The Leap Year Boy

by Marc Simon

  “They went to the too-oomb, taking spices which they had prepared.”

  Ten seconds later, she was fast asleep. Alex didn’t notice until he stopped reading and asked her what became of Jesus’ body.

  *

  Reverend Sunday moved on from Pittsburgh, but the Holy Spirit was alive and kicking in Ida Murphy, fueled by Alex’s recitations of the Ten Commandments and his nightly readings from the good book. The way he pronounced the words was so moving, so sincere—out of the mouth of babes, she thought—that she wondered, perhaps the Holy Spirit had entered him, too.

  With a gift like his, so wonderful and rare, the Christian thing to do was share it. She knew Billy Sunday would approve, and so she called on her next-door neighbor, Margaret Conroy.

  Despite their friendship, Margaret had never been farther inside Ida’s house than the vestibule, and was a bit taken aback when Ida invited her for dinner, ostensibly to thank her for baby-sitting Alex. She arrived at five-thirty in her second-best dress, carrying a loaf of soda bread she’d baked that morning.

  After dinner Ida set out tea, and the women made small talk about how the neighborhood was going to hell in a hand-basket, what with the Dagos and Polacks moving in like termites, you couldn’t trust them, that was for sure, they were clannish, and besides, wasn’t it bad enough the Jews already owned half the real estate on the street? “Well, anyway, Margaret,” Ida said as she stacked the teacups in soapy water, “you are in for a revelation. Wait until you hear Alex read.”

  Margaret said, “He can read? I didn’t know that. But he hasn’t even been to school yet, has he? He’s awfully young to know how to read.”

  “Sometimes I think he’s older than Methuselah, the things that come out of his mouth. Alex?”

  He came into the room holding a pretzel. “Hello, Mrs. Conroy.”

  Ida said, “Dear, would you like to read for Mrs. Conroy?”

  With nothing better to do, he nodded yes, and took the New Testament from the bookcase.

  Margaret hesitated. “I thought you meant a children’s book.”

  Ida beamed. “Just pick a passage. Any passage.”

  She looked at the tiny boy holding the large volume. Something was out of kilter, but she decided to go along with it. “Well, I’ve always been partial to Corinthians.”

  Alex flipped through the pages and began, “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s spirit dwells in you? If any one destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and that temple is you.”

  Margaret fainted.

  By the middle of March, as many as ten people from the neighborhood attended Alex’s after-dinner readings, which Ida had moved to a more spacious venue, her living room. The women brought tokens of their appreciation—toys, clothes and sweets for Alex, doilies, knickknacks and candles for Ida. Alex would read a passage, stopping when he was tired or too bored to go on. At that point, the women began to discuss the meaning of the scripture or the meaning of this strange and wondrous little boy so adroit at reciting the word of the Lord.

  News of Alex’s readings spread faster than crabgrass in summer, and soon Ida had to limit the size of the gatherings, lest her house be overrun by the curious righteous. Order, that was the key. She devised a system based on last names. Letters A through L came Monday and Wednesdays, M through Z Tuesdays and Thursdays. Friday was Alex’s day off, when both he and Ida took a needed break.

  Running out of gift ideas, the faithful began to leave legal tender of various denominations with Ida: a dime here, a quarter there. At first she declined to accept the cash, but when she considered the wear and tear on her living room and factored in the cost of supplying tea with sugar and lemon and cookies for the after-Alex discussions, she came to expect monetary offerings, and she felt stiffed if someone left without making one. The lion’s share of the cash went into her growing Jerusalem fund.

  By April, certain spiritually needy individuals began to make discreet inquiries as to the possibility of having private sessions with Alex, and although these consultations would cut into his naptime, Ida felt it was her righteous duty to pursue this new revenue stream. She had seen a newspaper advertisement about a Holland America Line luxury cruise from New York to the Holy Land. True, the trans-Atlantic journey was fraught with peril—who could forget the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, when over 1,500 souls went to chilly graves at the bottom of the sea—but then, the road to salvation was paved with perils, and what were her difficulties compared to the Lord’s suffering for her sake? And so, the notion of making a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, accompanied by her remarkable grandson, glowed like a hot coal inside her. The child had a gift, no doubt a very special gift, and she was certain it was God’s will that she bring Alex to Jerusalem, to walk the paths that Jesus had walked, for after all, he just might be the new Messiah, and wouldn’t it be wonderful that she, grandmother and daughter of Jerusalem, had brought him there for the salvation of the world?

