Looking back, he saw his staff floating on the water, far beyond reach without a boat—or another swim. As for his prophet’s mantle, by now it was somewhere on the bottom.
FATHER AL VENDETTI was rather surprised to see a sizable crowd once again sitting in the sanctuary of Our Lady’s, visiting quietly, eyes rarely wandering from the crucifix that hung on the wall. Some he’d seen before, in those few days between the first miracle and the advent of Antioch’s messiah. Penny Adams was there, apparently unhappy with her hand, though it looked all right. The young woman from Moses Lake who had leukemia was back without her husband, looking well physically, but strangely ill in her demeanor.
Others were new to this place, but Father Al had been told a little about their stories: the exceedingly fat lady who still wanted a miraculous reduction in her size; the young man who couldn’t get a million dollars out of Brandon Nichols and still hadn’t thought of working; the man who had important things to do but had to put them off so he could be healed of procrastination; the man wanting to be more sexually attractive, along with his three friends.
But Father Al wasn’t quite as familiar with the common motivation these and the hundred others freely acknowledged among themselves: They couldn’t get it at the ranch, so they were going to get it here.
He moved among them, greeting them, asking if there might be anything he could do to meet their spiritual needs. Might he pray with them, or hear their confession? He would be happy to conduct a special mass just for them.
“I’m not Catholic.”
“Not now.”
“Uh, you’re standing in the way.”
“How often does it cry?”
“Is this going to cost us?”
“What is this, a commercial?”
Their message was clear: He was intruding.
An intruder in his own church!
He retired to his office and closed the door, weighing a new fear he hoped was ill-founded. He wanted to believe these pilgrims were the same as they were before: pious, penitent, humbly petitioning. This was Monday morning, he told himself, that time of rude awakening that can bring out the bad side of people. Surely he had only imagined their tense expressions, edgy voices, and scavenger eyes.
Even so, an ominous possibility made him shudder: Suppose the crucifix doesn’t cry?
IN THE VACANT LOT beside Mumford’s Machine Shop, Dee Baylor sat alone on the hood of her car, watching the sky. There were no clouds overhead and only a few near the horizon, but this was where the Lord had spoken, and this was where the joy had been. Now Adrian had her angel and Mary had become the Virgin Mary. Blanche had long since pooh-poohed the whole thing and gone back to church. Brandon Nichols wasn’t seeing anyone today.
But the sky was still here, right where Dee had left it, and if it took all day to see one little cloud bearing a word of hope to her soul, she would remain here.
A car drove into the parking lot and two couples climbed out, one older, one younger. They had cameras and binoculars and ran up to her eagerly.
“Is this where you see the Virgin in the Clouds?” the older man asked.
Dee felt her heart soar. The Lord had brought these seekers to her. The miracle would return and she would guide them. “This is the place. If you have faith and a willing heart, God will speak to you.”
The young man checked the sky and smirked. “There aren’t any clouds.”
“There will be.”
“We don’t have time for this!” said the older lady.
“What about the trees in the park?” asked the young lady. “Somebody saw Jesus and Mary there yesterday.”
“Let’s go!” said the older man.
Dee called after them, “But this is the place!”
“You can have it!” the young man mocked.
And just that quick, they were gone.
Dee’s heart sank, but she remained there, sitting on the hood of her car. The clouds would return. She had faith.
“HOW MUCH do we really know about this guy?” asked Richard, the real estate broker from Wisconsin.
“Everything we need to know,” replied Andy Parmenter, the retired California executive. “He’s a messenger of God—”
“No, no, now come on, that’s a cop-out and you know it!” said Weaver, the CPA from Chicago.
“There’s something he’s not telling!” warned Richard.
“Like everything, maybe?” said Weaver.
They were gathered around the front of Andy Parmenter’s big motor home, all three of them in sour moods they’d been working on for days.
“It hit me this morning,” said Real Estate Richard. “Here we are in this RV park with—what?—three hundred other people?”
“Four hundred, I think,” Weaver the CPA offered.
