CANDLELIT CHRONICLES: HISTORIC HAUNTS

June 20 Happy Father's Day & Free Read _ 989 wc

Happy Father's Day to all the dads, grandpas, great-grandpas, dads-in-law, and stepdads who assume both the role and the responsibility as role models, disciplinarians, examples of love, and friends to a child. To those who manage to father but refuse this responsibility, sorry for you I am, but not as sorry as I am for those children who suffer from your lack of faith in yourself and them.





As a friend of mine mentioned, Happy Father's Day also to all the moms who have had to assume the role of both parents, whether through death, divorce, or deployment. You go, Mothers!!





I had planned to add more on the Oil Spill today after I saw there is worse news, but I find myself speechless again. I just want to ask this: according to BP publicity, the time CEO Tony Hayward spent with his son yesterday at a South Britain yachting race was “downtime.” So WHERE'S THE DOWNTIME FOR THE SEA BIRDS AND MARINE LIFE DESTROYED OR DAMAGED IN THE SPILL AND ITS AFTERMATH??





Finding the Abandoned Child:





Chapter Four





         Standing still for a moment where Denguer ended at Swan, I glanced down toward the ruins of the Harbour, then sighed and turned away. I decided to walk more slowly back to the Shelter; maybe Mamma would catch me up before I got there (and catch me up as well for disobeying, as only she could), maybe I would reach there first. I hoped that now she had determined to return to our compound to collect some possessions, that meant we would soon be moving into our new home on the West side, whichever and wherever that was going to be.


         As I turned back onto the sidewalk on Denguer, I glanced down: in the grassy lawn right next to the sidewalk, in among the overgrown grass stalks, dandelions, and weeds, lay a naked, silent, very much alive infant.





         Never stopping to think, I stared into the infant's calm grey eyes as I reached down for it and cuddled it to my shoulder. Then I headed for the sound of voices, in the alley stemming just North of me at an angle from Swan Street. I heard, I thought, a woman and maybe a man or boy chatting, so I raced there as quickly as I could, considering I was juggling a naked infant, uncaring and unthinking as to the fact that it was not swaddled and I held it to my shirt.





         Speeding down the alley, at first I saw no one. Then a slender woman about my height walked out of a shed carrying a box, and saw me. She looked startled, as well she might.





“Madam! I just found this-him-please-call for help! We need-he needs to be checked-his health!”


         She scowled at me but turned to the boy of about sixteen who had exited the shed behind her and thrust the box to him.





                   “Here, Joh-lee, load this one.”





         Reaching into her vest pocket for a communicator, she quickly dialed and connected with the City Dispatch.





                             “Yes-we need EMT here-Denguer Street at Swan-immediately. This girl-just found a naked infant-where?”


she turned to me to inquire.


“I saw it in the grass, just over there, across the street, near the corner-in the unkempt lawn of that first empty house-” and I pointed past the direction of the shed from which she had carried her box out.


“We need a Constable out here too, please-” she added, then closed the communicator and turned to me.


“Would you like me to hold him?”


         I grasped the baby closer to my shoulder and demurred, shaking my head. We waited in silence while the boy Joh-lee-I supposed him to be her son or nephew-continued to move in and out of the shed, loading boxes, carriers, and sacks of grain onto a large wagon. She kept watching the infant and me, still scowling, turning every few minutes to direct the boy, yet without losing track of me.


         It seemed long, but was probably not more than twenty minutes, when first the Constable car, with behind it the EMT's machine, pulled across the alley's end. The Constable was a woman, light-haired, pale of complexion, perhaps four inches shorter than the woman next to me and I. She pulled a notebook from her back pocket, and a pen from her shirt pocket, and walked towards us.





                   “Constable-in-Training Lucysha Ware. Constable Jackmund is down at the Harbour still, working with the fisherfolk to take damage tallies. What have we here?”





         I looked at the woman from the shed and she stared back at me. Finally she had stopped scowling, but just looked at me unsmilingly, and then nodded for me to begin.





                   “I was following my Mother back toward our compound in Center City, but she moved too fast and I lost sight of her. I turned at Swan Street to return to the Shelter-you know, at the Gymnasium at Wicher's Point?”





         The constable nodded. The woman just looked bemused. I noticed her son-or nephew-had moved up behind her and was listening intently.





                   “When I turned around, over there-”


I moved up the alley so I could see past the shed, and pointed toward the apparently empty house on the end of Denguer, on the South side of the street-”right there, in the lawn next to the sidewalk, where the grass is so high? I saw him,”


and I looked at the baby who still did not cry nor make any sound, and I cuddled him closer. By now the EMT had pulled a gurney out of the back of his vehicle and an oxygen tank and mask, the portable kind, and was moving toward us. I knew he was about to take the baby from me, so I quickly told the Constable,


“I can take you over there and show you exactly the spot.”