Tom—you’re pathetic.
I love you, honey.
You’re out of control, said Eleanor.
There was no time for the hold-down bolts. Tom tipped the canopy into the bed, weighted it down with a few sticks of firewood, and drove toward the street again. Heidi had blocked his path with her Corolla and was standing beside it, daring him, and looking self-righteously arrogant. Fat-ass hog. Piece of shit. How tempting it was to slam her broadside with an unexpected acceleration but instead he smashed through a tangle of blackberries that for a moment concealed his view through the windshield and when he hit the street again he rolled down his window and called to Heidi Have a nice day, ugly bitch.
Child of Satan, Heidi replied. Go join your father in hell.
IV
Mediatrix
NOVEMBER 15, 1999
One of Ann’s followers knocked on the van door and handed Carolyn a stack of Monday newspapers, a thermos of tea, a bag of oranges, a box of extra-strength Tylenol, and four small containers of yogurt. Pray for me, she entreated Ann, struggling for a glimpse over Carolyn’s shoulder. I’m Elizabeth Hoynes, your servant. She’ll try, said Carolyn. Now please go in peace. Please give Ann some privacy. But the servant hesitated, lingering hopefully, and Carolyn saw behind her a throng of followers pressing toward the van like rock and roll fans, devotees who, with the door open, were calling out their assorted petitions and exclaiming their adoration. I could always douse them with pepper spray, she thought, if it turns into genuine chaos.
Fortunately, though, there were nearby sentinels arrayed in a defensive perimeter. New unbidden male presences who had appeared the night before. Carolyn noted that the campground, this morning, looked suddenly like a refugee center, full of refuse and unwashed people milling with desperate zeal. Her van was like the United Nations truck with its load of soy powder for the starving. Already it was past ten o’clock and there was a rain hiatus that wouldn’t last, the trees were dripping, drab clouds blew past, North Fork’s eternal, oppressive pall darkened everything preternaturally and dimmed the faces of the hopeful acolytes, beneath it all of them, Carolyn included, were dank damp prisoners, citizens of a gulag, a colony of rotting mushrooms. Earthbound strangers locked in gray straits. Hollow refugees yearning toward whatever God they could construe. Or toward nothing, as in Carolyn’s case, except, perhaps, the god of the sun, that pagan equatorial potentate. The ramshackle campground made Carolyn yearn impatiently for Cabo San Lucas. She would sleep naked there and eat fruit and rice, drink margaritas, get high at 9 a.m., take pick-me-up tokes as needed. Shop for limes and tonic water; read travel books beneath palm trees. South of the border the past four winters her slogan and mantra had been mañana—everything could wait for another time—but for now, hey, breakfast and the papers, delivered by an earnest servant. Pray for me, please, the servant repeated. And I hope you enjoy your breakfast this morning. Carolyn, nodding in the manner of a dowager who expected just such offerings, pointed at an errant photographer and pronounced, Make him follow the same rules as the others, he has to stay behind the lines. But already a sentinel was at the business of thwarting the wayward cameraman with a hand thrown across his lens. Carolyn considered the herd of petitioners urgently waiting for an audience and said, She’s engaged in fervent prayer just now, tell them so, do that for me, then raised an arm in benediction until the servant turned to the crowd and announced: She’s at prayer everybody, be patient and calm, and God bless you all! Thank you, said Carolyn, that’s it for the moment, and a sentinel drew the van’s door shut: with the shades drawn too, for privacy, Carolyn had a chance to laugh. She’d redecorated her inner sanctum with votive candles, hung a crucifix from her rearview mirror, and left the Gospels, a prop, on her dashboard. All to the good, presto, a miracle—tea and morning news. Instead of grazing for mushrooms in the rain. Instead of wandering, damp, in penury. Didn’t all of that call for a heartfelt wicked cackle? Carolyn ate yogurt and perused the headlines. TEEN SEER SWAMPS LOGGING TOWN. RUNAWAY AT EPICENTER OF VISIONS. HUGE CROWDS DRAWN TO MARY SIGHTINGS. THOUSANDS GATHER FOR FOREST VIGIL. BISHOP TO STUDY APPARITIONS. MUSHROOM PICKER CLAIMS TO SEE VIRGIN. PILGRIMS TEST TOWN INFRASTRUCTURE. LOCAL SHERIFF “OVERWHELMED.” WOMAN CLAIMS SEER HAS CURATIVE POWERS. LOCALS RESPOND TO VISION FRENZY. Carolyn browsed, in search of her own name, acknowledging as she did so that yes, all is vanity, her ego was a pack of drunken monkeys, it wanted what it wanted, period, and now it wanted her name in the news, however tawdry and puerile that was, however empty and ridiculous. So be it, thought Carolyn, I’ve sold my soul to the material world with its infinite array of fascinations, to be alive is better than not, than ashes or the afterlife, than worm fodder, Saint Peter’s Gate, nirvana, or the Elysian Fields. A willing slave to the corporeal quotidian, which included press notes such as this: Ms. Carlton claimed her warts disappeared about three and a half hours afterward. Carolyn read on, increasingly astounded. MarketTime checker Sue Philips, 27, described Ms. Holmes as “quiet, meek, somebody you wouldn’t even notice.” Phil Peck, Media Affairs Officer at Stinson Timber, said the company would issue a statement Monday morning. A spokesperson for the diocese expressed the bishop’s concern over reports of hysteria and said a full Church inquiry would soon be under way. Sheriff Nelson cited safety and health considerations. Mushroomer Steven Mossberger, 29, said the visionary “mostly kept to herself—the rest of us just couldn’t see this coming.” Ms. Holmes, born in Medford, Oregon, was reported missing September tenth after dropping out of East Valley High School. Mayor Cantrell, speaking outside his office, was “guardedly optimistic” that North Fork could handle the growing flood of religious pilgrims. Lyman Sylvester, president of the North Fork Chamber of Commerce, described events as “a shot in the arm for a patient in serious cardiac arrest.” Father Collins refused comment and referred questions to the bishop’s office. At the Vagabond Tavern local out-of-work loggers expressed dismay at the sudden influx. “It’s not that we’re against outsiders,” said Dale Raymond, 41, born and raised in North Fork. “But when people come here they better pay attention. They need to understand who we are in this town. Don’t just roll right over us.”
Ann sat with a pillow behind her head, opening the thermos slowly. She’d passed the night in the priest’s sofa bed and been whisked away by sentinels at eight, her clothes clean, her allergies suppressed by a double dose of Phenathol, her fever as yet unmitigated. Perturbed, too, by Father Collins’ recalcitrance. How could she make him see the Blessed Mother? That Our Lady had reached to embrace him too? Arriving that morning at the North Fork Campground she’d lowered her head to the reporters and cameras—a television news team producer beckoned—but had clasped her hands at her chin for petitioners, who’d shouted her name and called their praises, Glory, Hallelujah, Our Ann! Carolyn, quickly emerging from her van, had embraced Ann publicly with dramatic flair, Spent the night with your priest, aye? she’d whispered, I’ll have the cameras cleared right away, these media people are like vicious scavengers, they’ll bite your fingers if you feed them. She’d trundled Ann inside, slammed the door, then turned like a press agent and said, emphatically, Not giving any interviews this morning, I’m sorry there won’t be comments. And we’re going to establish a media-free perimeter. You’ll all have to stay outside the flagging our friends are about to put up for us so the business of Mother Mary can be conducted unencumbered by media.
Now, in the van, she peeled an orange with flippant grace and leaned closer to her newspaper. Hey, she said. Check this out. This quote—right here—this quote’s from me. Greer, describing herself as the visionary’s disciple, estimated Sunday’s crowd at two thousand and projected even larger crowds today, with “accompanying stress on local infrastructure.” Unquote. I mean, check it out, said Carolyn. I’m like your spokesperson or something now. I’m totally in the newspaper.
Do you know what it means to be a disciple?
Does it mean I have to buy your dope?
Ann didn’t answer. She poured a cu
p of tea. Your helper, said Carolyn, in spreading the teachings. A devoted follower of Saint Ann of North Fork. That’s me—want a part of this orange?
No thanks.
You should, though. For the vitamin C.
Saint Ann?
Bad joke. Sorry. Now take this Tylenol—three or so. Unless your priest gave you some this morning after you slept with him.
I slept on his sofa.
That’s what they all say.
What do you mean?
