Reunion at Red Paint Bay

by George Harrar

  “Because,” Ellen said, “she’s been praying to her for help every day since her son’s accident.”

  “Q.E.D.,” Simon said, and Ellen laughed a little, his audience of one. “Seems we’re the only skeptics in this bunch.”

  Donna raised her hand again and began talking even before he acknowledged her, a big step forward, he thought. “I wrote the story when Johnny got hurt,” she said. “The way his spine was crushed, the doctors didn’t give him a chance. It was a miracle he survived.”

  “A medical miracle,” Simon said. “But the question is how we treat this supposed appearance of the Virgin Mary now on Larkspur. Do we run a straight story, or do we hint that the whole thing’s a ploy to arouse sympathy and donations?” The young reporters exchanged glances.

  “Maybe it’s neither,” Ellen said. “Maybe Mrs. Nichols is just seeing what she wants to see.”

  “Can I ask something?” They all turned toward David Rigero, standing against the back wall, his foot on a chair. “I know I’m not a writer or anything, but I was wondering something.”

  “Shoot,” Simon said.

  Rigero fixed Ellen with his eyes in a way that made her look away. “Is anyone showing up there, like from the local parish?”

  “Dozens of people,” she said. “Whole families.”

  “So why are people around here looking for miracles in dirt?”

  Simon wrote Red Paint Looking for Miracles on the easel. “That’s a good angle. Talk to the people making the pilgrimage to the house, Ellen, find out why they’re going there. And take David with you.”

  He decided to see for himself. Miracles, even imagined ones, didn’t happen very often in Red Paint. He headed for the western side of town by the Bay Loop, the longer route that dipped and curved so much that even drivers familiar with the road kept two hands on the wheel. Off the right-hand side was Red Paint Bay, sparkling blue-green in the late afternoon sun. As a boy it seemed to him like the ocean itself, as big as it was, six miles around.

  At the end of the loop he veered onto Larkspur. The street ahead of him was so full of parked cars that he had to pull over a block away. When he reached the sprawling Colonial at number 33 the miracle seekers were lined up on the narrow gravel path next to the house. Yellow police tape stretched across the front walk. A sign tacked to a tree pointed around back. Several women in line fingered rosaries. He heard whispers of “Hail Mary, full of grace …” After a few minutes shuffling forward he turned the corner into the freshly mowed backyard. There was the dirt, piled ten feet high, with a white canopy arching over it and clear plastic draping the sides. The sign staked into the ground said DONATED BY DEVEREAUX CATERERS. A computer-size cardboard box marked BLESSINGS FOR THE VIRGIN sat next to the mound. The woman in front of him pulled out a twenty-dollar bill from her pocket and dropped it in, then crossed herself and kissed her fingers. A man in a business suit did the same. Simon leaned over the box, saw dozens of tens and twenties. These were not spare-change miracle seekers.

  “Keep moving, please,” Mrs. Nichols said from her post next to the mound, coaxing people along. She was somewhat grayer than when he interviewed her after her son’s accident, and thicker in the waist. Still impressive, though, almost six feet two, with no hint of stooping over. She was apparently quite comfortable with her size. The dirt did look like a face, he had to admit, and more so of a woman than a man, though he couldn’t say why. There was a small rock for a nose and two slight indentations where eyes would be. But if this was the Virgin Mary, she didn’t have ears, hair, or much of a chin, as far as he could make out.

  Mrs. Nichols touched his shoulder. “Please step back if you want to linger.” Simon started to move on, but she grabbed his arm. “Mr. Howe,” she said, “I didn’t recognize you.”

  “Nice to see you again, Mrs. Nichols. How’s John?”

  She tipped her head to the upstairs window, and there was the boy staring out at the scene in the yard. A round red face and shaved head. “He’s doing fine now. He feels his whole life has been blessed.”

  Simon found himself nodding, but to what—a miraculous blessing of this yard, this house, this paralyzed boy? A woman pressed against his side and gave him a little shove. “Quite a crowd you’re getting,” he said as he stepped out of her way.

