An Imperfect Miracle (21 page)

Father Tom squeezed my shoulder even tighter to where it began to hurt a little.

“Pastor Mike is a good man, Nate. He was just trying to do the best thing for his church.”

Father Tom was working his hand up my shoulder toward my neck when a cop car pulled up and parked along the street. Its siren wasn't on, but the red and blue lights up on the roof were flashing all in a row. I wondered if they were coming after the kid with the spiky hair. The kid must have thought so too, because he started backing up a little. But the two cops who climbed out didn't even look at him and went straight for Father Tom.

One was the round cop and the other was the skinny guy built like a crescent moon. When they got within a few yards of us, Father Tom finally let go of me, and I remember thinking how good it felt not to have his fingers digging into my skin. I doubted if Father Tom meant any harm by it though. He was such a big guy that he probably didn't realize his own strength.

The round cop pulled up on his belt and asked him if he was Father Thomas P. O'Hara. It was such a stupid question, because everybody in town knew who he was. But Father Tom didn't give him any trouble and said he was the guy they were looking for. Meanwhile the skinny cop snuck around back of Father Tom and tried slapping handcuffs on him. But he wasn't as swift as those TV cops, and he had trouble sliding the cuffs on right, I guess on account of how thick Father Tom's wrists were. Father Tom turned around to help him, and they finally got them latched on. Then the round cop started telling Father Tom that he had a right to a lawyer and the right to remain silent and all that other legal stuff you always hear cops saying on TV.

Father Tom didn't put up a fight or give them any lip or anything like that. In fact, he looked kind of peaceful, like he'd been getting ready for this all along and was happy that the time had finally come. He even tilted his head back and smiled a little up at the sky, like he saw pretty angels flying around in the clouds.

Finally, the round cop said that Father Tom was under arrest for the murder of Timothy J. Runyon. I must have known it was coming, because I started yelling that it was all a big lie. I got so loud and angry and bitter that Father Tom had to tell me to pipe down. He said I just had to have some faith that things would work out all right in the end. Then he smiled a little and said, “Come to think of it, maybe that was why Mary picked you for the job, to give you some faith.”

Chewy was getting real worked up by then too, and I thought for a second that she was going to appear out of nowhere and bite those cops like she'd bitten Runyon. But I guess it wasn't in the cards this time, because in a few seconds she quit pacing and settled down at my feet, licking her chops like she was hungry.

After they drove poor Father Tom away, I ran down to the shrine to tell Carlos. He wasn't there, and I was worried that they'd arrested him too. But Mr. Santelli said Carlos had taken the day off to go and visit his sister who lived down in Pittsburgh. I never remembered Carlos talking about any sister, and I wondered if he was just using that as an excuse to play hooky.

Then I told Mr. Santelli about Father Tom getting arrested for the murder, and he said he'd just seen the news pop up on his little computer screen. He said that he hoped folks didn't take it out on Mary. I asked him what Mary had to do with Father Tom getting arrested. He said people were always blaming God for what the bad priests were up to, and he expected that they'd blame Mary too on account of her shrine being so popular.

I ran straight home and told Mom the news. I almost hated to because Mom never believed me whenever I told her something important. She always had to get on the phone first and talk to her girlfriends before she gave me any credit for knowing anything, and this time was no different. After she chattered with them awhile, she told me that it must be some kind of a big foul-up. She said that everybody knows Father Tom wouldn't kill anybody on purpose.

“What reason could he possibly have?”

The more I thought about motive, the more scared I got. I hoped that if Father Tom really was the killer he hadn't bashed in Runyon's skull just on account of me, and that instead he was trying to get out of paying the blackmail money. I didn't want to feel like it was my fault for him going to prison.

Mom called up Pastor Mike next, and they gabbed for so long that we never did go out for lunch. I was about to head back to the shrine to talk things over with Mary, but Mom said she wanted me to stay with her all day. I didn't really know why either, because all we did was sit around on the couch watching TV and eating popcorn, with her hugging me every once in a while.

