An Imperfect Miracle

by Thomas L. Peters

  I glanced away for a second because I was a little embarrassed to admit it. But I didn’t figure that Carlos would hold it against me too much.

  “I guess I’m starting to feel a little sorry for him. He can’t really do anything to hurt me now anyway, like flunking me out or something.”

  Right away Carlos’s face lit up, and he rubbed his hand over the top of my head until I backed away from him a little. That afternoon I noticed that Carlos wasn’t wearing his big silver cross around his neck, and I asked him if he’d lost it. He said someone had swiped it and that he’d reported it missing to the cops, but that he hadn’t heard anything back from them yet. He said that with all the tourists coming through to gawk at Mary, it wasn’t a surprise that once in a while some troublemaker would rip something off. He said he didn’t really mind, because he liked how the big golden one he was wearing now sparkled in the sunlight. He was right too, because it sparkled so bright that sometimes it nearly blinded me.

  The town was making so much money off the shrine that it had hired a medic to hang around full time waiting for people to keel over from the heat so he could stick an oxygen mask over their mouths and shove them into an ambulance that was always parked close by. At supper one night Mom said that the shrine was killing as many people as it was healing, but I think she was still a little jealous of how quick Mary could cure folks of their diseases.

  Toward the end of the next to the last week before school started, they began bulldozing the karate place and Joe’s novelty shop. Carlos said that the town was thinking about setting up a museum to Mary on part of the land, but that they hadn’t decided on anything official yet. Then he leaned back against the counter and his eyes got sort of clean and open and bright, like little glass marbles shining in the sun.

  “The town is being purified one brick at a time. That’s the way it looks to me anyway.”

  “Do you think that’s why Mary showed up, to spiff up Millridge a little?”

  “Part of the reason, I imagine.”

  “Sort of the way Mom cleans out our house in spring, one room at a time.”

  “Sort of.”

  “Do you think Mary’s gonna just keep on cleaning and scrubbing until all the dirt and stains and grime are gone and the town’s all shiny and bright?”

  “I don’t know about that. If all the ugliness were gone, after a while you’d forget what it was like and wouldn’t appreciate the cleanness anymore. It seems to me like you need some dirt to balance out the clean and keep us all honest.”

  Carlos’s idea might have sounded good, but I still wasn’t sure.

  “After Dad left, our house got a lot more peaceful and quiet. And I still appreciate it too. Even when Mom acts up and starts hollering at me for something I didn’t do, it’s nothing like it used to be. When things are really bad, I don’t think you ever forget them.”

  He turned and gave me a sweet sort of look.

  “I still say you ought to become a priest, Nate.”

  I shook my head right away.

  “Mom would never go for me turning Catholic, especially not when she’s trying to get Pastor Mike to marry her.”

  “So you still like Pastor Mike, do you?”

  “Sure. Don’t you?”

  “He seems like a nice enough fellow, although I don’t know him all that well.”

  That struck me as kind of strange, since I’d seen some e-mails back and forth between Carlos and Pastor Mike one morning when I was messing around on his computer. I decided that when I had a chance I might read one or two of them just to see what they talked about. I couldn’t look right then though, because he had me go up and polish Mary’s glass cover, which I liked to do because I got to study her without worrying about the next person in line trying to climb over the top of me. Nothing had changed from the last time though, and she was still showing that same cute little smile and the five tears.

  That Saturday night Pastor Mike came over to our house to meet Uncle Carl and Aunt Helen, who had driven down from Erie just for that. After supper, which was ribs and chicken and these big, thick, greasy hamburgers that Pastor Mike and Uncle Carl grilled out on the backyard barbecue, they all sat around our living room playing bridge. I watched them pretty close, because I’d always wanted to learn how to play a real grownup game.

