An Imperfect Miracle (9 page)

Some people booed him, like Mr. Grimes, for instance, but most like Mom and me just sat there like dummies and listened. After he sat down I looked over at Carlos and Father Tom, who were both smiling and nodding like they agreed with him. I whispered to Mom if she thought they were going to get up and push the idea too from a religious angle. But she whispered back that it might look bad, them being the town's big Catholics and all.

Next some bald guy grabbed the mike and spoke in a voice that was so deep that it almost cracked me up. He said that there were already enough robberies in town, especially lately. He said that somebody had just swiped his GPS navigator and his stereo right out of his car, and that with all the outsiders flooding in on account of Mary, crime was bound to shoot up even higher. As soon as he was through the round cop popped up and said that they were working hard to catch the thief. He said that we all ought to keep our minds on what to do about Mary's picture and not get sidetracked. I asked Mom why the cops were wasting time investigating Mary if they had a real thief to catch, and she whispered back that some cops just liked throwing their weight around.

Then Mr. Grimes shuffled up to the mike kind of stiff and ginger. He hadn't even bothered to clean himself up and was wearing the same red lumberjack shirt and dirty blue jeans he had on when the little drunk beat him up. He jerked the mike right off the stand and started pacing back and forth with his shoulders all hunched over and staring at the floor, the way he did when he was lecturing us in class on how dumb we were for not knowing the answers to any of his stupid questions. Then he started stroking his mustache a little with his free hand, which always drove me crazy.

“The town will be a laughingstock if it gives any credence to this silly fairy tale. I say that the garage should go in as planned. The only reason people are coming to see this comical water stain is because they've been deceived through a clever marketing campaign by the Catholic church into believing that their various ailments can somehow be miraculously cured. We all know that it's a fraud, and that this charade can't possibly continue. There will be investigations, and the truth will eventually come to light.”

Right away some old lady in back waved her little fist and hollered that Mary was no fairy tale, and that Mr. Grimes shouldn't be allowed to tell everybody else what to think. Then Mr. Grimes yelled back something about “separation of church and state,” and that if the town turned Mary into a shrine it would be violating the Constitution. I wondered what church he was talking about, ours or St. Sebastian's. But I'd learned in social studies that the state capitol was way over in Harrisburg, so I didn't see what the big problem was.

A lot of folks must have agreed with me because Mr. Grimes got shouted down pretty quick. He didn't seem to mind though, because his little eyes started shining real bright and cocky. He stood there waiting until the mayor banged the meeting to order again.

“When are you going to learn to think for yourselves instead of buying into all this religious nonsense?”

“We think you're an idiot,” somebody yelled.

“Mindless people see what they want to see. And if you feel compelled to delude yourselves into thinking that a smudge on a worthless slab of concrete represents divine intervention, then I guess that's your right, so long as you don't try and push your silly beliefs on the rest of us. But if you ask me, it's a sad state of affairs when supposedly educated people in an advanced society such as ours can harbor such antiquated and ridiculous beliefs.”

“Who asked you?” somebody else shouted.

“Mr. Grimes is a brave and gallant man,” somebody else hollered.

I was worried that Mom was about to stand up and take Mr. Grimes's side, on account of how she didn't like the idea of sick people thinking that Mary could do miracles on them. But she just frowned a little and shook her head at all the fussing and yelling, and I really couldn't tell who she was backing.

Then the mayor opened up the meeting again, although from then on nobody said much new. When everyone was all talked out, the mayor said that he liked the idea about visitors to the shrine being made to pay to park and then being bused back and forth. Then he asked another guy sitting at the table, who I guess was the town's official lawyer, to explain to us how the town and St. Sebastian's could do all this without breaking any laws. During his little speech this lawyer said that the town could even build Mary a little house if it wanted, a historical monument is what he called it, to attract more tourists.

Halfway through the talk Mr. Grimes yelled that the fix was in and stormed out along with a few other hotheads carrying cardboard signs that said in big crayon letters, Atheists Say Down With Religious Extremism, or something like that. When I asked Mom what an atheist was, she said that they're people who believe that sooner or later human beings can figure out pretty much everything that's worth figuring out all on their own. I wasn't sure if Mom was pulling my leg or not, because later that night when I looked the word up in her dictionary it didn't say anything like that.

