The Miracles of Ordinary Men (15 page)

Emma looked at the ground. “It's not that.”

“What?”

“You're sneaking around. You keep looking over your shoulder as if people are following you. And you're talking to yourself. You even do it in class.”

“I do not.” But he couldn't remember. Why couldn't he remember?

“Mr. Connor,” she said. And then, “Sam.” She was so pale. “They don't see what I see. They see you wearing a trench coat, or shirts with holes in them, and everybody knows that your mother died and you're losing your hair and you just — you look terrible, all the time.” She stopped, took a breath. “Maybe it really is a disease,” she said then, her voice small. “I think they're getting bigger. The wings.”

She was right. He'd checked the mirror this morning. “I suppose that means more responsibility.”

She winced. “I'm sorry. I just — I feel like I should be doing something. I can see the wings — that has to mean something. Doesn't it?”

“Maybe. Or maybe, again, it doesn't mean anything. There's nothing you can do, Emma.” He ducked into the Jetta and settled his wings across the seat. “But you're right. I should leave. It's probably best.”

“I don't mean go forever,”
she said hastily. “I just mean — you look terrible. Maybe you just need to take some time.”

“And then what?” He shut the car door to mask his sudden rush of panic. “And then they'll disappear?” He watched her swallow, and for an instant he imagined he could see himself there, sucked into the throat of an unknown destiny.

He ignored her the next day, and the next. The day after that, he went to Stacey and handed in his resignation.

—

Three nights later, he went to bed and woke floating in water, the wings half-submerged. Salt water slopped against his mouth. He blinked, unsure, and then spun around, as wildly as the water would let him. Sky, the sun creeping up slow on the eastern edge.

He was in the ocean. The water off Jericho Beach, if memory served him right — the outline of the city just there, flickering on the horizon like the auras of his students. He kicked his legs and felt no bottom. A glance to the left and a buoy, there. He struggled through the water and climbed onto the buoy as best he could. He hung there, and tried to remember, and nothing came.

He'd fallen asleep in his own bed, Chickenhead beside him. And now here he was in the water. The ocean stank of salt and rotting fish. He turned his head and a wave washed up against the buoy, slapping seaweed against his mouth. The wings grew heavier with each second that passed. He clung to the buoy and shivered.

When he couldn't feel his fingers anymore, he slipped back into the water and struck out for shore. He swam slowly, the wings threatening to drag him down into the water with each laboured move toward land. Every pull of his arms made him warmer. He crawled onto the beach as the sun flickered at the eastern edge of the sky, and felt his own temperature rise as if to greet the sun. He staggered behind a rock and tried to wring the excess water out of his jeans as best he could. The wings were sodden and bedraggled, murky with seaweed and sand. He could feel them stretch toward the light like sunflowers.

He'd proposed to Julie on this beach, three long years ago — on a morning like this, the sun shining white, the air scented by the ocean and heavy with mist. He paused for a moment, water pooling in the sand around him, and rested his forehead against the rock. That life. Then.

He climbed up the beach and to the road, and walked until a bus stop came into view. No one else was there. He sat on the bench and spread the wings so that they covered the inside of the shelter in all of its grime, then rested his head back against the glass. He blinked, and colours swam before his eyes. The world seemed made of dew, the deep green of grass, the warm smell of dirt. He focused on the ground and saw each individual pebble, each crack in the concrete. A spider crawled out of a crack by his feet and scuttled over his toe.

The bus, when it came, was also empty. The driver took one look at him, shoeless and shirtless, and let him on, unmoved.

“Make sure you don't get those seats wet,” he said.

“I'll stand,” Sam said wearily. His jeans were damp, but drier than they would have been had he been anyone else. The air of the bus, after the cool calm of the shelter, was almost hotter than he could stand. He closed his eyes. The bus wheezed slowly into the city, and no one else got on.

They rolled into Kitsilano. He pulled the bell when they turned onto his street, and the bus lurched to a stop.

“You be careful now,” the driver said as Sam approached. “This city isn't so nice in the morning.”

“I know.” It was all he could say. He left the bus — ducking quickly through the door so that the wings wouldn't catch as it closed — and made his way up to the housing complex, stood in front of his door. He could leave now, and no one would know. Walk through the city and up Grouse Mountain and disappear into the trees.

He opened the door with difficulty and walked into the house. No one stirred. Even Chickenhead was still on the bed, sleeping. He stripped off his jeans and climbed in beside her and lay there shivering, even though he was no longer cold.

—

Father Jim did not think that quitting was a good idea. “What will you do?” he said. “What about the condo? What about the house?”

“What about
them?” Sam said. He felt like a petulant child. “My mother's house is paid for. And this one — I'll let it go.”

“You can't ‘let it go,'”
said the priest. “What happens when the bank comes calling for their money?”

“I won't be here to see them. It's okay.”

“You need something to fill up your time.”

“Sure,” Sam said. He hadn't said anything to Father Jim about the dreams. About that morning, waking up in the ocean, adrift. “Maybe I'll take up flying.”

“I'm serious.” The priest had cooked dinner again that night — rib eye steak, out on the tiny patio. They sat by the sliding doors and ate, drank wine. “You're not thinking straight. It just won't be good for you.”

“Maybe we should swap places,” Sam said. “You go teach Flannery O'Connor, and I'll move to Tofino.”

“Rilke fought God,” said the priest. “All his life. For him, God
was
loneliness, that drawing away into the self, rather than from. Is that what you want?”

“I didn't want to wake up in the morning with wings,” Sam said. He felt as though he'd said it a million times. “I didn't want my mother to die. I don't want to be sitting here, drinking with you and wondering what comes next. I don't want any
of it.”

