The Touch

Ba

"What on earth did you feed that new peach tree, Ba?" the Missus said as she looked out the library window. "It's growing like crazy!"

The Missus had been quizzing him on the material for his Naturalization test. He had filed the forms. After they were reviewed, he would hear from an examiner if he qualified for citizenship. They were taking a break now.

The Missus was disturbed. Ba could tell. She was hiding her troubles with small talk.

Over the years Ba had come to recognize the signs—the way she held her shoulders high, the stiffness of her back, and her pacing. On those rare occasions when the Missus gave the slightest hint of a disturbed inner face, she always paced. And smoked. It was the only time she smoked. The afternoon sun was slanting through the high windows of the two-story library, illuminating the haze in the air from her cigarette, silhouetting her as she passed back and forth through the light, puffing on the cigarette while she slapped a folded newspaper against her thigh.

"Is there something Ba can do, Missus?"

"No… yes." She threw the newspaper onto the coffee table. "You can tell me why people spend money on garbage like this!"

Ba picked up the newspaper. The Light. He had seen it often at the supermarket checkout aisle. This issue was folded open to an article on a Long Island doctor named Alan Bulmer whose patients were claiming miracle cures at his hands.

Ba had seen the miracle cures on long island banner on the front page yesterday and had bought the issue. He knew the Missus would eventually learn of it and would be disturbed. He had wanted to be ready to help her, so he had gone to the New York Public Library and found Arthur Keitzer's book, The Sea Is in Us. He had remembered the author passing through his village during the war, asking many questions. He remembered that the author had written down the song of the Dat-tay-vao. To Ba's immense relief, he found that Keitzer had included a translation in his book. Ba would not have trusted his own translation. He had photocopied the page and returned to Monroe.

"Do you know what's going to happen now?" the Missus was saying, still puffing and pacing. "Every kook from here to Kalamazoo will be knocking on his door, looking for a miracle! I can't believe someone's printing a story like this about him! I mean, if there was ever a more conservative, cautious, touch-all-bases kind of doctor, it's Alan. I don't get it! Where do they dig up this nonsense?"

"Perhaps it is true, Missus," Ba said.

The Missus whirled and stared up at him.

"Why on earth do you say that?"

"I saw."

"When? Where?"

"At the party."

"You must have been sampling too much of the champagne."

Ba did not flinch, although the words cut like a knife. But if the Missus wished to speak to him so, he would allow her. But only her.

The Missus stepped closer and touched his arm. "Sorry, Ba. That was as cruel as it was untrue. It's just that…" She tapped a finger against the paper he still held in his hand. "This infuriates me."

Ba said nothing more.

Finally the Missus sat on the sofa and indicated the chair across from her. "Sit and tell me what you saw."

Ba remained standing, speaking slowly as he reran the scene in his head.

"The man, Mr. Cunningham, was bleeding terrible. I saw when I turned him over for the Doctor." He spread his thumb and index finger two inches. "The wound was that long"— then reduced the span to half an inch—"and that wide. The Doctor put his hand over the wound and suddenly the bleeding stopped and the man woke up. When I looked again the wound was closed."

The Missus crushed out her cigarette and looked away for a long moment.

"You know I trust your word, Ba," she said without looking at him. "But I can't believe that. You must be mistaken."

"I have seen it before."

Her head snapped around. "What?"

"At home. When I was a boy, a man came to our village and stayed for a while. He could do what Dr. Bulmer can do. He could lay his hand on a sick baby or on a person with a growth or an old sore that wouldn't heal or an infected tooth and make them well. He had what we call Dat-tay-vao…the Touch." He handed her the photocopied sheet from the Keitzer book. "Here are the words to a song about the Dat-tay-vao."

The Missus took it and read out loud: