by Alex Grecian
“ ‘Something must be done’?”
“I have no plan yet. But I would feel better knowing Bear is safe.”
“Don’t do anything stupid, Travis.”
“I appreciate your confidence.”
“I mean it. I’m a police officer. You do something illegal and you and me are gonna end up on different sides.”
“I would not wish that.”
“I’ll take care of your dog. But you have to get him tomorrow. My daughter’s getting attached to him, and it’s gonna break her heart if he’s around much longer.”
“I forgot. You said you have to work tomorrow.”
“The holidays work out so if you work Thanksgiving you don’t have to work Christmas. It’s better for Maddy.”
“How will I get Bear from you?”
“You could pick him up here. My mom’ll be around.” She realized as soon as she spoke that she didn’t want her mother to deal with Bear and Travis on her own. “Or better yet, I can take him along with me on patrol.”
“They allow that?”
“He’s not exactly high maintenance, Travis. I don’t think anybody would even know if I had him in the car.”
“Text me where to meet you. As early as possible.”
“Will do. Earlier is better. It’s Thanksgiving, and I have a lot to get done as soon as I go off shift.” The thought of the holiday meal suddenly made her picture Travis and his dog eating a microwave pizza. The restaurants in Paradise Flats would all be closed. “Wait a second,” she said. “Do you have somewhere to be tomorrow?”
“I have a room at the Cottonwood Inn.”
“No, I mean do you have anyone to celebrate Thanksgiving with? A place to go?”
“I have been invited to attend church tomorrow.”
“No, I’m serious,” Skottie said.
There was a long silence. Then: “I will have Bear. We will be fine.”
“Listen, my mom and I are cooking a turkey. Why don’t you come? You can eat some stuffing and mashed potatoes and watch a football game.”
“I am not sure—”
“So you’re gonna sit alone in your hotel room?”
“I—”
“Just come.”
“Since you insist,” Travis said. She could hear a smile in his voice. “Thank you for inviting me. I would be delighted.”
June 1992
Gary Gilbert heard the congregation chanting, but at the same time that the reverend was shouting and the choir was singing something about God choosing “the finest from among us,” he recognized Marybeth Quinlan’s voice. She had briefly been a babysitter to his girls before the accident with her daughter had turned her into a virtual shut-in. She was somewhere nearby, laughing and crying and gasping for breath. Barely audible among all this chaos was the small, sad voice of a girl asking where she was and what was happening. No one was answering her, and Gary reached out toward the sound of her, thinking maybe he could comfort her with a pat on the shoulder or a friendly smile, and he dropped his bag. His stomach chose that moment to do a double roll, and he reached for the pocket where he kept a couple of Zofran tablets in case of an emergency, but he was too late. He got his hands up just in time to spew a mouthful of bile and Diet Sprite out between his fingers.
He could smell it right away, bitter and rancid, and he hoped he hadn’t hit anyone with the spray. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he felt himself trying to form an apology. But he couldn’t get it out. Instead he slid straight forward onto his face and blacked out. He had no idea he was directly in front of the enormous gold lightning bolt that split the altar. No idea that, to the congregation behind him, it looked like he was prostrating himself before that sacred icon.
Gary woke up, to a degree, several times during the rest of that day and night. Each time, he slipped back under before he could speak or move. But he could feel people touching him and, later, carrying him. He felt the sanctuary’s carpet against his cheek, which was replaced by a cold metal surface. He smelled his own vomit, then bleach, and then dust and oil and blood. He heard snippets of conversation from different men in different rooms, but they made little sense to him.
“Praise be.”
“Heal your brother.”
“He’s waking up …”
“… didn’t work.”
“Gary Gilbert is not of us. You see how …”
“Impure stock. This man has lied to you. His blood is …”
“Just get him off to the side until …”
“What do we …”
“Damn, he’s heavier than I …”
“Fold up his legs.”
When he finally woke up again it was dark. He couldn’t tell what time it was or where he had been taken. His mouth tasted terrible and he felt dizzy, but his stomach was calm. He tried to move his arms and legs, but they were bound to the surface beneath him. His back hurt, and he wiggled into a slightly more comfortable position. He could feel the air against his skin, raising goose bumps, and he knew that he had been undressed. He could make out vague shapes in the darkness, ambient light glinting off glass or metal next to him, and he wondered whether his vision had returned or his head was playing tricks on him. His brain sometimes supplied him with colors and shapes that weren’t really there.
“Hello? Is there somebody here? I can’t move.”