“I’m still waiting to have my water turned on, I’m smelling the sewage from sixty other vehicles in my row that isn’t going anywhere, it’s just sitting in the sewer lines—”
“The whole system’s backed up.”
“And we’ve got kids crying and couples fighting and radios blaring while I’m trying to sleep—”
“And who’s that loud-mouthed prophet lady over in Row Four?” “Which one, Moses’ sister, Miriam, or Isaac’s wife, Rebecca?”
“She doesn’t know when to shut up, does she? Who’s listening to her?”
“Your point, Richard!” Andy demanded. “Get to your point!” Richard leaned forward and gestured like an angry Italian. “My point is, this morning it hit me: I am not better off than I was back in Wisconsin. Back there I had a house and a job and people who looked up to me. I didn’t like it, it didn’t feel like it was about anything, but—” He looked around the RV park hastily laid out on George Harding’s property. “What’s so great about this? I may as well be back in Wisconsin!”
Andy shook his head impatiently. “Richard, you have to be willing to sacrifice.”
“What sacrifice? I didn’t come here to sacrifice! I came here because you told me Nichols could produce.”
“He can’t produce!” said Weaver.
“Wait a minute, Weaver!” said Andy. “He healed your bald spot, didn’t he?”
“My bald spot? My bald spot? Winnie and I came all the way out here and she still has her hay fever and she still bugs the heck out of me and now my motor home’s in mud up to the axles! And you want me to be happy about a freakin’ bald spot?”
“So leave!” Andy snapped.
“Uh-uh!” said Richard. “I’m coming to my point here: You’re the one who talked us into this!”
“I sold my house, remember?” said Weaver, who started poking Andy in the chest. “You told me to sell my house, so now I’m sitting in the mud with that stupid motor home in a wheat field with a wife I can’t stand who has hay fever!”
Andy grabbed the poking finger and pushed it away. “Don’t touch me again, Weaver!”
“Why? You gonna do something about it?” This time Weaver shoved him.
Andy outweighed him. His shove put Weaver on his back in the stubble. Richard got into the fight, then Weaver again. Andy’s neighbor sided with Andy and threw his weight into it. Weaver resorted to straw and mud, Richard to lots of high kicking, Andy to more shoving and a little biting.
A bigger crowd would have gathered to watch, but theirs was not the only fight worth watching. Over on Row Four, Dorothy who once had arthritis and Alice who once had a bad hip were in the middle of a face-scratching, hair-pulling catfight over whose grandkid broke out a window, and Row Two had two fights involving six people and plenty of black, sticky mud to make it interesting.
“AND WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?” Brandon Nichols growled as Michael came in the back door to the house dripping wet. Nichols was standing on a chair while Melody Blair worked hurriedly, pinning the hem of his new white robe.
“I’m afraid I’ve taken a swim.”
Nichols’s fiery eyes glared at him through his disheveled hair. “You went swimming when I need you?” He snapped
at Melody, “Are you through?”
“Just a few more pins and—”
“The people need some enlightenment! They need their eyes opened! Who put their bodies together? Who put bread in their stomachs and hope in their hearts? TELL ME!”
Michael jumped a little at Nichols’s outburst but answered loyally, “You did, my Lord! You and only you!”
Nichols gave a slight nod of approval though the anger did not leave his face. “Then we’ll have to go over it again for the sake of those who’ve forgotten! Did you hear there’s another messiah in town? There’s somebody else telling people he’s the christ! In my town!”
Michael was quite dismayed. “How can this be, when you are the Christ?”
Nichols glared at nothing, half in a world of his own. “Sally Fordyce is a poison to us. She’s lying. We’ll have to take care of that. And Mrs. Macon . . .” He cursed. “I fault myself for hiring Gildy Holliday.” Nervously, he swept his hair from his face with his fingers. “We’ve got a lot to do and not a lot of time. Michael, who is the Christ?”
“You are, my Lord.”
“Who, Michael? Who is the Christ?”
“You and only you.”
