Our Lady of the Forest (36 page)

Tom said, But are the bunions still there?

They're still there, but they just don't hurt.

How do you explain it?

I don't explain it.

No pain?

None at all. And I got healed in the nick of time. Because tomorrow the woods are shut down.

Tom didn't believe her. How could it be? Be honest, he said. Maybe you've got yourself talked into it. You talked yourself out of your bunions, maybe. Because you wanted to believe in being healed.

If I did I guess that's a miracle too.

In a way, said Tom. You can look at it that way.

I do, said the woman. Praise Mother Mary. It's a miracle however you look at it, isn't it? As long as the pain is gone?

         

He still had time before night shift started, so he drove toward the North Fork Campground. He drove with less patience than usual and with a terrorizing frustration about other cars and twice he passed drivers who were doing fifty-two where the speed limit was fifty-five. Predictably there was no good radio reception except for a station that had once played country but now played pop music aimed at teenagers so he put in a cassette called
The Legendary Hank Williams Senior
chiefly because it was in the glove box—somebody had left it behind years before—
Chains from My Heart
and so on. Tom listened with resistance to it. Its emotional tenor was a mystery to him, an alien sensibility. No one could be that cheerful about sadness in a place where it rained with such unrelieved constancy, a long slow piss from heaven. He rifled through the glove box again and came up with Eleanor's Dixie Chicks tape and threw that out the window—
flip
—with a therapeutic glee.
My fishing pole's broke, the creek is full of sand, my woman run away with another man
.… With that frog in his throat like Gomer Pyle.

At the campground Tom left his truck on the road shoulder and hiked toward the glow of the campfires and gas lamps and the lit windows of the campers and trailers. The scene reminded him of a Civil War painting he remembered seeing on the History Channel, crowds huddled close to comforting flames, a gargantuan army in abeyance for the night but in expectation of the morrow. A whole town of new Port-A-Potties was set up by the fee shed and two state patrol cars were parked on the median, side by side and head-to-toe so that the officers inside, hats off, radios crackling, could shoot the breeze, make comments about women, and chew gum with their elbows in the window frames, which taken altogether was bad PR, they ought to get out and off their asses and do something for their tax-paid salaries. Tom walked by feeling vaguely criminal: mattress theft, truck canopy hijacking, assaulting a fax machine with business cards. He made his way past Kay's Religious Gifts which even at this hour was doing a lively trade in the garish light of kerosene lanterns, as was the bald man from Salt Lake City selling t-shirts from the back of his van, as was the food service truck run by Marysville teenagers who normally worked at horse shows. There was another retailer set up now with a banner reading
NORTHWEST CATHOLIC SUPPLY
and beside it a booth hawking soda pop, potato chips, candy bars, plastic water bottles, kindling, and flashlights. When the vendor turned around it was Eddie Wilkins Junior wearing a blue coin apron and a knit watch cap that made him look like a small-time burglar and making change from the apron pockets like a peanut peddler at a baseball game, Eddie who had at one time worked for Cross Logging and been arrested twice since then, once for growing marijuana plants, the other for pirating cedar. He had a small goatee now and indistinct sideburns and when he saw Tom he said, in a furtive aside, If you can't beat 'em join 'em and praise the Lord for your conversion. I bought most of this crap at the Wal-Mart in Tacoma and just sell it off at markup.

Ten sticks of kindling for five bucks though?

Hey I'm a capitalist like anybody else.

Whatever happened to business ethics?

Whatever happened to supply and demand?

Don't you need a state business license?

I got one for my booth at the Jubilee. Eddie stepped back out of earshot of pilgrims examining the bags of potato chips. But Tom—what're you doing out here? I can give you a discount on the kindling.

I'm a tourist, said Tom. Looking around. Think of it like the circus is in town and I'm hanging around behind the tents.

Jesus, whispered Eddie. Sell 'em some popcorn. Or better yet—go fill some jugs in the river and sell 'em holy water.

They can get it themselves, they don't need me.

Well sell it to the ones who can't walk two miles between now and tomorrow morning.

You do it. But get the right bottles. And labels. Get the right labels.

You're giving me, said Eddie, big ideas. Great big holy water Web site ideas. Want to go into it with me?

I'm computer illiterate.

That doesn't matter.

In the meantime get rich selling candy bars.

Okay I will, said Eddie.

