Touch (1987) (10 page)

ORGANIZATION UNIFYING TRADITIONAL RITES AS GOD EXPECTS !!!

August read the pamphlet to Greg Czarnicki.

Greg said, "How come you don't mention Juvie?"

"Because nobody knows about him yet," August said. "Don't you see what I'm doing? I'm setting it up, like saying we need a symbol, a sign, and there he is. Can you imagine the impact? I still can't believe it--no, I don't mean that, I don't want to infer a lack of faith. But it gives me the chills thinking about it. Like there's no question God has His hand on me and is using me. Do you feel it?"

Greg nodded, yes, he did. He would have felt it more, though, if August said "us" instead of "me." Like something miraculous was happening to August.

Chapter
11

"I HATE TO SAY IT," Lynn said, "but the last time I was in church was at Uni-Faith in Dalton. No, I take that back, I went with Doug when his sister got married in Fort Worth. But you know what I did today? I bought a dress. And I haven't owned a dress I bet since I was a little girl, a regular dress. At first I thought it was a housedress because it's just a print, you know. But, God, it was eighty dollars because it's a Diane Von Furstenburg." Lynn paused. "I guess it's kind of cute really."

The phone rang inside, sounding far away.

Lynn and Bill Hill were on the balcony, outside but private on the second floor, behind the railing and the hanging plants. Lynn didn't move, slumped low in a red canvas chair, bare legs stretched out. Bill Hill was on the matching red chaise looking down the quiet twilight fairway, seeing himself loft an approach to number seventeen that dropped within inches of the cup. He looked over at Lynn.

"You don't have the phone with you."

"Shit," Lynn said. She drew her legs under her, but didn't get up. "No, I quit carrying it around from room to room. Two days, I've pretty near forgotten all about the business."

"How do you know it's business?"

"Who's gonna call me eight o'clock Saturday night? The guys're out with their wives. It's Artie, from the Coast."

The phone continued to ring.

"I asked you one time, you never told me. How come all those guys sound like they're from New York?"

"Like gangsters talk in the movies," Bill Hill said. "I don't know, I guess it's supposed to impress you. . . . You gonna answer it?"

Lynn got up, barefoot in white shorts and a white shirt hanging out hiding the shorts, looking like a little girl, scrubbed clean and not wearing her eyelashes. She took her time going inside, hoping the phone would stop ringing.

Bill Hill was always nice to Lynn. He liked her a lot. There was a time, after finding her divorced and living in Detroit--couple of old buddies up here six hundred miles from home--he'd thought about making the moves to get her in bed. But when he pictured himself doing it, he knew he'd be self-conscious and both of them would probably laugh. That was it, they were buddies--even with a twenty-year difference in their ages--they told each other things and confided; they were like kin.

She had certainly been in a state Thursday night, come running out of the Sacred Heart Center, jumped in the car saying, "God, you're not gonna believe it," and hadn't told him clearly, in words that made sense, until they were out on the Chrysler Freeway and past the Ford interchange, midway through Detroit going north.

He had tried to keep his eyes on the road and not ask questions, trying also to picture what she was telling him, finally saying, "You mean nails were in him?" And Lynn saying, "No, wounds like from nails and a cut in his side like he'd been stabbed."

"Jesus."

"Yes, Jesus," Lynn said. "Standing there like him. Honest to God, if he had a beard--you know like the pictures you see of him, the brown hair? His hair's the same color."

"What did he say?"

"Nothing. He just looked at me."

"Was he in pain?"

"No, I don't think so. He seemed, like he was sad. I don't know, he was just--quiet."

"And he didn't say anything."

"No. Well, yes, he did. He said my name, I remember now hearing it as I ran out. God, why'd I do that?"

"I can understand," Bill Hill said.

"He didn't yell it out I remember, going out, I heard him say it. 'Lynn?' " She tried it again-- " 'Lynn?' "--trying to get the right tone.

"You think he wanted you to help him?"

