MY FRIEND BRIAN

BRIAN

My friend Brian Meadows had a peculiar turn of mind. As he told me over the course of our long friendship, from as far back as he could remember, whenever he saw someone using crutches he would feel his own self pumping along on his arms and shoulders, merely resting his weight on his legs long enough to bring the crutches forward for the next step. Brian never dared speak of this strange longing to anyone, but he had never, ever been without it. Each Christmastime it was considerably whetted when his whole extended clan hosted a party for the patients of the Albert Meadows Hospital for Crippled Children, founded by Brian's great-great-uncle of that name and lavishly endowed in his will. The world thought the institution was named for the magnate himself, but most in the family were aware it was for his youngest son, whose inability to walk puzzled an entire generation of doctors.

Brian's family was, to say the least, exceedingly wealthy. One evening early in the summer of Brian's tenth year his father told him that George Jones, one of the chauffeurs who lived in an  apartment over the old carriage house on the family estate, had asked if his grandson Sam could stay with them for the month of July. Sam's parents were about to move from the Kansas wheat farm they had just sold, to the city of Wichita where his father had gotten a job in a big aircraft factory. Brian's father went on to explain that Sam was just a couple of months older than Brian and that polio had left Sam dependent on long leg braces and crutches since he was three. Brian's father wanted to know how he might feel about skipping the first four weeks of summer camp to stay home and keep Sam company. Sam, like Brian, was an only child and Brian's parents felt the experience might be good for both of them. Brian replied "It'd be OK, I guess," struggling to keep his cool as he feared the sweat would drip from his palms and his racing heart would show through his T-shirt.

Three weeks later Brian went to the airport with George Jones and his wife Greta to meet Sam's plane. Last off the plane, holding his metal forearm crutches as a stewardess pushed him toward them in an airport wheelchair, Sam looked like anyone's idea of Kansas: burr-cut hair the color of wheat, eyes like the clear plains sky, sun-kissed skin poured from a milk pail, a blue and white plaid shirt well filled by the beefy upper body which belied the crippled condition of his legs, loosely covered by new bluejeans. Only the steel braces inserted into high-top orthopedic shoes where one might have expected cowboy boots diminished the farm-boy effect.

Brian was decidedly not Kansas, perhaps more a bit of his ancestral France – a shock of neatly combed and parted chestnut brown hair framing a high forehead, the roundness of his face accentuated by round wire-rim glasses resting on a thin, very straight nose, his widely spaced hazel eyes slightly magnified by the lenses, bifocal from the time he began to read, his build quite average and his legs, like those of many of the Meadows men, a bit short in proportion to the rest of his body and his feet rather small. It was said this trait came from the family habit of marrying distant cousins. Once George introduced them Brian offered to hold Sam's crutches as his grandparents bent down to hug him. He could hardly contain himself as he took them – real crutches, his size, in his own hands!

Greta took over the wheelchair and Brian carried the crutches while George claimed Sam's luggage and went to bring the car around. As the three waited on the broad sidewalk outside the baggage claim door Sam gestured toward the crutches still in Brian's hand and invited, "Want to try them?" He knew from experience that any boy their age would. Brian looked uncertainly to Sam's grandmother, who nodded her assent. Brian crutched a hundred feet or so down the sidewalk in the way he had always imagined himself doing and returned. "That's a lot harder than I thought it would be," he said. "You'll get used to it," replied his new friend. Startled, Brian asked, "What did you say?" "You get used to it," Sam replied. Brian was convinced he heard him correctly the first time. "What does he know about me?" he thought in consternation. "How does he know about me?"