The gym was a riot of noise. Some of the fifth grade boys were tormenting some of the fifth grade girls. Oh, maybe tormenting is the wrong word. Sometimes the boys were wide of the mark and it really was torment, but sometimes their torments were exactly what the girls wanted and the boys got what they wanted in return, a giggle from a little blond or red head who for some odd reason seemed ever so much more there than they had the year before.

One of third grade boys really was tormenting a smaller boy. Nicky, the smaller boy had deliberately taken a seat well away from the other kids because he was tired of being teased and heckled. But Sam was bored, and so he found Nicky at the top of the bleachers and sat behind him. Nicky knew it would be futile to move and futile to fight and futile to do anything but sit there and take it and so he sat there and took it.

Sam just couldn't get over Nicky's ears. They were so much larger than the ears on any of the other boys in the third grade, or in the whole school for that matter. And it was the ears as much as Nicky's defenselessness that attracted Sam.

So Sam sat behind Nicky and flicked one ear after another with his right middle finger. Not only were the ears larger than they had a right to be, given the small size of Nicky's head. But they turned the most interesting shade of red when they were flicked. One could call it flame red, and Nicky would never have argued with the description since they burned each time Sam flicked them. Of course, Nicky tried to cover his ears, but when he did, Sam would do something to make Nicky need his hands for something else. He would kick Nicky's books off the bleacher, or he would just barely touch Nicky's neck so that Nicky thought a fly had landed on it. And when Nicky took his hands off his ears to catch the books or swat the fly, Sam nearly always got a flick in before Nicky had a chance to get them back over his ears.

Nicky was just about to embarrass himself like he had so many times before by getting up and flailing at his tormentor. Flailing would have suited the boys who had gathered to watch Sam just fine, but Nicky was saved from further harassment and from the embarrassment of a futile attempt to make Sam stop when Mo limped onto the wooden platform that served as a stage in the school's gymnasium. One of the boys behind Nicky said: "Wow! There's the cane!" And then an absolute quiet descended on the gym. The traffic noise from the street might not really have stopped. It might just have been that the kids gathered in the gym had no ears for it. It might have been that the student's ears -- even Nicky's unusual auditory organs were available only to Mo.

Mo was the school janitor all year long. But for one brief hour at the end of each year, he was a magician. Actually, he was more a wizard or a warlock or a shaman. The word magician suggests trickery and no child sitting in the gym at that moment believed that Mo was a trickster. Even the school staff, the teachers and administrators, half believed that some if not all of Mo's magic was authentic. Each school year there was always a debate, sometime during the year, about the wisdom of letting Mo perform. But Mo had cleaned every toilet in the school bathrooms daily for the last twenty years. And for the last twenty years his magic act had been the final event, the climax of the school year. So Mo limped onto the platform. Considering the fact that the gym was filled with five hundred third, fourth and fifth graders, it became impossibly quiet, and Mo began his act.

One of the hallmarks of the act was that Mo never spoke. Mo could shine floors and he could empty trashcans and he could polish a bathroom sink until a child could see his face in it, but he couldn't talk in public. One year one of the teachers tried to 'encourage' him to 'develop his act' further by including a short homily of some sort. But Mo made it stutteringly clear that he would not do the act if he were required to talk. When Mo threatened not to perform, even those who had debated the wisdom of allowing him to that year, joined with the other staff in rebuking the teacher who had nearly scared off their star magician. They told the teacher in no uncertain terms that magic was the thing. Magic was what the children wanted to see (and secretly it was what the teachers wanted to see as well).

And Mo could do magic and who cared if he could talk. Mo could indeed do magic. If some of his tricks were -- well tricks, getting five hundred third, fourth and fifth graders to sit silently -- not quietly -- silently for the better part of a half of an hour -- if that wasn't magic, well the teachers didn't know what was!

