Free Time Dancers by Steve Cash Page A

revealed in any other way.
    Carolina had given the boy a name since there was no official name available. She called him Oliver Bookbinder—Oliver because she said he “looked straight out of Dickens” and Bookbinder for the Reverend who sent the two-year-old the boy had tried to save. The boy was dark and Hispanic in appearance and I thought he might someday have a few questions for Carolina about her choice of names. She told Ray no one was calling him Oliver because Ciela had nicknamed him Biscuit for the biscuit in a handkerchief that the boy would barely take out of his mouth when we first brought him home. He had already won everyone’s heart, especially Ciela’s, and Carolina thought Ray should meet him right away.
    She led us to the kitchen where the boy sat with Ciela at the long table. They were playing checkers, sort of. The boy had captured nearly all of Ciela’s pieces. She had only two pieces left on the board. He was sitting with his back to us, but once he heard us, he spun around and found himself face-to-face with Ray.
    He stared into Ray’s green eyes for only a second, then started trembling head to foot, and finally he fell to the floor, dragging the checkerboard down with him. The checkers went flying and scattered across the kitchen. He rolled under the table and curled up in a fetal position, trying to cover his head with the checkerboard. He was still shaking all over.
    Ray immediately leaned over and spoke softly to him. “It’s all right, kid. I’m not going to hurt you, I promise.”
    But it was no use. Ciela knelt down next to Ray and motioned with her head for him to leave, then turned and waved her arm for all of us to leave. “Go,” she whispered. “ Vamos! I will take care of this.”
    We left the room as quickly and silently as we could. Carolina was extremely upset and so was Ray. He felt like he had been responsible and apologized over and over, to Carolina, to me, to anyone who would listen.
    “It’s not you, Ray,” I said.
    “Then what is it?” he asked.
    I hesitated and glanced at Opari, who had remained mostly quiet but was observing everything carefully. The boy had never exhibited any fear of the rest of us.
    “What, Z? What is it?” Ray asked again.
    “Not what, Ray. It’s who. It’s someone who looks very much like you.”
    “The Fleur-du-Mal,” Ray said, more as statement than question. I never had to answer. “He’s a son of a bitch, that one,” Ray said to no one in particular, “a real live son of a bitch.”
    An hour later Ciela had calmed the boy enough to where he fell asleep on the bed in her bedroom. Carolina told us he was breathing evenly and she tried to assure Ray that the boy would be fine. Ray did not forget the incident soon, however. Things like that affect him deeply, much more than he ever lets anyone know, and he carried the boy’s terrified reaction with him for weeks, though the boy himself forgot about it and even became Ray’s friend within days. Upstairs, I tried to bolster Ray’s spirit. I took him to my closet where I kept his oldest possession, his bowler hat.
    He smiled once as he rubbed the brim, then placed it carefully on his head. “Kept it all the way through Africa, did you, Z?”
    I smiled back. “Sure did.”
         
    The next day I contacted Mitch and told him of our plan. I asked if he could accompany an old friend and me as far as New York. From there, the “white rose” would be our escort. He agreed on the spot, saying he needed the trip anyway for “business reasons.” At the same time, Owen Bramley was busy making all the arrangements for the entire journey. As we were going over the names of various emergency contacts, something suddenly occurred to me, something that would have been very important to Unai. I asked Owen if he had remembered Unai’s beret. “You bet, Z,” Owen said. “I wouldn’t forget that. It’s in there with him.”
    I also sent Arrosa a telegram informing her of our