He listened, but there was no movement, no response, just his own labored breathing. He struggled against his bonds, tried to sit up, but eventually gave in and waited. He had no idea how long it took for someone to come, but he had just begun to fall back to sleep when a light flicked on above him. He blinked and gasped. The room he was in was bright and clear, and he knew it couldn’t possibly exist in his imagination. He was lying on an inclined metal table with his feet slightly elevated above his head, and his wrists and ankles were secured with thick leather straps. There was a lamp on a swivel arm above him and two high metal stools, one on each side of the table. His clothes were draped over one of the stools. A rolling cart was positioned near his head, and Gary could see an array of scalpels, clamps, spreaders, tongs, and sponges spread across a stained white towel on the cart’s surface. There were other instruments there that he didn’t recognize. And strewn atop them were items from Gary’s own wallet. He recognized his driver’s license with its donor sticker, his library card issued by the Hays Public Library, and a credit card he hardly ever used because it was almost at its limit and he hadn’t paid it down in months. Across from him was another table like the one he was lying on, this one unoccupied, its straps unbuckled and hanging empty. The walls were lined with metal shelving units like the ones Gary had in his own garage, but the shelves were piled high with medical paraphernalia.
A door opened and Reverend Rudy entered, wiping his hands with a red cloth.
“You’re awake, Mr. Gilbert,” the reverend said. “Good. I was beginning to worry about you.” His voice was soft with a warm undercurrent, completely unlike the harsh spitting rasp he used when shouting from the pulpit.
“Where am I? What am I doing here? The last thing I remember—”
“You made a bit of a mess in my sanctuary,” Rudy said. He pulled one of the stools, the one that wasn’t currently occupied by Gary’s khakis and button-up shirt, closer to Gary’s table and sat on it. “It took poor Liz more than an hour to clean up your sick, and even though we’ve got fans drying the carpet, I think we’re going to have to replace it. I can still smell your vomitus in there.”
“I’m sorry,” Gary said. “But my stomach feels fine now. And I can see. My vision is … You really did it. You healed me.”
Rudy tapped a finger against his lips and stared off into the middle distance. “Funny,” he said. “I didn’t feel the tingle when I laid my hands on you. The energy didn’t move through me. Are you sure you feel all right?”
“I …” Now that the reverend had cast aspersions on his health, Gary noticed that his stomach had in fact started to feel a little queasy. And his per
ipheral vision was going blurry again. “Yes,” he lied. “Yes, I feel good. I feel perfect. Could you let me up now? I think all the blood is going to my head.”
Rudy continued to tap on his lips, but he looked at Gary. “You’re in what’s called the Trendelenburg position, heels over head. Named after Friedrich Trendelenburg, a great surgeon. A great German surgeon.”
“Oh.” Gary wasn’t sure what else to say. He wished the reverend would untie him, but he understood he was in a delicate situation of some sort and he didn’t want to push Rudy too hard. He thought it would have been enough to lay him on a couch until he woke up. He wasn’t likely to roll off and hurt himself, so strapping him to a table was definitely overkill.
“Listen,” he said, “I’m grateful, but I don’t understand what’s—”
“Mr. Gilbert, how many fingers am I holding up?”
Gary panicked, realizing the fuzz had crept without warning inward from the edges of his vision. He could still see somewhat clearly, but only within a small area directly in front of him. He wasn’t sure where Rudy’s fingers even were, much less the number of fingers he was holding up.
He guessed. “Three?”
“Interesting,” Rudy said.
Gary heard the stool squeak as Rudy moved. Then Rudy was standing above him.
“You can’t see much at all now, can you?”
“I could for a little bit there,” Gary said. “When I first woke up. Maybe if you try again?”
“The power of suggestion,” Rudy said. He took off his glasses and wiped them with the red cloth. “You tricked yourself into thinking you were healed because you believed in my energy. But only briefly. Without that energy, you’re slipping back into ill health. You need the lightning. My lightning.”
“Please just let me go home now. Let me go home.” Gary could hear the wheedling tone in his voice and was ashamed, but he suddenly realized he could live with his problems. He was used to them, and they were uniquely his. Being strapped to a table while the reverend talked about German doctors was not something he wanted to get used to.
“Tell me,” Rudy said, “do you have any family in Paradise Flats? I didn’t see anyone at church with you today.”
“My wife left. But I have two little girls.”
“Two girls? Where are they now?”
“I, um … They’re with my dad.”
“Your father. And where does he live?”
“Well, he’s still in Stockton, actually. But that’s pretty close by, you know. I could call him, if you want. He doesn’t drive much these days, but he’d come pick me up. I know he would. It’s not that far. It’s not far at all.”
