Enter by the Narrow Gate

by David Carlson

  Worthy looked away for a moment before answering. “I noticed the guest books on the back table. Do many visitors write in them?”

  “Some pilgrims do, but most don’t take the time,” the nun replied. “I already looked through them after the policewoman called, if that’s what you’re getting at. I didn’t find anything out of the ordinary.”

  “Fine, but can I look at the pages for April eighth?” Worthy asked.

  The nun moved briskly to the back table, returning with a large blue, cloth-covered scrapbook. Sitting down and opening the book on her lap, she began humming off key, turning pages until stopping at one.

  “Here it is.”

  As Worthy sat down on the other side of the nun and the three scanned the page, Father Fortis noticed that most of the entries were in Spanish. Only at the bottom did he see the name of a Professor Wormley from Allgemein College. Next to the name was the comment, “Thank you. My students found El Sanctuario provocative.”

  Below were two other comments in English, both apparently from students in the group. Each suggested that their professor tended toward overstatement. The first, “This place is friggin’ cold” was followed by “I’m still an atheist.”

  “I guess I missed those,” the nun confessed. “Is one of those from your missing girl?”

  “It’s hard to say,” Worthy replied. The policeman studied the entries and then turned to the next page, which Father Fortis saw was again filled with Hispanic names. Turning a third page, Worthy’s finger rested on a penciled, unsigned entry at the very top. From where he sat, Father Fortis could just make out childish loops and pencil smudges.

  “I wonder …” Worthy began.

  “But that’s from much later in the day,” the nun insisted. “Look at all the names in between.”

  “Unless she accidentally turned two pages instead of one,” Worthy replied.

  “What does it say, Christopher?” Father Fortis asked.

  Worthy angled the book to catch the meager light from the altar and showed the words to the priest. “I like the brite colors and holey picturs. Some day, I maybe come back.”

  “That’s not from a college student!” the nun declared.

  “Maybe from this one,” Worthy replied.

  “But even if she did write it, what does it tell you?” Father Fortis asked.

  “I’m not sure.”

  Father Fortis cleared his throat. “May I have a look?”

  The book ended up like a Bible in Father Fortis’s lap. He gazed down at the childish script, recalling from yesterday’s drive to the monastery Worthy’s uncertainty about the girl’s true medical condition. If the VanBruskman girl had indeed written this message, did it hint at genuine emotional limitations or trickery? He began a silent prayer for the girl’s recovery and instinctively rubbed the loops of her handwriting with his forefinger.

  His hand stopped. “Unless I’m wrong, something else was written beneath this.” He returned the book to Worthy, watching intently as his friend traced the childish words with his forefinger.

  “Nick, I think you’re right. Something’s been erased, then written over.” He angled the book up again toward the light from the altar. “And, unless I’m mistaken, I think I can read the name Victor.”

  Chapter Five

  Worthy glanced toward the back of the church where the door was swinging gently in the afternoon breeze. In a matter of minutes they’d be out of this stuffy hole and on their way. For the life of him, he couldn’t understand why Sera Lacey had made such a big deal of the place, or why Father Fortis seemed so intent on defending it. Unlike St. Mary of the Snows, whose architecture had impressed him with its austerity and subtlety, the famous Church of Chimayó seemed like a carnival warehouse.

  But as he had tried to explain that morning at the sheriff’s station, all that mattered was what Ellie VanBruskman had made of the place. Perhaps what was written beneath the childish words in the book would provide an answer to that question. But then again, the skeptical nun might be right. There was no guarantee that the comment was from the missing girl, and even if it were, the underlying words might be just as pointless.

  “Where are you going with that book, Lieutenant?” the nun asked as he started for the door.

  “I’m sorry, I thought you knew that I’d need to take it back for processing.”

  The nun frowned. “If you must, you must, I suppose. It’s just that people like to read about the miracles.”

  Promising the book’s return within a day or two, he made a second attempt for the door.

