Our Lady of the Forest (43 page)

She felt the heat of her menstrual blood, heard a pounding in her ears. She sought to implore Our Lord again, but Father Collins' face intervened; he was kneeling over her and blocking her view of the Son of God behind him. Ann, he was saying. Ann. Hey. Then she felt his hands on her face. He was holding her face so lightly in his fingers. She's blue, she heard him say. I don't think she's breathing. I've never felt a face so hot. She's burning up. She isn't breathing. That can't be, said another voice. Her muscles are rigid, replied the priest. She's locked up, and look, her pulse. He laid two fingers against the flank of her throat. It's fast, he said. Call for help.

The priest put his ear against her mouth. I don't think she's breathing, he said again. Forgive me, he said. Oh Ann, please forgive me. Mother of God, Ann gasped. Mother of God, save us.

         

VI

Our Lady of the Forest

NOVEMBER 12, 2000

T
he new vesting sacristy had wonderful closets, aromatic, orderly, and large. Father Collins dressed in an alb and stole and was about to slip a chasuble from its hanger when he paused, bent, and removed his glasses in order to examine the items now collected as the foundling Our Lady of the Forest reliquary—two baby teeth, a lock of hair, a swatch of dingy sweatshirt cotton, a bone shard, and a tiny dime-store crucifix designed to be worn as a necklace. False and beautiful, he thought. False and potent totems. They had all been left on his desk anonymously with a letter explaining at length and in detail how Ann of Oregon's relics had been secured: the bone shard recovered from a careful sifting near Toketie Falls, on the road to Crater Lake, where Ann's mother had tossed Ann's cremated remains; the crucifix and sweatshirt cloth clandestinely purchased from an “unnamed but entirely reliable source who had penetrated the county coroner's office”; the baby teeth and hair obtained from Ann's grandfather, an independent trucker named Melvin Holmes, for $3,500. The teeth, stained yellow by time, were small as popcorn kernels. The strands of hair, held together by a rubber band, were not the right color or texture.

Father Collins laid the bone shard against his palm and nudged it over with a fingertip. There was always the possibility of a forensic test to determine authenticity, but in the end what difference would a test make? This bleak blanched bit of calciferous tissue, unexalted and ridiculous, was, to the priest, sufficient for adoration, even if it came from a deer's flank. Which put him at odds with the Church.

Just as he was shepherding the bone shard away, guiding it back into its reliquary case, there came a small knock at the door. The members of the choir filed in and began—nervously—to enrobe. Father Collins greeted them cordially and hummed a few bars of the Gloria, smiling. Yet he himself felt mildly distraught and undone by anticipation. He was on this morning about to help dedicate the new Our Lady of the Forest Church. It was a task he wished to perform without a slip and with the proper evincing of his passion. The priest was ignorant of the rites of dedication but had in the last month studied closely the proscriptions in the
Roman Pontifical
and in the
Ceremonial of Bishops.
He had also memorized the Ordo for the day and typed up a script for the ceremony. Despite these provisions he had a case of nerves and felt an imminent acid reflux. He wished the bishop had agreed to appear but also understood his recalcitrance. Impossible, the bishop had told him. In these circumstances. My personal involvement. Though I'm perfectly happy, you might let it be known, to see this growing, joyful interest in our Church and in our faith. The bishop had granted his judicious blessing, saying You understand why it must be so, given what has unfolded. And summarily entrusted the ceremony to Father Butler as a priest of rank and esteem in the Church and of late his Vicar General. An appropriate irony, Father Butler had said, upon his arrival, once again, in North Fork. But we must be cast down, and cast down repeatedly. And perform our duties with an open heart. With that, he passed most of the preparations into Father Collins' hands.

Father Collins reviewed with the choir members pertinent points in the proceedings. He told them they all looked festively accoutered, dressed as they were in new vestments. Twelve women and four men, directed by Constance Pedersen, whose mezzo-soprano pierced the priest's soul, and including the architect Larry Garber, whose meek contralto was strangely moving. Garber, today, had another role—as project architect he would present the building, right after Father Butler's greeting but before the sprinkling of the holy water.

