The Reason

  Charlie nodded.

  Alex picked up a big piece of bark from the ground and threw it as hard as he could at one of the rotting fence poles. It burst into a kajillion pieces. “Did you see that? That was cool!”

  Charlie nodded, smiling.

  “I hope Mrs. Lindy went to the store and got some macaroni and cheese. Are you hungry too, Charlie?”

  Charlie’s big eyes lit up at the word macaroni and he nodded his head in agreement.

  “Look at this!” Alex yelled, pointing down into a bunch of mushrooms that were growing at the side of a dead tree. “It’s ginormous!” The green and white cap was the size of a plate. Alex reached down to touch it, but a tan boot stepped in the way. Alex pulled his hand quickly to his side, then looked up in surprise.

  Kenneth was standing there.

  Charlie snatched up Alex and then took a few steps back, carefully cradling him in the crook of his massive left arm.

  “It’s okay, Charlie. It’s just Kenneth!” Alex said, frowning at his big friend and wondering why he was acting like a fraidy cat. Alex looked around the woods and then back to Kenneth. “What are you doing out here?”

  “Keeping you two away from those mushrooms,” Kenneth said, taking a small step toward Charlie, who took a big step back.

  Kenneth looked up at Charlie. “Hello, Charles Paul Lindy.”

  Charlie’s head tilted back and forth. And then he smiled at the carpenter.

  “Charlie likes hearing his name like that,” Alex said. “Pastor Jim does that too.”

  “Hey, Alex,” Kenneth said, taking another step closer to them. Charlie didn’t move. “Mr. Cooney is a very nice man.”

  “No, he’s bad,” Alex said. “Looney Cooney killed animals and ate them and burned up in his rocker and died.”

  “Tell me something,” Kenneth said, holding out his arms for Charlie to pass Alex to him.

  “Tell you what?” Alex asked, reaching for Kenneth.

  Charlie waited. His head teetered back and forth again.

  “It’s okay, Charlie,” the carpenter said.

  Charlie held Alex out and Kenneth took him. He tapped Alex lightly on the chin and said, “Tell me how those things make Mr. Cooney bad.”

  “I don’t know,” Alex said. “But he died.”

  “That doesn’t make him bad, does it? Everyone dies, in time.”

  Alex looked at Charlie and then poked at Kenneth’s chest. “But I dunno if he knew ’bout Jesus.”

  Kenneth squinted and lowered Alex to the ground, crouching beside him. “What do you mean?”

  Alex looked at Charlie and back at Kenneth. Could Kenneth really not know? Didn’t everyone?

  The carpenter smiled. “Tell me,” he said.

  “Jesus died for us,” he said.

  Kenneth stared at Alex for a few seconds and then smiled. “How do you know, Alex?”

  “Pastor Jim tol’ me. Tha’s how we get to heaven. Do you know Jesus, Kenneth?”

  “Oh yes,” he said, getting that warm look in his green eyes that Alex liked. It made him just want to look and look at them. “He and I go way back.”

  “But I don’t really get how he died and came back again.”

  “You will, in time,” Kenneth said, standing and running his hand across the top of Alex’s head. “Everyone will, in time. You guys want to race? I know a shortcut.”

  “Yeah!” Alex said. “You’ll never beat me and Charlie!”

  “You think so?” Kenneth said. “Why don’t we find out?”

  “Let’s do horsey back,” Alex said, pulling on Charlie’s pant leg.

  Charlie lifted Alex over his head, on top of his shoulders. Alex loved being up there. It was like he was on top of the world!

  Alex reached his arms over to hang on to Charlie’s thick neck. Charlie held his legs. Alex’s big horsey was ready to go. “You ready?” Alex said to Kenneth.

  “Ready when you are,” Kenneth said, standing next to them.

  Alex clicked his heels gently on Charlie’s chest and yelled the magic words: “Giddy up, horsey!”

  Fallen branches and dry acorns pop, pop, popped under Charlie’s feet as he ran through the red and yellow leaves at the base of a narrow hill. Alex smiled as they moved through the woods, keeping a safe lead over Kenneth, who was right behind them. As Kenneth came closer, Alex squealed and Charlie ran faster and faster. Alex laughed as they ran up the side and over the top of another small hill. Then Charlie began to slow down.