Mo started his act that year in the same way he always did. He started with card tricks. He had learned them as a child by asking his mother to read to him a book on card tricks that she'd brought home, and then by practicing the tricks in front of his mother and grandfather for hours on end. Mo had to have the books read to him because reading, like talking in public, was a kind of magic Mo had never been able to master.

For his next tricks, Mo pulled a bunny out of a hat and doves out of his sleeves. These tricks had been harder to learn.

Because Mo couldn't read, he'd never been able to browse for and find a book on some of the more difficult tricks. But once when he was a teenager, Mo had attended another magician's performance and afterwards he'd been able to flatter the stranger into showing him how to do the tricks. By the time he learned to do the tricks with the rabbit and the doves his grandfather had died, and so Mo had wearied his then aging mother with the tricks for endless hours as he perfected them.

The silence of the gym was broken for only a moment, as all the girls oohed when the rabbit was produced and then again as all the children pointed and clapped and whispered: "cool" when the doves were released. But when Mo picked up his cane, the gym became deafeningly quiet again, except for the boy in back of Nicky who said: "That's the cane!" and then was shushed by a punch in the ribs from Sam.

Mo could barely walk without the cane. He'd been crippled most of his life, but the cane made life manageable and Mo was never without it. He leaned on it as he cleaned the blackboard erasers and he kept it looped over the handle of the floor polisher because he trusted the cane more than he did the handles of the polisher. The cane lay beside Mo's bed as he slept and it rested against the arm of his easy chair as he watched television. In fact, Mo would never think of standing or walking without the cane for support, except for once a year when he would take the cane in his hand, wave it wildly over his head and do his trademark trick. This was the trick that worried some of the teachers. And this was the trick, more than any other that delighted the children. No one knew how he did it. Some believed it really was impossible. But few would admit the belief, since such an opinion opened the door for a lot of questions and no answers. By silent consensus, the school staff all wondered publicly what the secret to the trick was. And they all wondered privately how he did it if it wasn't a trick.

That the small stoop bodied cripple could stand as straight as he did now and look as large as he did as he brandished the cane over his head seemed more awesomely magical than all of the other tricks in his act combined. But standing without the cane wasn't the trick that the students and the staff were waiting for. It was what Mo did next that worried the teachers and delighted the students and alarmed some of the children's parents when they heard about the trick at home that evening.

The most important part of the trick came after Mo swung the cane once around his head and then threw the cane on the ground. I don't mean that he tossed it on the ground. I mean that he threw it on the ground the way he'd seen his mother throw her wedding ring at Mo's father when he walked out the door. There had been anger in that throw and there had been discarding in that throw as well and that was the way that Mo threw the cane on the ground. Now, you've got to remember, Mo couldn't exist without his cane. He couldn't walk or work or cook his meals without it, so I must be wrong about the 'discarding'. Of course there was no 'discarding' in his throw.

It wasn't the violence of the throw that worried the teachers or alarmed some of the parents. It was what happened next. As soon as the cane hit the ground the boys were all shouting "wow" and standing up so that they could see better and the girls were all pulling their feet up off the bleachers and screaming. The teachers would have been panicked as well if they hadn't seen the trick so many times; because where the stick had hit the ground there was now a snake. It wasn't a boa constrictor, or even a rattlesnake. In fact, it was an ordinary garter snake, but the species of the snake didn't matter as it slithered there on the floor in a direction that was approximately towards the bleachers.

And Mo just let it slither there for a whole minute and then; and this is almost as amazing as the cane turning into a snake; Mo, the janitor who couldn't walk without a cane strode, (I don't mean he shuffled or he ambled, I mean he took great, healthy, strong strides) down the steps of the platform and another five feet beyond. Then he grabbed the snake by the head, not the neck, but the head! And then, there he was with a cane in his hand, limping back towards the platform.

-----

Mo had only been eight the year it had all happened. It was hard to imagine that so much could happen to an eight-year-old boy. It was hard to imagine that whatever God or gods there were could be so pitiless to such a small boy. Mo's illness hit in February, and even though he remembered very little of it, the effects of the illness lasted the rest of his life.

