A-Sides

  **********

  The cold of the previous night had thawed to a fairly tepid dawn that commenced with distant rumbles of thunder that grew steadily closer and more formidable. By the time Alan got to the airport that morning a roaring thunderstorm was in full voice. The wipers of his rental car could barely keep pace with the pelting downpour and standing water on the roads sloshed into his engine compartment, causing the little red battery light to glow feebly a couple of times. Thunder didn’t crack but rumbled, shaking the earth as if some massive metal machine were pounding the ground. Lightning was steady and bright, sometimes blinding.

  Though he kept the idea of the prophesied crashing plane somewhere near the front of his thoughts, Alan’s most pressing cogitation was on his physical well being. He had awakened that morning pain-free for the first time in years. His sleep the previous night had been untroubled and deep and he literally felt twenty years younger. He hadn’t felt this good since he’d been a teenager. The pain wasn’t dammed up by a pill. It was gone.

  He sprinted nimbly from his rental car, his jacket over his head in the torrential rain, and into the airport terminal, his knee joints springy and willing. His flight wouldn’t be leaving for an hour and, just on the off chance, he strolled over to one of the information desks and asked the agent there to page Daryl King, Cyrus’s doctor. Perhaps he had arrived from Hilton Head. Only a moment after the page went out over the intercom, the courtesy phone buzzed and Alan picked it up.

  Alan explained who he was and what he was doing, and would it be possible for the doctor to answer a couple of questions? Dr. King suggested they meet for coffee at the Skycap Cafe.

  Dr. King was short and affable. His hair was wet and his umbrella still dripped as he sat at the table. His black overcoat gleamed from rivulets of water catching the light. Growls of thunder were still clearly perceptible even deep inside the airport terminal.

  King took the proffered cup of coffee in both hands and gulped it gratefully.

  “Nasty out there,” he said. “I’ve got a thousand hours of flight time in and this is about as bad as I’ve ever seen it. My advice: don’t fly a little Cessna in this weather.”

  “I appreciate your seeing me, Dr. King,” Alan said. “But I’m pressed for time...”

  “Of course. What do you want to know?”

  “In my interview last evening, I got the feeling that... well, maybe, Cyrus isn’t really blind.”

  Dr. King cut him off with a laugh.

  “Oh, I assure you, he’s sightless. Has been since birth. But he’s very perceptive. Not enough to fool anyone, but enough to make them wonder.”

  “Okay. About this healing business...”

  “Total hogwash...maybe.”

  “What do you mean?” Alan didn’t know what to make of the twinkle in Dr. King’s eyes.

  “The science doesn’t support it. But science doesn’t support spontaneous remissions of cancers, recovery from brain death, or spontaneous reversal of paralysis. And all those things happen. Some physicians won’t cop to it, but they’ve all seen it. Medicine is like a blunt instrument, but sometimes pure will can best brute force. And that might explain Cyrus’s abilities.”

  “So you think it’s real?”

  “I said I’ve seen it happen. How it happens, through God, or force of will, or suggestion, or a pill, doesn’t make it any less real.”

  “Okay. One last thing.” Alan wavered for a moment, trying to properly phrase the question.

  “Have you ever known him to have the gift of prophecy?”

  King frowned.

  “Prophecy? That’s a new one on me. No, Cyrus has never claimed that.”

  Alan thanked the doctor for his time and the doctor wished him a safe trip. The intercom vibrated overhead. Alan’s flight was boarding.