really lucky. I came back to work a week ago, and then . . .
something else happened." Winton unbuttoned his shirt, pulled it open,
and lifted his undershirt to reveal his bare chest. "The scars."
Father Wycazik shivered. Though he was close to Winton, he leaned
closer, staring in amazement. The man's chest was unmarked. Well, not
entirely unmarked, but the entry wounds had already healed until they
were just discolored spots as big as dimes. The surgeon's incisions had
almost vanished thin lines visible now only on close inspection. This
soon after major trauma, some swelling and inflammation should have been
evident, but there was none. The minimal scar tissue was pale
pink-brown against dark-brown skin, neither lumpy nor puckered.
"I've seen other guys with old bullet wounds," Winton said, his
excitement still restrained by a rope of fear. "Lots of them. Gnarly,
thick. Ugly. You don't take two .38s in the chest, undergo major
surgery, and look like this three weeks later or ever."
"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 about-one
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 on-and 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 sixteen-year-old 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 naked 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
six-inch 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 PCP-crazy, and you can't talk sense to him. We drew our guns
because you don't just walk up to some doped-out 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 probabl
y 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,
awe-stricken 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 six-year-old, 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 eye-level 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?"
"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 deep-seated 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 vague-had in fact
been emphatically specific-and had already given them more answers than