  “Giddyap,” Alex said, not wanting Kenneth to catch up. But instead of going fast again, Charlie came to a stop. “What’s wrong, Charlie?”

  Panting, Charlie lifted his left arm and pointed toward the fence.

  Alex saw it. The woods suddenly seemed smaller and much quieter. The only noise in the woods was Charlie catching his breath and Kenneth walking up behind them.

  “Oh man,” Alex said sadly. “What happened to it?”

  But he could kinda see what happened. A little deer had tried to leap over the barbed wire and one of its rear hooves got caught on the top of the fence. It hung upside down, with its tongue hanging out and its body twisted on the other side.

  “Let me down, Charlie,” Alex said. “I want to see it closer.”

  Charlie followed his instructions and carefully lowered Alex. They both stood and stared at the dead animal.

  “Why did it have to die, Charlie?” Alex asked. “It doesn’t seem fair to die like that.”

  Charlie was still. His arms were hanging straight down to his sides, and he bowed his head at a slight angle like a child who had just been scolded. His eyes shifted back and forth between the deer’s tongue and its lifeless eyes. He looked like he was going to cry.

  “Something was eating at it,” Alex said, noticing a patch of black blood on the deer’s side, all dried up. “Its fur looks yucky.”

  Alex inched a few feet closer, shuffling slowly through the leaves. He stopped again, almost hoping the deer would wake up and run away. He turned around and looked back at Charlie and Kenneth.

  “C’mon, guys! Let’s go closer,” Alex said, going back to Charlie and tugging on his pant leg so he’d lift him up. He wanted to see the deer. But he’d feel better if Charlie would hold him.

  Charlie remained still. Alex looked up and saw he was about to cry. “It’s okay, Charlie. Don’t cry.”

  “He’ll be all right,” Kenneth said.

  Charlie’s eyes never left the deer as he lifted Alex and moved them a little closer. The closer they got, the faster Alex’s heart raced and the tighter he hung on to Charlie. Alex didn’t like the way the deer’s eyes were, open but not seeing. Blank.

  “I feel bad for that deer,” Alex said, lifting his head to see little puffs of light dust that were coming off of Church Road as a black car approached from the distance.

  “Its foot got broken on the fence,” Alex said, noticing a tiny broken bone sticking out of the deer’s hoof. He turned to look back up at Kenneth. “There’s a bone; you can see it.”

  “I know,” Kenneth said.

  Charlie still didn’t move.

  “Can we get it off the fence?”

  They all looked up at the road as the fancy black car hummed by them. It caused a small tornado of leaves to swirl off the ground in tiny circles behind it as it made its way toward St. Thomas. Alex thought the driver was the man who ate the crackers with pee on them yesterday. Dr. Somethin’. But he was more interested in the dead deer.

  Still holding Alex, Charlie snapped a branch off of a nearby tree and then slowly approached the dead deer as if he were protecting him and Alex with a wooden sword. He tapped at the deer with the branch, and Alex didn’t like the hollow way it sounded. Charlie poked it again as if he were making sure the animal was dead. He put Alex down and then carefully lined up the end of the branch with the deer’s trapped hoof. He gave it a firm shove, ripping its skin from the rusty brown wire. It tumbled over and into a bunch of tall, dry grass.

  Alex took anot
her look into the deer’s lifeless eyes. Charlie scratched at his chin, wiped a small tear, and then leaned over and picked up Alex to place him over the fence.

  “Don’t cry, Charlie,” Alex said again. “Maybe that deer went to heaven. Maybe she is okay.”

  Charlie straddled and then pulled one leg carefully over the fence.

  “She sure is stinky,” Alex said, holding his nose. He backed away and reached up for Charlie to lift him again. He stared down at the little deer. She looked smaller, now that she was off the fence. “I wish she didn’t have to die hangin’ up like that.”

  “Me too,” Kenneth said. “But she’s fine now. Better than you can imagine.”

  Alex stared at the little doe. She did look more peaceful-like now that she was down in the tall grass.

  “I’m tired, Charlie.” A nap on the couch right now sounded really, really good to him. Right after a bowl of macaroni and cheese.