Farther down the loop road of numbered campsites Tom saw coming toward him a battalion of pilgrims carrying empty jugs and flashlights. He stood aside to let them pass—they seemed to him like earnest children—and then he lit a cigarette and squatted with his back against a tree. Two days of sick leave, he remembered. On the other hand, if he didn't show up, would that be the last straw on top of Nelson calling? And, he thought, what if it was? What if they fired him? His prison guard's pittance, set against the vastness of his debt, was like throwing a handful of sand at the ocean, like pissing on a raging forest fire. Pocket change. Penny ante. What he really needed to do was skip town, set himself up with a fresh start somewhere, and just live quietly like a million other deadbeats down-and-out in small western places where nobody noticed or gave a fuck. Head south. Modesto or Flagstaff. Warm winds and barren spaces. Get another dumb-ass mindless job and a half-decent television set with rabbit ears until he worked his way up to cable. Sit around at night with a six-pack of Schlitz and a copy of
Penthouse,
jerk off, eat lunch-meat sandwiches, doze on the couch, every once in a while go fishing if he could figure out how to do it without a license. Live somewhere with a low heat bill and a lot of Mexicans always looking the other way, get beer at convenience stores, fast food in a bag, keep the truck full of gas, topped up. And fuck everybody. What did he owe? He was already worthless. Eleanor could come after him for alimony and his answer would be Hey, look, check my pockets! You can take home all the lint you want. And my television and my leftover beer, my boots and this package of taco shells.

There was a booth that said
AID STATION
/
LOST AND FOUND
where a woman sat reading
Reader's Digest
with a flashlight in her fist. Tom approached her with a straight-faced game plan. Hello, he said. Praise the Lord. Did anyone turn in a little lost cell phone? The woman folded back the corner of her page and he knew right away from that unconscious gesture that he had her number. Nokia? Yep. Flip phone? Yep. Afterward he called in sick for the night, it was a line where you left a recorded message, Tom felt grateful he didn't have to bullshit directly to a warm living ear. Even so he allowed his voice to subside into a listless register, as if indeed he was flu-ridden. This is Tom Cross.… I can't make my shift.… I'm sick tonight and sorry for the late notice but all day long I was hoping to make it and… uh… now I see I'm not going to get out there. Hoping to get better by tomorrow, thank you. Tom Cross. Thank you. Click. They probably figured the cell phone static meant he was parked in the woods somewhere, bent over a luscious divorcée's tits, ever since he'd separated from Eleanor he could feel that assumption trailing him, that he lived now like an alpha dog in heat, the married guys always rooted for him, Go for it, they'd say. Get some!

Tom went back to Eddie's booth with a fresh cigarette stuck between his lips and his hands slipped into his jacket pockets. There were pilgrims buying soda pop so he had to wait while Eddie winked at him like a gypsy scam artist and suggested the pilgrims add candy bars to their transactions. Then Tom was up front. Old trick, he said. Real old trick. Except this time it's serious, Eddie—no shit. Hey Eddie look over there, and he pointed just over Eddie's shoulder and when Eddie turned he picked up a water bottle and put it inside his jacket. What was this, he said. Ninety-eight cents? For one of these plastic water bottles from Wal-Mart? I'll tell you what I'll give you a buck for it. He dropped a dollar on the table.

Take two and bring me some holy water, Tom.

How much are you going to mark it up?

You getting water for your son that's paralyzed?

I'm getting it for you. Because you're impotent, Eddie.

Well I hope it works. Here, take a Snickers. Eddie tucked one into Tom's jacket pocket and thrust a second water bottle at him. It's all fucking crazy, he observed.

Holy water in a Wal-Mart plastic bottle.

That's America, said Eddie.

Tom walked out of the campground on the trail marked, with a makeshift sign,
OUR LADY OF THE FOREST TRAIL
. In the sodden woods candles shimmered under trees and pilgrims hiked toward him announced by their roving flashlight beams. You're late going up. It's after ten-thirty. Well now or never, I guess, Tom answered. He met another group at an uphill bend. You're going to need a flashlight with you it's dark up there in certain sections. There's a little one here in my pocket, lied Tom, but I'm trying to get my eyes to adjust. Farther along, close to Fryingpan Creek, a third party rested on a log, three women. Hello, said one. You're a late-night traveler. Last chance for holy water, answered Tom.

They've got the pool good and excavated now. It just keeps filling with holy water. You won't have any problems.

