Pierced by a Sword (29 page)

There she was, standing next to the Father Sorin statue, looking at him with that accusing look of hers, her hands on her hips.

"Well?" Joanie accused.

"Well I guess I lose the Wager. Some tramp comes in here
and seduces me with a few alligator tears. God! I didn't last three days, much less a whole year. I was ready to sleep with her to help her out! I threw you away, Joanie. And everything you stand for. Gone! You don't deserve me even if you still wanted me. I can't hack it."

He nodded his head and his eyes stared blankly ahead as he spoke, as if she were in the room with him.

He violently ripped
the Miraculous Medal off his neck, disgusted, and threw it across the room.

You're wrong, Chetmeister, I
am
the same. Just worse. I make a lousy Catholic. I was better off being a jerk.

Talking to himself about his utter failure, even thinking about it, was unbearable. He looked around the room for a bottle of scotch, or vodka, or anything.

Follow me down,
the words from an obscure Doors song,
echoed sourly inside his head.

"Okay," he replied out loud to no one in particular.

Goin' down. Gotta get some fuel for the trip first. How about the Wheat family favorite, Maker's Mark, for old time's sake? Excellent fuel. Maybe bring a buddy along, Jack Daniels. Captain Jack will get me–

The phone rang, freezing his thoughts. It had to be Joanie.

He let the machine answer the phone.

"Nathan,
I can't sleep. I've been praying for you all night long. I know something's wrong. I'm coming to get you. Denny's going to fly me to a private airport in Evanston. He keeps a beat-up car there. I'll be at your place in less than an hour and a half. If you're not there, I'll check every bar in Chicago until I find you. Are you there, Nathan?" Nathan could hear her sobs between her words.

He picked
up the phone with a shaking hand.

Joanie heard his breathing after the small click of the handset being lifted. "Nathan, is that you?" she asked, panicked and relieved at the same time. "Nathan, what's going on? Are you okay?" Her frantic questions rushed past him like a stiff breeze, yet Nathan was eerily calm.

"Joanie, don't come."

"Nathan, you sound terrible. I'm coming. You can't stop me.
What's going on?" she repeated. He tried to ignore the concern in her voice.

It's for her own good,
he thought.
Cut the cord.

"Don't make me say it, Joanie. Don't make me say it."

She ignored him. "Do you love me, Nathan? Do you?" Her voice was falsely confident, as if she knew he
just had to
answer in the affirmative. Joanie was gambling.

His first thought was:
Say yes!

Then:
She must sense it's
over. She's got courage, I'll give her that much. Too bad. Better to cut it off now and give her some temporary pain than to give her far more permanent suffering later. It's for her own good. And mine.

"No, I don't love you. I don't ever want to see you again. Good-bye darling." He knew it was a lie. He hung up the phone gently before she could answer him.

Nathan looked at his hands as if they
were covered with blood. He desperately wanted to go to the couch, curl up, and cry. But he hadn't cried openly since before first grade. His mother was the only woman he had ever cried for–and crying hadn't brought her back. Crying had only made him feel worse. He made a great effort to control himself. He put his emotions back in the box where they had stayed all his life. Before Joanie showed
up and opened the box.

Nathan was hard, like an anvil. An anvil does not yield to the blows of the hammer.

His mental equilibrium gradually returned. The effects of the alcohol he drank before Jennifer showed up were now almost gone.

Nathan decided that getting drunk again would not help him feel any better than crying would. His decision made him feel better. In control.

So, what next, Pascal's
Fool?

He looked around his apartment and knew he didn't want to be there anymore.
For all I know, Joanie's playing Amelia Earhart with Denny right now.

He was at a loss for action. Nathan picked up the small leather key holder with his Mustang keys inside, staring queerly at it until inspiration came.
I know. While she's going west, I'll go east. I'll go for a drive.

He grabbed his wallet, but
left his cellphone on the counter. The telephone started to ring again. He closed the door behind him before the message on the phone machine finished.