His other girlfriends.
He’s a priest, remember? He doesn’t have girlfriends.
Did you see The Thorn Birds? Richard Chamberlain? Hitting on Rachel Ward?
No.
So is he into handcuffs?
Carolyn.
So what did you do if you didn’t sleep with him?
We talked about things.
What kinds of things?
About the church.
Which church is that?
The church we have to start building right away. Our Blessed Mother’s church.
I see, said Carolyn. That church, yes. I’ve been thinking about that church also.
She pointed at her five-gallon picking bucket, half full with small bills and change. See that? she said. There’s your church right there. Money translates into a church. You get aggressive about asking for money, your church will, I don’t know. Materialize.
How much is there?
I don’t really know.
Maybe we should count it.
We’ll count it later. In the meantime make an announcement today. More than once. Repeat it, Ann. That you can’t fulfill Mother Mary’s wishes without more alms, contributions, tithes, offerings, greenbacks, tax deductions.
Carolyn put the bucket on the table. Look what I wrote right here, she said. Our Lady of the Forest Church Fund.
Our Lady of the Forest?
Nice ring, don’t you think? And I’ve got three more buckets just like it.
There was a tentative knock on the van’s sliding door, courteous and deferential. Carolyn tucked the bucket away. Not a moment’s privacy, she complained.
A new devoted follower this time, this one a woman in a parka patched with duct tape, a clear plastic rain scarf over a hairdo swirled stiff like gray cotton candy. There’s a priest here who says he’s from the bishop, she said. And another priest from the church in North Fork. They both want to speak to you.
Oh they do, said Carolyn. How interesting.
Should I let them in?
We’ll talk about it.
What should I say?
Tell them to wait.
For how long?
Until I say.
No, said Ann. They’re welcome.
The woman moved aside and the clergymen peered in. They stood in the open door of the van, Father Collins in his overcoat and leather gloves and the bishop’s representative in ecumenical black garb and a high white priestly tab. With his gray bristle cut and wire-rimmed glasses he looked like a high school gym teacher dressed as a priest for a faculty Halloween party or a six-foot-two Harry Truman. Hello, said Father Collins, good morning, salutations. The crowd is exceptionally huge today. I’m just astonished at the size of this crowd. This is my… colleague. Father Butler.
Good morning, said Father Butler. Sorry to intrude on your breakfast this way. We’re barging in, apologies. And yes, this crowd is exceptional.
You’re from the bishop, said Carolyn. Or so my associates report.
Yes, from the bishop. That’s right. Yes. Getting right to the point with it, yes. I’m sent by the bishop. To look at things. To have a look out here.
To have a look?
Exactly.
The visionary sat against her pillow with the thermos cup of tea in one hand, the other settled in her lap. She was under blankets like a convalescent in a turn-of-the-century sanatorium, minus a thermometer stuck in her mouth and a hot water bottle by her head. Her pallor, now, was almost ghostly, her complexion so flawless as to seem surreal, a Kabuki character with anorexia, girl from the West doused with rice powder. Father Butler, she said dreamily. Welcome and peace be with you.
And you must be the girl we’ve heard about and read about in the newspapers.
Father Butler, repeated Ann. I’m glad you’re here. My name is Ann Holmes. Please come in and sit with us. You too, Father Collins.
Father Butler hesitated. Such extreme politesse, he said. I don’t know when I was last invited into one of these clever Volkswagen vans. It’s really… efficient, isn’t it? Would efficient be the right word?
Germans, said Carolyn. Lebensraum.
The priests sat at the fold-down table so that the four of them now were like teenagers in a booth at a small-town soda shop. Father Butler smelled like brittle leaves or a very earthy pipe tobacco, Carolyn could not quite tell, or possibly Bay Rum aftershave. Bugs in a rug, he said.
It’s cozy, she answered. Cozy or claustrophobic, depending on your point of view. Cup half empty or cup half full. I hope neither of you gets Ann’s flu, by the way. Maybe I should open a window.
No need, Father Butler replied. In New Guinea I worked among the sick every day, but the Lord kept me well—indeed wherever I went in the Third World the Lord always kept and blessed me. But ’sixty-two to ’sixty-five in Popondetta, not far from Port Moresby, why those were some of my heartiest days, despite the presence of malaria, typhoid, and assorted, shall we say, jungle fevers. I lived on simple food there, slept when it fell dark, got up with the light, played a bit of soccer, badminton, and never once a speck of illness.