At the bridge a white gas lantern cast light and a man stood waiting with a five-gallon bucket. Who goes there? said Tom. That's my line, said the man. A seeker, said Tom. Bless the Mother of God. We're taking cash donations, urged the man, for building the Church of Our Lady of the Forest. Tom dropped a nickel into the bucket. You can put this job on your résumé, he said. That way if you apply for a toll-booth position you'll have a little head start.

On the far side of the bridge, nailed to trees, were two
NO
TRESPASSING
signs, two
PRIVATE PROPERTY
signs, two
STINSON TIMBER LANDS
signs, two
KEEP OUT
signs, and a small box, mounted on a post, containing a notice on Stinson letterhead, probably two hundred copies or more beneath a plastic shield. Tom read it by the light of three matches, Hello, my name is Q. Robert Stinson, Chief Executive Officer of the Stinson Timber Company, and grandson of our company's founder, Joshua Waddell Stinson.

For three generations the Stinson Company has dedicated itself to careful stewardship of its forest holdings and has sought to preserve their pristine beauty and delicate ecosystems.

Our North Fork Quadrant is home to mule deer, elk, black bear, cougar, lynx, and bobcat, and to hills carpeted with magnificent fir, hemlock, and cedar trees. In these woods, yew bark is harvested to make taxol for cancer patients, and cascara bark is harvested for laxatives.

Timber harvested here is used to build homes, schools, and hospitals, and our trees shade rivers and creeks in which salmon and steelhead spawn.

For many decades the Stinson Company has allowed hunters, fishermen, and other outdoor recreationalists free use of its lands and has also allowed the commercial harvesting of mushrooms and floral brush on a small scale. We have always welcomed the public with open arms and in the spirit of a good neighbor.

Unfortunately, we must now close the North Fork Quadrant and prohibit public access due to excess use.

It is in the best interest of our forests that we do so. As stewards of our lands, it is incumbent upon us to act on their behalf, even when such actions are difficult. Yet we can do nothing less. We must ensure the health of our forests in order that future generations might continue to benefit from them and enjoy them.

The North Fork Quadrant of the Stinson Timber Company is hereby closed until further notice. Trespassers will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Tampering with or removal of signs is a misdemeanor and subject to fine and/or imprisonment. We thank you in advance for your compliance.

Cordially,

Bob Stinson.

Tom tightened the lids on his water bottles and entered the forest of blowdowns. The trail wound around fallen trees and passed lit votive candles and pieces of merchandise he'd seen for sale at Kay's Religious Gifts—crucifixes, rosaries, statues, figurines, all left in the forest like sacrifices offered to furtive gods of the night. Tom sat for a moment on a rock in the forest and by the light of a votive candle contemplated a gallery of miniature framed photographs arranged on an altar of moss and plastic flowers. A label had been affixed to each—Sandro Botticelli,
Madonna of the Sea,
Hans Memling,
Virgin and Child,
Andrea Mantegna,
Madonna of the Caves,
and Georges de La Tour,
The Adoration of the Shepherds,
in which the Christ Child looked strangely like a corpse. Across the trail was a second gallery, Pietro Perugino,
The Deposition from the Cross,
Dirck Bouts,
Lamentation,
Giovanni Bellini,
Pietà
—in this one Christ's wounds were exceptionally vivid because of their dimension of graphic depth—and Michelangelo da Caravaggio, whose Christ in the moment of deposition was as muscular as a steroidal weight lifter. Tom scratched his head and pondered the Bellini, attracted to its wounds and to the turquoise pigment applied to Christ's face suggesting the pallor of recent death.

The trail turned steeply northward now, and darker and gloomier, and the numbers of pilgrims in exodus dwindled, and Tom hiked steadily taking a strange pleasure in the extraordinary nature of present circumstances, alone in the night woods on a desperate mission to retrieve two bottles of holy water. He felt like a soldier. Purposeful. He felt the grief and bitterness of the past like a secretion suffusing his gut. He began to search for redemptive memories or an alternative way to look at things but nothing legitimate welled up. Striding through the sheared salal and Oregon grape he passed more lit and flickering candles and a group of pilgrims who had stopped to rest, one of whom greeted him by calling out It isn't far now to the holy water you've already gone three quarters of the way and there aren't any more steep hills. Tom thanked him for his travel information but didn't stop to hobnob any further and before long passed another group coming his way with flashlights. Just around the corner, someone said. Miracle of miracles, said another.