My dad before that. I lived with my grandmother until she died last winter. After that, I was at a place with other kids for a while, but I left. ”
“You left?
”
“They were not nice. ”
“How long have you been on the street? ”
“Since March. ”
It was now October.
Seven months. Arthur felt a thing move in his chest that he did not have a name for. He had not felt it in a long time. He was on the whole glad to find he had been wrong about not feeling it again.
Officer Ray walked back. “There is no Aunt Bernadette,” she said low, to Arthur. “The laundromat on Pearl closed for renovation eight months ago. The boy was reported missing from a state placement in March.
I have a duty here, but wanted to tell you first because you were standing here when it mattered. ”
“Officer Ray, my name is Arthur Mercer. I would like to ask you for ten minutes. ”
She looked at him, assessing his coat, the way he spoke his name.
“Ten minutes for what? ”
“For one telephone call to a woman named Estelle Witford. She has run a licensed therapeutic foster placement in this state for thirty-one years. I want to ask her if she can take Ren as an emergency placement tonight.
”
“Why? ”
“Because the boy ran from the last placement. And boys who run from placements run again from the next one if it is the same kind of place. Estelle is not that kind of place.
”
She was quiet. Then: “Make the call. Speaker. I want to hear it.
”
Arthur walked back to the step, sat beside the boy. He called Estelle. She answered on the second ring. “A tree fell on Sycamore and Lyndon,” Arthur said.
“It would have fallen on me, but a boy pulled me out of the way. He is eight years old. He has been on the street since March. He can hear you.
There is a police officer standing nearby. ”
A pause. “Hello, Ren. Hello, Officer.
”
“Hello, ma’am,” the boy said. “Arthur, what are you asking me? ”
“I am asking whether you have a bed tonight. ”
“I have a bed.
I have had a bed open since Sunday. Officer, I would be glad to speak with your supervisor. My number is the one Arthur just called from. ”
Officer Ray wrote it down.
Estelle said, “Ren, my house is quiet. There is a yard with a fence. There is a dog named Pepper who is too old to do much but sleep. There is a room at the back that has been empty for a while.
That is what is on the table. The rest we will figure out. ”
The boy did not answer. He was looking at the phone as though it were a thing he had read about in a book.
“Thank you, Estelle,” Arthur said. “Call me back. ” The line went dead. Officer Ray closed her notebook.
She made a call to her supervisor. She came back and told Ren a woman named Ms. Park would take him to Estelle’s house that night. “Your job tonight is to eat and to sleep.
”
The boy picked up a bag from behind a dumpster at the church on Hadley. Officer Ray opened the front passenger door of her patrol car and helped him in. She buckled his seat belt. She looked at Arthur once through the windshield.
He raised one hand. She raised one back. Arthur stood on the corner for a long time after the car was gone. Then he walked home, nearly two miles.
His knees told him about it. He listened but did not let them change his mind. He thought about his wife Helena, divorced thirty-three years. They had talked about children, postponed them, then postponed each other.
He thought about his brother who died on a treadmill in Houston. He thought about the firm he had built, the foundation he started because his accountant suggested it, and how he had been a stranger at his own foundation for years. He thought about the boy who had watched a tree lean for a week, told two adults, been ignored, and then stationed himself near the tree to do for strangers what the adults would not do for the street. He arrived at his building after four.
The doorman, Reuben, looked at his face. “Mr. Mercer, are you all right? ”
“I had a near miss with a tree this morning.
”
“Should you not be at a hospital? ”
“A paramedic looked at me. I’m only tired. ”
Upstairs, his apartment was clean and quiet.
He sat on the sofa. He did not turn on the television. He thought about the boy who was at that exact moment riding in the passenger seat of a patrol car with a backpack on his lap, on his way to a house with a yard and a fence and a dog named Pepper. He picked up his phone.
He called a number he had not called in eleven years. Helena answered on the fourth ring. “Arthur. ”
“Helena.
A tree almost fell on me. A boy pulled me out of the way. He is eight. He has been on the street since March.
I have spent the day arranging for him to go somewhere safer. And I have spent the last hour thinking about what I am going to do with the rest of what I have. One of the things I wanted to do was call you and tell you I am sorry. ”
A long silence.
Then: “Arthur, I do not know what to do with this call. ”
“You do not have to do anything with it. I wanted you to have it. ”
She asked about the boy.
He told her about the corner of Sycamore and Lynden, the voice at his elbow, the granola bar, the dumpster, Estelle. When he finished, she was quiet. “Arthur, do you remember the conversation we had in the kitchen in 1989? About children?
”
“I remember every conversation. ”
“I asked if you wanted them. You said yes. We agreed.
Then we did not. We waited until I was thirty-seven and you were forty-one. By then I had stopped asking. I want you to hear what I am about to say.
You are sixty-seven. You have just decided to do something about a boy who is eight. That is the largest thing I have heard you describe wanting to do. Do it carefully.
Do it for him, not for you. Your job is to be the hand that holds the lantern, not the lantern itself. ”
Arthur closed his eyes. “Yes,” he said.
“Now I do. ”
“Good. I am glad you called. ”
He did not see Ren for nine days.
He spent those days with his attorney, Marcus, setting up a trust for Estelle’s house so it would never have to refuse a child for money, and a trust for Ren to use at eighteen if he chose. He called his niece in Phoenix, asked her about her work with children. He had lunch with Doris, the receptionist who had answered his attorney’s phone for twenty-two years, and asked about her children. He did not call Estelle.
He came on Saturday. The yellow house had a white porch and a fence and grass that had been allowed to grow a little wild. The dog Pepper was asleep in a square of sunlight. Estelle opened the door.
“He is in the back reading. He does not know you are coming. I did not want him to spend the morning waiting. ”
She walked him to the kitchen.
He sat at the table. There were drawings on the refrigerator. She went down the hallway. He waited.
After four minutes, small footsteps came. The boy entered in a clean shirt a size too big. His hair had been cut by someone who knew how. “Hello, sir.
”
“Hello, Ren. ”
The boy crossed the kitchen and sat across from him. He folded his hands carefully on the table. “How are you?
” Arthur asked. The boy thought about it. “I am okay, sir. I think I am going to be more than okay, but I am okay for now.
”
Arthur did not try to keep anything off his face. “That is the best answer I have ever heard. ”
They talked for two hours. About the book Ren was reading, about Pepper, about the school he would start soon, about his mother who had liked to sing while making pancakes.
They did not talk about the tree. When it was time to go, Ren walked him to the porch. The afternoon light came sideways through the maple, turning the lawn the color of honey if honey had a sound. “Estelle says you are coming back next Saturday if you would like to.
”
“I would like to. ”
The boy held out one small hand. Arthur took it. He held it a moment, then let go.
“Goodbye, Ren. ”
“Goodbye, sir. ”
Arthur walked down the porch steps and through the gate. He turned.
The boy was still on the porch. He raised one hand. Arthur raised one back. He got into his car and sat for a moment with the keys in his hand.
He thought about the corner where a tree had missed him by a foot and a half because a child had pulled him backward. He thought about the granola bar. He thought about Helena, who had told him to be the hand that holds the lantern. He thought about the years he had spent being irritated about small things in a life that had been extraordinarily fortunate.
And he said out loud to no one in the quiet of his car, “So am I. ”
He started the engine. He drove home.