Cross Roads (11 page)

A strange ease had come over Tony, perhaps due to the recent confession and cathartic emotional release. Whatever the reason, he breathed deep and pulled his stool even closer to the logs that were dancing and popping, ablaze and excited by their own brilliance.

“Jesus, have I mentioned to you that you have…” He wanted to say “beautiful eyes,” because it was what first came to mind, but concerned about being inappropriate he changed it to “remarkable eyes.”

“Yeah, I get that a lot. Got them from my Dad.”

“You mean Joseph?” queried Tony.

“No, not Joseph,” answered Jesus. “Joseph was my stepdad, no direct genetic inheritance there. I was adopted.”

“Oh, you mean”—Tony pointed up—“your God Dad?”

“Yes, my God Dad.”

“I’ve never liked your God Dad,” admitted Tony.

“You don’t know him,” asserted Jesus, his voice unwavering, warm and kind.

“I don’t want to know him,” responded Tony.

“Too late, my brother,” returned Jesus. “Like Father, like Son.”

“Hmm,” grunted Tony, and again they were silent for a time, mesmerized by the dance of heat and gas as flames voraciously consumed their prey. Finally Tony asked, “Your Dad, isn’t he the God of the Old Testament?”

It was Grandmother who responded, standing up and stretching. “Oh, the God of the Old Testament! He kinda freaks me out!” And with that she turned and headed through a net of blankets and back into the bedroom. Jesus looked at Tony and they both laughed, returning their gaze to the dying embers.

Tony lowered his voice. “Jesus, who exactly is that woman… Grandmother?”

“I heard that,” came the voice from the other room. Tony grinned but otherwise ignored her.

Jesus leaned in. “She is like you. Lakota.”

“Like me?” Tony was surprised. “What do you mean, like me?”

“Tony, all of us belong to a tribe, all members of the two-legged Nation. My tribe is Judah and you have Lakota blood in you.”

“I do?” He was incredulous. “Is she my”—he paused—“is she my real grandmother?”

“Only according to blood, water, and Spirit, but not according to flesh. You are not related to her, but she is related to you.”

“I don’t understand.”

Jesus smiled. “And that surprises you? Let me answer
your question another way. That strong, courageous, and beautiful woman in there is the Holy Spirit.”

“That woman, that Indian woman is the Holy Spirit?”

Jesus nodded and Tony shook his head. “Not exactly what I expected. I thought the Holy Spirit would be, you know, more ghostly, oozier or something, like a force field, not,” he whispered, “some old woman.” He lowered his voice till it was almost inaudible and mouthed the words, “who lives in a shack.”

“Ha!” Jesus laughed deeply and the voice from the other room spoke again: “I can do oozy. If you want oozy or ghostly, I can do that, too, and… if you don’t think I like shacks, you don’t know me very well.”

The ease of their banter and relationship was entirely new to Tony. No underlying tension, no eggshells or minefields hidden in the conversations. He could not even detect agenda masked inside their words. It was real, authentic, compassionate, easy, enjoyable, and felt almost dangerous.

A few minutes passed before Jesus spoke, barely above a whisper, “Tony, you are about to go on a journey…”

He laughed. “That sounds more like something Grandmother would say: ‘You are about to go on a journey, grandson,’… as if this”—he opened up his arms to include everything around—“as if this couldn’t qualify as a journey?”

Jesus chuckled softly. “Exactly like something she would say. Regardless, on your ‘journey,’ it is important that you remember you will never be alone, no matter what it looks or feels like.”

“Do I really need to know this?” He reached over and touched Jesus’s arm. “I’ve been sitting here trying not to remind myself that I already agreed to this, so if you’re trying to make me nervous, it’s working.”

Again Jesus laughed, quietly and authentically, giving
Tony the comfort that he was indeed fully present to him, fully there for him. “I am not about making you feel nervous; just wanted you to know that I will never stop holding on to you.”

Tony took a deep breath, searching for the right words before speaking. “I think I believe you, as much as I believe any of this. Not sure why, maybe because of my mom, but I think I do.” He paused before adding, “Thank you, by the way, for all that, you know, when I came apart on the way up here.”

