An Imperfect Miracle

by Thomas L. Peters

  It was harder than I expected getting the knot to hold, the snake being so slippery and slimy, but I finally got it fastened on good and tight. Then after telling the snake to settle down, I started poking around a little deeper into the woods.

  Chewy was scampering around all excited now, scaring off the other snakes, because Chewy liked throwing her weight around out in the woods. I’d gone another fifty feet or so when all of a sudden I got a whiff of this really putrid smell, like a skunk or a deer had died close by. I started searching around for the body, but the smell was so bad that even when I pinched my nose tight between my fingers, I still felt like puking. Chewy must have been on the scent too, because she was headed toward a thick patch of evergreen trees with her snout nearly touching the ground and her tail wagging high and loose.

  The stink was so awful that I was about to go back to the church when I saw it sticking up out of the weeds right in the middle of the evergreens. At first I thought it was just a big gray bag of garbage that somebody had dumped there. Then as I got closer and saw that it was a dead person, I started shivering so bad that I forgot all about how rank he smelled. His arms were poking up real rigid and hard and his legs were twisted around a little underneath him. There was a big dent in his skull too, and worms were crawling in and out of his eyeballs.

  I ran back to the church yelling out his name and that he’d been murdered on account of the dent in his head, which I didn’t think he’d done to himself. But then I remembered the little snake and stopped by to see how it was doing. The string was still tied to the weed, but the other end was loose and the snake was gone. It seemed like either some animal like a raccoon or a groundhog had come along and eaten it, or else the little snake had wriggled free and escaped. I decided that she must have slipped out on her own, because there wasn’t even a drop of blood or guts on the ground. I didn’t feel too bad about losing her either. With a dead body out in the woods the cops would soon be tramping around all over the place. And I didn’t want the poor snake to get squished, since it wasn’t her fault that the guy had gotten himself killed.

  When I ran back inside the church and started telling everybody about the dead body lying right outside, you should have heard all the shrieking and gasping and wailing. It was like being down at the shrine when all the country folks rolled in speaking in tongues. Mom didn’t seem too thrilled about me being the one to find the body either, but there wasn’t much she could do about it now. She sat me down right beside her, while Pastor Mike and some of the others went outside to check out my story.

  After a few minutes they came back and said that I wasn’t making it up after all. So just like when news first got out about Mary’s face appearing on the concrete, I got to be the center of attention for a while, especially a few minutes later when the cops showed up.

  I recognized two of them right away, the round one and the skinny guy shaped like a crescent moon, the same ones who’d asked me all those dumb questions about Mary. I’d seen them hanging around the shrine a lot lately too. The skinny guy was always leaning up against the outside of Mary’s house chattering into his cell phone. He must have been talking to his girlfriend because he kept using words like “honey” and “dear” and “don’t get mad.” And whenever people came up to ask him where the restrooms were or something like that, he’d just turn his back on them and keep right on talking into his phone. The round cop liked strutting along Main Street twirling his billy club and throwing his weight at anybody who came too close, so that most of the pilgrims were scared even to go near him.

  The round cop seemed to be the boss, and he told the skinny guy and two cops I’d never seen before to go outside and rope off the body, so people wouldn’t go stomping on the evidence. Then he came over and asked me a bunch of questions about how I’d found the stiff, and whether I’d seen anybody sneaking around out there in the woods, and other simple-minded stuff like that. I answered every one of his dumb questions, but he didn’t seem too happy about my answers because he kept asking me the same question two or three times. After he was finally through with me, he started lecturing anyone who’d listen how motive was the most important thing in any murder investigation.

  “Once we find the person or persons with the proper motive, we’ll solve this case in no time.”

