Terminal

One winter, when we were about ten years old, school got canceled one day because of a snowstorm the night before. John and I spent the day with some other kids, sledding down the big hill on the outskirts of town, the same hill I’d gone to the afternoon I was diagnosed with cancer. At the bottom of the hill was a short grassy strip, littered with beer bottles and fast-food bags, and beyond that, the road leading from Hanover to Spring Grove. Not a major road, but busy just the same. Truckers used it as a shortcut between towns, rather than taking the highway. The storm had dumped about two inches of sleet on top of the snow, so the hill was one big mountain of solid ice. Kids were flying down it at breakneck speeds, turning their sleds at the last moment to avoid going out into the road. All except for John . . . He’d done it on a dare. A stupid dare. Richie Wagaman had called him a pussy— told him that he didn’t have the balls to ride his sled straight across the road and into the field on the other side without stopping to look for traffic. Rich bet him a House of Pain cassette (remember, we were kids and House of Pain was still the bomb back then). John looked down the hill, glanced up both sides of the road, saw that there was no traffic coming, and took the bet. I pulled him aside and tried talking him out of it, but unlike he usually did, John wouldn’t listen to me this time. Instead, he just stared at Richie and his friends, clustered together and calling him a pussy, laughing to each other and any girl within earshot about how chicken shit John was. The next thing I knew, John ran to the edge, threw the sled down, jumped onto it (landing on his belly), and rocketed down the hill like a runaway train. Kids were cheering and shouting— and then we all heard it at the same time, the loud blast of a truck horn. The Department of Transportation’s dump trucks had been out early, covering the roads with salt and cinders, but all that did was make them slicker. There was a hiss of air brakes as the trucker tried to stop, and then the back end of the trailer began to fishtail, taking up both sides of the road. I tried to scream but my breath caught in my throat as John shot across the grass and directly into the path of the jackknifed truck. Time seemed to slow down then, just as it had done on the morning of the robbery. The truck slid toward John, John flashed across the road, and the truck slid on by and crashed into a snowbank, sending brown snow and cinders and dirt flying high into the air. The cloud obscured everything, and there was dead silence from the kids on the top of the hill.

The cloud settled, and the trucker clambered out of his cab, unhurt but shaking an angry fist. There was still no sign of John . . .

And then we saw him, clambering off his sled and waving at us from the other side of the road. I’ll never forget how my panic dissolved, how grateful I was to see him at that instant. To see him alive— there in the snow.

Alive . . .

I knew what I had to do.

“Benjy, come here.”

He finished sliding over to me, his eyes alert and urgent.

“How can you— make him better? What do you need to do?”

“I need to touch him, Mr. Tommy. I have to put my hands where that other man shot him.”

The thought of Benjy’s little hands touching that bloody mess made my stomach turn. Not to mention the image of what Sherm would do if he came back and caught us.

“Couldn’t you touch him with your head or your foot or something? Maybe rest your forehead on his?”

“No, Mr. Tommy. It has to be with my hands. I don’t know why, but that’s the way it always works.”

I took a deep breath, glanced down at John, and focused on Benjy.

“Okay. I’m going to take the tape off your wrists. But Benjy, you’ve got to promise me that you won’t try to get away. If you do, I don’t know what Sherm might do. He could get very, very angry and we don’t want that to happen right now. You were right about him. He might be sick too. I don’t want him to hurt your mommy or any of these other people. So you can’t run away, okay?”

“Okay.” He nodded. “I promise, Mr. Tommy. I just want to help. I’m good at helping.”

“All right,” I agreed. “Hold still. This might hurt a little.”

I ripped the duct tape from his thin wrists as carefully but as quickly as possible. He gritted his teeth and I could tell that it hurt him, but he didn’t make a sound. Just like T. J. would have done. He rubbed his wrists and gave me a reassuring wink. It seemed absurd, this little boy trying to reassure the bank robber who was holding his mother and him captive. But I took comfort in it. Maybe that was part of his power— not just healing people, but also making them feel better in general. Then he knelt over John, placing his palms on the bloody wound.

“I’ll make it all better.”

“I know,” I whispered. “I believe you.”