You’re lucky, said Carolyn. That’s not me. Just tell me you’re sick I get sick, too. Or tell me you were sick last week. I can talk myself into serious disease without even really trying.
Ho, said Father Butler. Hypochondria. But you’re looking hale now, Ms. Greer. You’re looking relaxed, I must point out, for someone so close to the center of things. Someone so close to—excuse me—purported visions. And with this clearly feverish girl at your side, convalescing in, shall we say, close quarters. It reminds me a little of my navy days. Bunking shipboard in shifts.
Purported or not, said Carolyn, there’s no point in stressing out.
Father Butler didn’t blink or waver. Composure, he said, is certainly admirable. A trait of martyrs, oftentimes, who know they go to the Lord.
Well I’m no martyr.
And yet you sacrifice, clearly, Ms. Greer. You might be miles from here, unencumbered. Instead of offering your services so generously. As Ann’s friend and confidante.
Carolyn began playing with an orange peel. Kneading loose the white inner meal. Father Butler, she saw, was an inquisitor. He seemed already to have looked right through her. On the other hand he couldn’t know that underneath his priestly posterior was four hundred and fifty-five dollars she’d appropriated from his fellow Catholics. The night before, her shades drawn tight, she’d tediously counted all the small bills Ann’s followers had so virtuously coughed up and hid more than half in the empty catch basin of her van’s never-used chemical toilet, directly underneath the very bench on which Father Butler sat. Whatever you say, she told him.
Father Butler smiled, pulled loose a handkerchief, and began cleaning his glasses. He was agonizingly slow about it, blowing hot air repeatedly on the lenses and holding them up to a seam of light, examining his polishing work critically. As you may or may not know, he said to Ann, there are each year in this country alone a considerable number, hundreds shall we say, of claims made regarding the Blessed Virgin, that her face has appeared on a freshly dug potato, that a pizza maker throwing dough in Syracuse saw her silhouette in the wrinkles of a crust. The details are unimportant. The details are not my point. Shorn lamb’s wool, cow dung, snowdrifts, children having epileptic seizures, road-show evangelists, psychotic nuns, runaways addicted to marijuana—go ahead and take your pick. These claims are manifold, absolutely, commonplace and everywhere, rest assured you are not the first such claimant, nor
will you be the last. So commonplace as to be banal in certain circles of the episcopal college which I think shall go unnamed right now, to name them would be a certain digression, but the important point is that your experience of Mary is not in the least bit unusual, dear, as far as the church is concerned. It has seen the likes of this a thousand times, and each time the likes of me is dispatched to try to make sense of it. Although, I should say, your case is unusual in that the scope of it is quite impressive, you’ve succeeded in attracting considerable attention, more than the average Marian event, that fact is not contestable, this is a significant episode that requires a significant investigation, such investigation to pursue, at its core, the fundamental truth of your claims regarding the Blessed Virgin. Which the Church does not take in any way lightly and which it is determined to explore thoroughly with all due seriousness.
A change of tone had crept into his voice, an increasing gravity that made Carolyn think of the immolation of Joan of Arc. She knew very little about religious persecution, but perhaps this was it.
Father Butler looked up from his polishing work in order to settle his eyes on Ann, who responded by clasping her hands to her chin and saying I want your questions, Father. I want your interest. Thank you.
You’re very welcome.
I’m blessed by your presence.
You may not feel that way later on.
I’m sure I will, replied Ann.
Father Butler went back to his glasses, giving them a final scrutiny before slipping them onto his face. Their presence was prosthetic and increased his severity. Fortunately for you, he said, I’m not a psychologist. I don’t operate in the realm of science. If I did I would dismiss you out of hand as suffering from a patently self-evident delusion, the ready and obvious explanation. But for a priest it isn’t that clear and simple. It can never be clear and simple, Ann. What is the nature of God’s plan, God’s reality? How can we know the good Lord’s truth? Father Butler shook his head, as if to suggest the innate futility of every metaphysical inquiry. You can see that the task I have in front of me is grave, deep, difficult, challenging. How do I decide what is real?