Jared had been born in an isolated and weather beaten shack at the edge of the tree line in Clear Cove. He came into the world at the height of a storm with no more sound than the tide rushing in and the wind whipping through the trees, a mere five pounds, blind in one eye, missing three fingers on one hand and club footed. He was, his fourteen year old mother had scrawled on the cover page of her Bible and then wrapped in a tattered blanket with him, marked for glory. Having done her penance, she carried the newborn to the church then returned to Clear Cove and walked through the still raging storm into the unforgiving ocean. Her battered body washed up on the rocks by the ferry slip the following morning, just as James and Lily discovered the infant on their doorstep. Sweet Standin' Jaysus, Cap exclaimed to the shocked crew, If it ain't Paulie Sims' youngest girl!
Paulie Sims, parttime mail car driver and full time drunkard as people liked to say, had fallen into the gurry scow some six months past and suffocated in fish guts and gore. The overall opinion was that he had met an appropriate demise - he was buried without ceremony or mourning in the only grave that Miss Clara refused to tend and his common law wife and family had abandoned the island without a backward glance or a single goodbye. All, apparently, except his youngest daughter. Bad news travels faster than light in a small fishing village and by the time James preached his Sunday sermon, speculation about the girl's death and the deformed, orphaned child was rampant and ugly. I don't like to speak ill of the dead, Aunt Pearl told my grandmother, but he was as useless a no account as I've ever know and what else could it be? Nana hurriedly hushed her and sent me outside to pick berries. Such talk in front of a child, she scolded Pearl sharply, I won't have it!
Against all odds, the child not only survived under Lydia's care but thrived. The pastor's wife had a gift for throwaway children and a tender heart - she treated the little boy as one of her own and he responded in kind. Any talk of his birth or suspected parentage was forbidden and in time, forgotten.
Jared was bright and curious, uncomplaining of his defects, remarkably sunny natured and if, James would occasionally say, he was subject to abject terror of storms and had periodic brief spells of drifting off and becoming blank and unaware of his surroundings, surely that was understandable. No one saw the dark clouds on the horizon until the first seizure struck and Lydia discovered him rigid limbed and stiff, his heels ramming into the floor and his body flailing. The horrifying episode lasted last then twenty seconds and while it left no visible damage, both James and Lydia watched the boy come back to himself with dread. Fire coming, Jared had spoken quite clearly toward the end, He'll lose the corn. A week later, a fire broke out in Bill Albright's still and the explosion rocked the mid section of the island. Coincidence, James told Lydia firmly, Nothing more. They spoke of it to no one.
Subsequent seizures followed, each more terrifying, each accompanied by a prediction - a well did go unexpectedly dry, a barn raising went awry and injured several men, the schoolhouse roof on Brier Island collapsed. Taken each by itself, a simple series of accidents. Jared's fourth seizure was not so easily explained, She'll never breathe, he muttered, It's a blessing. The only Sullivan girl's first daughter - armless and without legs - was stillborn a month later. Quietly desperate, James and Lydia packed Jared for a trip to Halifax where a diagnosis of epilepsy was made. All but one doctor dismissed the prophesies - a young resident who had studied in India suggested that even the best medicine couldn't explain everything. It's natural to fear what we don't understand, she told them kindly, But every child is a mix of mystery and miracle.
Being an honest man, a man who had faith in his flock and trust in God, James shared the story and repeated her words to his whole congregation several Sundays later while Jared sat quietly with Lydia at his side. Islanders, all of whom had seen their own fair share of mystery and miracles, listened intently as James detailed the regimen of medicine and diet the doctors had prescribed and closed with a prayer for forgiveness and understanding. Jared's days of prophesy were over, the seizures slowed then stopped altogether, village life went on.
Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind - Dr Seuss
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