The Miracles of Ordinary Men

by Amanda Leduc

  Now here he was, again, listening to Joni sing as he wound the car down to the water.

  “Am I missing something?” he said. To the air, to Chickenhead. The only answer came from Joni. Wax and rolling tears — couldn’t help him any.

  Chickenhead spared him a glance and then went back to her catnip, holding it soft between her paws and then snapping it between small white teeth. Lately she’d taken to looking at him with a renewed glint of interest, the same look she reserved for mice and other objects of play. Not surprising, really — he was, after all, turning into a giant bird.

  Scars, the doctor had said. Traumatic scars, extensive stitching. What did that mean? He couldn’t begin to guess.

  —

  On the ferry, he sat outside on the floor, in an alcove made by a sleek silver lifeboat bin and a blank stretch of wall. He willed himself smaller, invisible. It had started to rain; hardly anyone came outside and when they did, they walked past him or away in the opposite direction, avoiding him like those in the doctor’s office. The Gulf Islands passed in shifting hues of green and grey.

  He went downstairs as soon as they began to near the island, and crammed into the Jetta — no one around to question the adjusting, the crazy shuffle as he settled the wings around the seat. Chickenhead, curled into a fat dark ball, woke up, blinked at him, and then turned her head and went back to sleep. A few minutes later, the opening door and the calm brown shores of Departure Bay.

  He drove.

  —

  The island felt at once like an extension of his city and an entirely different world. The mountains that followed the road were softer here, their tips blue-green and grey and fading into clouds that hung low in the air. Farther north, they grew sharp again, were hostile, unapproachable. Four summers ago he’d hiked part of the northern park with Julie. Middle of August and they’d shivered over a nighttime bonfire, surrounded on all sides by peaks that were black against the dark of the sky.

  “It’s like being surrounded by giant witches’ hats,” she’d said. They’d laughed because it was silly, but also because it was possible, in the dark, to believe that it might just be true. In the utter blackness of a night in Strathcona Park, he could see a million things rising up to finish them — fire, water, acts of God.

  But nothing had happened, and now Julie was with Derek, and Sam had woken up in his own bed with wings sprouting hard from his back. If you’re destined for trouble, his mother would have said, it will find you anyway.

  —

  He did not believe in destiny — or he hadn’t, until just over a week ago. How many times had they argued, he and his mother, squared off on either side of the debate?

  “We make our own destiny,” he’d said. “Anything else is shirking responsibility.”

  Carol had laughed at him. “Shirking responsibility, just because I think that some things are out of my control?”

  “It’s a crutch,” he said. “A cushion. People can’t face reality, so they make up stories and cling to belief.”

  “But everyone does that,” she pointed out. “Some people kneel to a cross and some people get mired in quantum physics. In the end, it’s all the same.”

  “Quantum physics is all about chance,” he’d argued, aware, as ever, that she was serene and intractable. “That makes sense — you have to pull yourself above the chaos. But destiny? Some people are meant for greatness and others — what? They’re just filler?”

  He might even have argued the line on Tuesday, had he gone to the house, had he been in time. He might not have argued it well, especially if she’d been able to see the wings, but he’d have argued, all the same. This thing, happening to me — it’s nothing special. It’s like a disease. I have a different set of cards now, that’s all.

  Outside Parksville, just past the provincial park, he stopped the car and almost turned back. What was he doing? Why wasn’t he home, helping Doug, making arrangements, seeing to it that the plants were taken care of? What could he possibly expect? He’d stopped not far from the ocean — the old highway ran for miles along the water. There was a smattering of trees to his immediate right, and beyond them, winking bits of blue and tan. Miracle Beach, the map reminded him.

  He got back on the highway, and kept going. He rolled down his window and let the air rush in. The trees melted by in blurs of green and brown. The mountains began to sharpen. He drove, and when he saw the sign for the Tofino–Ucluelet junction, he took the right.

  —

  The retreat house, according to his map, was actually just outside of Tofino, a little farther down the highway that led to Ucluelet and the beaches of the national park. It was new, as retreat centres went, and fairly low key. The place didn’t even have a webpage. Maybe it didn’t have running water, either. Maybe — his sudden gasp of laughter made Chickenhead startle in her seat — the fathers marched down to a neighbouring stream two by two, yoked under heavy wooden pails. In tune with God, with nature, with Greenpeace. How very twenty-first century.

  Then, all of a sudden, he was there. A nondescript brown driveway, an etched sign on a sturdy iron post. He turned into the drive and followed the path through the woods. It ended at a white house that stood in the middle of the trees like a cheerful child. When he got out of the house he noticed that it was weathered — the paint cracked, the roof missing tiles — but the path to the front door was meticulous. He walked softly up to the house and knocked, and wondered what would happen when someone answered the door.

  It opened, and the answer was immediate: nothing. The man who greeted him was small and bald and no one Sam had seen before.

  “Hello,” he said, in the same business-like voice that had sounded so strange over the phone. “You must be Samuel. I am Brother Thomas. Come in.”

