The Boy Who Could Fly

(continued)

By Jean Blasiar

"But Mum…"

"Get a soda, son. You're beet red." Mrs. Sanders turned her attention to the next townspeople in line to buy tickets.

More than once during that hot Saturday afternoon, Timothy Sanders glanced up the hill to where he had fallen off his bike, shocked to realize what a long way down he had flown. Not sure now if he dreamt it or if the hard knock on his head caused him to imagine the whole thing, he was too busy that afternoon to wonder if it had happened at all. When his mother collected him at six o'clock and walked with him to the bike stall, Timothy remembered exactly where his bike was and how he'd managed to get to St. Michael's that afternoon.

"Get your bike, Tim."

He had to tell her. "It isn't here, Mum."

"What? You mean while we were inside slaving away in the hot sun to make money for St. Michael's, some scoundrel stole your bike?"

Tim started to tell his mother the truth, but she wasn't listening to him. Instead, she grabbed Mister Rigby by the arm and proceeded to tell the man in charge of the entire fair about somebody stealing Tim's bike and what was he going to do about it. Tim was certainly not going to tell the Mr. Rigby, a very busy man, how earlier that day he had closed his eyes, raised his arms and flown down the big hill to St. Michael's.
Too proud to accept Mister Rigby's offer of a ride home, Mrs. Sanders said that her boy, though exhausted, would walk and offer it up to the Lord. She also said that she hoped that whoever took it upon himself to take what wasn't his, needed it worse than her son.

There never was a moment after that, having been joined on their walk home by Mrs. Francis, a neighbor, to tell Tim's mother the true story. She was too busy telling Mrs. Francis all about it, going back to how things were when she was a girl riding a bike to school with God fearing people who would never dream of taking anything that belonged to someone else. And where was she going to get the money to buy Tim another bike to ride to school come September, she'd like to know. It just didn't seem to be the appropriate time for Tim to tell her, nor later that evening when Aunt Fran called to see if Tim was all right. A neighbor of Aunt Fran's had run across a twisted and broken bike on the road to St. Michael's, she said, and wondered if by any horrible happenstance it might be Tim's.

"It was stolen," Mrs. Sanders told her sister. "The scoundrel who stole it was probably knocked off the bike by God himself, like St. Paul, and a good thing too for now he might repent and sin no more." Mrs. Sanders told that story and believed it with all her heart, but not Tim.

Forever after, when the steep hillside above St. Michael's was in bloom with the jasmine, he would close his eyes and recall that afternoon when he lifted his arms, the warm breeze on his face with the wafting, sweet smelling blossoms below, and floated gently, gently down, down, down till his feet touched the ground and he praised God.