Strangers

Page 17

Darkness.
Abruptly, the nearness of nightfall hit Ernie Block hard. For a while, the mysterious magnetism that had drawn him to this place had been stronger than his fear of the dark. But that changed in an instant when he realized that the eastern half of the sky was purpleblack and that only minutes of vague light remained in the western realm.
With a cry of panic, he bolted across the eastbound lanes, in front of a motor home, oblivious of the danger. A horn blared at him. He did not care, did not pause, just ran pellmell because he could feel the darkness clutching at him and pressing down on him. He reached the shallow gully that served as a lane divider, fell as he started down into it, rolled back onto his feet, terrified of the blackness that was welling up out of each depression in the land and from under every rock. He flung himself up the other side of the gully, fled into the westbound lanes. Fortunately there was no oncoming traffic, for he did not look to see if the way was clear. At the van, he fumbled with the door handle, acutely conscious of the perfect blackness under the truck. It was grappling at his feet. It wanted to pull him under the Dodge and devour him. He yanked the door open. Tore his feet loose of the hands of darkness. Clambered into the cab. Slammed the door. Locked it.
He felt better but far from safe, and if he had not been so close to home he would have frozen stiff. But he only had a quarter of a mile to go, and when he switched on his headlights, the gloom fell back, which encouraged him. He was shaking so violently that he did not trust himself to pull back into traffic, so he drove along the shoulder of the interstate until he came to the exit ramp. There were sodium lamps along the ramp and at the base of it, and he was tempted to stop there at the bottom, in the yellow glare, but he gritted his teeth and turned onto the county road, out of the light. After driving only two hundred yards, Ernie reached the entrance to the Tranquility Motel. He swung through the parking area, slid the van into a slot in front of the office, switched off the headlights, and cut the engine.
Beyond the big windows of the office, he could see Faye at the front desk. He hurried inside, closing the door behind himself with too much force. He smiled at Faye when she glanced up, and he hoped the smile looked more convincing than it felt.
“I was beginning to worry, dear,” she said, returning his smile.
“Had a flat tire,” Ernie said, unzipping his jacket.
He felt somewhat relieved. Nightfall was easier to accept when he was not alone; Faye gave him strength, but he was still uneasy.
She said, “I missed you.”
“I was only gone the afternoon.”
"I guess I'm hooked, then. Seemed longer. Guess I've got to have my Ernie fix every couple of hours or go through withdrawal symptoms."
He leaned across the counter, and she leaned from her side, and they kissed. There was nothing halfhearted about their kiss. She put one hand to his head to hold him close. Most longmarried couples, even if they remained in love, were perfunctory in their displays of affection, but that was not the case with Ernie and Faye Block. After thirtyone years of marriage, she could still make him feel young.
She said, "Where are the new lighting fixtures? They did come in, didn't they? The freight office didn't make a mistake?"
That question jolted him back to an acute awareness of the night outside. He glanced at the windows, then quickly away. "Uh, no. I'm tired. I don't really feel up to hauling them in here tonight."
“Just four crates-”
“Really, I'd rather do it in the morning,” he said, striving to keep a tremor out of his voice. "The stuff will be all right in the truck. Nobody'll touch it. Hey, you put up the Christmas decorations!"
“You mean you just noticed?”
A huge wreath of pine cones and nuts hung on the wall above the sofa. A lifesized cardboard figure of Santa Claus stood in the corner beside the rack of postcards, and a small ceramic sleigh with ceramic reindeer was displayed at one end of the long counter. Red and gold Christmastree balls hung from the ceiling light fixture on lengths of transparent fishing line.
“You had to get up on a ladder for some of this,” he said.
“Just the stepladder.”
“But what if you'd fallen? You should've left this for me to do.”
Faye shook her head. "Honey, I swear to God I'm not the fragile type. Now, hush up. You exMarines carry macho too far sometimes."
“Is that so?”
The outer door opened, and a trucker came in, asking about a room.
Ernie held his breath until the door closed.
The trucker was a lanky man in a cowboy hat, denim jacket, cowboy shirt, and jeans. Faye complimented him on the hat, which had an elaborately sculpted leather band brightened with chips of turquoise. In that easy way of hers, she made the stranger feel like an old friend as she shepherded him through the checkin process.
