The Visitation Part 6

"You know what I mean!"

I stopped and turned. "Yes, I know what you mean. I know the language, Kyle. I was speaking it before you were born. I used to lay that trip on people! But you're the man of G.o.d now, Pastor Sherman. Fight the good fight any way you want. The cause is all yours. Just stay out of my face!"

I turned and kept walking and did not look back, even as I heard him close the door I'd left open and drive off.

I SUPPOSE WE COULD HAVE AVOIDED our little spat if Kyle had been here two years ago, the first time Everett Fudd came to town to revive us at the Baptist church with a week of special meetings. At least he would have had a better picture of what was eating at me.

I wanted to help Bob Fisher out so I got on board and announced the revival meetings in my morning service. For three of the meetings, I brought some of my choir over. Bob and I even sang a duet one night while I played my guitar.

And every night we listened to Brother Fudd preach his long, rambling string of jeremiads, railing against any and every sin, real or imagined, and continually reminding us how backslidden, selfish, and cold of heart we all were. He came from the "to wake 'em up, beat 'em up" school of preaching, the kind that gave rise to a popular description of the Bible belt: "Punch a hole in the sand and guilt pours out." I often looked around the room to view the weathered faces of those being revived and wondered how much of this stuff these people really needed.

Bob and I saw these same faces in church most every Sunday. They were the regular people, the habitual church attenders who viewed the fact that there was something to show up for as reason enough to show up. G.o.d bless them, they were many a pastor's last gasping reason to continue having a midweek Bible study or a Sunday evening service, and now they were, at least in my mind, Bob's primary justification for scheduling Brother Fudd.

They came every night, and every night Brother Fudd beat them up. He accused and scolded them, then shoved their tattered souls up against the sublime memories of the past for comparison: the great revivals that happened in another place, another time; the things that G.o.d used to do; the way it was when they first found the Lord. Wherever they once were, they had strayed. Shame on them. Shame on them!

And the altar call was always the same, a piano-accompanied pet.i.tion: Come back to where you were. Do the old things again. Turn back and pick up whatever it was you dropped.

Recycle the old-time religion.

Come back to the Lord. Get right with G.o.d.

As the memories came back, I quickened my step, hurrying down the quiet house-lined street. I was dreading the possibility that Bob Fisher might drive by, offer me a lift, and invite me to the Fudd revival meetings again.

He was my friend. He meant well. But when he approached me after the ministerial with his invitation-"Hey Travis, come to the meetings. It'll be good for what ails you"-I could hear the message coming between the lines: You need to come back to square one and do it all over again, just do it harder. You need to come back to the Lord.

Come back to the Lord.

Come back to the Lord.

Just what did that mean, really? I chuckled. I could vow never to eat devil's food cake again, or deviled eggs, as Brother Fudd instructed us two years ago. I could think of all kinds of things to do to please G.o.d.

I whispered as I walked, "Lord, we are okay with each other, aren't we?"

There was no booming voice from heaven, nor was there any quickening in my soul. There was only the same silence I'd endured for months.

I kept walking, anger fueling my steps. Spiritual Band-Aids from friends, silence from heaven, and the same, unshakable sense of being on the outside of it all. The story of my life.

4.

ON THURSDAY, Nancy Barrons sold a b.u.mper crop of Harvesters, her biggest print run since the brush fire of '95, and the town became officially informed regarding the "Antioch Phenomenon." The story about Arnold Kowalski worked well because Nancy had a real Arnold to interview and photograph, as well as a doctor from Davenport to render his opinion about the arthritis mysteriously disappearing. I thought the accounts of the angelic sightings had a strange, groping tone, trying to be a story about something that might become news if it ever happened. No matter. News that might become news was still news enough. The photocopier at Prairie Real Estate got a lot of use that day, and single households were buying multiple copies of the paper. This news was definitely going to travel.

