"What The Deaf Man Heard"

"What The Deaf Man Heard" is a Hallmark Gold Crown Collector's Edition movie and it is great.  Sammy Ayers is being raised by a single mom and they board a bus for Georgia hoping to change their lives.  En route, Sammy's mother gets off the bus to stretch her legs at a stop while Sammy is sleeping and she disappears.  When he arrives alone at his destination, the bus driver insists he is now the charge of the station master, Norman Jenkins (played by Tom Skerritt) and at some point Sammy decides to pretend that he is deaf.  He ends up growing up living in a room with a cot in the back of the station being watched over by Norm and a waitress, Lucille, who works there.  He becomes the town's handy man.  He also becomes friends with a local trash hauler played by James Earl Jones and, because people don't think he can hear, he becomes privy to a lot of secrets.  Eventually, some secrets are too big to keep and he has to speak out and use his voice to right some wrongs.  What he learns about himself in the process changes his life.  I think this is one of my favorite Hallmark movies!  pazt