Miracle and Other Christmas Stories

by Connie Willis

  “You mean like by warming ‘em up in front of a heater?” the kid said, holding his hands in front of the vent again. He put up his hand and touched the ding in the windshield. “That’s gonna spread,” he said.

  His hand looked even worse now that it was warming up. The sickly white splotches stood out starkly against the rest of his skin.

  Mel took off his gloves, switching hands on the steering wheel and using his teeth to get the second one off. “Here,” he said, handing them to the kid. “These are insulated.”

  The kid looked at him for a minute and then put them on.

  “You should get your hands looked at,” Mel said. “I can take you to the emergency room when we get to town.”

  “I’ll be okay,” the kid said. “You get used to being cold, working a carny.”

  “What’s a carnival doing here in the middle of winter, anyway?” Mel asked.

  “Best time,” the kid said. “Catches ‘em by surprise. What’re you doin’ out here?”

  He wondered what the kid would say if he told him. “I’m a minister,” he said instead.

  “A preacher, huh?” he said. “You believe in the Second Coming?”

  “The Second Coming?” Mel gasped, caught off-guard.

  “Yeah, we had a preacher come to the carny the other day telling us Jesus was coming back and was gonna punish everybody for hanging him on the cross, knock down the mountains, burn the whole planet up. You believe all that’s gonna happen?”

  “No,” Mel said. “I don’t think Jesus is coming back to punish anybody.”

  “The preacher said it was all right there in the Bible.”

  “There are lots of things in the Bible. They don’t always turn out to mean what you thought they did.”

  The kid nodded sagely. “Like the Siamese twins.”

  “Siamese twins?” Mel said, unable to remember any Siamese twins in the Bible.

  “Yeah, like this one carny up in Fargo. It had a big sign saying ‘See the Siamese twins,’ and everybody pays a buck, thinking they’re gonna see two people hooked together. And when they get there it’s a cage with two Siamese kittens in it. Like that.”

  “Not exactly,” Mel said. “The prophecies aren’t a scam to cheat people, they’re—”

  “What about Roswell? The alien autopsy and all that. You think that’s a scam, too?”

  Well, there was some outside confirmation for you. Mel was in a class with scam artists and UFO nuts.

  “After what happened the first time, I don’t know if I’d wanta come back or not,” the kid said, and it took Mel a minute to realize he was talking about Christ. “If I did, I’d wear some kind of disguise or something.”

  Like the last time, Mel thought, when He came disguised as a baby.

  The kid was still preoccupied with the ding. “There’s stuff you could do to keep it from spreading for a little while,” he said, “but it’s still gonna spread. There ain’t nothing that can stop it.” He pointed out the window at a sign. “Wayside, exit 1 mile.”

  Mel pulled off and into a Total station, apparently all there was to Wayside. The kid opened the door and started to take off the gloves.

  “Keep them,” Mel said. “Do you want me to wait till you find out if they’ve got a tow truck?”

  The kid shook his head. “I’ll call Pete.” He reached into the pocket of the denim jacket and handed Mel three orange cardboard tickets. They were marked “Admit One Free.”

  “It’s a ticket to the show,” the kid said. “We got a triple Ferris wheel, three wheels one inside the other. And a great roller coaster. The Comet.”

  Mel splayed the tickets apart. “There are three tickets here.”

  “Bring your friends,” the kid said, slapped the car door, and ambled off toward the gas station.

  Bring your friends.

  Mel got back on the highway. It was getting dark. He hoped the next exit wasn’t as far, or as uninhabited, as this one.

  Bring your friends. I should have told B.T., he thought, even though he would have said, Don’t go, you’re crazy, let me recommend a good psychiatrist.

  “I still should have told him,” he said out loud, and was as certain of it as he had been of what he should do in that moment in the church. And now he had cut himself off from B.T. not only by hundreds of miles of closed highways and “icy and snow-packed conditions,” but by his deception, his failure to tell him.

  The next exit didn’t even have a gas station, and the one after that nothing but a Dairy Queen. It was nearly eight by the time he got to Zion Center and a Holiday Inn.

