Incident at Falcon Way

   One day, a small child entered my life, changing it forever – and that was before God took him home. I never want to forget the events of our time together, so I decided to record them. What had started out as just another long drive home alone, ended with the pair of us being brought together for all too short a time.

   I had stopped the car as quickly as I could, thereby irritating the driver behind me, jumped out, and run towards the woman who was beating a young child with her handbag. I positioned myself between them.

   “Let go of the child at once”, I thundered above the noise of the traffic.

   The woman staggered back as if she had been struck. The child, until then held firmly by the hand of the woman while trying to shield his head with his other hand, immediately moved behind me, clutching the back of my leg in a vice like grip. He had been crying piteously, “Please don’t hit me, mummy”, with a resignation that spoke of many similar beatings. The woman then tore into me verbally with a string of expletives I will not here repeat.

   I called to some bystanders to summon the police who came most promptly. A lone female officer took in the situation at a glance, looked quickly round my leg at the child, and at once began to question the woman. The only coherent response I heard was “My child, my child”. Motioning authoritatively to the woman to remain where she was, the officer then questioned me and a few of the bystanders, taking copious notes as she did so.

   The officer next tried to coax the child from out behind my leg but to absolutely no avail. The vice like grip seemed if anything to strengthen, while the cries, although quieter, continued and were heartrending to hear. The officer called for reinforcements and in short order a second patrol car arrived, followed almost immediately by an ambulance.

   The first officer tried to explain to the child that there was nothing more for him to worry about, that he was now completely safe, and would he like to ride in a shiny new ambulance with lights flashing and sirens blazing? This continued for some time but with no result. The vice like grip did not slacken: the crying did not stop. Eventually the officer asked if I would be willing to go with the child in the ambulance along with its crew. I said I would if someone would please follow behind in my car.

    A third patrol car was summoned and on its arrival, this time with two officers, the woman was escorted to the police station. The child, still clinging unrelentingly to my leg, and I were driven to a nearby hospital, while my car, with another officer at the wheel, was taken to the same police station.

   At the hospital, the little boy would not let go of my leg, although he did allow a doctor to examine his head, albeit only superficially. There did not appear to be any obvious physical injury, but the staff were gravely concerned as to the psychological effects the child had suffered.

   In the long wait for a child psychologist to arrive, I asked if I could lie down as my leg was positively throbbing. This was readily agreed to, but still the boy clung to my leg.

   Perhaps strange to relate, we both fell asleep, I to be awakened by the child’s piercing screams as the nursing staff tried to prize his hands off me. In the end, the child psychologist said it would be for the best if we were both to spend the night in the hospital, although, given the circumstances, a police appointed nurse would be assigned to us throughout.

   When I awoke the boy was sitting contentedly in the crook of my arm, playing with the buttons of his little coat. He allowed the psychologist to examine him and ask innumerable questions, to every one of which the boy would answer in a tone of repeated resignation, “Please don’t hit me, mummy”. It transpired later these were the only words he knew.

   After what seemed a very long time, the psychologist, accompanied by a welfare officer and the first police officer from the previous day, announced it would be in the best interests of the child if we could remain together for the time being. I said I would welcome this, and that is in fact what happened.

   The boy’s mother was charged with assault and battery, and after previous instances had come to light and been taken into account, her chances of escaping a custodial sentence seemed slim.

   One evening, after I had put little George, aged four, to bed, there was a knock on my door. It was the irritated driver and some of the bystanders. They had come to tell me they had devised a get-away plan if, as they suspected would be the case, the mother would merely be given community service and hence the immediate right to have her child restored to her. I could hardly believe what I was hearing but it was obvious my visitors were most serious.

   On the day the verdict was to be announced, I was seated in the sheriffs’ office below the courtroom in the presence of four highly sympathetic officers whom I had got to know well in the time since we had first been brought together. George was asleep in his large portable cot that went everywhere with us.

   I was told of the procedure whereby an orange light above the interior door leading upstairs to the courtroom would signify the judge’s asking the jury if they had reached a verdict. A red light would indicate a guilty verdict and a green one a not guilty verdict.

