The Unspeakable (26 page)

The pain went away.

“I didn't do anything but he thought I did.”

“Maybe the burn wasn't that bad.”

“Maybe. Except that it happened again.”

It was in Minneapolis. Marbury was at the hospital, recuperating after his ordeal in Pennsylvania. He was staying in the neurological ward, a terrible place that was filled with all sorts of cases, from brain disorders on down. Marbury said that he felt stupid being there, especially when there were people worse off than him, but he tried not to think about it, strolling the halls or just watching television. One day he was walking by a room and the door was open. A man was sitting in a bed shaking uncontrollably. No nurses were there. No doctors to check up on him and he was alone.

“I walked in. He didn't say anything. But it broke my heart.”

Marbury said that he sat with the man and just held his hand, trying to quiet him down. He prayed too but quietly.

“Nothing left but prayer.”

The next day Marbury heard a commotion. People running in the hallway and talking with excited voices. Later he learned that the man, who was suffering from a rare neurological disorder that caused violent tremors in his body, just stood up and walked away. No attribution was made for his recovery, but Marbury said that he knew. It was the spirit of God working through Lucy. Through healers everywhere.

I smiled. “Do you expect me to believe this?”

“Believe what you want.”

“I see. And what about your voice? Did Lucy take that as well?”

“I told you already. God decided that I didn't need it.”

“You're very cavalier about this, Marbury. Most people would fight to get back what they lost. That's natural.”

“Is it?”

“Yes.” I was firm.

“Erosion isn't so bad. Dust to dust, just early.”

“You can exercise your voice. Maybe surgery.”

“The doctors said that I was fine, remember?”

He looked at me, holding my glance.

“Besides, do you really think it would change things if I spoke?”

“It's a start.”

“Wheelersburg was a start. And look where it brought me.”

I watched Marbury change into his vestments.

People were already filing into the church. I could see them through the window in his office. They were coming up in wheelchairs, some with canes, many of them signing to one another. Whether they were coming for Easter Mass or for a few good words
of healing from Marbury, I couldn't tell. But I expected the worst. Cameras, tape recorders and videotape, just to start. I also expected a huge crowd, but I was surprised when I took my seat. The church was barely half full and those that were in attendance didn't seem at all interested in preserving the moment. I saw no cameras. No notebooks. Hardly even a program cracked open.

I also saw the same woman who brought in the baby a few days ago, sitting in front of me. The baby wasn't crying anymore and looked content, all dressed in pink. I tried to crane my neck to get a better view when somebody dropped a hymnal on the floor. Nobody in the place turned their head except for the baby, who wasn't deaf at all but perfectly normal.

God's will, like Marbury said. Except that I didn't know whose will it was. The power of God or the power of Marbury to suggest that something actually happened. I had no other proof than what I saw. A distraught woman, a kiss on the forehead, and now nothing.

My usual problem. Left with nothing.

Someone tapped me on the shoulder.

“Father, I thought you didn't heal?”

It was the woman from the boardinghouse. The one with the arthritis.

“—or are you waiting to be healed yourself?”

“Neither,” I said, disappointing both her and me.

“Then let's hope you're in the wrong place.”

After she sat down, several rows in front of me, the Mass began. A layperson repeated with words everything that Marbury signed. And I found myself watching and listening to both, like someone in a foreign country with the command of two languages, except the two overlapped in my brain. Each one wrestled for domination. I tried closing my eyes, just to focus on what was being spoken, but I couldn't. Sign language filled my head. I tried to block it out, just hang on every word. I listened to each syllable, every intonation from the lips of the speaker. But still more signs. It had a confusing,
almost narcotic effect. Words and signs, fingers darting around verbs and nouns and slipping back into silence again. And the more I watched and listened, the more that I wanted it to end. I wanted it to stop.

It went on this way for almost half an hour before I finally did it. I plugged up my ears with my fingers. No more confusion. I heard the world only one way. The way most of the people sitting there had. Barely a buzz other than the one you imagine to be there and then nothing. Marbury was standing up at the altar alone, praying over the communion elements. The broken bread was raised, then the wine. More prayers. I saw people leave their pews. No rustling from their clothes. No murmuring. No snapping of hymnals. Just silence.

I sat in the far back, observing all of this. I watched people go up and receive communion along with Marbury's prayer. An imaginary cross that he drew on every person's forehead with his finger. Then the words:

Abandon yourself to God.

I was the last in line. Our eyes locked as he handed me the chalice. I drank the wine and felt Marbury's finger on my skin. It was cool. And I felt like I wanted to drift off to sleep.

But I didn't.

Nobody was healed. I didn't see the man who came in on crutches leave in a gallop. The woman with arthritis limped out just as slow as she came in. And the blind woman didn't drop her cane and proclaim her sight. Life wasn't changed at all; it was just the same old life without a disguise.

When I pointed this out to Marbury after Mass, he just shrugged.

“What did you expect?”

I smiled. Maybe I hoped for a miracle.

“People don't always walk away better, you know.”

“The deaf girl did.”

“She was an exception,” he said. “Sometimes no one is healed. Sometimes it takes a week or a month or never. God decides that, not me. And sometimes this is as good as it gets. Blindness, pain, love, too. It's all part of this package called life.”

“Why you?”

“Why anything? Why was I at the bar? Why Jill? Why the train?”

The train. Somehow I knew that he would bring it up.

I said, “Believe me, the train wasn't from God.”

“I didn't say that it was. Your mother—”

“My mother knew nothing.”

“But you were there. You witnessed it.”

I was there all right.

“She told me about your testimony, Peter. That horrible man.”

“The only horrible man, Marbury, was me.”

