The Miracles of Ordinary Men

by Amanda Leduc

  Timothy stood on the sidewalk, alone.

  “Are you okay?” Sam asked. He put their cups on the garbage can and balled his fists.

  “That man,” Timothy said, staring down the street. “He — knew.” He blinked and turned his head slowly to Sam. “He saw me.”

  “What?” Sam turned sharply around, but the street was empty. “He saw the wings?”

  Timothy nodded. “He just . . . walked up to me. Out of nowhere. He touched my forehead — ” and the boy’s hand went up, mimicking “ — and he said, Timothy. Ah, I see. I see you now.” Even as Timothy spoke his voice grew darker, richer, more hypnotic. “You have no place here. You have no power.“ He blinked. ”Then he reached his hand out and he held the wing. Like this,” and the boy reached over and pulled Sam’s right wing tight into his fist.

  Sam drew a breath, but Timothy didn’t seem to notice. That darkness in the air, the weird shimmer of the glass. “What happened. When he touched your forehead.”

  Timothy blinked. “I — I don’t remember.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t remember,” he said, again. “It’s . . . fuzzy.”

  “Fuzzy?” Sam said. “What do you mean?”

  Timothy frowned. “I don’t know.” He let the wing go. “I’m cold,” he whispered. “I’m never cold.”

  “Timothy.” He gripped the boy’s shoulder and shook him gently. “This is important. What happened when he touched your forehead?”

  “I don’t know!” Timothy cried, and he knocked the drinks to the ground. “I don’t remember. He made me not remember.”

  “Timothy,” Sam said again. Just a hint of pressure, there, in the fingers. It’s okay. It will be okay. “Calm down.” He remembered. “You called me. In there, in the coffee shop.”

  “What?”

  “You called me for help,” he said slowly. He raised his hand and touched the boy’s forehead. Touched skin and felt the blood rush beneath his fingers. The ground dissolved beneath his feet. He saw a flash of white light, and — a face? A woman? A boy? Then the light again — light at once soft and heavy, like snow.

  He opened his eyes. Heard nothing. Timothy’s mouth moved, but there was no sound. Sam blinked, and the world came rushing in.

  “What did you see?” said the boy.

  “I saw,” and he put a hand to his temple, thinking back, “I saw — a woman? I think. I don’t know. Is that what he saw?”

  “I don’t know,” said Timothy. His ears were red with cold, or shame, or both. “I’ve never seen him before. I don’t know anything.”

  Perhaps this was God — this insistent whisper, this uneasy rumble in the stomach. He fought the urge to take the boy’s arm again. “What did he look like, the man?” His own memory was hazy now. A dark figure, a long black coat. “Maybe Father Jim will know who he is.”

  “Father Jim can’t know everything,” Timothy snapped. Then he flushed and looked away. “It feels like a dream,” he said, his voice trailing off. “Or a nightmare.” He lifted his shoulders so that his wings trembled in the air — still bedraggled, still limp. But lighter, now, since the day they’d taken him in. “You have no power here — what did he mean?”

  “I don’t know.” Sam bent and picked the soggy cups off the ground. Adrenaline and confusion fought for space in his head. Power? Did Timothy — did either of them — have any power at all? “We should go home,” he said finally.

  “I haven’t seen my sister,” said the boy.

  “We should go home,” Sam repeated. The drinks made a sticky mess beneath their shoes. He threw the cups into the trash can. Not waiting for Timothy to answer, he started walking.

  The boy followed a few moments later. They walked back to the house in silence, watching the road, the cars, each other. As they neared the house, Sam remembered the shimmer of the air around the man, the unfamiliar, accented tones of Timothy’s altered voice. The uneasiness in his stomach intensified.

  “Should I tell my sister?” asked Timothy. “Maybe she should — I don’t know. Maybe she should know.”

  “What could you tell her?” Sam said. “She doesn’t see you. And anyway,” quickly, to guard against the sadness in Timothy’s eyes, “we don’t know that it’s bad.” Nothing but a feeling, a memory growing more unreal as they walked. “We don’t know what any of it means.”