  To create a more intimate, sanctified setting for their private clients, Ida moved her overstuffed leather chair into her sitting room, stacked three pillows on the seat and placed Alex on top. She dressed him in a white shirt, too broad in the torso but with sleeves long enough to cover his arms, and hung a large silver crucifix around his neck. He insisted on wearing his orange cap, a concession she grudgingly gave in to after he threw a fit. For some reason, the Maine Coon perched on top of the chair during the sessions, Sphinx-like behind Alex. Ida kept the shades drawn and lit a string of votive candles, which created flickering silhouettes of the boy and the cat against the background.

  Mrs. Agnes Mullins, from nearby Atkins Avenue, was the first private client. Even though she’d just turned forty-eight, incipient osteoporosis had already shrunk her to less than five feet tall, so that when she knelt before Alex on his cushioned throne, he towered over her, diminutive and iconic.

  Agnes looked to Ida, uncertainty welling up in her watery blue eyes, clearly discombobulated at the specter of Alex and the cat looming over her. “Ida,” she croaked, “what do I say?”

  Ida really hadn’t thought about it. She said, “Well, do you have a favorite passage?”

  “No, I hadn’t planned on one, I’m sorry.” Slow moments passed by.

  “How about the 23rd psalm? ” She had printed it out on white paper for Alex beforehand as a fallback for such an occasion, figuring that, even though it was from the Old Testament, who didn’t like the 23rd?

  “Oh, that would be fine.”

  Ida held out her palm.

  “Yes, of course, sorry.” Agnes put a fifty-cent piece in Ida’s hand.

  “Alex, go ahead.”

  Alex looked at the words and decided he wasn’t interested. What he really wanted was for this woman to be gone and to have his nap. He yawned.

  “Alex,” Ida repeated.

  He thought about how Reverend Billy preached to the people, and, emulating the minister, stood on the pillows and pointed at Agnes. “Jesus knows what you have done.”

  Both Agnes and Ida said, “What?”

  He repeated, “Jesus knows what you have done.” He reached behind him, and thanks to his long arms had no trouble patting the cat on the head, who was staring, unblinking, into cat infinity.

  Agnes began to sob. As if on cue, Ida hunkered down beside her. In a small, choked voice, Ida said, “Please, what does Jesus know, Alex?”

  Whether or not Alex knew what Jesus knew became pretty much a moot point, since before he could answer, Agnes decided to spill the beans. “It’s Tom, isn’t it?”

  “Mary Agnes?”

  “Oh, I have sinned against God and for that I beg forgiveness.” She sniffed. Small puddles of tears began to form on the polished hardwood floor. “It’s only the one time, I swear it. Oh don’t stare at me so, Alex, please. You don’t know the misery I have swallowed down all these months, lying awake night after night, and my husband, he won’t touch me anymore, won’t lie close to me, he won�
�t put his arm around me, I don’t know why, I’ve been a good wife, submissive, caring. But late at night while he sleeps, I can’t help it, I have these, these thoughts. I know it’s wrong, I know it’s a mortal sin, but as I lay there one night not so long ago, I saw my neighbor’s husband Tom in my mind, with his dark mustache and smile, and I began to…I began to touch myself…in that way. Please, I couldn’t help it, don’t make me say anymore.”

  Ida put her hand over her mouth. Alex stared at the sobbing, prostrate woman. The cat, evidently feeling that the juiciest part of the confession was over, leaped from the top of the chair and brushed against Agnes, who recoiled from him as if he were The Beast incarnate.

  Agnes said, “I know what I’ve done is a sin. I’m so ashamed, I am impure. I don’t know what to do, please tell Jesus to forgive me.” She bowed her head again.

  Alex leaned forward and rested his chin on his knuckles. Seeing Agnes cry reminded him of his mother, and how she had cried as she lay in bed, in pain from The Dip, and how his mother’s tears made him want to cry, too, and crying was sad, and he didn’t like to be sad, and he didn’t want this old lady to be sad from what he said. “Don’t cry.”

