The priest looked past him, out into the rain. Ann, he said. What happened to your loyal female friend? The cynical chairwoman of the Karl Malden Fan Club? Why didn’t you get a ride with her? Carolyn, right? Where is she?
Her friend may or may not be loyal, the man with the mustache countered. That’s been difficult to pin down.
What? said the priest. Excuse me?
Carolyn Greer. The woman you mention. You talk about issues of trustworthiness, I bring up her name.
He’s right, said the second man. We’re a little suspicious. It’s best to withhold any judgment on Greer until a few answers come in.
The rain was starting to saturate the priest’s hair to the point where he felt how cold it was. Let’s go inside, he said to Ann. To you gentlemen I say, thank you very much. Thank you for your kind service. Thank you for your help.
It’s nothing, replied the second man. You go in. Go ahead. We’ll wait out here. In the car, right here. You don’t have a back door, do you, Father? A second point of ingress?
The priest took Ann’s small hand in his and pulled her into his living room. No, he said. Just the one. Good night now, gentlemen. Thank you.
He shut the door before they could respond, hoping his trailer wasn’t tinged with his shame, with the telltale odor of spilled seed one notes in the bedrooms of teenage boys. The priest recalled with terrible embarrassment that the collage of his masturbatory fantasies, unfolding only minutes before, had fleetingly featured the very girl who stood before him now. There was something residually erotic, he found, in her fleshly presence at the very moment when he had just arrested temporarily his desolate sexual desire. In fact it was sexual serendipity. It was as though he had made her from degenerate thoughts—like God making Eve from clay or a rib, except that God was not corrupt—as though he had conjured her.
As I remember it yesterday you were sans bodyguards, he said. You were still yourself, for the most part.
Ann loosened the drawstrings on her hood but didn’t lower it. Her pallor, clearly, had worsened since the day before, and he worried, again, about her health. Those two just appeared, she answered.
Are you saying they’re apparitions too? Maybe that’s the way to think of them.
They sat and she accepted his offer of a cup of chamomile tea. A little something for your cold, he said. I don’t think it’s just a cold, she answered. I think I’m coming down with the flu.
Are you taking something?
Sudafed.
Is it helping, do you think?
For some reason, no.
You need to see a doctor.
No I don’t, Father.
Your health comes first.
No it doesn’t. Building Our Lady’s church comes first. Before my health. Before anything.
The priest excused himself delicately and went to put the water on to boil. A domestic task that calmed him a little in the face of such fierce dedication. Alone in his kitchen, arranging biscuits on a plate, he thought of words like vicar and parsonage with their pastoral associations. Finger sandwiches with cutaway crusts. Chocolate madeleines and Wiltshire Haystacks. Mr. Collins from Pride and Prejudice, invited to the Bennets’ as entertainment. Mr. Collins the clergyman. Father Collins’ namesake.
When he returned, the girl still hadn’t removed her hood and was sitting with her kneecaps pressed together, as if thwarting an urgent bladder. It’s really uncanny, Father Collins said, but you look a little like a visionary. As if you were born to the role.
What’s a visionary supposedly look like?
Like Bernadette at Lourdes, I guess, who was fourteen when she saw Our Lady. Or the three shepherd children of Fátima. Or the two cowherds at La Salette. Like you, they all needed showers, Ann. They all needed to do their laundry.
She smiled, thinly, and chewed on a cuticle. You’re welcome to clean up here, said the priest. I’m blessed with a washer and dryer on the premises, and plenty of shampoo and soap.
Thank you, said Ann. But what about the church? We have to get started on the church.
Is it okay for you to take a shower first? Before you put on your tool belt?
Nothing’s okay for me, said Ann, except to do what Our Lady asks.
The priest sat down beside her on the couch. That sounds hellish, actually, he observed. Like your life isn’t yours any longer.
It isn’t.
I can see that.
I serve Our Lady.
It sounds like a form of possession, though. You don’t even have time for a shower.
Yes I do.
There’s a clean towel in there.
What about the church first?
What about today? asked the priest. Back up to today, Ann. Did you have another vision today? Another visitation?
Yes.
At the same place? Out in the woods?
With, like, a thousand people watching. Called there. By Our Lady.
A thousand people.
The sheriff said there were fourteen hundred. The whole campground’s full.
The sheriff?
He was there too.
How come?
Crowd control.
A thousand people?
More than that.
You’re kidding me.
No I’m not.
Father Collins experienced a lurch of his heart, a stroke of arrhythmia; a catch. He’d understood from the gossip at church that a crowd had gathered for today’s apparition, but a thousand people? A thousand? Well, he thought, I’m calling the bishop. This has gotten over my head. This has become a phenomenon that cries out for church investigation. How did a thousand people get up there? he asked. Way out into the woods?
They walked.
I see.
Just like you did.
Father Collins hooked one leg over the other, as if he was just warming up to the subject, as if he was in it for the long haul. So in this context of a thousand people, a number I’ll presently take at face value, what did she say to you?
