"Who was he? we wondered. What had happened to him? Where had he come from? A doctor examined him but couldn't get him to remember anything. The chief of police got the same results and asked the state police if they knew about anybody who matched the boy's description and had been reported missing. The state police didn't learn anything, either."
That made sense, I thought. Loganville was in Ohio, but the fire had happened in Indiana. The Ohio police had probably decided that the boy's arrival in Loganville wasn't important enough for out-of-state inquiries. Even if they had gone out of state, inquiries to the Indiana state police might have been pointless, the fire having been basically a local matter that the state police wouldn't have monitored.
"Various members of the congregation offered to take the boy in," Mrs. Garner said. "But the reverend decided that since I'd found him, I had the right to take care of him if I wanted. My husband was the most generous soul imaginable. Five years earlier, we'd lost a son to cancer." She paused, caught in her memories.
"Our only child. If Joshua had lived, he'd have been the same age as the teenager I'd found on the church steps seemed to be. I couldn't help thinking that God had sent him into our lives for a reason. As a…"
Mrs. Garner had trouble saying the next word.
"Substitute?" I asked.
She nodded, her pain lines deepening. "That's another reason I believe I was punished. For vain thoughts like that. For presuming that God would single me out and give me favorable treatment. But back then, I couldn't resist the idea that something miraculous was happening, that I was being given a second son. I told my husband what I hoped for, and he didn't take a moment to agree. If I wanted the boy to live with us while his problems got sorted out, it was fine. My husband loved me so much and…"
Her voice dropped. She turned her wheelchair slightly so that she looked even straighter at me. "The boy came to live with us while the authorities tried to figure out who he was. He was awfully skinny. It took me days of solid home cooking, of fried chicken and apple pies, to put some weight on him. His burns had healed, but the scratches on his arms and legs, where his clothes had been torn, got infected and needed their dressings and bandages changed a lot. I didn't mind. It reminded me of taking care of the son we'd lost. I was pleased to do it. But I couldn't help wondering what on earth had happened to him.
"I left books and magazines on his bedside table so he'd have something to amuse him while he was resting. After a while, I realized that none of them had been opened. When I asked him if they didn't suit him, if he'd like to read something else, he avoided the question, and it suddenly occurred to me that the boy couldn't read."
I'd taken a seat on a porch swing. Now I frowned. "But you said that he could recite passages from the Bible."
"Any passage I asked him."
"Then I don't understand."
"I asked him to read the back of a cereal box. I asked him to read the headline of a newspaper. He couldn't do it. I put a pencil and paper in front of him. He couldn't write the simplest words. He was illiterate. As for the Bible passages, there was only one explanation. Someone had taught him the Bible orally, had made him memorize passages that were read to him. It chilled me when I realized that. What on earth had happened to him?"
"That's one of the few questions I have an answer for."
Her gaze was intense. "You know?"
Wishing that I hadn't interrupted, I nodded. "His parents held him prisoner in an underground room."
"What?"
"As much as I've been able to figure out, they believed that the Devil was in him, that the only way to drive Satan out was by filling his head with the Bible."
Mrs. Garner looked horrified. "But why wouldn't they have let him learn how to read and write?"
"I'm still trying to piece it together. Maybe they believed that reading and writing were the Devil's tools. The wrong kind of books would lead to the wrong kind of ideas, and the next thing, sin would be all over the place. The Bible was the only safe book, and the surest way to guarantee that the Bible was the only book Lester knew was to teach it to him orally."
Mrs. Garner's eyes wavered as if she'd become dizzy. She lowered her head and massaged her temples.
"Are you all right?" I asked.
"The things people do to one another."
"I've told you what Lester did to my family. What did he do to your Seconds passed. Gradually, she looked up at me, the pain in her eyes worse. "He was the politest boy I ever met. He was always asking to help around the house. At the same time, I'd never met anyone so troubled. Some afternoons, he'd lie in bed for hours, staring at the ceiling, reliving God knew what. In the nights, he couldn't go to sleep unless his closet light was on. He often woke screaming from nightmares. They seemed to have something to do with the fire that had burned his arms. I'd go into his room and try to calm him. I'd sit holding him, stroking his head, whispering that he was safe, that nothing could hurt him where he was, that he didn't have to worry anymore."
She paused, rubbing her temples again.
"Are you sure you're okay?" I asked.
"So long ago. Why does the memory still hurt so much?"
"I don't mean to upset you. If you need to rest for a while, I can come back when-"
"I never spoke about this to anyone. Ever. Maybe I should have. Maybe it wouldn't keep torturing me if I'd told someone, if I'd tried to explain."
"Do you want to explain it to me?"
She looked at me in anguish for the longest while, searching my eyes. "To a stranger. Yes. Someone whose judgments I'll never have to face again."
"I don't make judgments, Mrs. Garner. All I want is to get my wife and son back. Do you know anything that can help me do that?"
She struggled with her thoughts. "One night, he kissed me on the cheek. Another night, after one of his nightmares, after I held him and calmed him, he pecked my cheek again. Or tried to. He grazed my lips, as if he'd aimed for my cheek and missed. It was an awkward moment. I stood as soon as I got him settled in bed. I felt uncomfortable, but I kept telling myself that I was imagining things, that the boy hadn't meant anything."
"Mrs. Garner, you don't need to-"
"I have to. Somehow I have to get it out of me. I wanted to take care of the boy so much that I was in denial. Each intimacy seemed innocent. Like when I tried to teach him to read and write. That's what I used to be: a teacher at the high school. This happened at the end of summer. School hadn't started yet. I had time to try to teach him. I used the Bible, since he already knew the words. We sat together at the kitchen table. Our chairs were close. There was nothing wrong. We were just a teacher and a student sitting at a table working on a school problem, arid yet, in retrospect, I realize that he sat closer than he needed to. When he helped me make dinner, our hands would touch briefly. I didn't think anything of it. One of the reasons I haven't told anybody about this is that I'm afraid it'll seem as if I took some kind of"- she had trouble saying the word-"enjoyment… That's the furthest thing from the truth. I know that there are a lot of twisted people in this world, Mr. Denning. But I'm a churchgoing, Godfearing woman, and I assure you that I am not capable of enjoying the touch of a teenager whom I considered to be like a son."
An uncomfortable silence gathered. I made myself nod, encouraging her to continue.
"But it's because I wanted so desperately to take care of him that everything happened. One night, after another of his nightmares, when I held him, he grazed my…" Self-conscious, she looked down at the front of her dress. "It seemed accidental, yet I finally admitted that too many accidental gestures like that had happened, and I told him that certain kinds of touching weren't appropriate. I told him that I wanted the two of us to be close but that there were different kinds of closeness. He said that he didn't know what I meant but that if I wanted him to keep a distance, he would."