Their fervor renewed, Dee, Adrian, and Blanche returned to the church parking lot with a more favorable weather forecast- morning low clouds, but partial clearing in the afternoon. Blanche brought her camera and notebook to record whatever signs might appear, noting that they saw Jesus riding a white horse from 2:05 to 2:15, and then a big fist that could have been the hand of G.o.d. Dave White stopped by briefly to check the sky for himself, but he was the only person other than the three ladies to do so. This particular aspect of the Antioch Phenomenon hadn't made the paper yet.

Of course, the Phenomenon had no regard for Nancy's publishing schedule. Even as the Harvester was. .h.i.tting the vending boxes around town and the checkout counters at Mack's Sooper Market, it happened again, to a person no one would have expected.

One look at Bonnie Adams and you just knew she couldn't have been born and raised in Antioch by parents who were born and raised in Antioch. It may have been Marc and Greg who first pointed her out to me and called her the "hippie woman." She was the one who lived on Birch Street with the "PEACE BEGINS WITH ME" b.u.mper sticker on her car and the "KEEP OUT, NO TRESPa.s.sING" sign on her fence. I was never sure how she made a living besides being an artist who created bizarre nudes and animals out of sheet metal and sc.r.a.p aluminum. She had long, frizzy hair, granny gla.s.ses, loose clothing that had to have come either from India or Berkeley, and a particular scent about her, a strange combination of incense and burning hemp. The first time I met her, she was playing old Grateful Dead and Bob Dylan songs at a local jam for acoustic musicians. I did some lead fills on my banjo and we hit it off fine, but she turned a cold shoulder to any mention of the Lord. I quickly gathered she was into energy and vibrations, maybe a little karma, and that was about it. She was pragmatic, however, and that was why she showed up Thursday morning at Our Lady's with her daughter, Penny.

Penny was seventeen, had no memory of her father, and up until a year ago was constantly in trouble. Brett Henchle and his two cops had run Penny in several times for shoplifting, drug possession, and truancy, but her mother always seemed either helpless or indifferent, and Penny showed no signs of changing.

Until the accident.

Many folks were surprised the single-vehicle wreck hadn't happened sooner. Penny was out with two friends late at night, drinking and driving, when the car went off the road and rolled several times down an embankment. Penny was thrown from the vehicle and the open door landed on her right forearm, crushing it and mangling the nerves. The two friends recovered from their injuries, but Penny's hand was ruined and soon withered, curled back on itself like a broken bird foot.

After that, we didn't hear too much about her.

"Well," Jack McKinstry told me once, "she just can't be the thief she used to be." He ran Mack's Sooper Market, and Penny used to be a regular visitor who cost him a lot of money. Brett Henchle confided that things had indeed quieted down as far as Penny was concerned. "Maybe she's learned her lesson."

When Al Vendetti opened the church doors for the pilgrims, Bonnie was there with Penny in tow. Penny looked a lot like her mother, except that her frizzy hair had green streaks in it, her clothing was quite a bit tighter, and her face was pierced in far more places than Bonnie's. They took a seat in the second pew from the front, directly behind the young couple from Moses Lake. Bonnie had brought some granola bars and took her first bite as she gazed at the crucifix, waiting. Penny just slouched in the pew, bored and scowling.

After no more than five minutes, Penny snarled, "Can we go home?"

"No!" Bonnie answered.

"I need a cigarette."

"Shhh! You're going to disrupt the energy."

"There isn't any energy."

"There is. You just have to relax." Bonnie closed her eyes for a moment and took some deep breaths. "It's here. I can feel it. You just have to settle into it, let it flow." She opened her eyes again and looked around the room. "This could be big medicine. The Spokanes could have worshiped on this very spot."

The other pilgrims were giving them sideways glances.

"This isn't Indian," said Penny, "it's Catholic!"

"It's all the same, sweetheart."

Penny rolled her eyes. "It sure is."

"Shh," came a quiet suggestion from across the room.

"We're doing this for you, Penny."

"It's not going to work!"

Bonnie raised her voice. "If it worked before, it'll work again."

Then she drew a deep breath, settled back in the pew, and tried to settle her nerves, relaxing, relaxing. With her eyes on the crucifix, she drew a deep breath and began to hum, "Ommmmmmmmmm . . ."

