Father Tom was standing a few feet in front of the steps with his big wide back to us. He was all dressed up in a long white robe that reached down so far that I couldn't see his shoes. And he had a wide purple belt with little white fluffy tassels on the ends wrapped around his shoulders. At our church Pastor Mike and Pastor Bob never got dressed up fancy like that. The most they ever got dressed up was at Christmas Eve and Easter when they wore a suit and tie. I looked around for Chewy to make sure she wasn't lost. But just like Mom she wasn't paying any attention to the ceremony and was busy sniffing some old guy's socks.
According to the Catholic kids at school Father Tom used to be a Golden Gloves boxer, and I believed it too because his nose was all smashed in. But as big and strong as he was, Father Tom liked to smile and laugh a lot and tell funny stories that weren't dirty or anything. Sometimes he'd play basketball with a bunch of us on the playground outside St. Sebastian's, even though he wasn't very good at dribbling. I wasn't very good at dribbling either. But I was decent at kickball because thanks to Chewy I could run pretty fast; it was the only sport besides dodge ball that I didn't get picked dead last in.
Father Tom was holding a book wide open in his thick hands, which I figured was a Bible because it was black and pretty solid looking, and it had a long red piece of cloth to mark your place. It looked just like the Bible our ministers carried around with them, except that the place marker in theirs was green. I wondered if it had the same stories in it.
Carlos was standing off a little to one side with his hands folded in front of him and his head tilted down a little like he was praying. But he must not have been praying too hard because I saw him wink at me once or twice. The sun was so bright that it was shining off his head like little squiggly bolts of lightning. It was shining off Father Tom's head too because he didn't have much hair either, except for right over his ears and down around the back of his neck, where it had turned mostly gray. I felt a little sorry for him because he was already sweating pretty good under that heavy robe. But it didn't seem to bother him, and he was looking up at the hot blue sky and kind of smiling at it.
I tried to get a look at Mary's face, but she was too far away. Then I saw three sets of crutches leaning up against Carlos's table where he must have still been selling all his religious goods. I looked around to see who the crutches belonged to, but nobody was limping around much except old Mr. Whales from up our street. I spotted some people in wheelchairs a ways back in the crowd. But they looked to be in such bad shape that I didn't think they could stand up even if they had good, sturdy crutches to lean on.
Father Tom cleared his throat, and me and everybody else in the front row shut up right away. Farther back where Mom was still yakking with her friend they took a little longer to pipe down. Then Father Tom started talking in his preaching voice, sort of grainy and deep I mean. I knew how a preaching voice sounded because our ministers talked the same way when they were preaching.
“We have gathered here today on this beautiful morning to give thanks to God for his many blessings, and especially to revere the image of our Blessed and Holy Mother, which He has so graciously provided us for our comfort and reflection.”
“Is he talking about Mary?” I whispered to the old guy next to me. Mary seemed to have so many different names that I just wanted to make sure.
He nodded and then smiled up kind of misty toward the sky, like he was expecting some angel to come floating down on top of us or something.
Father Tom sang a little song that I didn't really understand the words to, swished at the air in front of him with his right hand like Catholics are always doing, and read a couple verses from his Bible. I didn't recognize any of the verses, but that didn't mean anything since I was no expert. While he was reading, the old fellow next to me bowed his head and closed his eyes, so I did too.
When Father Tom was finally through reading he swished the air again and then walked up to the top of the concrete steps real firm and steady, like he was going up to heaven or something. Then he swished the air one more time, got down on his knees right in front of Mary, spread his arms out wide, and then asked God to forgive all our sins. That part I understood because our ministers, Pastor Bob especially, were always asking God to forgive us, because they said we were generally a pretty miserable bunch.
