The Miracles of Ordinary Men

by Amanda Leduc

  Then she was his, and that was that. Aloof and pissy and rather heavier today than she’d been six years ago, but still his. Chickenhead. To the best of his knowledge, Father Jim was the only other person in the world who’d been able to pet her, although Sam’s mother had tried. Given another six years or so, she might have been able to wear the cat down.

  “And she can see the wings,” said the priest.

  “Yes.”

  Father Jim chuckled and ruffled a hand through the cat’s fur. “I guess this gives new meaning to nine lives, doesn’t it?”

  Sam grunted, not wanting to laugh. He was tired of the jokes. “What does it mean?” he said, for the umpteenth time. “Should I — I don’t know. Should I be expecting her to talk anytime soon, or something?”

  “I expect, Sam,” the priest said, his hands still steady, calm, “that this is less about her, and more about you.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  Father Jim shrugged. “The miracle came right from your hands. You can’t deny or ignore that. Wings can be chalked up to a hallucination, but bringing someone back from the dead makes you extraordinary. It means that there are amazing things in store for you. Not for the cat.” Then he smiled — a sad smile, the light of God lurking deep in his tired face. “You don’t hear much more about Lazarus, either. Even if it was only a story.”

  —

  They left on Saturday, and hit the deer late that morning, just before they reached Cathedral Grove. Sam flicked his turn signal and moved into the oncoming lane to avoid a hunk of debris on the road, and when he moved back, the deer ran out from the trees and into the car.

  He felt the thud, saw in one long, panned shot the deer’s shock and the sudden blossom of its fear. The Jetta cracked and crumpled and came to a lurching halt. For an instant, only that, the world was silent. Then Chickenhead hissed and Father Jim ran a calming hand through her fur.

  “Are you all right?” he said, meaning Sam.

  “I’m fine.”

  The hood was crooked and glass from the shattered headlights shone dimly on the road. A broken moan came from in front of the car.

  Then his hands began to tingle, and everything else went out of his head.

  Sam got out and closed the car door. No one had stopped. The road was inky black, glistening with fresh-fallen rain.

  In front of his car, the deer lay dying. It was a young doe, not quite a year old. The eyes that followed Sam were large with terror. The impact had broken the deer’s collarbone— several ribs poked through its torso, the whiteness of bone gleaming stark against dark red flesh. The deer’s rear legs were bent at strange angles, the outermost leg still trapped beneath the car, and its heart pumped furiously beneath a thin layer of skin and muscle, each throb adding to Sam’s own rush of adrenaline and fear.

  He’d watched a student die once, back in his first year of teaching. A fight in the school parking lot — always about drugs in that part of the city — had ended in gunshots. He’d rushed outside in time to see the perpetrator drive away, and had held Steve’s head until the ambulance came, stroking his brow and saying three words over and over. You’ll be okay. You’ll be okay. The life had ebbed from the student’s eyes like a thinning swarm of fireflies. Flicker, flicker, and nothing.

  He felt the same now, crouched by the deer. Except that this time his hands tingled with fever and the air around him shone. The wings were a steady pull against his back; were he to look over his shoulder, he felt sure he’d see them glowing. The car door opened and closed. A moment later, Father Jim stood behind him.

  “Do you have a knife?” he asked.

  What an odd thing for a priest to say. “No.” He was out of breath, as though he’d run into the deer himself. He thought of Chickenhead. He thought of his mother. He closed his eyes and touched the deer.

  A warm rush of air, and then nothing. When he opened his eyes, the deer was dead.

  “I take it,” Father Jim said after the first moment of shock, “that this isn’t quite what happened with your cat.”

  Sam couldn’t speak for a moment. “No.” The deer’s eyes were still open, but the terror was gone, the surface of its eyes glassy and unfocused. It was a mess of blood and flesh and broken bones. It did not — what was it that people always said about death? — it did not look peaceful. It looked interrupted. It looked terrible.

