Strangers

“When's the last time you visited your doctor? Has he seen this?”

Winton rebuttoned his shirt with trembling hands. "I saw Dr. Sonneford a week ago. The sutures hadn't been removed long before, and my chest was still a mess. It's only been the past four days that the scars melted away. I swear, Father, if I stand at a mirror long enough, I can see them fading."

Finishing with his shirt buttons, Winton said, "Lately, I've been thinking about your visit to the hospital Christmas Day. The more I've gone over it in my mind, the more it seems your behavior was peculiar. I remember some of what you said, some of the questions you asked about Brendan, and I start wondering. . . . One thing I wonder aboutone thing I've got to know -is whether Brendan Cronin ever healed anyone else."

"Yes. Nothing as dramatic as your case. But there's an other. I'm . . . not at liberty to reveal who,“ Stefan said. ”But this isn't why you called the rectory, Winton. Not to show Brendan how well you've healed. Your voice was so full of urgency, even panic. And what about all these policemen with the Mendozas ... ? What's happened here, Winton?"

A mercurial smile appeared onand quickly faded fromthe man's broad face, followed by a transient glimmer of fear. Emotional turmoil was also evident in his voice. "We're cruising. Me and Paul. We get a call. This address. We get here, find a sixteenyearold kid high on PCP. You know what they're like on PCP sometimes? Crazy. Animals. Damn stuff eats brain cells. Later, after it's over, we find out his name's Ernesto, son of Mrs. Mendoza's sister. He came to live here a week ago because his mother can't control him any more. The Mendozas ... they're good people. You see how they keep this place?"

Father Wycazik nodded.

Winton said, "The kind of people take in a nephew when he's gone wrong, try to set him straight. But you can't set a kid like that straight. You break your heart trying, Father. This Ernesto, he's been in trouble since he was in fifth grade. Juvenile arrest record. Six offenses. Two of them pretty serious. We get here, he's na*ed as a jaybird, screaming his head off, eyes bugged out like the pressure in his head's going to blow his skull apart."

Winton's gaze unfocused, as if he were seeing back into time and had as clear a view of that scene as when he had first encountered it.

"Ernesto's got Hector, the little boy you probably saw when you came in, he's got him down on the sofa, holding him, and he's got a goddamn sixinch switchblade at Hector's throat. Mr. Mendoza ... well, he's going crazy, wanting to rush Ernesto and take the knife, but scared Ernesto will slash Hector. Ernesto's screaming, he was blissed on angel dust. He's PCPcrazy, and you can't talk sense to him. We drew our guns because you don't just walk up to some dopedout freak with a knife and shake hands. But we didn't want to try to shoot him because he had the knife at Hector's throat, Hector was crying, and Ernesto could've killed the kid if we made the wrong move. So we tried to talk him down, talk him away from Hector, and we seemed to make headway, cause he started to take the knife off the boy. But then all of a sudden, Jesus, he slashed quick, cut Hector's throat almost from ear to ear, deep"-Winton shuddered-"deep. Then he raised the knife over his head, so we shot him, I'm not sure how many times, blew him away, and he fell dead on top of Hector. We pulled him off, and there was little Hector, one hand trying to close up the hole in his throat, blood spurting between his fingers, eyes already glazing over.........

The cop took a deep breath and shuddered again. His eyes came back into focus, as if he needed to retreat from the horror of the past. He looked toward the window, beyond which the gray winter daylight sifted like soot over the gray Uptown street.

Stefan's heart had begun to pound, not because of the bloody horror that Winton had described but because he could see where the cop's story had to be leading, and he was eager to hear the miracle described.

Looking at the window, Winton continued. His voice grew shakier as he spoke: "There's no first aid for that kind of wound, Father. Severed arteries, veins. Big arteries in the neck. Blood pumps out like water from a hose, and you can't use a tourniquet, not on a neck, and direct pressure won't seal up a carotid artery. Shit, no. I knelt on the floor beside the sofa, and I saw Hector was dying fast. He looked so little, Father, so little. That kind of wound, they're gone in two minutes, sometimes a lot less, and he was so little. I knew it was useless, but I put my hands on Hector's neck, like somehow I could hold the blood in him, hold the life in him. I was sick, angry, scared, and it just wasn't right that a boy so little should die that way, that hard, not right he should die at all, not right, and then . . . then.. . ."

