Three old men on a bench meant I could put that down for an hour. And when I put it down, Eli went further from me than he’d ever gone.
By August he was climbing the big structure. By September he was climbing it with another kid.
I met Danny in October.
Walt drove me and Eli out to Mercer on a Sunday, about fifty minutes, to a group home on a street with good trees. Danny Reyes is thirty-four years old, six foot two, built like his father, and he spends most of his day with a pair of over-ear headphones around his neck that he does not wear and does not take off.
He has about twenty words. He uses maybe nine of them.
He put a flat hand on Eli’s back when he met him. Pressed. Didn’t rub.
They sat on the floor of the rec room for an hour and a half and lined things up. Dominoes, mostly. Neither one of them said a word to the other and I have never seen two people enjoy each other’s company more.
