Author's webpage: http://www.geocities.com/VBabe47/home.html

Author's disclaimer:
There once was a group in Toronto
Who made the world's best TV show
People, wolves, places, and plot
All the rights they have got
But here I can do what I want to

Author's notes: The author is running off to Mouseland two seconds after she throws this baby on the hexwood archive. She will not be back on line for at least six months, maybe more, but she still loves feedback. The "author" link actually goes to one of the author's best friends. Send feedback there.

***

Oh, I believe there are angels among us, Sent down to us from somewhere up above. They come to you and me in our darkest hour, To show us how to live,
To teach us how to give,
To guide us with the light of love.
"Angels Among Us", Alabama

***

She hadn't been looking for angels.

She had been looking for a story, a simple bread-and-butter piece that she could free lance to some local paper, or to a wire service if she was lucky. Being a free-lance journalist had it's perks, but job security wasn't one of them. Instead of an editor handing her something to go work up, Susan Badgett had to find her own stories, write her own stories from the ground up, and sell said stories before they became old news. Usually, this meant streetwork. Covering the local interest stories, the crimes and other bits that happened too quickly for an editor to assign to a staff writer.

Those stories were not normally all that hard to find. In a city as large as Chicago, there were always neighborhoods languishing in appalling condition, and appalling neighborhoods trying to claw their way out of that condition. There were children getting other children pregnant, old people left to die in cardboard boxes in back alleys, and gangs shooting down innocent bystanders in their haste to kill everyone who didn't wear their colors. There was always darkness to find, and it was easy to make a living off darkness.

It was the darkness that had caught her eye.

Lake Shore Drive was one of the busiest streets in Chicago. Literally thousands of feet throbbed against each square inch of sidewalk on a daily basis. People pushed and shoved and hurried, some walking confidently so as not to get themselves mugged, some hunched over against the chill, real or imagined. Some just walking. Everyone looking where they were going, thinking their own thoughts, occupied with their own world.

No one noticed the boy.

He wasn't, in all fairness, easy to notice. A delicate, almost doll-like Hispanic child, four years old at most, was standing in the shadow of a garbage can, tiny body pressed tightly against the brick wall of the building behind him. His clothes were ragged and filthy, his dusky skin streaked with dirt. Only one foot was enclosed in a shoe, the other was bare, and he refused to rest his full weight on it, suggesting that something on the city streets had already sliced the tender skin. His arms were wrapped protectively around himself, and he didn't make a sound, his timid manner, small size, and dark clothing effectively hiding him from passerby.

Even she would not have seen him if she had no happened to look in his direction exactly as he was looking up. Looking up was something he did rarely. For the most part, his eyes were cast downward towards the pavement, long strands of straight black hair hanging down in a thick fringe to hide them. When he did look up, though, they were enough to catch her attention, a ring of startling white around despairing black.

Her first reaction had been horror. This was the kind of child you saw in television ads at four in the morning when you couldn't sleep. This was the kind of child that do-gooder organizations were always asking you to sponsor. Maybe he didn't have the bloated belly and the skeletal limbs yet, but he was obviously malnourished, his eyes too large, his body too small to be healthy.

Her mind had then insisted that these things simply did not occur in America. Those were children from *other* countries. Countries with *problems*. Not here. Not Chicago. Not her own back yard.

Susan's stomach twisted as those desperate eyes came up again. What could she be expected to do? He was probably a crack baby or worse. What if he had some crazed relative near by, ready to attack if she laid a finger on the 'abandoned' child. What if the boy himself was insane? Sure, he looked small enough, but those eyes...there was that touch of wildness there that could be dangerous. What if he had AIDS? Even just scratching her or biting her could be a kiss of death if that were the case!

The best thing to do would be to call Child and Family Services. They would come get the boy. All she had to do was write down the name of the store he was standing in front of, and pop a quarter into the nearest pay phone. It would be simple as that, and then someone who knew what they were doing could help him. Really, it was better that way. Weren't boys like him their job, after all?

She reached into her purse for her cell phone, and for a split second, her attention was away from the boy.

When she looked up, she nearly dropped her cell phone. In that moment of inattention, an angel had appeared, right there in the middle of Chicago.

Her mind had been rigorously trained by years of strict discipline and a college education, not to mention a journalist's cynicism. She had seen her share of crackpot religious hokum debunked, and had helped in the debunking several times. Yet all her vaunted vocabulary could pitch upon was 'angel'.

He certainly looked the part of an angel. All right, so maybe Hallmark never drew them in blue jeans, but at least that sweater was white, wasn't it? The face looked like a composite fantasy of Renaissance masters and daydreaming schoolgirls, breathtakingly handsome yet unpretentiously wholesome. He looked heavenly, but that wasn't it. Susan had seen dozens, even hundreds of handsome men in her life, even a handful that would rival this exquisite creature. There was something else about him. The way he held himself, the way he moved...it was so kind.

Kindness was something she didn't see much of any more.

She watched, transfixed, as he slowly knelt down to the child's level, his movements unthreatening, a gentle smile on his face. At first, the boy shrank back, but the man didn't seem bothered by that. Instead of pressing forward, he rocked back on his heels a bit, widening the distance between the two.

