Our Lady of the Forest (16 page)

That makes you research material, Jim.

She can use me for that it's okay with me.

You can tell her you're doing research too. Get the nonprofit discount.

Bridges laughed with silent blue mirth. That's good, he said. I'll use that on her. Professor John's nonprofit discount.

Bridges popped open his truck hood. He pressed his glasses to his nose with his middle finger and stood there examining his engine.

Get this, Bridges said. You heard about this mushroom girl? Well Bridget went up in the woods with her to look for the Virgin Mary.

Bridget went?

Day before yesterday.

Bridget's in with the mushroom girl?

Bridget's one of her followers now. She's dropped everything else.

Tom worked the pressure off his radiator cap. I wouldn't have thought it, he said.

Well Bridget loves this kind of stuff. Television psychics, hypnotists, séances, ghosts, horror movies, the works. She cried all through
The Sixth Sense
—did you see that? Bruce Willis as a dead guy? Bridges shook his head and released a sigh that was meant to suggest the idiocy of the world, then gently pressed his hood shut. The mushroom girl—get this, Tom—the mushroom girl mentioned Lee Ann.

What?

She's up there where we lost Lee Ann.

How did she know about Lee Ann?

She told Bridget the Virgin told her.

The Virgin knew about Lee Ann?

She said Lee Ann went to heaven, which is good. She said Lee Ann passed on in the woods. In her sleep. Or the Virgin said it.

Bridges walked around his truck. Tom could see how he felt about the subject. Bridges stood reading his gas pump receipt. I bet she wants money, he said.

Maybe, said Tom. But who doesn't?

I'm going to take some aspirin, said Bridges. And sit on my ass watching football.

Don't hurt yourself.

Okay, said Bridges.

You've got it pretty hard, said Tom.

He went into the minimart for breakfast. The place was busy for a Sunday morning; three of the four tables were occupied. He poured coffee into a plastic cup, bought a donut and a maple bar, and sat down with a will to eat in expeditious solitude, but boredom seized him immediately and he ended up listening to the talk at other tables for its entertainment value. Someone had rented a trailer to Indians: Their six hundred cats shit on everything so I had to pull up the rug.

You can call a guy to take carpet away.

If you can get him to show up before you die of old age. I took it all to the transfer station. Pad and everything. Gone.

Sometimes you do that but it's more expensive.

Let me give you a piece of advice. Don't ever rent to Indjins.

I don't have nothing to rent, Ken.

Leave it like that if you want to stay happy.

Why don't you give me one of those smokes? Your Indjins can get you new ones at discount. Don't they like to barter?

What are you talking about? I'm all through with them. Jim Billy, you know that guy? Indjins have those names like that. There was one I knew named Dick By The Fire. We called him Roasted Weenie.

Dick By The Fire.

That was his name.

How'd you like to be Dick By The Fire?

Jim Billy. He was the guy. The cat master. The cat chief. I had to kick him out last week. The whole bunch of them. Out of there.

They left to pursue their untrammeled lives, full of ordinary problems. Their spots were taken by what Tom discerned were a newspaper reporter in a Gore-Tex jacket and a photographer in a complicated vest. At first they talked about someone named Slagle whom apparently they both despised, a colleague in their office. Then they talked about the mushroom girl and the Virgin Mary sighting. Who the hell knows? the photographer said. It's probably too much psilocybin. On those you'd see Tiger Woods in the woods. Or George Bush in the bushes.

Forest Whitaker lolling in the forest.

Tree Rollins up in a tree.

Kate Moss down in the moss.

Stop right there. Let's stick with that one.

Let's try nature names like Ethan Hawke.

You mean bird names like Robin Williams.

I mean water names like Johnny Rivers.

Doc Rivers.

River Phoenix.

Okay. Harrison Ford.

Harrison Ford? What's with that?

A river crossing. Ford a river. River Phoenix, Harrison Ford?

That's incredibly lame.

Try Linda Lovelace.

Monica Lewinsky.

Monica on Hanukkah.

Lewinsky. Stravinsky.

Sikorsky.

