The Maldonado Miracle (12 page)

Father Lebeon had stayed with him for a few minutes but felt so uncomfortable about the use of ordinary medical techniques in such a delicate situation that he returned to his office. When he heard the rap on the door he attached a set smile to his face. He was greatly relieved when he saw who his visitors were.

"It's good to see friendly faces again. Let me get some coffee cups."

Olcott hesitated, then plunged ahead. "We didn't come to have coffee this morning, Padre."

"Well, don't tell me you're bringing a big contribution." Father Lebeon grinned over at Abe. "Know any rabbis who'd like to trade places with me today?"

Abe sputtered, the laugh sounding uneasy.

Olcott said bluntly, "Padre, we'd like to know why you closed the church."

Lebeon pushed back in his chair. "For the past two hours, I've been explaining to visitors, friends, and enemies. But you, Frank, above all, should know."

Olcott froze. "Why me?"

"Because you're a Catholic, and a very intelligent man. We can't treat this lightly; make a Las Vegas show out of it. It's got to be proved."

Recovering, Olcott said, "But people from all over the state know we've got a miracle here. It's on the radio, in the newspapers..."

"I know." Lebeon nodded. "Listen, all of you, no priest ever wanted to close a church. We'd rather open them, a thousand a day, all over the world. But something like this happens, and we can't let emotions run it. You have to be sensible. You and Nello, as parish members and citizens here, have to help me. So do you, Abe."

Olcott pulled a chair up to Lebeon's desk. He couldn't count the times he'd done this in the past two years. "Two weeks ago, Padre, I was here, in this very chair, and we talked about what could be done to save this town—put it on the map. We got no answers. But if you'll remem
ber, when I was leaving, I said, 'Padre, maybe only luck will keep us going.' Remember that?"

Lebeon's eyes narrowed. He felt himself being trapped. "Yes, I remember."

"Well, we got that luck now. There's hope in this town again. Something's happened here. Take a walk out on the street. Go into the Dinner Bell. See for yourself. It's in the air, Padre. Don't destroy it."

"Hold on, Frank," Lebeon said angrily. "I don't want to destroy anything. I just don't want any of us to be hurt. And we can be. We can also hurt other people." The priest felt like a record on a turntable, playing the same words over and over, though to different people for different reasons. How much simpler it would be to say: Yes, it is a miracle! Hail, Mary!

Nello Solari felt compelled to speak. "We have the feeling you're against the miracle, that you won't accept it."

Lebeon looked over at Solari with puzzled anger. "Why do you have that feeling?"

Solari opened the morning Salinas newspaper and pointed to the quote from Josefa Espinosa. It said that Father Francis Lebeon, O.F.M., "had doubted her."

Lebeon said quietly, "It is my place to believe and to doubt."

Olcott's voice was just as tempered. "Padre, we're begging you to open the church. Whatever you believe about this, give your parish a chance to survive, or at least to hope. If word gets out that no one can see the statue, believe me, you personally will have finally strangled us."

Before Lebeon could answer there was a knock at the door. Lebeon called out dismally, "Come in."

It was the lab technician from Salinas. For a second, Lebeon considered asking his visitors to leave but then reconsidered. It was no time to withhold the truth. He got up from the desk and asked, "What did you find? Paint? Floor polish?"

The technician shook his head and placed two slides on Father Lebeon's desk under the lamp. "No, Father, it's blood."

Lebeon held on to the back of his chair.

"Human blood," the technician said. "Common Type O."

Lebeon felt as if he'd been slugged. Now the whole thing would mushroom. Blood didn't come out of old wood like sap. It had to be dripped on, or thrown on. Yet he still could not believe that any anyone would have the courage to do so purposely. And something else had to be considered.
Perhaps it was a miracle?

He studied the young technician. "You're certain?"

"Positive. You can look at the slides yourself."

"Thanks very much," Lebeon said. "Will you leave these here for the commission?"

"Be glad to," the technician said.

When he had gone, Lebeon tried to muster a brave smile. "Well, it's human blood." Even he caught the hollow tone.

Abe Goldblatt, who had been silent through it all, looked at the priest with sympathy, then said, reverently, "Christ was human, Padre."

