The Wayward Gifted - Broken Point

In
memory of Elizabeth

For
Dr. Klesel

The Wayward Gifted

Broken Point

Donna K Childree and Mike L. Hopper

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

ONE

Steuart
couldn’t sleep.
He was
angry with his mother. “I don’t want to leave Atchison Bay,” he whispered. “I
want to stay here.”

Lying miserably in his antique, hand-carved
bed, he took a deep breath, pulled at his covers, and stared up at the ceiling
before grabbing hold of his favorite pillow and giving it a tight squeeze.
Tugging and wrestling with the thing, Steuart pretended it was a child-sized
dinosaur discovered earlier in the day during his exploration along the south
side of the house. This was just beyond the Oleander and beneath the hedgerow
of blue Hydrangeas. Feeling not only paternal, but also lonely, Steuart chose
to keep the unusual specimen and raise him as a pet. “I will name you Leighton
Jefferson Allnight O’Dowd,” he said. “Your nickname will be
Sparky
.” Steuart situated himself, took
a deep breath, and put the pillow down.

Gazing across his room, Steuart thought
about waking too soon from a newer bed in a house he did not care to see.
I don’t want a new room. I don’t need a new
room.
Burying his head in another pillow, he wondered about his new school.
Will we ride a bus? Can we walk or ride
our bikes?
He wondered about his teachers.
Will they be nice? What if they smell?
Steuart coughed. He thought
about making new friends and considered how Midwestern children might differ
from children in the South.
Do they play
kickball? Do they enjoy reading? Are they clever?
 
Sitting up, he squeezed his pillow again
and whispered, “Will you come with me?”

Although he loved his mother, Steuart
wished she had more time for him and his sister Sam. He also wished she were
nicer, kinder, and more fun like his grandmother, Ida Light. While it wasn’t immediately
apparent, acquaintances could quickly see that Olivia DuBoise had a way of
being difficult with the world. You might say she had an abrasive affect, and you
might also say that it wasn’t her fault. Olivia was born with a narrow personal
perspective allowing little room for the ideas and consideration of others.
Steuart shuddered as he turned on his side and thought about his mother’s
preferred devotion. She read daily from an instructional publication titled
Right, Good, and Appropriate
.

“Good etiquette is everything,” she
liked to say.

“I feel sick,” Steuart mumbled as he
sat and reached for the cup of water on his nightstand. Ready to vomit, he
rushed into his bathroom, turned on the faucet, and splashed cold water across
his face. He grabbed a white washcloth and held it under the running water,
gagging as he moved towards the toilet and lifted the seat. Heaving on his
knees with his head above the bowl, Steuart pressed the cool, wet cloth against
his forehead and waited for the nausea to pass. After a while, and finally feeling
some better, he returned to bed, stopping first by the switch plate to increase
the speed of his ceiling fan. He climbed onto the mattress, plumped his
pillows, and situated himself once more. He reached for his cup and sipped. “That’s
better.”

Steuart could not sleep. Wrestling with
his pillow, he stood on his bed and pretended he and Sparky were in a match. He
held his hands high above his head and rotated slowly, nodding to the
spectators as the announcer introduced him to the crowd. Hearing the bell,
Steuart turned and flopped, belly first, onto the mattress before jumping up,
grabbing Sparky, and throwing him across the bed. Steuart moved from one corner
to another tossing the pillow, catching the pillow, tossing, catching, and
working up a sweat—increasing his speed and intensity with each throw. Standing
in the center, he jumped three more times and lunged forward, this time pinning
Sparky under his belly. Up again, he clutched the pillow, jumped, jumped again,
and threw Sparky into the air. He watched as the pillow, flying high, was
grabbed up and spit out by the whirling blades of the fan, hurled across the
room, and dumped onto the floor where it laid silent, crumpled, and defeated behind
an overstuffed club chair. “Oh no,” Steuart sighed as he jumped, and ran to
rescue his opponent. “Are you okay pal?”