Jesus patted him on the shoulder, a silent acknowledgment of what he had said, and continued, “Grandmother and I want to give you a gift that you can give to someone on your journey.” As if on cue, Grandmother parted the blankets from the other room and returned to sit with them. She had taken her braids out; her inky hair falling loose and free created a contrast with her wizened but radiant face. She was comfortable and at ease in presence and movement.

She stretched and scratched herself below her chin where a button was missing from her smock.

“I’m getting old,” she grumbled, “but what can you do?”

“Whatever!” Tony teased. This woman was supposedly older than the universe. “Exercise and diet,” he offered with a smile, which she returned.

With that she plopped down on the stool next to Tony, squirmed a little until she appeared comfortable while at the same moment producing from the folds of her garment what looked like several strands of light. He watched transfixed as she deftly brought various ends together, matching and connecting without thought or intention, but as light touched light their colors merged and transformations began. A length of iridescent aquamarine became a thousand shades of dancing greens, reds undulating against purples while white continuously flashed throughout. With each new shade and hue, a barely audible tone would begin
and together merged and grew into a harmony that Tony could physically feel inside his body. Between her fingers emerged shapes, dark spaces in between the light pieces that were three-dimensional or more.

These patterns and figures became increasingly complex, and suddenly within the rich blackness in the hanging spaces small explosions began, patterned fireworks like multicolored diamonds suspended on an inky backdrop. But they didn’t disappear. First they hung in the emptiness, twinkly and shimmering, and as their tones united they stirred to a dance precisely choreographed yet free-form. It was utterly captivating, and Tony found he had been holding his breath as he watched. He sensed that the slightest breeze, even a whisper, might send her creations in directions unpredictable and maybe even ruinous. Grandmother’s arms opened wider to contain this treasure, and Tony witnessed the evolving of design that seemed impossible, as if his eyes could observe in ways his mind could not process. He was now experiencing the harmonies within his chest, from the inside, and the music seemed to grow as did the complexity of configurations. Hairline waves of brilliant color entangled with purpose and intent, each penetration creating a quantum participation, filaments of random certainty, chains of chaotic order.

Suddenly Grandmother laughed like a little girl and gathered this grandeur inward until it was cupped in her hands. These she finally closed, until Tony could only see light pulsating through the spaces between her fingers. She brought it all slowly to her mouth as if to encourage embers, but instead blew like a cosmic magician, spreading her arms and opening her hands at the same moment to create a shape like a heart descending. The glory was gone.

She smiled at Tony, whose mouth was still open. “You like that?”

“There aren’t words,” he said, struggling to speak. “That was the single most thrilling thing I have ever seen, or heard, or even felt. What were those things?”

“Strings,” she responded matter-of-factly. “You remember cat’s cradle?” He nodded, thinking about the simple game of finger manipulations and shapes he played as a child. “That was my version. Helps me focus.”

“So.” He hesitated, not wanting his question to be ignorant, but still needing to ask. “So, what I just saw, that… whatever that was that you just did, did you just make that up as you went, or was that the design of something specific?”

“That is a brilliant question, Anthony. What you saw, heard, and felt is a very tiny presentation of something very specific.”

“And what is that, specifically?” Tony was eager to know.

“Love! Self-giving, other-centered love!”

“That was love?” he asked, hardly believing what she was saying.

“A tiny presentation of love. Child’s play, but real and true.” She smiled again as Tony sat back, trying to grasp her words. “One more thing, Anthony. You couldn’t have noticed, but there was something essential purposefully left out of my little composition. You heard and felt the harmonies of light, at least the surface of them, but you didn’t notice, did you, that the melody was missing?”

It was true, Tony had not heard a melody, just a symphony of harmonies.

“I don’t understand. What’s the missing melody?” he asked.

“You, Anthony! You are the melody! You are the reason for the existence of what you witnessed and consider so immeasurably awe inspiring. Without you, what you perceived would have no meaning and no shape. Without you, it would have simply… fallen apart.”

“I don’t…,” Tony began, looking down at the dirt floor, which he felt move slightly under his feet.

