Keeping Faith: A Novel (7 page)

“I didn’t know–“

“Oh!” Millie exclaims. “This is his big tour! The one he’s taking across America!

Tuesday he was in New Paltz.”

Mariah laughs. “New Paltz has a big atheist population?”

“Just the opposite. He was there because some church claimed to have a statue oozing blood. Turned out to be a limestone deposit or something.”

A line of type flashes at the bottom of the screen: HOULTON, MAINE, LIVE! The camera pans, catching T-shirts emblazoned with THE LIMB OF LIFE: THE JESUS TREE. Then it narrows on a close-up of Ian Fletcher, framed in the doorway of an RV. “Gorgeous man.” Millie sighs.

“Look at that smile.”

Mariah doesn’t glance up from the TV Guide she’s skimming. “Well, of course,”

she says. “He’s probably having the time of his life.”

Ian has never been so miserable in his life.

He is hot and sweaty, has a killer headache, and is quickly coming to hate Maine, if not the entirety of New England. Worse still, he can’t look forward to a respite when the broadcast is finished. His producer refused to book him a decent hotel, saying that a guy who wants to go on a grassroots tour ought to be willing to let his Italian loafers touch the ground. So–for appearance’s sake–Ian’s production crew gets to stay at the Houlton Holiday Inn, while Ian camps out in a glorified tin can.

He’s not about to reveal that accommodations are vitally important to a man who cannot sleep at night, but only prowls about, exhausted. His insomnia is no one’s business but his own. Still,

Ian can’t even begin to describe the anticipation he feels at the prospect of bringing down this whole little Christ show. Whatever hoax he picks next to unravel will damn well be situated near a Ritz-Carlton.

At a signal from James he steps out of the godforsaken Winnebago, several reporters closing around him. He pushes through them and steps onto an empty milk crate that someone has left behind. “As y’all may know,” Ian says,

gesturing to the small and devoted knot of people gathered in front of the McKinneys’ sprawling apple tree, “there’s been some question in recent days whether Houlton, Maine, is indeed the site of a religious miracle. According to William and Bootsie McKinney, the morning of August twentieth, following a severe thunderstorm, Jesus appeared to them in a split branch of this Macintosh tree.”

Ian turns toward it. Actually, the way the rings of the tree have grown and the delicate lines of dried sap do sort of resemble a long-chinned,

dark-eyed visage. Like conventional pictures of Jesus, if one believes in that sort of thing.

Ian deliberately smacks his open palm over the image, covering it. “Is there a face here?

Maybe. But if the McKinneys were not pious Catholics who attended mass regularly, would they have seen Jesus? Or might they have said it looks like Orville Redenbacher, or Great-uncle Samuel?” He waits for the suggestion to sink in before adding, “Is a religious miracle truly inexplicable and divine? Or is it a coincidental meeting of what’s been programmed in one’s mind with what one wants to see?”

At the quick gasp of one of the nuns, the Houlton parish priest steps forward. “Now,

Mr. Fletcher,” Father Reynolds says.

“There are documented cases of religious miracles that have even been approved by the Holy See.”

“Like that sighting of the Virgin Mary in a Mexican subway puddle a few years back?”

“I don’t believe that has reached the approval stage yet.”

Ian snorts. “C’mon, Father–if you were the Virgin Mary and you wanted to choose a place to appear, would you pick the oil sheen on a subway platform? Can’t you accept the possibility that this may not be what it seems?”

The priest taps his finger against his chin. “I can,” he says slowly. “Can you?”

At the titter that runs through the crowd, Ian realizes he’s lost his momentum. Goddamn live TV. “Ladies and gen’lemen, I’d like to introduce Dr. Irwin Nagel, of Princeton University’s Forrestal Campus.

Doctor?”

“Wood,” the professor says, “is made up of several types of xylem cells, including vessels, which conduct materials and strengthen the stem of the tree. The so-called picture inside here is only a natural process of the xylem.

As the tree gets older, the innermost layers stop conducting food and get clogged with resin,

gum, and tannin, which harden and darken. The face that the McKinneys have seen is actually just a conglomeration of deposits in the tree’s heartwood.”

Ian nods as his producer comes to stand beside him.

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know if they’re buying it,”

James whispers. “I liked your subway thing,

though.”

Dr. Nagel suddenly lifts up a large,

dangerous-looking pair of hedge trimmers.

“Now, I’ve got the McKinneys’ permission for this,” he says, as he randomly selects a branch and hacks it off. The pale sapwood seems to blush, and then within moments the demarcations of the tree’s rings are clearly visible. “Well,

there. It kind of looks like Mickey Mouse.”

Ian steps forward. “The professor means that the apparition of the face of Christ is, literally,

a fluke of nature. That it happened is not extraordinary for a tree of this size and age.”

On impulse Ian takes a black marker from his pocket and draws a shape on the exposed insides of the tree. “Roddy,” he calls to a familiar reporter, “what is this?”

The man squints. “That’s the moon.”

Ian points to Father Reynolds. “A bowl.”

“A semicircle,” says Professor Nagel.

Ian sets the cap on his marker with an audible click. “Perception is a very powerful thing. I say this isn’t the face of Jesus. That’s my opinion. It may or may not be true, and I can’t prove it, and you have the right to doubt what I say. But by the same token, when Bill McKinney and Father Reynolds say, “Yes,

this is the face of Jesus,” well, that’s just an opinion, too–and one that can’t be proved. It doesn’t matter if the pope agrees with them,

or the President, or the majority of the whole damned world. It’s certainly what they see. But it may or may not be a fact. And if you don’t believe me, how can you believe them?”