Sandra was lying on the ground, dead. I just kept staring at her body, which was partially mangled, perhaps too much staring on my part, for one of the train workers laid a coat over her, covering her up. I couldn't believe she was dead. They couldn't believe it either.

“I'm sure I blew the whistle,” said one of the men.

Another responded, “We all heard you. It wasn't the whistle.”

“Then what?”

Somebody eyed the man from the caboose suspiciously.

“You heard a whistle, right, buddy?”

But the man wasn't listening. He was in his own world.

He said, “Superman tried to fly. He tried but no whoosh.”

“What the hell is he talking about?”

“Isn't that the guy who breaks into trains? Sure it is.”

“Jesus, you don't think—?”

“He was standing right over her.”

“I think he was chasing her.”

“Chasing her?”

“I thought I saw him grab her.”

“Aw, God!”

The one man grabbed the man from the caboose by the throat. Pressure against his windpipe and gagging.

“You like little girls, Superman? Huh? Do you?”

“Look at him, a pervert.”

“Superman tried to fly.”

“Christ, his zipper's down. I ought to beat him right here, Jerry.”

“What did you do to this little girl?”

“He's a moron. He doesn't get it.”

“He gets it. You did something, huh?”

“He did something.”

“She was running like hell.”

“Running from you,”

“Tell me!”

“He killed her.”

“I think he pushed her, Jerry.”

“Jesus, you crazy bastard.”

“I mean his zipper's down.”

“Trying to cover it up, he is.”

“Well, he's not going to get away with it.”

“Let's just beat him now, Jerry.”

“Forget the cops. I got justice right here.”

And then a fist was waved.

Someone looked at me. “You saw it all, right, kid?”

“He blew the whistle. You heard it, he blew it.”

“Just tell me, kid. Did he push her?”

“Don't be afraid.”

“He pushed her.”

“Did he?”

I don't know how but my head went up and down.

Yes. I answered yes.

That's all the men needed.

“Your next stop, moron, is in hell.”

The men were poised to beat him but they didn't. For across the road another group of men from the feed store came running, to see what all the commotion was about. I could see my father running too, limping with that cane of his. But then he saw me, the smoke settling around the train and the other men's expressions, both angry and horrified, and he did something odd. At least I considered it odd. He threw his cane to the side and ran as fast as he could, so fast that I almost thought that he wanted his heart to give out, explode altogether so he wouldn't have to see any of it.

But he did. His daughter was dead.

I shifted my body in the pew, uncomfortably.

Marbury appeared almost stunned, as though he had suddenly been smacked in the face hard. He blinked a few times but he didn't look at me. He couldn't look at me.

“I lied. I told the police that she was pushed. I told everyone that it was the man from the caboose who did it.”

Marbury still didn't react.

“My mother didn't even know. I lied to everyone, Marbury.”

And the lie had its own power. For the first few days I thought it would blow over and the truth would come out. When it didn't, I told myself that I would tell everyone what really happened but I never did. A week became a month, which turned into a year. Soon all memories were changed. The men from the train believed what they thought they saw, a lie. My parents believed it. As with my brothers and relatives. I found myself exonerated for being there, certainly not to blame for something so hideous, so random. Eventually it became a part of my history, something that if it didn't happen certainly could have.

Marbury looked at me again. He asked me about the man accused.

“What happened to him?”

“He was arrested and taken to a hospital for the criminally insane.”

Growing up, I made up all sorts of scenarios for that man. A part of me wanted to believe that he was actually happier there, in the hospital, certainly better taken care of than when he was living in his caboose. I wanted to think that he had more comic books to read, that maybe he was even healed and sent on his merry way with a new life. Then finally I quit thinking about him altogether. He became a shadow memory but a shadow that lurked in the back of my head. And I can still remember his face.

“Why didn't you say something?” asked Marbury.

“I was afraid.”

“But you could have freed him.”

“Nobody wanted to hear the truth. So I didn't offer it.”

And I thought that was true. The police, the men from the train, even my father all wanted an answer right then. They didn't want to hear about a boy not watching his deaf sister around the railroad tracks. They just wanted it neat and tidy. The man from the caboose was perfect. He couldn't fight back; he couldn't defend himself.

“This is a horrible thing to carry with you.”

“A lot of people carry secrets. You did.”

“Not like this. You should confess.”

“I am confessing.”

“I mean, to the man himself.”

I tried, I told Marbury that. Ten years ago I even went so far as to look up where the man from the caboose had been assigned. I found the facility and actually went there and talked to the superintendent in charge, only to learn that the man had killed himself
three years earlier. He had no family. He left nothing. Not even the picture of his mother.

“He vanished the day he met me, Marbury.”

“You were goaded into it. I'm sure without the men—”

“The men had nothing to do with it.”

“They certainly influenced you.”

“I was supposed to be watching her. I didn't. She died.”

“People die. People also go on.”

It was then that the irony suddenly struck me. I was just like Marbury. Our lives, without us even knowing it, had intersected. But not at this moment. Not even twenty years ago in seminary. They had intersected way before that, when we both were pulled into a place where we didn't expect to be or ever remain.

I said, “Like you I killed a man. Two if you count my sister.”

Marbury shook his head. “It wasn't your fault.”

“I was in the caboose. Not Sandra. If I hadn't walked in—”

“None of this would have happened.”

“Yes.”

“I told myself the same thing. But it's worthless, guilt.”

Guilt. The worst of sins.

I often wondered how my family would have reacted to the truth. Maybe they would have ostracized me, sent me away and never spoken to me again, or maybe they would have embraced me. Maybe we even would have discussed it instead of erasing the event like so much dust on a chalkboard. But I didn't blame them. What I gave them was a death without any connection. It was just something random, this death, no meaning at all except for the lives it devoured.