  The nun, however, still had Father Fortis pinned down in the front row. “The policewoman said the girl might be ill. Can you tell me a bit more? We’d like to pray for her, you see.”

  Father Fortis patted her arm. “Yes, of course, my dear.” He looked up at Worthy, a twinkle in his eye. “Worthy, you can share that with sister, can’t you?”

  Worthy glared at his friend, but complied. “She’s been diagnosed with something called bipolar disorder, which is a form of—”

  “Of depression,” the nun finished. “That happens to be one of Chimayó’s specialties, along with paralysis of the legs.” She shrugged toward Father Fortis. “Don’t ask me to explain how those two connect.”

  Worthy motioned toward the door, but the nun intercepted the message.

  “Father can’t leave without seeing our main attraction,” she commanded, her face aglow. “You, too, Lieutenant. Your missing student must have taken some of the dirt.”

  The priest grinned mischievously before ducking his huge frame through the portal.

  Reluctantly, Worthy followed, passing into what could have been a theater prop room. Crutches and braces hung from the rafters above, while on the walls saccharine prints of Jesus and the Virgin Mary stared out, their hearts visible and rosy. Rosaries hung like clumps of seaweed from other framed pictures, these of saints, their eyes gazing dreamily toward heaven.

  To the right, in an even smaller and darker room, Worthy spotted the couple, arm in arm, huddling over something on the floor. Father Fortis walked to the far wall, bent down to kiss an icon of the Madonna and Child before crossing himself. Worthy heard the nun’s tremulous sigh and thought if his friend wasn’t careful he’d have her swooning at his feet.

  He checked his watch. If they could break free in fifteen minutes, there would be enough time to drop Father Fortis off at the monastery and still get to the lab before it closed. He paused in front of a glass case set in the center of the room and peered in at a kewpie doll bedecked in purple velvet. The floor of the case was littered with the tiny tokens he’d seen by the altar, some in the shape of cars, candles, crosses, as well as miniature arms and legs. Fighting an urge to smile, he stooped to study handwritten notes that had been slid through the case’s small opening. One, in English, prayed for a happy marriage, another for a son in prison.

  “Those are milagros,” the nun whispered, standing close to him. She explained that each represented a request for healing or thanksgiving for a blessing received.

  Oh great, Worthy thought, detecting the note of zeal in the nun’s voice. Another person trying to save my soul.

  The nun continued in an animated whisper, “For example, that little leg could mean someone has had an operation, but it could also symbolize something like the ‘leg’ of a journey. Quite ingenious, don’t you think?”

  “I suppose you sell these trinkets?”

  The nun reared up as if struck. “Absolutely not. The pilgrims bring them or buy them in town, but not here.”

  From the innermost room, the woman, her voice shaky with emotion, called out. “Sister, would you please come in here?”

  As the nun obeyed, Father Fortis turned and smiled, his eyebrows raised. Worthy gestured toward his watch.

  “Soon,” the priest mouthed. “I’d like a bit of the dirt.”

  With the couple trailing behind her, the nun returned to the room of crutches and braces. “Really, I’m forbidden
to do that,” she said, shaking her head. “I’ll pray for you, but please, trust in our good Lord and His loving mother.”

  The woman wept softly as the man thanked the nun and ushered his companion back into the church proper. An open sob echoed through the sanctuary.

  “They want too much,” the nun whispered to Father Fortis. “They imagine that if I’d only rub the dirt on them, then God would have to … heal them, or in this case, give them a child.”

  Father Fortis nodded sympathetically. “A healing site attracts desperate people, like those two.”

  “Sometimes it’s worse,” the nun whispered, coming closer to the priest. “This couple isn’t Catholic. When I claim to have nothing to do with what happens here, Catholics think I’m just trying to be the humble nun. That’s when I can almost hear the devil laughing. As we both know, when all else fails, Satan can latch onto us with pride.”

  Worthy cleared his throat. “The lab closes at five, Nick.”

  “Not before Father takes some dirt,” the nun stated, guiding the priest into the inner room.