“You know, half the time I don’t even understand what he’s saying, and I still think he’s terrific,” Millie announces. “Look at that priest. He’s practically purple.”

Mariah laughs. “Can we turn this off, Ma?

Or is Jerry Springer coming on next?”

“Very funny. He’s a poet, Mariah. Just you listen to him.”

“He’s using someone else’s script,”

Mariah says, as Ian Fletcher lifts up a Bible and begins to read with heavy sarcasm.

“”But the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God hath said Ye shall not eat of it;

neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.”" Faith comes into the room and slips onto the couch. “I know that poem.”

The funny thing is, the biblical verse seems familiar to Mariah, too, although she can’t understand why. It has been years since Mariah has studied a Bible, and as far as she knows,

Faith’s never even seen one. She and Colin had put off their daughter’s religious instruction indefinitely, since neither of them could consider it without feeling like a hypocrite.

“”And the serpent said to the woman …”"

Faith mutters something beneath her breath.

Assuming the worst, Mariah crosses her arms.

“What was that, young lady?”

“”Ye shall not surely die.”"

As the words leave Faith’s mouth, Ian Fletcher repeats them on TV, and then plucks an apple from the McKinneys’ tree to take a large, provocative bite. That’s when Mariah recalls where she’s heard Fletcher’s verses before–just days ago, when Faith was playing on the swing set in the middle of the night, humming them softly. Just days ago, when Faith–who has never been to church or temple in her young life,

who has never attended Sunday or Hebrew school–was singing from the Book of Genesis as if it were any other jump-rope rhyme.

The men and women who work at Pagan Productions in L.a. keep a healthy distance from Ian Fletcher, frightened by his bursts of temper, his ability to turn their own words back on themselves, and their instinct for self-preservation–

in the event Mr. Fletcher is wrong about God,

they don’t want to be cast into the lake of fire along with him on Judgment Day. They are paid well to respect their employer’s privacy and to firmly deny requests for interviews. It is for this reason that no one outside Pagan Productions knows that Ian leaves every Tuesday morning, and that no one has any idea of where he goes.

Of course, people who work for Ian hypothesize like mad: He has a standing appointment with a mistress. He attends a witches’ coven.

He calls the pope, who is, unbeknownst to his followers, a silent partner in Pagan Productions. Several times, on dares, the bravest employees have tried to follow Ian when he disappears in his black Jeep. He manages to lose all of them by winding around the Los Angeles Freeway. One swears that he tracked Ian all the way to LAX, but nobody believes him. After all, where can you fly round-trip in time to be back for a tape-editing session that same night?

On the Tuesday morning of the week that Ian kicks off his grassroots antirevival at the Jesus Tree, a black stretch limousine pulls up alongside the Winnebago. Ian is discussing with James and several associate producers the reactions his recent comments have received in the press. “I’ve got to go,” Ian says, relieved to see the car approach. He’s had to juggle time and make concessions, since this week he is leaving from Maine rather than L.a.

“You’ve got to go?” James asks. “Where?”

Ian shrugs. “Places. Sorry, I thought I mentioned I’d be cutting out early today.”

“You didn’t.”

“Well, I’ll be back tonight. We can finish up then.” He grabs his briefcase and his leather jacket and slams out the door.

Exactly two and one half hours later he crosses the threshold of a small brick building. He navigates the hallways with the confidence of someone who has been there before. Some of the people he passes nod as he makes his way to the recreation center, equipped with oak tables and televisions and chintz couches. Ian heads for a table in the far corner occupied by a man. Although it is warm in the room, Michael wears a crewneck sweater with a button-down oxford shirt. His hands flutter over a pack of cards,

which he turns over one at a time. “Queen of diamonds,” he murmurs. “Six of spades.”

Ian slips into the chair beside him. “Hey there,” he says softly.

“King of hearts. Two of spades. Seven of hearts.”

“How have you been, Michael?” Ian scoots closer.

The man’s shoulders rock from side to side.

“Six of clubs!” he says firmly.

Ian sighs, nods. “Six of clubs,

buddy.” He moves back a distance. He watches the cards flip in succession: red,

black, red, black. Michael turns over an ace. “Oh, no,” he says. “Ace–“

“In the hole,” Ian finishes.

For the first time, Michael makes fleeting eye contact with Ian. “Ace in the hole,” he echoes, then goes back to counting cards.

Ian sits quietly until exactly one hour has passed since his arrival–not because Michael has acknowledged his presence but because he knows that Michael would notice an absence even a few minutes shy of the routine. “See you in a week, buddy,” Ian murmurs.

“Queen of clubs. Eight of hearts.”

“All right, then,” Ian says,

swallowing hard. He walks out of the building and begins the journey back to Maine.

Something Faith has recently discovered is that if you squinch up your eyes really tight and rub them hard with the balls of your thumbs, you see things:

little stars and greeny-blue circles that she imagines are her irises, as if there’s some kind of mirror on the insides of her eyelids that makes this vision possible. She pulls at the edges of her lids and sees a flurry of red, the color she thinks that anger must be. She has been doing it a lot, although yesterday, when school started, it didn’t work that well. Willie Mercer said that only babies would carry a Little Mermaid lunchbox, and when she whispered to her guard, trying to ignore him, Willie laughed and said she was Looney Tunes. So she closed her eyes to shut him out, and one thing led to another, and before she knew it the school nurse was calling home to say that Faith wouldn’t stop rubbing her eyes; it must be conjunctivitis.

“Do your eyes hurt, Faith?” Dr.

Keller asks now.

“No, everyone just thinks they do.”