Old Leo Tillman made his way up from the flagstone path which led to the seldom-used work shed. The bright beam of his flashlight played over the advancing group of people. A group of people he himself had called together upon making a startling discovery while hunting through the shed in search of turpentine.

His little brother Obadiah--who was just shy of sixty years old--looked up at him with an anxious expression. "What's this all about, Leo?"

"Yeah, Daddy," Johnson Tillman began in his usually perturbed voice as he stared at his father. "Why'd you call us all out here?"

"In the shed." Leo replied shakily, jerking a thumb back towards the small, abandoned-looking construct. "They're--They're in the shed."

Confused and curious, the group traversed down the flagstone path.

Obadiah, Ida, Hope and Johnson stood side by side, their eyes vacant, their expressions slack with shock and confusion because of what they found in the shed.

The boy who was called Tyrell Downs lay at an awkward angle on the floor of the shed, his nut-brown face ashen with dirt and dust. His eyes were closed, but his breathing seemed regular.

Griego Rojas lay in his pajamas, huddled near Tyrell. He too was unconscious, but he didn't seem to be resting as comfortably as the older boy. He was hugging himself and was shivering because his sleep wear wasn't protecting him sufficiently against the evening cold.

And standing over Tyrell and Griego was Fan Lanh--the disturbed young Afro-Asian woman who claimed to be Obadiah's niece. She doted over the two unconscious boys like a loving nurse. She looked from one boy to the other; occasionally her tan face would just glow with the adoration of a mother gazing down upon her sleeping children. She tenderly performed maintenance on them: wiped away the smudges of dirt on Tyrell's chin, clipped the nails of Griego's hands and feet. She fixed absolutely everything that she considered to be wrong with them.
"Fan?" Obadiah was absolutely dumbfounded. "What . . . ?"

Without a word, the exotic young woman screamed and bolted for the door leading from the shed. Leo immediately stepped into her path, caught her by the wrist, then forced her arms behind her back. She screamed and cursed in two languages.

Everyone saw now that she wasn't merely disturbed. Fan Lanh Tillman was insane. Insane, perhaps, beyond all hope. He face was now twisted into a cat-like mask of hatred and fear, slanted eyes wide and fixed on Obadiah.

Ida Tillman, heedless of the dirt and grime, was already on the floor of the shed kneeling next to Tyrell, stroking his forehead. Hope Tillman joined her, wrapping her arms around young Griego--as if trying to warm the youngster's cold body up with heat from her own. Johnson made sure both boys were all right before he carried them into the house, first Tyrell and then, with considerably less effort because of his size, Griego.

* * *

Johnson announced that the two boys were going to be put to bed in one of his guest rooms.

When Ida finished drinking a steaming cup of chamomile tea in the kitchen, she made her way to this particular room and found Tyrell Downs sprawled across one of the single beds, fully clothed and still unconscious. She walked over to where he lay and, for a moment, simply watched over him. The tenacious youth seemed far younger than fourteen in slumber. His face was streaked with dirt; his shirt and pants were rumpled; his muscles lax. His chest rose and fell with the even rhythm of his breathing.

Ida smiled down at him, still relieved over the fact that he had been found safe and sound. She remembered how frightened she had been when the boy first turned up missing. She remembered the feeling of panic that had jolted through her when she first spotted his motionless body in the work-shed, and the way she'd wanted desperately to tend to him when he and the little Spanish boy had been lying there helplessly on the shed's dirty floor. For the first time, the matronly woman realized that she was not merely fond of this sagacious boy who often ran errands for her and her husband. She truly loved him.
Obadiah arrived a few moments later. And when her husband began to tug off the sleeping youth's shirt and sneakers, she stared at him, not doubting that her mate felt as relieved as she did. Obadiah and Tyrell had been best pals for about a year or so, and she knew that the tenacious youth's sudden disappearance had agitated him as deeply as it had her--especially since Ty's last known wherabouts had been their home. She hadn't seen her husband so distraught since their son, Devon, had been rendered comatose as a result of the injuries he'd sustained in an automobile accident.

This situation has a happier ending, however. Poor Devon had not been able to return to them, but Tyrell had.
Eventually Johnson entered the room, the sleeping Spanish lad in his arms. When the bald man tried to lay the boy down, Griego made a kind of whimpering sound and clung to him without really waking up. Gently Johnson stretched the youngster out on the room's other single bed and pried Griego's thin arms from around his neck. Smiling absently, Hope Tillman walked over to them, a clean pair of her own son's PJs in her hands. She handed her husband the pajamas and watched as he removed the filthy pair that Griego was already wearing. Johnson's touch was deft, and he was careful not to disturb the slumbering youngster too much as he dressed him in the clean sleep wear.
And from across the room, Ida observed how gentle her nephew was in handling the sleeping child. Though he couldn't draw or paint or sculpt to save his life, the bald man had definitely inherited his father Leo's nurturing tenderness.

