Training

by Sonya Lee

  Chapter 2

  Upon our arrival to our country home, I was immediately sent to my room, no questions answered. I was informed by my mother not to leave my room until my father called for me. I saw her heading towards the laundry closet before I closed my door and began wondering around my room. I loved my room with its white canopy bed and princess decorations of pale yellow and white. Yet, it brought me no solace as I wondered about the young man I had found in the field.

  My curiosity began to get the better of me, so I had to find out what was going on downstairs. I raced over to the vent in my room and sat down beside it. I could hear any conversation in the house listening in at that vent. I listened closely and began to hear my father and mother talking, but they weren't making any sense to me.

  My father said that the boy had been penetrated and was bleeding from his anus. I ran to get the dictionary I kept on my desk for my daily language lessons and looked up the words "penetrated" and "anus". Once I read the definitions of those words, I still wondered how a boy could be penetrated. I went back to the vent and listened to even more of their conversation, dragging the dictionary with me for reference.

  "Will you be able to erase the damage caused to the boy?" asked my mother.

  "Yes, I can, but I don't know if I should just yet. Whoever did this is still out there and they might be looking for him or simply do it again if the boy doesn't recall what happened to him," said my dad.

  "Let's wrap him up and get him to the hospital. He needs medical attention. We can decide later on what we want to do, once the boy has been seen by a doctor," said my mother.

  "What are we going to tell Agnes?" asked my father

  "For now, let's just say he was hurt and we're taking him to the hospital. We can figure out later how to explain this situation to her and help her through it," said my mother. "Bring him to me and I’ll put him to sleep."

  My mother was going to rock the boy to sleep. She often did that to me when I had a bad nightmare in the middle of the night. I always went to sleep quickly when she rocked me to sleep. The nightmares didn’t come back. I would sleep peacefully the rest of the night. If my mother rocked him to sleep the way she did me, he would sleep well, I thought.

  I started hearing a lot of movement. My parents were finished talking for now. I got up off of the floor and wondered what had really happened to the little boy. I sat on my bed and thought about the words penetrated and anus once again. It finally came to me. I remembered my dad allowing me to watch one of the horses give birth. He had explained a little about where baby horses came from and I was able to put some things together.

  My stomach began to hurt just thinking about what someone had done to that little boy. I lay down on my bed trying to calm my stomach and my mind. I had just calmed down when I heard my mother calling for me.

  "Agnes, Agnes, honey, put on your gloves and come downstairs. We need to take the boy to the hospital," she called up to my room.

  I grabbed my gloves and slipped them on. You’re probably wondering why I would be wearing gloves in the summertime. I always wore gloves when I was going to be around other people. I had been wearing gloves all my life.

  My dad said it was to protect me from getting sick. You see Father MacArthur, I was told I had an illness when I was three years old. The illness disrupted my immune system. My immune system was still rebuilding its' self and I was always admonished not to touch people or their things because they could affect my immune system. There are some things in life that children never seem to question their parents on, this was one of those things for me.

  When I entered the living room, my mother was at the door waiting on me. I could see my father outside in the backseat of our car with the little boy lying across his lap. My favorite blanket was draped over his body. As mother and I walked outside to get in the car I noticed the little boy wasn't moving and I asked my mother why not.

  She said he passed out from the pain he was feeling. I had completely forgotten that she was going to rock him to sleep, so I didn’t think much of it when she lied to me. My mother got behind the wheel of our old Ford Crown Victoria and I got in the passenger seat next to her. We put our seatbelts on and she began to drive. She drove us the twenty miles to the hospital.

  I enjoyed the ride to the hospital. It wasn’t often that I left the confines of our home to venture out into the city. The sights and sounds of the city always fascinated me, just as they did as we drove through it. I found that the people in the city were more colorful than the ones that I had seen on tv. I often wondered why there was such a contrast between what I had seen on television and what I saw in the city now. All too soon, the hospital loomed before us. My mother found a place to park and we exited the car. My dad carried the boy into the emergency room with my mother and I close upon his heels.

  My disappointment at arriving at the hospital was soon replaced with another fascination. As I looked around the hospital, I felt a little ashamed of my excitement at being at a real live hospital. People came there to get help for their illnesses, some of which could be life threatening, and here I was fascinated by the experience of a real hospital at work.