  “Maybe.” They reached the house. Sam unlocked the door and held it open, let the boy pad down the hall, into the kitchen. He locked the door, rested his forehead against the wood and turned the deadbolt, just in case.

  But nothing changed, and the feeling in his abdomen didn’t go away.

  —

  Timothy stood by the counter in the kitchen, scissors in his hand.

  “My hair,” he said. “Take it.”

  “All right,” said Sam. “Timothy — it’s going to be all right.”

  “Please,” he said. He shook, barefoot on the tile.

  “All right,” Sam said again. He went into the bathroom and got the razor instead. When he came back to the kitchen Timothy was sitting, Chickenhead purring loudly in his lap.

  “All of it,” he said. “All of it. Gone. Like yours.”

  The hair fell away in seconds. He ran the razor lightly over Timothy’s scalp until everything was gone, until his scalp shone ivory and his ears revealed tips that were slightly pointed, like Sam’s own.

  “There,” Sam said. “It’s done now.”

  “Thank you.” Timothy stood and brushed off errant bits of hair, then kept brushing, even as the hair disappeared. He rocked his head slowly from side to side.

  “I think you’re . . . okay,” Sam said. Why were words suddenly so hard? He reached out to the boy.

  Timothy shook his head and moved farther away. “No. No. Don’t touch me.”

  “All right.” Sam put the razor down and held up his hands. “I’m sorry. It’s okay, Timothy. It will be okay.”

  “No.”

  “Timothy. You’re home now.” The deadbolt. “It’s safe.”

  “No,” the boy said again. He shook his head one more time and walked out of the kitchen, dark blue veins spreading out across the back of his head even as Sam stood and watched him go.

  —

  Father Jim came home an hour or so later, bottle of whiskey tucked under his arm. Sam, huddled by the back door, watched as Chickenhead jumped down from his lap and ran down the hall to the priest. She seemed lighter when the priest was around.

  “Hey,” he called. “Get your own cat.”

  The priest chuckled, then frowned as he came into the kitchen and saw Sam on the floor. “Are you all right?”

  “Something happened,” said Timothy. He came from behind Father Jim and stood between them, hands twitching, eyes looking from the priest to Sam and back. “We saw someone — ”

  “Someone who saw Timothy.” Sam spoke the words to the floor. “Someone who saw the wings.”

  “And?” Father Jim’s voice was crisp, focused. “What happened?”

  “He touched my forehead,” the boy recited, moving his hand. His voice had an odd, singsong quality to it. “He touched my forehead, and he said, You have no power here.” He paused with his own hand in the air. “Then he went away.”

  “Did you see him?” Father Jim turned to Sam. “Did he speak to you?”

  “I was getting coffee,” Sam said. It sounded strange now. “I saw them through the window, and I panicked.” He told them about the darkness of the air, that shimmer of the world through the glass. “But by the time I got outside, he’d left.”

  “So he didn’t see you,” Father Jim said.

  “No.” Sam shook his head. “He didn’t see me. Just because I went to get coffee.”

  The priest turned his hands palm up in the light. “The world has turned on smaller things.”

 
; Sam held his hand out for the cat; she ambled over and then rolled on her back in front of him. He brought his wing around and brushed the feathers across her stomach. “I don’t know what happened but it meant . . . something.”

  “Do you know what it means, Father?” Timothy shifted from one foot to the other.

  “I don’t know,” the priest said, his voice quiet. “But I’m not surprised.”

  “What?” Timothy and Sam spoke at once.

  “God is beyond mysterious.” Father Jim sat at the counter and ran a hand across his face. How old he looked, Sam thought suddenly. “But you — you, me, all of us — we’d be foolish to think that God is the only unknown in the universe.”

  Sam grew cold, shivering as he hadn’t in weeks. “Are you talking about — ”

  “I don’t know what I’m talking about,” the priest said sharply. “Isn’t it obvious? I’m guessing, just like the two of you.”

