Free Soul Survivor by Andrea Leininger, Bruce Leininger Page A

James his numbers. The animals pile up apples on their heads in a progression,
     until they all finally balance ten.
    Look!
    Ten apples
    On us all!
    What fun
    We will not
    Let them fall.
    There were bears and tigers and dogs in the book, but nothing alarming, or suggesting violence—just a harmless metered-rhyming
     children’s book. And in the middle of it, James lay down on his back beside Andrea and said, “Mama, the little man’s going
     like this,” and then he kicked his feet up at the ceiling, as if he were upside down in a box, trying to kick his way out.
     “Little man’s going like this.” And he kicked again. It was the same kind of kick as in his nightmares, but now he was wide
     awake.
    And he said as he kicked, “Ohhh! Ohhh! Ohhh! Can’t get out!”
    He reenacted the dream almost without emotion.
    Andrea was trembling. Her hair felt as if it were standing up. She decided to be very careful. She put down the book. And
     something made her press on: “I know you’ve talked about that before, baby, when you had those nightmares. Who is the little
     man?”
    And as he lay there with his feet up in the air, he said in a strangely quiet little voice, “Me.”
    Without making too much fuss, Andrea handed James the book and said, “You know what? Let me go get Daddy so you can tell him,
     too.”
    Bruce was in the family room, down an L-shaped hallway, watching TV. Andrea walked slowly down the hallway to the curve in
     the L; then, when she was out of James’s line of sight, she bolted down the last leg to the family room. She was in Bruce’s
     face, trying to whisper, but too excited to do anything but spray a fine, incomprehensible mist.
    Bruce wiped his face, unable to distinguish between her attempt at quiet tact and her being in the throes of a psychotic meltdown.
    “Bruce, you’ve got to hear this!”
    “What?”
    “James is talking about the little man.”
    “What!”
    Bruce leaped out of his seat, and now they were both racing down the L-shaped corridor.
    James was leafing through the Dr. Seuss book.
    Both parents approached their son as if on eggshells.
    They sat on the bed and spoke in a hoarse whisper. “Baby, tell Daddy what you were telling me before.”
    Obediently, James lay on his back, exactly as he had done before, and said, “Little man’s going like this,” and kicked up
     at the sky, exactly as he had done before, and said while he was doing it, “Ohhh! Ohhh! Ohhh! Can’t get out!”
    Andrea spoke softly: “James, you talk about the little man when you have your dreams. Who is the little man?”
    Matter-of-factly, he repeated, “Me.”
    Bruce’s face turned pale. Later, he would say that his brain felt as if it had turned into the size of a pea.
    For months Andrea had been trying to get Bruce’s attention. He always listened but then saw no significance in the dreams.
     “Children have bad dreams,” he said. “It will pass. Let’s not panic.” But now, in his own marital bed, his child was wide
     awake and calmly reenacting something so odd, so far beyond his imagination’s ability to compute, that he was momentarily
     struck dumb.
    He looked at Andrea, as if she might have some kind of explanation, and then he bent over to his son, who sat up.
    “Son, what happened to your plane?”
    James replied, “It crashed on fire.”
    “Why did your airplane crash?”
    “It got shot.”
    “Who shot your plane?”
    James made a disgusted face. The answer was so obvious. He had treated all the other questions with a certain tolerant innocence,
     but this one seemed to strike him as so inane that he rolled his eyes.
    “The Japanese!” he said with the disdain of an impatient teenager.
    It felt as if the air were sucked out of the room. Neither parent remembered breathing since they had come in here. Both felt
     in a state of mild shock. Later, they would say that the answers that came out of their two-year-old’s mouth were like Novocain.
     They were numb.
    Maybe it