I was just patting my full belly when Aunt Helen told us that she'd baked an apple pie for dessert and that she had some ice cream and chocolate chip cookies too. I said to save me some while I went outside to play with Rocky. I was pretty sure Uncle Carl and Aunt Helen would have understood about Chewy being invisible now, but I didn't want to say anything with Mom sitting right there.
I ran all the way to the back of Uncle Carl's orchard searching for snakes, but I didn't find even a single garter snake. Rocky was racing around the whole time showing off how much he knew about where everything was, like groundhog holes and raccoons and such. But Chewy never minded Rocky's bragging and was taking it all in good fun.
I was finally starting to get hungry again and decided to leave the dogs out there to play some more while I headed back to the house. The window to the dining room was wide open, it being pretty hot out. As I was passing under it I heard Mom talking real low and serious, which was how she always talked about me with her nurse friends when she thought I wasn't listening.
“Nathan's doing much better now in school. I just wish he had more friends. I still hear him talking to Chewy once in a while. I've told the doctor about it, but he thinks he'll grow out of it.”
“It's a tough thing on a boy, losing his dog all of a sudden like that,” Uncle Carl said kind of garbled, like he still hadn't quite finished off his corn.
I pictured Aunt Helen throwing him a stern look.
“Maybe that young preacher could help him adjust,” Aunt Helen said. “You know, bring him out of his shell.”
I hated it when Mom started going on and on about me being lonely and having no friends and maybe being a little crazy too. How would she know anyway? It wasn't like she followed me around all day. I shut up my ears and then ran into the house as fast as I could, where as soon as they saw me they started talking about how rainy it had been that year.
“Good for the corn and tomatoes though,” Uncle Carl said, and then winked at me.
After gobbling down the apple pie and cotton candy ice cream, which Uncle Carl had bought special for me, I sat back and patted my stomach, hoping I wouldn't explode. Then I noticed that Uncle Carl had only eaten one little bite of pie and no ice cream or cookies. Uncle Carl was always shoveling down candy and donuts and anything sweet, and I asked him if he had a bellyache. Uncle Carl said that the doctor had told him to watch his sugar, whatever that meant. Then Mom chimed in that his diabetes wasn't a problem if Uncle Carl would just eat right and exercise a little like the doctor wanted.
“Easy for you to say,” Uncle Carl moaned.
Aunt Helen wiped her mouth off with the big white handkerchief she had sitting on her lap, even though her mouth looked plenty clean to me.
“If you had just taken better care of yourself all these years, you wouldn't be in this mess.”
Uncle Carl reached down and yanked off his slippers and then started rubbing his toes a little. His toes looked fine to me, although the nails seemed a little thick and pale and crusty at the top.
“My feet are already starting to go bad. Next thing you know I won't be able to see. That's how diabetes works. It just wears down all your organs.”
“Follow the doctor's orders and you'll be fine,” Mom broke in before Aunt Helen could yell at him again. “It's at an early enough stage that it's easily treatable.”
But Uncle Carl still looked pretty sour about it, and I was wondering how I could cheer him up when all of a sudden I got an idea.
“Why don't you go down and see Mary? I bet she could heal you up, a lot quicker than those doctors anyway. And she'll probably let you eat all the apple pie and ice cream you want.”
Uncle Carl looked at me kind of strange and mixed up for a second, but he didn't say anything.
“Faith healing,” Mom snorted kind of testy. “That's the big new thing in town. I'm sure it's just a passing fad though. I hope so anyway.”
Then Mom told them how I was the first one to see Mary's face on the concrete, and they all laughed about that. Even Uncle Carl seemed to perk up, which I was glad about because I wasn't used to seeing Uncle Carl all sad and gloomy. Mom was the one who was supposed to be depressed all the time, not Uncle Carl.
“The town council is holding a public meeting tomorrow evening to discuss what to do about it,” Mom said. “I guess some people are complaining about all the traffic and noise.”
