By Philip Lear
It was a hot
Saturday afternoon and Mike was in his back yard sitting at the picnic table
trying to fix his son Joey's bike. He was a real good kid but hard on bikes.
Everything on it was bent, the wheels, the pedals, and the seat. It looked
pretty hopeless and it probably would've been smarter for him to buy a new one,
but he decided to give it a try.
He had been
working furiously on this thing for two hours without much success. Nothing
seemed to fit together. The sweat was dripping off him. He was trying to
straighten out the wheel rim when the thing slipped and he hit his thumb with a
hammer. He really slammed dead square. .
"Ouch!"
He screamed, flicking his hand. "This
confounded thing is driving me nuts." He took the bike and heaved it into
the adjoining bushes and went inside to ice his thumb.
As he sat in the
kitchen waiting for the pain to subside, it got worse. Added to the soreness he
could now feel the pressure from the blood clot forming under his nail.
Mike waited a
while and the ice seemed to dull the pain. He calmed down. He felt bad about
tossing the bike. It wasn't Joey's
fault. It wasn't as though he was trying to mess it up. He was a good kid. He
just played hard. Mike went outside and walked over to the bushes where he had
thrown it and pulled the bike out. To his surprise, it was all fixed. It looked
and smelled like new. The handlebars, which had been bent beyond belief looked
perfect. There wasn't a mark on them. And the tire rims, which had been a
disaster, looked flawless. The tires were even inflated. He couldn't believe
it. One minute he can't fix the thing and the next, he tossed it and it was
fixed. Was he hallucinating? He didn't think
so. Then Joey came running out and he knew he wasn't. The kid was eleven and a
little on the skinny side with lots of freckles and straight brown hair that
flopped down over his face.
" Dad! You
fixed my bike. Thanks."
Joey looked up at
him and smiled. That look! It wasn't Joey's regular look. It was more a look of
admiration. Nobody looked at Mike that way in a long time and it made him feel
proud. He patted Joey on the head and
before he could say " Your welcome ", Joey took off on the bike.
There he was scratching his head trying to figure out what happened. He took
another look in the bushes. Maybe it was one the neighbors playing a prank. But
his neighbors weren't like that. They were a couple in their seventies and kept
mostly to themselves.
Several weeks
later, there was this kitchen chair and the slats had come loose and Alice, his
wife, had been nagging him to fix it.
"It's
disgusting the way things are so run down. I'm ashamed to invite anyone
over," she said.
He was again in the backyard trying to figure
out what to do. There didn't seem to be any answers. How could he get the slats
back into the chair without taking the whole thing apart? Then he'd need all
sorts of clamps and glue that he didn't have. He also didn't have money to
spend hundreds of dollars on fixing old chairs.
Then it came to
him. It was like a light going off in his head. Should he throw it in the
bushes? Nah! Was he completely crazy or was it his imagination? But it worked
with Joey's bike. The bike is still working. He picked up the chair and flung
it into the bushes and walked over and grabbed it. Sure enough, it looked brand
spanking new. The paint had that fresh enamel smell about it.
Mike took a deep breath. All he had to do to
fix something was to throw it in the bushes. Do the bushes have some magical
power? They must. But they don't look
special. They're just overgrown privet hedges that haven't been trimmed in
years. Maybe that's why. He thought about it a little more. One thing was for
sure he wouldn't trim them. They might loose their magical powers.
Or was it the
bushes at all? Maybe it wasn't throwing the things in the bushes that was
fixing them but throwing them in the air, he thought. Mike tested some other
things. He took his Grandfather's broken gold pocket watch that had been given
to him years before by his dad. It was the only thing he had from his
grandfather. The hands and stem were broken. The face was faded and stained.
But he didn't want to throw it out and didn't have the money to get it fixed.
He threw it up and caught it and it was fixed. It was shining like new. He set
it and wound it and it ticked quietly. He put it in his pocket. Mike knew now
that he didn't have to throw things in the bushes. How stupid to think that the
bushes had anything to do with it. Next
he took an old brass teakettle. It was full of dings and dents and the whistle
didn't work. He tossed it up and caught it and again it was like new. He boiled
some water in it and the whistle gave off a high-pitched sound. Later that
night when Alice came into the kitchen she looked at it.
"George, the
tea kettle. Where'd you get it?"
He wasn't ready
to tell her.
"I bought it
in a garage sale for $2.00," he said.
He was starting
to feel pretty good. Being able to do things no one else could do. This had a
nice kick to it.
He didn't tell
Alice about the chair, but put it back in the kitchen. He took other little
odds and ends around the house and fixed them too. There was the steam iron,
the radio, and the electric toothbrush. When she saw Mike using the electric
toothbrush she gave him a funny look.
"I thought
that thing was busted," she said.
"Nah, it was
just a loose connection."
He didn't say
anything. It took her a week to notice the chair.
" I see that
the chair is fixed," she said. "It looks pretty good. Who did that
for you? "
"
Nobody," he said. "I fixed it myself. "
" Now
George," it's me you're talking to, "you don't know how to put
toothpaste on a toothbrush, " she said.
" Give me
something to fix, anything, " he said.
"George, " she said " I have a
drawer full of cheap old broken jewelry that you've given me over the years.
