The Unspeakable (16 page)

I set down my briefcase and just watched him. He stayed there, kneeling for almost twenty minutes before he lost his concentration. An amazing feat, for my mind began to wander nearly from the start.

Marbury stood up. He noticed me at once.

“I missed you last night. I was ready for you but no feet.”

“I was busy.”

My tone of voice betrayed me.

“You didn't celebrate?”

“Not this year. I had other business.”

Marbury knew that what I was talking about involved him. I could see it on his face, though he tried his best to disguise it. He started talking about Good Friday and the sermon that he had written about the two thieves, but I interrupted him.

I said, “I know all about Easter, Marbury.”

He wasn't surprised.

“I know that you're planning on healing people too.”

“Then you're invited. Come and see for yourself.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“I'm not doing anything. It's only a prayer service.”

“Well, it might be your last.”

He looked at me and smiled. “One of the thieves was saved, Peter.”

“And the other was damned. Which do you want to be?”

Marbury sat down in the pew, right across from me. For a moment I saw him as divided, as though he were waging some war within himself. His lips started to pucker, ever so slightly, as if a word were rising to his mouth. But then it left.

I pressed him further.

“Since when did you get interested in this? Being on the fringe?”

“Is that where I am? Nice to know that I'm somewhere, though.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I've always believed in prayer. Haven't you?”

“Yes. But I can't raise people from wheelchairs.”

“And you think I can?” he asked.

“I think you're leading folks to believe you can, a big difference.”

“How?”

“By not telling them otherwise.”

“Let them judge my actions instead.”

“Actions like what? Losing your voice?”

“I didn't lose it. It was taken from me; I've already told you that.”

“Why? What did you do that was so horrible, Marbury?”

He just smiled. “The question is what I didn't do.”

One thing that he didn't do was to actually accept his predicament. Marbury said that he kept looking for some way out, a miracle
snowplow or something to come and help him, save him from the people whose lives he was slowly becoming entangled in. But no help was on the way.

And maybe none was ever coming.

Outside the hospital over two feet of snow had already fallen and more was still coming down. Everything was a gigantic sea of white. And the town of Wheelersburg, hardly more than an intersection with a streetlight and a few gas stations, resembled a series of unstirred lumps, like flour in a mixing bowl, except with chimneys and trees poking out.

Inside the hospital, Barris was still watching Helen, as he had before. Her pulse and respiration had improved considerably. The doctors were surprised of course, but attributed her improvement to their own efforts instead of some mystical intervention.

“She's not out of the woods yet,” said one.

Barris nodded and touched his wife's hand. Much warmer. Her breathing was less labored, with her face again getting flush. She began to look alive. But the doctor was still negative.

He said, “I just wouldn't get too excited, that's all.”

Marbury mentioned that he tried not to pay attention to the doctors either. Helen was better and that was the only thing that mattered. He picked up Lucy, who with all the excitement had fallen asleep in a chair, and he took her to bed. Her body was as limp as an old rag but she began to stir anyway.

Marbury asked her the only question that he could. Or rather the only question on his mind.

“Did you have anything to do with that?”

Lucy smiled faintly.

She said, “God did. He tried to open his box but he couldn't.”

“You mean, the big yellow one? Why couldn't he?”

“God said it was stuck. Too many boo-boos, I guess.”

“Oh, God said this?”

“Um-huh.”

“I need to know, Lucy. What happened to Helen's boo-boo?”

Lucy showed Marbury her closed fist. It was a tiny fist for such a big boo-boo, he thought.

She said, “I have it, silly. Wants to jump out, though.”

Lucy crawled beneath the sheets in her bed with what little strength she had left. She looked spent, so much so that she couldn't even cover herself up. Marbury did that for her. He said that he couldn't remember ever covering up a child, and perhaps in all his years Lucy was his very first. A sad thought.

I caught this remark and asked him about it.

He said, “No children. Seems odd now, doesn't it?”