  When the round cop left to go check out the stiff firsthand, I asked Pastor Mike, who was sitting right next to Mom now with his arm around her shoulders, what motive meant. He said it was a reason, a good reason, he said, for killing somebody. I asked him if it was possible to have a good reason for killing somebody. He smiled and said that I’d scored a point on him there. Then I asked Mom what the big news was all about, and she said she was too upset now and that she’d tell me later. I asked her what she was so upset about, since it didn’t seem to me like such a horrible thing that the guy was dead. But she shook her head kind of slow and weary and said that it was time for us to go home.

  Chapter 15

  I sat in the back seat of Mom’s car and thought about who in town had a good reason for killing Tim Runyon. Dad was mean and nasty enough that he might have done it, especially if Runyon were cheating him in the little burglary ring they had going. But Mom told me that Dad had been in jail for a couple weeks already, and I knew from getting mugged by Runyon that he hadn’t been dead that long.

  The more I thought about it, the more it seemed like the cops would have a hard time figuring out who the killer was. Anybody he’d ever stolen from, which was probably half the town judging from the stash he had out at the old mill, might have felt like clubbing him over the head. I even had a reason to kill him, although I wasn’t sure if getting him off my back was good enough of a motive to land me in jail. Mom had the same motive as me, but I didn’t figure she was strong enough to drag him out there to the woods, unless somebody helped her, like maybe Pastor Mike. But Mom always called up Marcie’s dad the lawyer whenever she wanted to get rid of some guy, and I didn’t figure it was her.

  I tried to think of anybody else who might have wanted to kill Runyon, but I couldn’t come up with any names right off the bat. I would have asked Mom what she thought, but I doubted if she knew any more than I did.

  That afternoon I went down to the shrine and thanked Mary for not letting Runyon kill Mom and me and maybe other people too, Runyon being the jerk that he was. And I thanked her for keeping Dad away from us too, since from what I could remember he was even scarier than Runyon.

  Mary didn’t answer me or anything, but since she never talked out loud as far as I knew I didn’t think much about it. I didn’t even bother asking her who did it. She must have known though, being the Mother of God and all according to the Catholics, and I wondered if she was going to clue the cops in on who the killer was. The cops didn’t look too bright, after all, especially that round one in charge of the case, and I was pretty sure Mary would need to give them a hand if she wanted the killer nabbed. I wasn’t sure if she really did or not, because it didn’t seem right that a person should go to jail for killing a creep like Runyon. But by then I’d learned that Mary was the kind of lady who had her own ideas about things.

  Next morning Mom took me to see that doctor again. I guess she was scared I might crack up from finding a dead body out in the woods all on my own, and maybe from hearing about my old man getting tossed in the can too. I told her I was feeling fine, but Mom wasn’t buying it. I was a little scared that the doctor might recognize me as the kid who’d bloodied his son’s nose at Marcie’s swimming party. But the doctor didn’t say a word about it. Instead he asked me a bunch of questions about how I was feeling and whether I was having any nightmares lately.

  I told him I was a good sleeper and didn’t get nightmares, except sometimes when I was dreaming about my legs getting stuck in quicksand. He told me that if I ever started feeling down in the dumps that I should tell my mom right away.

  “So, how are you getting along in school?”

  “Okay.�
� Then Mom jabbed me in the ribs with her finger. It stung too, because Mom had just done up her nails into these sharp little points, probably to impress Pastor Mike. “Thank you for recommending that I take the special reading class at school, Doctor Johnson. It’s helped me a lot.”

  I looked up at Mom to see if I’d said it right. I guess I did okay, because she quit poking me, at least.

  “How are you getting along with your classmates?”

  “Good.”

  “I hear that you’re spending a lot of time down at our new monument along Main Street.”

  “I was the one to discover her, you know. And it’s a shrine, not a monument. Monuments are for dead people.”

  His eyes opened real wide for a second.

  “So you think she’s still alive, Mary I mean?”

  “A lot of people think she’s alive, and a lot of them are pretty smart and educated too, like Father Tom and Mom’s friend Pastor Mike. I bet they’ve had more schooling than you even.”