  He walked straight in, not even stopping to get his luggage out of the trunk, and across the lobby toward the phones.

  “Hello!” The short plump woman he’d seen the night before waylaid him. “Here we are again, orphans of the storm. Weren’t the roads awful?” she said cheerfully. “I almost went off in the ditch twice. My little Honda doesn’t have four-wheel drive, and—”

  “Excuse me,” Mel interrupted her. “I have a phone call I have to make.”

  “You can’t,” she said, still cheerfully. “The lines are down.”

  “Down?”

  “Because of the storm. I tried to call my sister just now, and the clerk told me the phone’s been out all day. I don’t know what she’s going to think when she doesn’t hear from me. I promised faithfully that I’d call her every night and tell her where I was and that I’d gotten there safely.”

  He couldn’t call B.T. Or get to him. “Excuse me,” he said, and started back across the lobby to the registration desk.

  “Has the interstate going east opened up yet?” he asked the girl behind the counter.

  She shook her head. “It’s still closed between Malcolm and Iowa City. Ground blizzards,” she said. “Will you be checking in, sir? How many are there in your party?”

  “Two,” a voice said.

  Mel turned. And there, leaning against the end of the registration desk, was B.T.

  “And there appeared another wonder in heaven, and behold

  a great red dragon.”

  —REVELATION 12:3

  For a moment he couldn’t speak for the joy, the relief he felt. He clutched the check-out counter, vaguely aware that the girl behind the counter was saying something.

  “What are you doing here?” he said finally.

  B.T. smiled his slow checkmate smile. “Aren’t I the one who should be asking that?”

  And now that he was here, he would have to tell him. Mel felt the relief turn into resentment. “I thought the roads were closed,” he said.

  “I didn’t come that way,” B.T. said.

  “And how would you like to pay for that, sir?” the clerk said, and Mel knew she had asked him before.

  “Credit card,” he said, fumbling for his wallet.

  “License number?” the clerk asked.

  “I flew to Omaha and rented a car,” B.T. said.

  Mel handed her his MasterCard. “TY 804.”

  “State?”

  “Pennsylvania.” He looked at B.T. “How did you find me?”

  “‘License number?’” B.T. said, mimicking the clerk.” ‘Will you be putting this on your credit card, sir?’ If you’ve got a computer, it’s the easiest thing in the world to find someone these days, especially if they’re using that.” He gestured at the MasterCard the clerk was handing back to Mel.

  She handed him a folder. “Your room number is written inside, sir. It’s not on the key for security purposes,” the clerk said, as if his room number weren’t in the computer, too. B.T. probably already knew it.

  “You still haven’t answered my question,” B.T. said. “What are you doing here?”

  “I have to go get my suitcase,” Mel said, and walked past him and out to the parking lot and his car. He opened the trunk.

  B.T. reached past him and picked up Mel’s suitcase, as if taking it into custody.

  “How did you know I was missing?” Mel asked, but he already knew
the answer to that. “Mrs. Bilderbeck sent you.”

  B.T. nodded. “She said she was worried about you, that you’d called and something was seriously wrong. She said she knew because you hadn’t tried to get out of the ecumenical meeting on Thursday. She said you always tried to get out of it.”

  They say it’s the little mistakes that trip criminals up, Mel thought.

  “She said she thought you were sick and were going to see a specialist,” B.T. said, his black face gray with worry. “Out of town, so nobody in the congregation would find out about it. A brain tumor, she said.” He shifted the suitcase to his other hand. “Do you have a brain tumor?”

  A brain tumor. That would be a nice, convenient explanation. When Ivor Sorenson had had a brain tumor, he had stood up during the offertory, convinced there was an ostrich sitting in the pew next to him.

  “Are you sick?” B.T. said.

  “No.”

  “But it is something serious.”

  “It’s freezing out here,” Mel said. “Let’s discuss this inside.”

  B.T. didn’t move. “Whatever it is, no matter how bad it is, you can tell me.”

  “All right. Fine. ‘For ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of Man cometh.’ Matthew 25:13,” Mel said. “I had a revelation. About the Second Coming. I think He’s here already, that the Second Coming’s already happened.”