Right away I asked Mom if we could go. She said that I could tag along with her if I promised to keep my mouth shut. I promised and she said okay, probably just so she wouldn't look so mean and stubborn in front of Uncle Carl and Aunt Helen. Then Mom said we better get going because we had to get up early for church.
Just as we stepped outside I gave a secret hand signal to Chewy to make sure she knew to climb back into our car. I hadn't decided yet whether Chewy had superfast powers when it came to traveling, like she could fly or something, or whether she had to ride in the car with us. I expected she could fly home on her own if she really wanted to, but I didn't feel like taking any chances.
It wasn't long before it was pitch black out, and as we drove along I could hear the crickets singing by the road, which always made me feel a little lonesome. Then my eyes got heavy, but I kept pinching the loose skin on my arm because I wanted to tell Mom something before I forgot.
“I don't wanna move out to the country.”
Mom smiled up into the rearview mirror.
“We'll have plenty of time to talk about it later.”
“Why are you always telling people that I don't have any friends? Carlos likes me, and so do some of those old ladies like Mrs. Marcella.”
“Why don't you go to sleep?”
I must not have been able to hold out any longer, because everything went dark until we got home and Mom made me go to bed.
Mom said our church didn't look like a lot of churches, because there weren't any crosses or stained glass windows or pulpits or altars or anything too religious, nothing like the kind of stuff Carlos was always selling at his little table. We didn't even have any song books or Bibles out where the people sat. Everything you needed to know, even the Bible verses and the words to the songs, they flashed up on a big screen behind the stage, just like at the movies. And the seats were soft and cushy too, not like those hard plastic chairs at school. You could even lean back a little and fall asleep if you wanted to, although sometimes it was hard to fall asleep with all the shouting and praising God going on. Some Catholic kids at school said I was a Protestant, even though I told them that our church was called “Lamb of the Redeemer Holy Ghost Worship and Revival Center.” Some kid with big ears even called me a Fundamentalist once, whatever that meant, and he made it seem like it wasn't such a great thing to be, either. When I asked Mom about it, she said we weren't really anything. She said the church was on its own and we just went there because we liked it. Our church didn't have any statues of Mary outside, that was for sure.
That Sunday Pastor Bob was preaching. He was real tall and lean, and from back where we sat most Sundays he looked like all nose, chin and legs, except for his thick gray hair that he combed straight back. Mostly I tuned Pastor Bob out and just sat there daydreaming, because he talked a lot about what to do and what not to do. And I had a hard time remembering all those little rules of his. I guess I could have remembered them if I really tried, but I just never felt like it. I liked Pastor Mike's sermons a lot better, because he mostly talked about loving your neighbor and not getting a big head and treating other people the way you'd want to be treated, stuff that was pretty easy to understand.
That morning Pastor Bob started off by saying how bad it was to worship idols and graven images and pictures. I wasn't really sure what idols or graven images were, but I knew what a picture was and started paying more attention. It turned out that Pastor Bob was all in an uproar about Mary's face showing up along Main Street and how silly it all was. He said that even if it was Mary and not just some water mark, we're supposed to worship Jesus and not her. He said that the Catholics were way off base putting so much stock in Mary, building statues to her and painting pictures of her and praying to her and stuff like that, and that we shouldn't fall into the same trap.
I didn't quite follow him on what trap he was talking about, but he made it sound pretty scary and I wondered if I was close to falling into it. Then he said how he'd just read in the paper about some guy in Ohio who thought he saw Mary in a pan right after he'd fried up some rice.
“Now that fellow bows down and prays to his frying pan every morning before he goes to work,” Pastor Bob said, kind of chuckling.
Most everybody, including Mom, laughed about the frying pan, but Pastor Bob said it really wasn't very funny when you thought about it.
“Weak-minded people can easily be led astray by such foolishness.”
I didn't know if I qualified as weak-minded or not, but Father Tom sure didn't look weak-minded and Carlos didn't either. I began wondering if I was headed straight to Hell for having seen her face first and telling that blabbermouth Marcie about her. All this time Mom was sitting there beside me mostly staring up at the stage with her eyes sort of glassy and her head tilted sideways a little. I nudged her arm and whispered whether I could leave early to talk to Pastor Mike. She whispered back that I could, so long as I didn't make a pest of myself. Just then Pastor Bob started talking about the church's new building project and how they'd need to raise a ton of money real quick to start construction on time.
