The Visitation Part 7

I watched for him to come around the back of the house and toward the front of the yard again, trying not to have a silly grin on my face in case he should look my way. He appeared soon enough, circling around the back deck and weaving his way toward me through the fruit trees. It was him, all right. He spotted me right away, smiled that same pleasant smile, and this time he waved. I waved back. He seemed like a nice guy.

I looked down at the catalog in my hand so as not to stare at him. I was just debating whether to return indoors or walk over and say h.e.l.lo when I heard the mower stop in the front of John's yard.

"Hey Travis!" the man yelled. I looked up. "Got a minute?"

"Uh, sure." I set the mail in the mailbox and left the door open to remind me. Crossing the street, I kept looking at his face and probing my memory. He knew me by name, but had we met before? Had he ever been to the church while I was pastoring? Maybe he came into Judy's a few times, or attended one of the acoustic jams. I crossed the street, approaching the little lawn mower where he sat waiting. I did not remember this guy. He gave me a sympathetic smile. "You're really going through it, aren't you?"

I smiled to be pleasant. "Excuse me?"

"You'll be okay. It's just a little eye opener, that's all."

"Have we met before?"

"Never face to face." He offered his gloved hand. "Or hand to hand."

I took his hand to shake it and felt a weird tingling, like electricity. It didn't stop and I pulled my hand away. "Whoa!"

"What?"

"Got a little shock."

He chuckled. "Sorry. Must be the lawn mower." He rested his elbows on the mower's steering wheel and looked at me casually. "We've known each other for years, Travis, ever since you were eight years old." I was about to question him on that, but he didn't pause. "It's a lonely time for you, I know, especially when so many folks don't understand what you're going through. They've never been there. But you and I have." He chuckled, shook his head, then said in a mimicky voice, "Travis, you need to come back to the Lord." He told me sincerely, "They don't know your heart."

Just a landscape man? "Who are you?"

He gazed at me for just a moment, his head slightly c.o.c.ked. "I've been with you all this time and you don't know me?"

Well . . . he could have been Jewish, from the Middle East. His skin was dark, his eyes a deep brown, his hair jet-black with a gentle curl at the ends. Then again, he could have been part Native American or perhaps Hispanic. He seemed to know a lot about me, even what I might be thinking, but I wasn't about to take the bait. "No. I guess I don't know you. But go ahead, I'm listening."

He drew a breath, sighed it out, and then said, "Travis, you've lived here for years. You know the people, you know the ministry. So tell me. I've sent some messengers on ahead to prepare people. How are people responding? What are they thinking?"

I was trying to remember what I had prayed for a few minutes ago. Whatever it was, I wasn't expecting this for an answer. "Oh, people are really buzzing about it. Yesterday the ministerial had its best attendance in years."

"They even let you in."

"I behaved myself. I didn't say much."

"What else?"

I thought a moment, then told him about Nancy's big write-up on the healing of Arnold Kowalski and the angelic visitations. "She sold a lot of papers this morning."

He smiled and nodded, obviously quite pleased.

"So, I'm to understand you're the cause of all this?"

"Well, I haven't appeared in the clouds. I haven't appeared to anyone except you. You know how it is. Some people receive the message and ponder it for what it is, and some take it like a handoff and just run with it-usually out of bounds. It happens."

Wow. He knows football. But then I pulled out the old 1 John 4 test. "So let me ask you: Did Jesus come in the flesh?"

He held out his arm and pinched the flesh under his s.h.i.+rt. "What do you think this is?"

"But why all this show biz, all this angelic stuff and weeping images?"

He shrugged. "John the Baptist doesn't get out much these days."

In spite of myself, I laughed. "I can't believe I'm having this conversation."

"Give it time, Travis. I don't expect you to believe everything in one moment, not even one week. But I was kidding about John the Baptist. This all goes deeper than clouds and angels and images. You know that."

"This is a gag! Somebody sent you, right?"

"Actually, I came on my own."

I laughed at that as if it were another joke. "Yeah, right."

