An Imperfect Miracle (17 page)

“It's always nice doing business with you fellows,” Runyon said, keeping a close eye on the little drunk.

Father Tom stuck his finger right into Runyon's chest so hard that Runyon nearly fell backwards over the chair.

“If anything untoward happens to that boy or to his mother, for any reason, I'm holding you responsible.”

Runyon raised his fist at Father Tom like he was getting ready to fight.

“Don't get so high and mighty with me. You guys are the biggest thieves I've ever come across.”

The little drunk whipped a knife out of his pocket, a real mean-looking switchblade too, and after flipping it open he held the blade right against Runyon's neck. He didn't slice him up or anything, but it was still enough of a scare to knock that silly grin off Runyon's face. Then after waiting for what seemed like forever, Father Tom told the little guy to put away his knife and that there was no need for violence.

“At least not yet anyway.”

Runyon shoved the envelope into his pocket and ran for the steps like they were about to set his pants on fire. I scampered upstairs and knelt down behind one of the pews until Runyon was out the door. Then I almost went back down to the basement to thank Father Tom and Carlos for protecting me and to ask why they were giving a skunk like Runyon so much money. But with that little drunk whipping his knife all around, I decided I'd wait until I could talk to Carlos about it alone.

When I got home Mom was there fixing me a ham sandwich with lots of my favorite yellow mustard spread on. I told her that I'd cut my eye tripping and falling down on the sidewalk. She washed the cut out and slapped a Band-aid on it with some ointment that she claimed worked better than anything else on the market.

“At least you had sense enough to come straight home. For somebody who thinks he's so smart, you can be awfully stupid at times.”

After lunch and after Mom had gone back to the hospital, Chewy and me went up to my room and laid on my bed side by side and talked it over. I was hoping that Chewy might have been able to sneak around and gather some secret information about what Runyon was up to and why Carlos was giving him money. But Chewy was as clueless about it as I was, which I guess is even more proof that being invisible isn't all that it's cracked up to be.

Chapter 13

All next week Mom worked days, and I spent most of my time between breakfast and supper down at the shrine. I was pretty sure that with all the pilgrims around Runyon would have a tough time snatching me or beating me up again. I didn't see him at all though and hoped that maybe Father Tom and the little drunk had scared him off for good. I even pulled some of the local papers out of the big round trash bins the town had just set up all along the sidewalk to see if there was any news about Runyon being chased out of town. But there was nothing about him at all, which I figured was probably a good thing.

It took me a few days, but I finally got around to asking Carlos what he and Father Tom were doing with Runyon in the basement of St. Sebastian's. I would have spoken up sooner, but I couldn't figure out a way to get into it without making it seem like I'd been spying on them. Finally I decided to fib a little. I told him that I happened to be in St. Sebastian's admiring that big picture of Mary on the front wall right behind where Jesus was hanging with the red paint smeared all over him, when I heard Runyon talking down in the basement.

Right away Carlos wanted to know exactly what I'd heard. His face turned pretty sour too, which shook me up a little on account of how easygoing he mostly was.

“I just heard Father Tom warning him that he better not mess with me anymore. That was about it, except for one thing.”

“And what was that?”

I worked the lie over in my head until it sounded true enough to tell.

“When I heard all your voices, I started walking downstairs to say hello. Then when I turned the corner, I saw you hand an envelope full of money to Runyon. I guess that made me think I wasn't supposed to be there, and I left right away.”

Carlos fixed his dark eyes right at me.

“Is that all you saw?”

“That's it.”

I thought about the little drunk shoving his knife at Runyon's throat and Runyon calling them all thieves, but Runyon being such a lowlife I didn't see why I had to bring that all up too. Carlos finally sat back down on his little swivel stool behind the counter, picked up his big white handkerchief and went back to polishing his crosses. He seemed a little embarrassed about having gotten so worked up, because he kept frowning and shaking his head and talking real soft.

“We owed him money for some landscaping work he'd done around the church.”

“Do you mean you hired a skunk like him?”

“Father Tom believes in giving everybody a second and even a third chance. It's in the Bible, you know. Of course, now that he's attacked you, we're not planning on giving him any more jobs.”

I told him that I was glad it wasn't the money he skimmed off every week from the profits down at the shrine to pay the utility bills. I said the shrine wouldn't look too good if the electric company had to shut off the power. Carlos flicked his eyes up at me.

“I wouldn't call it skimming, Nate. But anyway, I use envelopes to store a lot of things, like receipts, for instance. You can't read too much into it.”

His story still sounded a little fishy, especially the part about some bum like Runyon doing honest work. But I didn't see how I could press him anymore and still stay on his good side, since he seemed so touchy about it.