No more-ski.

I also have to put in Nijinsky.

What about Nastassja Kinski?

What about Slagle eating your bagel?

What about Slagle reading Hegel?

What about Slagle doing Denny Neagle?

What about Elton John?

They stopped talking and sipped their coffees. Tom kept his head down and shut his eyes. These fucks were living on a different plane. Their lives were not like his at all. They could laugh and talk about trivial things. Play rhyme games in order to pass the time. A date with a virgin, he heard one of them say. Sounds excellent to me.

         

Tom skipped church and drove toward the campground. He passed a sale he'd shovel-logged in the fall of '87; the reprod had not been properly thinned and all these years later there was still evidence of windrowed slash that hadn't burned and there were rusted cables about. The sky was low among the trees; it had a metallic cast. The wind beat against the high branches. The puddles of standing water looked dark. A case of Budweiser had been tossed from a car and the broken bottles littered the road shoulder, some held partly together by their labels. The river ran close to high water, green with glacial till.

Tom turned east at the campground junction. There was a driver too close in his rearview mirror—a teenage boy in a Honda sedan—and that made him seethe. Tom considered rolling down his window and giving the little asshole the finger, but instead he slowed to fifteen, taking pleasure from that. The boy turned off at the river road, spinning out as he took the grade, and Tom rolled down his window then to give him the finger while stopped in the junction, honked his horn and yelled Fuck you you little piece of shit!

Even before the overnight pay booth, there were cars parked on the road shoulder, cars, trucks, motor homes, vans, and camping trailers. It was like the approach to a logging show, a county fair, or a circus. Always at the perimeter of those events were throngs of vehicles larger than the events and composing events themselves. A park ranger stopped Tom's truck at the booth, a girl in uniform. She spoke to him with her hands on her knees, her hair falling into her smooth chubby face, a girl who looked like a backpacker type, big tits grown healthy on granola. We're full up, she said. There's nowhere to go. You can use the turnaround.

What am I supposed to do?

Park it down the road I guess.

What the hell is going on?

We're swamped today. That's all I know. Be sure to get yourself well off the road. And be careful walking up.

He went back and parked. People were driving in too fast and banging through the potholes. He walked on the shoulder and found at the booth that the girl had her hands on her knees again, explaining things to someone else, and now there was a line of cars. Tom followed the parade of campsites with their numbered stanchions and picnic tables and here too the cars were everywhere, eased in between trees, pulled in without a scheme. Some were blocked by other cars, by camping trailers or tents. Motor homes were docked like ships but staggered for access to their doors and here and there in the incidental places were arrangements of aluminum lawn chairs. Damp campfires spit popping sparks and people walked with their toiletry kits toward the campground's only rest rooms. Tom saw the contractor from town off-loading chemical toilets. At one campsite an awning had been rigged to protect a corral of display tables. A banner read
KAY
'
S RELIGIOUS GIFTS
; under it were plastic statues, crucifixes, books, cassettes, and videotapes. Farther along someone else sold rosaries, scapulars, prayer books and medals from a pop-top Volkswagen van.

Tom spoke to the sales clerk at Kay's. A chinless woman with a blanket across her legs and the bulbous waxen throat of a bullfrog, she sat on a lawn chair by a kerosene heater, wetting her forefinger occasionally with her tongue to turn the pages of a magazine. What's this? he asked her.

It's an Immaculate Heart of Mary figurine. Those others there on the left are different they're Sacred Heart figurines.

Where are you from?

Near Pocatello.

That's probably over five hundred miles.

It's seven hundred and fifty miles.

So when did you leave there?

Friday night.

But how did you even know this was happening?

How did we know specifically? We knew because of a chat room we're into. More than one chat room we log onto regularly. That's an Infant of Prague statue please be careful with that.

Two other women stopped to look. There's a video I've been looking for, said one, called
Why Do You Test Me?
all about Conyers and I'm also looking for a video I heard about that's all on Veronica of the Cross.