  Pastor Mike teamed up with Aunt Helen, and they beat Mom and Uncle Carl pretty handily. Mom blamed it all on Uncle Carl, who was smiling and laughing and telling jokes the whole time and didn’t seem to mind losing. She said he wasn’t paying enough attention to what he was doing, and Aunt Helen said it was because the doctor had just told him that his diabetes had disappeared. She called it a “misdiagnosis,” but then Mom chimed in that the symptoms for diabetes can go away if you catch it early enough and take good care of yourself. She called it “pre-diabetes.” While they were going back and forth, Uncle Carl just looked over at me with this big wide grin and winked.

  I kept trying to figure out the rules as they started a new game. But it was way too hard and I began watching TV instead and sometimes glancing over at them, especially when they talked about personal stuff. Uncle Carl must have gotten carried away shooting the breeze, because all of a sudden Aunt Helen gave him a real sharp jolt with her elbow right into his shoulder. She hit him so hard that he yelped a little. I figured he wasn’t supposed to say what he’d just said, because Mom was rolling her eyes at him now too. Meanwhile, Pastor Mike’s face went kind of empty and pale, and his blue eyes kept flicking from Uncle Carl to Aunt Helen to Mom and then back to Uncle Carl again.

  After I thought for a few seconds about what Uncle Carl had said, I could see why Aunt Helen and Mom had gotten so mad at him. After all, they were always trying to keep me from hearing the good stuff.

  “How about Dave getting arrested down in Pittsburgh for fencing stolen merchandise? I’m surprised he’s still living in the area.”

  Like I told you, Dave was my dad’s name, and after Aunt Helen was through ragging on poor Uncle Carl I asked them what fencing was. Nobody wanted to say at first. But then Aunt Helen frowned and told me that it was sort of like being a middleman between a buyer and a seller, except that the goods my dad was dealing in were stolen. That was why he was in jail.

  Of course, I already knew what a middleman was from Carlos, because he was always ordering his crosses and Bibles and other goods from middlemen over the Internet. Carlos didn’t care for them much either and was always calling them sharks, because he claimed that they took too big of a cut from the profits. I wondered if that was what got Dad into trouble, charging too much money I mean, so that somebody snitched on him. Then I thought of Runyon and his stash of loot out at the old mill, and I wondered if maybe he was the one who’d turned Dad in. I didn’t say anything about it though.

  After that they didn’t talk too much until the game was over, except for Mom, who kept saying in a real tight wiry voice that Dad could stay locked up forever as far as she was concerned. I could tell by how they sometimes winked and smiled at each other that Uncle Carl and Aunt Helen really liked Pastor Mike a lot. It seemed pretty clear to me that Mom and him would get hitched sooner or later, since I couldn’t think of any other hoops Mom had to make him jump through.

  After Uncle Carl and Aunt Helen left to go back up to Erie, Pastor Mike and Mom sat on the couch watching TV and holding hands a little. They even let me sit up on the couch with them. Mom must have felt a little guilty about having torn into Dad the way she’d done, because she started going on and on about how I shouldn’t worry that Dad was in jail and that everything would work out okay.

  I guessed she was afraid that I had “undergone a traumatic emotional experience,” which I’d heard that doctor say about me when he was trying to explain to Mom why I was still talking to Chewy. The doctor seemed to think that Dad dumping us had something to do with Chewy coming back from the dead, which of course just proved that he didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. A
nd now that I knew what a big jerk his kid was, I had even less respect for his opinions.

  Pastor Mike even got into the act and had us all hold hands and say a prayer asking God to guard us from any and all dangers and to give us a peaceful and quiet life. Even though I thought he was going overboard a little, probably trying to impress Mom with how religious he was, it sure was a big change from all the swearing and screaming and fighting that went on when Dad was still around.

  After that I played on the floor with some model race cars Pastor Mike had brought me that he’d glued together himself. Pastor Mike was always bringing me little presents, and I wondered if he’d keep it up once they got married. I wasn’t sure how he could afford it though on a preacher’s salary, which Mom said wasn’t much more than what she was making as a nurse. But she said that once they put the two paychecks together, we wouldn’t be nearly as poor and might even be able to afford a computer, which I figured was about time.