So two boys became Tillmans that night. They may not have been connected by blood, but they were connected by their souls. Yes, these lads had been fully adopted by the loving family currently surrounding them as they slept. Not legally, but in the hearts of every Tillman present. The inconseqential legal proceedings would come later.

* * *

Tyrell Downs yawned and opened his eyes. Something just wasn't right, for although the scene outside of the bedroom window told him it was night, he could hear adult voices murmuring frantically from some distant room in another portion of the house. Only the little latin-looking kid lying on the bed across from his was asleep, and he was moaning as if in the throes of a nightmare. Ty had no idea who this kid was, nor was he aware of his present location . . . or how how he had reached it. His head spun with the after-effects of the drugs which had kept him unconscious for the past several days.
When the latin-looking youngster began to mumble aloud, Tyrell climbed out of bed and made his way over to him. He leaned over the boy. He recognized him. It was Griego something-or-other . . . the kid whom Johnson and Hope Tillman had all but adopted. Tyrell wanted to hate this raven-haired Salvadoran kid. Hate him for the love that Johnson and his family clearly felt for him. In other words, the tenacious youth was rather jealous.

The younger boy awoke suddenly--as if he was actually sensing the tenacious youth's hatred.

And Tyrell was taken aback by this. Griego's face held such an intense look of fright and confusion that the older boy felt a tug of sympathy in his gut. He had startled the poor kid, standing over him with such a scornful expression. Also the tenacious youth guiltily realized that Griego must have thought that he was about to hurt him . . . weak and helpless as he lay.

Tyrell just gingerly patted him on the shoulder--a gentle, albeit awkward, gesture to indicate that he didn't mean the lad any harm. A warm smile came to his swarthy young face, and as he stared around at the room, this smile grew even broader. Apparently he, unlike Tyrell, was aware of where he was. And this place was obviously sweet to him.
Ty was about to request that the raven-haired youngster fill him in or where they were, but Griego had closed his eyes. After a second, Tyrell realized that the youngster had returned to sleep. It didn't matter. After glancing around the room a bit longer, Ty now had a pretty good idea of where he was currently residing.

Extremely exhausted himself, the tenacious youth stumbled back to the bed he had occupied and fell across the covers. As he lay there, he struggled to recall just how he had come to be here in what must be Johnson and Hope's home, but his mind was too tired and jumbled to come up with any cohesive answers. After a couple of futile minutes of thinking, he dropped off to asleep.

He regained his senses again about an hour later. And the gentle, smiling face bending over him when he awoke belonged to Obadiah Tillman's wife, Ida.

Mrs. Tillman explained everything to the befuddled tenacious youth. She told him how Fan Lanh must have drugged both him and Griego with some of the tranquilizers in Obadiah's border patrol arsenal. This scenario would also account for Dusty Tillman's rather surreal account of Griego's kidnapping--Fan probably drugged him as well to prevent him from interfering with her plans. Then somehow she transported both the latino boy and the tenacious youth to the work shed hidden in back of the house.
"But why?" Tyrell asked.

The matronly woman shrugged. "Who knows what Fan went through in Vietnam. It is known that she lost three sons over there. Maybe there was somethin' about you an' Griego that reminded her of them. It's probably the reason she locked the two of you up . . . so she could keep you safe an' watch over you forever."

"So you're having her put away?"

"Yes," Ida said sadly. "Of course we'll place her in a nice hospital. We can't just dump her off in some institution and hope for the best. And It's really hard for Obadiah, you know--he doesn't like the idea of placing family in the care of strangers. He raised his brother Earl . . . just as Leo had practically raised him. Still, he knows that we just aren't equipped to deal with Fan's problems. Placing her in the hands of professionals is the only thing we can do."

"Which Hospital are you putting her in? I mean, for the long term?" the tencious youth asked. Because of the bouts of various addictions his mother had suffered through, Tyrell had become acquainted with more than a few mental health fascilities.

"It's up in the air right now. We were thinking about Martinson, but I'm not too keen on that idea--I got wind of a rumor that some white supremacist guy managed to kill himself in that place. And I hear he was stoked to the gills with medication and still wearing a straitjacket when he did it!"

"Daaaaaang!" was the tenacious youth's only response to this.
After a few moments, a haggard-looking Obadiah Tillman entered the room and immediately sat down on the edge of Tyrell's bed. The lieutenant patted Tyrell's foot under the blankets, then glanced up at his wife, "Did you tell him?"

Ida shook her head. "Not yet. I was just getting around to it."

"Tell me what?" Tyrell asked.

Obadiah gazed at the youth intently. "Well, with Fan Lanh leaving, me an' Ida have an extra room in the house, an' we were wonderin' . . . well, we know that your mama's in the hospital again, an' that she's got the full-blown virus now . . . an' we were wonderin' if you'd like to stay with us after . . . you know."

