I looked over at Carlos separating the bills into neat little stacks. Then I took a deep breath to jack up my courage, because I still felt a little funny being such a sneak about it, and clicked open the e-mail. The subject line read, “Potential Fund Raising Opportunity.”
“Along the lines of what we discussed the other day, I happened to stumble onto a little smudge in the abandoned lot on Main Street that might do the trick. We'd still have to touch it up some though. Let's get together and talk more about it.”
I kept reading it and reading it, and every time I went through it my heart climbed up an inch or two closer to my throat. It seemed pretty clear that Carlos and Pastor Mike, and probably Father Tom too, had gotten together to dress up the mark I'd found into a phony image of Mary so they could raise money. That was probably where all the cash was coming from to build the addition to our church. It must have all been Pastor Mike's idea too. I couldn't see any other reason why Carlos and Father Tom would be splitting the profits with him. Runyon must have found out about it, probably when he spotted Carlos carving his knife into Mary's face that day, and he'd been blackmailing them until he got killed.
The more I worked it over in my head, the more strange and awful I began to feel deep inside me. All this time I'd been talking to Mary and thinking about her and admiring how pretty she was and everything, and it turned out that she was nothing but a water stain that Carlos had touched up with his knife to make it look like her. I would have stomped home right then and there and shouted good riddance to all of them for being such greedy little sneaks, but I was feeling so empty and lost that I couldn't seem to work up the energy.
I looked over at Carlos still counting his money, and I wondered how he could have done such a cruel thing to me and to all the other people in town who believed in Mary so much. He was no better than Runyon, if you asked me. Just then Chewy whispered something, or at least I thought it was Chewy since I didn't know who else besides Mary talked to me from the inside out like that.
She said that I'd been wrong about Runyon burning down Mary's first shrine. She said I might be wrong about this too. That gave me a little hope, because Chewy was pretty sharp most of the time.
I waited for Carlos to finish stacking the bills and then asked him to come over and see something. Right as his eyes lit on the e-mail, he winced a little. Then he sat down beside me, slumped his shoulders over a little and sighed real deep and low. He said that he always knew he should have deleted that message, but he wanted some proof that Pastor Mike was in on it too, just in case things turned sour.
“So Mr. Grimes and all those newspaper reporters are right. It's all just a big fake and a scam.”
Carlos shifted his knees toward me and stared right into my eyes. I had a hard time staring back at him and kind of bowed my head a little.
“It started out that way. Your mom's friend Pastor Mike read a story about the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico, which is a real famous Mary sighting, and then got the idea for starting our own shrine to raise money and interest in our churches. Then when he saw the water mark down along Main Street, he figured that we'd stumbled onto a gold mine. The reason he brought Father Tom and me in on it was because he knew he'd need the help of the local Catholic parish to make the story sound convincing. We didn't want to do it at first, but when we checked out the stain we decided that it looked so much like our vision of how Mary might appear in a small town like ours that we went along with him.” Then Carlos smiled at me and started talking with a little more pep than before. “Even though I spruced her up a little, Nate, she's basically the way we found her. And we never had any wish to use the money for personal gain, and we haven't either, at least not much of it.”
He kept staring at me until I nodded like I was sort of agreeing with him.
“Then at the blessing ceremony that older gentleman was apparently cured of his Parkinson's, and we decided that maybe it really was Mary after all. We talked the mayor into building a shrine, and he hired a fancy lawyer to smooth things over. We've been riding it ever since, and it's worked out so well that we're all convinced, even a non-Catholic like Pastor Mike, that something truly miraculous is at work here. So in spite of all our obvious shortcomings, Nate, there's no reason for you to get upset. Miracles aren't all so clear cut as people sometimes would like you to think. They're a little like life that way. That's how you know they're really miracles.”
I tried to get mad at him for having lied to me, but I just couldn't seem to pull it off. All that I could dredge up was some disappointment, and not even that much of it either.
“How come you didn't tell me all this before, especially since I was the one discovered her?”
Carlos rubbed a speck out of his eye, and then he laid his hand real gentle on my arm. For a little guy he [[sure]] had pretty big hands, although not nearly as big as Father Tom, or even Pastor Mike. But then again, they were boxers.
“We never planned for you to get involved in all this. We were going to have Mrs. Marcella stumble onto it. She's always on the lookout for stuff like that anyway. You just happened to show up that morning. You turned out to be a lot better choice though, because people tend to believe little kids about the supernatural way more than they do older folks. I guess it's because they don't think that a kid has any ax to grind. So it seems like Mary really did know what she was doing after all.”
“What about the little drunk John?”
“We didn't plan on him either.”
“How'd that gash on his head get closed up then?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. John must believe that Mary had something to do with it though, as hard as he works for us now.”
I thought about it a little longer, and I noticed that my stomach didn't feel near as empty and strained as before. And my heart was starting to sink back down to where it belonged too.
“So you really believe that the old guy with the shakes was cured.”
“As far as we can tell. We were going to have Mr. Santelli say that the arthritis in his hand where his fingers had been lopped off went away right after he touched Mary's face. But with all the healings during the dedication ceremony, we didn't have to go through with it.”
“Do you actually think that Mary's real then, her face on the concrete I mean?”
Carlos shrugged, and then he folded his hands real careful on his lap.
“We don't really know, but I wouldn't be surprised. Remember that we're all just God's instruments after all. We don't have to understand exactly how everything works to receive the blessings that come along with it.”
“It's a mystery then.”
“I guess you could say that.”
I was still a little suspicious. I guess I inherited it from Mom.
“How come you were paying blackmail money to Runyon?”