After the meeting I wanted to go up and say hello to Carlos and Father Tom. But they were busy talking to the mayor and Marcie's dad the lawyer, and Mom said I shouldn't bug them. When we were driving home I told Mom that it sure was lucky I'd discovered Mary's face before the town bulldozed her. Mom said maybe it was and maybe it wasn't, and that we'd just have to wait and see how things worked out. When I kept after her, she started tickling my belly until I cried uncle.

Chapter 7

Next morning as I was heading to school I detoured past Mary to see how she was holding up, what with Mr. Grimes trying to blowtorch her and all the other fussing going on. The town must have been antsy to start the money rolling in from her new shrine, because Mary's lot was already fenced off. And there were pot-bellied construction guys tramping around inside laughing and telling dirty jokes. I wondered if all the swear words bothered her, but Mary seemed tough enough to handle it, showing up as she did on a grungy slab of concrete in the bad part of town. They even had a backhoe in there where Carlos's table used to be, and I was worried that they were planning to dig up the concrete steps. I hoped not, because I kind of liked how people had to climb the stairs to get to see Mary up close.

As I was leaving I spotted Tim Runyon across the street with his arms folded real tight over his hairy chest so that you could see the muscles bulging in his arms. He was leaning back against the door to one of the bars, glaring over at Mary's lot and all the work going on. Judging by how he was scowling, he must not have liked it much that Mary was going to be a permanent part of the neighborhood. He didn't pay any attention to me, and I didn't think he even knew who I was. I looked around for Dad, but I didn't see him.

I had English right after lunch, and Mr. Grimes spent the whole class pacing around feeling his mustache and ragging on poor Mary. As far as I could tell, he was saying that she was just a myth like all the other myths we were reading about at the time, like Zeus and those other dopey Greek gods and goddesses, and that she wasn't a very good myth even at that. She was out of date, he said.

I must have dozed off, because he rapped me a good one in the ribs to wake me up as he was handing back my latest quiz, which according to him I'd flunked. He said if I didn't get an A-plus on the final test, I'd flunk the entire class.

I'd been expecting him to say something like that, and I knew that Mom would make me go to summer school if I flunked out. So right after class I went up and told him that I'd seen him trying to destroy public property with his blowtorch, and that if he flunked me I'd go straight to the cops. I fibbed a little and said that I had another witness willing to back me up. Mr. Grimes was sure shook up by it, all right, judging by that pale little tremble in his eyes.

“We'll discuss this later,” he said finally, kind of soft and whiny.

I figured I had him cornered, so I didn't press him any harder. I was amazed that I'd had the guts to stand up to him like that, and as I was walking out into the hall I whispered to Chewy that Mary must have been jacking up my courage somehow. Chewy said that Mr. Grimes deserved it, snitching on us to Mom like he did. Then we headed across the hall to Mr. O'Connor's science class.

I was pretty sure that Mr. O'Connor didn't believe in Mary either, because he didn't seem to believe in anything he couldn't run through the little silver laptop he had sitting on his desk. Just like always he was wearing one black sock and one gray one, and he must have been washing them in the same load because the colors were starting to bleed together. The socks must have been bleeding into the white shirt he was wearing too, because it had a lot of wavy pale purple streaks in it. But for as dorky as he dressed, Mr. O'Connor graded pretty easy and didn't give us any grief so long as we didn't mouth off too much.

All the kids wanted to talk about Mary's new shrine going up along Main Street, since it was the big news in town. Like always Mr. O'Connor was ready for us, and right off he said that science and religion are different.

“The standard view is that science has to do with how the universe works, while religion has to do with what's behind it all. Assuming there's anything behind it all.”

Then some pig-nosed kid asked him what all that had to do with Mary's face showing up on the concrete down on Main Street. Mr. O'Connor answered in the same dry, stiff, dusty way that he talked about everything, except when it came to the periodic table and the theory of evolution, where he always got a little more excited.

