by Alex Grecian
“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 right 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 th
at 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.
“You look uncomfortable, Gary. Is it your stomach again? I think it must be. I have these pills from your trouser pocket. Would you like one? Open your mouth and raise your tongue. There you go. Let it dissolve.” Rudy smacked his lips as if he were the one taking a Zofran, but Gary couldn’t see him at all anymore, not even as a vague shape in the shadows. He concentrated on the sweet taste of the pill in his mouth and half listened as Rudy began to talk again.
“I was about to tell you about the camp,” Rudy said. “It was grand, Mauthausen-Gusen, with so much vital industry, so many people, and I was at the center of it all. I had been given the responsibility of keeping the trains running on time, so to speak. But my superior was a weak man, an alcoholic, and so I did everything. I ran the entire camp, whether I ever received proper credit for that or not. They called me the Wolf because I was fiercely loyal to the men who served under me. As I say, I thrived. I had a room built for me, much like this room, so that I could explore and discover and experiment. I’m not really a scientist, but I am curious about the world around me, a good thing to be, and I’m adaptable. Why is this person not the same as this other person? Why are the Juden and the black different from the white man? Why does the lightning not work when I try to employ it for the benefit of your kind, Gary? I must know. And you can see that, if the lightning itself rejects you, we were not wrong in the things we did back then, during the war. Before I knew anything of the lightning I was doing its work, but I never did understand, and I still don’t understand. I have had many opportunities over the years because I am the chosen of the storm. I am the conduit for the energy, and it is my responsibility to move that energy properly. Before I knew this, I suspected it, and I would walk about the camp and choose from among the prisoners there, point them out and they would be taken to my special room, the one like this room. And one day as I was walking among the Juden and the homosexuals, I saw a familiar face. He had changed a bit over the years. It had been a decade since I had seen him in the street, but I recognized him. It was the magician, of course, but he did not know me, and why would he have? I was no longer a child, even if I still had a child’s thirst for knowledge. I had him cleaned up and brought to me, the magician, that man who had created a miracle in the street, and I asked him, now that I finally had my chance, I asked him how he had done it. At first he didn’t want to tell me—can you imagine? That he would hold so tight to his secrets even in that place where all was laid bare for everyone to see? Madness. But I made him talk, and now I wish I hadn’t. He was a charlatan, of course. A part of me knew that all along, but I did so want to hang on to that feeling that there was magic in the world, in the air, in the sky above us and moving through us. I made him tell me and it spilled out of him, how he hid the bit of meat between his fingers along with the balloon full of pig’s blood, and squeezed it out onto the other man’s belly, worked it around and produced that piece of meat, pretended it was the cancer. It turns out, and this may not surprise you, the other man did not even have a tumor. That, too, was a lie. All of it a trick to get money from people on the street, people like me. I look back now and see that, in her way, my sister was wiser than I was. She kept her money, at least for a time, until she spent it on other things that didn’t last, and perhaps my belief in the magic gave me the same pleasure as her sweets and ribbons brought her. Perhaps that belief lasted longer and gave me more than she got. I don’t know. But in any event, the news that I had been tricked did not sit well with me, and I’m afraid I didn’t react well. And here we reach the end of my story. I thank you for listening, Gary, though I suppose you had no choice. It is good to relate these things every once in a while.”
Gary heard the scrape of one steel instrument against another.
“Oh,” Rudy said. “I left off the last bit of the story, didn’t I? Do you know what I found when I cut open that magician? When he was on my table at the camp that was so very much like this table in this basement room? You will hardly believe. Hidden away in his bowels were three perfect diamonds. He had swallowed them to try to keep them when he was brought to the camp, and I suppose he must have excreted them and reswallowed them again and again, his ultimate secret, a treasure with real worth beyond his lies and his tricks. He had brought me the beginnings of real wealth, and I kept those diamonds until I needed them. I did not spend them frivolously. I saved them and used them to purchase safe passage to America, where I am safe and respected, where I was able to purchase a ranch, where I was available for the storm to speak to me and through me, where I ultimately bought this church and saved it from the wrecking ball. And I have done so much good here for so many people, all because once, when I was a young boy, I stopped and paid attention when I thought there was magic happening. Isn’t that a sort of magic itself, Gary? If I had not paid attention to that magician on that day, I would not have recognized him later and I would not have had those diamonds delivered to me so that I could later make my escape and find my destiny here. I believe the lightning was speaking to me then, urging me toward the direction I needed to go to survive and, as always, thrive. But maybe you’re wondering how I could have done all of this with just three diamonds. You see, I learned that day the thing I had been so curious about. I learned the difference, what it was inside the Juden that made them different. It wasn’t only the diamonds. Some of them had coins and other small pieces of jewelry, gold and silver and gems. Do you know how much gold is in a gold tooth? In a thousand gold teeth? I kept it all. And I still look for it, Gary. I don’t find much these days, but I hold out hope. There are always possibilities, as long as I am willing to pay attention and look for the magic. And that truly is the end of the story.” Rudy chuckled. “Now, let’s see what you have inside you, why don’t we?”
Before he started screaming and all thoughts were driven out of his mind by pain, Gary realized what it was that had bothered him about the other table, sitting there across from him, empty save for the leather straps at each end.
It was child-size.
CHAPTER EIGHT
1
Lieutenant Keith Barent Johnson hated to work late, but it was the night befor
e a holiday, which meant that there were housekeeping duties to perform and paperwork to finish up. He fervently hoped that the new trooper, Skottie, would be able to get through the morning’s shift without too much trouble. Thanksgiving wasn’t likely to be as bad as the Fourth of July or New Year’s Eve, or even Christmas. He didn’t anticipate a lot of drunk drivers, but the roads were a little slick from the melting snow, and street crews would not be operating. There wouldn’t be sand or ice melt spread across the blacktop. And there would be a lot of travelers out and about, headed to Grandma’s house for a slice of pumpkin pie or to the local Chinese restaurant after the turkey burned and the gravy seized up in the pan. If Keith had to guess, he figured Skottie would be facing at least four or five accidents, cars in a ditch or up a tree somewhere. He just hoped there wouldn’t be any fatalities. Those were tough to deal with under any circumstance, but were especially difficult during the holidays. If Skottie ran into any trouble, he would come in and help, of course, but he was afraid Gwen wouldn’t like that at all. Not after he’d missed taking the girls out trick-or-treating last month. That hadn’t been his fault, and he knew she understood that, but the knowledge didn’t make things a lot easier. Gwen was getting a little frayed around the edges, trying to cope with a teenage boy and twin girls, none of whom were inclined to listen to her. She needed a little help, and he’d promised her he’d be there, at the very least so he could deal with his parents when they showed up. He thought she’d appreciate it, too, if he made his famous butterscotch pie for everyone and maybe did the dishes afterward while she relaxed for once.