Cry for the Strangers Page 0,7

they’d seen, this one wore jeans and a faded work shirt, but somehow he wore them differently. It was the fit of them. They fit too well. And the face. What was it about the face? Then it hit Brad: the man had recently shaved off a beard, leaving a pallor where the lower part of his face had been protected from the sun. And something else hit Brad: a sense of recognition. He was almost sure he knew the man.

Before he could ask Elaine about it their food arrived and the Randalls began eating, though every now and then Brad’s glance moved curiously to the man whose clothes fit and who had just cut off his beard. The man kept his eyes on his plate and ate steadily, not rushing, but wasting no time. Once he signaled for more coffee. The waitress poured it willingly but didn’t stop to chat for a few seconds as she did with everyone else in the café. When the man finished his meal, he dug into his pocket, dropped some money on the table, and started to leave. But as he moved toward the stairs his eyes suddenly met Brad’s, and he stopped short. A grin lit his face and he moved quickly across the room, his hand extended in greeting.

“Dr. Randall? Is it really you?”

Brad recognized him then and stood up. “Glen Palmer! For Christ’s sake! I’ve been sitting here all along, sure I recognized you, but I couldn’t place you.”

“It’s the beard,” Glen Palmer answered. “I shaved it off when we moved out here.”

“Sit down. This is my wife, Elaine. Honey, this is Glen Palmer, the father of Robby Palmer.”

Elaine’s brow furrowed with puzzlement, then cleared as she extended a hand in greeting. “Of course,” she said, smiling. “How is he? Brad tells me there was some kind of miracle.”

“That’s the only word to describe it,” Palmer agreed as he sat down. Brad looked at him expectantly, wanting to bombard Palmer with questions but reluctant to embarrass the man.

Robby Palmer, Glen’s nine-year-old son, had been under Brad Randall’s care for nearly three years, a victim of hyperkinesis. It had been a particularly severe case. The first time he had seen the child, Robby was six years old, and unable to sit still for more than a second or two, talking constantly, compulsively, his hands and feet always moving, sometimes only nervously, but more often destructively. Brad had quickly learned to remove all breakable things from his office when Robby Palmer was coming. A small boy with an angel’s face and a “devil” within. There was something inside him, some malfunction in his nervous system, that kept him moving, relentlessly, exhaustingly, sometimes frighteningly. The child had been subject to sudden fits of senseless rage, and it had been during these fits that his violence would surface, his small hands darting out to seize the closest objects—any objects—and hurl them at the nearest window, wall, or person. Brad had a memory, one he would not soon forget, of two pieces of Steuben crystal, his two favorites, bought when he could ill afford them, that had been smashed irreparably one afternoon by a mildly upset Robby Palmer, who had then stared at the splinters of glass, puzzled, as if he wondered what had happened to them. There had been no evidence of remorse in the child, no fear of punishment. Only a second’s detached coldness, as if the shattered figurines had nothing to do with himself, before the compulsive nervous motion took hold again.

One day, a few months ago, Robby Palmer had stopped coming to see Brad Randall, and Brad had never understood why. When he had tried to talk to the Palmers about it they had only said there was a miracle and left it at that. Silently, Brad Randall wondered if Clark’s Harbor had anything to do with that miracle. Now Glen told him.

“You won’t believe it,” he was saying. “The change in Robby is absolutely incredible. Ever since we brought him out here. He’s calm, Dr. Randall. He’s still active, but it isn’t like it used to be. Now he’s like other children.”

“But what caused it?” Brad asked.

Glen Palmer shrugged. “I haven’t any idea. We came out here on a camping trip and stopped just north of town, at a place called Sod Beach. And Robby calmed down. Just like that,” he said, snapping his fingers. “And he stayed calm as long as we were on the beach. So we moved