  Sam stood and marched into the trees. The ground beneath his feet was spongy with moss and rotting leaves. The trees blocked much of the daylight, but the wings shone milky white, showing him all of the roots and debris on the ground. He walked until the sound of traffic was muffled almost completely, and then he stopped, and put a hand against the nearest tree. His hands were cold now, the tingling gone from his fingers. He closed his eyes and saw the deer, mangled and dead. His mother, lying cold in the morgue. And Chickenhead, alive and well, who waited in the car.

  He bent and picked a handful of earth from the ground — mud, rotting leaves, small stones. Then he arced his arm and let fly, and the debris thwacked against the nearest tree. Again, more stones this time. And again. By the time Father Jim came to stand beside him, minutes or hours later, it was a rhythm, almost a dance. Stoop, scoop, thwack.

  “Someone stopped,” said the priest. “They’ve called the wildlife authorities, and a tow truck for the car.”

  “The car will be fine.” He threw another handful of dirt. “Is Chickenhead okay?”

  “She’s all right. Sam.” Father Jim stepped forward and put a hand on his arm. “Sam. It could have gone on for hours like that.”

  “Still.” Thwack. “A knife — even a gun — would have been somewhat less spectacular, wouldn’t you say?” The deer could be floating in front of the trees right now. Energy particles floating in the air, just like his mother.

  “They’ll be here soon,” Father Jim said. “We should go back. Be careful where you step.”

  “I can see in the dark,” Sam said, mid-swing, and he choked on a bout of hysterical laughter. “Didn’t I tell you?”

  The priest said nothing.

  “Do you ever crack?” Sam turned sharply to face the other man. “I just killed a deer with one touch of my hand. Don’t you find that strange? Oh, but nothing surprises a man of God — I forgot.”

  “Plenty of things surprise me,” Father Jim said. His face was lost in shadow, his voice both long-suffering and stern. “Come on, Sam.”

  Suddenly the anger sluiced from his bones. They trudged back to the road in silence, Father Jim cautiously picking his way through the undergrowth. Sam, less careful, followed the glow of his wings and stared into the surrounding green. The trees loomed overhead and the entire world was dank and dark and smelled of night, of old decay. His hands were filthy — too late, he realized he had no way of cleaning them up. He felt as though he were walking in circles, as though he’d been lost in the forest for days. The trees he’d hit were lost now. He’d never find them again.

  When they reached the road, the ranger and the tow truck were already there. The driver of the tow truck was barely five feet tall and carried a blue-green Slurpee, from which he took noisy sips. He looked as though he couldn’t hold up the drink, never mind take a hitch to the Jetta. An orange pylon sat a few yards ahead, toppled against the road like a lopsided Halloween hat.

  As it turned out, though, the car started fine. A hardy little thing, his Volkswagen. He backed it up slowly and then moved it out of the path of the deer. Father Jim opened the passenger door and climbed in, and Chickenhead jumped forward into his arms. Aside from the rickety sound of the hood, the rumble of the car beneath Sam’s feet was steady and strong.

  “It’s a pretty clean kill,” said the ranger. He was young, and tall beside the tow truck driver — they looked like a sketch team, a wilderness comic duo. “Eat venison?”

  “No.”

  He shrugged
. “We’ll handle this, here on in. Odd bit of luck, that,” and he nodded to the car. “It shouldn’t be driveable, what it did to the deer.” Then he laughed — Father Jim had turned to face them and a sudden shaft of light from the sun illuminated his collar. “Or maybe not.”

  All Sam could manage was a watery grin. “No,” he echoed. “Maybe not.” Then they pulled onto the road, and in a scant few seconds they crossed the bend and left the deer behind.

  They didn’t speak again until the ferry terminal came into view. Sam pulled into the wait line and turned to face the priest, who sat serene, his hands buried in Chickenhead’s fur.

  “Do you have any idea?” he asked.

  Father Jim shook his head, and Sam had the sudden impression that he’d heard the question before, too many times to count. “Everyone wants to know why,” the priest admitted. “Even me.”