“And then he healed,” Father Wycazik said softly.

Winton Tolk finally looked away from the gray light at the window and met Stefan's eyes. "Yes, Father. He healed. He was soaked in his own blood, seconds away from death, but he healed. I didn't even know what was happening, didn't feel it happening, nothing special in my hands. Wouldn't you think I'd feel something special in my hands? But the first I realized that something incredible was happening was when the blood stopped spurting against my fingers, and the boy shut his eyes at the same time, which was when I thought he was dead for sure, and I just . . . I shouted, 'No! God, no!' And I started to take my hands away from Hector's throat, to look at it, and that's when I saw the wound was ... the wound was closed up. It still had a raw, ugly look to it, an awful line where the knife cut deep, but the flesh was knit together into a bright red scar, a healing scar."

The big man stopped speaking because shimmery lenses of tears had formed over his eyes. He was overcome once more. If he'd been racked by grief, he probably would have suppressed it, but this was something even more powerful: joy. Pure wild disbelieving joy. He could not contain several explosive, wrenching sobs.

With hot tears in his own eyes, Father Wycazik held out both hands.

Winton took them, squeezed them tight, and did not let go as he continued: "Paul, my partner, saw it happen. So did the Mendozas. And two other uniforms arrived just as we shot Ernest: They saw it, too. And when I looked at that red line across his throat, somehow I knew what I had to do. I put my hands on the boy again, covered up the wound again, and I thought about him being alive, sort of wished him alive. My mind was in high gear, and I made the connection with Brendan and me, the sandwich shop. I thought about how the scars on my chest had been disappearing the last few days, and I knew somehow it's connected. So I kept my hands on his throat, and in a minute or so he opened his eyes, he smiled at me, you should've seen that smile, Father, so I took my hands away again, and the scar was there but lighter. The boy sat up and asked for his mother, and that's ... that's when I went to pieces." Winton paused and gulped some air. "Mrs. Mendoza took Hector into the bathroom, stripped him out of his bloody clothes, bathed him, and all the time more people from the department kept showing up. Word was getting around. Thank God, the reporters haven't cottoned to it yet."

For a while the two men sat facing each other in silence, gripping hands. Then Stefan said, “Did you try to bring Ernesto back?”

"Yes. In spite of what he'd done, I put my hands on his wounds. But it didn't work with him, Father. Maybe because he was already dead. Hector was only dying, not yet gone, but Ernesto was dead."

"Did you notice odd marks in your hands, on your palms?

Red rings of swollen flesh?"

“Nothing like that. What would it've meant if there'd been rings?”

“I don't know,” Father Wycazik said. "But they appear in Brendan's hands when ... when these things happen."

They were silent again, and then Winton said, "Is Brendan ... is Father Cronin some kind of saint?"

Father Wycazik smiled. “He's a good man. But he's no saint.”

“Then how did he heal me?”

"I don't know precisely. But surely it's a manifestation of the power of God. Somehow. For some reason."

“But how did Brendan pass along this power to heal?”

"I don't know, Winton. If he did pass it along. Maybe the power isn't yours. Maybe it's just God acting through you, first through Brendan and then through you."

At last Winton let go of Father Wycazik's hands. He turned his palms up and stared at them. "No, the power's still here, still in me. I know that. Somehow. I feel it. And not just ... not just the power to heal. There's more."

Father Wycazik raised his eyebrows. “More? What else?”

Winton frowned. "I don't know yet. It's all so new. So strange. But I feel ... more. It'll take time for it to develop."

He looked up from the pale palms of his callused black hands, awestricken and fearful. "What is Father Cronin, and what has he made of me?"

"Winton, get rid of the notion there's anything evil or dangerous about this. It's entirely a wondrous thing. Think of Hector, the child you saved. Remember what it was like to feel life regaining its hold in his small body. We're players in a divine mystery, Winton. We can't understand the meaning of it until God allows us to understand."

Father Wycazik said he wanted to have a look at the boy, Hector Mendoza, and Winton said, "I'm not ready to go out there and face that crowd, even though they're mostly my people. I'll stay here a while. You'll come back?"

" I've got other rather urgent business this morning, Winton. I have to get on with it soon. But I'll be in touch with you. Oh, you can be sure of that! And if you need me, just call St. Bette's."

