Dust moats swirled lazily in the air as dim rays of the setting sun filtered through cracks in the wooden slats. A lamb, one day old and too sick to live, bleated. The boy pulled it close to him.

“Are you sure, honey? There’s not a thing any of us can do.”

“Pleease,” his eyes met those of his parents’, speaking what he could not.

His father looked down at the boy’s leg, still and swollen.

“You cover up good. The cold seeps in faster than you know.”

“But you always say the animals keep the barn warm,” countered the boy, before his mother could object.

“That’s a fact.”

“I’ll keep the bottles right next to me. He can eat whenever he wants. See?”

His mother sighed audibly. “Keep the phone close now. If anything happens, you call the house.”

The boy nodded quickly. He’d done it!

“Hey little guy,” he whispered in the lamb’s ear as his parents walked out. “We’re going to be roommates tonight. I know you’re hurtin’. I know.”

He rubbed his bum leg and rocked back and forth, then began to sing quietly – Christmas carols mostly. It seemed right for Christmas Eve.

Finally, as the lamb snuggled close and his own eyes drooped, he uttered the prayer he’d prayed through the day.

“God, heal this little lamb. He’s a good one – I can tell. Give him a chance. Please, God, please. I know what they all think. But let this one be different. Don’t let him die.”

Hours passed. Boy and lamb slumbered together as rays of starlight swept over them. The boy didn’t know what hour of the night it was, but light as bright as high noon abruptly filled the stall.

“You love football?” the man standing there asked.

“How’d you know?” The boy rubbed his eyes as he took in the tall form. He was wearing a cowboy hat and jeans with a warm jacket. The boy glanced through the slats into the darkness, then at the man’s bare feet.

The man smiled. They talked about the boy’s dreams, how it felt to be left out sometimes, of this and that as the man knelt and patted the little lamb. And then he was gone. The boy blinked, turned, looked around. . . the stranger had disappeared as suddenly as he had arrived.

Just before daybreak his dad stepped into the barn to dispose of the lamb’s dead body.

“What’re you doin’ awake so early?”

“I’ve been awake since . . .”

The little lamb stood shakily, then walked over to him.

“How in the world?” His father uttered under his breath.

And the story the boy had to tell was told over and over again; passed from family members to cousins, townsfolk to passersby, until the barn became something of a tourist destination every Christmastime. They say the boy, now a famous football player and rumored to have the fastest running speed on record, returns, too, each year. He sleeps in the barn every December 24th.

For one year a man appeared to him on Christmas Eve: a man whose feet and hands were scarred, who healed a boy given no hope of healing, as well as the lamb with him because, the man had said, he was partial to lambs.

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