Give it to Garber, he'd welcomed design help, and with the pro bono consultation of two Seattle architects, a structural engineer, a commercial landscape designer, and a Stinson Company environmental specialist he'd formulated a graceful set of blueprints. The building was understated and spiritually evocative—rough cedar beams, sweeping glass walls, a light-washed, spacious, ethereal sanctuary—and the grounds incorporated a fern dell, a grotto, a hall of mosses, and a pool. The road from the campground arrested speed and was closely shrouded by a canopy of trees, and the parking lot, with its split cedar fence, lay a half mile from the church site. Worshipers were made to approach by foot on a path always bending through the forest. Here their souls were moved toward manumission, the ordinary world distilled. Along the Fern Walk worshipers found rest stops appointed with benches and objects for meditation: a statue of the Virgin, another of Saint Bernadette, a third of Saint Catherine Labouré.

Father Collins had found, to his surprise, that he took an avid interest in matters of design when it came to the Our Lady of the Forest Church. In his self-characterization he was a lover of abstractions, a soul afloat in the realm of ideas, so it had caught him off guard to find that his brain had fixed on architecture. It seemed to him a transformation related to turning thirty. At any rate he'd scoured the blueprints with clerical obsessiveness and had supervised each day of the work with a fussy nitpicker's zeal. Inexorably he fell into an alliance with Garber and came to appreciate a three-sided ruler and a lot of slow careful head scratching. It was humbling to discover this new world beside his old one, so he dabbled in surveying and carpenter's math as an exercise in regaining perspective. After all, drain rock and mortar mix didn't make theory irrelevant; the universe remained, to the contrary, predictable, as solidly Newtonian as ever. What a relief to affirm, with a transit, the platonic basis of everything! Smitten, the priest learned the lingo of the trades so as to ingratiate himself with subcontractors; he felt they might do a better job if they suspected he knew a little something. He didn't. He couldn't see inwardly from the plan to reality in any purposeful detail. But at night he fell asleep with his mind striving anyway toward solutions to physical problems.

The members of the choir filed out in their vestments and Father Collins, after pausing to assess the dignity of his own garments, crossed the hall to the working sacristy. The servers, he found—Tom Cross and Carol Boyle—were engaged in a sacramental inventory. Holy chrism, check, Sprinkler, check, Thurible, check, Corporal, check, Purificators, check, et cetera. I'm dressed, said the priest. So one of you can keep vigil again. I see you're still in your street clothes.

Yes, answered Tom. I have a question about that.

About the reliquary vigil?

About our vestments. Tom was new to the ministry of serving; Father Collins had recently appointed him an acolyte in support of Tom's efforts at self-improvement. Red or white? Tom asked.

The priest primped his chasuble for Tom's edification. White, he said. White is worn for a church consecration. Red has other purposes. We wear it, for example, on the feast days of martyrs. Among other occasions.

Tom nodded as if filing these facts away. There was a deepening patina of gray at his temples and just above his ears. Father Collins understood from their confessional dialogue that Tom had been allowed, lately, to visit his children again. That he bathed and fed Tommy without feeling saved. Salvation, the priest had reminded him at confession, was undoubtedly the work of a lifetime.

I'll put on white, said Tom.

He went out and the priest did Tom's work momentarily, filling the chrism vessel with olive oil and folding the altar cloth. He thumbed with appreciation the Lectionary and took down the censer and incense boat and spoon and counted the candles and candlesticks. A rush of tactile pleasure filled him. The aspergillum looked brilliantly polished. Hand it again to Larry Garber: there was a place for everything, and pleasing order.

For a moment in the presence of Carol Boyle, who was obliviously busy at her work, he paused to remember Ann Holmes. He thought of the shroud of her sweatshirt hood and of her canvas tent in the campground. The priest said a Hail Mary meditatively and crossed himself very slowly. He gave thanks for his winnowing of the previous autumn. He gave thanks, too, for the monotony of sacrifice. There were things to do, there were many things to do, there was a host of things he felt drawn to doing. Then he went out with ministerial resolve, as his schedule on this Sunday dictated. In the vestibule was a rack for the missalettes and prayer books constructed of fir by a furniture builder, and a baptismal font hewn from a piece of granite already naturally convex. The altar boys were straightening the missalettes and, on seeing him, increased their efforts. Father Collins smelled the new stain exuding from the vestibule's aggregate floor. He was pleased to note no tincture of mildew, and this left him feeling vindicated. The project manager had kept to high standards on Father Collins' constant insistence, shaking his head and repeating Overkill, but whatever you want, I'll just do it. Everybody seemed glad, now, to have taken Father Collins' zealous approach. The site was by nature aqueous, spongelike; much money had been spent on good drains.