  Worthy watched Father Fortis cross himself, kneel, and reach down for the dirt. With smudgy fingers, the priest crossed himself again and remained on his knees.

  The nun scurried over to a weather-beaten cupboard before returning to the priest. As she handed a small sandwich bag to Father Fortis, the priest whispered a thank you. Worthy could have sworn the nun’s knees buckled.

  For the first time since Worthy had been in this odd church, he felt overcome with fatigue. Perhaps it was the circle of mounded dirt on the floor, his friend on his knees, and the clucking of the nun. Or perhaps it was the endless pages of names in the book he held in his hand, the thousands of people who dragged their hopelessness into this tiny room and polished the stone floor with their knees, never noticing that the dirt at their feet was the same color as the soil outside, never wondering how each new day, no matter how many hands scooped out mounds from the day before, the well would be always brimming.

  He felt the nun’s gaze upon him. “You don’t like it here, do you, Lieutenant?” Before he could answer, she continued, “To be honest, sometimes the place gets to me, too. Just don’t make El Sanctuario harder than it is.”

  I don’t need this, Worthy thought, scrambling to find some way to extricate himself. “I just need to get the book back to Santa Fe and find out if it means anything,” he repeated.

  Father Fortis met Worthy’s eye and seemed to plead for forbearance. Don’t worry, Worthy thought, I never insult someone I might need to re-question.

  Worthy had turned back toward the room of crutches, hanging like old bones, when he felt the silken coolness of a sandwich bag slip into his hand. “Turn off your head, Lieutenant, and pray with your knees,” she whispered.

  Worthy looked down at the bag, wondering if the nun felt it her duty to coerce every visitor. Old images of his youth came flooding back, the town drunk crying at the Sunday night altar, his father and the pitiful few in attendance pretending the scene didn’t happen four times a year. He turned the bag over in his hand, searching for a way out, before realizing that if he refused, the nun would turn him into a prayer concern, a new bead on her rosary.

  He moved quickly to the hole, crouching rather than kneeling. After filling the bag, he took out a felt-tip pen to print “Chimayó, May 4, Ellie VanBruskman.” It was an action he’d done a hundred times before—labeling small containers of bloodstained clothing, hair, human tissue, or even dirt like this.

  And yet something troubled him, something more than the eyes of the nun and Father Fortis on him. He wanted to tell the nun that this was simply routine police work, but instead he rose quickly, slid the bag into his right-hand pocket, and left the room.

  Worthy delivered the book to the lab ten minutes before five and got the clear impression that his demand for immediate analysis wasn’t appreciated. Wandering outside, he found a public phone and called Susan just as the sun was setting over the mountains. The conversation was brief, and as was typical, focused entirely on Allyson. Hanging up the phone, he remained for a few moments in the cool breeze before walking dejectedly back to the policewoman’s office.

  Sera Lacey sat behind her desk as she briefed him on her trip to Acomita. “Victor Martinez hasn’t been seen since February, and now the boy’s mother doesn’t seem to be around. The poor woman left a ton of bills unpaid and no forwarding address.”

  “Any other relatives?” Worthy asked.

  “I did manage to track down the grandmother’s address. Grandmothers are the key out here.”

  Worthy glanced down at a picture on the desk of a smiling Little Leaguer, a boy of nine or ten, with red hair and freckles but also the black eyebrows of his mother. Somewhere in his apartment in Detroit was a photo of Allyson at the same age in almost the same pose, a soccer ball cradled under her arm.

  Susan had spent the first two minutes of their phone conversation talking excitedly about Allyson, who’d finally agreed to go back to Rachel, her therapist. Even more surprising, their older daughter had spent a half hour alone with Rachel.

  Something in his ex-wife’s voice—something besides the whispering that always signaled Allyson was home—had made him uneasy. Then it came. After Allyson’s session with Rachel, the therapist wanted Susan to relay a message to “the father.” Allyson’s running away had come after she’d returned home from school one day to find him—her father and the man her mother had divorced six months earlier—sitting across the table from Susan, drinking coffee and talking just like old times.

