I didn’t say a word. I took off my coat, I laid it flat on that filthy supermarket floor beside his head, I put my hand between his shoulder blades, flat, and I pressed.
And I tapped the rhythm out on my own knee. Four beats. Pause. Four beats.
My son put his hand on my coat and spread his fingers out, and after about two minutes, through the crying, he said one word.
It was the first word he has ever managed to get out in the middle of one. Nine years and it took him until last month.
He said, “Walt.”
He wasn’t calling for him. I want to be careful about that. He wasn’t asking me to go get him.
He was telling me he knew what we were doing. He was telling me he knew the name of the thing that works.
I got him to the car. I got him home. I got him down for the hard sleep that always comes after.
