The Boy Who Appeared from the Rain

by Kevin David Jensen

Zach threw the baseball high, straight up into one of the trees in the back yard. It ricocheted off one of the upper branches, and he had to react quickly and run several steps to his left to snatch it out of the air. It was good outfield practice.

  Dad still wasn't home. He had promised. Zach kicked his foot crossly through a few red and yellow leaves. It was fall now, nearly the end of September, and the deciduous trees in the yard were beginning to shed their leaves into carpets beneath their outstretched limbs.

  He gave the ball one last, little toss and returned to the house.

  "Close the door behind you," Mom told him without looking up as he stepped into the kitchen. "It's getting cool out there." She was slicing potatoes at the standalone counter. A glass vase adorned the center of the counter, displaying a rose Zach had selected for her from the yard a couple of days before.

  He shut the door and circled around Mom. "Paws found a black glove outside," he reported. "I tried to take it away, but he just wanted to play tug-of-war." He bounced the baseball off the floor and caught it with his bare hand.

  "Don't bounce the ball inside, Zach," Mom ordered. "A baseball is not an inside toy."

  He bounced it again. He didn't know why—he just did it, harder than before.

  Mom spun at him. "Zechariah Timothy!"

  Startled, he stabbed at the ball with his baseball glove, but misjudged it and knocked it onto the counter, where it caromed off a potato and into the vase, which fell to its side with a clang. Water spilled across the counter and onto the floor.

  At Mom's instant, wrathful glare, Zach backed away, bumping into the dining table. Without looking away from him, Mom reached to the side and snatched the ball up from the counter. How did she grab it on the first try without even looking at it?

  She came at him, the ball in one hand and the other hand stretched out before her, palm up. With a gulp, he handed her his baseball glove. "Go to your room!" she commanded. "And when I look in there, you had better not be under your bed!"

  He didn't run to his room, but he wanted to. It took effort to only walk. And he didn't hide under the bed, though that was his inclination, whatever Mom had said. But he didn't dare disobey her again, not tonight. She was angry.

  Shutting the door behind him, he sat down as near to under his bed as he could get without actually being under it. For several minutes he waited there, dreading Mom's coming to scold him.

  She didn't come, though. Eventually, he looked around for something to do. He hadn't begun his homework yet, so he went to his desk and lifted his math textbook from his backpack. He set to work on the assignment Mr. Herd had given his "sheep"—Mr. Herd was pretty funny, calling the class his herd of sheep.

  Mom opened his door and glanced in once as he worked. "Doing your homework," she observed. She was calm again, but not happy. "Good for you. Come and eat when you're done." She set his glove, the ball tucked into its pocket, on the desk and looked him in the eye. She was scary when she did that—not mean, just scary. "The vase didn't break, lucky for you. If it had, you might not be getting these back for a while. Next time, bounce the baseball outside." She left his door open as she returned to the other end of the house.

  He finished his homework a few minutes later and joined Mom at the dining table. She had eaten half of her dinner already. He dished out some potato soup and sat across from her. "When is Dad coming home?"

  Mom was reading a gardening magazine and kept on reading as she answered. "Soon, if he knows what's good for him. He called a couple of hours ago and said he was driving up to Mount Vernon."

  "Where Grandmother lived?"

  "Mm-hmm. He wants to find the people she used to work for. An attorney's office—there are only a few there and he wanted to see if any of them remember her." She still did not look away from the magazine, but neither did her eyes follow the lines of words; they stared straight ahead as if through the pages, and they still weren't happy. She waved a hand in front of her. "He's off on another wild goose chase."

  Zach plunged his spoon into his soup and took a bite. It was still warm. "Will he get home in time to play catch?"

  Mom slapped her magazine onto the table and finally looked at him. "I don't know, Zach. I don't know." She stared out the window for a minute, then resumed eating and reading.

  Zach said nothing more. He ate his food and took his dishes to the sink. Just as he dropped them in, he heard Dad's pickup arrive.