The same message. Jesus is angry. There’s too much sin. Believers are supposed to act on her behalf, perform deeds of loving-kindness. She’ll return, she promised—two more visits. I’m supposed to tell you everything. We’re supposed to get started on the church.
The priest sighed. Okay, he said. Okay—the church. Let’s get started building the church. But first we’ll need to see who owns the property. Then we’ll need to buy it, right? Then we’ll need an architect, won’t we? Someone to come up with a design and plans who isn’t too busy with other jobs? And maybe the architect finishes in nine months. He has to work with an engineer, and that takes, maybe, three more months. Meanwhile, we hope to find potable water—reasonable hereabouts, I guess, fortunately for us. And we also hope the land perks—less reasonable: clay soils. We take the architect’s plans into town and submit them for review and approval to a bureaucrat who asks us, four times, to resubmit. This takes—oh, nine months, a year. Meanwhile the county wants a septic design. There will have to be an environmental assessment. An environmental impact statement. A cataloging of environmental assets. Botanists will want to count the plants; someone will check for eagle aeries, yew trees, pileated woodpeckers, and then count the newts and voles. Not to mention a wetlands delineation. After twelve to eighteen months, if we’re lucky and everything goes without a hitch, maybe we’ll have a construction permit and the right to go ahead. Then we can hire a road builder, so we have a way to get equipment in. The road builder will put us on his schedule. There’s always a window of opportunity for road building when things dry out, which is never. Then we’ll bring power up from the campground over a distance of probably two miles, which might cost a hundred thousand dollars, I’m making up that figure. Again, the power company will have a schedule. And then—then we can build the church. Once we have power, permits, and a road. All we’ll need is two or three years, probably two or three million dollars, blood, sweat, and considerable tears, and then we’ll be ready to start.
> I don’t see how you know all this.
I’m already trying to build a new church. Because our current site is dying of mildew. Mildew and carpenter ants.
Ann shrugged. So the first step, she said, is to see who owns the property.
I’ll make the phone call. First thing tomorrow. Or I’ll go to the county assessor’s office and look it up in person.
The kettle in the kitchen began singing. Excuse me, said the priest. You stay right here. Relax for a while. Calm yourself. Think about something other than the church. There’s nothing wrong with just relaxing. Quiet repose. Meditation. It’s very good for the soul.
I can’t relax.
That’s not good.
There’s things to do.
There are always things to do in life.
There’s things Our Lady has asked me to do.
First, said the priest, just relax.
But instead she followed him, bolting from the couch, and while he fussed with the tea bags over his stove she stood in the doorframe, pulled off her hood, and revealed her sickly young face. There’s something else, she said.
Okay.
It’s personal.
That’s still okay.
It’s actually a bunch of things.
A bunch of things. That’s okay too.
I’m sort of embarrassed. Really embarrassed.
Don’t be, said the priest. I’m a priest.
She stood in silent scrutiny of him, as if to verify this statement. The priest picked up his plastic tray with its teacups and nicely arranged biscuits. You can tell me in the living room, he suggested.
It’s this, replied Ann. I’m full of sins.
No you’re not.
Yes I am.
Do you want to confess?
I can’t. I’m not baptized.
Pretend you don’t have to be baptized, then. Pretend you don’t have to worry about that. Consider me less of a priest right now and more… a friend, a good close friend. Baptism isn’t required.
He motioned with the tray. Living room, he said. The living room of this trailer house is my unofficial confessional.
In the living room, she perched on the couch. She didn’t touch her tea or look at him. He sipped from his own tea, took a bite from a biscuit. He was patient and held to a siegelike silence. Finally the visionary blew her nose and spoke. I’m going to hell, she said.
No you’re not. Don’t say that.
Satan has a hand on me. I’m going to burn in hell.
The priest, unnerved, bent toward her paternally. He took in her odor of long-soiled clothing. Ann, he said. You don’t believe that. You don’t believe in Satan, do you? You don’t have to think that way.
Father, she said. I’ve used a lot of drugs. Magic mushrooms and marijuana. I’ve cheated. I’ve lied. I’ve ripped off people. I even stole my catechism. I had an abortion. I ran away from home. I’ve suffered from… venereal diseases. And I… you know… touch myself constantly. I did it twice, Father, on the day I first saw Our Lady.
That all sounds very normal, the priest said, though he had to admit, privately, a misguided, prurient, tantalizing interest in her obsessive masturbation. You sound human to me, Ann. A human being with faults and a history. Like everybody else. Like everybody.
But everybody else doesn’t see Our Lady.
That doesn’t change the nature of your sins. Which for the most part are venial. Venial as opposed to mortal.
Father, said Ann. You have to help me. Help me get away from the devil.
There is no devil; begin with that. If you mean a guy with a tail and horns, there’s no devil, period.
There is a devil. There has to be. If you believe in Jesus, the son of God, you have to believe in the devil.
Why?
Because how else do you explain all the bad things?
The devil is just an idea, said the priest. A notion. A concept. An abstraction.
If that’s true of the devil then it’s true of God.
God is a ceaseless mystery.
Then why isn’t the devil a mystery too?
The devil is a mystery.