“Hush now, Mr. Gilbert.” Rudy smiled at him, put his glasses back on, and tossed his red cloth on the cart. “Sometimes it doesn’t work. Sometimes the lightning doesn’t come, doesn’t flow from me. I used to blame myself. Do you have any idea how awful that made me feel, this notion that people needed my help and yet I couldn’t deliver? How could that be? Why was I able to heal one person and not another? The answer, of course, was right in front of my eyes. And my eyes work much better than yours, Mr. Gilbert. Still, it took me a long time to see it.”
“See what?”
“That the problem wasn’t with me; it was always the other person, the person who had come to me. The lightning did not respond well to those people. Just as it didn’t respond to you. I mean no offense; it’s simply a fact.”
“But I wanted to be healed. I did.” Gary’s vision was fading fast. He turned his head and saw the other table, the empty table, through a pinprick of light. He knew that it might be the last thing he would ever see, and he drank in every detail. The reverend kept talking, but Gary didn’t hear him. He was staring at that table, and it was puzzling him. There was something odd about the dimensions of it, something that didn’t seem right, even though it was fading fast, being eaten up all around the edges by the creeping fuzz. He blinked and tried to bring it into focus, but that only made things worse, and everything disappeared at once in a gray smear.
“Mr. Gilbert, are you listening to me?”
“What?”
“I asked if I might call you Gary, since we’re becoming such intimate acquaintances. May I?”
“Yeah, um, sure. Just, can you let me up from here, please?”
“There’s a story I sometimes tell, Gary,” the reverend said.
Gary took it as a bad sign that Reverend Rudy was selectively ignoring him, but he still couldn’t wrap his head around the situation. He had been in a church and he thought of churches as safe places.
“I never tell this story up there, not at the pulpit,” the reverend said. “This story is not for them. It’s for my guests down here. But not all of them, either. I don’t tell it often, but I think it’s sometimes useful to revisit our history, don’t you think? It keeps us humble. Would you like to hear it? This story of mine?”
“Just let me go,” Gary said. His throat had closed and he could barely force the words out. “I promise I won’t tell anybody about all this, whatever it is. I swear, man.”
“When I was a boy, my father would sometimes take us into the city. My sister and I. She was younger, and very beautiful, with long blond curls, and our mother made the prettiest little dresses for her. But she’s not important to this story, my sister, even though she was there.”
The reverend’s voice floated through the charcoal air, and Gary stopped struggling against the straps. A small part of him had accepted what he knew was going to come. He tried to keep the worst of his panicked, rabbity thoughts at bay and sent up a silent prayer for rescue.
“As I say, sometimes our father would take us with him on his trips. He would have work to do, business acquaintances to meet, I suppose, and he would give us coins—I no longer remember how much money it was, a Reichsmark or two each, perhaps—and he let us roam about, just so long as we promised to stay together. My sister always spent her coins right away on treats and on ribbons for her hair, while I pocketed my money and saved it. I had a box under my bed at home, and I would put my unspent coins away after each of these trips. This hoarding of wealth, I guess you’d say, was a habit that would later serve me well. But one time, on one of our outings, we were walking along a busy street, holding hands, and my sister was sucking on a hard candy of the sort she liked best, when we saw a crowd gathering. We were small, and it was easy to push our way through to the front of the crowd. In a little clearing in the middle of all the people was a man who was lying still, just lying there on a rug that had been spread out on the ground. And next to him was a second man, who was kneeling in the dirt and talking to us all and calling out to passersby, calling to them to stop and see the miracle. Stop and see the miracle. I remember feeling concerned that he was soiling the knees of his trousers and thinking that Mother would be cross with me if I were ever to do what that man was doing. But even though my sister tugged on my hand, trying to pull me away, I stayed and watched those two men. My sister was already bored, and I don’t know why I wasn’t bored as well, but … well, I wasn’t. I stood and listened as the man talked. I wish I could tell you exactly what he said, Gary, but it has been a great many years, and so much of what happened in my youth has faded from memory. I can’t even remember my sister’s face anymore.” Rudy sighed, and it was a long moment before he resumed his story. “I do go on, don’t I? It’s nice to be able to hear myself talk without all the yammering that goes on up there in the church. It’s quiet down here sometimes, so peaceful. But where was I? Oh, yes, the man was talking, saying something about a certain kind of sickness. He told us that the man on the ground had this sickness, that he had a growth in his body. In English we would call this sickness a cancer, of course, a tumor, but that’s not what we called it then and there, and it’s not what the man called it that day. I remember that much at least. But we knew what it was, even we children had heard about such things. The man on the ground was conscious and he was crying, much as you are crying righ