In a barely audible voice, Father Lebeon replied, "Very human, Abe." He felt tears coming into the corners of his eyes but did not know whether they were from rage or helplessness.

Olcott could not bring himself to look at the priest. The three men muttered good-bye and left without saying anything else.

Later, Lebeon set out on a stroll around San Ramon. He'd always felt these walks were as much a part of his duties as conducting mass. He was a familiar figure in the village, wearing his monk's robe in the European tradition, visiting the stores; speaking to everyone.

Jose watched him cross from the mission and again pulled back The thought of facing him was terrifying. When the priest had disappeared up the road, he moved back closer to the grime, now imprinted here and there with the marks of his nose.

More and more people seemed to be arriving. That crazy woman never left her chair. The taco peddler was back and doing a brisk business. He'd been joined by another pushcart vendor who was selling colored ices.

Jose wondered if they were charging admission to the church.

Father Lebeon stopped first at the Dinner Bell. Maisie Keeper was polite but lukewarm. In Estaban Cole's the grocery shoppers nodded respectfully but buried themselves in their lists. Estaban didn't hide. He said, "Town's a little puzzled by what you're doin, Padre," and then decapitated a head of lettuce for emphasis.

Lebeon circled behind the stores on the west side of the Real, toward the freeway, and entered the farm-equipment shop of Freddie Lurash. Freddie turned down the spitting blue arc on his welding torch, crawled out from beneath a tractor, and lifted his goggles. He relighted the cold cigar stub in his mouth. He was a brawny little man, always greasy.

"Freddie, what's the feeling in town about my closing the church?"

Lurash sucked on his cigar a moment until the tip was red, bit a chunk off the butt, and spit it across the room. "You just walked around it, didn't you, Padre?"

Lebeon nodded. It had been an unnecessary question.

"For the first time in years they don't understand you," Lurash said. "Neither do I." Lurash had always been blunt, no matter who got offended.

"How's business?"

"Mine's great. Always is." He patted the muddy tractor. "They don't make 'em that won't break down." He peered at the priest over a cloud of thick smoke. "But some people in this town been hurtin a long time."

Father Lebeon returned to the mission. He summoned Gonzalvo and ordered him to open the church doors. Then he sat down and carefully wrote out a request for immediate transfer from Mission San Ramon.

B
Y TWO O'CLOCK,
Jose could stand it no longer. He had to see the statue. There were now more than five hundred people thronging around the mission, among them some photographers. Cars were pulling in and out every few minutes. No one would notice him, he was certain.

He crossed the Real, hearing the jingling bells from the colored-ice cart, its owner crying out, "
Helados! Hela-dos!
" The taco man was also shouting his wares. A third peddler, holding a handful of strings attached to red and blue gas balloons, already stenciled the miracle of san ramon, was yelling, too.

It is almost like a carnival,
Jose thought.
A circo.

Then he noticed older people moving toward the church. There was a woman in a wheelchair; a man on crutches. They had to be going in for a cure. He had seen Mexicans like that going into the church in Ensenada.

How could the priest let this happen? Surely, he knew the truth. Surely, the gas station man had told him in the morning.

Jose went over near the fat woman in the chair. There was a crowd around her. He didn't understand what she was saying because she spoke in English.

"...there seemed to be a light, a beautiful light all around it..."

"And no one else was there?" a woman spectator asked.

Josefa answered regally, "It was I who discovered the Miracle of San Ramon. Father Lebeon would not believe it when I told him."

A news photographer said, "I hear he doesn't believe it now."

"He cannot doubt it."

"May I touch you?" the woman spectator asked.

Josefa considered the request and then extended her pudgy hand as if she were consecrated. "You may kiss it," she said.

The news photographer muttered, "Pardon me while I throw up," but took his photograph nonetheless.

Jose went on around the mission.

The priest was surrounded by a group of men in the garden. There were photographers and lights for television cameras. A distinguished-looking gray-haired man in a dark suit was standing near the priest.

Jose watched, certain that it concerned the statue.

"...I'm sorry about the facilities. I really wasn't expecting you in a group. I've never done anything like a press conference..."