“Children aren't part of the package, Marbury.”

“I know that.”

“But you don't sound very convinced.”

He didn't answer. I must admit that I was thrown off somewhat. My expectation was that Marbury would have loved the temporality of this life, furnishing the building blocks for God to help him construct a better one. But he didn't. And nothing seemed to shine a brighter light on his regrets for the temporal world than children, or not having them.

“Then you should have been Lutheran,” I cracked.

“Or else an atheist.”

Marbury said that he covered up Lucy and wrapped the blankets high up around her throat just to keep her warm. She was chilled and almost shaking, which he attributed to the cold. A draft was blowing through her room, but he didn't know from where. Maybe it was just the wind from outside.

Lucy took the blankets and clutched them.

She said, “Jacob doesn't like me.”

“He loves you, Lucy. I'm sure of that.”

Marbury was lying and she knew it.

“But he's mean to me.”

“I think he'll be nicer now.”

But Marbury wasn't sure. Maybe Barris had always hated Lucy and would always hate her. Lucy, who came to him from out of the blue, attached to a wife that nobody wanted.

He said, “We'll make sure he's nice to you, Lucy. I promise.”

“He'll forget. God says people forget.”

Marbury was curious. “When does God say all this?”

“At tea. He likes tea.”

“When do you have tea?”

“My dolly has tea.”

“Does your dolly talk to God as well?”

“Silly. My dolly doesn't talk.”

“Foolish me. I forgot.”

“And she doesn't eat cookies. So don't give her any.”

“I won't.”

“But God loves cookies.”

Marbury said, “I'm afraid I've never offered God cookies before.”

“He likes chocolate chip.”

“Would he have tea and cookies with me?”

“Oh, he wants to.”

“When?”

“You'll know.”

Abigail peeked into Lucy's room just as she was falling asleep. A blood-pressure monitor hung from her hand. It was her rounds but Marbury asked her to wait.

She said with a whisper, “I heard what happened.”

“Barris told you?”

“One of the doctors. Of course they don't believe it.”

Marbury shut the door behind him.

“How's she doing?” asked Abigail.

“Tired. Do you know she speaks to God? She just told me.”

“What do you think?”

“I think we're all exhausted. Nobody's thinking straight.”

“I didn't tell you this before. I didn't even believe it was possible,
but now I don't know what to think. She's done this before, Father. Healed someone.”

It happened several months back.

Abigail said that she was on the morning shift. It was a crazy day. A mine fire had brought in several men for smoke inhalation and every room was filled. Lucy, who was under observation for severe neck pains and fever, possibly even spinal meningitis, was out in the hall, awaiting a bed. But there was no room. People were coming in and out, including a young boy with leukemia. The boy was dying and every attempt to save him had failed. His family swarmed around him, just waiting for the end.

The boy, for reasons even he couldn't later understand, noticed Lucy, and despite the fact that he was dying he made an effort to talk to her. Maybe it was her own suffering that he identified with or maybe he just wanted to take his mind off of his own plight, Abigail wasn't sure. But something happened. The boy didn't die that night. In fact, he didn't die at all.

She said, “The kid went into remission. Even the doctors called it a miracle, and they don't call anything a miracle unless it slaps them in the face first.”

“How do you know it was Lucy?”

“One day the kid's dying, the next the cancer is all gone. She was the only link.”

“Maybe it really was a miracle.”

“Yeah, a miracle named Lucy.”

Marbury said that he had no explanation. But then he had no explanation for a lot of things. All the injuries, for instance.

“Where did she get these from? Barris denies even touching her.”

“I don't know. But she gets ton of them,” said Abigail.

“And that doesn't bother you?”

“Of course it bothers me. But what can I do?”

“You can stop it.”

I was glad to see that Marbury was coming to the same conclusion that I had before, that Barris was a monster to be stopped. But I didn't like where he was going with the other part of this story. That Lucy was not only seen as a child of God by Barris but also that she saw herself that way by purporting to speak with God. And I told him that.