  Agnes wiped her eyes. She managed to look up at him and smile. “Oh thank you, Alex, God bless you. I won’t cry anymore, I promise.”

  The women helped each other to their feet. Before she left, Agnes gave Ida another fifty cents.

  As the front door closed, Alex said, “Grandma, can I come down now?”

  *

  Agnes Mullins felt compelled to tell Betty Koehler about her life-changing encounter with Alex. Betty felt similarly compelled to tell Helen Gault, and on and on it went, and soon the supplicants, as Ida called them, began to stop by her house at all hours in the hope of seeing the messianic little fellow.

  Even when Ida turned them away, the seekers left a variety of religious offerings on Ida’s front steps, from rosary beads to holy cards and statuettes of the Virgin Mary. There was non-religious tribute as well—bowls of fruit, bags of candy and nuts, toy animals and, for some reason, combs, along with notes and carefully scripted letters regarding sick children, financial difficulties, cheating husbands, the implications of the impending world war on the U.S. economy, as well as unanswerable questions, such as, would the labor movement succeed, what was wrong with the Pirates, would T.R. make another run for the presidency, what is the nature of Divine Grace, is Alex a midget or an angel, or both?

  One muggy, rainy afternoon, Alex sat in his usual spot and dangled a paper pinwheel like a scepter at the cat, which swatted back with his paw. A few yards away kneeled Bess Foster, asking Alex what he knew about the condition of her dear sweet mother Rose, who’d passed over to the other side some eight years earlier. “Alex, dear Alex, can you tell me, is my blessed mother in Heaven with the angels? Was she the bright flash in the sky I saw last night?”

  The bright flash Bess had observed may have been her mother, or it may have been an explosion at the Number Four blast furnace at the Hazlewood Works, but either way, Alex wasn’t interested. He’d flatly refused to read from the New Testament because some of the passages people had requested included long-winded descriptions from the Book of Revelations depicting apocalyptic horsemen and serpents and graves and marching skeletons, all of which he didn’t understand but frightened him and made his head hurt. He’d put his little foot down and was willing to read only from his A Child’s Life of Christ, a text that included far more pleasant images.

  He stared at Bess, then read, “‘Brighter than the brightest day is the light from Heaven.’” He closed the little book and yawned, as did the cat.

  Tears streamed down Bess’s face. “I knew it. I knew it was Mother as soon as I saw the flash. What was she trying to tell me? Is she all right? Is she sitting at the hand of the Lord?” She edged closer to Alex.

  “All right, Bess, that’s enough,” Ida said, drawing Bess back.

  “I’ll pay, I’ll pay more.” Bess shook coins from her change purse.

  “Mrs. Foster, please,” Ida said. “That’s enough for one day.” Ida had become adept at handling the overzealous, and gently but firmly dragged Bess away, even as she clutched at the carpet with her fingernails. On another day Ida may have left Bess to grovel a little longer, but she’d scheduled Alex for a three o’clock and it was already two-thirty.

  After showing Bess the door, Ida collected the coins that for some reason Bess had arranged in a triangle near the base of Alex’s chair. Wary of banks, Ida kept the Jerusalem money in a rosewood box in her bedroom, and the last time she counted, they were up to $106.28. It was hardly enough to book passage to the Holy Land, but every day she got a little bit closer, and with her other savings and her husband’s life insurance money tucked neatly under her bed, she just might have enough by the beginning the following year, if business kept up the way it had been, praise Jesus.

  Alex,” she said, “I’m going upstairs to take a short nap. Remember, Mrs. Scully is coming at three o’clock.”

  “My head hurts.”

  “There’s milk and chocolate cake on the kitchen table. But don’t let the cat get your milk.”

  “I don’t want to do this anymore.”

  “Alex, darling, don’t be silly. It’s our calling.”

  “I don’t, I don’t.” Alex tossed his orange cap to the floor and rubbed his temples.

  Ida came back into the sitting room. “Alex, please, stop your yelling. Now, you listen to me. You have to do exactly what I say if you want to go to the Holy Land.”