She's not going to give up, is she?
he thought wearily. Then a question came to his mind in his own inner voice, but the words seemed to be composed by another person:

Do you mean Joanie or the Mother of God?

3

Early Friday Morning
13 October
Mishawaka, Indiana

Joanie hung up the phone. She fought to hold back her tears.

I can't afford tears at a time like this.

She turned to her brother Denny, who still had sleep in his eyes. Denny was wearing slippers and a bathrobe.

Denny was not so sleepy that he failed to notice the look of determination on Joanie's face. He had seen that look many times over the years. When the vertical line formed
on her forehead between her eyebrows, he knew there was no denying his sister. Besides, he kind of liked Nathan Payne. He could tell that she was extremely disappointed with Nathan's answer to her question a moment before. He had watched the battle for control that had played out quickly on her face.

"Are you sure you can get clearance to land in Evanston?" Joanie asked.

"At this time of night,
no problem. We'll be in the air less than an hour, Sis. Let me get dressed. We might have to jump start the car. It hasn't been used in over a month, and it's been cold at night lately. I just called ahead–it's available." It wasn't exactly Denny's car. At many small airports an old car is kept for out-of-town private pilots to use as a courtesy.

"Let's do it then," she said with more resignation
than enthusiasm.

"What about your school? What should I tell them tomorrow?" Denny was planning on returning to Mishawaka as soon as he got the beater car started up for his sister.

"Tell them the truth."

"Okay." Denny turned to go back up to his room to get dressed.

Nathan lied,
she told herself.
Then he called me darling. That wasn't a lie. He called me darling.

She checked her purse to make
sure she had cash. Then she began to pray for Nathan while she waited for Denny to return from getting dressed. Even though she had been praying for him almost nonstop since he failed to return her phone calls earlier in the week, her instincts told her that she was just beginning to pray for Nathan Payne.

4

Three o'clock
Friday Morning
13 October
Indiana Tollway, Indiana

He was playing a Chicago
alternative rock station on the Mustang's stereo as loud as he could stand it. He wore a heavy leather flight jacket. The temperature had dipped below freezing, but he had the convertible top down.

Showers had fallen around the South Bend area an hour or so before the temperature started to drop. He had the Mustang's powerful heater cranked up all the way. The jacket's wool lining kept his body
warm, but his ears were freezing. Nathan, who was now stone cold sober, was not feeling the pain. The Mustang hungrily gobbled up the road before it. He didn't even look at the speedometer, which was registering over one hundred miles per hour.

Lyrics from a group he didn't recognize streamed out of the speakers:
...don't get it back. The more you want it the less you're gonna get it back.

He
was only a mile or so from the Notre Dame exit. The exit had crept up on him. Remembering the last time he had seen that exit sign, he reluctantly allowed himself a thought about the girl who had been sleeping next to him on a warm Sunday morning.

Funny how I ended up here, Joanie, where you live.

Suddenly his emotions stirred and the voice he had been trying so desperately to repress since her
phone call now spoke to him.

You want her. You want her. You
love
her.

As the thought struck him, the Golden Dome, a mile south of the tollway, came into his view. He saw the statue of Mary (fully illuminated by Klieg lights) in the clear night. A hopeful sentiment suddenly filled him from head to toe. He addressed his heavenly mother out loud:

"May I have Joanie? I love her."

Over the din of
the music he distinctly heard a voice–a real voice, not a voice in his head–which sounded kind, like Sister Leonardo's, only more beautiful and loving.

One word.

"Yes," Mary, the Mother of God, replied.

Nathan smiled, elated. He was about to say thank you, as if Mary were sitting in the seat next to him, when the words on the radio foreshadowed his own fate:

I'm spinning out. I can't control my
car.

The six speakers screamed the words; the musical chords reflected the cacophony that inspired the lyrics.

What happened next took less than three seconds.