Tyrell looked away, a broad range of emotions consuming him.

Obadiah reached out and patted the youth's shoulder. "Your mama an' our son--we both know our share of pain, boy. But we can help each other, you see? Ida an' me need someone like you, Ty . . . and we think you need us. I know some people will tell you that you're too old now to need a Daddy, but that's bull. I never did put too much stock in placin' time limits on things like wants an' needs. So what do you say, Tyrell? You want to give a try at bein' our son?"

Tyrell never thought he would do it, but he burst into tears. The tenacious youth had never admitted to anyone--not even himself--that this was what he had desired most in the world. Some families had allowed him to be a part of their lives, but none had ever requested that he join into their clan on a permanent basis.

The lieutenant and Ida embraced the boy strongly for quite awhile. They only released Tyrell upon realizing that he had almost fallen asleep in their arms. Then the couple gently forced their tenacious new son back into a reclining position upon the bed. Before turning off the light in the room, Obadiah gently stroked Tyrell's shoulder while Ida leaned over and kissed the drowsy youth's forehead.

And Tyrell slept.

* * *

In his nightmare, Griego could clearly see his mother on that fateful day she encountered the maniac who took her life.

He saw the knife, in slow motion, sink into his mother's chest. He watched as the cold metal slipped again and again between the beautiful woman's ribs. In fact Griego could almost feel as the blade tore apart her lungs and intestines . . . .

Then the dream suddenly changed.

The dismal scene transformed into Griego standing alone a wading ankle-deep through a shallow body of water when, quite suddenly, Fan Lanh’s hands came up from the water and seized his ankles! Before he could do anything she hurled him all the way out of the water and onto a beach’s sandy shore.

He climbed to his feet, but found that fan’s hand was still gripping his ankle. Her body couldn’t be seen…just her hands and arms protruding from the sand of the shore—making it seem as if the beach itself was alive. Griego screamed in utter and complete terror. It was then that her crazed head popped out of the sand. Fan held his bare foot close to her face, scrutinizing it with an appraising eye.

“A golden, naked young sole and five bare golden-tan and wiggling toes…” She said, pulling his foot close to her nose. She took a deep whiff and sighed blissfully.

Then she attacked the toes she just sniffed—using her pinky to play with the Latino lad’s digits. Griego, though still terrified and attempting to escape, began to giggle. The crazed Afro-Asian worked her pinky through the space between the lad’s toes. All five digits clinched-up by reflex. Her pinky finger was trapped between the laughing Latino lad’s toes. This prompted her to gently raked three free fingers across the giggling boy's arch.

"AAHHAHAHHAEEEEEEEEE!!" laughed Griego as his toes unclinched, releasing the crazed girl’s pinky. "HahahaahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

Fan Lahn wriggled her fingers along the crevices under Griego’s five toes. The Latino lad’s digits kept wiggling and spreading. Fan tried to wedge several of her fingers in between the golden toes, but the spaces were too narrow for even her slim fingers. So she just worked her fingertips all over those five digits.

“Noooooooooooooooo!!! Hahahahaahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!”

Then her fingers traveled all over Griego’s bare sole. A sole so soft, tender and ticklishly sensitive that the boy thought he might faint! And the crazed Afro-Asian girl clearly loved the feel of the lad’s sole--the soft texture of those wrinkles on her fingertips. Yes, Griego’s bare foot was wriggling in her hands as her fingers slowly raked his defenseless sole.

"Noooooo!!! AHHHHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!"

She then increased the pace—raked and stroked her fingers hard and fast over every inch of Griego’s bare ticklish sole. From arch to heel she tickled, and everything between it.

"HAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHA! HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!”

Griego partially awoke and was surprised by the fact that he wasn’t screaming with laughter the way he had been in his nightmare. He glanced sideways and saw that he was sharing a room with a teenaged black youth who was sprawled in sleep atop another bed across the room.

Griego stood up from his own bed, still largely asleep--for residue from the somnolent narcotics he had been given still flowed in his veins--but conscious enough to know that something significant had occurred. Still, his brain hadn't come into sharp enough focus for him to remember that he was not at home . . . and that his mother and Delisha Paine were dead. The past and the present jumbled together incomprehensibly. At one moment, his mind was back in the seedy apartment he and his mother shared downtown . . . then suddenly he'd find himself at home in his own native El Salvador. He made his way across the room.

Moving smoothly and catlike on the balls of his bare feet, he crossed the hallway to one of the house's larger bedrooms. He found who he thought was his sleeping mother lying spoon-like in the arms of his equally sleeping father. But then his vision cleared, and the couple transmuted from latino to African-American. It was at this moment that Griego suddenly recalled the fact that his mother was dead. And Delisha Paine was dead as well--she hadn't risen from the grave as an undead, fanged vampire like he and Dusty had believed.