In bed again, Steuart held Sparky close
and gave the pillow a squeeze. “I’m sorry about that. Can we continue?”
Together they stood and readied themselves for the next round. “Wait,” Steuart
looked at the referee. “Don’t start yet.” He dropped Sparky, jumped from bed
and ran towards the door. “I need to turn down the fan.” He lowered the speed,
turned around, raced back, and dove onto the mattress. He jumped, dropped,
jumped again and then lunged a final time, pinning his opponent to the bed.
Steuart called the count and pronounced himself the winner. Out of breath, he
gasped, flipped onto his back, and lay quietly for several minutes before pulling
Sparky close. “You’re a good man,” he whispered.

Steuart
drifted into a dream. His grandmother became a helium balloon attached to a
string that was 43,026 feet long. He wrapped the string around his waist four
times, or maybe five, tying it to his wrist so he could keep Ida with him
always, pull her in extra close if he needed help, or just wanted to say “Hello
Grandmother.” Everywhere he walked Ida floated in the sky above him. On
beautiful days she rode the wind with the rafters causing Steuart to walk at a
faster pace. On windy days she moved swiftly, lifting him completely off the
ground and carrying him high into the air.

Ida
could touch the clouds. She added sugar, baking soda and organic vanilla to
cumulus clouds and created fresh, fluffy cloud candy. Quite by accident, Steuart
learned that he could stick out his tongue and taste little bits of the delicacy
as it gently floated towards the ground. When conditions were perfect, Ida used
the same ingredients to create Steuart’s favorite candy—divinity. If
Steuart chose to skip or run extra fast, his grandmother moved with him, even
if he moved as fast as the wind. If rain came, he loosened the string letting
Ida rise high above the clouds for protection. And, on cold days, he pulled her
in close and wrapped her inside his coat.

Once,
while racing through a field, Steuart grew concerned and looked up to make sure
his grandmother was there. What he saw was her hand gently leaving her mouth as
she blew him a kiss. Like the greatest athlete, Steuart jumped quick, straight,
and high making the catch. He put the kiss into his pocket for safekeeping and
then created several of his own, sending all of them to Ida at once. He watched
as she held the kisses and rubbed them together in her palms. “I love you,” she
said, opening her hands and releasing thousands of white butterflies into the
sky.

“I
love you too, Grandmother.”

For
a short while, before the flutter of butterfly wings gave him a need to rest, Steuart
felt that his heart might burst open with love. Lying on the grass, beside a gurgling
stream, he made a moment of silence. He thought of other children and their
grandparents around the world as he sent a silent prayer of hope into the
universe for their good health, long lives, and happiness.

Steuart dozed fitfully before waking
clammy and wet with thoughts and worries of arriving too soon at a house he
already couldn’t stand. After all, what could be good about a new house and a
new place without his grandmother?
I’ll
never feel happy in another place. This is terrible.
At the age of ten, he
couldn’t remember feeling sadder. Steuart still couldn’t sleep. In times past,
when this was a problem, Ida encouraged him to make up stories. Quite often it
worked, so he began.

Steuart
pretended a pirate ship looking for seamen and carrying a recently discovered
hidden treasure, sailed into the bay and docked at the end of his pier. Aware of
the Galapagos pirates, he was also sadly aware of the giant island turtles, Chelonoidis
nigra and their danger of extinction. He was certain that the pirates, infamously
reputed for gorging themselves on turtle soup, were responsible for the crime.

Surprisingly,
they seduced Steuart’s mother into working a full-time rotation between the
southernmost Galapagos pirate turtle farms, Takemoore and Arrrrrrr. The job called
for a caretaker/cook responsible for daily soup production using a gourmet
secret recipe brought from France two hundred years earlier by a 102-year-old,
blue-blooded Huguenot chef-turned-pirate named Jacques Supree. Steuart was
thrilled until he overheard the pirates pondering their lack of protein. No
more turtles meant no more soup—and no need for Olivia.