The Miracle Stealer

by Neil Connelly

  Sitting with one knee bent and my bleeding leg stretched out, with Daniel standing next to me, I pictured the day in the future when no one sought his blessing. A strange, abiding peace welled up inside my chest. The fire and the smoke, the water behind us and the stars above, everything seemed serene. Daniel asked if my leg hurt bad, but honestly, I was so glad things were nearly done that I felt no pain at all.

  I was content. For those few moments.

  In my memory, it’s the smell that comes first. Dank and musty. Ancient and untamed. But with all the smoke in the air, the burning gas and the smoldering tire rubber, I doubt that’s really possible. My brain must have borrowed the odor from later and rearranged it. So I can’t say for sure what the initial sign really was. I don’t remember if I first saw a hulking shape drag itself from the shadowed cave behind the fire, or if I heard rocks rattled by the great paws. All that matters is that, in an instant, everything changed.

  Daniel and I weren’t alone in the cove.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Samson didn’t come right at us. Patiently, methodically, he lumbered in the general direction of the Skylark’s burning corpse, entering the fire’s flicker with his massive head lifted high, nose up. With each step he snorted at the air, searching for the scents that would provide some clue as to what had disturbed his slumber. Seated on the rocks, I looked up at Daniel standing beside me. His face was smothered in the false blood, and right away I wondered what it would smell like to a blind and hungry bear.

  “Daniel,” I whispered quick, “we got to get into the lake.”

  He made no sign that he’d heard me. His body froze statue-still and his eyes stayed locked on Samson. I grabbed his hand and yanked it, which brought his blank gaze down to me.

  “That’s Samson,” Daniel said. “He ain’t pretend.”

  I nodded and tried to sound calm. “Yeah. Now you need to get out into the lake. Quiet as you can, deep as you can. Swim out around the edge of the cove and wait for me in the forest.”

  Daniel shook his head. “He’ll chase me.”

  By now the bear had crossed along the cliff face, putting the burning car between us. “Samson can’t see,” I whispered. “And if you’re in the water, he won’t be able to smell you. You’ll be safe. But you got to go right now.”

  “You gotta come with me.”

  I glanced at the wreck of the Skylark and couldn’t see Samson directly, but the fire cast his monstrous shadow against the cliff face. “I’ll come right behind you,” I told my brother. “But you’ve got to go first.”

  Daniel, who never had anything but total faith in me, said, “Come fast,” and his hand slipped from mine as he started toward the lake. Willing him forward, I watched his dark form wade out into the shallows. He carefully picked his way across the sharp rocks and soon the water covered his knees, his waist. Daniel was a good swimmer, and I knew he’d make it around the cove with no trouble.

  With my brother out of harm’s way, I turned to my own situation. Samson stood off to the side of the Skylark now, sniffing at another tire, this one smoldering. Hoping this was enough to keep him distracted, I struggled up onto my good leg and tried to put weight on the bleeding one. Pain spiked through me and made it clear I’d either be limping or crawling to the lake.

  Then a thought sparked in my head. Suppose I made it to the water? My bloody trail would only lead Samson in Daniel’s direction. I looked out to the lake, where I could see my brother in water only a few feet deep, not even twenty, thirty feet out. Samson could cover that distance in seconds. Daniel needed more time.

  I considered trying to lure Samson away by limping for the trail, but I couldn’t guarantee he’d follow. Till Daniel was safe, I couldn’t leave him unprotected. So I bit my lip at the pain in my leg and lowered myself back onto the ground, posting my body between the bear and my brother. From the rocks scattered around me, I gathered fist-sized stones and stacked them into a small pyramid at my side. Samson lost interest in the smoking rubber and began cautiously circling the fire in widening arcs. The bottom half of my right leg was warm and sticky with blood, a scent I knew would summon him by deepest instinct.

  When he came across my trail, he dead-stopped. With the burning wreck behind him, he turned toward me and stared. Even though I knew he couldn’t see, I didn’t move. He took one step in my direction, paused, then took another. Slowly but deliberately, he began plodding my way, sweeping his great head side to side. It seemed almost like he was walking out of the flames, like the beast had been born in that open fire.