  VIII

  The first time Lilah swore, she was fourteen. This was the year before mascara, that last year when she still thought nothing of wearing sweat pants to school. Roberta was still a year or so away from the Fernwood house, and Carl had left. They had moved, the three of them, into the basement apartment of an old house in Oak Bay. There were spiders. Lilah shared a room with Roberta and pretended not to notice the muffled sobs, the shaking that came from the other bed. Usually, Timothy would crawl into bed with her at some point in the night. He burned as he slept — a human furnace that smelled of snow and dirt and air.

  That day, she walked home from school to the rhythm of her times tables. Eight times eight is sixty-four. Eight times nine is seventy-two. She’d always had trouble with these, and she was concentrating so hard that she missed the curb. Her foot buckled and down went the rest of her. Her face smacked against the stone.

  She lay still for a moment, and then stumbled to her feet, the copper taste of shock warm in her mouth. Raised a hand and felt it, warm beneath her nose.

  “Say fuck,” said a voice. She turned — slowly, still unsure of the world — and saw a boy. He was breathing hard; he’d been running. Later, Lilah would realize that he’d run to her. It had been a spectacular fall.

  “Are you all right?” he said. Sixteen? Seventeen? She couldn’t tell.

  “I think so.” Her words were slurred.

  “Say fuck,” he said again. “It will make you feel better, I promise.”

  “Fuck,” she whispered into the air. The word took shape and danced. Not good, a word brought to life with dirt and blood. But she didn’t know that then. She wouldn’t know until years later. Fuck and blood, linked forever.

  —

  She dreams of light that isn’t warm.

  “This doesn’t hurt.” He hits her again.

  She squirms underneath him, and uses her fingernails to scratch a white furrow in his arm. “Fuck you.”

  “Delilah,” he says. He makes her name a benediction, a prayer. “It doesn’t hurt you. It can’t hurt you. How can I show you that you are so much more than your body?”

  I don’t want you to show me. It would be so easy just to say it. But she doesn’t say it, because it isn’t true. Get off. She doesn’t say that, either.

  “I won’t.” He kisses her, a lovely kiss that makes her think, for a moment, that none of this has happened. “Tell me. This doesn’t hurt, no?”

  She weeps. “Please, Israel.” Or has she said anything at all? Maybe all of this is a dream, one small dream of a man with hands that could crush her. If he wanted, he could snap her arm, her neck. She is nothing but an extra layer of silk against the mattress.

  “Let me go,” she whispers. “Please.”

  He pulls his hands away from her wrists and sits back, then watches her in the dark. “You can go,” he says. “Emmanuel will drive you home.”

  Her breath comes in short bursts — even her lungs hurt. Israel shifts so that he sits completely apart from her, dark at the end of the bed. Lilah doesn’t move.

  “Well?” Even as he says it Lilah knows what her answer will be. She raises her arms above her head and rests them against the headboard. She looks at him, and says nothing.

  “I thought so,” he says. She can hear the smile in his voice. He moves toward her, bringing darkness over her head like an angel, come to end the world.

  And then she balls her fist and hits him, so fast it surprises them both. Her hand meets the hard curve of his cheek and keeps going, so that as Israel falls back her fist thuds into the bed. Her knuckles hit the mattress, crack. She breathes in and hunches, still. She can’t see. The room is so dark she can’t see.

  Silence. Now — now — Lilah’s hands start to shake. Blue-white energy shoots through her arms, through her fingers. She throws her head back and sucks in air, opens her eyes and there he is, against the bed. She imagines that she can see the imprint of her hand on his cheek, the energy from her palm glowing soft against his skin. Were she to walk outside, right now, that same hand would write her name across the sky. She’s never been more certain of anything.

  Israel laughs. “I thought so,” he says again. All of a sudden his hand is around her throat, solid and strong. She closes her eyes and thinks of nothing. Everything that she is has shrunk to this bed, and she is incandescent, suddenly, with the knowledge that she could die here, in this apartment, and no one would ever know.