At first, his father, mother, and grandfather had wondered if Mo would live or die, so when the doctor told them that even though Mo had turned the corner and would live, he would be crippled the rest of his life, they had been happy for him.

But, the endless days of rehabilitation that followed took a horrible toll on the family. Since the family couldn't afford physical therapy, the mother and father and grandfather took turns following the doctor's directions, urging the boy to walk using a homemade bamboo walker. In June, when the boy was still barely able to stand even with the help of the walker, Mo's father gave up and left. That was when Mo's mother threw the ring out the front door at the man's retreating back.

By November, Mo was able to navigate the house using the walker. The doctor recommended a set of braced crutches. But the family couldn't afford them and so Mo's grandfather walked two miles into town and bought an adult cane, which was the only cane he could find at the second hand store. Then Mo's grandfather walked two miles back in the rain. Though it was November, it was already as cold in the afternoons as it would normally have been in January, and Mo's grandfather caught pneumonia. It was Christmas Eve when his grandfather died.

The memory of how Mo learned to do the trick with the cane was forever a cloudy one for him. He thought it was after Christmas, but he knew it must have been sometime in late November or early December. Mo had become the brunt of jokes for the local bullies. They'd call him 'crip', or they'd move his cane just far enough from his desk that he'd fall down as he tried to retrieve it, and then the boys would all laugh raucously. The incessant teasing was beginning to take a toll on Mo, and it was January -- No, his grandfather died in December, so it must have been much earlier, but Mo could have sworn it was January. Anyway, his grandfather came onto the enclosed porch that served Mo as a bedroom and saw the boy sitting on his bed crying. He sat in the little wooden chair across from the bed and just watched for a while. There was no need to ask Mo what was wrong. His grandfather knew exactly what was wrong without asking. He'd been a boy once too and he'd heckled and he'd been heckled and he had a good imagination and so he knew without asking how rough it must have been for Mo.

They just sat in the dark of Mo's room for maybe a half hour. Eventually, Mo's tears dried up and so did Mo's grandfather's and then his grandfather said: "What you got there?"

Like I say, Mo's memory was cloudy about when the conversation with his grandfather actually took place, but he would never forget what happened in the next few minutes.

"What?"

"What ya got there?"

"Grandpa, you know that's my cane. You bought it for me."

"Ya like the cane?" Mo's grandfather kind of chewed his words as he talked.

"Yeah, Grandpa! I like the cane. I couldn't walk without it. You know that."

"You mean you need it?"

"Yeah. It would be hard without it. I couldn't go to school or even walk to the bathroom or the kitchen table or clean my room without it."

Both Mo and his grandfather looked around at Mo's messy room and Mo's grandfather just said "Um huh." And Mo smiled sheepishly.

"Throw it away."

Now, Mo wasn't sure what his grandfather meant. There was a lot of stuff in his room that needed to be thrown away.

"Throw what away?"

"Your stick. Throw your stick away."

"My cane?"

"Yeah, your cane. Throw it away!"

"I can't, Grandpa, I'm crippled. I can't get around without my cane."

"Yeah. That's the problem. You think you are your cane. Throw it away."

Mo was never sure why, but he picked up the cane, walked over to the door between his porch room and the yard in back of his Mom's tiny house. Then he opened the door and just stood there a minute. It must have been January, because in the moonless dark, Mo could just barely see the discarded Christmas tree on the thin blanket of snow that covered the ground. Anyway, as he stood clutching the doorframe, feeling the cold cutting through his pajamas, his Grandfather, walked over, grabbed the cane from underneath Mo, caught him as he stumbled and threw the cane next to the discarded Christmas tree, beneath the steps that led from the yard to Mo's door. His grandfather threw it with just the anger and just the discarding that Mo had seen his mother throw her wedding ring at his retreating father.

It was at this point that Mo's memory became cloudy again. In spite of the fact that Mo had seen the same thing happen again each year, he never could make himself quite believe that a snake slithered where the stick had hit the ground just outside of his door. Nor could he make himself believe what his grandfather said as he let go of Mo.