  A breeze swirled in off the water and circled the cove, stirring up the flames and somehow bringing me Samson’s smell. It was an awful, feral odor, not just of a wild animal but of something sickly, close to death. It made me think of rotting corpses, squirrels and birds and rabbits that I’d stumbled across in the woods. When I inhaled Samson’s scent, I wondered how long it had been since this carnivore had tasted fresh kill.

  My heart thumped like it was trying to break through my rib cage, and every muscle in my legs twitched with the urge to run. All I’d be able to manage was a hobble, though. So I tried to breathe easy and keep my mind steady, like in a race. I knew that heading straight for the lake would only lead Samson closer to Daniel. I’d never make it past him to the steep trail, and even if I did, he’d catch me on the hill. My only hope was to disorient him, turn his attention back to the crash maybe, then slip away into the water without him in pursuit.

  I stayed quiet and still until he was about ten feet away, close enough that I could hear the scrape and click of his claws against the rocks. Slowly, I lifted a stone in each hand. I heaved one over him to the left, one to the right, and when they clattered against the other rocks, he snapped his head in each direction. For a moment, I thought he might investigate. But then, his face returned to aim straight at me. He was locked onto the scent of my blood, too close and too hungry to be fooled.

  He started toward me, with his rotting breath misting the air, and his sightless pink eyes fixed on me. Hard as I could, I fastballed a rock and it thudded against his neck. His lips snarled back, and a low growl filled McGinley’s Cove. I rolled to my belly and jerked myself across the rocks, reaching and pulling with my arms, flopping like a fish, thinking of nothing now but escape. The still lake spread out before me, perfectly peaceful and unconcerned.

  Then a crushing weight anchored my leg, flaring white pain through my eyes. I heard a scream, realized it was mine, cocked my head back, and found Samson driving a paw onto my right knee. Blind, he stared down at the gashed calf as if he could see the ripe flesh in the moonlight. Samson swept his other paw, a blurring slash, and he shredded the muscle. A strip of something wet arced into the darkness. I twisted as much as I could and kicked my free foot into his snout. It stunned him, but he was more annoyed than hurt. In response, he pressed hard on my trapped knee, driving bone into rock. Then he opened that great jaw, a cavern of teeth, and snapped down on my leg.

  Since this happened, I’ve read about how pain works, how your brain drowns your body with chemicals to help you endure the unendurable. It produces a natural high. So when a gazelle has its limp neck draped in the mouth of a lion and is being dragged to its death, it’s actually experiencing a kind of ecstasy. Call it God’s last gift to the doomed. So maybe something like this is what was happening to me on the rocks that night. I mean, I have a clear memory of Samson biting into my leg. But after that first burst of white pain, there was no agony. Instead, I was peaceful in a weird way. It was like the twilight of sleep, when you’re about to slip away and you can feel the weariness of the day fading, and you know there’s no sense fighting it anymore.

  Maybe it’s because of this sleepy sense that when I saw Daniel, I thought for sure he was a dream. His arms hung straight at his sides as he slowly rose from the shallows. Thin ripples spread out away from him. The lake had washed the false blood from him, so he was clean and pure.

  Now for the record, I’m not one hund
red percent, absolutely certain of anything once Samson starting working on my leg. It honestly could be that my doped-up brain imagined the sound of my brother’s voice and the song that seemed to gather from the walls of the cove. I’ve never been able to recall any lyrics from what I heard, just the rhythm, which I can only describe as something like a lullaby. Whether Daniel really sang or not, what I know for sure is that he swam back to the rocky beach after he was safe, and because of that, Samson stopped what he was doing.

  The great bear turned to my brother, and I tried to shout and grab another rock, but I don’t think I made any sound at all. Dark clouds floated across my vision, and I had to concentrate just to stay awake. All I have from this part of the story are snapshot images: Daniel reaching an open hand to Samson. The bear lowering his huge head as he approached my brother. Daniel setting a gentle hand on the bear’s neck. His fingers caressing the fur. Sweet Daniel smiling back at me. Then the two of them turning in unison and walking side by side together, heading toward the water, as if Daniel might lead the bear to the fairy tale land of harmony and peace.