I was down at the shrine enough that Carlos put me to work sweeping the floor at his gift shop and running errands for him and stuff. He even let me use his computer for playing solitaire, which for some reason I could sit and play for hours. He showed me how to work the e-mail too. He wanted me to be able to send out advertisements to his customers reminding them to visit the shrine again, especially when he was running specials on his crosses or rosary beads or whatever. He had quite a mailing list built up, and it didn't surprise me that his business was growing so fast.

We'd eat lunch together sometimes at this new restaurant that had just gone in across the street where the last of those crummy bars used to be. I'd munch down burgers and fries while he sipped on coffee and chewed on a cream-filled chocolate donut that he said was the best he'd ever tasted. He always paid for my lunch out of his own pocket too, just like he did sometimes for the homeless people who came around asking for a handout. Carlos said it was the least he could do for “our poor brothers and sisters,” as he liked to call them.

“If Mary, being the Queen of the Universe, can pitch in to do community service, then we should be willing to help out too.”

I rubbed the ketchup off my lips and waited until I'd swallowed down the last of the fries, because Carlos didn't like me talking with my mouth full any more than Mom did.

“It sure was boring around here before Mary showed up, but now it seems like something new and exciting is happening all the time.”

Carlos grinned at me kind of crafty and then ordered me apple pie with two scoops of vanilla ice cream. I let Chewy lick the ice cream but not the pie, since when she was still visible pie would always make her throw up. I didn't have to put on an act either like when Mom was around, because Carlos was always asking about Chewy and how she was doing.

Then I got to thinking about Mr. Grimes and asked Carlos how much jail time he'd do for burning down Mary's shrine. Carlos said he didn't know for sure, but that he expected it would be plenty.

“Maybe after Mr. Grimes goes off to prison, Mary'll show up on his cell wall and give him some hope.”

Carlos kind of blinked at me a little.

“But I thought you couldn't stand Mr. Grimes.”

I glanced away for a second because I was a little embarrassed to admit it. But I didn't figure that Carlos would hold it against me too much.

“I guess I'm starting to feel a little sorry for him. He can't really do anything to hurt me now anyway, like flunking me out or something.”

Right away Carlos's face lit up, and he rubbed his hand over the top of my head until I backed away from him a little. That afternoon I noticed that Carlos wasn't wearing his big silver cross around his neck, and I asked him if he'd lost it. He said someone had swiped it and that he'd reported it missing to the cops, but that he hadn't heard anything back from them yet. He said that with all the tourists coming through to gawk at Mary, it wasn't a surprise that once in a while some troublemaker would rip something off. He said he didn't really mind, because he liked how the big golden one he was wearing now sparkled in the sunlight. He was right too, because it sparkled so bright that sometimes it nearly blinded me.

The town was making so much money off the shrine that it had hired a medic to hang around full time waiting for people to keel over from the heat so he could stick an oxygen mask over their mouths and shove them into an ambulance that was always parked close by. At supper one night Mom said that the shrine was killing as many people as it was healing, but I think she was still a little jealous of how quick Mary could cure folks of their diseases.

Toward the end of the next to the last week before school started, they began bulldozing the karate place and Joe's novelty shop. Carlos said that the town was thinking about setting up a museum to Mary on part of the land, but that they hadn't decided on anything official yet. Then he leaned back against the counter and his eyes got sort of clean and open and bright, like little glass marbles shining in the sun.

“The town is being purified one brick at a time. That's the way it looks to me anyway.”

“Do you think that's why Mary showed up, to spiff up Millridge a little?”

“Part of the reason, I imagine.”

“Sort of the way Mom cleans out our house in spring, one room at a time.”

“Sort of.”

“Do you think Mary's gonna just keep on cleaning and scrubbing until all the dirt and stains and grime are gone and the town's all shiny and bright?”

“I don't know about that. If all the ugliness were gone, after a while you'd forget what it was like and wouldn't appreciate the cleanness anymore. It seems to me like you need some dirt to balance out the clean and keep us all honest.”

Carlos's idea might have sounded good, but I still wasn't sure.

“After Dad left, our house got a lot more peaceful and quiet. And I still appreciate it too. Even when Mom acts up and starts hollering at me for something I didn't do, it's nothing like it used to be. When things are really bad, I don't think you ever forget them.”

He turned and gave me a sweet sort of look.

“I still say you ought to become a priest, Nate.”

I shook my head right away.

“Mom would never go for me turning Catholic, especially not when she's trying to get Pastor Mike to marry her.”

“So you still like Pastor Mike, do you?”

“Sure. Don't you?”

