Revival (31 page)

I laughed. “You remember when the first one went ass over teapot at the Speedway?”

Terry rolled his eyes. “First lap. Fucking Duane Robichaud. I think he got his license at Sears and Roebuck.”

“Is he still around?”

“Nah, dead ten years. Ten at least. Brain cancer. By the time they found it, poor bastard never had a chance.”

Suppose I were a neurosurgeon
, Jacobs had said that day at The Latches.
Suppose I told you your chances of dying were twenty-five percent. Wouldn't you still go ahead?

“That's tough.”

He nodded. “Remember what we used to say when we were kids? ‘What's tough? Life. What's
Life
? A magazine. How much does it cost? Fifteen cents. I only got a dime. That's tough. What's tough? Life.' Around and around it went.”

“I remember. Back then we thought it was a joke.” I hesitated. “Do you think of Claire very much, Terry?”

He tossed his polishing rag into a bucket and went to the sink to wash his hands. There had been nothing but one faucet back in the day—just cold—but now there were two. He turned them on, grabbed a cake of Lava, and began to soap up. All the way to the elbows, just as Dad had taught us.

“Every damn day. I think of Andy, too, but less often. That was what you call the natural order of things, I guess, although he might have lived a little longer if he hadn't been so fond of his knife and fork. What happened to Claire, though . . . that was just fucking
wrong
. You know?”

“Yes.”

He leaned against the hood of the SS, looking at nothing in particular. “Remember how beautiful she was?” He shook his head slowly. “Our beautiful sister. That bastard—that
beast
—cheated her out of all the years she still had coming, then took the coward's way out.” He swiped a hand across his face. “We shouldn't talk about Claire. It makes me emotional.”

It made me emotional, too. Claire, who had been just enough older for me to see her as a kind of backup Mom. Claire, our beautiful sister, who never hurt anyone.

We walked across the dooryard, listening to the crickets sing in the high grass. They always sing the loudest in late August and early September, as if they know summer is ending.

Terry stopped at the foot of the steps, and I saw his eyes were still wet. He'd had a good day, but a long and stressful one, just the same. I had been wrong to bring up Claire at the end of it.

“Stay the night, little bro. The couch is a pullout.”

“No,” I said. “I promised Connie I'd have breakfast with him and his partner at the Inn in the morning.”

“
Partner
,” he said, and rolled his eyes. “Right.”

“Now, now, Terence. Don't go all twentieth century on me. These days they could get married in a dozen states, if they wanted. Including this one.”

“Oh, I don't mind that, who marries who ain't none of mine, but
partner
ain't what that guy is, no matter what Connie may think. I know a freeloader when I see one. Christ, he's half Con's age.”

That made me think of Brianna, who was
less
than half my age.

I gave Terry a hug and a peck on the cheek. “I'll see you tomorrow. Lunch, before I head back to the airport.”

“You got it. And Jamie? You played the spots off that guitar tonight.”

I thanked him and walked to my car. I was opening the door when he spoke my name. I turned back.

“Do you remember Reverend Jacobs's last Sunday in the pulpit? When he gave what we used to call the Terrible Sermon?”

“Yes,” I said. “Very well.”

“We were all so shocked at the time, and we chalked it up to the grief he was feeling over the loss of his wife and son. But you know what? When I think of Claire, I think I'd like to find him and shake his hand.” Terry's arms—brawny, like our father's—were folded over his coverall. “Because what I think now is that he was brave to say those things. What I think now is that every word was right.”

 • • •

Terry might have gotten rich,
but he was still thrifty, and we ate catered leftovers for Sunday lunch. For most of it, I held Cara Lynne on my lap, feeding her tiny bits of things. When it was time for me to go and I handed her back to Dawn, the baby held her arms out to me.

“No, honey,” I said, kissing that incredibly smooth forehead. “I have to go.”

