The Removed

by Brandon Hobson

  “Who, Wyatt?”

  He nodded.

  “Did I sleep through it? I don’t ever remember waking up last night.”

  “You were asleep. He came to my side of the bed, like Ray-Ray did.”

  “No, you dreamed of Ray-Ray. I do it all the time.”

  “He walked into our room in the middle of the night,” he said. “He tapped my arm. I woke and saw him standing there. There he was, standing there like Ray-Ray.”

  I looked deep into his face and tried to see what was happening to him. I remained quiet, looking at him.

  “It was Wyatt, but it was also Ray-Ray standing there,” he said.

  I felt my face flush. “What did he say?” I said quietly.

  “I followed him in here,” he said. He looked around the room, gesturing with his hands. “Colored lights were hanging all over. There were balloons. I sat on the floor, and he brought me one. He brought me a rock that lit up in my hands. He told me to look into it.”

  I shook my head. Now the Alzheimer’s was making him sound crazy again. I didn’t want to hear anything else.

  “I held the rock in my hands,” he said. “I looked into that light. It was a yellow light. I held that rock like a bird in my hands. Then I gave it back, and he told me to go to bed, to rest, because I needed to get well.”

  Sunlight brightened the room as it streamed in at an angle from the window overlooking the back deck. I could see in that stream of light the particles of dust floating in air, and they held my gaze until Ernest walked out of the room. I had an overwhelming urge to do something, but I didn’t know what.

  I thought again of Edgar. In the coffee-table drawer we kept a list of phone numbers, and I looked through them for Desiree’s number. I couldn’t find her name or number anywhere. I did manage to find Edgar’s friend Eddie’s number. Eddie was also living in New Mexico. I reached for my cell phone and called him. When he answered, I immediately asked if Edgar was okay.

  “Who is this?” he said.

  “Eddie, this is Maria, Edgar’s mom. Is he doing okay? Have you seen him?”

  “Oh,” he said. “Oh, well, I saw him a few days ago. He seemed fine to me. What’s up?”

  “Did he say anything about coming home?”

  “I’m not sure. I think he said he was taking a train. He seemed fine, no worries.”

  I felt an enormous relief—that he wasn’t hurt, and that he was planning on coming home. “That’s good to hear, Eddie. If you see him, can you tell him to call me? He hasn’t returned my calls, and I’m a little afraid. But I’m glad you say he’s doing okay.”

  “Yeah, I think him and Rae broke up, I guess. Don’t worry. If I see him, I’ll tell him you called me.”

  “Thank you, Eddie.”

  After we hung up, I took a deep breath and sat back in the chair, wondering if Eddie was being truthful or covering for Edgar.

  IT WAS VERY POSSIBLE I was starting to believe Ernest when he said Ray-Ray’s spirit was inside Wyatt. It wasn’t so crazy to think such a thing. What mother wouldn’t long for her dead child’s spirit to be near? For years I had looked for Ray-Ray, for signs and evidence of his watching us. I once found a feather outside that held turquoise, red, pink, and yellow colors. It was unlike any feather I had ever seen, certainly not from any bird around here. Sonja said it was a gift for us from Ray-Ray, and though at the time we laughed it off, I secretly wanted it to be true, and in some ways, I actually believed it.

  When Wyatt arrived home from school that day, I found myself staring at him. Something was different, either in me or in him, I wasn’t sure which. But I felt a much stronger connection to him. It was my evening to volunteer at the youth shelter, to read to the residents staying there, and when I mentioned it to Wyatt, he told me he knew some of them.

  “Those kids are from my school,” he said. “I know some from the chess club. Drama Club. We’re sort of like a family, even though I’ve never had to stay there.”

  A family. What an odd term for describing the others, I thought. Some of the kids came to the shelter with bruises or welts on their legs. Some came with lice, skin infections, even serious illnesses like hepatitis C. Wyatt asked if he could come along, and whether it would be possible for him to bring his notebook so he could read a story to them. Of course I let him.

  When we arrived, sure enough, many of the kids already knew him, all the lost boys and girls, even the older ones in high school. They welcomed him with high fives, fist bumps, some questions about whether he was still acting president of the Youth Foundation for Nonviolence in Elementary Schools, which was news to me, something he hadn’t mentioned.