  But then a thunderclap from a cloudless sky—a rifle shot from the Lookout. The startled bear towered up on its hind legs with a roar that rattled my bones. Daniel stood his ground, holding up his hands the way a lion tamer might. At the second rifle shot, Samson flinched in pain, swung wildly, and a massive paw caught Daniel in the chest. My brother’s body lifted up into the air like a tossed doll. He sailed over me and crashed to the rocks not fifteen feet away. At the water’s edge, Samson collapsed in a heap. The third shot made his mighty body twitch. The fourth hit home but had no effect, as the great bear was finally dead.

  “Daniel!” I screamed, already scrambling over the rocks, crawling forearm over forearm, dragging my mauled leg behind me. His body lay on its side, facing away from me, toward the fire and the cave. High above, someone was shouting from the Lookout, and I was aware of flashing lights and maybe a siren’s cry. But I stayed focused on Daniel’s silhouette. The tips of my fingers began to tingle, then my hands, but even after my arms went numb with cold, I drove them onto the rocks and pulled myself forward. I don’t know if it was from shock or loss of blood, but each breath took more effort to draw in, until by the time I reached Daniel I wasn’t breathing so much as sucking at the air. I stretched a trembling hand to his shoulder and eased him onto his back.

  My brother’s eyes were closed, as if he were merely asleep. But a twist in his neck made me gasp, and from an open gash on his forehead, shiny blood seeped along the side of his face. By one elbow, a jagged bone broke through the skin. “Daniel,” I said. “Danny.”

  I hoisted myself up and leaned onto him, draped an arm over his wet chest as if hugging him. I choked back sobs and my tears fell onto his still face. I understood that others were coming, that Bundower had surely summoned rescue workers who were on their way. But the help seemed so distant at that moment, like they’d never be able to reach us, like Daniel and I were buried together in the deepest part of the earth. I couldn’t hear anything by that point, no sound at all, and my body was beginning to shiver. A darkness was gathering around us.

  I settled my face onto Daniel’s thin chest like a pillow, maybe to pass out, maybe to die for all I knew. His shirt smelled like the lake, dank and rich. And his chest rose and fell once, I remember that, but when I pressed my ear down, I could find no beating heart.

  My eyes closed, and I tried to push the truth from my mind—that these two wrecked bodies, these two fragile lives, were entirely my fault. I couldn’t stand the thought that, driven by anger and fear, I’d led my brother and me here to the edge of death.

  And now it was too late.

  I remember thinking those exact words and wishing for oblivion, just wanting to be gone from where I was and who I’d become. But as I sucked in what I thought might well be my last breaths, a smell came to me through the must of the lake and Samson’s foul odor. Vanilla. A sweetness that had nothing to do with this place. And with my eyes still closed, I felt my hand working along Daniel’s body, finding his fingers—still warm and soft. My own fingers laced together with his, squeezing so he could feel the fading life I had left, take that strength from my body if it would help him. But I knew that the power to bring him back was not within me.

  I wondered, though, if it might be somewhere else. The instant this notion came to me, a low warmth began to glow in the center of my body, a bright shining that hummed with white heat. I don’t remember if I spoke the words, or if I just imagined them in my mind: If you’re real then you’re here right now and you can hear me and keep this sweet boy from dying. Don’t punish him for my screwup. You need somebody to die tonight, you take me. The warm feeling swelled up in my chest, filled it, and spilled outward, and my arms weren’t cold anymore, and I began to feel light, weightless. Please. Please God. He’s so much better than me. Please God. There’s just nothing right about Daniel dying. Let him stay. And now it seemed I’d become the warmth itself, that there wasn’t an Anderson Grant anymore at all but just the warmth extending out into forever. I still felt Daniel’s chest beneath my face somehow but that was the last thing, I knew I was about to leave this behind and dissipate, surrender to a greater warmth swirling calmly all around me like an ocean, and still I kept thinking it: Please God. Please God.