t now, Gary, anxious about what was to occur and hoping for that miracle the man was shouting about. Or that’s what we were led to believe. Perhaps he was, perhaps he was innocent and truly full of cancer and sincerely hoping to be cured by this man kneeling in the dirt by his side. I would like to believe that, I would, but the man lying down was no doubt the healer’s accomplice, a con man, and I’ve spoiled the first part of my story, haven’t I? Because, yes indeed, the kneeling man was a healer, and he had a box next to him with the lid open and a few coins scattered along the bottom of it to prompt those of us in the crowd to add our own coins to the meager few in there, to donate to the spectacle, to show our appreciation for the afternoon’s entertainment. And when he was satisfied that he had a big enough crowd he went to work, talking all the time about what he was doing. Magicians call it a patter, talking about one thing while you do another, distracting your audience and binding them to you through speech. As I am binding you to me now, Gary. And while he talked, the healer, the magician, he opened the other man’s shirt and he ran his fingers up and down his torso until he had found the tumor under the skin. At least, that’s what he told us he was doing, searching for that pesky tumor. He found it, of course. Told us he’d found it. My sister and I watched, awestruck, as he dug into the man’s stomach with his bare hands, blood pouring out from between his fingers, poking and prodding and digging, and talking to us the whole time, and the man lying there without showing any signs of pain, any indication that he was being wounded by the magician’s prying fingers. The healer looked at my sister as he worked, seemed to be talking to her, and I could not blame him. I do remember that she was beautiful, and I do wish I could call her face to mind now. She watched the man work, staring right back at him, and I don’t think she was bored anymore. Then he pulled a bloody growth out of the other man’s belly, produced it for all to see, showed it to us in the palm of his hand, and it was roughly the size and appearance of a large slug. He rose to his feet and passed it triumphantly under the noses of everyone gathered there, but my sister, whom he was most trying to impress, I think, turned suddenly away and made a retching sound and asked me again to leave. But I could not move. I was stuck to the spot, Gary, mesmerized. I wondered at it, at every bit of it: the showmanship, the goriness, the truth or fiction of it. What did it mean to use a man’s agony for the entertainment of strangers? I confess I was thrilled. And then the magician used a bucket of water to gradually wash away the blood that had pooled on his patient’s stomach. As the water ran over and down his skin and soaked into his shirt and pants, the blood was diluted and just … it just disappeared, just like that, leaving no indication of a wound or … or anything at all. The man on the ground was wet, but otherwise fine, and the magician said that he could rise and return to his home, that he was cured and would go on to live for another decade or more. I suppose that man with the tumor is dead by now anyway, whether he lived for another decade as promised or another fifty years. But on that day he did get up, and he smiled and did a little dance to show that he was unharmed and cancer-free, though why could he not dance, even if the cancer remained inside him? I did not question it. Not then. The man who was now without cancer, if he had ever had it, dropped a few coins in the magician’s box, and that was to prompt the rest of us to do likewise—I know that now, but at the time I did not, and so I stepped forward and took the coins that my father had given me that morning, took them from my pocket and put them in the box, and the magician smiled at me and nodded. I tried to talk to him then, tried to ask him how he had done it, what else he could do with such amazing powers, but he didn’t wait around for questions, mine or anyone else’s. As soon as he saw that he had all the coins he was going to get from the crowd, he grabbed up his box and he marched away down the street. I tried to follow, waving at him, crying for him to come back and teach me how to do what he did, but my sister tugged at my hand and led me away in the opposite direction, back to the shops where she could buy more sweets and more ribbons and lace, because she had not given the magician her own coins. She still had her money and I had nothing, and so I could only follow my sister from place to place, thinking all the time about the miracle I had witnessed. That night I pulled my own box of coins from under my bed and counted them, wondering how many more I would have if I could do what that healer had done. It was a seed, you see. A seed had been planted in my mind, and it would grow and grow over the years, even when I did not know that it was there. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that the things I saw that day inspired me to become a healer, but you’d only be half right. You haven’t heard the whole story yet. On that day I only knew I didn’t want to be my sister, who had seen something glorious and paid no attention. Now I was aware of the magic that surrounded me. There was more in the world than I had previously dreamt. I grew withdrawn and rebellious, bored by the mundanities that others gladly suffered. I looked everywhere for opportunities to thrive, to be different and better than the people around me, better than my sister, who married a baker’s apprentice, a pauper, and moved away from me. But my attitude served me well when the party came into power, when the Führer made it possible for individuals with vision and talent to rise and come into their own. I finally thrived.