“I make a remember mistake, Sahh-dum.”
Shawn Mondell reached for Lewis’s shoulder. Most people would have flinched at Shawn’s huge appendage jutting out at quick-twitch muscle speed. Strangers might have screamed.
The hand at the end of Shawn’s massive arm landed gently on Lewis’s sweaty red t-shirt without Lewis blinking.
Shawn had watched Lewis amble from his family’s trailer, across the adjacent lot that Shawn owned, and over to where Shawn idly raked the few leaves he had missed last autumn.
“I make a remember mistake, Sahh-dum.”
Shawn’s brain was churning the words “It’s okay, Captain,” but he knew his hand would have to be the reassurance.
Telling Lewis something was okay when it was not okay was not the way to teach him things. In some cases, a wrong lesson burrowed its way into Lewis’s brain deeper than the right lessons.
Shawn would have to determine what the mistake was before he said anything.
Lewis repeated himself.
Shawn knew he would-Lewis always did-but Shawn listened intently again, keeping his eyes focused on Lewis’s eyes, doing his best, hand and iris in concert, to let Lewis know that they would fix whatever it was if it was fixable.
A remember mistake…
Shawn let his thumb rub Lewis’s collarbone, marveling at the lengths the poor kid’s brain went to phrase something.
The problem was that Lewis couldn’t say the word forget, but he knew what he meant to say.
There were a lot of words that Lewis couldn’t say, but he seemed to have a workaround for most of them.
He couldn’t say “ice cream” so he said “melty sweet.”
As far as Shawn could tell, Lewis could make every sound in the English language, there were just some words that had fallen off the shelf when his Uncle Dale hit him over the head with a four iron when he was ten.
The story went that Dale had gone out one night shinin’ deer-poaching off the strip of land north of the DNR access road, of all places- came home and found his nephew in bed with his girlfriend.
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