The priest pondered, once again, the vast funding that had materialized in the wake of Ann's sudden death. The Stinson Company, in an about-face generated from its PR department, had gifted the land for the church to the diocese and had made the front page of both Seattle papers. The Chamber of Commerce had energized the banks to guarantee what its constituency foresaw as a cash cow in perpetuity. The City Council's tourism plan was revised and invoked in light of developments to generate infrastructure tax monies. A wealthy Marianite in California had anonymously contributed a half million dollars, and the hardscaping of the grotto and pool, the walkways, benches, and bluestone terrace, was donated by a Tacoma company driven by Marian fever. A host of moss-backed artists stepped forward, emerging from their drenched forest hovels, to fill the new church with their handiwork.

And in town something called the Super Motel was already nearly completed. On Main Street was the new Country Corner Cafe, featuring homemade pies. The North Fork Campground had been vastly expanded. Three new bed-and-breakfasts had opened. MarketTime was being renovated, a delicatessen and bakery added. There was a new coffee shop around the corner from Gip's called First Light Espresso selling pastries with French names,
biscotti
from a jar, and sandwiches made on peasant bread. There were plans in the works for new downtown sidewalks, angled parking, and improved sewer lines, and as long as the streets were being ripped open high-speed cable would go in. The tourism consultant, Applebaum, had suggested to the town the marketing slogan The Lourdes of the Northwest Rain Forest.

Standing in front of a tableau carved from yew wood—a triptych featuring the Annunciation, Lamentation, and Coronation of the Virgin—was a woman Father Collins didn't recognize. She was peering closely at its rough chiseled detail and as he approached he saw her lean farther toward it, the better to admire its craft. Excuse me, he said. Might I help you?

The woman increased her attention to the woodwork. Maybe, she answered. Might you?

Worshipers assemble in the fern dell, said the priest, gesturing toward a bank of picture windows. Just there, beyond the grotto.

I'm not a worshiper.

Who are you then?

I'm president of the Karl Malden Fan Club, Father. Don't you recognize me, even?

She turned and winked and his first thought was, What a clever and thorough disguise. Carolyn, he said. You look different.

Weight gain, she answered, helps enormously, hugely. I highly recommend an extra twenty pounds to fugitives and spies.

You're not either.

That's good to hear.

Should you be?

If I was that would make my weight gain convenient and invest it with meaning, maybe.

Father Collins stepped closer to the triptych and clasped his hands at his back. Your hair is different too, he noted.

Dyed it this obscene jet black, said Carolyn. And had it cut in this unflattering pageboy. So now I look like what's-her-name—Rosie. And with this huge Gore-Tex anorak and this ugly mascara I'm not even me anymore.

It works, said the priest. I wouldn't have known you.

Carolyn rubbed up the rouge on her cheekbones. I'm incognito for a reason, she said. I didn't want to deal with her hive of followers. Her swarm of glassy-eyed Christian storm troopers. But I did want to come to this… thing today. And I figured you wouldn't reveal me.

I might, though.

You wouldn't and you know it.

I'm glad you're here.

Don't pretend that, Father.

You were Ann's friend.

Not really, said Carolyn.

How can you say that? asked Father Collins. You—

I killed her, said Carolyn. Remember?

She feigned even closer inspection of the triptych. Do you have a few minutes? she asked.

The priest didn't. Her timing was bad. He was expecting on the order of ten thousand people in a little less than two hours. There were already reporters assembled in the grotto. Shuttle buses hauled pilgrims to the parking lot. There were preparations to make before the entrance procession, he wanted to review once more his commentary, not to mention his homily, he wanted to seat more deeply in his mind the order of the ceremony, and he felt it necessary to oversee the altar servers and to work a bit with the deacons. Not to mention a review with Father Butler, beginning in fifteen minutes. What about tomorrow? he asked.

Tomorrow I'm going to Seattle, Father. To have truffles or something. For lunch. And shop. And get a massage and a seaweed drape. Unbreakable appointments.

It's just that right now I'm a little preoccupied.

Well this is short, said Carolyn. And they aren't going to start without you.

True.

Carolyn slid on tinted glasses slung from her neck on a silver lamé tether, half-moon reading aids that sat, slightly crooked, low on the bridge of her nose. You look good, she said to the priest. You look… vibrant or something.