Curious, Susan moved slowly closer to the two of them, still trying to appear not to have seen them in case one or both should look up and see her. The man was speaking now, his voice low and melodious, and Susan frowned. The words weren't familiar. She moved closer still, stopping only ten feet away as she pretended to be fascinated with something in the store window.

She could hear them now. The man was speaking to the boy in Spanish! She didn't understand the language, but the words seemed to be delivered with a rhythmic cadence, almost as if he were relating a story or nursery rhyme. Whatever it was, the little boy's reaction was stunning. He lit up from within, showing a mouthful of tiny, pearly teeth as he grinned broadly.

The man spoke again, and Susan shivered as she heard a sweet laugh bubble from the child. It was the same sound she heard from her own white, healthy, privileged suburban niece that was now coming out of this poor, half-starved urban Hispanic child. It was the boundless sound of a child's happiness.

The child laughed again, then the man asked some kind of question. This time the response wasn't so happy. All the joy melted from the little boy's face, replaced by the wide, frightened eyes again. A rapid stream of babyish Spanish came pouring from the heart-shaped mouth, delivered between gulping sobs as tears fell from the dark eyes down the rounded cheeks. Through it all, the man kept his distance, though he nodded, occasionally offering a compassionate, "Si, si."

When the child had finished, he reached to wipe his cheeks with the back of one fist, but the man reached into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out an actual cloth handkerchief, which he presented to the boy. For the longest time, the little urchin just looked at it, unsure. Susan stifled a laugh. She probably wouldn't know what to do with it either! No one, but no one carried handkerchiefs any more!

Cautiously, the child seemed to ask what it was for, and the man smiled warmly. Ever so slowly, ever so easily, he reached out with the white cloth, wiping the tears from one cheek. Then he presented it again, and this time, the boy took it, scrubbing eagerly at his face with far more gusto than needed to merely remove tears. The man nodded in approval, then gestured towards the foot that the child was standing so gingerly upon.

This sparked quite the reaction. The boy cried out, "Non, non!", shrinking back into his little corner as he hugged himself, clutching his new handkerchief for dear life.

Nodding, the man moved back again, speaking low, soothing words until the child began to uncurl. Then, it seemed as if a series of questions were asked and answered, the boy relaxing a bit more each time, even smiling again. Now the man was holding out his hand for the child. The child was taking it. The man was picking the little boy up! Susan froze. What possessed him? All the old fears swept through her. Didn't the man know the kinds of risks he was taking? If nothing else, that little boy almost certainly had lice, and probably fleas to boot!

As the man turned towards her, the child mounted on his broad shoulders, little fingers entwined in the man's dark hair, Susan turned away, pretending to rummage in her purse. Fine. Let them leave. Let that stupid, foolhardy, beautiful man take his little refugee and go somewhere else, somewhere where she didn't have to think about them.

She was about to turn around, certain that they were gone, when she felt a tap on her shoulder. Startled, she jumped a mile. Her hand went to the strap of her purse, tightly clutching the can of mace she kept there as she whirled around.

It was the man, with the boy still sitting on his shoulders, looking down at her like some dark-eyed little bird. Susan's grip on the can of mace didn't loosen, but she felt her heart literally skip a beat as she looked into the stranger's eyes. They were a deep, clear gray-blue, shining with intelligence and a gentle kindness that, in combination with his precisely formed features, made her feel certain that he was, indeed, an otherworldly being. "Excuse me, Miss."

Every muscle in her body tightened. "Yes?"

"I couldn't help but notice you had a cellular telephone. Could you please dial 555-4459, the 27th Precinct, Chicago Police Department? I'll pay for the call."

So he had seen her. Seen her and her telephone, and that meant he had seen her deliberately pretend not to see them. Damn. She stalled. "Why do you need the police? Is something wrong?"

He smiled, looking up at the child. "I need to contact this young man's parents. Miguel's family is here on vacation from Brazil, where their family owns a number of sugar plantations, and he became separated from them approximately four days ago. He's well for the most part, though quite frightened and hungry, but his parents are likely beside themselves with worry."

On vacation from Brazil. Sugar plantations. The child was well to do then. Not a crack baby. Not an abandoned gang child. Not some homeless waif born of parents too drunk or drug-addled to care where he was. The beloved child of a family whom he had simply lost.

She looked up into the boy's face again. This time, she saw not some pitiable creature of another race, but a little blonde girl from twenty six years ago. She had been three, huddled crying in a corner of the zoo after she had run away from Mommy and Daddy on a game that had been fun until she couldn't see them any more. The man who fed the seals had helped her find them within an hour. It had been the most terrifying hour of her young life. She could hardly imagine four days of such hell.

But what if the man who fed the seals had passed her by? What if she hadn't been his problem? What if he had assumed the worst and simply called Social Services, forcing her parents to go through the agony of proving they weren't abusive or neglectful of her if they wanted to get her back? What if everyone had passed her by?

Hands shaking, she fumbled open the buckle that held the flap of her purse closed, rummaging blindly inside until her hands closed over the sleek casing of her cell phone. Tears blurred her eyes as she pressed it into the man's hand. Then Susan turned and ran.

The cell phone and the hundred dollars it had cost were forgotten.

The little boy was not.

***

"But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him." The Bible, Gospel of Luke, 10:33

***

THE END