“It’s okay, Anthony. I know you don’t believe much of this yet. You are lost and looking up from a very deep hole just to see the superficial. This is not a test you can fail. Love will never condemn you for being lost, but love will not let you stay there alone, even though it will never force you to come out of your hiding places.”

“Who are you?” He looked up and into those eyes, almost able to see in them what he had so recently witnessed in her hands. At this moment, “Holy Spirit” seemed a vague description and without much content.

Her gaze held his without waver or hesitation. “Anthony, I am she who is more than you can begin to imagine and yet anchors your deepest longings. I am she whose love for you, you are not powerful enough to change, and I am she whom you can trust. I am the voice in the wind, the smile in the moon, the refreshing of the life that is water. I am the common wind that catches you by surprise and your very breath. I am a fire and fury opposed to everything that you believe that is not the Truth, that is hurting you and keeping you from being free. I am the Weaver, you are a favorite color, and he”—she tilted her head toward Jesus—“he is the tapestry.”

A holy hush descended, and for a time they only watched the cinders glowing, breathing bright, then fading, oscillating according to the whim of invisible breath.

“It is time,” whispered Grandmother.

Jesus reached over and took Tony’s hand. “The gift I spoke of earlier, Tony, is that on this journey you are taking, you can choose to physically heal one person, but only one, and when you choose the one, your journey will end.”

“I can heal someone? Are you telling me that I am able
to heal anybody that I want to?” he asked, surprised by the very idea. His thoughts, without prompting, immediately returned to Gabriel’s bedside as the five-year-old’s hand slipped from his, and then skipped to his own body in an ICU room. He glanced down at what was left of the fire, hoping that no one else knew what he had been thinking, which he by now accepted as unlikely. He cleared his throat and asked, just to be certain he understood, “Anyone?”

“Providing they are not dead already,” commented Grandmother. “Not impossible, but not usually a good idea.”

Tony interrupted, his vision slowing, as if he were seeing frame by frame, and his words blurred, too. “So, lemme get it straight. Anyone! I can heal anyone I want to, I can heal?” Though he wasn’t sure what he asked made any sense at all, he was confident that Grandmother and Jesus understood.

Jesus leaned closer. “You can’t actually heal anyone, not alone, but I will be with you, and anyone you choose to pray for, I will heal through you. But this sort of physical healing is ultimately temporary. Even faith healers eventually die.”

“Anybody?”

“Yes, Tony, anyone.” Jesus was smiling, but his smile was beginning to come off his face, and Tony reached out into space to try to put it back.

“Okay, then,” he mumbled, his words barely understandable. “Good! So lemme ask you, do I have to believe for this to work?” He again looked back at the fire, bare remnants remaining, yet heat emanating from it strong and certain. He wasn’t certain he heard the answer, but thought later that Jesus had replied, “Healing isn’t about you, Tony.”

He lay back and began sliding.

N
ight had fallen in Portland. Somewhere above the seemingly ever-present clouds and precipitation flew a full moon, and the normal lunar patient increase had begun to clutter the waiting rooms of OHSU’s emergency ward. Neurological Sciences ICU on the seventh floor was thankfully quiet except for routines, accompanied by the programmed repetitions of monitoring devices and other electronic gadgetry, medical staff and personnel dancing to the rhythms of well-established and predictable expectations.

Dr. Victoria Franklin, head of the Department of Neurosurgery, was making her evening rounds with a cadre of students who pursued and huddled like a flock of chicks trying to keep pace with their mother hen, each hopeful to impress while avoiding embarrassment. She was a smallish African American woman, a little frumpy but with eyes and a demeanor that demanded and maintained attention.

Her next stop, room 17. Walking to the end of the bed, the chief resident tapped the tablet and scanned the information. “Our patient is Mr. Anthony Spencer,” she began, “who will be forty-six in a couple weeks, assuming he makes his birthday, a businessman who has graced our premises a couple times in the past, once for a torn Achilles tendon and another time a little sparring with pneumonia, but other than that has been mostly healthy. He came in yesterday and presented with head trauma in two places, a sizable gash on his forehead and a concussion probably occurring when he collapsed on-site where he was found, resulting in bleeding from the right ear.