House of Gold (27 page)

From behind, as if reading Buzz's mind, the deacon said, "The whole town, even the Nazarenes, vie for the honor of caring for him."

There was no reaction in the priest's brown eyes when Buzz looked into them.

What have you seen since 1910, old man?

"Do you trust me to be alone with him, Deacon?" Buzz asked, looking up to
Samuels, who was still standing in the doorway.

The deacon nodded. "Call me Bob. I'll be right here in the dining room with Tommy if you need anything."

He turned and left, closing the door behind him.

Buzz took a deep breath.
No harm in trying.

He recalled a story that Father Dial had once told during a homily. While on a trip to Rome, a man had collapsed from a heart attack, right in the middle
of Saint Peter's Square. The priest had watched helplessly for a moment as a doctor from the crowd attempted to restart the man's heart.

Then, while the doctor was counting out loud, compressing the man's chest in and out, Father Dial had leaned over the dead man and whispered into his ear: "If you can hear me, I'm a Catholic priest. If you have any sins that you are sorry for, tell Our Lord now,
and I will give you absolution."

Father Dial had then given the absolution, making the sign of the cross over the man's head. The man did not recover, despite the efforts of the doctor.

Maybe it can work in reverse,
Buzz thought.

"Can you hear me?" he asked the old priest.

No response. Buzz got down on his knees, and shut his eyes tight, and rested his folded hands on the arm of the easy chair.

"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned," he began earnestly. It was in confession when he felt most like a little child. "It's been four weeks since my last confession." He had gone, along with the Man, in a little town called Rush.

"One two three four five!" the priest counted with vigor.

Buzz's eyes snapped open, startled. There was still absolutely no cognition in Father Mark's eyes. But he had
spoken.

Maybe he does hear me.

Buzz closed his eyes again.

"I'm not sure if it's a sin or not, but several times at night, or during my walks, I allowed my imagination to linger on sexual images of my wife. She's in New Hampshire. Nothing came of it...my body is, uh, not working, in that department."

He half-expected to hear the priest begin to count again.

Jesus hears me even if this priest doesn't.

"But what I'm really sorry about is giving in to the temptation to despair during this journey. When the Man died, I didn't blame God or anything–I mean, God didn't shoot him–but I, uh, this is hard to explain–I know what I did in my heart was wrong. I gave up–inside. I was angry with God for letting the Man die. I miss him.

"Many years ago, I promised God that I would never despair again, so I
broke that promise to God, too. That's it.

"Oh yeah, and I haven't prayed my Rosary like I should.

"For these and all my sins I'm sorry, Father. Amen."

Buzz waited for a minute, his eyes closed. He felt a warm, dry hand come to rest on his own. He opened his eyes to see Father Mark's hand there. There was no expression on his face; he was still staring past Buzz toward the television.

"One two
three?" Buzz asked hopefully...

"One two three four five...through the ministry of the Church...six seven eight...I absolve you...nine ten. One two three four five six!"

All the words had come out clearly, tonelessly, the words of the absolution in the same counting cadences as the numbers.

Buzz gulped as he heard the words.

The priest's expression had still not changed at all, but this did not
stop his penitent from bursting into tears.

Buzz kissed the liver-spotted hand over and over. He felt that he was kissing the hand of Christ.
Oh thank you, Jesus, oh thank you Jesus, thank you!

"One two three?" Buzz asked again.

No response from Father Mark.

In that inner way of knowing, Buzz knew the sacrament had been consumated.

What is my penance?
he asked his Lord.

Keep your hand to the plow,
the Man's words drifted back to him from the past.

Fair enough.

He rose, walked to the door, and opened it. The deacon and the boy were sitting in silence, their heads bowed in prayer, at the dining room table. They looked at Buzz.

Well?
they asked silently.

Buzz decided not to tell them about his unusual confession.

"Bring me to Sister Emmanuel."

+  +  +

Fearful of moving her, Buzz decided to
work on her in the wheelchair. It was not an ideal set-up, but they carefully shifted her forward on her chair, and her sister unbuttoned the old nun's habit, revealing her thin, cotton under-blouse.

