The Healer Read Free

longer hear the sounds of the birds that had been singing, or the tap-tap of a woodpecker who’d been hammering on a nearby tree.
    He watched in disbelief as his little boy bent over the squirrel. How could Jonah move when Adam felt unable to even take a breath? Then the air began to shift.
    At first Adam thought it was a breeze; then he realized it was more like a vibration. The tremors rocked against his body from every direction, and even beneath his feet. Was this an earthquake—or the end of the world?
    A faint light enveloped the child and the squirrel as Jonah’s small, grubby fingers gently spread across the animal’s belly. When the squirrel’s back legs began to twitch, Adam thought he was seeing things. When the animal’s tiny belly began to rise and fall, Adam heard his neighbors’ swift, indrawn breaths. When the squirrel’s black eyes opened and his nose began to twitch, Wilson’s wife, Patty, groaned, then began to pray. Adam recognized the chant but did not understand the words. It didn’t matter. At this moment, a prayer in any language seemed more than appropriate.
    Suddenly Jonah rocked back on his heels and put his hands in his lap. As he looked up at Adam, the smile on his face was nothing short of beautiful. At the same time, Adam felt the air around them change, and the light that had enveloped the boy and the squirrel disappeared.
    “Look, Papa, I fixed him. I did good, right?”
    Adam didn’t know he was crying until Jonah stood up and laid his hands on his father’s cheeks.
    “Don’t be sad, Papa. The squirrel is okay. See? I fixed it just fine.”
    The squirrel was up and running as Adam began to come to himself. Old Sun-Catcher glanced longingly at the squirrel, then fixed his gaze back at Jonah, as if waiting for permission to move.
    “Go on, Sun-Catcher. No squirrel today,” Jonah announced.
    The old dog jumped up and loped off as Adam reached for Jonah and pulled him close.
    Wilson and Patty stared at Jonah without speaking. When their oldest boy started toward Jonah, they grabbed him, then took the kids and left without explanation.
    Adam felt their fear, but there was nothing he could do to change it.
    “Jonah…oh, Jonah…what did you do?” Adam whispered, still unable to believe his own eyes.
    Jonah pulled back and stared at his father.
    “Papa, did I do something bad?”
    Adam sighed. He heard the tremble in his son’s voice and saw the tears in his eyes, which was the last thing he’d meant to achieve. He hadn’t meant to scare Jonah, but he was scared—as scared as he’d ever been.
    “No, no, nothing bad, son. Not bad at all.”
    Jonah relaxed and then smiled as he blinked away tears. “Okay, Papa,” he said, and sank into Adam’s lap.
    Silence lengthened as Adam sat with his arms around Jonah, trying to find words for what he’d seen. Finally, there was no way around it but to ask.
    “Jonah?”
    Jonah tilted his head so that he could see his father’s face. “Yes, Papa?”
    “How did you do that?”
    “Do what, Papa?”
    “Fix the squirrel. How did you do that?”
    Jonah’s eyebrows arched as his eyes widened. Adam found himself staring at his own reflection.
    “I just fixed what Sun-Catcher broke, that’s all.”
    Adam felt sick. This was so far out of his comfort zone that he didn’t even know what to say or how to say it. Still, he had to know.
    “Have you ever done this before…I mean, fix animals that were, uh, broken?”
    “Sure, Papa. All the time. Just like you. I fix just like you.”

Two
    West Virginia
Present Day
    T hin wisps of smoke from the dying embers of a campfire spiraled upward through the skeletal limbs of the barren trees. Before morning, frost would cover the ground.
    A man slept near the dying fire, wedged as tightly beneath the overhang of rock at his back as he could get. A large mountain lion lay stretched out on the outcropping of rock above, chewing on the haunch of a deer that it had taken down earlier in the