  It was a house that didn’t deceive: tired and plain, the walls white, the floorboards scuffed and worn. But the light increased as they walked to the back, and he saw that the south wall of the house was made entirely of glass and interlocking wooden beams, and the kitchen opened up onto a patio. The patio door was open and there were grey tree stumps sprinkled on the grass.

  “Father Jim is just finishing his rotation,” said the man. “If you’d like to wait here, he will be by in a few minutes.” He pointed to a chair and Sam sat down. “Can I get you anything? Something to drink? Eat?”

  A splash of holy water, perhaps? Sam was seized by a sudden, sinking fear. Suppose Father Jim saw a man limp with grief, nothing more? “No,” he said. “But thank you.”

  Brother Thomas nodded and disappeared down the hall, and Sam was once again alone. He thought of Chickenhead, picking at catnip in the car. He thought of his mother. And then, as always, he thought of Julie, who still didn’t know. When they got back to Vancouver, he’d have to tell her the news.

  Behind him, the wings lay soft and still. They were warm with the light from the windows, a warmth altogether different from the heat that they’d given off in his mother’s house — a green warmth, the long, slow heat of trees. He lifted the left wing and curled it out so that a greenish-yellow light dappled through the feathers. A sudden, strange comfort, knowing they were there.

  “Holy shit,” said a voice.

  He turned and curled the wing in all at once. “Hello, Father.”

  There he was, six-foot-four, with his winking white collar. His beard had more grey in it now, but his hands were tanned and he still looked more like a lumberjack than a priest. He came to the table, sat across from Sam, and hooked his fingers around one knee. His eyes were shrewd and blue, and they weren’t looking at the Sam that everyone else in the world could see. “I think,” he said, “you have some interesting things to tell me.”

  —

  The little white house in the woods had a surprising number of rooms. Sam’s faced the woods, the lone window scratched and blurred. It held a single bed and dresser, and a mirror that
hung lopsided on the back of the door. The floorboards were bone white beneath his feet.

  That next morning, he woke with a headache, and remembered the edges of a strange dream. A view of the sea from the edge of a red-brown cliff, the waves rising to the level of his feet and then receding, slowly, under the guidance of his hand. The power in his fingertips softer than that which had woken the cat but still there — humming, unmistakable. Gone, now that he was awake. The room felt hushed and sweet. He could hear the brothers shuffling about in the rest of the house. Even the faint trickle of water from the bathroom tap sounded like a song.

  He climbed out of the bed — he’d slept face down on the mattress, the wings spread over bed and floor — then stood in front of the mirror and spread his arms. The wings arched out from his shoulders. They had stopped growing, at least for the time being, which was good. He ran his index finger along the left wing, tracing from under his armpit out as far as it could go. Suddenly he was dizzy. He put a hand out to the mirror and leaned into it, the glass cool against his palm. The wings came up and whispered against the mirror. All was dark. Calm. He was and was not himself.

  —

  “Did you sleep well?” Father Jim asked, over breakfast. The dining hall had four tables, and wooden floors like the boards in Sam’s room. It was still early, but there was no one else around. Everyone else, the priest said, had eaten and gone about the day.

  “No,” Sam said. “I mean — yes.” He’d slept, after all. And dreams were just that. The ocean was not going to rise to the touch of his hand.

  “Ah,” said the priest. He shot Sam an odd look over his cup of tea, and resumed drinking.

  “What was that look for?” How silly — here he was, eleven years old again, a sudden cheeky imp in his voice.

  “Nothing.” Father Jim waved the question away. His eyes narrowed, sharpened. “What are those for?”

  “Beats me.” They’d talked until the dark hours of the morning, tossing out a million things. Sleep on it, Father Jim had said, finally. As though that would do anything at all. He thought back to the night he rescued Chickenhead, standing alone on the drive and rocking on the balls of his feet. The empty sky above him. “They don’t even work.”

  “The interesting thing about wings,” and now the priest’s voice was idly conversational, “is that they’re completely unnecessary. At least from an angelic perspective.”

  “What?”

  “The seraphim, the cherubim, the classically angelic — they’re powerful messengers of God. They appear and disappear at will. Why fly somewhere to mete out the judgment of the Most High when you can appear instantly anywhere in the world? Wings — a human concept. That’s all.”

  “So I have wings because people assume that angels have wings.”

  “That would be one guess.”

  “That still doesn’t explain why they’re here.”

  Father Jim shrugged. “In my experience, God isn’t heavy on explaining.”

  “When people get stressed, they get hives. They don’t grow feathers.”

  The priest chuckled. “At least you haven’t lost your sense of humour.” He stacked the teacups and saucers and stood. “Does anyone else know?”

  Sam shrugged and heard feathers slide against the floor. “No.” Emma. “Yes.”

  “Yes?”

  “One of my students.” How strange that sounded. “And Father Mario, back at the cathedral.”

  “Ah.” Father Jim nodded. “Mario. Yes. He’s a good man.”

  “So — what? What does that mean?”

  “It might mean nothing.” The priest began to stack the plates on the counter. “I certainly don’t mean to suggest that he saw the wings only because he was a good person, if that’s what you think.”

  Sam pushed his chair back. The dishes. “I can do that,” he insisted.