  JAMES’S LEG TWITCHED AS IF SOMEONE WERE HOLDING the open flame of a lighter against his bare knee. “I’m telling you, I know that Kenneth was talking about Brooke and Alex.”

  “How could he know?” Shirley asked, delicately patting James’s wound with a cotton ball soaked with antiseptic.

  “I don’t know. Maybe he heard Brooke talking about the hospital visits. But that’s why he switched the Bible verse to he from she.”

  “Sit still, James Lindy,” Shirley said sternly, taking another bandage out of a small cardboard box and tearing off its paper cover.

  James briefly held his hands up in surrender before dropping them to his lap. He rubbed the top of an oval-shaped bandage that she had just applied to his elbow, making sure the edges would stick. “It’s too much of a coincidence.”

  “Why don’t you ask him when he comes to the harvest party on Saturday?”

  “I will. You know I will.”

  Shirley looked curiously out the kitchen window. “James, that same fancy black car that was here yesterday is parked out in front of the church.”

  “Fancy black car?”

  “I’m pretty sure that it’s that doctor,” Shirley said, hesitating before putting her glasses on to look again. “It’s Zach Norman. He is going up the walkway to the church.”

  “Maybe he’s looking for me,” James said, rising dutifully to his feet. “I better go over there.”

  Shirley’s palms were on the edge of the sink, and she went up on tiptoe. “Now he is walking across the lawn.”

  “Coming here?” James asked. “Why didn’t he drive over here?”

  “I don’t think he is coming here,” Shirley said. “He just stopped.” “What’s he doing?”

  “Nothing,” Shirley answered, shrugging. She stepped back and then turned to James. “He is just standing in front of the cross, looking at it.”

  ZACH TURNED AROUND AND ACKNOWLEDGED CHARLIE and Alex as they approached him from behind. “Hey, guys,” he said distantly. He then turned back to the cross.

  “What are you looking at?” Alex asked innocently, the tiny freckles beneath his eyes huddling together as he squinted to look up past the cross and into the sky as if he were missing something that was flying over.

  “It’s awesome,” Zach answered.

  “What is?” Alex asked. “What does that mean?”

  “The cross,” Zach said, placing his palm firmly on it and oddly feeling as if it were alive in some way. “It’s a miracle.”

  “Yes, it is,” Pastor Jim said loudly as he walked across the lawn from the doctor’s left. His arms were crossed to shelter himself from the breeze, and the bandage on his elbow had come undone, hanging halfway off, flapping with each step he took.

  Zach didn’t respond.

  “Yes, it is a miracle,” Pastor Jim repeated. “The Lord blessed us with the work of our friends’ hands.”

  “Yeah,” Zach said politely, knowing that there was a little more to the cross’s resurrection than what the good minister believed. He didn’t really expect Pastor Jim to be able to explain what had happened—mostly because he himself couldn’t explain it. In fact, looking at the cross again today convinced him of what spooked him the most, and that was his high degree of certainty that nobody could explain it.

  “Is there something I can help you with, Dr. Norman?” Pastor Jim asked.

  “I guess I just wanted to see it again,” he said as Beethoven’s “Symphony No. 9” flowed softly through the half-opened driver’s side window of the Mercedes. “That’s all I really needed, Pastor Jim.” What he really needed was what no one could give, and that was the answer as to exactly how the carpenter did it, because what he did was, by a strict definition, impossible. It was, in fact— and he found himself thinking it again—a miracle.

  “See what?” Pastor Jim asked. “The cross?”

  Zach nodded again. “It really happened, didn’t it?” He slid his hand a little higher on the smooth side of the cross. “He really did this.”

  “What really happened?” Pastor Jim asked, his forehead creasing in confusion.

  Zach had no words to answer. That was part of the problem. There were no words to explain it.

  Charlie stepped closer to them and placed his hand above Zach’s on the cross. They looked at each other and exchanged what Zach felt to be some type of glance of mutual understanding.

  “You—” he said to Charlie. “You saw it, didn’t you, big fella?”

  Charlie looked innocently into Zach’s eyes.