“Science can tell us that the markings represent a stain or discoloration caused by water soaking into the concrete over an extended period of time, perhaps from rainfall or perhaps from a leaky drainage pipe. Beyond that it can't tell us why the markings are there, or if the fact that they may resemble a woman's face has any significance beyond the random chemical processes at work.”

But the kid's forehead was still all crinkled up, so Mr. O'Connor decided to try again. I could tell he was getting bored though, because he kept looking at his watch.

“So if you believe that God or Jesus or Allah or Mary or Buddha or Zeus or the Fairy Queen or whatever other invisible being you can think of put the markings there, then the standard view is that science can neither prove it nor disprove it. Some scientists dispute that, of course, and say science can indeed disprove it, but you'll have to judge their position for yourselves. If on the other hand you say it's just a water stain and there's nothing more to it than that, science likewise can't really say if you're right or you're wrong, and in my personal opinion it shouldn't try. That's the province of religion, and philosophy too, I guess, although I'm no expert.”

“So I guess that means you really do think she looks like Mary,” the kid sneered.

Mr. O'Connor smiled a little but wouldn't say one way or the other. It sounded to me that if something was really important, like Mary or Jesus or where you go after you die, then science wasn't much help.

On my way home I was walking past St. Sebastian's and saw Father Tom out shooting basketballs by himself. He waved me over and asked if I wanted a Sprite. I liked drinking Sprite a lot better than Diet Coke or Diet Pepsi, which was about all that Mom ever kept in our fridge anymore, so I told him sure. He led me into the church, where I'd never actually been before, and I started looking around at all the statues of Mary and Jesus they had piled up everywhere. They were all such pure white that they almost looked like snow, except for some of the ones of Jesus where somebody had slapped on red paint down along his ribs and up on his forehead.

They even had a huge picture of Mary way up on the front wall right behind a statue of Jesus hanging down from a cross with his legs bent. Mary's arms were spread wide open and her face was shining like the sun, and she had a gold crown on her head full of pretty jewels and diamonds and stuff. I asked Father Tom if Mary had shown up here in the church right out of nowhere like she had down on Main Street.

“She was painted on the wall, Nate. But the artist is pretty famous.”

“So her picture's a fake then.”

“Well, I guess you could say that.”

I stared up at it some more, while out of the corner of my eye I noticed Father Tom smiling at me.

“Mary lives mostly in our hearts. That's where she does the most good.”

“That's about the same thing as Pastor Mike says. Have you been talking with him or something?”

I waited for Father Tom to answer my question, but when he just stood there kind of grinning at me I decided to ask him something else.

“So she can show up in two places at once, I guess.”

“Probably in millions upon millions of places at once.”

That made me feel a little better, because even if we did end up moving to Erie, Mary might be able to follow me after all. Just then Mrs. Marcella dragged herself in and gave me a big wink, but her hips must have been bothering her because she didn't try to come over and pat me on the head.

Father Tom scooted right over to her and said hello and helped her up to the front row, where she knelt down and started praying. Because Mary was closed for construction, I guessed that Mrs. Marcella had to do all her praying in church. When he came back I began to ask my questions, since I figured that being a priest he ought to know more about Mary than Carlos even.

“Why'd she show up on the concrete then if she can live in everybody's heart at the same time? And why doesn't she just come out and say who she is and make it a lot easier on everybody? My teachers at school are always saying that we shouldn't believe in stuff until it's proven, but if she started talking I don't know how anybody could not believe in her.”

Father Tom had soft eyes, which looked even softer whenever he smiled.

“You might be surprised, Nate. People are quite inventive when they're thinking up reasons not to believe.”

I kept waiting for him to answer my other questions. But they must have been too hard because instead he told me how well he thought I'd handled myself lately, what with all the commotion about Mary and me being kind of at the center of it. I told him that Mom was always on my case about not getting a big head out of it. He laughed a little and then asked me how my mom was doing. I said she was going after Pastor Mike pretty hard, but that I didn't know for sure yet how it would all turn out.

“Pastor Mike seems friendly toward Mary,” I said. “Did you talk him into believing in her or something?”