  “Channel 13’s coming out tonight from Portland. They said CBS may pick up the feed, go national. We’ll be mobbed, but I couldn’t keep this to myself and Johnny. That wouldn’t be right.” She let go of his arm. “Sorry I couldn’t give the Register an exclusive, though. I did call you first.”

  “I understand,” Simon said.

  Mrs. Nichols closed her eyes. “Can’t you feel it?”

  “It?”

  “The spirit of Our Lady.”

  Simon looked back at the pyramid of brown earth, and now the Virgin seemed to be smiling at him.

  Fox Run was silent. Standing at the edge of his yard with the mail in his hands, Simon listened. Where were the speeding cars, the mothers calling back wandering children, or the rude teens skateboarding treacherously down the sidewalk? Where were the backfires that sounded like gunshots, or the gunshots that sounded like backfires? Where were the foxes running? The street was uncommonly still, even for Red Paint. He walked the slate path toward his house with the magical mound of earth in his mind. He scanned the rows of white pines on either side of the yard, his eyes searching out an unexpected pattern, some suggestion of design imprinted on nature. What he saw were the ragged branches of trees in desperate need of pruning.

  He opened the front door and shouted hello, as he always did, extending the word into nonsense for Davey’s benefit … “Hel-looooo.”

  The boy came running from the kitchen, an Oreo clenched between his lips. His sneakers were untied and his T-shirt ripped at the neck. He skidded to a stop and spit the cookie into his hand. “Anything for me, Dad?” His face contorted into an assortment of squints and stretches, as if he were auditioning to be a clown.

  “No, and keep doing that, your face might stay twisted up one day, which you won’t like much when you start up with girls.”

  “I already got a girl.” Davey sucked on the Oreo.

  “When did this happen?”

  “Sometime.”

  “What’s her name?”

  Davey bit his lip, his top teeth grinding down in a sawing motion. It was a habit he had only recently started. “You’re not going to call her parents or anything.”

  “I just want to know who you’re hanging out with.”

  Davey ran his fingers through his hair, propping it higher. “It’s Tina.” He turned to go before any more questions could be asked of him.

  “Hey,” Simon said, “you didn’t mow the lawn again today.”

  “I know,” the boy answered wearily, as if he was always confirming the obvious to his father. “I was busy making things disappear.”

  “You mean making things appear to disappear.”

  Davey pulled a blue bandanna from his pocket. “Yeah, like coins and eggs. I was trying to make Casper disappear, but she won’t stay still long enough.” Davey opened his right hand to reveal a quarter. He draped it with the bandanna, then yanked it away. The palm was empty. “Cool, huh?” He hurried down the hallway past Amy, who patted him on the way by. She was always touching him when he came within her range. Should he do that, too, Simon wondered, or was it more of a mother’s thing?

  She nodded at the mail in his hands. “Anything besides bills?”

  He shook his head. “Sometimes I think we’re raising a very odd boy.”

  She glanced behind herself, but Davey was already gone. “He seems normal enough to me.”

  “You don’t think it’s strange for him to sit inside all afternoon trying to make things disappear?”

  “You’re the one who bought him the magic book.”

  Simon set the mail down on the hall table, and as he did his fingers felt the slickness of a postcard on the bottom. He pulled it out and saw a giant
Ferris wheel with the inscription, THE COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION, CHICAGO, 1893. He read the message out loud: “Greetings from the City of Big Shoulders. I saw one of those adages today that everybody is supposed to believe. It said: Expect the worst and you won’t be disappointed. Faithfully …”

  Amy touched his arm. “This is getting weird, Simon.”

  He read the message again. “It’s just a little philosophizing.”

  “It doesn’t bother you getting strange notes in the mail?”

  “I figure the sender’s just confused me with somebody else.”

  “How many Simon Howes do you think there are in Maine?”

  “Apparently at least one other.”

  She headed for the kitchen, and he followed her. “So,” he said as she took a sponge and wiped the counter, “aren’t you going to ask what I’m leading with this week?”