  Sam pressed his hand into the cat’s stomach. Fur, smooth skin, and beneath the flesh, organs that propelled her forward. An inner solar system, an inner rhythm. Did she see the world differently, now that her life had been dipped in a miracle? If she had been there beside Timothy on the sidewalk, would she have seen something else besides a man in a long dark coat?

  “You can’t talk about God,” Father Jim said slowly, “or live through a miracle, without eventually seeing something else. Something other than God.”

  Sam took a breath and stared at his hands. A demon, a different kind of angel altogether. He thought of Rilke. Almost deadly birds of the soul. “What happens now?”

  “Damned if I know,” said the priest. “This isn’t The Exorcist.”

  “So — we just sit here?” Timothy’s voice went even higher. “We do nothing? What if I want to see my sister?”

  “No one said ‘do nothing.’” Father Jim poured whiskey into a glass. He passed it to the boy, who held it between one forefinger and thumb as though he didn’t quite know what to do. “Liquid courage, my boy. If I had to come face to face with the Devil, I’d sure as hell not want to do it sober.”

  Sam snorted. He rested his elbows on his knees and let his hands hang above the floor. “We keep going,” he said. “I don’t see that we have any other choice.”

  “You don’t have a choice,” Father Jim said flatly. “Look — maybe you came close to something today. Maybe not. Maybe there’s a thread in all of this that none of us can see. God is being revealed to both of you — but on God’s time, not yours. You do not get to decide what makes sense, and whether something has meaning or not. You get to pay attention. You get to feel God in your blood. That’s all.”

  “God does not feel all that great,” said Sam. “He feels like . . . the flu.”

  Now it was the priest’s turn to snort. “God is more terrible than anything you could imagine, Sam.”

  “That’s your wisdom?” Timothy’s voice was almost hysterical. His eyes were stark, haunted — the eyes of a fugitive. “That’s your uplifting speech?”

  “Yet in my flesh I shall see God,” said the priest. He paused and let the words hang in the air. “Only a fool would find that uplifting. If God is truly in your veins, gentlemen — changing your skin, changing your bones — there won’t be anything left of you when it’s over. Anything else is a toy, by comparison.” Now he was quiet, sad. His words settled among them like the ash that had begun to drift, steady and slow, from Sam’s own wings. “As to the rest — if I was God, the world would make me ill too.”

  III

  The week goes by and she avoids them both, Timothy and Israel, as much as she can. It’s too much. She runs errands. She calls Roberta. She pleads another headache, and another. She leaves work early every day and goes straight home, where she crawls into bed and goes to sleep. No dreams. No answers. Nothing.

  On Thursday, she stops at a McDonald’s, and from there takes the long way home. She finds Timothy by the water, perched on beach driftwood, staring out. He wears a hat she hasn’t seen before, and as she steps closer he straightens, becomes more alert.

  “Lilah.” He turns around and takes off the hat. “Where have you been?”

  “What happened to your hair?” she says. He has showered. He is wearing different clothes. He is bald. “Where did you get that shirt?”

  “I’m just borrowing it,” he mutters. He does not look at her. “I’ll give it back.”

  “Who gave it to you? Why in bloody fuck did you shave your head? Are you in some kind of cult?”

  “I was safe,” he says. “Don’t worry.”

  Worry. Worry is all she ever does. “You could shower at my house. You can borrow clothes from me.”

  “I can’t borrow clothes from you.”

  “So I have tits. Big fucking deal. You can borrow a goddamned sweatshirt, at least.”

  “Don’t swear.”

  “Well? For fuck’s sake, Tim. What am I supposed to think?”

  “This isn’t about you,” he says. “Isn’t it enough to know that I’m safe?”

  Yes. And no. “You’re not . . . you’re not . . . you know — ”

  He smirks. “No. Thanks a lot.”