I just feel strange, Ann said. I feel him breathing down my neck. Like he’s right behind me, watching me. I want to be purified.
You’re nervous.
I guess.
You’re alone.
Sort of.
Why did you run away? asked the priest. Do your parents know where you are?
I don’t have parents. I have a mother. But she’s… out of it, you would say.
Father Collins rubbed his chin, the gesture, he knew, of a pedant. Out of it? he asked. How so?
Totally out of it.
Well does she know where you are?
No, said Ann. But she knows I’m somewhere.
Everyone is somewhere.
I don’t know.
It’s true, though. They are.
Their conversation, the priest concluded, had steadily devolved toward the inane. They’d been reduced to commenting on their mere existence. Look, he said, standing now. You’re hungry, Ann, you’re tired, you’re sick, you’re wet, you need a shower. You’re under duress from all of this. I think we ought to table our discussion. You take a shower, get into clean clothes, eat something, get a good night’s sleep. Then, tomorrow, we’ll talk, you and I. Believe me, things will look different.
Her smell—her stench—was discernible across the room. She needed toothpaste, soap, and mouthwash. Father, she said, and the word made him sad. Coming from her it made him sad. He found himself thinking of mortality, which was the subject inspired by her tender impoverishment, which was always the subject behind all subjects—sex, the universe, God. Father, she repeated. We have to get busy. We have to build a new church.
The priest devised a logistics for her shower that was more than mildly self-serving. Even as he uttered it he knew this was so. Shame, he thought. Incorrigible. Untenable. But the visionary did what he told her to do. She went in the bathroom and shut the door. When she was naked she opened it a few modest inches and dropped her clothes outside on the floor. The priest saw only her thin white forearm and the pale inside of her elbow. He waited until it was clear from the sound of it that she’d stepped beneath the spray of water and then he examined the articles of clothing which did not include a bra or panties, she was too shy to put them in with the rest or she didn’t wear such things. Either way it was erotic to think about, though not as erotic as the missing articles, the little catches on the back of a bra, the elastic waist in panties. The priest upbraided himself for being disappointed, for his perverse interest in her underwear. He picked up the other things and held his nose all the way to the washing machine, they were that foul and awful, redolent of sweet high sweat. He turned the pockets of her jeans inside out and found a folded burrito wrapper. In the pouch of her sweatshirt were a half dozen Starbursts, the wet empty husks of sunflower seeds, her Sudafed and Phenathol pills, and three small white seashells. The priest mused. He thought of her beachcombing. He thought about her finding the shells. Fondling them, deciding to keep them. He doubled his normal detergent dose and set the washing machine to use hot water all the way through its cycle. Sterilize, he thought. Purify.
The phone rang four times while the priest squinted at his Caller ID unit, which 90 percent of the time identified no one and told him nothing but Unknown Caller, the indefatigable Unknown Caller, he let the answering machine take such calls including the one coming in at the moment, You’ve reached Father Donald Collins of Saint Joseph’s of North Fork Catholic Church—the priest thought his voice sounded tiny and feeble, he wished, fleetingly, that it wasn’t so—and then he heard a more sonorous voice, Hello, this is Father William Butler, I’ve been asked by Bishop Tracey to look into this matter of Marian apparitions out your way—and Father Collins picked up the receiver, Yes, he said. It’s me.
Father Collins?
Right. Yes.
Bill Butler.
Yes Father Butl
er.
Have we met somewhere?
I don’t think so. Maybe.
Your name is familiar.
There’s another Father Collins in Federal Way.
You’re not him?
I’m Donald Collins.
I guess we haven’t met before.
I don’t think we have either. Bill Butler. It isn’t familiar. But my memory for names is terrible.
Mine as well.
It’s something of a problem.
This girl out there. I’m calling about that. It’s starting to show up in the newspapers.
That doesn’t surprise me, said Father Collins. Apparently today a thousand people followed her into the woods out here. I was going to call first thing tomorrow.
First thing tomorrow I’ll be in North Fork. So I would have missed your morning call. Where would I find you, Father Collins?
Father Collins felt, already, admonished for his lack of activity. He felt, already, like Father Butler’s son. The man sounded older, wiser. Where would you find me? Father Collins asked.
Where would I find you to get a briefing.
At the church, let’s say. Nine-thirtyish. Anytime after nine-thirty tomorrow. Because I have to go out to our prison at eight and take confession for an hour.
Your prison?
Yes.
The town has a prison?
The state’s way of giving loggers work.
So where are you exactly? Your church out there?
Left at the light. The only light. Two blocks east on the left.
Left at the stoplight.
North Fork Avenue.
If I’m late it’s because the roads were bad.
Well I’m in my office anyway doing desk work so it isn’t a problem to wait for you. I’ll be busy until you arrive.
I think I heard you say a thousand.
I don’t know for sure, but yes.
Where did you get that?
It’s rumor, hyperbole. This is a chatty little town, North Fork. It might be closer to a hundred.
I’ve never been to North Fork, Washington.
Logging mostly. Or used to be. Before they opened the prison.
A prison sounds ghastly.
It is ghastly.
A prison casts its shadow on a town.