His stifled cry of anguish was just audible enough to awaken the brown-skinned older couple who were lying on the bed.

"Griego? What's wrong, baby?" said the woman.

"What the hell are you doin' in here, boy?" grumbled the man. He looked a bit like Grandpa Leo Tillman, but slightly younger . . . and more rugged.

The woman nudged the man, motioning for him to be calm and silent. She saw that the pajama-clad youngster standing before her had been through hell--was probably still going through it. She saw the sheen of cold sweat that oiled the boy's body. She saw the fogged glassiness of his smokey-brown eyes.

"What's wrong, baby?" she repeated concerned.

"My Mama . . . and Delisha. Th-they're dead."

"Oh, you poor thing!" The woman said as she climbed out of bed and placed her arms around the boy. Griego began to sob quietly, and she kept him in her embrace as she sat him down beside her on the bed. She then proceeded to rock and hug him until he was nearly asleep again.

The man, who was quite a different person in the middle of the night than he was in the daytime, wasn't too happy about having his sleep interrupted, but he softened with clemency for Griego. He didn't even become upset when his nephew and his nephew's wife suddenly burst into the room wondering what all the commotion was about.
Griego lay with his body cushioned heavily against the woman's breasts. She caressed him absently and faced her nephew, her husband and her nephew's wife. "Poor thing must've been sleepwalking--probably still feelin' the affects of whatever Fan doped him up with."

Tyrell Downs, bewildered, arrived two seconds later. He became instantly alert upon realizing that he had blindly followed Johnson and Hope into the bedroom where Obadiah and Ida Tillman--his new parents--were residing in for the night.

"You may as well join us, Tyrell," The lieutenant said resignedly. And the tenacious youth did just that.

The group confabulated for a few moments, trying to piece together just when and how the two youths had been overpowered and carted away by the crazed Fan Lanh. They didn't find many answers that morning. Niether boy was completely coherent enough to accurately recount the events leading up to their abductions. In fact, both had an annoying penchant for dozing off in the middle of sentences. More after-affects of the drugs they'd been force-fed.

Eventually Ida Tillman stood a sleepy Griego on his feet and gently forced the rather limp raven-haired boy into Tyrell's arms.

"Take him back to the guest room, baby." She asked the tenacious youth, giving him a tired smile.

Tyrell took hold of the youngster's arm and pulled him through the bedroom's doorway and out into the hallway. Griego obediently went where he was led. But neither boy made it back the guest room, however. Seeing that they were both more than a little bit scared (Tyrell was trying to pretend that he wasn't upset or frightened by what had happened, but his hand was ice-cold on the raven-haired boy's arm) the duo was ordered back into the bedroom by Obadiah. In a second Griego was enfolded once again in loving arms. This time, however, the arms belonged to Hope Tillman. And Tyrell allowed himself to relax within the solicitous embrace of Ida Tillman.

Johnson Tillman knuckled the sleep from his eyes then turned to Obadiah. "Maybe we should go across the way and wake Daddy up, Uncle Obie . . . I'm pretty sure he wouldn't want to miss any of these Kodak moments."

The lieutenant looked startled for a second, then realized that his nephew was only joking.

Soon even curious young Dusty Tillman and Cousin Angel (who'd returned from his visit back home to Louisiana just the day before) appeared in the bedroom's doorway. Some might say that it was merely a coincidence that Angel Tillman had never encountered Fan Lanh after she'd come to live with Obadiah and Ida Tillman in Baldwin Hills. And now that the exotic Afro-Asian female had been taken away to a state institution (which had occured while the orphaned young man was busy slumbering the night away), it was unlikely that he ever would.

And no one would ever so much as guess that the mysterious woman and the taciturn boy shared a brief, but very in supposable past together. Cousin Angel would simply continue to reside with the Tillmans--giving and receiving love from a family that had more than enough to pass around.

Currently a sleepy and confused Angel Tillman, along with an equally sleepy and confused Dusty, were surveying the scene within the small guest bedroom--Griego, his scrawny form embraced by Hope Tillman, was whimpering weakly, shuddering in his sleep; Ida Tillman, with a softly snoring Tyrell Downs nestled in her arms; Johnson and Obadiah Tillman, rolling up their sleeves in preparation for the chore of carrying both of the slumbering boys back to the other guest room.

"It's been a strange night, eh, Unc?" Johnson asked Obadiah, his brows furrowing thoughtfully.

"It's been a strange lifetime, nephew. A strange, wonderful lifetime!" replied the lieutenant with a sleepy smile, "And you know what?"--Obadiah reached out and placed his hand gently atop the somewhat nappy head of the sleeping Tyrell--"I don't think it's anywhere near over with yet!"

And he was right.

To be continued….