  “Are you all right, Dr. Norman?” Pastor Jim asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Zach said, keeping his right hand on the cross while lightly rubbing his forehead with his left. “To be honest with you, sir, I really don’t know.”

  Alex stepped between Zach and the cross and poked at the doctor’s leg before looking up at him. “I was at the hospital today. Nurse Kaitlyn was there.”

  Zach didn’t even acknowledge Alex. He didn’t mean to ignore him; he just couldn’t look away from Charlie.

  “Would you like to go inside the church and talk?” Pastor Jim asked warmly. “Maybe I can help. I don’t see real well, but I think I’m a pretty good listener.”

  “I appreciate it, Pastor Jim,” Zach said, his hand fluttering off the cross as he turned to the minister. “I may take you up on that sometime—sometime soon. But I’m running late as it is, and I need to make another stop before I get to work.”

  “I understand,” Pastor Jim said. “Just remember that I’m always here.”

  “I like Nurse Kaitlyn,” Alex said impatiently.

  “She is a very nice lady, Alexander,” Zach said. “I like her too.”

  “There’s a dead deer on the fence back in the woods,” Alex said, somber and earnest in his reporting. “Its toe got stuck, and it stinks, and something ate its stomach.”

  Zach didn’t say anything, smiling at the cute little redhead. Poor kid. Rough go for him ahead. Leukemia could—

  “It went to heaven,” Alex said confidently.

  “Heaven, huh?” Zach said quietly, his smile melting. Did dead deer go to heaven? Did anyone? “I have to go, you guys. I’m really sorry to have bothered you today.”

  He took a hand out of his pocket and placed it back up on the cross one more time, only a few inches below Charlie’s hand, which was still resting there. Something about touching the cross made him feel good. It reminded him he wasn’t losing it—it’d really happened.

  Charlie suddenly dropped his hand over Zach’s, and Zach was startled. He thought that Charlie was looking at him like he wanted to say something.

  “I’m tired, Pastor Jim,” Alex said quietly. The pastor picked him up and kissed him. Alex rested his head on his shoulder.

  Zach took his hand off the cross, patted Charlie on the shoulder, and then zipped up his jacket. At least he wasn’t alone. Charlie knew something really bizarre had happened here too. “See you later, guys.”

  “You’re welcome here anytime you like, Dr. Norman,” Pastor Jim said. “Anytime you like.”

>   “I appreciate it, Pastor Jim,” Zach said, turning to offer his hand to Charlie. Slowly, they shook hands, and Zach looked into his eyes. “I know you can’t do it, so I’ll say it for you, big fella. It’s a miracle. A true-blue miracle. You know it and I know it, and somehow, that makes me feel better.”

  NINETEEN

  Zach double-clicked his key holder, which chirped to confirm that the Mercedes was securely locked behind him. He dropped his hands to his sides and then looked up to read the copper block letters that arched above the wrought iron gate—the sole entrance to St. Victor’s Cemetery.

  He’d heard that the last of the 150-year-old cemetery’s 6,500-plus plots had all been claimed a good twenty years ago, which was one of several reasons its upkeep was no longer on the top of anyone’s to-do list.

  “Here goes nothing,” he said, firmly shoving on the rusty gate, which swung open with an obligatory creak that magnetically invited him onto the gravel walkway within the cemetery grounds.

  Zach closed the gate behind him and then looked around. None of it was familiar anymore. He hadn’t been to the cemetery in over twenty years, and the lack of maintenance had left it looking like an abandoned set of a low-budget horror film. Tumbleweeds piled against the highest gravestones. Weeds were overtaking everything. Half the grass was dead and gone and not coming back with spring.

  He buttoned up his coat, lifted his shoulders, hid his hands in his pockets, and walked slowly down the first of countless rows of tombstones, his head moving back and forth, trying to remember any visual clues about where it was. His confidence in just happening upon the tiny headstone was pretty low. Were there two trees? A hedge? A huge angel tombstone somewhere close? He shook his head. He couldn’t be sure of anything.

  He stopped abruptly and glanced at his watch. He was supposed to have been at East Shore fifteen minutes ago. He had already called in late for the second time that day, which would make it the second time in his entire career as a medical doctor that he had done that.