(no subject)

[seymoure]

2.

There was very little damage.

He didn’t even get an undue amount of ice cream like when he had his tonsils out.After a couple of days they were sure he was okay, and they let him go home.

Nothing, other than the occasional comment by this adult or that adult, had changed in his life.

He went to school, he went home, and things ran with staggeringly sameness.

For about a week, that was true.

The family had been out at a local town baseball game and now they were on their way to get ice cream. Win or lose, the best thing about any outdoor activity was the ice cream that followed it.

But the trek to frozen joy was interrupted by a line of  emergency vehicles. Three police cars and two fire trucks were blasting their sirens and all the eyes were on a blazing building.

Everyone fell into the American tradition of rubber necking, and they rolled down their windows.

On the highest window sill, three stories above the ground came a wail.

A woman near them screamed, “My baby!”

On the sill was what appeared to be a two or three year old little girl, crying and holding out her arms. Behind her was the licking tongue of flame that threatened to consume her in moments.

The ladders were in motion, but they wouldn’t reach the child in time.

“If I could fly, I’d save her,” thought Mickey. “Or if she could fly . . .”

At that moment the girl leapt off the window, and a gasp erupted from nearly every throat.

But, instead of plummeting to her doom, the toddler flew gracefully to her mothers arms, giggling all the way.

A moment elapsed before anyone said a word.

Then Dad said, “I think we’d better get along.”

They drove in silence, but one person in the car was wearing a thoughtful, if tentative smile.

(c) 2005 by C. Wayne Owens