  “Principal Holt said I was taking on too many extracurricular activities once I started cracking jokes about the Dewey Decimal System,” he told them. “I mean, seriously guys, do we really need to know the Dewey Decimal System? Dooo we? Dooo we?”

  Laughter all around, more fist bumps. “They’re a good group of kids,” Sarah, the youth services coordinator, told me. For a while Wyatt played Ping-Pong against an older teenager named Antonio, a former gang member. Antonio spent six months in a secure lockup placement down in Altus before getting released and placed back into the state’s custody. “Angry” was how everyone described Antonio, but that had been proven false, Sarah told me; he’d been at the shelter for three months without one incident or angry outburst, even when he was told to do standard chores like cleaning the kitchen or picking up around the facility. Wyatt lost the game, joking that he let Antonio win. He said something in Antonio’s ear that made Antonio laugh so hard he doubled over.

  “Dude is cray-zeeee,” Antonio said, still laughing, as everyone began to gather in the commons room. The kids gathered on the floor in front of Wyatt, all of them; even the older kids with the basketballs and Ping-Pong paddles sat down to listen to his story. Sarah and I watched, a little surprised at how natural it all seemed, Wyatt’s sway over the other kids, his easy mentorship, all of it at such a young age.

  “The story is called ‘Doe Stah Dah Nuh Dey,’” he told them, but he didn’t bother translating it to English for them or, for that matter, me either. I was unfamiliar with this phrase, even though I knew some of the Cherokee language. One of the younger kids asked whether it was like the other story he used to tell them in Drama Club, “The Boy Who Never Grew Up,” a story based on Peter Pan that Wyatt had written a year or so earlier. At this point Wyatt launched into a long explanation about stories based on stories, and how sometimes the same characters appear in various forms.

  “Look, look,” Wyatt said, “the stories all have something in common, right? They’re like medicine, but without the bad taste, right? It’s good for you. No painful needle in the arm or hip.” Finally, he assured them that this was a new story.

  There was once, in a small town called Quah, a quiet boy who lived near a dark river. One day the boy ran away from home after disobeying his father. The boy went to the river to swim, not knowing it was the home of a giant snake, e nah dah, who was known to leap out of the water and drag people to an underground world full of darkness. The snake opened its mouth wide and grabbed the boy as he was swimming, pulling him down into the land . . .

  Wyatt held his hands up like claws and made a face, which reminded me, oddly, of Ray-Ray. Such a strange expression, it occurred to me. Now I could understand what Ernest was seeing in him, or at least how he resembled Ray-Ray in this particular way. His face, the way his lips curved downward, the way he talked and smiled. I could see it.

  . . . and the boy looked around to see he was in another world, the Darkening Land. All around him were other people who had been pulled under by the snake. He saw dead buzzards and dead fish along the side of the road. He saw a cloud of vultures in the sky. Nobody would look at him or talk to him. In the distance, he heard gunshots.

  “Someone help me!” he called, but nobody answered.

  So the boy ran. He didn’t know where he was going, but he ran until he came across a group of peo
ple. He saw a few men holding rifles, following a group of people who were walking and falling. The men with their rifles kicked and yelled, making the people walk and walk, even when they fell.

  The boy hid behind a rotting building and watched, feeling helpless. He saw birds gathering, making noises. He saw rain lifting from earth to sky.

  The residents were all entranced. Wyatt was so charismatic. That he resembled Ray-Ray so strikingly in this light was bewildering. I was reminded of when Ray-Ray used to do his impersonations, gesturing broadly with his hands, so entertaining. Wyatt talked with the same mannerisms, had the same ornery smile, even as he recounted a story of such despair and pain.

  Suddenly a giant eagle, bigger than the boy, landed in front of him. The eagle spread its wings, then turned into a man with long silver hair. The man approached the boy and told him not to fear what he saw. “Their suffering is for you,” he told him. “Now go home.”

  “How do I go home?” the boy asked.

