Scratch

  “Mamma, I have to go and help the little girl,” he pleaded, seemingly oblivious to the blood bath and wreckage only a short distance in front of him.

  He could do that…just block everything out, and he did it often. His mother had wondered, time and time again, how he did it…and now, more than ever, she was glad that he could.  She wished that she could do the same, for this day of August, nineteen hundred and seventy two, would haunt Maria Angelina Stevens, until her dying day. But her Manny was special and unique. He was wise beyond his seven years, with a maturity that never ceased to amaze her. However, Manny had a gift that not even she was aware of. Manny knew things that others did not know. Manny saw things that others could not see. And Manny heard things that others could not hear, because Manny listened and watched with the ears and eyes of his soul.

  “I believe the child is gone,” she said softly, as she stared sympathetically into her young sons eyes. Normally as clear as a moon bathed night, they now had transformed from darkest brown, into a mystifying black, a transformation that occurred only when the placid waves of his mind had been deeply disturbed.

  “She’s not gone, mamma! She’s right over there!” He refuted anxiously, pointing toward the small child lying in the sand no more than fifty feet in front of them.

  “Yes, Manny…I can see her.” His mother sobbed. She looked in the direction to which he pointed. “But that is just her body…her soul has gone to be with Jesus. And there is nothing that you or I can do to help her now.”

  Manny knew what that meant. His mother had explained it all to him when his grandmother Stevens had died the year before. Even though he could see her lying as though she were asleep, in the bed his mother had called a casket, she had clarified to him that his grandmother was no longer in her body. Her body had just been a home for her soul while she was on earth. When her body had died, Jesus sent the angels to claim her soul and return it back to Heaven to be with God.

  Manny looked at the thing hovering over the little girl. It didn’t looking like an angel, and he was certain it wasn’t Jesus.