"See. You don't need that cane."

And for a moment, standing in the doorway between the warm dark room and the cold dark yard, Mo didn't. His legs held him just fine.

"Now, pick it up."

"Pick what up?"

"You're cane."

And Mo walked down the steps without limping, grabbed the snake by the head, walked back up the steps and set the cane against his bed.

Mo slept like a baby until the next morning when he woke and used his cane to walk from the bedroom to the kitchen table for a bowl of oatmeal. No, Mo wasn't cured, but from that day on, he never felt quite as powerless as he had before either. And eventually the bullies in his school tired of the game with the cane and found smaller animals to torture.

-----

Nicky was always afraid to go to the bathroom at school. Sam and the other school bullies had baptized him in the toilets so many times that Nicky had lost count. On more than one occasion, Nicky had soiled himself and his mom had begun to wonder what was wrong. At one point she had taken him to a doctor, thinking that maybe there was something physically wrong. But the doctor tested him and suggested a psychiatrist and Nicky's mom was on the verge of taking Nicky to see one when Sam caught him alone in the bathroom.

In a way, Nicky was crippled. Not only had he been teased and heckled more than a boy should be, but he'd also watched his father hit his mother so many times that he really believed that violence was normal. But the day Sam walked in and found Nicky alone in the boy's bathroom, Nicky was way beyond crippled. His helplessness had finally boiled over into an angry rage.

Nicky's father had come home drunk the night before for the third night in a row. Nicky had brought a note home from a teacher saying that he had "cut up" in class. He had shouted at Sam to stop torturing him, and that was what the teacher meant by "cutting up." Nicky's Mom left the note lying on the dining room table while she poured herself a third glass of brandy, and Nicky's dad found the note when he came home and took it into Nicky's room where he shook it in front of Nicky's face. When Nicky started to cry, partly from fear and partly from anger, Nicky's dad called him a sissy and hit him across the face. It could have been the shouts of his father or Nicky's crying or it could even have been the sound of the slaps that woke his mother and brought her screaming into Nicky's room. Whatever brought her into the room also counseled her to take a weapon and so she stood in the door jam, with the light from the hall making something between a halo and horns out of the tangled mess of hair on her head, brandishing a paring knife and screaming: "Stop it!" again and again.

Nicky's father didn't see the knife at first. And because he was drunk, he saw no need to stop anything. When Nicky's father heard his wife's screams, he threw Nicky down on the bed and then he lunged for his wife. Nicky's mom raised the knife as his father stumbled towards her and brought it down on his shoulder. The wound wasn't severe, but it made his father stop his hand in mid air just as it was poised to deliver what would a violent punch to his wife's face.

The bleeding started almost immediately and when it did, Nicky's mom dropped the knife and covered her mouth with her hands. Then she said: "I'm sorry" and asked if Nicky's dad were hurt. Then she started to cry.

Something about the blow or the cut sobered Nicky's dad and he pushed past his wife and screamed: "No one treats me like that!" and left the house. Nicky's mom walked back into the kitchen and poured herself another glass of brandy. Then Nicky heard her bedroom door close as his mother hid in the glass of brandy.

Nicky's father didn't come back that night. And when Nicky awoke the next morning, he saw the knife where his mother had dropped it, midway between the door to his room and his bed. He picked the knife up and looked at it. There was a little blood on the knife, but it didn't look that menacing. Nicky had seen his mom cut carrots and potatoes and tomatoes with it before and it had seemed pretty impotent then. But, now, as he looked at the knife, he saw something that could make his father stop beating him. It could make his father leave his mother. And maybe, just maybe, the knife could stop the bullies at school.

Nicky dressed for school, took two dollars from his mother's purse for lunch, and then went back to his room where he hid the knife on the inside of his sock, next to his leg.