“He seems like a nice enough fellow, although I don't know him all that well.”

That struck me as kind of strange, since I'd seen some e-mails back and forth between Carlos and Pastor Mike one morning when I was messing around on his computer. I decided that when I had a chance I might read one or two of them just to see what they talked about. I couldn't look right then though, because he had me go up and polish Mary's glass cover, which I liked to do because I got to study her without worrying about the next person in line trying to climb over the top of me. Nothing had changed from the last time though, and she was still showing that same cute little smile and the five tears.

That Saturday night Pastor Mike came over to our house to meet Uncle Carl and Aunt Helen, who had driven down from Erie just for that. After supper, which was ribs and chicken and these big, thick, greasy hamburgers that Pastor Mike and Uncle Carl grilled out on the backyard barbecue, they all sat around our living room playing bridge. I watched them pretty close, because I'd always wanted to learn how to play a real grownup game.

Pastor Mike teamed up with Aunt Helen, and they beat Mom and Uncle Carl pretty handily. Mom blamed it all on Uncle Carl, who was smiling and laughing and telling jokes the whole time and didn't seem to mind losing. She said he wasn't paying enough attention to what he was doing, and Aunt Helen said it was because the doctor had just told him that his diabetes had disappeared. She called it a “misdiagnosis,” but then Mom chimed in that the symptoms for diabetes can go away if you catch it early enough and take good care of yourself. She called it “pre-diabetes.” While they were going back and forth, Uncle Carl just looked over at me with this big wide grin and winked.

I kept trying to figure out the rules as they started a new game. But it was way too hard and I began watching TV instead and sometimes glancing over at them, especially when they talked about personal stuff. Uncle Carl must have gotten carried away shooting the breeze, because all of a sudden Aunt Helen gave him a real sharp jolt with her elbow right into his shoulder. She hit him so hard that he yelped a little. I figured he wasn't supposed to say what he'd just said, because Mom was rolling her eyes at him now too. Meanwhile, Pastor Mike's face went kind of empty and pale, and his blue eyes kept flicking from Uncle Carl to Aunt Helen to Mom and then back to Uncle Carl again.

After I thought for a few seconds about what Uncle Carl had said, I could see why Aunt Helen and Mom had gotten so mad at him. After all, they were always trying to keep me from hearing the good stuff.

“How about Dave getting arrested down in Pittsburgh for fencing stolen merchandise? I'm surprised he's still living in the area.”

Like I told you, Dave was my dad's name, and after Aunt Helen was through ragging on poor Uncle Carl I asked them what fencing was. Nobody wanted to say at first. But then Aunt Helen frowned and told me that it was sort of like being a middleman between a buyer and a seller, except that the goods my dad was dealing in were stolen. That was why he was in jail.

Of course, I already knew what a middleman was from Carlos, because he was always ordering his crosses and Bibles and other goods from middlemen over the Internet. Carlos didn't care for them much either and was always calling them sharks, because he claimed that they took too big of a cut from the profits. I wondered if that was what got Dad into trouble, charging too much money I mean, so that somebody snitched on him. Then I thought of Runyon and his stash of loot out at the old mill, and I wondered if maybe he was the one who'd turned Dad in. I didn't say anything about it though.

After that they didn't talk too much until the game was over, except for Mom, who kept saying in a real tight wiry voice that Dad could stay locked up forever as far as she was concerned. I could tell by how they sometimes winked and smiled at each other that Uncle Carl and Aunt Helen really liked Pastor Mike a lot. It seemed pretty clear to me that Mom and him would get hitched sooner or later, since I couldn't think of any other hoops Mom had to make him jump through.

After Uncle Carl and Aunt Helen left to go back up to Erie, Pastor Mike and Mom sat on the couch watching TV and holding hands a little. They even let me sit up on the couch with them. Mom must have felt a little guilty about having torn into Dad the way she'd done, because she started going on and on about how I shouldn't worry that Dad was in jail and that everything would work out okay.

I guessed she was afraid that I had “undergone a traumatic emotional experience,” which I'd heard that doctor say about me when he was trying to explain to Mom why I was still talking to Chewy. The doctor seemed to think that Dad dumping us had something to do with Chewy coming back from the dead, which of course just proved that he didn't have a clue what he was talking about. And now that I knew what a big jerk his kid was, I had even less respect for his opinions.

Pastor Mike even got into the act and had us all hold hands and say a prayer asking God to guard us from any and all dangers and to give us a peaceful and quiet life. Even though I thought he was going overboard a little, probably trying to impress Mom with how religious he was, it sure was a big change from all the swearing and screaming and fighting that went on when Dad was still around.