Carlos took a few seconds to scratch his nose and fiddle with his glasses, so he could figure out what to say, I guess.
“He saw me working over Mary's face with my penknife the same day you did. I wasn't really doing much to her, just setting the tears in a little firmer like I told you. But it would've looked bad if he'd blabbed it all over town.”
“Did you kill him then to shut him up?”
He flinched a little.
“Why would we need to do that? We were paying him off handsomely, after all. That arrangement was working out fine. There was plenty of money for everybody.”
“But there'll be even more for you and Pastor Mike now that Runyon is dead.”
“That's true. But aside from the town's share, most all the profits go to your church and to St. Sebastian's and to other charitable causes. So it's not as if we're making a killing out of it.” Then he smiled at me and winked. “As I recall you got a few free lunches out of it too, not to mention a nice iPod. I admit that we should have told you about it sooner, but I guess we were hoping we could keep you out of it. Now that you know everything, what do you think?”
Carlos's story didn't sound half bad, like it might even have been the truth. I had some experience in lying, after all, and could usually sniff out a phony story. But I still didn't feel like letting him off the hook so easy.
“I'm not sure. I'll have to think about it some more.”
“Fair enough. Now, do you want to enter today's sales numbers into the computer?”
I jumped at the chance, because I loved messing with that big computer spreadsheet of his. After I was through we swept up the floor and made sure all the merchandise was in the right place for tomorrow. Carlos didn't say anything more about Mary, and I didn't ask him either. I didn't want him to say too much and ruin it all, especially now that I was feeling a lot better about the whole thing.
When I got home Mom was pouring a can of baked beans into the frying pan to heat up for supper. Baked beans at my house meant we were having hot dogs too, and I loved hot dogs. All we needed were some of Uncle Carl's fresh corn and tomatoes, and maybe some of Aunt Helen's apple pie and ice cream, and supper would have been perfect. Then I remembered how Uncle Carl's diabetes had gone away after he visited Mary's shrine, and I began to feel even better about Carlos's story.
As I was gobbling down my second hot dog I asked Mom if I had to act any different once she got married to Pastor Mike, him being a preacher and all. She put down the ladle she was using to dish out the last of the beans, knelt in front of me and pressed her hands against my shoulders, like she did whenever I used to ask her about Dad coming back.
“Is that what's been bothering you?”
“A little.”
She got this droopy look and then squeezed my shoulders even tighter.
“We all have to make adjustments as we go through life. We can't just live in our own little world all the time, no matter how much we might want to and how safe and secure it might make us feel.”
I asked her if I was living in my own little world, and Mom said she thought I might be, at least some of the time. She said she understood it though, what with the shock of Dad having dumped us and all. I still didn't know what Dad's leaving had to do with anything. But I didn't want to stir her up again so I kept my mouth shut about it.
Then she stood up and hugged my face against her stomach, and it lasted longer than just a few seconds too. She really was pretty strong for a girl, and I couldn't seem to break away from her even though I was struggling hard.
“And I don't want you giving Pastor Mike a hard time either. He isn't like your father. He's not just out for himself. He wants to be as close to us as we are to each other. Do you understand what I'm talking about?”
“I think so,” I kind of gurgled because she was nearly suffocating me by then.
Then after she finally let me go I smiled inside myself, thinking what Mom would say if she knew that Mary's shrine was all Pastor Mike's idea. I didn't tell her what a sneak he'd been though, since she seemed so happy about marrying him. After dinner we sat around on the couch eating popcorn and watching TV and gabbing and laughing, and I had to admit that Mom could be pretty nice when she wanted to be.
Mom had the next day off, and as a treat she offered to take me out to lunch wherever I wanted so long as it didn't cost too much. I was trying to decide between two hamburger joints when she told me to go outside and look around for someone to play with until lunchtime. She said that with all the computers and text messaging nowadays, kids were always cooped up inside. “Why don't you go over to the playground at St. Sebastian's? Maybe you can shoot some basketball.”
To keep her happy so she wouldn't back out of taking me to lunch, I said I'd check it out. There was only one kid on the playground, and he was a lot taller than me and I think he went to the intermediate school, although he might have even gone to the high school. His hair was done up in these long, bright purple spikes, and he kept whipping the ball at me like we were playing dodge ball or something. I finally decided I'd had enough and was about to head for the shrine when Father Tom came out of the church in his long black robe and told the kid to stop picking on me. Then he grabbed the basketball and bounced it right to me.
“Why don't you take a shot? I really think you have some talent for this game.”
“I'm getting better lately,” I said. “Especially dribbling.”
I fired it up at the hoop, and the ball rattled around the chewed-up rim for a while before swishing down through the raggedy old net. I grabbed the ball again and hugged it tight against my chest, and then I looked up at Father Tom. He must have guessed what I was thinking, because right away he said Carlos had just told him everything and that he didn't have much to add, except for one thing.
“Mary really does love us. No matter what happens, that's what you always need to remember.”
All at once, so many powerful feelings started rushing through me in all different directions that I started sniffling a little.
“How come she didn't pick some other kid to discover her?” I said kind of whiny. “Why'd it have to be me?”
Father Tom worked his eyebrows around for a few seconds. “Maybe she likes you.”
It didn't sound like much of an answer, especially coming from a priest who ought to know better.
“Do you think she's got something special in store for me? Carlos still seems to think so, although he's not a hundred percent sure. But Mom's getting married soon to Pastor Mike, and I don't know if that's going to mess things up or not.”
I must have looked like I was about to start howling and bawling, because Father Tom walked over and squeezed my shoulder blades a little to buck me up.
“So you still believe in her then.”
“I guess so. I don't really know what else to do.”