  Then Mom, who could be such a downer, asked Pastor Mike if he’d seen Runyon around town lately. She said she hadn’t heard a peep out of him ever since she’d gotten the court order.

  “I doubt if he’ll be bothering you and Nate anymore.”

  I asked Pastor Mike how he could be so sure, and he said he just had a feeling that Runyon was long gone. That was when I finally pieced it all together. Runyon was delivering the stuff he stole to Dad, who was selling it to the general public and then splitting the money with him. With Dad in jail, Runyon either had to find a new fence or go to some other part of the country to do his stealing. The only thing that didn’t make sense was how Pastor Mike could have known about it all, since he seemed pretty positive that Runyon had left town for good. After a while I got sleepy from thinking so hard about it and started yawning, and Mom sent me upstairs to get ready for bed. The walls in our house were as thin as tissue, and I could hear most of what they were saying. But it was generally just grownup talk and didn’t amount to much. Mom went on a little about what a skunk Dad was, but I’d heard her tell that whole sad story to her nurse friends plenty of times and didn’t pay much attention.

  After they’d stopped chattering for a while, I crawled down the steps a little to see if they might be hugging and kissing. But Mom was just resting her head on his shoulder with her eyes closed and smiling sort of calm and sweet. Pastor Mike was smiling a little too, although his eyes were still open and he was looking down at her. I didn’t hear him leave, but when Mom woke me up next morning for church he was gone.

  Chapter 14

  My new Sunday school teacher, Mrs. Shipley, had been divorced three times now according to Mom, and she’d just spun off her last husband about a year ago. She was always wearing real tight dresses, especially up top, and high black heels that made the muscles in her legs stand out kind of plump and meaty. She liked having plenty of sparkly jewelry clanking around her wrists and around her neck, and she smelled like flowers most of the time. Some people at church thought she shouldn’t be teaching Sunday school, I guess because of her being married so much. But according to Mom, Pastor Mike had put the brakes to that idea. I guess Pastor Mike had a soft spot for women like Mom whose husbands hadn’t measured up.

  That morning Mrs. Shipley read us a story from this new Bible she brought along that was written special just for kids and had lots of pictures in it. The story was about a guy who got swallowed up by a whale and then after stewing about it awhile got spit back out onto dry land. It wasn’t long and hard to follow either, like those stupid old myths Mr. Grimes kept pushing on us before he got himself tossed into jail. After she was through reading, Mrs. Shipley closed up the Bible and smiled at us and said that the story showed that we were all special and that God loved each and every one of us no matter what. It sounded to me like God let us get away with an awful lot. When I asked her about it, Mrs. Shipley said that it was probably true.

  “Just don’t push your luck, Nathan. You have a tendency to do that sometimes.”

  Mrs. Shipley being so nice and all, I let it slide without putting up a fight like I usually did when someone took a shot at me. When Sunday school was over, Mrs. Shipley gave me a big long hug that almost squeezed all the air out of me. She looked even happier than usual, and I asked what had gotten into her. She was so excited that her voice shot up real high and squeaky, and I almost had to shut my ears.

  “Oh, your mother probably hasn’t told you yet. It’s just like her to be so secretive. I’m sure she’ll get around to it shortly.”

  I asked her what Mom hadn’t told me yet, but Mrs. Shipley said she wasn’t allowed to give it away. She said it wouldn’t have been fair to Mom, but according to her it was good news and that I shouldn’t fret about it. Even though I liked Mrs. Shipley a lot, I wasn’t sure if she could tell the difference between good news and bad news. But when I asked her again, she still wouldn’t budge.

  After I moped downstairs for church, I saw Pastor Mike in the lobby all dressed up in a suit and tie. Like I told you, our preachers never got dressed up fancy like that except for Christmas Eve and Easter. And according to Mom the only reason they did it then was because they were trying to show off for all the people who only came to church once or twice a year. I thought about asking Pastor Mike what was going on, but there were too many people crowding around him for me to break through.

