Hearts Left Behind Read Online Free

lost all potency.  A sudden fury welled up from inside
me and I began punching the pillow I had been clutching.  When my rage
burned out, I tossed the pillow to the floor and sat back against the
couch.  Then right in front of my face, one perfect tiny white
pillow-feather drifted down and landed in my open palm as soft and as light as
an answered prayer. 
     
    After my visit
with the Coopers, I walked up to my old elementary school and took a seat on
the bench alongside the empty playground.  There was more equipment here
now than we ever had, but there are no children around.  The basketball
court had a fresh layer of asphalt, brightly painted boundaries, and newly
strung nets of chain - all ready for a summer of hoops, but nobody was
playing.  What a wonder that there are no children here on such a
day.  To gather under a warm sun and play with friends.   To pretend and thrill.
    I thought back
to a time in the 4th grade when I was shooting baskets at one end of this court
while two high school boys played one-on-one at the other end.  My ball
accidentally rolled down to their end once and they tossed it back hard. 
When it rolled down there a second time one of them kicked it as high and far
as they could in the opposite direction.  I retrieved the ball and walked
home in tears.  When Dad asked me what was wrong, I told him what had
happened and he drove me back up to this very court where the boys were still
playing.  I sat in the car while he confronted the two. 
    “You two boys ever bully my son again,” he said with a
single threatening finger, “you’re going to deal with me.  Got it?”
    These boys were big.  And I don’t mean big-to-me
big.  I mean big big .  Country
big.   Dad was six feet tall and weighed around 180 pounds, but both
boys were taller and one was broader.  It was absurd to think that my dad
stood a chance against the both of them, yet all four of us there that day were
quite convinced of the absurd.  If he couldn’t lick them with size and
strength, he would lick them with a father’s rage.  My dad was fierce and
I loved him for it right then. 
    From the playground, a little girl’s voice called out, “Hey, Mister!”
    I blink and yesterday’s gone.  On the ground
between my feet there is a small grey feather.
    “Feathers will be Ethan’s way of letting you know
he is with you.”
    Of course we saw more feathers.  We were
desperate for them.
    “Hey, mister!”
    The voice was not coming from memory – where I seemed
to be living often these days – but rather from one of the nearby swings where
a little girl had somehow snuck in under my radar.  I guessed her to be about ten years old.
    “Yes?”
    “ Whatcha doin ’?”
she said between smacks of bubble gum. 
    “I’m sorry -
what?”
    The little girl pumped her knees and soared higher
into the Willow Grove sky, speaking only when she reached the highest point of
her swing.  “WHAT ARE…YOU DOING…HERE?” she asked.  Then she stopped
pumping and just stuck both legs straight out in front of her as if gliding in
for a landing.
    “Oh, uh, I don’t know.  Just thinking, I guess.”
    “Thinking?” she said.
    She pumped hard one more time and launched herself
from the swing high into the air.  Higher than I would have thought
possible and my heart skipped a beat for her safety.  A spastic gasp
escaped me and both arms reached out involuntarily as if to catch her from
afar.  Such a rise and fall would surely have resulted in sprains or
breaks for me, but she was without the rigidness and doubt of adulthood and
landed softly and safely, almost fluttering to the ground.  Then in a
glorious ‘stuck the landing’ sort of way, she raised her arms high and lifted a
smiling face to the heavens.  I found myself clapping in applause.
    “Thinking, huh?  That’s what you came here to
do?” she asked. 
    Walking toward me now, I could see that she was taller
than I had originally thought.  And her