  Mom rolled her eyes a little but didn’t say anything. The doctor gave out a slippery sort of smile. That was when I knew for sure that he was angling to trap me somehow and make me look bad in front of Mom.

  “You’re very observant to have spotted it. Most people would have walked right past those old concrete steps.”

  “It’s a she, not an it. And plenty of other people think she looks like Mary too, which means that I’m not seeing things, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

  He laughed a little and then wiped his mouth off with the back of his hand.

  “You’ve already developed a very strong sense of yourself, Nathan.”

  I looked up at Mom to see if I was supposed to say anything or not. But Mom decided to bail me out for a change.

  “Nathan is sometimes very headstrong.”

  She should talk, I thought to myself. The doctor looked at my final report card Mom had just handed him.

  “Your grades have improved markedly since your last visit, all except for English, which you barely passed.”

  “My English teacher was that crazy guy who got arrested for burning Mary’s shrine down. This year I’ll do better. Mom’s trying to get me into Miss Graves’s class, and she’s supposed to be real nice and grade easy too.”

  He nodded real fast and serious all of a sudden, like he was getting ready to agree with himself.

  “We all run into people from time to time, like Mr. Grimes, in your case, who we don’t really care for. The trick is to learn how to get along with them.”

  I felt like saying that I didn’t really need to get along with Mr. Grimes, since he’d be in jail for about the next thirty years according to the newspapers. But I decided against it because Mom would just get mad at me for mouthing off.

  “I get along good with people. Mostly anyway.”

  “You certainly are making progress in your social skills.” The doctor jotted something onto his clipboard, which always got me to worrying that I’d just said something wrong. “On your last visit you barely talked to me. How’s Chewy doing, by the way?”

  I knew right away that the doctor was trying to trick me, sneaking Chewy into it like that. I told him that I realized now that Chewy was just a “figment of my imagination,” which was what I heard Mom saying on the phone one time to one of her nurse friends. I figured I could always apologize to Chewy later for ditching her.

  The doctor scribbled something else onto his clipboard, and then he patted me on the shoulder and said that he was proud of me for facing up to my fears. I didn’t really know what fears he was talking about, but by then I just wanted to get out of there in one piece.

  After whispering about me in the corner of his office with Mom, the doctor finally let us go. On the way home Mom made me sit up front with her. I griped about it because I wanted to stretch out in the back seat with Chewy and take a nap, but Mom held firm. As we pulled onto our street she said she had something to tell me, and then she hugged me real tight against her shoulder. I tried to squirm away, but Mom was pretty strong for a girl. I wondered for a second if she might have been able to haul Runyon’s body out into the woods all by herself. But I didn’t see why she’d need to if she could have gotten Pastor Mike to help her.

  “Pastor Mike and I are getting married. He asked me just the other night after you went to bed. Isn’t it wonderful?”

  I broke free of her finally and asked her whether he’d come and live with us, or whether we’d have to move in with him. She said she didn’t know yet. She said that his apartment was too small for all three of us, and that he’d either move in with us or we’d buy a new house.

  All of a sudden I got really down in the dumps. I didn’t want to let on to Mom how I was feeling, because I was afraid she’d turn right around and drive me back to the doctor’s office.

  “We aren’t going to move too far away from the shrine, are we?”

  “Is that all you have to say?”

  “I was just wondering. You don’t have to get so worked up about it.”

  “We both have to stay here in Millridge, at least for now. This is where our jobs are.” Then she asked me what I thought about having Pastor Mike for a dad. I said I didn’t really know him all that well except for church.

  “Why are you being so difficult all of a sudden? I thought you’d be thrilled. You’re always talking about how cool Pastor Mike is and how much you like him.”

  “When are you getting married?”

  She almost ran our car into a fire hydrant, and for the first time in a while she let out a few swear words.

  “We haven’t decided yet.”

  “What are you waiting for?”