  “I want to go outside.”

  “You can go outside later, after Mrs. Scully, all right? I promise. I’ll push you on the swings. We’ll have ice cream. But first, we must do everything just like I planned it. Remember, sweetheart, it’s God’s will and you are God’s special messenger. You could already be an angel, did you know that? So be a good boy and go have your snack.”

  Alex sighed. “Yes, Grandma.”

  “Now, you come upstairs and wake me when the big hand on the kitchen clock is on the nine and the little hand is near the three.” She retreated up the stairs.

  Alex watched her climb the stairs. “You don’t have to say it like that, I already know how to tell time.” He swung his pinwheel in wide circles over his head, then in sweeping arcs from the left to the right, easily touching the floor on both sides with his long arms.

  His last swing rested for a moment on a burning votive candle. Almost immediately the paper folds ignited, creating a miniature torch. Unaware of the flame, Alex toddled to the kitchen, bearing fire like a miniature Prometheus.

  As he reached for the milk with his free hand, the pinwheel fire leaped to the kitchen curtains and quickly embraced the lacquered wood cabinets. Flames from the pinwheel worked their way down the stick, too, and when Alex felt the heat he dropped the stick on the rag rug, which began to smolder as well.

  In seconds half the kitchen was in flames. He yelled, “Grandma, Grandma!” He took two steps toward the stairway in the hall, but the smoke and heat terrified him. He turned around and watched the cat leap through a 10-inch rip in the screen door.

  Next door, Margaret Conroy was browsing through the latest Sears Roebuck catalogue. She’d become engrossed in the fantasy that her flabby body would look ravishing in one of the lacy corsets featured on pages 27–28. But which one? Why not order two, or three? And who might be the one to ravish her…the butcher? The coal and iceman? The guarantee promised, “Your money back if you’re not completely satisfied.”

  She was up to page 35 when a meaty, smoky smell drifted into her living room. She assumed it was the pork chops she’d left frying in the kitchen, but in fact it may have been Ida’s right calf. Margaret went back to her corset fantasy until she was roused into real time by the clanging bells on the hook and ladder wagon from Station #2 as it pulled up next to her house.

  Three firemen bashed through Ida’s kitchen door and followed the screams coming from the second floor. T
hey hauled what was left of her down the stairs as quickly as possible and loaded her, smoking and comatose, onto a horse-drawn police wagon, which loped off to St. Margaret’s Hospital. Lloyd Casey, the deputy chief who’d lost an eye in an oil fire in ’03, canvassed the onlookers to see if there might be anyone else in the house, and was about to walk away when someone screamed, “The little boy, Alex! Little Alex Miller!” just as the second floor collapsed into the first.

  Chapter 15

  Close to four hours passed before the smoldering rubble cooled enough for the firemen to search for the unlikely survivor, Alex Miller. Virtually everything was burned beyond recognition, except for the kitchen sink, the marble mantelpiece from above the fireplace and a scattering of hot coins. Ida’s Holy Land folding money and her other important papers had turned to wet, sludgy ashes. The men sifted and shoveled in the fleeting hope of finding the little boy’s body—pray to God he died of smoke inhalation, not flames—but all they came up with was an orange cap that had somehow survived the inferno.

  A veteran crime reporter from the Pittsburgh Gazette Times, Thomas Lowery discovered a tiny boy sitting on the steps of the house across the street, calmly taking in the spectacle. It had to be Alex Miller, given the description from the neighbors. He squatted down in front of him. “Are you Alex Miller?”

  The child nodded.

  “Can you talk?”

  “Where’s Grandma?”

  Before Lowery called for a doctor, his investigative reporter side got the best of him. He asked Alex how he’d escaped the blaze.

  Alex said, “Like the cat. Where’s Grandma?”

  Gradually the neighbors discovered Alex, too. Everyone said it was a miracle that he was alive. It had to be. How else could you explain that a child, especially one so tiny, could have made it out of that horrendous fire? Perhaps Ida, the poor woman, had been right all along, that God truly did favor the boy and look out for him. Or perhaps Alex had used some God-like powers to keep him from harm. Bess Foster, Alex’s most recent client, shouted that Alex was God before two of her neighbors led her away.