Showing the Way

"Hi, Uncle Wil."

It was the voice of a little boy who knows he has done something very wrong -- hollow and jittery. And that voice made me shrink inside myself, because usually Andre is full of little-boy bravado. He sounded scared.

"You must never" -- and then I caught myself; I needed to be comforting and soothing. I'd lecture him later. I told him I loved him, told him to put his mom back on the phone, threw detective-like questions at her: Where were you? Why did he get in the car?

Andre would be okay, she huffed over my questions, then said she had to go. Enough of me. Click.

Only he wasn't okay. But he was lucky: A doctor found something that would have otherwise gone unnoticed: a cyst on his brain. There would be brain surgery.

Let potential tragedy come to a child, and clocks will stop ticking. Rivers will dry. We turned on heels with anguish, and learned searing lessons: Mike, the doomed tough guy, the criminal, was steadfast, there like a soldier alongside Andre.

Andre came through surgery fine, his head swelling terribly. No more football, the doctors said.

Andre went about recuperating. He played games with his mom and Mike, who slept in the bedroom next to Andre.

THEN JACK, MY FATHER, GOT SICK.

I went home to Columbus last June. His grave situation had worsened. For some reason, I couldn't face going to the hospice alone to see Jack. So I took little Andre. We glided along the gleaming halls of the hospice to Jack's private room. Once inside, Andre searched it, poking his head into the closet, as if spies were hiding. "When you gonna drive your car again, Grandad?" he asked Jack.

"Oh, I don't know," my father said. "I hope soon."

Watching them, Andre, full of life, and Jack, losing life, it seemed as if I were floating, between the things done to a child, and the things done to save a child.