She only had a dozen words or so—one of them was now my name—but I've read that their understanding is much greater, and she knew what I was telling her. The little face wrinkled up, she held her arms out again, and tears filled those blue eyes that were the same shade as my mother's and my dead sister's.

“Go quick,” Con said, “or you'll have to adopt her.”

So I went. Back to my rental car, back to Portland Jetport, back to Denver International, back to Nederland. But I kept thinking of those chubby outstretched arms, and those tear-filled Morton Blue eyes. She was just a year old, but she had wanted me to stay longer. That's how you know you're home, I think, no matter how far you've gone from it or how long you've been in some other place.

Home is where they want you to stay longer.

 • • •

During March of 2014,
after most of the ski-bunnies had left Vail, Aspen, Steamboat Springs, and our own Eldora Mountain—came news of a monster blizzard approaching. Our piece of the famed Polar Vortex had dropped four feet on Greeley already.

I hung in at Wolfjaw for most of the day, helping Hugh and Mookie batten down the studios and the big house. I stayed until the wind began to pick up and the first flurries started to scatter down from the leaden skies. Then Georgia came out, dressed in a barncoat, earmuffs, and a Wolfjaw Ranch gimme cap. She was in full scold-mode.

“You send those guys home,” she told Hugh. “Unless you want them stuck side o' the road somewhere until June.”

“Like the Donner Party,” I said. “But I'd never eat Mookie. Too tough.”

“Go on, you two, scat,” Hugh said. “Just double-check the studio doors on your way down to the road.”

We did so, and checked the barn for good measure. I even took the time to dole out apple slices, although Bartleby, my favorite, had died three years ago. By the time I dropped Mookie off at his rooming house, it was snowing hard and the wind was blowing thirty or more. Downtown Nederland was deserted, the traffic lights swinging and drifts already piling up in the doorways of shops that had closed early for the day.

“Get home fast!” Mookie shouted to be heard over the wind. He had knotted his bandanna over his mouth and nose, making him look like an elderly outlaw.

I did as he said, the wind shouldering at my car like a bad-­tempered bully the whole way. It pushed me even harder as I made my way up the walk, clutching my collar to my face, which was clean-shaven and unprepared for what Colorado winter felt like when it decided to get serious. I had to use both hands to yank the foyer door shut once I was inside.

I checked my mailbox and saw a single letter. I pulled it out, and one glance was enough to tell me who it was from. Jacobs's handwriting had grown shaky and spidery, but was still recognizable. The only surprise was the return address:
General Delivery, Motton, Maine
. Not quite my hometown, but right next door. Too close for comfort, in my opinion.

I tapped the envelope against my palm and almost obeyed my first impulse, which was to rip it to pieces, open the door, and scatter the shreds to the wind. I still imagine doing that—every day, sometimes every hour—and wonder what might have changed if I'd done so. Instead, I turned it over. There, written in the same unsteady hand, was a single sentence:
You will want to read this
.

I didn't, but tore it open, anyway. I pulled out a single sheet of paper wrapped around a smaller envelope. Written on the face of this second envelope was
Read my letter before opening this one
. So I did.

God help me, so I did.

March 4, 2014

Dear Jamie,

I have obtained both of your e-mail addresses, business and personal (as you know, I have my methods), but I am an old man now, with an old man's ways, and believe that important personal business should be conducted by letter and, when possible, by hand. As you can see, “by hand” is still possible for me, although for how much longer I do not know. I had a minor stroke in the fall of 2012, and another one, rather more serious, last summer. I hope you will excuse the execrable state of my handwriting.

I have another reason for reaching out to you by letter. It's all too easy to delete e-mails, a bit more difficult to destroy a letter someone has labored over with pen and ink. I will add a line to the back of the envelope to increase the chances of your reading this. If I get no reply, I will have to send an emissary, and that I do not want to do, as time is short.

An emissary. I didn't like the sound of that.