"I'm a little surprised you haven't asked me about Marian."

That was no gag. It was a sudden, very serious twist, and I could feel it. I studied him. He just raised an eyebrow and looked back at me, waiting.

So now we were going to talk about Marian? This man was a total stranger to me. My answer came with difficulty, but I hoped it would close the topic. "It would be a very big question."

He nodded as if he understood. "The answer's pretty big too." Then he added, "But she sends her regards."

If this was a joke, it was a sick one. I could feel my anger starting to rise- A car pulled up beside us. "h.e.l.lo?" a lady called from the pa.s.senger side.

I turned. "Yeah? Can I help you?"

Behind me, the mower started up. "We'll talk again, Travis!"

I jerked my head back to see him putting the mower in gear.

The lady in the car was saying something I couldn't hear over the mower. I turned to her again. "Excuse me?"

She repeated, "We're lost. Can you tell us how to get to the Catholic church?"

I approached the car so I could communicate better. I could hear the mower whirring toward the back of the yard. "You're looking for Our Lady of the Fields?"

"Yes, that's it!"

I noticed the car was full; four women and two men. It had an Oregon license plate. "Uh, well, you head down this street till you get to 7th-it's right where that red pickup is parked."

"Uh-huh."

"Turn left, go down the hill to Highway 2, that's the main drag through town."

The lady driving the car elbowed the older woman sitting next to her. "I told you we weren't supposed to turn!"

"Turn right, and it's down two blocks, on the left. Big stone church. You can't miss it."

"Do you think it's open today?"

I ventured a question. "Are you here to see the weeping crucifix?"

Every pa.s.senger in that car brightened up and leaned toward me. The pa.s.senger lady said, "We sure are! Have you seen it?"

"I haven't seen it cry, but I've seen it."

She nodded toward one of the gentlemen in back. "Barry has lung cancer. We've come clear from Oregon."

I noticed the gentleman had oxygen tubes attached to his nostrils. I didn't know what to say other than, "I think Father Vendetti is keeping the doors open all day."

She clapped, they giggled, the driver put the car in gear.

"Thanks a lot! G.o.d bless!"

"G.o.d bless," I said, and they drove away.

I watched them until they turned left at the red pickup and drove out of sight, struck by what I had seen in that car, and so many times before: serious illness companioned with high hopes. I knew what that was like. I wondered how it would turn out.

But where did the Mower Man go? I no longer heard the mower running and I couldn't see it.

Hoping John wouldn't mind-and not really caring at the moment- I went into his yard, following the last mown path. As I rounded the back of the house, I found the mower parked by the patio, but no sign of its mysterious operator. I peered about the yard, over the fence, and through the back gate like a hound on a hunt, but there was no one around. I almost knocked on the door of the house, but finally put the brakes on and admitted that my emotions were getting the better of me. Whoever this man was or claimed to be, we had ended our conversation on a tedious subject that was best left closed for the time being. I took a moment to draw a long breath, then turned for home.

Between John Billings's yard and my mailbox I determined that John and I would talk about his lawn mower man. I would be in a cooler mood by the time John got home. I would quietly and politely find out who the man was, extend to him an opportunity to apologize for being so cruel and tasteless, and hopefully put this whole event to rest. Surely the Mower Man understood that the town was going through enough craziness right now and I was in enough pain. His witty masquerade would not help matters.

I would be civil. I would be Christian.

By the time I retrieved my mail from the mailbox, I'd dealt with my anger. I'd cooled down a bit.

But the pain was still there. The Mower Man had gotten to me. His words and actions, like slow venom, were still working, and by the time I reached my front door I felt nineteen again. Not young, just burdened with an old sorrow, a deep loneliness, a familiar despair.

Certain smells, like the odor of your grade school or even the scent of an old girlfriend, remain in your memory forever. An old song can bring back the feelings you had when you first fell in love. You may think you don't remember how the back door of your childhood home sounded when it swung shut, but if you could hear it again, you would know the sound.