Father Tom got up without even grunting and sprinkled some water over Mary's face from this little silver pail that Carlos handed to him. It would have made a nice bucket to water the flowers and the tomatoes Mom grew out back, if it had just been a little bigger. I figured it was full of holy water, because I'd seen some old movies on television where priests did the same thing to vampires. But when the holy water hit her face, Mary didn't shrivel up and disappear like the vampires had. I decided it must have been because she was holy too, and that Father Tom just wanted to clean off some of the dirt and grime that had built up from her sitting out in the rain and wind.
I hadn't really thought of it until just then, but the way the steps led up to Mary did look sort of religious, like you had to climb up to reach her. I didn't know if Mary had planned it that way or not, but she probably did if she was as special as the Catholics were always saying.
After Father Tom was through sprinkling the water on, he turned around, swished the air at us again, and thanked the people for showing up on time and generally behaving themselves. That must have been the signal that the ceremony was over, because right away everybody started chattering again until it built up into the kind of racket you might hear at a big football game. Pretty soon the crowd got a little rowdy too as folks started pushing and shoving for a chance to see Mary up close.
I started looking for Mom, because I didn't really feel like waiting around in some long line and getting all beat up trying to hold my spot. I kept my eye out for the little drunk too. But the ceremony must not have had anything to do with him because I didn't see him anywhere.
Finally I spotted Mom talking to Pastor Mike, and right away it hit me why she was itching to come so bad. She probably thought that because it had to do with religious stuff, Pastor Mike would show up and she could corner him. She was really laying it on him thick too. She was flashing her big green eyes at him, I mean, and smiling that shiny smile of hers and tilting her head this way and then that way, and all the while she was talking a mile a minute. I felt a little sorry for Pastor Mike having to put up with Mom like that, but he seemed to be holding in there okay. It didn't look like they were planning to quit any time soon, so I started searching around for something to do.
I decided to talk to Carlos a little, because I still had some questions. Carlos was already sitting behind his table getting ready to sell the crosses and pictures of Mary and other stuff he'd stacked up on it. I didn't think the crutches were for sale because there was no price tag on them, but everything else was.
I didn't want folks to think I was trying to cut in line, so I strolled around real casual to the rear of the lot, right near the back wall of the 7-Eleven with all the cuss words still scribbled all over. I wondered why someone hadn't scraped the paint off yet, since all those swear words so near to Mary didn't look right. But Carlos and Father Tom and the rest of the big Catholics in town must not have gotten around to it, probably on account of how busy they were in blessing her and selling stuff and swishing the air and all that.
It wasn't long before I was able to scoot up to just a few feet behind where Carlos was sitting at his table. I was hoping for a slow period when he could talk to me without having to haggle over prices. But Carlos was busy answering questions about the six-inch gold crosses to a bunch of old ladies who didn't seem in any rush, so to pass the time I began watching the tourists filing past Mary.
A little ways back was this skinny old guy in a baggy gray suit who had a bad case of the shakes. He was all stooped over too, like he could have used a cane to prop him up. His hands and knees were quivering so bad that if this woman, who I guessed was his daughter since she had the same kind of flat, fleshy nose he did, hadn't been there to steady him, I doubted if he'd have ever made it to the steps.
The old fellow was all set on seeing Mary though, because he kept yelling at the folks in front of him to get out of his way. They must have felt sorry for him, because they all stepped back and let him and the woman pass. When he finally reached the bottom step, the woman, who looked pretty old herself, lowered him down real slow onto his knees. And then they both bowed their gray heads and started praying. They were praying too soft for me to hear, but I figured that Mary could follow along well enough because she was only a few feet away. The concrete must have been hard on the old guy's knees, because pretty soon he was waving his arms all around like he wanted to stand up again. Carlos, who I guess had been watching him out of the corner of his eye all along, scampered over real fast, and he and the woman reached down and grabbed the old guy's shoulders and heaved him up.
He was still shaking pretty bad and even slobbering a little now onto his chin. I wondered what good praying to Mary had done him. Then all of a sudden he got as stiff as a board and fell straight backwards. He'd have cracked his head wide open on the steps just like that little drunk had, if Carlos hadn't been there to catch him. Then Carlos and the woman lowered him onto the ground real slow and gentle, where he laid there on his back like he was dead for a minute or two.