  “I’ll take you,” the man said. Then he turned back into an eagle and told the boy to climb on his back. Carefully, the boy climbed on, and they flew westward into the pale sky.

  Wyatt closed his notebook and looked out at the kids.

  “Wait,” one of the boys said. “That’s it? What happens?”

  “I have one more story for you,” Wyatt told him.

  I saw Wyatt now as a reflection in the sky, dreamy and mystical, surrounded by kind spirits. He was an eagle soaring in the clouds one minute and back in the shelter the next, a boy entertaining deprived kids. I had a vision of him in a hospital with the sick and disabled, the addicts, the mentally ill—the dead with self-inflicted gunshot wounds, scars on their wrists and necks. I saw him comforting our people who had died of sickness and fatigue along the Trail, the young and the elders. And now these kids were all there listening to him, our strange and wonderful Wyatt, the boy who could seemingly do anything.

  There was a man named Tsala, a Nunnehi.

  “What’s a Nunnehi?” a girl asked.

  “A spirit. An immortal who lives everywhere,” Wyatt said.

  One day, he searched for a beautiful woman to become his wife. He searched every opening in the woods. He walked and walked but never found her. That night he had a dream. A giant hawk appeared before him. The hawk spread its wings and told him, in a voice he recognized as his own: “Go forth to a mountain far away, and there you will find the woman who will become your wife.”

  “Who are you?” Tsala asked, but the hawk flew away into the night.

  Wyatt outstretched his arms like wings to illustrate the bird flying away. Again I pictured Ray-Ray, could almost remember him in this exact room, making the same gesture with his hands. A déjà vu. And yet I knew that Ray-Ray had never come to the shelter with me when he was alive. I tried to remember a time when he had fluttered his hands like birds, but I couldn’t recall. He was in an elementary-school play once—maybe that was it. The vision dissolved as quickly as it had come.

  Late the next morning he awoke to find himself surrounded by a group of children. They were all looking down at him, their eyes wide in wonder. One of them said, “Are you Tsala? The man who will save us?”

  “I’m looking for my wife,” Tsala said. “But first I will help you find your way home.”

  He began to lead the children back toward their village, determined to return them safely. They walked past the mountain where the Yunwi Tsundsi lived, then followed a trail through the woods. They walked under dark clouds, thunder sounding in the distance. Soon a light rain began to fall. By the time they reached the village, the thunder grew louder, and the rain was coming down harder.

  “I have to go,” Tsala told them.

  “Beware of the soldiers,” the children warned him.

  “Wait,” a boy said. “Who are the Yunwi Tsunsdi?”

  “The Little People,” Wyatt said. “From old Cherokee stories. But that’s all for today. Now go and think about what I told you.”

  I was a little stunned by listening to him, almost entranced myself, even as Wyatt got up and returned to playing Ping-Pong. The rest of the time at the shelter, Wyatt seemed like a normal kid again, talking about movies and music with the others.

  “Wyatt has something special,” a supervisor named Hank told me. He put an inhaler in his mouth and sucked in. “I put out fires all day, every day,” he said. “Some of these juveniles are runaways and criminals. Some get kicked out of long-term placement for getting high or stealing from staff. Others get picked up by the police and brought in. It’s a rare day when there isn’t a fire to be put out.”

  I had seen kids come in and out of the shelter for twenty years. The court placed them in the custody of social services, and they sat in the shelter and waited to be placed in group homes. Then they might run away from the group homes and return to the streets, and the whole cycle would start over again. When I worked at the shelter, it was my job to meet with the kids when they were first brought in. After they changed out of their street clothes and showered and put all their money and jewelry in baggies, after they carried their bedsheets and pillows down the hall past the medical supply room to their rooms, I would sit with them as they told me everything that happened on the streets. They opened up to me—it was a gift. I rarely had to do much, maybe smile and tell them I would try to help them. Part of my job was listening to them, these kids who had seen enough in six months to provide a lifetime of nightmares.

  One of the older boys came over to Hank and said he needed his medicine. Hank called for a staff member to come over.

  “Paolo needs his asthma meds,” he said, then showed the boy his inhaler. “I have mine right here, so I feel for you, son. Hang in there, it’ll get better.” After Paolo walked off, Hank told me that Paolo was sixteen and had lived in seven different foster homes since he was twelve.