  “Rachel says it confused Allyson, so for the time being, Chris, you’re to call before you come over.” Worthy held his tongue. It had been Susan who had invited him over that day, she who had made the coffee and the fudge brownies, his favorite. Yet now he’d become the criminal in Allyson’s eyes. She had run away the next day, her disappearance a headline story in the local papers. Five months later, she had come back. Little wonder the VanBruskmans thought he could find their daughter after the initial police assigned to the case failed to turn up a clue. What he would have told them, if they had bothered to ask, was that he hadn’t had anything to do with finding Allyson. No one had. She had come back on her own, without apology or explanation.

  “So how was Chimayó?” Sera asked, breaking into his thoughts. “Did you see the room in the back, the one with the sacred dirt?”

  “I got the grand tour,” he replied. “A nosy nun made sure of that.”

  Sera Lacey’s face reddened. She returned to the files on her desk, and after a moment of silence, reached for the phone. Worthy turned back toward the window, where the last pink rays shone feebly over the mountains. He had failed another test with his new partner, and maybe he had wanted to. It hardly seemed to matter. How was it possible that Allyson had run away because of him?

  “The lab tech thinks he’ll have your results in about half an hour,” Sera reported. “I can fax them to the monastery, if you’d like.”

  He sighed. The morning had begun with a new sense of lightness, of being where no one but Father Fortis knew him—or resented him. People even seemed to want his help. But now his new partner clearly wanted him to leave.

  “I guess I’ll take a walk and come back.”

  “Suit yourself,” she replied, not bothering to look up.

  He left the station and headed for a cluster of shops down a side street. He needed to shower, to grab some sleep, to recover his bearings.

  He passed a store specializing in ceramic tiles, one window filled with squares of smiling suns, moons, and signs of the zodiac, while in another, an entire bathroom—the flooring, the walls, and even the sink and shower—was composed of tiles. In the corner was a clay fireplace studded with more tiles. A fireplace in the bathroom?

  He came to an alley and crossed the street to start the slow trek back. In the window of a travel agency was a cutout of New York City’s skyline at night. Bright lights, shiny steel and stone, rain-soaked str
eets. He had intended to walk those streets with Susan on their twentieth anniversary trip. That had been his plan, at least. This is what we would have seen, he thought. This is where we would have walked.

  At the sound of running footsteps, he turned to see the policewoman jogging toward him. Her black hair swirled around her face with each step, while in her hand she waved a white piece of paper. She beamed as if she’d recalculated his score and he’d passed the test after all.

  “Well, Mr. Detroit, I think you’ve found our trail.”

  He bent down to read the real message from Chimayó: “Victor, I missed you. Someday I will find you.”

  Here it was, his first view into Ellie VanBruskman’s true state of mind. What else could the statement “someday I will find you” mean but that Victor Martinez was indeed the reason she’d run away? What else did the missing girl’s second message mean, the childish scrawl written on top, but that she was more cunning than anyone realized?

  Worthy handed the paper back to the policewoman. “Let’s go talk to that grandmother.”

  Chapter Six

  Father Fortis sat alone over breakfast. He took a long sip of coffee and sighed, pondering the mysterious action of mercy. His prayers the evening before had been plagued with self-recriminations, due to what he’d allowed to happen at Chimayó.

  Of course, the nun at El Sanctuario had come on too strong, treating Worthy as if he were an errant confirmation candidate, but hadn’t he also let his friend down? He’d thought it funny to egg the nun on and perhaps to show his friend that he was still capable of flirting. But when she started grilling Worthy, he hadn’t interceded, hadn’t escorted the nun into the back room to let his friend escape.

  He had been prepared to apologize to Worthy, but that was before his friend had appeared in his room late last night bearing the evidence from the lab, a huge smile on his face.

  “Don’t you see, Nick? Chimayó was their pre-arranged meeting place,” Worthy had explained, too excited to even sit. “Ellie VanBruskman isn’t as nutty as she wants everyone to think.”