Edward’s Eyes

by Patricia MacLachlan

In Jake's large family, the kids raise each other.  Jake, 11, remembers his younger brother from the day eight years ago when their mother brought baby Edward home from the hospital and put him in Jake’s lap.  Jake’s recollections of Edward shape a memorable portrait of a boy who, as a toddler asks to have Goodnight Moon read to him in French, insists on walking two steps ahead of his older siblings on his first day of kindergarten, never once strikes out while playing baseball, and teaches himself how to throw an impossible-to-hit knuckleball.  Edward loves to play baseball and organizes games on the family's seaside lawn where he practices knuckleball pitches with the guidance of a 68-year-old neighbor along with his 90-year-old father, a veteran of the Negro League.  Tragedy is gently foreshadowed, and Edward's death in a biking accident shatters them all, but perhaps no one more than Jake, who lashes out at his parents' decision to donate Edward's organs and corneas.

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