  I gave little thought to what the people waiting to see the doctor might be feeling. I just couldn't tap down my excitement at being in a hospital no matter how hard I tried. I had seen one on TV before, I had even experienced one first hand, I just didn't recall it since I was three when it happened. This was my first real experience and it was so interesting. I watched on as the triage nurse examined the boy while my father explained what had happened to him and how he came to be in our care.

  Once the triage nurse had finished her initial examination, she called for a doctor and informed my father that she would have to call the police. My father told her we would remain in the hospital in the waiting room until the police arrived.

  We marched silently to the waiting room and found seats close together. My parents sat on either side of me, boxing me into a protective shell. My father placed his arm around my back preventing anyone sitting behind us from touching me. We didn't speak to one another, we just sat quietly while we waited on the police to arrive.

  I took the opportunity to observe the people in the waiting room during that time. There were quite a few people there waiting to see a doctor. I looked around noticing people in different states of disrepair.

  A woman had a towel pressed against her jaw, it was red with blood. Sitting next to her was a man sitting in a corner anxiously awaiting information concerning his son he had brought in. His son had swallowed several pills from their medicine cabinet in an attempt to get high. At least that's what he told the woman with the bloody towel.

  I scanned the room again, appeasing my morbid curiosity and my eyes fell on a little girl with a gentlemen I assumed to be her father. She was clutching a brown paper bag. Every now and then she would cough something up in the bag. Her father seemed to get more and more agitated the longer they waited to see the doctor.

  I witnessed all of this just sitting and observing the patrons waiting to see an emergency room physician. The emergency room patrons were a marvelous source of information and I soaked it all up as we waited silently for the police to arrive.

  I took note of something else that night. My mother and father kept looking at one another as if they were having a silent conversation that no one else could hear. They never said a word, they just looked at one another ever so often. Sometimes a sigh would escape my mother's lips or my father would nod his head as if in approval.

  It took about ten minutes for the police to arrive. A male police officer entered the emergency room followed by his partner. He spoke with the triage nurse and she pointed us out to him. The triage nurse took the partner to the back where the little boy was being examined.

  My father had seen the nurse speaking with the officer and began walking over to him. He explained to
the officer what had happened. The officer listened to my father’s description of the incident but he insisted on speaking with me.

  My father walked him over to our position. He introduced Officer Johnston to my mother and me. Then he explained to me what Officer Johnston wanted. I proceeded to tell him how Rex had found the boy in our field close to our neighbors land and we brought him to our house before bringing him to the hospital.

  My father told him the neighbor, whose land the boy was found near, was out of town currently and wasn't expected back for another week. He had been keeping tabs on the neighbor's land and hadn't noticed anything unusual since the last time he had checked on the farm three days ago.

  Once Officer Johnston had taken our accounting of the day's events, he told us that a boy of about six years of age had been reported missing from his backyard two days ago. He pulled out a picture of the boy and handed it to my father. We all looked at the picture.

  The boy in the picture had jet black hair and light blue eyes. He was wearing a red, white and blue short set. He looked so happy in the picture. The boy in the picture looked like the little boy Rex had found but I wasn't sure. The boy Rex had found was caked with dirt and mud. My parents verified that it was the same little boy.

  Before he left, Officer Johnston asked my father to go down to the station to give a formal statement of the day's events.

  My father told Officer Johnston he wanted to make sure the boy was okay before we left the hospital.

  Officer Johnston said that the parents would have to okay any information given out about the little boy. He excused himself from our presence and went to find his partner. Together they would notify their supervisor that the boy had been found. We sat back down to wait on word of the boy’s condition.

  Several minutes later Officer Johnston returned and informed us the boy's parents would be at the hospital any moment. We could wait to see if they would let us know how he was doing.

  Ten minutes later, a woman and man entered the emergency room escorted by a female police officer.

  Officer Johnston excused himself from our presence and went to greet the couple. He guided them into the examination room where their son was being cared for. We waited patiently for someone in the family to come back out into the waiting area. A fair amount of time passed before the boy’s mother came out to speak to us.

  "Mr. and Mrs. Smith this is Katherine Hunt. She's the little boy's mother," said Officer Johnston.

  Mrs. Hunt looked at my parents and myself and suddenly burst into tears. "Thank you for finding my baby and bringing him to the hospital. I have been sick with worry trying to figure out where he might be or who could have taken him from us."

  "You're welcome," I said in a small voice looking at the pretty lady in front of me. She had luscious red hair and green eyes that seemed to sparkle with joy.

  Mrs. Hunt looked down at me. "Officer Johnston, tells me you actually found him in a field, is that right young lady?" asked Mrs. Hunt directing her question at me.