“What's your opinion then?”

I thought for a moment and came up with an answer.

“Abused children sometimes have capabilities that we adults view as odd or strange. Jung often spoke about it.”

“I'm up on Jung. An authority, except he never spoke with God.”

“And you think that Lucy did?”

“Children may speak with God every day. We just don't see it as God.”

“Or they might have imaginations like the rest of us.”

“You want to think that it comes down to imagination, don't you?”

I did, and dealing with Marbury I was forced to take that stance. I remember far too many conversations from the past, weird and unusual arguments that he tried to convince me were true. Stigmata for one. He was nearly obsessed with it. Showing me pictures of real stigmatics whose hands and feet bore the wounds of Christ, or what were supposed to be wounds. For one couldn't always tell. I argued a variety of causes, from ritual mutilation on down, but Marbury seldom budged. And if I didn't buy his ideas he would try to convince me through other routes, visual or actual, which was meant to dislodge my skepticism, though it often succeeded only in raising it.

Some of this was quite humorous. Every year we had a Halloween party, which was more of an opportunity to relieve pent-up steam than actually to celebrate Halloween. Over my tenure we had
several themes, including the infamous “Come as Your Favorite Saint or Heretic” party. I came as Saint Jerome, a favorite, whose acerbic pen and virulent behavior matched my own at the time. Most of us chose saints or the accepted heretic like Luther or Calvin, certainly not Marbury's choice of Nero. But that was his. Nero, with golden lyre and all. Nero, the lord of all heretics. Marbury entered, as was appropriate for Roman gods, with a slave on his arm, a woman who worked for the seminary. She was a stigmatic as well, at the party at least, her hands dripping with fake blood. At least I hoped that it was fake.

It was all good twisted fun. But the only kind of fun that Marbury could get away with. For such an act done in my uncle's day would certainly have meant curtains. Though Marbury got away with it as with most things in his life, with gestures of flair and imagination. The truth was, his act was a big hit, and even some superiors of ours, clearly the more liberal ones, enjoyed his eschatological tweaking of doom.

He grinned as I mentioned my memory of this to him.

He said, “Some costume. The poetry wasn't bad either. For Nero.”

Marbury, I should mention, in keeping up with his character and for the sake of authenticity, walked around reciting the most horrific of poetry. And most of it was in Latin, the obscene passages dulled by Roman taste.

“If I pulled a stunt like that, I would have been torn apart.”

“You've never been talented when it came to heresy. It takes a certain skill you've yet to develop, Peter.”

I wrote down this line, a phrase that seemed to sum up his thinking.

“Is that what this is? Another talent for heresy?”

Marbury scrunched up his brow. His facial lines were soft and tan.

He said, “No, Peter. This is the real thing.”

Chapter 7

I
leaned back in the pew and assembled my notes, spreading them out on the seat, which only made Marbury uncomfortable. He stood up and sat opposite me, partially just to stretch out his long legs unencumbered but also, I'm convinced of this, to see exactly what I was writing.

Our conversation about Halloween had sparked something within me, a memory from my own childhood of Halloweens long since passed, of endless bags of candy and homemade costumes. The school that I attended was right out of a postcard of the Midwest. It was an old one-roomer, with white shutters, built over a hundred years ago by Scandinavian immigrants. My teacher, a rotund woman with a heavy Norwegian accent, had to climb up the belfry every day to ring the bell, which could be heard for miles, from every grain silo and tractor to every farm table around. It was a sound that people knew. School was starting.

I studied with kids from kindergarten up to the seventh grade, when we were all bused, the older ones at least, to the big school in Saint Cloud. But it was never quite the same. Especially on days like Halloween. In the old one-room schoolhouse, the older kids helped the younger ones to construct costumes, which were usually monsters or angels made from ragged clothes and strips of glued
paper, reflecting ingenuity of every kind. For Halloween brought out ingenuity. And scariness too.