The next morning I was even more antsy to go down to the shrine, this time to talk to Carlos, and maybe get him to say a special prayer or two for Father Tom if he hadn't already. Carlos was good at praying, a lot better than me anyway. Mr. Santelli told me once that Carlos would climb up the concrete steps to Mary's face on his hands and knees every morning before they opened up the shrine and pray for nearly a half hour with his eyes shut tight and his head bowed and every muscle in his body all tensed up. When I asked Carlos why he did it, he said it made him feel good to do something he didn't have to. Mr. Santelli called it penance, which he said was one of those fancy Catholic words I didn't need to worry about. He said it worked for plenty of Catholics though, and that Carlos was pretty slick at it.

Just as I was finishing my orange juice Pastor Mike showed up, and Mom made me stay home again. I put up a big fuss about it, and Pastor Mike even tried to get Mom to change her mind. But like I said, Mom could be awful stubborn at times and wouldn't back down. I even tried to get Pastor Mike alone and kind of feel him out on whether he thought Father Tom was really the killer or not. But Mom hovered around us like some big pesky bug on a hot muggy night. Then right out of the blue Mom asked him if the cops had come around again.

Pastor Mike said that some bald heavyset cop had stopped by his apartment just yesterday, but the questions seemed pretty routine and that Mom shouldn't worry. I figured it must be the round cop and wondered why he was hassling Pastor Mike. Then I thought maybe he'd found out that Pastor Mike had been the one to cook up the idea for Mary's shrine. I didn't see how it was possible though, because neither of those cops seemed bright enough.

Pastor Mike decided to hang around all day helping Mom do stuff, like carry boxes down to the basement and help paint the wall right next to the kitchen, the one that had been peeling a little lately, and to fix the leaky bathroom faucet, and some other chores I can't even remember now. Mom made me stick around to help out, which was really unfair because school started the next day. So I never did make it down to the shrine, and I was pretty bummed about it too. I wondered if this was how it was going to be all the time once they got married. But I didn't want Mom hollering at me in front of Pastor Mike, so I kept quiet about it.

The next morning I left for school early so I could stop by the shrine and talk to Carlos. But Mr. Santelli said that Carlos hadn't shown up yet, which wasn't like him since he was always early. The line to see Mary was already backed up way far, and with Chewy egging me on like usual I headed off to school so I wouldn't be late.

I sat through my classes mostly thinking about poor Father Tom sitting in some jail cell. The jail was only a block or so away from my school, but it might as well have been on Mars. I would have sent Chewy over there to make him feel better, but because she was just a dog Chewy probably wouldn't have known what to say. And even if she could have dredged up the right words somehow, Father Tom couldn't see her or hear her, unless God let him, which I wasn't sure if He would or not.

After school I got held up by my new science teacher, Mr. Pantek, who wanted me to write a book report on whether something called “The Shroud of Turin” was a real miracle or not. I guess he picked me on account of how sharp and alert I was in spotting Mary's face on the concrete. I told him I'd do it just to get him off my back, and finally he let me go.

When I got down to the shrine it was just about four o'clock, which on weekdays was quitting time. How they worked it was that Mr. Santelli would come out right at four and put up a sign after the last person in line. The sign said that the shrine was closed and to come back some other day. But everybody in line in front of the sign could still get in to see Mary no matter how long it took. After a while people figured out that they could show up right at the very end of the day and still get in, so long as they were willing to wait. It was just my luck that a huge crowd of out-of-towners had slid in ahead of me, and the line went back nearly three blocks.

Mr. Santelli would always try and move things along because he wanted to get home too. But there were a lot of cripples and sick people up ahead that day, and it was taking longer than usual to herd them all through. I waited for a whole hour before it was my turn, and I wasn't worried about Mom yelling at me for being late for supper either. This was way too important to blow it over some little thing like that. I didn't even talk to anybody in line, even when some of them recognized me from my picture in the papers. I felt like I had to act real serious if I expected Mary to come through.