  "Yes, ma'am,” I said somewhat shyly. “Could you do me a favor?"

  "Sweetheart, I'll do anything for you," said Mrs. Hunt exuberantly.

  "Can you tell me what his name is?" I asked.

  “His name is Jason Hunt,” she said.

  "Oh, I like that name. It's one of my favorites. I like all names beginning with the letter J," I said in wonder.

  Mrs. Hunt was so overwhelmed with joy that she bent down and hugged me before my parents had the opportunity to intervene. She was squeezing me so tightly that I almost couldn't breathe. Her cheek touched mine and I could feel the coldness emanating from her. I began to shake and shiver all over. She was like ice, a beautiful ice princess. She was a bad person, so cold and uncaring, I just knew she was. I quickly stepped away from her and into my mother's warm embrace. She wrapped me in her love and kindness.

  "I'm sorry Mrs. Hunt but Agnes doesn't like to be touched," said my father noticing my reaction to her. "Is Jason going to be okay?" he asked her trying to deflect her attention from me because she had stiffened at my rejection and continued to stare at me.

  "Well he's been raped, as I'm quite sure you know,” she said a little flippantly to my father, taking my rejection of her to heart. She had obviously noticed my withdrawal from her. “The doctors say he will recover, but as for his emotional state, they don't know how he will respond, once he's truly aware of what's been done to him," said Mrs. Hunt even more nonchalantly than her statement about him being raped.

  I moved even closer to my mother as Mrs. Hunt discussed what had happened to Jason in a callous manner. Gone was her show of love and affection for her son. Although I hadn’t heard the word rape before, I knew it was something bad considering the looks my parents exchanged and the gasp that escaped my mother's lips when Mrs. Hunt blurted it out in front of me. I quickly equated it to the penetration of Jason’s anus that my parents had talked about earlier.

  "Can we see him before we go to the police station to give our formal statement?" asked my father.

  "Yes, of course. They moved him up to room fifteen for observation. His dad's up there with him now.”

  We followed Officer Johnston and Mrs. Hunt to Jason's room. When we entered the room Mr. Hunt was sitting by his son's bedside with a look of total devastation on his face. Tears were streaming down his face and he seemed oblivious to that fact.

  Jason lay prone on his bed. All color seemed to have been drained from his face. The white sheets were drawn up to his neck and it made his color seem even more placid.

  Mrs. Hunt began to introduce us to her husband as she went to stand by his side taking his hand to comfort him. The mask of caring and concern had returned to her face. "I'm sorry, what were your names again?" she asked.

  "I'm James Smith, my wife Mary and our daughter Agnes," replied my father. "Mr. Hunt I'm so sorry for what happened to your son."

  "Thank you. I've been praying to God to bring my son back to me and my prayers were answered. Now I'm just asking for his grace and mercy to heal my son," said Mr. Hunt.

  "I'm sure your son will heal nicely," said my mother touching Jason's forehead and brushing the hair out of his face. "He just needs some time to heal."

  "He looks so helpless laying there in bed, so still and unmoving. They had to sedate him when he first woke up because he became so agitated. I’m just grateful that he was sleep when they did the examination," said Mr. Hunt.

  The adults were so engulfed in Mr. Hunt's sorrow that they didn't notice as I moved closer to the bed. I was fascinated by the transformation of Jason. When he was with my parents he seemed more lifelike in spite of being found in a field all dirty and bruised. Now he seemed more like a doll so still and un-life like.

  I laid my hand on Jason's cheek just like my mother used to do me before I went to sleep. I was hoping I could infuse some color into his skin, I wasn’t prepared for what happened next. My forefinger grazed his cheek and a jolt went through my body. I hadn't noticed the hole in my glove before I began my movements but I was aware of it now. It took only five seconds to learn Jason's life story.

  In the mist of this download of information, Mrs. Hunt noticed me touching Jason's cheek and said, "Look, it's so sweet the way she's touching his cheek."

  I was unaware of all the eyes in the room on me. Jason's life was flashing before my eyes and for a moment in time, the visions eclipsed the outside world. The pictures that I saw, were snippets from his life but those snippets were filled with a world full of meaning. I felt everything he felt and went through everything he had gone through.