  Whatever B.T. had imagined—terminal illness or embezzlement or some other, worse crime—it obviously wasn’t as bad as this. His face went even grayer. “The Second Coming,” he said. “Of Christ?”

  “Yes,” Mel said. He told him what had happened during the sermon Sunday. “I scared the choir half out of their wits,” he said.

  B.T. nodded. “Mrs. Bilderbeck told me. She said you stopped in the middle of a sentence and just stood there, staring into space with your hand up to your forehead. That’s why she thought you had a brain tumor. How long did this … vision last?”

  “It wasn’t a vision,” Mel said. “It was a revelation, a conviction … an epiphany.”

  “An epiphany,” B.T. said in a flat, expressionless voice. “And it told you He was here? In Zion Center?”

  “No,” Mel said. “I don’t know where He is.”

  “You don’t know where He is,” B.T. repeated. “You just got in your car and started driving?”

  “West,” Mel said. “I knew He was somewhere west.”

  “Somewhere west,” B.T. said softly. He rubbed his hand over his mouth.

  “Why don’t you say it?” Mel said. He slammed the trunk shut. “You think I’m crazy.”

  “I think we’re both crazy,” he said, “standing out here in the snow, fighting. Have you had supper?”

  “No,” Mel said.

  “Neither have I,” B.T. said. He took Mel’s arm. “Let’s go get some dinner.”

  “And a dose of antidepressants? A nice straitjacket?”

  “I was thinking steak,” B.T. said, and tried to smile. “Isn’t that what they eat here in Iowa?”

  “Corn,” Mel said.

  “And when I looked, behold … the appearance of

  the wheels was as the colour of a beryl stone and …

  as if a wheel had been in the midst of a wheel.”

  —JEREMIAH 10:9–10

  Neither corn nor steak was on the menu, which had the Holiday Inn star on the front, and they were out of nearly everything else. “Because of the interstate being closed,” the waitress said. “We’ve got chicken teriyaki and beef chow mein.”

  They ordered the chow mein and coffee, and the waitress left. Mel braced himself for more questions, but B.T. only asked, “How were the roads today?” and told him about the problems he’d had getting a flight and a rental car. “Chicago O’Hare was shut down because of a winter storm,” he said, “and Denver and Kansas City. I had to fly into Albuquerque and then up to Omaha.”

  “I’m sorry you had to go to all that trouble,” Mel said.

  “I was worried about you.”

  The waitress arrived with their chow mein, which came with mashed potatoes and gravy and green beans.

  “Interesting,” B.T. said, poking at the gravy. He made a half-hearted attempt at the chow mein, and then pushed the plate away.

  “There’s something I don’t understand,” he said. “The Second Coming is when Christ returns, right? I thought He was supposed to appear in the clouds in a blaze of glory, complete with trumpets and angel choirs.”

  Mel nodded.

  “Then how can He already be here without anybody knowing?”

  “I don’t know,” Mel said. “I don’t understand any of this any more than you do. I just know He’s here.”

  “But you don’t know where.”

  “No. I thought when I got out here there would be a sign.”

  “A sign,” B.T. said.

  “Yes,” Mel said, getting angry all over again. “You know. A burning bush, a pillar of fire, a star. A sign.”

  He must have been shouting. The waitress came scurrying over with the check. “Are you through with this?” she said, looking at the plates of half-eaten food.

  “Yes,” Mel said. “We’re through.”

  “You can pay at the register,” the waitress said, and scurried away with their plates.

  “Look,” B.T. said, “the brain’s a very complicated thing. An alteration in brain chemistry—are you on any medications? Sometimes medications can cause people to hear voices or—”

  Mel picked up the check and stood, reaching for his wallet. “It wasn’t a voice.”

  He put down money for a tip and went over to the cash register.

  “You said it was a strong feeling,” B.T. said after Mel had paid. “Sometimes endorphins can—nothing like this has ever happened to you before, has it?”

  Mel walked out into the lobby. “Yes,” he said, and turned to face B.T. “It happened once before.”

  “When?” B.T. said, his face gray again.

