What The Deaf Man Heard

''What the Deaf Man Heard'' is a 1997 ''Hallmark Hall of Fame'' television movie that aired on CBS television on November 23, 1997. It concerns Sammy, a man who pretends to be deaf and mute, when in reality he can hear and speak perfectly well. The movie stars Matthew Modine and James Earl Jones and is based on the novel ''What the Deaf Mute Heard'' by G.D. Gearino.

Plot summary

Helen Ayers and her young son Sammy board a intercity bus to move to a better life. Sammy’s curious questions annoy Helen but she won’t reveal the surprise and admonishes him to be silent, putting him to sleep. At a rest stop, Helen goes into a bar to get a drink but is dragged into a vacant lot and murdered as the bus leaves. Sammy sleeps through the night until the bus arrives at the end of the route, Barrington, Georgia.

When a despondent Sammy ignores him, the cynical bus driver believes he is deaf and abandoned by his mother. Norm Jenkins, the kindhearted terminal manager, takes an immediate liking to Sammy and is very protective, as is Lucille, the owner and cook at the terminal’s cafe. Norm sees Sammy and Lucille as his surrogate son and wife as he had lost his own family to the Influenza pandemic of 1918. Young Tolliver Tynan stops with his adopted sister, Tallasse, and mother, Maddie, to watch Sammy being questioned by the police chief and tries to spook Sammy by lighting a cherry bomb. Sammy sees Tolliver’s activity in a reflection and steels himself to not react to the blast, which convinces the entire town that he is in fact deaf. Norm sets up Sammy to sleep in the storage room. Looking through Helen’s suitcase left on the bus, Norm finds important documents.

Sammy spends the next decades living in the terminal and working as the town’s handyman, hearing various secrets from people who believe him to be deaf. Norm backtracks along the route of the bus and eventually tracks down Helen’s cold case. Tallasse has returned after years away with dreams of becoming a professional photographer. Tolliver is still arrogant and patronizing as the treasurer of the town church. As his inheritance is tied up in a trust until his mother dies, he has various unsuccessful moneymaking schemes, all financed by funds he has embezzled from the church. Sammy hears all of Tolliver's secrets.

Black junk dealer Archibald Thacker and his sons masquerade as poor

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