When I got up to the front I showed Mr. Santelli my pass. But because he was in such a hurry to close up shop for the day so he could go home to his supper, he didn't even look at it. I spotted Carlos sitting all slumped and sad looking behind his counter and went over to try and cheer him up. But as I was strolling past Mary I noticed that she'd changed again. The corners of her mouth had turned up a hair higher, and her lips had opened up a little too. They left enough of a gap that you could see these tiny white specks in between that kind of looked like teeth starting to grow. I climbed up the steps to get a closer look, and instead of five tears, now I counted only three.

I went over right away to ask Carlos if he'd been working on Mary's face again with his penknife. Carlos was busy piling up all the money and seemed a little ticked off at me for interrupting him. I let him finish his counting and then told him about Mary's face changing. He sort of frowned and rolled his eyes a little, which was pretty unusual for Carlos, and then he wandered over to see for himself. It didn't seem like he really wanted to though, because he was grunting and sighing an awful lot.

Carlos climbed up to the third step, leaned forward a little, and then stared down at her for a few seconds. But it didn't seem like he saw anything new or special, because his face stayed just as gloomy and bored as before. I was standing right beside him pointing out all the changes too, so it wasn't as if he didn't know what was going on. Finally he straightened up and said that he couldn't see any difference in her. When I asked him how that could possibly be, he promised he'd look again tomorrow when he wasn't so tired. Then he went back to get the bags of money ready for the security guards to haul them to the bank.

Seeing as how snippy and strange he was acting, I didn't want to bug him anymore. Instead I got down on my knees on the bottom step and started praying to Mary to spring Father Tom out of jail somehow. I don't remember exactly what I said to her, so I guess it couldn't have been much of a prayer.

Next day at lunch Marcie came up to me while I was waiting for the cafeteria ladies to refill the mashed potatoes bin. She said she'd forgiven me for messing up her pool party, and that she was having another one in a few days before the weather turned real cold. I told her I wasn't interested, and in a second her eyes flared up at me. Then the words flooded out of her glossy little mouth like she was trying to sweep me away.

“You're just mad because that Mary of yours is a fake. She can't even get Father Tom out of jail. I told you she was just a bunch of dirt. You wouldn't listen to me though, and now see what's happened. My dad says that pretty soon the pilgrims are going to stop coming to the shrine, and then the town will just bulldoze her like they should have done a long time ago. My dad says that she turned out to be a lot more trouble than she was worth. And here you thought you were being so smart. Well, you're just a big pathetic dope, Nathan Gray.”

Instead of arguing with her, I just turned around and walked away. It shows you how low I was feeling, letting Marcie get the best of me like that. Then at recess some kid who lived so close that he could go home for lunch and be back in twenty minutes said that he just heard from his mom that the cops had arrested Pastor Mike for the murder too. They claimed that he was in cahoots with Father Tom. The kid said that reporters from all over the country, all over the world even, were headed to Millridge to cover the trial. According to the radio reports, Pastor Mike had helped kill Runyon on account of how he was jealous over some little nurse who worked over at the hospital.

All of a sudden I got to feeling so panicky that I could hardly breathe. I wasn't sure if Mom would ever survive Pastor Mike going to prison, seeing as how hard she'd worked to get him to marry her. I thought about the old guy with the shakes walking away from Mary all steady and straight, and Uncle Carl shedding his diabetes, and a ton of other folks being helped out too from all their ailments and troubles. Whether she was a fake or not, I was hoping there was one more miracle left in Mary. I decided to ditch school and head straight for the shrine. Chewy knew what I was thinking too, because she was already way out ahead of me.

Because it was lunchtime I was worried there'd be a big crowd, but hardly anybody was there. I figured it was on account of Father Tom and Pastor Mike going to jail, and that folks were finally getting sick of all this religious mumbo-jumbo, which was what some of the newspapers were starting to call it. Mr. Santelli looked pretty gloomy too. He said that he was too old to find another good paying job if the shrine had to close its doors.