  “What are you leading with this week, Simon?”

  “The Virgin Mary.”

  “She’s back?”

  “Yep. In a yard on Larkspur, ensconced in a mound of dirt.”

  Amy took out pots of various sizes from the cabinet drawers, banging them as she did. She wasn’t a delicate cook, but she was quick. “Does this dirt look any more like her than the freezer frost?”

  “I’d say it resembles a face like the Man on the Moon does. If you want to see the Virgin Mary, you can.” Amy opened the refrigerator and searched through the crowded shelves until she found the containers she was looking for. She left the door slightly open, a habit of hers, and Simon nudged it shut with his foot. “You’d think people would expect more from their miracles,” he said, “not just someone sitting in dirt.”

  “Are you going to run a story?”

  “We have to. The line of people is already stretching out to the street.”

  “Why don’t you get Father Elliott to say it’s a hoax? You know he finds this stuff embarrassing.”

  Simon pulled out a stool from under the counter and sat partway on it. “I went through this the last time with him. Privately he’ll tell me it’s bullshit, but for attribution all he’ll say is that the Church has a rigorous process for determining miracles, and he’s pleased with the demonstration of faith by so many people.”

  Amy lined up stalks of celery on the cutting board, then chopped them quickly into one-inch sections. It amazed him how close she was willing to come to her fingers. “It’s blind faith,” she said as she brushed the celery into a pan.

  “What faith isn’t blind?” Simon leaned down to rub Casper’s back as she ate. The cat whipped her head around, a warning, and Simon withdrew his hand. “Maybe I’ll dub her Our Lady of Red Paint in a 60-point headline over a picture. That would put us on the map. I could spark a whole new industry selling Red Paint dirt. The Chamber of Commerce would love it.”

  “What happens when it rains?”

  “They have her covered with a canopy. And I’m sure they’ll recarve her features every night. The Virgin will be staying in town with us for a while, if Mrs. Nichols has anything to say about it. She won’t let go easily.”

  Amy dumped a container of leftover white rice onto a plate, and it clumped in the center, box-shaped. She flattened it with a wooden spoon. “And you said nothing ever happens in Red Paint.”

  The thought of being feted by the Red Paint Area Rotary Club of America left Simon feeling vaguely depressed. Was this the pinnacle of his achievements as a journalist, the most he could hope for? He was the editor of a weekly newspaper in a town known only for the ancient Indian inhabitants who left huge shell heaps in the sand, remnants of their great feasts, and painted their dead with ocher. A thousand years later he was sitting on a raised platform in the Bayswater Inn watching fifty Rotarians jab their forks into Boston cream pie. And he had to listen to himself being praised in a way that seemed perilously close to eulogy.

  “A decade ago the Register was going bankrupt,” Rotary president Jim Concannon continued. “Red Paint was in danger of losing its voice. Simon Howe gave up a promising career as a reporter in Portland to return to his roots after his folks died. We all know he used his inheritance to buy the paper and pay off its debts. It’s not a glamorous job, editor of a small-town weekly. I’m sure we’ve all called over complaining to Simon about something he didn’t print or did print.”

  There was a little laughter from around the room, and Simon smiled as if no hard feelings.

  “Today,” Concannon said, “we recognize Simon Greenleaf Howe with our Medal of Community Service.”

  Simon jumped up quickly and whispered, “Thanks for the kind words” in the president’s ear. He only had to wait a moment for the clapping to die down. He surveyed the dozen tables, each with four or five local business people. He knew almost all of them by name or face, even the ones he hadn’t actually met.

  “I started out at the Register as a delivery boy when I was ten,” he began. “I probably tossed papers under the cars of a few of you.” Simon sipped from his water glass, allowing a moment for the gentle laughter. “President Concannon suggested I recall some of the most memorable stories we’ve run over the years. I remember this headline vividly—High School Dropouts Cut in Half. Seems a bit Draconian to me. Then there was Police Suspect Foul Play in Murder. Can’t put much over on Red Paint’s finest.” Chief Garrity smiled and waved from the back table when everyone looked his way. “We haven’t spared the school committee with our precision headlines, either. A few years ago we reported on page one, Initiative Seeks to Wipe Out Literacy.”