  “Annie!” my mother screamed, and I opened my eyes. Flashlight beams bobbed across the rocks as Bundower ran to Samson’s corpse and my mother charged for her children, dropping down next to us, and I felt the warmth still. I had not left it behind yet. My mother wept and far off I heard the patter-thump of helicopter blades. But I turned away from all these distractions and closed my eyes a final time. I pressed my face tight to my brother’s quiet chest. Please God. Please God. Please God. Over and over the words drummed in my mind: Please God. Please God. Please God.

  And just before they pulled me off him, I felt it on my cheek. It resonated like the first note of a hymn breaking the silence in a cathedral, like the very start of something grand and sacred: a single pulsing beat that could only mean life.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The emergency helicopter flew me all the way to a trauma center in Philadelphia, where a team of surgeons battled tissue damage and massive infection for hours. Of course, I have no memory of this. Even following the operation, for a time all I have are snippets of life: a loudspeaker paging someone; a nurse yanking back a curtain; a clear tube stuck in my forearm; a doctor in a white coat standing with his back to me. These mixed with nightmare fragments from the cove: that gunshot’s first crack; the burning tire; the sight of Samson’s open jaws. Doped up as I was on drugs, I had a hard time distinguishing reality from delusion. Once, late at night, I swore I heard Daniel singing, but when I looked around, the dark room was empty.

  When I finally came to for good, groggy and confused in the early morning light, my mother was sitting in a chair in the corner, paging through her worn Bible. The mattress was propped up just a little, so I could see her without lifting my head from the pillow, and she didn’t notice my open eyes. I didn’t speak, partly because I wanted to be sure this wasn’t another dream, partly because I couldn’t think of what to say. I didn’t know if Daniel was alive or dead, and I was afraid to ask. His beating heart, the last thing I could recall, seemed more fantasy than memory.

  My mother’s face was gaunt, as if she’d gone days without food or sleep, and I could tell too that she’d been crying. Rather than deal with her pain and my own, I closed my eyes and slipped back into the haze.

  Later—a couple hours? The next morning?—I opened my eyes again and saw the television was on. Just past the foot of the bed, high up on the wall, a cartoon turtle walked beside a cartoon moose with a red bow tie. There was no sound, and the blocky letters of the closed captioning sputtered across the bottom of the screen. My mother sat in her chair, Bible on her lap, head tilted in sleep. My eyes rolled away from her and settled on the bottom of my bed. In the space where the
lower half of my right leg should have been, there was nothing but a flat white sheet. I saw the peak made by my left foot and moved it, making the sheet ripple. But when I thought, Right foot, move, nothing happened, because it simply wasn’t there. This was impossible, of course, and even after I reached down, even after my hand under the sheet gingerly touched the gauze-covered stump that ended just past the knee, the amputation didn’t seem real. Nothing seemed real.

  The Bible thumped to the floor and I turned to my mother, who had stood up but not rushed over. She crossed the room slowly, came to my side, and put two hands on my arm. “Thank God you came back,” she said. “Oh, my sweet girl.”

  That’s what she called me when I was little. She leaned in over the IV tubing and kissed my cheek. “The surgeons didn’t have a choice,” she said. “Your leg, it was just too—”

  Samson’s open jaw flashed in my mind. “So they just cut it off?”

  She shook her head. “They tried their best, Annie. They saved as much as they could. Things were worse than you know.” She clutched at her mouth, as if the words themselves scared her. When she took her hands away, she said, “They kept telling me you’d wake up, but it’s been three days.”

  Three days, I thought. I wondered again about Daniel, a subject my mother was clearly avoiding. She went on. “I’ve already talked with the doctors about your recovery. They say with time and effort, you’ll still be able to have a perfectly normal life.”

  “A perfectly normal life!” I shouted back at her. “Sure. Of course. Me and my freaking peg leg. That’s exactly what we’ll have.” Tears pressed in along the rims of my eyes. I was trapped in that bed. I couldn’t stop looking at the place where my leg should’ve been, though the sight disgusted me. I turned away from the stump, turned away from my mother, and finally fixed on the TV, where the cartoon moose was spinning that turtle on its back.