Leaving her to it, trying to forget his curious experience on the interstate, trying not to dwell on the night that had come, Ernie moved behind the counter, hung his coat on the brass rack in the corner by the file cabinets, and went to the oak desk, where mail was stacked on the blotter. Bills, of course. Advertistments. A charity solicitation. The first Christmas cards of the year. His military pension check.
Finally, there was a white envelope without a return address, which contained only a Polaroid color photograph that had been taken in front of the motel, beside the door to Room 9. It was of three peopleman, woman, child. The man was in his late twenties, darkly tanned and goodlooking. The woman was a couple of years younger, a pretty brunette. The little girl, five or six, was very cute. All three were smiling at the camera. Judging from their clothesshorts and Tshirtsand the quality of sunlight in the picture, Ernie assumed that the snapshot had been taken in the middle of summer.
Puzzled, he turned the photo over, looking for a scribbled note of explanation. The back was blank. He checked the envelope again, but it was empty: no letter, no card, not even a business card to identify the sender. The postmark was Elko, December 7, last Saturday.
He looked again at the people in the picture, and although he did not remember them, he felt his skin prickle, just as it had done when he had been drawn to that place along the highway. His pulse accelerated. He quickly put the picture aside and looked away from it.
Faye was still chatting with the cowboytrucker as she took a room key off the pegboard and passed it across the counter.
Ernie kept his eyes on her. She was a calming influence. She had been a lovely farmgirl when he'd met her, and had grown into a lovelier woman. Her blond hair might have begun to turn white, but it was hard to tell. Her blue eyes were clear and quick. Hers was an open, friendly Iowa face, slightly saucy but always wholesome, even beatific.
By the time the cowboytrucker left, Ernie had stopped shaking. He took the Polaroid snapshot to Faye. “What do you make of this?”
“That's our Room Nine,” she said. “They must've stayed with us.” She frowned at the young couple and little girl in the photograph. "Can't say I remember them, though.
Strangers to me."
“So why would they send us a photo without a note?”
"Well, obviously, they thought we would remember them.
"But the only reason they'd think that was if maybe they stayed for a few days and we got to know them. And I don't know them at all. I think I'd remember the tyke," Ernie said. He liked children, and they usually liked him. “She's cute enough to be in movies.”
“I'd think you'd remember the mother. She's gorgeous.”
“Postmarked Elko,” Ernie said. "Why would anybody who lives in Elko come out here to stay?"
"Maybe they don't live in Elko. Maybe they were here last summer and always meant to send us a photo, and maybe they recently passed through and meant to stop and leave this off but didn't have time. So they mailed it from Elko."
“Without a note.”
“It is odd,” Faye agreed.
He took the picture from her. "Besides, this is a Polaroid. Developed a minute after it was taken. If they wanted us to have it, why didn't they leave it with us when they stayed here?"
The door opened, and a curlyhaired guy with a bushy mustache came into the office, shivering. “Got any rooms left?” he asked.
While Faye dealt with the guest, Ernie took the Polaroid back to the oak desk. He meant to gather up the mail and go upstairs, but he stood by the desk, studying the faces of the people in the snapshot.
It was Tuesday evening, December 10.
8.
Chicago, Illinois
When Brendan Cronin went to work as an orderly at St. Joseph's Hospital for Children, only Dr. Jim McMurtry knew that he was really a priest. Father Wycazik had obtained a guarantee of secrecy from the physician, as well as the solemn assurance that Brendan would be assigned as much workand as much unpleasant workas any orderly. Therefore, during his first day on the job, he emptied bedpans, changed urinesoaked bed linens, assisted a therapist with passive exercises for bedridden patients, spoonfed an eightyearold boy who was partially paralyzed, pushed wheelchairs, encouraged despondent patients, cleaned up the vomit of two young cancer victims nauseous from chemotherapy. No one pampered him, and no one called him “Father.” The nurses, doctors, orderlies, candystripers, and patients called him Brendan, and he felt uncomfortable, like an impostor engaged in a masquerade.
That first day, overcome with pity and grief for St. Joseph's children, he twice slipped away to the staff men's room and locked himself in a stall, where he sat and wept. The twisted legs and swollen joints of those who suffered from rheumatoid arthritis, that mangler of the innocent young, was a sight almost too terrible to be borne. The wasted flesh of the muscular dystrophy victims, the suppurating wounds of the burn victims, the battered bodies of those whose parents had abused them: He wept for all of them.