“Mary's all about grace. Pastor Mike understands that.”

I'd heard Mrs. Marcella say that word lots of mornings when she was praying to Mary, and sometimes she'd say that Mary was full of it. I asked him what it meant.

“Grace is helping people out when they don't deserve it. It's a gift from God, and Mary is a sign of that gift.”

While I was thinking it over, he led me down to the basement, where he bought me a can of Sprite from the machine. I started looking around for the ancient picture of Mary I figured they had stored down there, the one they'd copied from when they'd built the statue to her outside on the playground, but I didn't see any. I decided it didn't really matter, since Mary knew what she looked like and wouldn't let people put up a bad statue of herself. Then I spotted Carlos sitting in a cramped little room off to the side behind the pool tables, where I guessed he lived because there was a cot jammed in there in the corner. He was talking to some short, skinny guy with his back to me. The guy was smoking so fierce and constant that the whole basement smelled like it was on fire.

Father Tom leaned down and scooped a gum wrapper off the floor and tossed it into a trash can, and I noticed how big and powerful his hands were. Then all of a sudden it hit me who Carlos was talking to. I guess I didn't recognize him at first because he was wearing a nice green shirt and long pants without any smudges on them. His hair was cut shorter too, even since yesterday when I'd seen him beating up Mr. Grimes.

With Father Tom and Carlos right there to protect me, I didn't figure he'd cuss me out again, so I walked over and asked him if he knew who I was. He shook his head and took another puff on his cigarette. Then Father Tom walked up behind me and put his hands on my shoulders, but not real rough or anything like how Dad used to.

“John's a little shy.”

“He wasn't too shy when he bawled me out the other morning.” I glared at him as hard as I could, because I didn't want him thinking I was scared of him or anything, just in case he had any ideas of coming around later to hassle me. “How'd Mary do it anyway, close up your cut I mean? Did it hurt, like when you get stitches?”

The little guy just kept puffing on his cigarette. I looked up at Father Tom grinning at me.

“I saw him working over my English teacher, Mr. Grimes, down at Mary's. I can't blame him though. Mr. Grimes was trying to burn Mary's face right off the concrete.”

Carlos got a big grin out of it too, which surprised me a little since Carlos seemed like such a peaceful fellow.

“We know all about that,” Carlos said. “John here keeps an eye out for Mary, just in case any troublemaker wants to do her harm. He showed up at the church a week or so ago asking if he could help. He wants to pay Mary back for saving his life.”

The little drunk snuffed out his cigarette in a tin ashtray and blew some smoke out of both nostrils. I watched it drift up toward the blank white ceiling and just sort of disappear. Then he squinted at me out of one eye, like he was trying to scare me or something. But I wasn't scared, not with Father Tom and Carlos right there making sure he behaved himself.

“What were you doing, trying to kill yourself or something?”

“I was too drunk to kill myself.”

He sounded like he had mud in his throat. I figured it must have been from all those cigarettes.

“How'd you know Mary saved you then if you were so drunk?”

He took a few seconds to clear some of the gunk out so he could talk right.

“I could just feel it inside me somehow. I'll never forget it either. It's like being born when you're already an old man.”

I'd heard folks talk that way at my church when they were giving their testimony up on stage, so it didn't throw me off or anything. I was about to ask him some more questions when all of a sudden Father Tom spun me right around and led me back upstairs through the church and out to the playground like he was in some big hurry. I didn't know what Father Tom was so antsy about, since I knew all about drunks from living with Dad for so long, but I didn't squawk about it or anything.

As he was patting me on the shoulder and telling me that he'd see me around, I finally got up my nerve and asked him if he could teach me how to fight. I told him I needed lessons on account of how that big red-haired kid had got the best of me. After giving out this long breathy sigh, Father Tom asked me if I was right-handed or left-handed. I was embarrassed to have to think about it for a few seconds.

“Left-handed.”

He lined me up in front of him, moved my fists in front of my face and kicked my feet around until they were in the right position. Then he showed me how to throw a quick jab, which I got the hang of pretty fast.

“Next time maybe I'll show you how to follow it up with a knockout punch.”