“Touch me here, son. Ahhh.”
Agabus, in sermons, quotes scripture in the whispery lost language of Mesopotamia, which only he speaks, after being taught it, he says, by the winged angel Zadkiel.
“Today we discuss spanking. The abandonment of spanking children will lead to criminal activity among the young.”
If you get sick, Agabus comes to your bedside, and mutters in Mesopotamian and dispenses medicines — only he can do that — until you confess what you did wrong.
Then you get better, unless you get worse, which means you lied. Lying means a whipping.
God led us to this old leper colony, Agabus says. Leprosy was Bible punishment. Leprosy was God’s judgment on sinners. Leprosy cured was God’s reward, delivered through the great prophets and saints.
On the night it all ends, the night of the raid, the boy lies awake on top of a thin blanket, listening to the nutrias screaming, outside, smelling rotting vegetation, black water, and swamp, a mix like cut grass and old sweat and a damp bathing suit locked up in a ten-year-old musty duffel bag. Mosquitoes whine behind him, or batter against the screen from outside. He’s listening for Agabus.
I hope he comes, the boy, eight, thinks.
He looks at the wall. Agabus keeps old black-and-white leper shots in rooms to remind people of God’s punishments if you don’t listen to his word. The boy sees children’s faces eaten away, crutches instead of legs, holes instead of mouths, gaps instead of noses. Leper children line his walls. Sometimes the visages populate his nightmares.
I’ll be good. I’ll do what he tells me, the boy thinks.
The boy jerks when the first gunshots go off. He can barely reach the window. There seem to be more mosquitoes inside than out. He hears shouting out there. He hears a bullhorn and a stranger’s electrified voice warning, “Throw down your weapons.” Women create elongated running shadows in the floodlights of the compound. Someone screams. The boy’s mother is on her knees, hands pressed to her temples, insane with fear. A man charges out of another bungalow with a shotgun but stops and drops it and throws up his hands. The other men put their hands up also. The bullhorn voices order them to stand together in the light. Then strangers wearing helmets and armored vests appear, herding the adults away. The boy is terrified.
“God has chosen you for something special,” Brother Agabus told him more than once. “You are a genius. You are the smartest child here.”
Now Agabus appears out there on his porch, between two armed strangers. Brother Agabus is in handcuffs. His head is lowered. His hair falls over his forehead. He is shuffling toward their black car and looking at the ground.
The boy runs out of his bungalow, screaming, enraged.
“Leave my father alone!”
Two days later the boy sits in a parish police station, across the gouged-out wooden table from a fat, sweating detective named Edward Wohl, and a woman who says she’s a prosecutor, whatever that is. He’s refused the ham sandwich and the cold Dr Pepper they offered. He’s refused to answer questions.
“Don’t worry, son. That pervert is locked away. He can’t hurt you now.”
“He didn’t hurt me!”
“He was a fraudster. His real name is Leon Charles DeGraves. He tricked people. He stole money. The things he did to you kids are disgusting.”
“You’re the one who is disgusting.” The boy stares at the woman. Her bare arms are fleshy and visible for all to see. So are her legs and calves. The man is wearing jewelry; a watch and a gold ring. Agabus has preached about this ostentation, the exhibition of the body.
The boy shuts down as if he could make these two — and their godless glitter — disappear.
The woman says, “All that stuff he told you about angels and prophets, son, he made it up.”
“I’m not your son!”
The man and woman look at each other, then tell him to “think about things.” They leave a TV on when they walk out, but the door is locked. The boy has never seen a TV before. On-screen is a show about a father, a mother, and kids all living in the same house, saying stupid things to each other, even talking to a dog while other people, unseen in the background, bray and laugh. The music is awful. It’s like watching aliens from another planet. The dog cocks its head, as if it understands English, causing more stupid laughter to erupt from the tinny speaker.
There’s also a black telephone on the wall, which fascinates the boy. When the adults were here, it rang, startling him, and then the woman picked it up and a voice came out of it. The woman spoke into the telephone. This was amazing! That you could speak into a piece of plastic and someone could hear you on the other end.
“The doctor found bruise marks on you,” the woman says when she comes back, all alone.
“I fell.”
“We know what those marks mean. The other kids told us about it. That freak can’t hurt you. It’s important to talk about things.”
He pushes the ham sandwich onto the floor.
“There’s no secret angel language. There’s no souls flying around. Leon DeGraves targeted the weak minded. He’s a sick pervert. He sold tapes he made of you for money.”
“I want to talk to my father!”
Fat chance. The terrified boy next sits in a doctor’s exam room, eyeing the straps and gowns, and syringes. He’s never seen a doctor’s office. The white-jacketed, mustached older man introduces himself as Dr. Robert Maas, GP. He pokes the same places that Brother Agabus does, but his touch is clinical and different.
When the doctor goes into the other room, the boy presses his ear against the wall to listen to Robert Maas talking to the woman. The boy is trembling with fear.
The doctor says, “Give me a break, Charlene. The mother is delusional. That kid is not going back with her. She doesn’t want him anyway. He doesn’t even have a real name! Yedaiah? He’s not going through life called Yedaiah!”
“Foster home, then.” The woman’s voice sighs.
“He needs to be with people who understand what he’s been through. He needs therapy and time. Reaching smart kids is tougher. Their defenses are sharper. The last thing he needs is the Louisiana system determining his fate.”
“Do you have a better suggestion?”
A sigh. “The mother’s schizophrenia kicked in at twenty-five. In males the average age for onset is twenty. Between his childhood and genes, he’s a walking time bomb.”
The boy’s new bedroom is on the second floor of the doctor’s home. The wallpaper has a fire engine pattern, and an Oakland A’s baseball pennant on the wall, instead of leprosy photos. Another boy once lived here. The doctor tells Harlan — his new name — that the boy who had lived here is dead and that he’d loved the Oakland A’s, but if Harlan wants, the wallpaper can be changed. Is there some decoration that the boy would prefer?
Leprosy pictures, he thinks. At least they would be familiar. He misses the pictures.