  Seconds later, Dad stepped inside with exhilaration on his face. "Kara, Zach—look at this!" He held up a photograph, ignoring Mom's blank expression.

  Zach stepped over to him and looked. "Dad, that's her! I remember!" The picture showed Grandmother standing with two men and two other women, all dressed very nicely as if they worked somewhere expensive. They were inside a room with wood paneling and a long, shiny, wooden table behind them. All of them were smiling, Grandmother too.

  "That's really her, Zach?" Dad asked.

  "Yeah, that's how she looked when she moved away."

  Mom, in spite of herself, stepped over to them and looked at the photograph. "Which one is—Oh!" she gasped, her hands flying to her mouth. Her eyes went wider than Zach had ever seen them; her eyebrows stretched up so high they must have hurt.

  She looked at Dad. "I met her! I—I had forgotten…" Her eyes, still wide, flashed back to the photo.

  "What?" Dad asked, astounded. "You knew Rhonda Lerwick? How?"

  "I didn't know her," Mom explained, all wrath drained from her face now. She was white with shock. "I only saw her one time. At the clinic—I was alone in the examination room, waiting for the doctor. You weren't with me. It was after the second procedure there. She came in to change out the magazines. She asked me if I wanted a boy or a girl. I said either one, I just wanted a child. She asked me if I'd picked out a name for a boy yet…" Mom's eyes glazed over for a moment. More slowly, she repeated, "She asked if I'd picked out a name for a boy… I told her, 'Zechariah Timothy.' I didn't think anything of it… She said it was a good name…" She looked at Dad again, her eyes still big and round. "Craig, she said it was a good name… She didn't ask if we had a name for a girl…"

  She and Dad looked at each other for a long time. "So," Dad said finally, turning to Zach, "now we know how you got your name."

  "She knew when she came into that room," Mom muttered under her breath. Zach could barely make out what she said. "She knew," Mom said more loudly, "and she didn't say a word. I told her I just wanted to have a child, and she didn't say a word…" Mom looked angry again, but in a different, even scarier way.

  The three of them studied the picture a little longer, until suddenly Dad said, "Oh, and there's something else. I found the law firm where she was working when she died. Two partners, they both remembered her. One of them still had this picture—he gave it to me. And he remembered her husband's name—Bert. Or maybe Bill—they weren't sure. Rhonda talked about him sometimes, but just stuff about their divorce, nothing helpful that they could remember."

  "Bert Lerwick?" Mom repeated. "Or maybe Bill." She looked down at Zach.

  He shrugged. He didn't remember either one.

  Dad moved into the den, to the computer, of course. "I'm going to look him up. He died when, last spring? February or March, maybe? We're on to him, Kara—we're going to find him!"

  Mom followed Dad into the den, and they began to search online. Zach hung back behind them. For a week, Dad had been promising to play catch with him, and everyday he had found some excuse to put him off, to search for something new on the computer.

  "Dad?" Zach asked hesitantly.

  Dad pulled up another web page. "Give me just a few minutes here, pal."

  Mom drew out the phonebook and flipped pages until she found the one she wanted. She searched the page, her finger hurriedly tracing the lines of text. "Nothing in the phonebook," she said, closing it and looking over at Dad. "No Bert or Bi
ll Lerwicks. Not many Lerwicks at all, actually. It must be an unusual name."

  "Good," Dad replied. "That should make him easier to find. Let's start with Bert." He typed away on the keyboard and clicked on a link as Mom stepped back to his side.

  Zach gave up and marched to his room, anger growing inside him with each step. He went in and slammed the door. I waited for him all afternoon! Seeing his glove on the desk with the ball tucked inside the pocket, he grabbed them both, flung the door open, and hurled them together down the hall, slamming the door shut again behind him. It infuriated him that they didn't hit anything that would break or make a loud noise.

  He fell on his bed and waited, but Mom and Dad didn't come to see what was wrong. They didn't even come to yell at him for slamming his door. He waited a long time, but they didn't come. As the sky began to darken outside, he stretched himself out on the bed and cried.

  *****