When we last met, I asked you to serve as my assistant. You refused. I am asking again, and this time I am confident you will agree. You
must
agree, as my work is now in its final stage. All that remains is one last experiment. I am sure it will succeed, but I dare not proceed alone. I need help, and, just as important, I need a
witness
. Believe me when I say that you have a stake in this experiment almost as great as my own.

You think you will say no, but I know you quite well, my old friend, and I believe that after you read the enclosed letter, you will change your mind.

All best regards,

Charles D. Jacobs

The wind howled; the sound of snow hitting the panes of the door was like fine sand. The road to Boulder would be closed soon, if it wasn't already. I held the smaller envelope, thinking
something happened
. I didn't want to know what, but it felt too late to turn back now. I sat on the stairs leading to my apartment and opened the enclosure as a particularly savage gust of wind shook the building. The handwriting was as shaky as Jacobs's, sloping down the page, but I knew it at once. Of course I did; I had received love letters, some of them quite hot, in this same hand. My stomach went soft, and for a moment I thought I might pass out. I lowered my head, the hand not holding the letter covering my eyes and squeezing my temples. When the faintness passed, I was almost sorry.

I read the letter.

Feb. 25, 2014

Dear Pastor Jacobs,

You are my last hope.

I feel crazy writing that, but it's true. I'm trying to reach you because my friend Jenny Knowlton urges me to do so. She is an RN and says she never believed in miracle cures (although she does believe in God). Several years ago she went to one of your healing revivals in Providence, RI, and you cured her arthritis, which was so bad she could hardly open and close her hands and she was “hooked” on OxyContin. She said to me, “I told myself I only went to hear Al Stamper sing, because I had all his old records with the Vo-Lites, but down deep I must have known why I was really there, because when he asked if there were any who would be healed, I got in the line.” She said not only did the pain in her hands and arms disappear when you touched her temples with your rings, so did the need to take the Oxy. I found that even harder to believe than the arthritis being cured, because where I live a lot of people use that stuff and I know it is very hard to “kick the habit.”

Pastor Jacobs, I have lung cancer. I lost my hair during the radiation treatments and the chemo made me throw up all the time (I have lost 60 lbs), but at the end of those hellish treatments, the cancer was still there. Now my doctor wants me to have an operation to take out one of my lungs, but my friend Jenny sat me down and said, “I am going to tell you a hard truth, honey. Mostly when they do that it's already too late, and they know it but do it anyway because it's all they have left.”

I turned the paper over, my head thudding. For the first time in years, I wished I were high. Being high would make it possible to look at the signature waiting for me below without wanting to scream.

Jenny says she has looked up your cures online and many more than hers appear to be valid. I know you are no longer touring the country. You may be retired, you may be sick, you may even be dead (although I pray not, for your sake as well as my own). Even if you are alive and well, you may no longer read your mail. So I know this is like putting a message in a bottle and throwing it overboard, but something—not just Jenny—urges me to try. After all, sometimes one of those bottles washes up on shore, and someone reads the message inside.

I have refused the operation. You really are my last hope. I know how thin that hope is, and probably foolish, but the Bible says, “With faith, all things are possible.” I will wait to hear . . . or not. Either way, may God bless and keep you.

Yours in hope,

Astrid Soderberg

17 Morgan Pitch Road

Mt. Desert Island, Maine 04660

(207) 555-6454

 • • •

Astrid. Dear God
.

Astrid again, after all these years. I closed my eyes and saw her standing beneath the fire escape, her face young and beautiful, framed in the hood of her parka.

I opened my eyes and read the note Jacobs had added below her address.

I have seen her charts and latest scans. You may trust me on this; as I said in my covering letter, I have my methods. Radiation and chemotherapy shrank the tumor in her left lung, but did not eradicate it, and more spots have shown up on her right lung. Her condition is grave, but
I can save her.
You may trust me on this, too, but such cancers are like a fire in dry brush—they move fast. Her time is short, and you must decide at once.