  I saw him at his real mother's funeral when he was four years old, so sad and solemn. There was a weekend spent with his grandparents, he looked so happy and healthy. The vision of his stepmother selling him to the men who had hurt him was played over and over in my mind. I saw the faces of the men who had hurt him and how they had used him. I fe
lt the piercing of his buttocks and the pain it caused. I wanted to cry out as he had but my system wouldn't release me from Jason's grasp. It was one long, winding picture that caused me both joy and pain by watching it. My system was in overdrive, I was doing multiple things at once. I could still hear the conversation between my parents and the Hunts as the pictures flew by in my head.

  My parents saw me touching Jason's cheek and didn't get overly concerned because I had on my gloves. None of them were prepared for the scream that finally escaped my lips after several seconds of touching Jason's cheek.

  My parents looked at me with horror etched on their faces. My father snatched me away from Jason's prone body and into his arms. My mother laid her hand at my temple. I instantly calmed down and soon drifted off into a semi sleep.

  "Is she okay?" asked Mr. Hunt concerned with my sudden cry of pain.

  "Yes, she just gets emotional sometimes. She isn't a fan of hospitals having spent a lot of time in one when she was younger. We don't want to disturb you or Jason any longer, we just wanted to make sure he was okay. We'll be going now," I could hear my mom say through my fog.

  My father made a concerted effort to shake Mr. Hunts hand before they said their goodbyes. I could feel the jolt that went through my father’s body when they shook hands and wondered if Mr. Hunt could feel it also. My mother promised to check in on Jason the following day.

  We left the hospital and headed to the police station to give our official statement on what had happened that day. I slept in the back seat of a silent car as my parents seemed to be communicating without speaking in the front.

  Upon our arrival at the station, my dad parked the car and they both turned to me. I had awakened from my slumber by this time. My parents told me to tell the police exactly what happened when Rex and I found Jason. I wasn't allowed to say anything about what I had seen when I touched Jason. I wondered how they knew that I had seen something. I hadn’t told them that I had seen anything.

  "But, Mom, Mrs. Hunt is evil. She sold Jason to those bad men," I said in protest.

  "We know honey. The police are going to catch her. They only want to know what you saw when you found Jason in our field. They can't know about the rest of it because they will want to know how you know these things. Do you understand?" asked my mother.

  "Yes, I understand," I said but I really didn't. I hoped and prayed for Jason's sake that the police would catch his stepmother soon so that she couldn't hurt him again.

  I thought the conversation was over until my dad told me to make sure I didn’t touch anyone while we were in the police station. I quickly agreed not to touch anyone. I was still reeling from what I had seen when I touched Jason and didn’t want to experience that again anytime soon.

  After gaining my acceptance of their terms we left the car. When we entered the police station we went in search of the front desk. Once we found it, my father asked to speak with a detective Sanders. The officer on duty called for Detective Sanders who soon appeared and escorted us to his desk.

  When we arrived at his desk he had to pull over an extra chair so that my father could sit down with me in his lap. Detective Sanders began his interview with me and I told him exactly what happened when Rex and I came upon Jason in our field.

  Then my father took over and told him what they had done when they brought him to the house. Once we had given our statement, Detective Sanders printed it out and asked my parents to sign it. Shortly after this was done we left to return to our home.

  My dad drove while I sat in the back seat with thousands of questions in my head. Gone was the fascination with the big city lights. I had other things on my mind. I couldn't wait to get home so that I could ask my parents what had happened to me and how did they know that I had seen something?

  When we arrived to our house, my mother made all of us hot chocolate and we sat down at the kitchen table to discuss what had happened at the hospital or at least that's what I thought we were going to discuss.

  My dad began the discussion with a simple statement.

  "Agnes, show me your gloves," he said.

  I placed my hands on the table and he examined them closely. There was a small amount of skin exposed on the tip of the forefinger of the glove. It was the same finger that had touched Jason’s cheek. I had felt a jolt of electricity enter my body when I touched him.

  My parents saw the hole and gasped in unison. "She felt what happened to Jason through that little exposure to his skin," said my mother.

  "Hold on a moment Mary. Agnes, tell us what happened when you touched Jason's cheek. Use your describing words, think like a scientist exploring something new and needing to have all the information possible at his disposal," said my father.

  I sat up tall in my chair and tried to describe what I felt when I touched Jason. "When I touched his cheek, I felt a tiny shock like electricity going through my fingers. Soon after that I could see pictures in my head just flashing by so quickly. Jason's real mother died in a car accident when he was four years old. Katherine married Jason's father a year ago. He really liked Katherine at first because she was so nice to him. But then bad things started to happen to him and Katherine started treating him differently. He got food poisoning from something Katherine fed him, he was hit by a car while outside playing and he was stung by a bee in his bedroom. He's allergic to bees. The last thing she did to him was sell him to the two men who raped him."