“Introduce yourself to Pastor Mike like a little gentleman,” she whispered real intense and breathy. “Just don't go up to him and start asking questions. I don't want him to think you were raised in a barn.”
Mom was always griping about me acting like I'd been raised in a barn, which I thought was pretty strange since there weren't any barns that I knew of inside the Millridge city limits. Pastor Bob was still begging for money when I went out to the lobby and found Pastor Mike standing all by himself stirring the cream into his little blue coffee mug. I took a deep breath and walked right up to him to introduce myself like Mom told me. He smiled and patted me on the shoulder and asked me how I was doing. He knew my name too before I even had a chance to say it.
I'd heard Mom going on and on to her friends one time about how cute Pastor Mike was. I guess it was because of his sharp blue eyes and thick black hair that curled down a little over his forehead. But it was hard to tell what Mom was thinking sometimes, and I didn't really care whether he was cute or not.
“Is Mary real, her picture on the concrete I mean? Pastor Bob doesn't think so. He says I'm going straight to Hell if I go down and ask her for favors and stuff, although I haven't really asked her for anything yet, at least not for myself.”
Pastor Mike laughed for a few seconds, like I'd just told a good joke or something, and then his face settled into a nice pleasant grin. Pastor Mike had soft, smooth skin and a dimple when he smiled, just like Mom, and I wondered if that was another reason why she liked him so much.
“I don't think you have anything to worry about.”
“So you don't think she's a fake then.”
“I don't really know. Do you think she's a fake?”
I hated it whenever teachers at school answered my question with a question of their own. I was hoping that Pastor Mike was better than that.
“I think she's real, but I can't prove it. I don't know how you'd go about proving something like that anyway. The cops even came around asking me questions about herâwhether she was a fake I mean. But they didn't look smart enough to prove much of anything about her one way or another.”
I noticed Pastor Mike eyeing me up pretty close all of a sudden.
“When did they ask you these questions?”
“Just yesterday. They think Carlos and me are in cahoots, but I'm not worried since I didn't do anything wrong. They didn't say anything about Father Tom though. Do you think they're after him too?”
Pastor Mike's blue eyes weren't shining nearly as bright and sharp as before.
“Father Tom is a fine man. So is Carlos. The police should stick to solving real crimes.”
I remembered what Marcie had told me and decided to ask him about it just to see what he'd say.
“Maybe Father Tom wants to drum up some business for his church. His church isn't growing near as fast as ours, although I think it's because our church has a lot better music.”
Pastor Mike shrugged a little and then took a long swig of his coffee.
“That doesn't sound like something Father Tom would do.”
“How do you think her face got there then?”
Pastor Mike sipped some more coffee.
“Maybe it's just a water stain like some people say, or maybe it really is a miracle. But whatever the cause, she provides hope to those who believe in her. We all need hope. We can no more live without it than we can live without food or water. And who are we to deny people hope, regardless of the source?”
“So you don't think Mary is just some Catholic thing then like Pastor Bob says, because Mom'll never let me switch to being Catholic. She doesn't like all the candle burning and air swishing and the long robes and everything. But Mom can be pretty mule-headed about stuff.”
Pastor Mike laughed a little and then swilled down the rest of his coffee. He kind of slurped it there at the end, like Mom always did in the mornings when she was still waking up. I remembered thinking that if I ever drank my orange juice like that, she'd have been on me in a second to clean up my manners. I wondered if Pastor Mike knew what he was getting into by hooking up with Mom.
“The Catholics put more emphasis on Mary than we do, but it's only out of reverence for her. Maybe I'll have to talk to Pastor Bob and see if we can iron out our differences.”
“Do you think she can really do miracles?”
“I think we should respect the beliefs of others, just like we hope other folks will respect ours.”
