up a bit.” That was true
but the real problem was, the house had no heat. And, Adam had no money for a
deposit on the coal that would get the old farmhouse warm again. There would be
no need for furnace heat in the warmer weather of Spring. But then, there was
the problem with the bathroom. There was none. Adam didn’t know what he was
going to do about that.
Fritzy tried
to match his steps, stride for stride, crunchy boot beat by boot beat. “A log
stay in the hospital must get awfully expensive, Adam. My grandma was in the
hospital for a
whole week and that cost hundreds of dollars.”
“I don’t’
know what her stay will cost when she is finally done with treatment, Fritzy.
The bill will be a lot. I know that.”
“How . . .
?” Frederica stopped. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t ask. Your family’s accounts are none
of my business.”
“That’s
okay,” he thought about the stack of bills that already stuck out of every
cubby of the roll-top desk in the farm parlor. “I don’t have any idea about the
cost of things or when she can come home.” He really wanted to say, “And, I
don’t know where the money will come from either.” But, he was from a family
of private people and Adam had learned
to be silent. He had lived alone. The sound of the empty wind was all he heard.
Maybe that’s all that Shaddi is, the winter wind.
“Sorry to
get nosy, Adam.” She hurried, slipped and slid as she pressed deep footprints
in the fresh snow of the sidewalk and seemed to try to catch Adam’s eye
whenever she could.
He slowed
and touched her sleeve. “Wait, Fritz.” Maybe he could trust her. He had to talk
to somebody. He and Fritzy had been friends since grade school. Lately, he had
begun to feel silly around her, awkward.
He let go of
her coat as quickly as he had made contact. What if she didn’t want him to
touch her. “The problem is just that, my dad—well, I never told you—but―” he
caught himself before he continued. “Never mind.” How could he tell her that
his dad had been missing in action for over a year?
His
grandfather had always said, “Your name is your ticket to the good life.” A kid
with
no dad and a sick mom was not part of the pedigreed families.
Adam believed that.
If Pops
is dead, that’s one thing, he thought again and again. Death is okay. It
has respectability with it. People sympathize with the family when a loved one
dies. But, if Pops is a deserter, that’s a whole other
thing. If Pops is a deserter, the Shoemaker name would be shattered like
broken glass and there would be no hope of their reputation ever being
mended.
months since the war was over. He wanted to tell her. “Pops—”
he started. “Forget it, Fritzy. I’m talking way too much.”
“You!?
Talking too much? Adam you put fewer words together than anyone I know,” Fritzy
laughed and slipped a little on an icy patch beside him. “It sure is slick out
her,” she said as she caught herself. “Besides, I can’t say I know how you feel
‘cause I don’t. Daddy’s eyesight is what kept him out of the Army.”
Adam had to
change the subject. Shaddi, help me, he pleaded silently. Immediately, a
distraction on the street presented itself, like the wizard had waved a
sparkling wand.
“Hey
Shoemaker,” a boy leaned out of his car window at the four-way stop, “you goin’
out for basketball or not? We’ve already played some games but Coach said he
could still use you.”
A delivery
man in a milk truck honked his horn and the boy drove on. As he moved down the
street, the boy shouted back, “We need you Shoemaker!”
“We need
you, Shoemaker,” Carl Benton mocked from the open door of his milk truck.
“We need
you, Shoemaker,” a ten-year-old boy teased as he darted across the street, a
made his getaway.
“Watch out!”
Fritzy shouted as the grade-schooler stepped into the cross-street and into the
path of a large truck.
The truck
driver slammed on his breaks and geared down but his swift reaction was too
late. His truck was a torpedo, aimed at the fourth-grader.
Shaddi,
speed! Let me fly with a winged cape. Adam flung himself into the busy street, both arms extended
toward the boy. The velocity felt like flying but it happened too fast for him
to grasp the wonder of the miracle.
“Adam! No!”
Fritzy screamed.
Adam’s body
flew horizontally across the road, with enough speed to propel him, canon ball
style, directly at the boy. He grabbed the child and tucked him under his arms
like a large, leggy football. Then, Adam aimed for a high snow drift beyond the
street and hit the ground in a roll. Adam laughed as he let loose of the boy.
“Wow!” The
kid jumped to his feet and shook his head. “I thought I was a goner!” he
squealed. “Thanks Adam, thanks. We must have been flying.” Just as quickly as
he had slid into the street, the boy slipped and slopped off in the direction
of Pasadena Grade School.
“Adam,”
Fritzy gasped as she grabbed his arm, “you just saved that boy’s life. It
all happened so fast. How did you do
that?”
“I don’t
know. We do what we have to do, when we have to do it,” Adam said.
Then he
remembered, You will have all you need, when you need it.
Escape from the Shadows, the seguel to Escape from the Belfry,
will be available after the first of the year.
Escape from the Belfry is available on Amazon.com, b&n.com, cokesbury.com and others.
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