  “Weddings take a lot of planning, even second weddings.”

  She parked the car on the street in front of our house. She still couldn’t park in the garage because it was so full of Dad’s old junk. And the driveway was blocked by our old broken down freezer that her and me had dragged out for the scavengers to pick up in the middle of the night, since the trash collectors wouldn’t take it.

  “I guess we won’t be moving up to Erie right away then.”

  “At least you should be happy about that,” she snorted

  Then she yanked up on the clutch so hard that I thought for a second she was trying to rip it right out of the floor. After she climbed out and slammed the door behind her, I whispered to Chewy that I was sorry for ditching her back at the doctor’s office. Chewy said she understood why I had to do it, and that maybe from now on that nosy doctor wouldn’t bother us anymore.

  The next week I almost wished that school had started already. Then I could have told everybody what it felt like to see a real dead body that wasn’t all dressed up in a pretty casket at some musty old funeral home. The local newspaper ran stories on the murder every day, and I’d scoop the papers out of the trash cans down by the shrine to see what was going on. But it didn’t seem like the cops were making much headway.

  All they’d pieced together so far was that Runyon had been killed someplace else a few days before I’d found him, and then his body had been dragged behind the church and left there. They didn’t know what had killed him either, the murder weapon, they called it, but they were pretty sure that he’d died from a blow to the head. Of course I already knew how he’d died from seeing that big dent in his skull, and I decided that the round cop and his crescent moon friend just weren’t up to the job of solving a murder.

  A couple days before school started I was sweeping the floor down at the shrine and heard Carlos talking real loud to Mrs. Marcella, I guess because her hearing was getting a little weak. She had just finished praying to Mary with that skimpy black handkerchief wrapped over her head, and Carlos usually tried to be extra friendly with regular customers like her.

  Carlos was saying how he just saw on the Internet that Mary’s face was showing up lately in all sorts of different places all around the world. He said that Jesus was showing up to
o, but not as much. When Mrs. Marcella asked him why, he told her that Jesus mostly liked to stay in the background and let Mary and priests and saints and holy people like that get all the attention. He said it was just the way Jesus liked to operate, at least as far as Carlos could tell. After Mrs. Marcella left to get in line again, because she was a real hardcore Mary fan and didn’t mind spending big money on admission fees, I asked Carlos if Mary’s face was as good and clear in any of those other places as it was here in Millridge. Carlos said he didn’t know for sure because the pictures on the Internet were kind of fuzzy, but that he doubted it.

  He said she wasn’t healing near as many people in those other places either, at least according to the news accounts. He said you couldn’t always believe the newspapers though, because a lot of reporters didn’t like Mary much and were always trying to stick it to her. I thought of that smart-aleck reporter in the smelly white shirt who’d interviewed me right after I’d discovered her, and I told Carlos that he had a point there.

  “The more they try to malign and persecute her though, the stronger she gets. So persecution is a blessing in a way.”

  I asked him how it worked that something bad could turn into something good, and he said it was a mystery. He said that most really important things in life were mysteries. Then I asked him who he thought might have killed Runyon. He didn’t want to talk about it at first, but I kept pressing him.

  “Whoever rid the world of that skunk deserves a medal. You ought to feel more safe now at least, you and your mom.”

  “You don’t have any idea who might have done it then.”

  He shook his head and then stiffened his jaw, like he was getting ready for a boxing match.

  “None at all. Should I?”

  There was a little break in between shoppers and Carlos rushed over to the cash register to count up the money. He’d raked in a pile of it so far that day and I guess he wanted to get a head start. He told me to log onto the computer and send out a group e-mail announcing that for the next two weeks only he was putting the 24-by-12-inch genuine oil print copies of Michelangelo’s The Last Supper on sale for $155, a thirty percent reduction from the catalogue list price. I asked him if he was having trouble moving the picture, and he said he was using it to trick the more casual customers back into his store and shopping again.