The priest looked at him, then away. He toyed with his fork and let it drop on his plate with a clatter. “You know,” he said, idly, “they call it ‘spiritual counselling' now. What we do. People are afraid to attach something larger than themselves to all of this. So we are no longer intermediaries, representatives. We counsel. We listen to stories and prescribe prayer and meditation, and that's it.”

“If I wanted a therapist, I'd go to Julie.”

“Those magicians,” the priest said, ignoring him, “that lived during the time of Christ. They floated planks of wood beneath the water and knew how to distribute their weight so that they could walk on them and look like they were floating on the water. They were men who could, with sleight-of-hand and a few tricksy helpers, make five loaves of bread feed five thousand people. This is one theory.”

“And you?” Sam asked, in spite of himself. “What do you think?”

“Isn't it obvious?” the priest said. “I think that we'll never know one way or the other. Theology, Sam, is nothing more than another story. You're the English teacher — you should know.”

“Yeah,” and he did not point out that he wasn't an English teacher anymore, “but I'm not in the business of telling people to base their lives around that story. There's a difference.”

“Is there?” said the priest. “You dissect Flannery O'Connor and ask people what it means. Or you tell them to figure out for themselves what it means. And some people's lives will change forever because of that. A girl with a wooden leg, or a red wheelbarrow beside some white chickens. People build their lives around this too, Sam. And you think it's not the same?”

“It's not.” He thought back to Jodi the hockey player. To his other life, where he had once been so sure. “Stories that you tell to make sense of the world around you are different from stories that people tell because they don't want to deal with what comes
after
the world around you. It's a crutch. It's people being sloppy.”

“Right. And you're not being sloppy at all just now, despite the fact that a few weeks ago you woke up with wings.”

“There could be a logical explanation,” he said. “Even now.”

“You don't believe that,” the priest said, “so I'm going to pretend that you're not
being an idiot. As for logic — who says that God isn't logical? God
is
a matter of logic for the theologian, Sam. A matter of thought. The most brilliant minds in the world will never be able to get past that. But for the mystic, God is a matter of experience. You either get that or you don't.”

Experience. The pain, the possibility of flight. “So what happens” — again, so many repeated questions — “if this is in fact God? What am I supposed to do?”

“If it is,” said Father Jim, “God will tell you what to do. Eventually.”

“What if it's not that simple? No voice from on high, no vision? What if I misinterpret what it is I'm supposed to do?”

The priest laughed. “It wouldn't be the first time in all of history that's happened, Sam.”

“That's really helpful. Thanks.”

“You'll know.” Father Jim reached across and took Sam's plate and stacked it on top of his own. “And as to what you'll do — well, that's different, according to each and every man. Some of us are called to action and others to observe.”

“I wanted a small life,” Sam said, his voice low. The chance to touch a few lives, to love them deeply and carefully and well. To make mistakes and claw back from them a broken, humbled man, fusing back together.

“Some men are born for greatness,” said the priest. “And others have it thrust upon them. Isn't that how it goes?” His voice was deep and tired with knowledge. “Didn't you learn anything in those fucking catechism classes?
God does not ask
,
Sam
.”
He sighed. “So you haven't spoken to Julie? Since the funeral?”

Had he talked to anyone, apart from the priest and Emma, those few moments in and around the school? “No.”

“Shame,” Father Jim said. He picked up his glass and tilted it so that the sunlight sparkled through the champagne. “I am telling you, Sam — withdrawal is not a good idea.”

“Okay. So I seek out my ex-fiancée. And that's a
good
idea.”

“As I said. Unfinished business there.”

“Do they teach you this at seminary? How to grind in the obvious?”

“People always make the mistake of thinking that God is about the other
.
People forget that God is about people.”

Sam poured another glass of wine and thought about plucking the feathers off his wings, one by one, as though he was about to roast a chicken. Pluck them out and burn the rest of them off, that's what he would do. “And that means what, exactly?”

“You don't know what might happen.”

Chickenhead stepped out onto the patio and rubbed against his feet. He offered a piece of steak to her, let her lick his fingers. Her tongue was rough and strong.

“You feed her steak?” Father Jim asked, amused.

He shrugged. “Why not?”

“Hardly the cost-conscious choice for a man who's just walked away from his job.”

“There is some money,” he said, which was true. “In the house. In the bank. At least for a little while.” Wealthy grandparents to thank for that. Carol had never liked to talk about the money, but there it was.

“You're going to have to do something,” the priest said again. “You can't just withdraw from the world, Sam.”

Watch me
,
he wanted to say. Instead he said nothing, and they finished eating in silence. When night came he left the house and walked down dark streets until it seemed the entire city was empty, the people as elusive as God.

—

Doug was having trouble with the house. He wasn't sleeping, and he wouldn't let Janet clean the bathroom or dust the shelves. He kept forgetting to water the plants.

“I don't think he should live there anymore,” she told Sam over the phone.

“He probably just needs time.”

“He's not eating.”

Sam pictured chicken balls piling up in the fridge, unused cartons of sweet and sour sauce lying forgotten on the counter. “Of course he's not eating, Janet. His goddamned wife
just died.”

She ignored him. “I don't think it's good for him. And it's your house now, Sam. You should be living here.”

“I have a house.”

“Are you listening to me?”
Suddenly she was shouting. “I don't care about you, Sam
.
But I will do anything — anything — for him. I will take him out of the house and leave it empty, and everything in there can rot. The rain can wash it all away, for all I care.”

He spared a moment for the poetry of the image — a tsunami, perhaps, that would break in through the windows and carry away the plants, the old afghan rugs. “Janet,” he said. Why couldn't he have had a sister? “I think you should take him away. You're right.”

A long pause. When she spoke again, she was quiet, apologetic. “I think he needs to stay with Kenneth and me. At least for a while. That life is over for him now.”