  The Rotarians were wildly laughing now, as he expected. People always enjoyed hearing the errors of others. “To be honest,” he said, “I didn’t know what I was doing when I bought the Register. I learned fast that the paper is not just a chronicle of individual lives—the birth announcements and school sports, the marriages and promotions, the fire and police logs, and finally, the obituaries. A good paper is a portrait of the town itself. Sometimes the picture isn’t what we’d like to present or what you want to read—teenagers knocking over the gravestones in the Veterans Cemetery, for example, or the brawl at the hockey game last year. But there’s far more good in the picture—far more good in Red Paint—and we make sure you see that. It’s not the whole story. Much of life goes on inside families and churches and offices and stores—out of sight of our photographer and reporters. That’s as it should be. The Register strives to reflect the public life of the town with honesty and accuracy—the same goal as every community newspaper in America.”

  Simon stepped back from the dais. He hadn’t realized how short his speech was until this moment, as the Rotarians sat there staring at him, expecting more. It took a moment for Concannon to get up from his seat and start the applause.

  Amy was in the hallway when he opened the front door, waving an oversized postcard in the air. “Your anonymous correspondent strikes again.”

  Simon set down his briefcase in the hallway and loosened his tie. He gave her a hug and inhaled a wonderful citrus scent, possibly grapefruit. He could never remember the name to buy it for her.

  “This one’s of the Liberty Bell,” she said. “He’s getting closer.”

  “It’s just been three cities—Salt Lake, Chicago, and now Philadelphia. That doesn’t necessarily make a pattern.”

  “Sure it does. Any two things are meaningless. Three show a pattern.”

  “Okay, what’s the message this time?”

  She read it dramatically, as if reciting lines in a play: “I learned a valuable lesson from you some time ago. I am now in a position to pay you back. Come to the River View Restaurant in Bath, Sat. July 2, 7 p.m. Faithfully …”

  “So maybe these cards have a point after all,” Simon said as he took off his jacket.

  “Which is?”

  “That I helped someone in my generous past, and that person wants to repay me with dinner. The mystery will be solved July 2 at seven p.m.”

  Amy inspected the message more closely. “It’s written ambiguously. Pay you
back could mean getting even.”

  “Why would you jump to that idea?”

  “You’re a journalist. The stories you run in the Register aren’t always positive. Like that sex registry last month. There were a lot of mistakes you had to correct the next issue.”

  “There were two mistakes in the level of offense, and they weren’t our fault. The state gave us incorrect information.”

  “Still, somebody on that list could hold you responsible for ruining their reputation. They might want to get back at you somehow.”

  “And you think they’d go to this elaborate effort, starting out in Salt Lake City and letting me know they’re coming?”

  “Revenge is often elaborate. That’s part of its appeal. You get to enjoy it over and over again as you plan it.”

  He searched for a hanger in the hall closet but couldn’t find one. He wanted to ask why there never were enough hangers, but that would imply that she was in charge of them. He slipped his jacket around another one and turned back into the hall. “When did you become an expert on revenge?”

  She handed him the postcard. “I’m an expert on people, and I don’t think you should meet this person.”

  “Nothing’s going to happen at the River View.”

  “It has those huge windows. Somebody could take a shot at you from outside.”

  The thought of being a target amused Simon. Had he somehow fallen into a cliché mystery novel? “I won’t sit by the windows or on the deck out back, how’s that?”

  “I’m serious, Simon. You don’t know who this guy is or what he intends.”

  “This person has become a he in your opinion?”

  She pointed at the writing. “Look how large the letters are and the way the words crowd in at the end of the line. No woman writes like that.”

  “Messiness is a male trait?”

  “On postcards it is.”

  “All right, I admit there’s a small risk responding to an anonymous note. But it might make a good human interest story for the paper. I’m going to meet him.”