  Mom had her own special Sunday school class for old ladies like her. Whenever I’d gone into their room by mistake they were always clacking away so loud that it nearly gave me a headache. It didn’t sound like they were talking about God much either. Instead they’d be going on about somebody’s gall bladder operation, or saying what a shame it was that some guy’s nephew got caught red-handed with drugs on him and was shipped off to some prison on the other side of the state. When I asked her about it one time, Mom told me it was none of my business what they talked about. She said that you couldn’t talk about just the Bible all the time anyway without going a little crazy.

  After her Sunday school class finally let out and they were all gabbing out in the lobby waiting for the service to start, I walked up to Mom to ask her if I was old enough yet to sit by myself in church. Right after they passed around the collection bags, the ushers made you say hello to the people sitting near you and shake their hands, even if they were complete strangers. I hated doing that, “the greeting,” they called it, and I hoped if I were sitting way in the back I could hide out under my seat where nobody would bother me.

  I kept tapping Mom on the shoulder to get her attention, when all of a sudden she whirled around and said I could sit by myself if I promised to hook up with her right after the service. She said that she had some wonderful news to tell me, something that she had learned just last night. I knew it couldn’t be about Dad getting tossed into jail, since that was no big secret. I asked her why she just couldn’t spill it to me now and get it over with. She said she wanted somebody else to be right there with her. I asked her who, but by then she was already back to gossiping with her friends.

  I sat way in the very back row for church, and I even got in a little snooze before the band started playing real loud. When the time came and the band was putting away their guitars and fiddles and drumsticks and stuff, Pastor Mike skipped up onto the stage in his suit. I was surprised how skinny he looked up there under all the lights. A lot of the time when he was preaching, he wore these big bulky sweaters and looked kind of dumpy.

  Pastor Mike was so excited that he didn’t even say a little opening prayer like usual. Instead, he announced in a loud voice that some donor, he wouldn’t say who, had given enough money to pay for the whole new addition to the church. Then he made us all say a prayer thanking the Lord for being so kind to us. After that he started his sermon, but it was kind of boring and I didn’t pay much attention.

  After church let out I was hanging around in the lobby waiting for Mom, when I heard some old guy with a black patch over his left eye and a big scar on his chin saying that Pasto
r Mike had just given one of the best sermons he’d ever heard. He said that he’d grown up Catholic and then left the church for about forty years. Not too long ago he claimed he’d had a heart attack and started coming to The Lamb of the Redeemer Holy Ghost Worship and Revival Center to get back on good terms with the Lord before he hit the exit ramp for good. He said that if the priests had just preached “strong and true” like that while he was growing up, he might have turned out more religious.

  I told him I was good friends with Pastor Mike, and he said I was a lucky boy. Then he rushed out the door to beat the traffic, because he said churchgoers were the worst drivers in the world, at least when it came to getting in and out of parking lots.

  A few seconds later I saw Mom standing right next to Pastor Mike in the middle of all these old women who were talking up a storm. There were some guys too hovering along the edges. They kept trying to push through all the women so they could shake Pastor Mike’s hand. But they were having a hard time of it.

  I decided to slip outside with Chewy to go searching for snakes. Whoever it was must have given a pile of money, because they already had a big hole dug and these hefty steel girders set up nearly four stories high. Me and Chewy wandered around checking out all the heavy equipment, especially the backhoes, which to me anyway looked like iron monsters taking a nap. But pretty soon Chewy got bored sniffing hard metal and wanted to go out into the woods with the other living creatures.

  I tagged along, and in no time I spotted a nice pretty black snake with little orange stripes and grabbed it by the tail. But when it tried to bite me, I clamped my fingers down on its head and reached into my pocket for some string, which I always kept handy for emergencies. I tied one end of the string to the stem of a big sturdy weed and the other end to the snake’s tail. The snake didn’t really like being tied up much, but I figured it would get the hang of it soon enough. I knew Mom wouldn’t let me take a snake home with us in the car, so I planned to come back later on my own and get it. I could always keep it in a little cage I’d stashed away in the garage back behind Dad’s old work bench where Mom never went.