"
He kidded with
her. "How about the ugly straw hat
you always wear to church?"
" What you
mean ugly? That's a beautiful hat. It's just worn out. "
" You're
just lucky a bird didn't mistake that for its nest and lay some eggs in
it."
She got her hat
and gave it to him. It was rounded and had white and pink feathers along the
sides. In the front there was a square silver buckle. The straw looked worn and cracked. Mike thought about how pretty
she looked in the hat when it was new.
"Here, fix
this," she said defiantly and she handed it to him. He threw it in the air. It hung there for a
second and then landed back in his hands. He handed it to her.
"Now you can
see what kind of fixer I am. Bring on your jewelry," he said.
She smiled and
gave him a strange look.
"George!
What's going on here?"
She brought him a
box of her old bracelets with broken clasps and stones missing and he fixed
them. She stood there with her mouth
open.
"George, this
is really amazing," she said.
"I always
felt badly because I couldn't fix anything. You liked wearing it so much."
"It would
have cost more to fix than the stuff was worth," she said.
Mike watched as
Alice enthusiastically went through her newly repaired jewelry. She turned to
show him a necklace he had bought her shortly after they were married.
She smiled and
said, "Do you remember this one?"
"How could I
forget the way you looked in that? It still looks great on you."
It was turquoise
and silver and had lines of little white beads hanging down. It seemed to lie
perfectly on her chest. Seeing her smile gave him a thrill. It was like Joey's
smile when he fixed his bike. She was proud of him.
"Now that
you have this power, could you do something about that leak in the roof? And
how about the washing machine? You can start on the roof tomorrow."
" That's
what I call gratitude."
"Maybe you
could make money doing this," she said.
"I could open
a fix-it shop or become a magician. Suppose I took a melon and sliced into
quarters and threw up in the air. If it
came down whole, people would think I was the world's greatest magician. I would take my show on the road and make
millions."
"Isn't there
that annual talent show in Memphis, Maybe you could enter that."
"I could saw
you in half and throw you up in the air and you would come down whole."
Then she poked
him and said, "Better stick to the melon." The talent show was three
weeks off and Mike put an act together. Joey was proud of him and eager to
help. Mike told him not to tell any of his friends. Alice was acting
differently. She was very encouraging. It was great to feel that they were with
him all the way.
He set up a
routine. First he threw the sliced melon in the air; then he took the Memphis
phone book and sawed it in half; then he took a variety of other broken items
and fixed them. For the show finale, he used a 13 inch TV set and smashed it
with a hammer and then threw it.
Mike went to the
show and they had him scheduled behind some Elvis impersonators. His act was so
different that it was a shock to the audience. He went through his routine just
as planned. To add an unusual twist, after he fixed something and to show the
audience that there were no gimmicks, he'd throw the item into the audience.
When Mike did this the astonished audience would let out a collective gasp.
After the show he was approached by an agent who wanted to book him and to
various clubs and events. Mike agreed and off he went on tour.
He was on tour
for the next two years and during that time he was doing one or two shows a
night six nights a week and sometimes seven working in night clubs, concerts
and county fairs. He was making more money than he's ever dreamt of. Then he
played Vegas for a year and moved Alice and Joey up to live with him. There
were articles in magazines and in local newspapers and he was even on
television. Mike Wallace interviewed him on 60 Minutes. He was known as
"Mike The Wizard ".
Then there were
also product endorsements, magic kits, action figures and other things. He made
lots of money. Finally Mike made the big time. He moved to New York and
appeared as a regular on a TV series.
He had made it and was a true celebrity.
One morning when
he was coming out of his apartment on east Sixty-eighth Street he heard the
screech of brakes and there was a women screaming hysterically. It was almost a
howl. She was leaning over a little boy in blue shorts and a white shirt who
had been run over by a cab. The boy's mother must have turned around for an
instant and he had darted off the curb and been struck. She was kneeling beside
him and a small crowd was already forming.
Mike thought about what to do. He'd never fixed anything but melons and
TV sets. Could he repair this boy? What
would happen if he picked him up and threw him in the air? If nothing happened
they'd kill him.
He could walk
away now and no one would be the wiser. But then Mike thought about it some
more. What would he do if it were if it was his son Joey on the ground? It was
a no-brainer.
He pushed his way
through the crowd to where the boy was down. It was obvious that he wasn't
breathing. He picked him up and threw him in the air and as he did the crowd
let out a gasp. The boy seemed to hang there in mid air for just an instant and
then, he settled softly back in his arms. Mike looked down at him and his eyes
were opening. He stretched his little chubby arms and rubbed his eyes like he
had just awoken from a nap. He was as good as new.
Just like in his
magic act, to prove that this was no hoax he handed the boy gently to the
mother. She looked at Mike as she hugged her son. There was indescribable love
flowing from her. Her glow radiated as she squeezed his hand. "Thank
you," she said. "Thank you."
The other people in the crowd were staring in amazement.
Somebody said,
" Nobody's healed like this since Jesus." Onlookers started to kneel
down.
He breathed a
sigh of relief. Thank God the boy's all right, he thought. He stayed there for
a few more minutes. There was an incredible surge of warmth, a connection that
encircled all of them. In some way they were all being saved.