  “You think I’m actually going to wash? That’s what the dishwasher’s for, dear boy.”

  “You have a dishwasher?” Sam asked, amused. “How — ”

  “Modern?” said the priest. “Yes. But practical. Less time spent ministering to plates means more time ministering to people.”

  “The wayward souls of the universe?” Sam couldn’t help himself.

  “Naturally.” Father Jim grinned. “Keeping in mind, of course, that my soul is more wayward than most.”

  “They call that the blind leading the blind, no?”

  “Yes,” said the priest. “That’s exactly what they say.”

  —

  The light that filtered through the windows of the study was green, like the trees.

  “When I was in Portugal, I blessed a woman who had an arm growing out of her back — the arm could work, but the fingers had no muscle tone. She kept the arm hidden under clothes, so that it looked like a dowager’s hump. That was strange. An unborn identical twin, that’s the scientific explanation. Still, it was a fluke, no purpose. Those,” and the priest pointed at Sam, “are entirely different.”

  “If that’s true, then what the hell are they for?”

  Father Jim smiled. “Playing chess with the Almighty is tiresome business, Sam.” He flipped another page in the book he held and stopped. “Here. If wings were not the essential element in determining the difference between a hawk and an airplane, they were even less so in the recognition of angels.”

  “That doesn’t sound very biblical.”

  “It’s Marquez. A short story. I thought you’d know it, being the English teacher and all.”

  “Oh. So I’ve come all the way to Tofino just to sit and talk Marquez?”

  “Perhaps.” The priest lit a cigar. “We could also talk about Kafka. Although your own transformation, I think, is somewhat more beautiful.”

  “More beautiful,” Sam echoed. Wings, instead of countless tiny, waving arms. “Gregor Samsa dies at the end of that book.”

  “He does indeed.” Father Jim offered him a cigar. “Much different from real life, you see, where everyone lives forever.”

  “I went to see a doctor,” Sam said. “She saw scars. You see wings, and so did Emma, so did Father Mario. What does that mean?”

  The priest shrugged. “People see what they want to see, Sam.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “Isn’t it?” the priest said. “Some people see magical things at every corner. And some people train themselves because they would rather see nothing. What more do you want me to say?”

  Sam threw out his hand. “I don’t know. Why you, then? Why Father Mario? Why Emma?”

  “Or,” the priest countered, “why not everyone else?”

  “Yes. Yes, exactly.” This time, he wasn’t surprised when the other man shrugged, when he lifted his hands, when his shoulders said no one can know.

  —

  Eventually, of course, he told the priest about the cat. The surge of power through his fingers, the crackle of electricity in the air. And Chickenhead, staring up at him where before there’d been only death.

  “Ah,” said the priest. They stood outside in the clearing while Father Jim chopped wood, his hands rough and confident around the axe. “That’s interesting.”

  “Interesting? That’s it?”

  Father Jim shrugged and split another log. “I was never really one for that story,” he said. “The Lazarus episode. It always seemed a bit much.”

  “That’s not very priestly.”

  “Perhaps.” The other man grinned. “But then, I’m sure there are plenty of people out there who would tell you I’ve never been much of a priest.”

  Sam scuffed his shoes in the dirt and did not answer. The wings seemed to stretch of their own accord, sliding across his shoulder blades and out into the air. “So — what? You don’t believe it? You don’t believe me?”

  “That’s different,” said Father Jim. “Whe
n we talk of Lazarus, that story — that’s what it is. A story. I have no eyewitnesses, no one with whom to consult. And we know, historically, there were magicians at the time of Christ who went around the land performing ‘miracles’ just like this. People who woke from comas. Stuff like that. Who’s to say that that’s not what happened?”

  “So you’re saying,” Sam said, feeling oddly let down, “that you don’t believe any of it.”

  “No.” Father Jim rested the axe against the ground. “I’m saying, Sam, that it’s more of a mystery than anyone wants to admit. God — you have no idea about God. I have no idea about God. All we can do is guess, and try to follow where those guesses might lead.”

  “But you’re supposed to know,” said Sam. He bent down and picked a handful of grass from the ground. The blades quivered in his hand. “I need someone to know. What am I supposed to do?”

  Father Jim gathered the split logs and lifted them onto the woodpile before answering. When he looked back at Sam, he seemed genuinely surprised. “Why would you think to ask me that when the miracle is happening to you?”

  —

  “Tell me,” the priest said at another point, “about Chickenhead.”

  “What about her?” Chickenhead, it seemed, was growing soft. The brothers fawned over her like grandparents, and she’d taken to Father Jim like no one else Sam had ever seen. “Surely there are more productive things to say.”

  “The bond between human and animal is always interesting,” Father Jim said. He grinned. “And if what you say is true, then perhaps yours is a stronger bond than most.”

  Very well. Chickenhead. Chickenhead had come into his life six years ago this past May, a sudden surprise one morning when he’d gone to take out the trash. Something sharp in the bag had clipped her ear and she’d let out a little hiss that for some reason had reminded him of Julie. He’d looked in the can and there she was, wet and bedraggled and bleeding from the gash on her ear. After a moment’s blank stare, he reached in and picked her up, all bones and air and fur.