  “I remember working with a lot of kids exactly like him,” I said.

  “Paolo’s dad is one of those low-grade knuckleheads who wears flannel shirts and drives a 1993 Firebird and chews Red Man. Paolo’s a good kid, though.”

  “Maybe I helped a few over the years. I hope so, anyway.”

  We watched Wyatt give high fives to some of the smaller kids. Then he came over, and I asked him what the title of his story meant.

  “I thought you knew Cherokee,” he said.

  “Only a little. But I didn’t catch the title when you said it.”

  “Doe stah dah nuh dey,” he said. “It means ‘My brother.’”

  * * *

  On the drive home, the town felt quiet and isolated. The road took us past empty and decayed buildings, carrying us east toward the bridge leading to our house. A few welding trucks were parked in the otherwise barren lot of an old roadside motel. “Way out in the distance,” I told Wyatt, “way out there among the trees and hills, Woody Guthrie once walked on a dusty road, mumbling lyrics to a folk song with his guitar strapped to his back.”

  “We sang ‘This Land Is Your Land’ every day for three years at Sequoyah,” he said.

  We rode in silence for a while.

  “I think you’re a good mom,” he said.

  I put on my sunglasses and cried then, quietly, but I don’t think he knew. When we arrived back home, he went into his room to do homework while I went into the kitchen and took out a pan to make supper. I stepped out onto the back deck, expecting to find Ernest, but he wasn’t there. I called for him, but he didn’t answer. Now I felt terrified—what had I done? Left an Alzheimer’s patient alone to wander off? I checked the house, hurrying from room to room and calling his name, but he was nowhere. Wyatt came out of his room and asked me what was the matter.

  “Ernest isn’t here,” I said.

  His eyes widened, and he looked distraught. “Did you check outside? Maybe he’s out there. I’ll help you look.”

  While Wyatt rushed out, I got my cell from my purse and called Sonja, but she didn’t answer, so I left a message: “Sonja, it’s Mom. I th
ink Papa has wandered off. If you get this soon call me.” Then I rushed out the door and called out for him again.

  The moment I stepped outside, I felt a surge of pain in my chest, which I recognized as fear. I felt dizzy, short of breath, as I hurried around the side of the house.

  And there he was, by the garden.

  “Ernest,” I said, holding my chest. I was still short of breath. “I thought you’d wandered off.”

  I approached him and took his hand. “My God,” I said.

  He was looking at me in a way he hadn’t looked at me in a long time. He took my other hand in his. “Maria,” he said. “I can remember things I’ve had trouble remembering, like the combination to the safe in our closet. Thirty-six, eleven, twenty-two.” He took his keys out of his pocket and started going through them one at a time, telling me what each was for.

  I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. “You remember each key,” I said.

  “Just like that. Dr. Patel said he wears a Titleist cap when he plays golf. Last week at the Cherokee National Holiday, I watched a girl from Sallisaw win Miss Teen Cherokee. Her name is Aiyana, and she wore the same dress her grandmother once wore. Her favorite subjects in school are science and history, remember?”

  “What’s happening?” I said.

  He started laughing, and I put my head against his chest and let him hold me.

  Maybe this was a season for miracles to occur, I thought. Maybe the earth was healing itself of trembling and drought, maybe the bees weren’t dying, and the swarms of locusts jumbling tunelessly around were feeding all the rodents and reptiles and crawling creatures. As the sun came out from behind a cloud and Ernest asked if we could call Dr. Patel, I kept thinking we were due for a season of healing ourselves. “I want to tell him I’m feeling damn great,” he said.

  “Yes, yes,” I said.

  “Although I think the doctor’s offices are closed for the day.”

  I didn’t care. I pulled out my phone and called Dr. Patel’s number anyway. “This message is for Dr. Patel. This is Maria Echota. My husband is Ernest Echota, and something remarkable is happening with his memory. We think his Alzheimer’s is gone. He can suddenly remember things—can you believe it? I think—I think he’s been healed!” I hung up the phone, my hands trembling.