The man in the dark suit said, "A Mr. Olcott called us last night."

Lebeon seemed puzzled.

"He said he was the mayor. I'm Jack Ortt, KDOX-TV."

Father Lebeon said, "Yes, I've seen your news shows. Well, as you see, we have..." He wondered what to say next. "Well, gentlemen, is there anything I can do for you?"

Ortt replied, "Yes, Father, the miracle."

The TV cameras began to grind as Lebeon said, "It is not really anything for sensational headlines. Or the six
P.M.
news, Mr. Ortt."

The newscaster replied pleasantly, "That's a matter of opinion, Father."

"It's mine. I don't choose to call this a miracle as yet." There, he thought, I've done it. The bishop would probably take exception.

"Can you explain it, then?" Ortt asked.

"I cannot," Father Lebeon replied firmly. "Look, let's not be premature. That's all I ask These things sometimes involve hope where hope is false. Hope for old people ... for the dying ... for the crippled..."

Jose stood a moment longer, then forced himself to go up the church steps and inside. He stayed in the back Some visitors were coming in, some were leaving. A few kneeled in front of the rope. Others just stood and stared.

He looked at the stains and then at the sightless eyes angling down on him. Suddenly, he felt afraid and ran from the church. It was those eyes. He stopped a moment in the middle of the street and then kept going until he was opposite Olcott's. He hid behind a telephone pole.

Now and then, the old man's laugh drifted across the Real. He was busy. Cars were lined up at the pumps.

God will punish me; God will punish us all, Jose thought. He will cause the valley to be flooded, or open the earth.

He kept staring at Olcott and once, the old man looked up from a hood and frowned across the road.

Jose thought: You haven't told anyone. That's it. You have not told anyone. You are committing a sin as bad as mine.

G
ONZALVO SHOWED
J
OSE
to a bench just outside the refectory, the simple dining room where the brothers ate each night. Their meal was late because there had been visitors until almost seven o'clock.

"You wait here for the padre," Gonzalvo instructed.

Jose settled down, dreading what he had to admit. Through the open refectory door he could see the brothers and the room itself. The walls were white, bare except for the wall behind Father Lebeon, who was seated at the head of the long wooden table. In a recess behind him was a crucifix.

One chair was vacant, and Jose guessed that it belonged to the monk who was by a small serving table against the wall. He was counting money. "Ninety-one, ninety-two, ninety-three..."

Father Lebeon suddenly barked, "Will you stop counting in here, Brother Carlos?"

The other brothers ceased eating, and there was an uneasy silence for a moment. Then Brother Carlos moved away from the side table and took his place, crossing himself, lips working in prayer.

A very young brother broke the tension. "Do you realize what all this means? Next to Lourdes and Our Lady of Guadalupe, we'll have the most famous shrine in the world."

Father Lebeon's fork stayed poised in midair. "If. If. If it's a miracle, Brother Anthony."

They all glanced at him. Then one by one they resumed eating. "You're all presupposing. We shouldn't doubt the possibility, but we should certainly question it."

Brother Carlos, who was the mission treasurer, said, "You've been negative in this from the start, Father."

"Is there something you know that we don't?" Amos asked.

Lebeon stared back at him. "I know nothing that you don't know. I'm simply more cautious. The lab tests show it was human blood. Where it came from...?"

Brother Amos said, "No human would have the courage to splash blood on that statue. We agreed on that, Father."

"Most of us here were taught to believe," Brother Carlos added.

Father Lebeon rose and placed his napkin down. He said stiffly, "Excuse me," and left the refectory.

Jose started to get to his feet, but the priest swept by without noticing him. The outside door banged shut. He stayed on the bench another moment, urging himself to follow.

Relief settled over the monks' dining room. Silverware began to clatter again.

Brother Amos said, "Aside from the other wonderful aspects of this, I'm personally not above a little larceny in my thoughts. The financial condition of this mission could use a large miracle."

"Amen," said Brother Carlos.

 

J
OSE FOUND
F
ATHER
L
EBEON
standing in the garden by the mission wall, staring up the quiet road.