Today Pete Morgan was the lay a.s.sistant keeping watch at the ladder. After another minute of Bonnie's humming he finally set down his psalm book and hurried off the platform to have a word with her. "Excuse me, I'm sorry, but I'll have to ask you to- "

Bonnie leaped to her feet and pushed him so hard he stumbled across the aisle and almost landed in a lady's lap. All around the room, there were gasps and ooohhhs.

"Way cool!" Penny exclaimed.

"Come on!" Bonnie hissed, yanking Penny by the arm.

Pete recovered just in time to see Bonnie racing for the platform, her full-cut clothing rustling behind her like natural, organic flags in a gale, pulling a running, off-balance Penny after her.

The couple from Moses Lake jumped up from their pew as the young lady gasped and pointed. "It's crying!"

Everyone stood, pointed, shouted. "Look at that!"

"It's crying, it's crying!"

"Saints be praised!"

Pete stared, aghast. Tears from both eyes now traced thin, meandering streaks down the wooden face of the image.

He took the arm of the young lady with leukemia. "Come on, I'll help you."

"But -" She pointed at Bonnie Adams, already grabbing a rung of the ladder and pulling at her unwilling daughter.

"Come on!" Pete insisted, and they hurried onto the platform, followed by an asthmatic man from Ritzville, a lady from Spokane with cancer and the friend who came with her, three elderly folks with arthritis, a Yakima man with a bad liver, and at least ten other people who were either sick or just plain curious.

"Get up there!" Bonnie yelled, pulling on Penny's arm. Penny tried to jerk away. "I'm scared!"

"Make way!" Pete shouted, bringing up the young lady. "Let us come through!"

"Only in your dreams, bub!" Bonnie started clambering up the ladder, stepping and tripping on her long, full pants legs.

The crowd stumbled and jostled around the altar and closed in around the ladder, pleading, praying, grabbing at the rungs in order to climb. Bonnie yelled back at them, stomping on any fingers that dared to climb after her. The two women from Spokane began to wail and weep. The man with the bad liver swore and said excuse me, swore and said excuse me. A forest of pleading hands reached toward the crucifix.

"Calm down now!" Pete hollered above the clamor. His back was against the ladder and some folks were trying to climb him. "I'm sure there will be tears enough for everyone! No shoving!"

Al Vendetti heard the noise from his office and came running into the sanctuary. My G.o.d, they're going to break something!

The young woman from Moses Lake began climbing the ladder. Bonnie Adams stepped on her hand, she fell back, and her husband caught her.

"Please!" Pete begged. "Let her come up the ladder! She has leukemia!"

Bonnie didn't hear him. Her full attention was on that wooden face. She brushed her fingers across the wet streaks, gathering the tears. A powerful tingle coursed through her hand and arm and she cried out, her hand trembling. Then she screamed, forgot her grip on the ladder, and fell, bowling over the two ladies from Spokane and the Ritzville man with asthma. "Penny!"

With help from Pete and her husband, the young woman from Moses Lake went up the ladder.

"Penny!"

Penny reached around the man with the bad liver and the three arthritics. "Mom, get up!"

Bonnie grabbed her daughter's withered hand, her wet fingers touching her daughter's skin firmly, purposefully. Penny began to tremble and scream, trying to pull her hand away, but Bonnie held on with all her strength, her eyes wild with excitement. "You feel it, Penny? Feel the energy? I knew it! I knew it!"

The young woman from Moses Lake reached for the face of the image, touched it, and found it dry. "Oh G.o.d, no . . ." She ran her fingers over the face imploringly, but there were no tears. "No . . .

no, please, have mercy . . ."

The only tears now were her own.

Father Al worked his way into the crowd. "Please, let's calm down, everyone! Let's not endanger each other!"

Penny was the one doing most of the screaming, her body trembling, her eyes fixed on her right hand, now uncurling as it slipped steadily from her mother's grip. "I can feel it!" she gasped. The fingers wiggled. "I can wiggle my fingers! Mom, I can feel your hand!"

"It works!" Bonnie exclaimed, her wide eyes filled with awe. "This is a sacred place!"

