Simple minded? Yes, if shyness and averseness to people constitute simple mindedness. He did odd jobs for the townspeople and they tolerated him. Gardening, fetching and carrying, sweeping out the library. He read. Avidly he read everything that he could find. He learned about Mendel and his peas, and he knew what he was. An ugly word, a Mutant. It made him different and gave him a Gift that no one believed that he had, or wanted him to exercise.
That crazy Sloan, or that half wit Sloan, the townspeople called him, but he didn't care. He had never had any friends or companions and therefore felt no need for any. The small animals were his friends, and the children. He was never too busy to make a kite, or mend a toy or a skinned knee. He never mentioned his Gift but silently, unnoticed, as he went his shy way around the town, performed the small services that he was able to, unknown to the recipients. Some little aid, some little kindness every day. He was happy.
Then they brought Henry Jones, bitter and disillusioned, home from the hospital in the city. He had been kicked in the head by a horse while he was away at college, and would never see again. The doctors all agreed on that point. He was permanently blind. Carl was trimming the Jones' hedge the first day that they pushed Henry out for his daily airing in the sun. He saw the blood clot that blocked the nerves to the brain center and his powerful mind worked smoothly, efficiently.
"Open your eyes," Carl said simply. "You can see."
"It was a miracle," everyone said. "A true miracle."
The newspapers scented a lucky circumstance and whipped up a human interest story that was more fantasy than fact; the wire services carried the story and people flocked to see the person who had performed a miracle. By twos and threes they came. Then by scores. They came to see because they were curious, or to be healed of some real or imagined ill. By the hundreds, by the thousands, they came. The lame, the halt, and the blind. The doctors, lawyers, ministers, newspaper men, newsreel cameramen, zealots. Men, women and children; from near and afar. The religious, and the heretics. He couldn't begin to help all of those who came to him. Some, with missing organs or diseased in a manner impossible for him to aid, were turned away and added their cries to the pack who bitterly denounced him. For the most part his work was confined to the eyes of a few, but the numbers of those he helped without their knowledge he knew were legend.
The crowd expected to see miracles and they demanded to see them. His failure to perform according to their tastes set off disputes that swept across the country. Was he a healer or a charlatan? A wise man or a fool? A public benefactor or a fraud?
"He has never healed anyone," learned doctors gave statements to the papers. "It's all a matter of mass hypnosis. He tells the ignorant that they are cured and, for a short while they actually force themselves to believe that they are cured. A very simple matter, indeed."
He went on ministering to the crowds that increased daily. He asked nothing for his work, and they gave nothing; but the popcorn vendors, the soda pop dispensers, the ice cream wagons, had a field day. It was a circus and they assigned extra policemen to control the frenzied crowds.