  —

  Another dream, this one of death. A darkened road that glistens with new fallen rain, and Lilah, running across. Headlights. A flash of light greater than anything she’s ever known, and then she’s on the ground, and her ribs poke through her skin and she can’t breathe, she can’t breathe.

  A man swims in front of her eyes. In the shadows his face is hollow and long. It is a kind face, creased with sorrow and some twitchy, unnamed fear. She reaches out to touch his cheek but nothing moves.

  He shines. She is not imagining this. He is iridescent, shimmering with some uneven power. She tries again to reach his face, but the hand that stretches up is not hers. It is not even a hand. It is a hoof, broken and bleeding. She screams. The man reaches out to touch her and through his fingers she sees the sky splinter into countless shards. Behind them, oblivion. Death. Hers.

  She wakes with icy fingers and an abdomen that aches. In her own bed, her own home, the ride back through Vancouver a silent memory, Emmanuel at the wheel. She climbs out of bed and into her bathroom, pees and then crawls back into bed. She snuggles deep into the duvet. Then she does the unthinkable, and calls her mother.

  “Delilah,” Roberta says, before Lilah has even said hello. “It’s Timothy, isn’t it? Is he in the hospital? Have you found him? Is he sick?”

  “Mom.” Impossible that her heart could break any more but it does. “No. I don’t know where he is. I was calling . . . about me.”

  “You?” You. What is there to say about you?

  “I mean — I need.”

  “What, Delilah? What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” she says, finally. “Never mind. It’s okay, I’ll deal with it.”

  “Are you sure?” Now she’s suspicious. When Lilah calls Roberta expects disaster, as easily as she might expect absolution from her priest. But Lilah can’t tell her about Israel, this man who took her for dinner last night and then beat her in his bed. This will terrify her. And then it will terrify Lilah, and who knows what happens then.

  “I’m sure,” she says. She hangs up, and she looks at herself in the mirror. Her mouth is swollen and her eyes are red, wounds that will fade by tomorrow.

  —

  In the afternoon, she pulls herself out of bed and heads to the diner on Nicola. She has a lunch date with Joel. An apology. She wants to cancel, but instead she washes away the smell of Israel and counts her bruises in the mirror. She wants to be normal. To have a normal day, to remember what exactly it is that other people do. She spends as much time dressing today as she did the night before.
She does her hair. She wears long sleeves. She picks a blue scarf that hides the bruises on her neck, and a hat to match. And as she walks to the diner Lilah imagines that, yes, she could love the haphazard, messy, charmingly idiotic Joe-with-an-L. Done. She could say it. She could make it true.

  But even as she thinks this, she remembers the energy in her hands, that wild sense of freedom on the mattress. Her fingers, writing a name across the stars. And the fact that she did not die in that bed after all. So instead they dance for space in her head, the two of them. Joel, who finds her Catholic schoolgirl background a huge turn-on and thinks that the George Sand volumes on her bookshelf were written by a “homo.” Joe-with-an-L, who manages despite all of this to be charming, to make her laugh. And Israel. Israel Riviera, the boss, who has yet to say anything funny, who took her for dinner and then held her life like a seed in his hand.

  Joel is late. He is also hungover, and quite possibly high. He squeezes half a bottle of ketchup onto his burger and massages the inside of Lilah’s thigh as if he thinks it’s her vagina. His hands feel small and girlish. In the harsh light of the diner he looks — not unfit, exactly, but softer than a man really has any right to be.

  “I really like you,” he says. He talks with his mouth full and sprays hamburger onto the table.

  Lilah thinks of Timothy, who had a seizure two days before he left home and vomited his dinner over Roberta’s best china. “Thanks.”

  “I should move in,” Joel says. “Don’t you think so?”

  “You don’t call me enough.”

  “But if we lived together, I wouldn’t have to call you.”

  “Maybe.” She eats the rest of her salad in silence, and wonders what Israel is doing. Graphing management charts? Drinking wine? Reading in his apartment, intellectual and harmless?

  “I don’t love you.” She blurts the words with her mouth half full. Now it is her turn — milk sprays across the table and sprinkles Joel’s lap.