"Help him? Help him what, put Band-Aids on? He had the same wounds as Jesus on the cross and he hadn't been crucified and he didn't do it himself. There weren't any nails or a knife or anything; he wasn't showing it off, but--well, yes he was too--he was showing it to me." Lynn was silent. "You think he did want me to help him? God, and I ran out; turned and ran like a little kid."

"He must know what to do," Bill Hill said, "if he had it before."

"But why'd he show it to me?"

Bill Hill said, "Maybe the people there know and he felt it didn't matter, one more. Remember my telling you I thought they were keeping him hidden? Very friendly and helpful, except they didn't tell you a thing. If a man wanted to remain anonymous that'd be the place, wouldn't it?"

"But people leave there," Lynn said. "They'd tell; somebody would."

"I mean the staff," Bill Hill said. "I can't imagine that priest not knowing."

"Father Quinn," Lynn said, thoughtful. "I suppose the doctor--"

Bill Hill said, "Did you happen to notice his hands before? I mean when you were talking to him earlier?"

Lynn thought about it, picturing him in the coffee shop, then in the office, seeing his hand reaching for her breast. She hadn't told Bill Hill about that part and didn't think she would.

"I didn't notice anything special. Like you mean if he had scars?"

"I think he'd have to," Bill Hill said. "If a wound keeps opening up there's got to be a scar. Wouldn't you think?"

"I don't know. If it's a miracle why does there have to be anything natural about it?"

"Who says it's a miracle?"

"That's right," Lynn said, "you see people every day walking around with crucifixion wounds."

There had been a lot to think about in the dark interior of Bill Hill's Monte Carlo, heading out the Chrysler Freeway that night, the radio off, Lynn, for the first time not skipping around on the AM-FM to see if her records were getting any play. No, it was quiet, and the fluorescent glow of light beneath the overpasses added to the feeling--something happening they couldn't explain no matter how hard they thought about it. Juvenal's blood on Virginia's face and on the man with d.t.'s. Like it happened to him when he was healing somebody . . . maybe when he was in an emotional state, feeling compassion or something so intensely he began to bleed?

Lynn asked Bill Hill if he'd ever heard of anybody having it before. He said yes, he'd heard of it but had never read much about it or knew of anyone who'd had it lately. He believed it was something a long time ago saints used to get.

"God, saints," Lynn had said.

"I guess not all saints," Bill Hill had said, "just some."

Lynn came out on the balcony and sank into the canvas chair.

"Hey, thanks."

Bill Hill had filled her wine glass and made himself a fresh vodka and bitter lemon. He sat on the chaise with his white loafers crossed, the crease in his yellow slacks straight and sharp up to the lump of a bony knee, then on to the bulge of his body shirt that was like blue-flowered wallpaper, three buttons undone to show his silver chain and Thank You, Jesus medallion that his former wife, Barbararose, had given him years ago, way before neck ornaments for men became popular. He liked the feel of it there and sometimes liked to hook two fingers over the medallion and hang onto it. Maybe for security, though Bill Hill usually didn't analyze his moves or try to interpret his body language. He believed in Almighty God and His Only Begotten Son Jesus Christ, but did not believe in most traditional forms of worship or fundamental methods of propagating the faith. Not since his Uni-Faith days. It had been great stuff . . .

The World's Tallest Illuminated Cross of Jesus, 117 feet high . . . the Chapel in the Pines, the Pilgrims' Rest Cafeteria and Gift Shop, where they sold Heavenly Hash candy, ten-inch battery-operated replicas of the World's Tallest Illuminated Cross of Jesus, WTICOJ T-shirts . . . There were college-girl hostesses, fresh young things direct from the Florida campus at Gainesville, three state-champion baton twirlers including fabulous Lynn Marie Faulkner of Miami Beach, who had twirled in five Orange Bowl pageants before she was eighteen . . . And for the main attraction there was the Reverend Bobby Forshay, who would appear from way off coming down out of the piny woods like a 1960s John the Baptist. Bobby Forshay would mount the stage of the amphitheater in his raggedy jeans and polyester wolfskin sleeveless jacket and say, "Hi. I was up yonder talking to my old buddy Jesus. And you know what he told me? . . ." Bobby Forshay would preach and then he would invite the sick and the cripples to come up with their crutches and walkers and faith in their hearts and let him lay his hands on them and, as an instrument of the Lord, heal their infirmities. He healed a bunch of them . . .