Buzz asked the men to leave the room. Donna Melville stayed behind, at his side.

He used his hands to explore the nun's back for several minutes. Buzz had treated many malnourished patients during
his journey, but none so old, and none whose skin was so completely bereft of muscle. She was bone and nerve.

You're starving.

Using his fingertips as eyes, Buzz looked for signs of-subluxation. He concentrated on the upper part of her spine. It was obvious that her lumbo-sacral below was severely traumatized, and he was loath to apply pressure there.

It was impossible to tell if her back was
truly broken without the benefit of X-rays, but he guessed it probably was. Either way, there was nothing he could do about that.

At least I can realign her atlas.

He gently massaged her shoulders, then told Donna, "I'm going to adjust her neck now. You'll hear a sound we call cavitation. Don't let it startle you. It's the sound of nitrogen escaping, releasing pressure from her nerves."

Standing
behind her, holding her head with both his hands, his fingers outstretched under her jaw, he slowly rotated it to the right, and in a quick movement, he gave her a cervical-rotary adjustment. Then, the same to the left. He saw Donna wince at the sound of the muffled crackling.

"It's okay," he told her. "It went well."

He continued to massage the paltry muscles in her neck and shoulders, feeling
worthless as a healer. There was nothing unusual at the ends of his fingers–no heat, no tactile sensations other than the ordinary ones that came with the practice of his art.

"I'm going to show you how to massage her arms," he whispered. "She is not asleep. She is in a coma. She may not come out of it. Not without nutrition. Even so, I advise you to exercise her arms and fingers at least twice
a day. Here, I'll show you."

She nodded. He spent some time showing her how to massage her sister's arms, calves, and feet.

"It would be dangerous to teach you how to adjust her neck. She is too frail," he told her.

"What is her prognosis?" Donna asked bravely.

"Remember, I'm not a doctor," he told her.

"Your opinion, then," Donna pressed, obviously dejected by his earlier statements.

He motioned
for her to walk away from the patient, toward the corner of the room, out of earshot.

"In my opinion," he whispered, taking her arm. "She will...pass away...soon. Perhaps within the next twenty-four hours."

Donna looked away, a cloud coming over her eyes.

"She really held this town together?" Buzz asked, unable to think of anything else to say.

The old woman nodded, and brought her hand to her
mouth. Buzz, feeling distant, like an actor playing doctor, gave her a chaste embrace. She seemed smaller and frail in his arms.

"She said you would heal," he heard her whisper, blank disappointment, rather than accusation, in her voice.

Were you expecting her to rise from the chair and walk?
Buzz asked himself, not unkindly.

He pulled away, and tipped his head down to see into her eyes.

"I'm
sorry, Mrs. Melville. I can't work miracles. I'm just a chiropractic school drop-out."

+  +  +

Later, he was treated to a dinner of onion soup with very little onion at the Samuels' house. Mrs. Samuels, a woman named Dolores, was all smiles, but few words. It was clear to Buzz that she was putting on a show for his sake. The deacon was all questions about his travels. He alone seemed to be rising
above the news of Buzz's prognosis, which had spread quickly, that Sister Emmanuel would probably not recover.

There was a perpetual prayer vigil at the church now. The hundred or so citizens of Blackstone took shifts in groups of five or six, praying for her before the Blessed Sacrament.

After the meal, Buzz followed the deacon to the den. The sun had set now, and there was no light in the room
except for a six-day church candle. There was a small bar in the den, and the deacon opened a cabinet behind it, and held out an unopened bottle of Bowmore Mariner, a fine, single malt Scotch.

"I've been saving two of these," he told Buzz.

"Go right ahead. I'm a recovering alcoholic, so I'll have to pass."

The deacon frowned. Buzz sat down on a stool at the bar and smiled. "Water?"

Bob Samuels
opened the bottle and poured himself a careful fingerful. He then gave Buzz water from a reused plastic milk jug.

"To the Faith," the deacon toasted, holding up his crystal glass.

"The Faith!" Buzz said with real excitement, wondering where his enthusiasm was coming from. Perhaps the normalcy of this scene–being indoors, sitting in a den, having a conversation. Except for the candle, he could
imagine doing just this before the lights went out.