When Stefan left the bedroom, the waiting crowd of policemen and lab technicians fell silent as before. They parted in his path as he crossed to the dinette table, where little Hector was now perched on his mother's lap, nibbling happily at a Hershey bar with almonds.

The boy was small, even for a sixyearold, with delicate facial bones. His eyes were bright and full of intelligence, proof that he'd suffered no brain damage in spite of losing most of his blood. But even more astonishing was the fact that his lost blood had evidently been replaced, without need of transfusions, which made the boy's recovery even more miraculous than Tolk's. The power in Winton's hands seemed greater than it had been in Brendan's.

When Father Wycazik stooped down to be at eyelevel with Hector, the child grinned at him. “How are you feeling, Hector?”

“Okay,” the boy said shyly.

“Do you remember what happened to you, Hector?”

The child licked chocolate from his lips and shook his head: no.

“Is that a good candy bar?”

The boy nodded and offered Father Wycazik a bite.

The priest smiled. “Thank you, Hector, but that's all yours.”

“Mama might give you one,” Hector said. "But don't drop any on the carpet. That's big trouble."

Stefan looked up at Mrs. Mendoza. "He really doesn't remember . . .?"

“No,” she said. “God lifted the memory from him, Father.”

“You're Catholic, Mrs. Mendoza?”

,,Yes, Father," she said, crossing herself with her free hand.

"Do you attend Our Lady of Sorrow? Yes, well, that's Father Nilo's parish. Have you called him?"

“No, Father. I didn't know if . . .”

Father Wycazik looked up at Mr. Mendoza, who stood on the other side of his wife's chair. "Call Father Nilo. Tell him what's happened, ask him to come. Explain that I'll be gone when he gets here but that I'll talk to him later. Explain that I've much to tell him, that what he sees here isn't the whole story."

Mr. Mendoza hurried to the telephone.

Looking up at one of the detectives who had come close, Stefan said, “Have you taken pictures of the boy's throat wound?”

The detective nodded. “Yeah. Standard procedure.” He laughed nervously. “What am I saying? There's nothing standard about this.”

“Just so you have photographs to prove this happened,” Father Wycazik said. “Because I think soon there will be little or no scar.”

He turned to the boy again. "Now, Hector, if it's okay, I'd like to touch your throat. I'd like to feel that mark."

The boy lowered the candy bar.

Father Wycazik's fingers were trembling when they touched the fiery scar tissue and moved slowly around the boy's neck from one end of the wound to the other. A strong pulse beat in the carotid arteries on each side of the slender young throat, and Stefan's heart leapt when he felt the miracle of life. Death had been defeated here, and Stefan believed he had been privileged to witness a fulfillment of the promise which was at the root of the Church's existence: "Death shall not last; unto you shall be given life everlasting." Tears rose in the priest's eyes.

When at last Stefan reluctantly took his hand away from the boy and stood, one of the policemen said, "What's it mean, Father? I heard you tell Mr. Mendoza this wasn't the whole story. What's happening?"

Stefan turned to look upon the assembly, which now numbered twenty. In their faces, he saw a longing to believe, not particularly in the truths of Catholicism or Christianity, for not all were Catholics or Christians, but a deepseated longing to believe in something greater and better and cleaner than humankind, an intense yearning for spiritual transcendence.

“What's it mean, Father?” one of them asked again.

“Something's happening,” he told them. "Here, elsewhere. A great and wonderful something. This child is part of it. I can't tell you for sure what it means or that we've seen the hand of God here, though I believe we have. Look at Hector on his mother's lap, eating candy, and remember God's promise: "There shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away." In my heart of hearts, I feel that the former things are about to pass away. Now I must go. I've urgent business."

Somewhat to his surprise, even though his explanation had been vague, they parted to make way for him and did not detain him further, perhaps because the miracle of Hector Mendoza had not been vaguehad in fact been emphatically specificand had already given them more answers than they could handle. But as Stefan went, some reached out to touch him, to squeeze his hand or shoulder, not with religious fervor but with an emotional camaraderie. Stefan was overcome by the need to touch them as well, to share a profound sense of the community of humankind, which had filled everyone -in the room, to share the conviction that they were being swept toward some great destiny.