As I sat on the couch and picked up my banjo, I knew this feeling. I knew when and where I'd felt it before. I was nineteen at the time, sitting alone on the bed in my room in Seattle. I still remembered the "new house" smell of that room, the texture of the Sears bedspread, the feel and color of the blue-green carpet on the floor, the exact position of my Glen Campbell poster on the wall. I had a banjo in my hands then too-a brown, fifty-dollar Harmony with a plastic resonator, and I could have been playing the same song I was playing now.

I was nineteen, alone, and there was absolutely nothing happening in my life.

It was a pivotal moment, I suppose, frozen in memory like a historic photo from the LIFE magazine archives, a pa.s.sage out of childhood and a painful end to illusions. I'd been in love, but lost the girl; I'd been a prophet of G.o.d, but proven wrong; I'd prayed for the sick, but they didn't get well; G.o.d had called me to a faraway city, but hadn't met me there; my friends and I were going to change the world for G.o.d, but they had all scattered after graduation. I had been a young man of such hope and faith, but now my hope and faith were gone, slowly suffocated by disappointment and disillusionment. I felt desperately alone with no idea where to go next or why I should even want to go there.

Sitting on my couch at forty-five, banjo in hand, I could feel it all. The lawn mower man brought it all back. He was trying to be Jesus. He spoke of Marian. It made me realize how much I missed them both.

5.

THE Harvester didn't come out again until Tuesday, and when it did, Penny Adams was on the front page, holding her right hand high and wiggling it for the camera. It was a great picture and a great article, but oddly enough-and virtually unheard of in our little town-a big, out-of-town paper actually "scooped" Nancy Barrons on a local story. Someone-I'm guessing it was Penny's mother, Bonnie-called the Spokane Herald, and they sent a photographer and reporter to Antioch on Thursday afternoon. The story ran in the "People" section of the Herald on Friday, with a color picture of Penny and Arnold Kowalski standing on either side of Father Al and the crucifix visible on the wall behind them. But the outside news coverage didn't stop there.

Reporters and producers from three different Spokane stations saw the Spokane Herald article on Friday morning and had their crews out to Our Lady's before ten o'clock. Al, Penny, and Arnold posed in front of the crucifix again and did their on-camera interviews with the crucifix specially lit by TV lights. Bonnie, being Penny's mother and therefore worthy of quoting, elbowed her way into the story and got her face on television. The camera operators made sure to record the crowd of pilgrims sitting in the pews waiting for it to happen again, and also got sweeping shots of the outside of the church. When I drove by about noon, I saw the news crews still walking up and down the highway, cameras aimed at the church, the highway through town, Mack's, Judy's, the street signs, and any people who might happen along. Our town-even our street signs and Maude Henley walking her three-legged toy poodle-had suddenly become interesting. But it didn't stop there.

Anything interesting enough to get the attention of the Spokane Herald is interesting enough to make the wire services. That same Friday morning, major newspapers and news broadcasters all over the country were reading the wire copy, perusing the wire photos of Penny, Father Al, Bonnie, and Arnold, and raising their eyebrows. They wanted more. The big newspapers called the Herald. The networks called their Spokane affiliates.

Of course, by this time the local reporters were after sidebars and spin-offs to the core story. Sally Fordyce made the Sat.u.r.day editions and the weekend television news, her story corroborated by an anonymous, silhouetted member of the local Baptist congregation and the testimony of a police department spokesman who declined to appear on camera. By Sunday, the pilgrims coming to Our Lady's had doubled. That became a story in itself, which further increased the number of out-of-town reporters.

On Sunday, all the Christians and ministers in town were gathered at their respective churches, making them easy to locate and interview on camera as their services let out. Sid Maher expressed astonishment as the reporters interviewed him standing in front of his church, while Burton Eddy at least sneered civilly as he expressed skepticism in front of his. Bob Fisher had the Word of G.o.d to comfort him and that was enough. Morgan Elliott was indignant that such a private matter would become so public.

When a cameraman and reporter from Seattle came by Antioch Pentecostal Mission, Kyle didn't want to limit G.o.d but still called for caution.