Samuels, a true aficionado, took a long, leisurely whiff of the aroma of the single malt, then took a sip.

"So what happened to this town?" Buzz asked.

"It's a long story," the deacon replied.

"It's a long night."

The deacon proceeded to tell Buzz the amazing story. Father Mark and his religious sister, long since retired from her congregation,
had been preparing the Catholics in his parish for years for the "coming tribulations." He established Eucharistic adoration, prayer cenacles, an active youth group. He had even cultivated a relationship–along with Deacon Samuels–with Pastor Ellison down the street.

Ellison was not open to Father Gobbi or Our Lady of Fatima, but like many devout Protestants, had been anticipating the Rapture and
the return of Jesus. (Of course, Samuels, as a Catholic, knew little about the Rapture, a more recent Protestant invention.) Some in town had stored up food in anticipation of the crash.

When the lights went out, Sister Emmanuel, allowed to preach after services in both churches, had urged the Christians in town to share their food, just like in the Acts of the Apostles. She told them that no
one in the town would perish if they shared everything they possessed in a spirit of faith.

At first, there were skeptics, of course, but her prophecy came true: no one in Blackstone died, not even from the killer pneumonia which had ravaged other towns.

Blackstone's citizens had not set up roadblocks, and shared their meager rations with the dozens of refugees who had come down the hill.

By the
end of February, the food had pretty much run out because only a small percentage of folks had stored in. A hundred or so lived in the town, including its few farmers.

For the past three decades, Blackstone's main source of income was summer tourism. They came for hiking and camping, or stopped at the one motel and the three restaurants in town on their way to somewhere else.

At about the same
time as the food ran out, the old nun had promised that those who partook of the Eucharist would be nourished. She herself had not consumed anything but the Eucharist and water since January 1st. This was the "miracle" which Pastor Ellison had referred to when Buzz was in the church.

Catholics returned to Mass to receive communion, and despite their physical hunger and shrinking waists, everyone
had survived; none had gotten sick.

"If you ask me, the real miracle," Deacon Samuels suggested, "is that Pastor Ellison became a Catholic, along with most of his congregation, and half the Presbyterians. Their pastor had been transferred out last year due to a lack of vocations, and had not been replaced. There were only fourteen people left in the congregation. They became Catholics to receive
the Eucharist. Because Sister was holy. The handful who did not convert attend the interdenominational prayer meetings.

"Although I struggled for years to get Ellison to see the Eucharistic truth in John, it was Sister's life which opened his eyes."

Samuels was referring to the passage in John's Gospel where Jesus had said:
Amen, amen, I say unto you, unless you eat of my flesh and drink of my
blood, you shall not have life within you.

"Wow," Buzz said. "No one has died?"

"Not yet, though we're all weak, and we survive on wild onions–which are out of season, by the way, but seem to be under the dirt in everyone's garden–plus there's the occasional deer or rabbit the boys in town hunt for us. There's a pond about three miles from here, but it seems like we've fished it all out.

"By the
time we divide up what comes in, it barely amounts to more than a morsel or two per family. Yet the ten mothers in town are breastfeeding their babies just fine. It boggles the mind.

"What little wheat we have left, we've saved for baking unleavened bread for the Mass. When Father Mark had his stroke, and Sister Emmanuel fell, it really discouraged us. We have one consecrated host left–the one
we use for adoration. It doesn't decay. That's a miracle in and of itself. Jesus is holding this town together now, and sometimes I wonder if He took Sister and Father away so we would have nothing left but Him.

"I was ordained five years ago. We came here to retire; Dolores and I had come to Blackstone for our summers since we were married. We have no children. When I was newly married, before
I returned to the faith, I had a vasectomy–" he saw Buzz's eyebrows rise.

"She had a bad pregnancy, and lost the baby. I was in the Navy, gone half the time, and thought I was doing her a favor. Either way, it's the biggest regret of my life. After I heard the call, my becoming a deacon became our way of making amends, of trying to bring some spiritual fertility to our marriage. Father Mark, who,
more than anyone else, was responsible for bringing me back to the faith–he needed help with the parish.