The demonic enemies of Nathan, having failed to destroy the anvil they had repeatedly pounded, were allowed to strike one last thunderous blow. The forces of evil did not realize that their actions, designed to end Nathan's life, were part
of a Providential Plan set in motion by Nathan's short prayer:
Use any means necessary.

Providence decreed the necessity.

He was less than a quarter mile past the exit. After he turned his gaze from the Blessed Mother on the dome, Nathan's enemies succeeded in distracting him long enough for him to miss seeing the patch of black ice on the curving road. The car was going way too fast to avoid
it.

The Ford Mustang (never a good-handling car in bad weather) hit the ice and hurtled over the shoulder of the highway. It began to turn over in the air as it left the ground, flying awkwardly toward the gully and a thicket of trees beyond the shoulder.

His left leg struck the top of the windshield and snapped in a complete break as he was thrown far ahead of the car. Nathan screamed. As if
in a dream, he saw a large oak tree rushing toward him. The image of the living trees from
The Wizard of Oz
popped in and out of his mind. He opened his arms in a crazy flying parody of a bear hug as he struck the tree. Nathan turned his head sideways before striking it, and immediately felt pain everywhere. The air burst out of his lungs. Too much pain to scream.

The Mustang, now slowly skidding
on its side, came up behind him. If someone had been watching the car, they would have been certain that it would not stop before striking the tree with force. Yet the Mustang came to a screeching halt just before hitting the tree; the car had turned sideways and its hood pinned Nathan's body before the broken man could slump to the ground.

As paramedics would discover in just twelve minutes,
the car did very little damage to Nathan. The lone toll booth worker at the end of the Notre Dame exit did not see the crash, but he did hear it. He immediately called 911.

Nathan had one collapsed lung. He was still awake. He was perfectly lucid. He concentrated all his might and will and energy on one enterprise: the pulling in of a single breath.

After fourteen seconds, which seemed much longer
to Nathan, he pulled in that one breath and instantly regretted it as
new
pain exploded through his chest. He thought a bomb had gone off and wondered when the sound of an explosion would come.

The only sound he heard was the ticking of the Mustang's stalled engine block contracting in the cold Indiana night. His breathing had re-started automatically now, and the pain in his chest abated enough
for him to feel the excruciating pain in his left leg. He tried to release himself by squirming his torso but was met by more agony–everywhere pain–and the weight of the Mustang. His arms were still in a mock bear hug around the tree. His fingers began to scratch at the bark.

Nathan did not forget the voice of the Woman who had spoken to him seconds before the accident.

It was the Mother of God.
She said
Yes!

He was sure of it!

God is behind this.

Nathan decided to skip the formalities. He did not pray,
Why me God?
or
God have mercy on me!
He did not even bother with profanities. He had ignored God his whole life; he decided to turn to his Creator now, not in supplication, or confusion. But in anger. Nathan was supremely angry. Knowing deep in his heart that God could hear his every word–as
he had believed yet denied since Babsie had brought him to church as a little boy–he fought the pain reverberating in waves throughout his entire body. He forced his neck toward the sky, stiff and defiant. He did not speak. Instead, he looked up at the infinite stars and gave God
the look.

And Nathan addressed God, spitting and blinking in his fury.

"So
this
is what I have to do to get Joanie–You,
you damn sadist?!"

He winced. He shrugged off the spasms in his back.

"So
this
is why you took my mother and my Babsie from me!"

He tried to raise a bloodied fist, but failed. He shouted at the stars again.

"I'm ready! Do you hear me! I'm ready!
Let's go!

"Is this all you've got for me?
Do it!
Whatever it is!

"I'm READY!"

The suffering which Nathan was enduring was not all that God had in store
for the stiff-necked man.

The battle between demons and angels was over.

The wounds of the bear were torn open, pouring forth their bile.

The unyielding anvil would melt in the furnace in which it had been cast.

The heart was pierced by a sword.

Nathan Payne, still perfectly lucid eight minutes before the paramedics would arrive, was about to receive the greatest gift a loving, merciful Father
could bestow upon a child born of a mother's suffering.