I wish I had them, said the chinless woman. I have this other great video on Conyers, that one there called
Miracle at Conyers
that's just to your right and down a little, and lots of things on Veronica of the Cross I can order out of catalogs just let me grab you an order form.

Tom wandered over to the Volkswagen van and examined one of the rosaries for sale while an impassive bald man pointedly didn't watch him, a man with the superior, fastidious air of certain sales clerks. I just came from Kay's, Tom told him.

I've known Kay for a long, long time. We don't view ourselves as competitors in the least. We have different product lines.

Where are you from?

From near Salt Lake. Packed away I've got a lot more t-shirts. Hundred percent cotton heavyweights that are on sale right now.

At another campsite sat a food service truck where coffee was sold in Styrofoam cups as well as breakfast rolls and donuts. The boy working there was from Marysville. He normally worked at horse shows, he said, but this seemed like a decent moneymaker. He was gangly, with wispy hair on his chin. I'm wiped out, he told Tom. We didn't get any sleep last night. We slept on the floor in here.

Who's we?

My brother and me and my girlfriend. They took the car and went into North Fork to get some hot dogs and buns and stuff. We ran out last night seven-thirty. You people eat a lot of hot dogs. More even than horse people.

In the rest room men were combing their hair even though there wasn't a mirror and washing their hands and faces with cold water and soap from their toiletry kits. When Tom walked in he heard a man say The sun was spinning, that's what I saw. I don't know if spinning's the word—whirling, I guess, or swirling or something. There were streaks of light the first day, and the next we saw Jesus in the sky, it was one of those shapes in the clouds.

Glory, said another man. Fabulous.

We have photographs from California City.

I'd love to look at your photographs, Ed.

There's a very clear one of the golden doorway. There's another of Gabriel—a cloud shape again. There's a good one of the angel of death.

Tom stood by the river, smoking. A drift boat went by with a guide named Buck Hawes and two clients on board. Buck waved, Tom waved back, Buck shook his head, Tom shook his, Buck called out It looks like madness, Tom said It sure does, Buck said Make them keep the lid on, Tom said I'll give it a try, and then the boat was too far down-current for any further exchange. The river was too high but the clients didn't know it sitting there bundled in foul-weather gear and they were going to have to pay Buck for his time even though there were no fish to find, transferring money to the local economy sometimes involved deceit. So be it. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord for Seattle fishermen. Tom went back up to the food service truck and bought a cup of instant coffee. There was no place to sit so he leaned against a tree while nearby at a riverfront campsite pilgrims engaged in a prayer service. The people there held hands like hippies and stood in a loose-knit circle. They recited the Hail, Holy Queen and then a man with a faint Irish lilt said Lift up your voices as we recite the prayer to Saint Michael together, and someone else put branches on the fire, green branches that smoked. Tom's head still hurt and to placate it he shut his eyes and listened without watching. The pilgrims said the prayer to Saint Michael followed by a prayer for the pope's good health, and when they were done the man spoke again, Mary, Mother of Christ, O Most Blessed Virgin Mother, we believe in the forgiveness of all sin and the everlasting life. We believe that the Holy Mother of God continues in heaven to intercede on behalf of all members in Christ. Plead for us in our hour of need. Be unto us as our mothers have been, our salvation and our protection. Avail us of miracles. Cleanse us of sin and redeem us. Be as a light in this place of dark forest. As I understand it we shall proceed at ten-thirty or whenever Our Lady issues her call; don't forget a supply of water, some food for the hike, and toilet paper if it comes to that; there are no lavatories in the woods. The pilgrims chuckled at the mention of this and the man said A good practice is to take care of business while facilities are available which is something I learned many years ago, the hard way, when I was a wee little boy. More chuckling. The forecast calls for light rain, said the man, and this glorious day unfolds before us, in the name of Our Lady the Most Holy Virgin, she of the Immaculate Conception and of God's Birth. In Jesus' name, amen.

Question, said someone. How far exactly are we going? Because I have an unfavorable condition in my back that shoots pain down both legs and unfortunately I'm not sure I can make it depending on how far we have to go. I guess I didn't count on this, I have to admit, having to walk far in.