Nichols leaned, pointing his finger, his eyes like cold, white marbles. “WHO IS THE CHRIST, MICHAEL?”
Michael shouted back, “You are!”
Nichols nodded approvingly. “Simple. It’s as plain as anything can be. We just need to tell them, Michael, and keep telling them until they get it. We’re going into town today. We’re going to make it abundantly clear!”
“You—you’re going into Antioch?”
Nichols screamed toward the hall. “Mary!”
The voice of the Virgin Mary Donovan came from a distant room in the house. “Yea, my son?”
“Be ready in ten minutes!” Then he glared at Michael. “Put on some dry clothes and then go out and help Matt prepare the truck.
You’re my prophet, Michael. You’re going to prophesy.” He reached down and swatted Melody on the head. She cowered, fearing another blow. “Hurry it up!”
AT OUR LADY ’ S , Arnold Kowalski brought in the ladder. The pilgrims wanted it in place, ready for the next miracle. His feet hurt, his hands hurt, and carrying that ladder up the platform steps was no easy task, but no one in the crowd offered to help. This was his penance, he figured, the price to pay for a refreshing of his own private blessing.
His personal crucifix was still around his neck, and judging from the recurrence of his pain, it must need recharging. He didn’t think anyone would get upset if he went up the ladder to, uh, dust off the crucifix. He was, after all, the church maintenance man. He’d brought the ladder, hadn’t he? For all his trouble and pain he deserved access to the wonderful wooden image.
Setting the ladder carefully in place, he started climbing, one painful step at a time. He could hear the people beginning to stir behind him. He looked over his shoulder and produced his dust rag. “Church maintenance. Just gonna dust things off.”
They didn’t seem too sure about that.
He reached the top of the ladder, face to face with the image, and began to feign dusting as he carefully, stealthily pulled his crucifix from under his shirt. Leaning awkwardly—he still had the chain around his neck—he managed to touch the big crucifix with his own.
“Hey!” a man yelled. “What are you doing?”
“Uh . . . just dusting.”
“Whatcha got in your hand?”
And then it started. “What’s in his hand? What is he doing?” People got out of their seats, ran for a better viewing angle. “He’s trying to steal the blessing! Look! He’s got another crucifix!”
People were running onto the platform for a better look—and they were mad!
“Get down from there!”
“You think I came all this way—”
“How dare you!”
The ladder started shaking.
“Oh no, no, please!” Arnold cried. A hand grabbed his ankle. “OHH!”
The ladder shook again. Another hand grabbed Arnold’s other ankle. “Get down from there!”
“Well if he’s gonna get some, I’m gonna get some!”
“You’ll have to wait your turn!”
The lady who once had leukemia slapped the fat lady, who slapped her back, the procrastinator shoved them both, and Penny squirmed through the opening in the crowd trying to get to the ladder. A mob was forming on the platform and the ladder was beginning to teeter away from the wall.
Arnold was sure he was going to die.
There was a crash. A candle stand had fallen over.
“Now look what you did!”
“Look what I got!”
“Give me that!”
Slaps. Punches. Screams.
Arnold tried to climb down. Hands yanked him and he fell into the crowd. Now there was a free-for-all for the ladder. OOF! They were walking right on his back!
Father Vendetti came racing in, yelled something, waved his hands, yelled again. Nobody listened.
A burly character who’d been sitting in the front row reached the top of the ladder and grabbed the crucifix with both hands, making it wiggle on its wall mountings.
“Is it loose?” someone asked.
“Loose enough.”
“Yeah,” said the fat lady, “why does it have to be up there where we can’t reach it?”
A riotous yell went up from the crowd and the burly man started heaving and yanking.
Father Vendetti ran for his office and the telephone.
“GUESS WE’RE GONNA have ourselves a little parade,” said Matt Kiley, strapping down some loudspeakers in the back of the ranch’s big flatbed. “The Boss likes attention, ever notice that?”
Michael was yanking the starter rope of a small Honda gas generator anchored between some hay bales. It wouldn’t start.
“Choke it.”
“Where’s that?”