  “When I was nineteen. I was in college, studying pre-law. I went to church with a girlfriend, and the minister gave a hellfire-and-brimstone sermon on the evils of dancing and associating with anyone who did. He said Jesus said it was wrong to associate with nonbelievers, that they would corrupt and contaminate you. Jesus, who spent all His time with lowlifes, tax collectors and prostitutes and lepers! And all of a sudden I had this overwhelming feeling, this—”

  “Epiphany,” B.T. said.

  “That I had to do something, that I had to fight him and all the other ministers like him. I stood up and walked out in the middle of the sermon,” Mel said, remembering, “and went home and applied to seminary.”

  B.T. rubbed his hand across his mouth. “And the epiphany you had yesterday was the same as that one?”

  “Yes.”

  “Reverend Abrams?” a woman’s voice said.

  Mel turned. The short plump woman who’d been on the phone and at the motel the night before was hurrying toward them, lugging her bright green tote bag.

  “Who’s that?” B.T. said.

  Mel shook his head, wondering how she knew his name.

  She came up to them. “Oh, Reverend Abrams,” she said breathlessly, “I wanted to thank you—I’m Cassie Hunter, by the way.” She stuck out a plump, beringed hand.

  “How do you do?” Mel said, shaking it. “This is Dr. Bernard Thomas, and I’m Mel Abrams.”

  She nodded. “I heard the desk clerk say your name. I didn’t thank you the other night for saving my life.”

  “Saving your life?” B.T. said, looking at Mel.

  “There was this awful whiteout,” Cassie said. “You couldn’t see the road at all, and if it hadn’t been for the taillights on Reverend Abrams’s car, I’d have ended up in a ditch.”

  Mel shook his head. “You shouldn’t thank me. You should thank the driver of the carnival truck I was following. He saved both of us.”

  “I saw those carnival trucks,” Cassie said. “I wondered what a carnival was doing
in Iowa in the middle of winter.” She laughed, a bright, chirpy laugh. “Of course, you’re probably wondering what a retired English teacher is doing in Iowa in the middle of winter. Of course, for that matter, what are you doing in Iowa in the middle of winter?”

  “We’re on our way to a religious meeting,” B.T. said before Mel could answer.

  “Really? I’ve been visiting famous writers’ birthplaces,” she said. “Everyone back home thinks I’m crazy, but except for the last few days, the weather’s been fine. Oh, and I wanted to tell you, I just talked to the clerk, and she thinks the phones will be working again by tomorrow morning, so you should be able to make your call.”

  She rummaged in her voluminous tote bag and came up with a room-key folder. “Well, anyway, I just wanted to thank you. It was nice meeting you,” she said to B.T., and bustled off across the lobby toward the coffee shop.

  “Who were you trying to call?” B.T. asked.

  “You,” Mel said bitterly. “I realized I owed it to you to tell you, even if you did think I was crazy.”

  B.T. didn’t say anything.

  “That is what you think, isn’t it?” Mel said. “Why don’t you just say it? You think I’m crazy.”

  “All right. I think you’re crazy,” B.T. said, and then continued angrily, “Well, what do you expect me to say? You take off in the middle of a blizzard, you don’t tell anyone where you’re going, because you saw the Second Coming in a vision?”

  “It wasn’t—”

  “Oh, right. It wasn’t a vision. You had an epiphany. So did the woman in The Globe last week who saw the Virgin Mary on her refrigerator. So did the Heaven’s Gate people. Are you telling me they’re not crazy?”

  “No,” Mel said, and started down the hall to his room.

  “For fifteen years you’ve raved about faith healers and cults and preachers who claim they’ve got a direct line to God being frauds,” B.T. said, following him, “and now you suddenly believe in it?”

  He kept walking. “No.”

  “But you’re telling me I’m supposed to believe in your revelation because it’s different, because this is the real thing.”

  “I’m not telling you anything,” Mel said, turning to face him. “You’re the one who came out here and demanded to know what I was doing. I told you. You got what you came for. Now you can go back and tell Mrs. Bilderbeck I don’t have a brain tumor, it’s a chemical imbalance.”