Dee Baylor was waiting in the parking lot with a whole new spin-off. She had other witnesses camera-ready, Blanche had video and photographs, and Adrian had written records. By two in the after- noon, three stations from the west side of the state and two from the east side were aiming their cameras at the clouds while Dee provided the shape-by-shape commentary. That little twist on the story attracted more attention, which drew more pilgrims, which better filled the parking lot. All of which made it a better news story.

And people did start seeing things up there.

BY SUNDAY AFTERNOON, the Wheatland Motel had filled eight of its ten rooms, something Norman Dillard, the owner, hadn't seen in years. By the time a married couple and the man's brother-in-law arrived from Yakima to take the ninth room, Norman was beginning to reel off information like a tour guide.

"The weeping crucifix can be seen at Our Lady of the Fields Catholic church, up the highway and on the left, open twenty-four hours. Also, I understand they're seeing Jesus in the clouds at Antioch Pentecostal Mission, one block over and up the hill. Well, yes, I suppose you could stand anywhere, but Antioch Mission is the traditional place to gather, and facilitators are there to answer your questions. For angels-well, that could happen anywhere, any time. That's part of the thrill. Yes, cameras are allowed at all locations. Cloud watching will be pretty good for this afternoon, but the forecast is for decreasing clouds this evening and clear skies tomorrow, so keep that in mind as you make your plans."

Just outside, an older couple Norman had never seen before halted abruptly as the wife pointed at the hedge bordering the driveway. "I see him!"

The husband, somewhere near eighty and squinting through trifocals, studied the hedge. "Where?"

She was digging for her palm-sized camera. "Right there! Right there in those leaves!"

He muttered, "You're seeing things already?"

She yanked him by the arm. "You have to be standing here!"

He stood where she put him, studied the hedge, and never got the puzzled look off his face while she snapped pictures.

Norman signed in the new arrivals and gave them the key to Room Nine. Only one vacant room left, and that older couple was heading his way.

Hm. This religious stuff was good for business.

JACK MCKINSTRY noticed a lot of new faces coming through Mack's Sooper Market as well. The news crews stopped in for crackers, chips, and soft drinks. Out-of-towners were buying whole loads of groceries as well as film and batteries for their cameras. Others were stocking up on carry-along snacks for the vigils under the clouds or below the crucifix. He and his wife, Lindy, had little time to rest during checkouts at the cash registers.

"Hey," he called to Lindy, "what if we dress up our employees like angels? You know, little angel wings or something?"

He was at cash register two; she was at cash register three. She started speaking louder so she could concentrate-"Two at fifty, dollar twenty-nine, dollar forty, three ninety-nine . . ."-and then vetoed the idea with her eyes.

He chuckled as he counted cans of beans, sliding them along the counter with shuffleboard precision. Well, maybe that idea was a little too daring, but the way business was picking up lately, one couldn't be too quick to frown at new ideas.

Mack's was a family business, begun by Jack's father back when misspelling Super was still clever. It wasn't a large place, but Jack worked hard to keep pace with the big-town supermarkets while maintaining a neighborhood grocery att.i.tude. The store had four checkout counters with one designated "Ten Items or Less," but the laser bar-code readers were still something he'd only read about. The automatic doors were still activated by pressure pads instead of motion detectors, but Jack saw no need to upgrade them as long as they worked and the customers didn't mind waiting a little. He kept a magazine rack at each checkout with a fresh rotation of Cosmopolitan, People, and The National Enquirer, but drew the line at any magazine that had to have its cover concealed. He'd finally put in a video rack, but only at Lindy's insistence. At heart, Jack was a grocery man, the kind of guy who did his own meat cutting, bought produce from local farmers, and always provided floor s.p.a.ce for church bake sales.

"And that will be . . ." He scanned the register's display. "Forty-nine eighty-two." He got the money, gave the customer the receipt, Ronny the box boy took over, and Jack was free for a moment. "Hey Nevin, the widow called. She's wondering where you are."