He could not imagine why Father Wycazik thought this duty would help him regain his lost faith. If anything, the existence of so many painracked children only reinforced his doubt. If the merciful God of Catholicism really existed, if there was a Jesus, why would He allow the innocent to endure such atrocities? Of course, Brendan knew all the standard theological arguments on that point. Mankind had brought all forms of evil upon itself by choice, the Church said, by turning away from the grace of God. But theological arguments were inadequate when he came face to face with these smallest victims of fate.
By the second day, the staff was still calling him Brendan, but the children were calling him Pudge, a longunused nickname which he divulged to them in the course of telling a funny story. They liked his stories, jokes, rhymes, and silly puns, and he found he could nearly always get a laugh or at least a smile out of them. That day, he went to the men's room and wept only once.
By the third day, both the children and staff called him Pudge. If he had another metier besides the priesthood, he had found it at St. Joseph's. In addition to performing the usual tasks expected of an orderly, he entertained the patients with comic patter, teased them, drew them out. Wherever he went, he was greeted with cries of “Pudge!” that were a better reward than money. And he did not cry until he was back in the hotel room that he had taken for the duration of Father Wycazik's unconventional therapy.
By Wednesday afternoon, the seventh day, he knew why Father Wycazik sent him to St. Joseph's. Understanding came while he was brushing the hair of a tenyearold girl who'd been crippled by a rare bone disease.
Her name was Emmeline, and she was rightfully proud of her hair. It was thick, glossy, ravenblack, and its healthy luster seemed to be a defiant response to the sickness that had wasted her body. She liked to brush her hair a hundred strokes every day, but often her knuckles and wristjoints were so inflamed that she couldnot hold the brush.
On Wednesday, Brendan put her in a wheelchair and took her to the X ray department, where they were monitoring a new drug's effects on her bone marrow, and when he brought her back to her room an hour later, he brushed her hair for her. Emmeline sat in the wheelchair, looking out a window, while Brendan pulled the soft bristles through her silken tresses, and she became enchanted with the winterscape beyond the glass.
With a gnarled hand more suited to the body of an eightyyearold woman, she pointed down to the roof of another, lower wing of the hospital. “See that patch of snow, Pudge?”
Rising heat within the building had caused most of the snow to loosen and slide off the pitched roof. But a large patch remained, outlined by dark slate shingles. “It looks like a ship,” Emmy said. "The shape. You see? A beautiful old ship with three white sails, gliding across a slatecolored sea."
For a while Brendan could not see what she saw. But she continued to describe the imaginary vessel ' and the fourth time that he looked up from her hair, he suddenly was able to see that the patch of snow did, indeed, bear a remarkable and delightful resemblance to a sailing ship.
To Brendan, the long icicles that hung in front of Emmy's window were transparent bars, the hospital a prison from which she might never be released. But to Emmy, those frozen stalactites were wondrous Christmas decorations that, she said, put her in the holiday mood.
“God likes winter as much as He likes spring,” Emmy said. "The gift of the seasons is one of His ways of keeping us from getting bored with the world. That's what Sister Katherine told us, and right away I could see it must be true. When the sun hits those icicles just right, they cast rainbows across my bed. Eversopretty rainbows, Pudge. The ice and snow are like . . . like jewels . . . and ermine cloaks that God uses to dress up the world in winter to make us ooh and ah. That's why He never makes two snowflakes alike: it's a way of reminding us that the world He made for us is a wonderful, wonderful world."
As if on cue, snowflakes spiraled down from the gray December sky.
In spite of her nearly useless legs and twisted hands, in spite of the pain she had endured, Emmy believed in God's goodness, and in the inspiring rightness of the world that He had created.
Strong faith was, in fact, a trait of nearly all the children in St. Joseph's Hospital. They remained convinced that a caring Father watched over them from His kingdom in the sky, and they were encouraged.
In his mind he could hear Father Wycazik saying: If these innocents can suffer so much and not lose their faith, what sorry excuse do you have, Brendan? Perhaps, in their very innocence and naivetd, they know something that you have forgotten while chasing your sophisticated education in Rome. Perhaps there is something to be learned from this, Brendan. Do you think so? Just maybe? Something to be learned?
But the lesson was not powerful enough to restore Brendan's faith. He continued to be deeply moved, not by the possibility that a caring and compassionate God might actually exist, but by the children's amazing courage in the face of such adversity.