So, it was that when Sam approached Nicky to baptize him yet again, he found a small boy with large ears, a temper as big as the school's gym and a knife in his hand. And it wasn't more than a moment before things were sort of backwards. Nicky had Sam wedged in the corner of one of the stalls with the point of the knife pressed against Sam's Adams apple, where he was pleasantly surprised to see that Sam was trembling and approaching tears.

Now the knife was something much more than it had been the night before. Nicky realized that not only could it keep Sam from torturing him ever again, but with it, he could finally get some payback for all of the flicks behind the ears and all of the pokes in the ribs and all of the embarrassing times when Nicky had lost his temper and flailed at Sam in retaliation and ended up on the ground with a bloody nose because he was just too small and too out of control to be able to deal with Sam. As the memories of the flicks and the pokes and the laughter of Sam and his buddies charged into Nicky's mind, the knife point pushed just a little harder against Sam's neck. In his mind, Nicky saw his mother striking his father with the little knife, and he saw the blood flow from his father's shoulder, and he wanted oh so badly to see the blood flow from this monster who had tormented him for so long.

It was as the point of the knife drew just a drop of blood from the skin of Sam's neck that Mo came into the boy's bathroom to scrub the toilets. Nicky heard the door open and shouted "Go away!"

But Mo didn't go away, he limped back towards the stall from which he'd heard the voice and he knew in a split second what was happening. He'd seen Sam torture Nicky more times than he could remember and each time he'd felt a pang of sympathy for the little boy with the big ears. Each time he'd thought about taking Sam behind the gym and giving him a good dose of the cane. And each time he'd known that it would mean his job if he did. Each time he had turned impotently away and ignored Sam and Nicky.

When Nicky heard the bathroom door open, he unconsciously pulled the knife back a fraction of an inch from Sam's neck and Sam could have broken free if he hadn't been so frightened. But by now Sam was terrified, and so he just stood where he was and shook.

Mo stood in the doorway of the stall and tried to think what to do next. In his minds eye, he could see Sam lying between the toilet and the stall's wall in a pool of blood and Nicky being taken from the school in the back of a police car. Sam had tormented Nicky and he deserved a lesson, but he didn't deserve to lie in his own blood on the bathroom floor. And Nicky deserved better than what he would get if the point of that knife penetrated the skin of Sam's neck. So, Mo tried desperately to think. One of the reasons Mo would never consider speaking in public was that he couldn't think on his feet, and his thinking seemed even slower as he watched Nicky touch Sam's neck with the point of the knife again and shout: "Go away!" towards Mo.

Finally, in confusion and because Mo didn't know what else to do, he threw his cane on the bathroom floor. When he did that, Nicky jumped back from Sam and dropped the knife. At the same time, Sam dropped to his knees between the toilet and the stall divider and watched terrified as a rattlesnake coiled and began to shake its rattles.

With a strong, confident stride, Mo stepped over the snake and walked towards Nicky. As he did so, he said: "What's that?"

Nicky was as frightened as Sam was now, and trembled a bit as he tried to answer.

"It's a snake."

"No. You know that's not what I mean.

What's that?"

"It's a knife."

"Throw it away."

"Sir?"

"Throw it away you don't need it."

"But."

"Throw it away, or it's what you'll become."

Nicky stooped down, picked up the knife and threw it into the waste bin. And Mo turned and reached down and closed his gnarly fist around the head of the snake. Then he picked it up and walked out of the bathroom leaning on the cane that a second before had been a snake. A moment later, Nicky followed Mo out the door and left Sam sitting next to the toilet in tears. It was a long time before Sam would trust his legs to hold him as he left the bathroom. And for an even longer time, Sam would turn and half walk and half run in the opposite direction if he saw Mo or Nicky coming towards him. Sam's buddies couldn't understand the change in his behavior and for several weeks they tried to heckle Nicky, but now there was a quiet, restrained strength about the boy that made the heckling less enjoyable and eventually they gave it up.

As for Mo, he continued to stand once a year on the school platform and amaze the children with his trick cane.