“You mean when all those old ladies down in the front start lifting their hands way up in the air and swaying back and forth like they're gonna faint any second?”
“Sort of,” he said, and smiled.
Then he patted me on the shoulder again and looked around for some place to set his coffee mug, like he was trying to shake loose of me. But I still had some more questions.
“Did you quit talking with Mom long enough at the blessing ceremony to see the old guy with the shakes getting healed?”
“I heard about it. And it's probably more polite to say Parkinson's disease.”
I followed him to a window ledge a few yards away where he set his mug. I was hanging so near to him that my legs almost got tangled up with his. He didn't seem to mind me tailing him though, not like my English teacher, Mr. Grimes, for instance, who always acted like I had some sort of disease.
“I saw the whole thing, and it sure looked real enough to me, although I guess it was possible that the old guy could have been faking it. Mom says that even if he actually felt better, it'll wear off before not too long and he'll be as bad off as he was before, or maybe even worse. But Mom's always so gloomy about everything that I don't know whether to believe her or not.”
Pastor Mike said he hoped it wouldn't wear off, and then he started looking over my head toward the doors of the auditorium, like he expected church to end soon. I remembered something else that had been bugging me.
“How do you know what Mary is trying to tell you if she's not saying anything? Carlos says she's a sign for something, something important that's gonna happen, but I can't figure out what because she won't say.”
Pastor Mike sure was quick, a lot quicker than Mom, anyway, and maybe even Carlos, because he had his answer all ready to go. He even looked me right in the eyes for a few seconds, like what he was telling me was important enough that I ought to pay attention. I flinched a little since I wasn't used to it. The teachers at school, for instance, always seemed like they were talking to the walls.
“Your ears just hook up with your brain, Nate, but when you listen to Mary you have to listen with your heart too.”
Then he flicked my ear lobe with his finger.
“So it's kind of like her words just show up inside you.”
“Kind of.”
It sounded a little like how Chewy talked to me now that she was invisible. I looked around to see what she was up to, but I couldn't find her. I wasn't worried though, because after church Chewy usually liked going outside to chase snakes. Our church was built smack up against the woods, and the snakes seemed to like living there.
Then Pastor Mike started asking me all sorts of dumb questions about how Mom and me were doing, and whether Mom was happy, and whether I was happy, and how he'd like to see me around church more and stuff like that. He even asked me about Chewy. I told him not to say anything to Mom about Chewy being invisible because Mom wasn't really smart enough to understand it, and he promised he wouldn't. Then a clump of words burst out of me so fast that I never really saw them coming, at least not until they were floating right out there between us.
“Mom's thinking of moving us up to Erie so I can get another dog and run around in some field. I don't really want to though, especially now that I'm sort of famous around here for being the one to discover Mary. I don't think they'd care much up in Erie one way or the other, unless Mary followed me up there. But I'm not sure if she's able to show her face in two places at one time, or even if she'd want to. So if you're thinking about asking Mom to marry you, you'd better get to it before it's too late and we're long gone. Mom thinks she's too old and fat for you anyway.”
Pastor Mike's eyes got real wide, and he sort of stumbled around for a few seconds, like maybe he wasn't quite as quick as I thought.
“Well, that's good to know. Thanks for the tip.”
Then church let out and I had to scramble out of there fast to keep from getting crushed among all the old ladies charging out to surround him. Mom usually hung around the lobby gossiping with her friends and trying to angle in to see Pastor Mike, but today she seemed in a rush to leave. I gave my secret hand signal to Chewy to get back in the car, and we all took off. On our way home I told Mom what Pastor Mike had said about Mary not being so terrible and scary after all. She nodded but didn't seem to care one way or the other.
“It's funny that Pastor Mike takes Mary's side, almost as strong as Father Tom and Carlos do, and he's not even Catholic.”
“Pastor Mike thinks for himself,” Mom said kind of dreamy.
Since Mom wasn't talking much, I spent the rest of the ride home staring out the window trying to decide whether Mary was speaking to me inside my heart yet or not like Pastor Mike had warned me about, but I couldn't tell.