Al reached Penny and took her shoulders to steady her. Bonnie let her hand go and Penny held it up in front of the priest's face, wiggling, twisting, and flexing it. "You see? You see?"

He took her hand and felt it alive and strong in his own. "Oh child . . ." Then he looked up at the crucifix and blessed himself.

WITHIN HALF AN HOUR, I heard about it from Sid Maher who heard about it from Paul Daley who heard about it from one of his parishioners who heard about it from Pete Morgan. Sid called Father Al to confirm it, and then he called me. Sid was a believer now, totally flabbergasted, unable to understand what it meant, how it worked, how he could explain it doctrinally. I had no answers for him; all I could do was thank him for calling, hang up, and get out of the house before Kyle took it upon himself to call me. The way I was feeling, I couldn't talk to him or anyone else.

By the time I even cared where I was going, I found myself near the cottonwoods on the little hill beside my house. I stopped, rested a hand against a gnarled trunk, and began to pray desperately, trying to think, trying to understand just what in the world I was supposed to do with all this. The thing that kept wrenching my insides was that I wanted to believe it was true, that G.o.d was indeed moving through our little town and, well, doing something, doing anything. But I'd already put in too many years of believing too many things too quickly. I felt cautionary red flags popping up everywhere. I had scoffed at the reports of people seeing angels, but I was now standing where something had appeared to me. The G.o.d I had known all my life didn't heal through tearful wooden images, and yet two witnesses-the biblical requirement-had confirmed the healings at Our Lady's. What must I accept next, that Jesus was really appearing in the clouds?

"Lord, please speak to me," I said aloud as I looked across the expansive farmland to the west. "Help me sort this out."

I quieted myself and remained still, scanning the smooth, gently rolling horizon as I waited for a clear answer to come to mind. I listened for sounds, and even stole a few glimpses of the clouds, just in case. I recalled and sang an old song we used to do at prayer meetings: "Speak my Lord, speak my Lord. Speak and I'll be quick to answer Thee. . . ."

I waited. I told myself I wouldn't wait long, but I waited.

Minutes pa.s.sed. There was no remarkable vision, no voice. The only sound I noticed was the distant purring of a lawn mower in the neighborhood behind me.

Well, I thought, I can spend the whole day up here doing and accomplishing nothing, or I can get on with my life.

I turned and headed down the hill toward Myrtle Street, my prayers unanswered-again. I accepted that fact grudgingly even as I tried to remind myself, "Hey, time is one of G.o.d's primary tools for teaching wisdom." Time. And more time. And still more time. More praying, more asking, more weeks, months, or even years of anguish trying to pull it all together. This frustrating little session on the hill reminded me of something I'd learned over the years: G.o.d won't be hurried. Or in this case, I thought, whatever he's doing, he isn't about to clue me in!

I stepped out of the gra.s.s and around the wooden traffic barrier that marked the west end of Myrtle Street. The sound of the lawn mower was coming from John Billings's yard across the street from my place. Some guy was busily circling around the big yard on a little Snapper mower.

I checked my mailbox. Hm. More catalogs. Just what I need: a solid gold trailer hitch, a short-wave radio that fits on your wrist. . . .

The guy on the mower came whirring around the front of the yard. He was young, with long black hair bound in a ponytail, a beard, faded work jeans, a long-sleeved shirt, leather gloves. I couldn't recall John Billings ever hiring anyone else to do his lawn. Maybe he was a relative.

The young man looked at me, smiled, and turned the mower for another lap around the back.

I recognized him.

And I was stunned. Speechless. I stood there frozen, staring, my mouth dropping open so far I could feel the sun drying my tongue. A landscape man?

My mysterious vision of Jesus on the hill was just a landscape man, a young guy with long hair and a beard? He must have been out for a walk, or maybe scoping out another mowing and tr.i.m.m.i.n.g job. Maybe he was inspecting those trees for possible tr.i.m.m.i.n.g or removal.

I felt silly and embarra.s.sed. April Fool's. Just kidding. Gotcha!

But after that, I felt wonderfully relieved! It was John Billings's landscape man. His landscape man! I burst out laughing.