  "Did you see the bad men rape him?" asked my mother softly. They could both tell by the look in my eyes that I had.

  "Yes, it was very bad. I could feel what they did to him like it was happening to me. It hurt Jason a lot and he cried for his daddy, but they tied his hands and legs so he couldn't get away. They didn't cover his mouth because they liked to hear him cry and scream," I said squirming in my seat at the retelling of what I had seen and felt.

  "Okay, stop thinking about what they did to Jason. Can you tell me how the bad men looked? I want you to picture it in your mind," said my father in a very soothing voice. It helped me to calm down from the images that were flashing through my mind.

  "You want me to tell you how they both looked?" I asked.

  "You're not going to tell me, you're going to show me," replied my father.

  "But how can I show you?" I asked.

  "You'll be able to show me, just focus on one of them at a time. You'll see. When you've visualized one of them, then you can visualize the other one for me," said my father.

  I sat at our kitchen table, a place that normally brought me a measure of comfort, and envisioned the fat man that had taken Jason. I could see him clearly in my mind attacking Jason and I started to whimper.

  "Sweetheart, listen to my voice. Don't focus on what the man is doing, focus on what he looks like. Get rid of everything else in the room and picture him frozen in your mind," said my mother while stroking my hand.

  I felt a calm come over me and I began to focus on one of the attacker's face. My father must have gotten paper and pencil from his office because he began to sketch the attacker. I focused on the man as a whole and my father sketched his big body. He sketched the man's big stomach that slumped over his belt, his sleepy eyes that were green, and his chest which looked like a small set of female breast. His arms were flabby and he wasn’t very tall. He was balding in the top of his head, but the rest of his hair was black.

  My father told me to focus in on the attackers face and I did. The man had a fat face, with jaws that shook like jello. He had a crescent moon scar on his left cheek and a mole next to his lower lip. His ears were too small for his big body. After awhile, I couldn't stand to envision him and I lost the picture of mole mouth as I had nicknamed him in that short span of time.

  I shook my head to clear the vision of mole mouth from my memory. When I looked at the kitchen table the picture was sitting before me. My dad had sketched an exact replica of mole mouth. An involuntary s
hudder escaped my body as I looked at the picture of the man who had attacked Jason.

  "Mommie can I have some more hot chocolate?" I asked in a small voice a chill going over me.

  "Sure, sweetheart," replied my mother getting up from her seat and preparing another cup of hot chocolate for me.

  "Daddy, how can you draw a picture of mole mouth like that? It looks just like him," I asked a shudder running down my spine once again.

  "Agnes, it's a particular talent that I have. I can see the pictures in your head and draw from there. One day, you might be able to do it also with some practice," said my dad.

  "Really? But dad, I already see pictures in my head all the time. Will I be able to draw like you?" I asked.

  "Well, sweetheart drawing is a talent but perhaps with some lessons you might be able to draw as well as me. But you misunderstood what I meant by pictures in your head perhaps when you are older I'll be able to show you what I mean," said my father.

  My mother handed me another cup of hot chocolate and I began to sip it slowly.

  "Agnes, are you ready to picture the other man in your head?" asked my dad.

  "Yes, I think I am,” I said slowly. My mother grabbed my free hand once again. Will these pictures help catch the men who did this to Jason?" I asked.

  "Yes, we'll find a way for the police to use the pictures to help catch these men. Now remember how you did it the first time. Don't focus on what he’s doing, just get a picture of the man in your head and freeze him in place," said my father.

  "I pictured the second man in my head. He was a lot easier to picture than mole mouth. He had a lot of muscles and he was tall, like six feet tall. He was also very blonde with blue eyes and he didn't have any scars. He was a very pretty man who looked like he belonged on a swim team, that is, until you looked into his cold eyes. Looking into his eyes sent chills down my spine. My parents’ eyes were both warm and comforting, but this man's eyes scared me to death. They were devoid of depth and feeling, some people would call them soulless eyes. I couldn't focus on him for very long but my father managed to sketch a very good likeness of him including his cold eyes.

  I was exhausted after having pictured the two men who attacked Jason in my mind. My mother laid her hand on my temple and spoke to me in a soothing voice but I didn't understand the words that she said. My eyes became heavy and I slowly drifted off to sleep.