Bill Hill's ex-wife, Barbararose, who was a hard-shell Baptist out of Nashville, where there were 686 different Fundamentalist churches, had called the whole Uni-Faith setup "a mockery in the eyes of God." (Where did people find those special words for talking about religion? Mockery.) "You call yourself a born-again Christian," Barbararose had said, "asking people to reverence a ten-story wood and a Bible school dropout who can no more heal'n I can."

"It's the end result that counts," Bill Hill had said. "How it makes people feel."

Barbararose said, "Do you know what the Lord thinks about all this?"

"He told you but He hasn't told me yet," Bill Hill said.

Barbararose said He would call it an abomination unto His name. For thou shalt not make unto thee any graven images, etc.

Bill Hill said to his wife, "You know why Baptists never fuck standing up, Barbararose? They don't want God to think they're dancing."

Barbararose had left him, taking along little Bill, Jr., eventually got a divorce and was now married to a fruit shipper down in Stuart, Florida. Fine. (Little Bill, Jr., now a teen-ager, visited summers and they'd take off for a month in the latest r.v. equipment.)

As for getting back in the religion business--well, there were boys who still did all right with the old methods. Billy Graham filled the Astrodome and Oral Roberts had a university going for him and an AP top-twenty basketball club. Rex Humbard was still on TV Sunday morning and had his Cathedral of Tomorrow in Akron, Ohio. But those boys had become established over the years and worked hard to keep up their ratings.

No, there was another way to sell God and His blessings and he'd give Lynn a hint the next time she shook her head and said Juvenal wasn't salable or wasn't the kind you could use in a religious show. He'd say, "What did David Frost sell those Nixon interviews for?" She'd say what? Or she'd say she didn't know. He'd say, "Something like six million, that's what. You see it?" She'd say no. He'd say, "Sell the package and get out, that's how you do it." That's all he'd tell her today and only if she asked. Bill Hill wasn't sure yet how to go about it; but it was an idea that felt good, fooling with in his mind, one of those ideas you think of and say, "Of course. How else would you do it?"

Lynn said, "It was Artie. I told you. He's taking the red eye and'll be here in the morning. Has to see me."

"I thought you quit."

"I did, sort of. But I've got to give him my records and things."

"Wait a minute," Bill Hill said, "tomorrow's Sunday."

"He says he's got a presentation first thing Monday and if it doesn't come off right it's my fault."

"Well, tough. You told him, what, four days ago--"

"I know, but at least I've got to pick him up and, you know, get him squared away. He comes here, he's lost."

Bill Hill was sitting up straighter, frowning. "All you've been talking about is going up to Almont tomorrow. You're dying to see Juvenal--see what's going on with this weird guy and his Gray Ghosts--"

"I'm gonna be there. We're going, right. But I've got to meet Artie first, that's all. I'm definitely gonna be there. I have to, at least I have to apologize for running off, God, like I was scared of him. He must think I'm awful."

Bill Hill was shaking his head now. "You witnessed something few living persons have ever seen. You saw a miracle with your own eyes, and now you tell me these rock and roll records you have to give Artie are more important."

"The business records," Lynn said. "I'm not giving him record records. Look, it starts at eleven, Saint John Bosco in Almont. I got a road map--I've got a new dress, haven't I?--I know exactly how to get there and I'm going, we're going. But I've got to see Artie first."

"I'll pick you up," Bill Hill said.

"Fine."

"Ten o'clock."

"Fine. Only, just in case I'm not back you go ahead and I'll meet you there."

Bill Hill was staring at her, hard. "You're afraid to see him, aren't you?"

"I'm not afraid, and I'm gonna be there," Lynn said. "Maybe I'm a little nervous, that's all."