   As soon as the orange light glowed, an officer walked nonchalantly to the exterior door, opened it, nodded to someone outside and secured the door in the open position. We all heard the driver start the engine of the carefully positioned get away car: the air tickets for George and I would be in the glove compartment.

   The irritated driver and his cohort of bystanders were right, for almost immediately the light changed from orange to green.

   I moved quickly to pick up George but never made it to the door. As I lifted the child in my arms, I knew something was wrong. He seemed so cold, so still, so lifeless, as indeed he was. Somewhere during his afternoon nap, he had entered into his eternal rest.

   The autopsy showed serious internal head injuries caused by repeated beatings, but by then the mother had been charged and effectively acquitted and so could not be arraigned for what was subsequently held to be the same crime.

    I liked to think God knew what would otherwise be in store for one of his little ones, so He took him home instead. And I could say with Job, “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away: blessed be the name of the Lord.”

   Another evening, another knock on my door: this time it was George’s mother. “I cannot forgive myself for the way I treated my son, my only son: I wondered if you could find it in your heart to forgive me”.

   In the months since George’s passing, I had asked myself many, many times if I could ever really come to terms with the grief that never seemed to leave me. It helped that I had the happiest of memories of our all too short time together, but when George’s bedtime came around, it seemed nothing could assuage that grief. We always ended our lovely little routine with animated stories and prayers; now perhaps reaching out to George’s mother could help to heal us both.

   I told her it was not for me to forgive: only God could truly do that. She replied she knew herself to be completely without hope and asked what she should do. She seemed most genuinely contrite.

   I told her as best I could of the biblical story in which the people of Nineveh had likewise been without hope when the prophet Jonah had told them their city would be overthrown in forty days. However, the king had proclaimed a fast, neither food nor water was to be taken by anyone or any creature, all were to wear mourning clothes, to pray fervently to God, and to turn from their wicked ways. Thus might God’s anger be appeased and the people live, which is indeed what happened.

   I also reminded George’s mother of how God had overlooked David’s sin in having Uriah killed so that David could have Uriah’s widow to wife. Later, I continued, David would say, as can we all, “The Lord is my sure foundation, and my deliverer; in Him will I trust. He watches over me; He is my refuge in times of trouble; He is my savior”.

   In the light of such inspiring words, I urged George’s mother to give her heart wholly to the Lord, to follow His teachings, and to keep His commandments. If she would do this, she could take heart from the experience of Hezekiah who, after being told by the Lord to set his house in order as he was about to die, urged the Lord to remember how he had been faithful before God all the days of his life. God thereupon told the prophet Isaiah to tell Hezekiah that the Lord, the God of David his father, had heard his prayer, had seen his tears, would heal him, and add fifteen more years to his life.

   I pointed out to George’s mother that, since those far off days, we were no longer without hope because the beloved Lord Jesus Christ had paid for our sins with His life at Calvary. We had only to come to Him with a humble and contrite heart, confess our sins before Him in full assurance of faith and be washed white as snow in the blood of the Lamb.

   I think we both benefited from our time together, perhaps George’s mother the more so, because nothing has yet taken the place of the loneliness, the emptiness I feel without the little boy. At every turn there is a remembrance of the child who still lives in my heart.

   I tell myself over and over again, “Yours, O Lord, is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty; for all that is in heaven and earth is yours; yours is the whole Kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted over everything. Both riches and honor come from you, and you reign over all; in your hand is power and might, as well as to make great, and to give strength to everyone. Now, therefore, our God, we thank you and praise your glorious name.”

   I take consolation as best I can in the certain knowledge that George and I will one day be together again, reading animated stories and saying our prayers at the foot of a cross where another only Son, Himself the victim of such unjust cruelty, died and rose again, that we might have through Him, the gift of everlasting life.

   I laid the ornate dishes on the dining table and lifted the lid of each one, beginning with the smallest. I paused for a moment before opening the largest, wondering what it would contain. I shouldn’t have wondered. There, before the children and I, beautifully presented, were five barley loaves and two small fish.

For further reading: Job 1:21; Jonah 3:4-10; II Samuel 11: 12-13; 14-15; II Samuel 22:2-3; Luke 1:69; 1 Kings 8:61; II Kings 20:3-6; I Chronicles 29:12-13