Matt flipped the choke up. “Try it.”
Michael yanked again, and the generator came to life.
Matt opened the choke and then switched on the PA. He spoke into the wireless microphone. “Hello, testing, testing.” His voice boomed out of the speakers, echoing off the ranch house and barn.
“Brandon Nichols, you are ready to greet your public!” He handed the microphone to Michael. “Go on, get out in front and try it out.”
Michael took the microphone and hopped down from the flatbed. For the first time since he’d knocked on the door of the Macon ranch house, he felt a little foolish.
“Come on,” said Matt, “let’s hear something prophetic!”
“Hello . . . testing . . .”
“Come on, come on! We’re driving through town, remember?”
“Let the, uh, ears of the multitudes be opened before the, the, uh, coming of the Lord!”
“Go out a little farther,” Matt directed. “We’re getting some feedback.”
This is dumb, Michael thought. He’d never spoken a test prophecy before. He walked several yards out in front of the truck, talking as he went. “Let those who have seen no mercy now see mercy! Let those who are hungry come and dine! Let the blind see the light of the Messiah come to this place!”
The back door of the ranch house opened and Brandon Nichols walked out from under the patio roof and into the sunlight, his image reflected in the swimming pool.
His hair was neatly combed, parted in the middle, and cascading to his shoulders. His beard was shaped and trimmed. He was wearing a white robe and mantle, and biblical leather sandals. The full sleeves of his robe were just short enough to reveal the scars on his arms. He looked like a piece of religious artwork, and he was ready. Mary Donovan followed him, her robe and shawl perfectly in place, her eyes full of wonder.
“Let’s go,” he said.
MONA DILLARD knew she would lose her mind. As if she wasn’t sickened and frightened enough over dirty-eyed Norman, now it turned out that the couple who’d rented Number Eight weren’t really
a couple. They were two halves of two other couples, and one of the other halves, a semimaniacal black belt, was kicking on the door, trying to smash it in, yelling and swearing.
“Now, now you stop that!” Mona pleaded from a safe distance across the parking lot. Where, oh where, was Norman?
The brute just kept kicking. “Sutter, you’re gonna pay for this!”
Another kick. A woman inside screamed. A man inside screamed something about being sorry and making a mistake and why don’t we talk about this.
The door caved in. The brute ran in. A woman ran out, hands over her head, screaming, while all hell broke loose inside. A lamp went through the window and landed in several pieces on the concrete. Then a suitcase.
Then Sutter.
Mona ran to the office to call the police.
ADRIAN FOLSOM opened the bottom drawer of her dresser and pulled out the remaining stationery she’d purchased for her special ministry. She wouldn’t be needing it anymore.
“Is that all of it?” asked her husband, Roger.
“This is it. I wrote . . .” She consulted a list she kept in the box, counting all the names. “I wrote fifteen letters from Elkezar to all these people.”
Roger was dismayed. “Fifteen!”
“I thought he was—” Adrian winced with shame and embarrassment. “I thought he was an angel of God. I really did.”
“Where is he now?”
“Oh, I don’t know! He’s a spirit, Roger! You can’t just go out and find him.”
“Well he’d better take his business elsewhere, that’s all I’ve got to say.” He shouted to the air, “You hear that, Amazar?”
Adrian whispered, “You’ll scare Melissa! And his name’s Elkezar.”
“He knows who I mean.”
She looked at the list of names in her stationery box. “I’ll have to write back to every one of them and tell them to throw the letters away.”
Roger nodded with a smile. “I’m feeling better already.”
Just then, they heard the voice of their granddaughter Melissa, playing in the living room. “Hi! What’s your name?”
Roger and Adrian exchanged a look, then ran.
Five-year-old Melissa and Jillie, the schnauzer, had been playing fetch with Jillie’s ball, but now they stood in the middle of the room looking up at . . . nothing. Melissa was making a face. “That’s a funny name. I’m Melissa.” Seemingly in answer to a question, she looked at Jillie and said, “This is Jillie. She won’t bite you.”
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