Between Summer's Longing and Winter's End

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It was Charlie, age thirteen, who saved the life of Vindel, age fifty-five. At least that’s how Vindel described it at the preliminary police hearing.

“If Charlie hadn’t looked up and pulled me to the side, that damn thing would’ve hit me right in the skull and I wouldn’t be sitting here now.”

It was a peculiar story right from the start, for three main reasons.

First, Charlie was thought to be deaf in both ears. Not least by Vindel himself, who was convinced that the only things Charlie understood nowadays were eye contact, sign language, and physical touch. It’s true that Vindel talked with him more than ever, but that’s only to be expected when someone you liked grew old and slowed down, and Vindel had always been kind to Charlie. Just what you would expect.

Second, it is a long-established axiom in Western physics that a free-falling body precedes the sound that said body produces by friction against the surrounding atmosphere. Thus, according to said physics, there would have been no noticeable sound whatsoever.

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