  “Oh. Well, that’s good, then.” She stands above him, awkward, unsure. Someone else had Timothy in their apartment last night, when she was hiding under her duvet. Someone else had him safe.

  “You always find me,” he says then. “How?”

  “I don’t know.” Other people get pulled around this city for food, for sex. Lilah follows her brother around like a shipman, lost at sea and following the sky.

  “How’s Mom?” he asks.

  “She’s dying. She wants to see you.”

  His breath comes out funny — a wheeze and a whimper all at once. He blinks and he runs a hand around his head. “Do you like my hair? It was falling out. I couldn’t hide it anymore.”

  She shuts her eyes and imagines the story she’ll tell Roberta. “Please tell me it’s not a cult.”

  “A cult?” He is genuinely perplexed. “Why would I join a cult, Lilah? God lives inside of me.”

  “It’s falling out because you’re not eating enough.” She sits beside him, on the log, and pulls out the bag of fast food. All of this travel between Victoria and back has meant little time for groceries — Roberta would cringe to see the shit Lilah is feeding him now. But Timothy is oblivious. He eats his food without comment, and this time he wipes his face with the single napkin that was placed inside the bag.

  “Thank you.”

  “You always liked Happy Meals,” she says. She thinks of The Actor, who brought Timothy food all those weeks ago. The Actor, Joe-with-an-L, all these parts of her life that are falling away, disappearing. The guilt is sharp and sudden, but eventually it subsides.

  “I’m not seven, in case you haven’t noticed.”

  “I know.” She reaches for his hand; as always, he pushes her away. “You’re a grown man. Completely capable of making your own decisions. I’m aware.”

  “You laugh,” he says. He begins, once again, to rock in his seat. “You laugh, but Delilah, if only you knew.”

  “Then tell me!” Suddenly she is furious. A woman walking past them jumps mid-stride.

  “I won’t hurt you,” is what he says. “Just know that.”

  “Tim — you can’t do this forever.”

  “Who said anything about forever?”

  The sound that comes out of her throat is wild, uncontrolled. She throws the rest of her hamburger at him. Then she stands and shouts so loud that people fifty feet away stop to look at them. “I hate you!”

  His face opens for her like a flower, dying even as it blooms. “I know,” he whispers.

  Lilah stalks away before she can do anything else. She doesn’t look back. She doesn’t cry. She walks through the city, blind with rage. She walks straight to Israel’s
apartment, gleaming tower of metal and glass. She presses the buzzer.

  “Delilah.” She whirls around to find him there, in front of the door, holding Chinese takeout in his sleek gloved hands. “How . . . unexpected. I thought you were in hiding.”

  “What — I can’t come to see you? We do everything on your clock, is that it?”

  He smiles. For an instant, he looks like every other man she’s ever slept with. Then he takes her arm, and she remembers. “Hardly.”

  Inside, he splits the takeout onto two plates and pours wine for them both. Lilah sits at the counter and does not eat; the fast food turns her stomach. She runs her fingers over the granite. Timothy’s face, opening and crumpling for her all at once.

  “You have seen Timothy,” Israel says.

  She sniffs, and immediately hates herself. “No.”

  He laughs. “You are a terrible liar.”

  “Fine. Yes.”

  “Yes. And he is — not well?”

  “He’s fine,” she mutters. “He spent the night at someone’s house. He fucking shaved his head. Like he’s in some goddamned cult!”

  She doesn’t see his arm move at all. Another backhand, so quick. “How many times must we do this, Delilah? You are more than your body. You are certainly more than your mouth.”

  “He’s going to die,” she says bitterly. She speaks around the pain, around her stinging cheek. Then she dips her finger into the sweet-and-sour sauce. “He’s going to freeze to death on the streets, and there’s nothing I can do.”

  “But everyone dies,” he says. “Your brother. Your mother. Even you, eventually.”

  She stares. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

  “The truth does not make you feel better or worse. It is merely the truth.” He puts his cutlery down. “You build what you can from that.”