Most of the people in the crowd, like Mom and Pastor Mike, for instance, were clueless and kept right on gabbing, although some looked over to see what was going on. Then Father Tom strutted by and lifted the guy up onto his feet with one hand like he was a feather. I heard some fellow with a runny nose standing next to me say to some tall skinny woman who must have been his wife, “They planned it all out ahead of time, because it went off too slick and smooth to be real.”
“But what if it is real?” she said, sort of high-pitched and whiny. “Wouldn't it be wonderful?”
“Stuff like that just doesn't happen in the real world,” the guy snorted.
I figured he was probably just guessing though, because he didn't seem too bright.
The old guy's eyes were closed at first, and his face looked kind of tight and red, like he was expecting Father Tom to punch him in the nose or something. I wondered if he was being born again, like they were always talking about at my church, especially when they were dunking the new members in this big tank of water they'd dragged up on stage just for that. But I wasn't sure because I really didn't know if Catholics got born again, or if they did, how exactly they went about it.
All of a sudden the old guy's eyes popped open and he started smiling, although he didn't have many teeth left and it wasn't much of a smile. Then I noticed that he wasn't shaking anymore, and he wasn't all crooked and stooped over either. In fact, he was standing straight and tall and didn't look too bad now in spite of how ancient he was. His daughter started fussing and crying over him right away. Father Tom didn't seem too surprised because he just swished the air over the old fellow's head and sent him on his way.
At first Carlos kept his hand right behind the fellow's back, like he was worried the old guy might suffer a relapse and topple over again. But after a few seconds he must have decided that the fellow was steady enough on his own, because he scooted right back to his table and started peddling his goods again.
“What a crock,” the guy with the runny nose yelled out, but then he got quiet when some old ladies started giving him nasty looks. His skinny wife must have had her fill of him too, because she whacked him with her purse and then wrestled him down into a headlock. She was trying to judo flip him onto the pavement when some cop, who must have been getting a real kick out of it because he was laughing his head off, finally strolled over and broke it up.
The old fellow had almost made it to the sidewalk when these reporters from some TV stations down in Pittsburgh ran over and told him to stare into this big camera some long-haired guy in a black T-shirt was lugging around on his shoulder. When they finally got him turned around right, they asked him how he felt. He just kept smiling and saying how “it was a miracle.” Then his daughter chimed in that their hometown doctors had all predicted that her poor dad didn't have long to live. So they'd driven up here to see the Weeping Lady of Millridge for one last shot at getting him cured. She said they were from Agerstown, Maryland, and that it had taken them nearly half the night to find the place.
Mom was still busy gabbing with Pastor Mike. So I ran back and got in line to see Mary up close again and maybe figure out how she'd cured the old fellow so quick. Poor Chewy wanted to scoot right up to Mary like when we'd first discovered her. But when I whispered that we had to wait our turn like everybody else she finally settled down.
I tried peeking up toward the steps to see if anybody else had gotten a miracle done to them, but I couldn't see over all the tall people in front. Just ahead of me was this guy with a cloudy gray beard who was wearing a yellow T-shirt that said on the back in big red sparkly letters, “Vegas or Bust.” He was with some short chubby lady with a round pink face who I took to be his wife, but she might have been his daughter because she didn't have nearly as many wrinkles as he did.
This guy kept rolling his eyes and shaking his head and grunting a little. The lady finally had to open up her purse and hand him a few sticks of chewing gum to calm him down some. In between chomping on his gum and scratching his belly and yanking up on his belt, the guy did a lot of talking.
“It's television that's done it. It's made everybody in the whole country stupid. Fifty years ago you wouldn't have seen all this hubbub over some silly thing like this. People don't know how to think straight anymore, so when they hear somebody on television blathering about the Virgin Mary showing up on a wall somewhere, then they figure they all gotta go and see it. What a sorry bunch of sheep, if you ask me.”