The Adam Enigma (27 page)

April 7, 2016
Blue Island, Illinois

“S
o what did we learn?” Grange asked Ramsey in the patrol car after the church meeting ended. It was early evening and the sun hung over the western edge of Blue Island like a searchlight laying bare the city's ruined landscape.

The meeting at the church had not gone well. The middle-aged and elderly people who came were filled with confusion and anger. They had watched their community dissolve into chaos over the past thirty years until the last shreds of hope and purpose had been wrung out of it.

While the rest of Ramsey's group piled into their escort patrol cars in front of the Baptist Church, he pulled the Thornton Foundation representative Janet Furlong aside. The concern on her face for the lackluster meeting was clear enough to see. He smiled at her and said, “A set of recommendations from us will be coming to you next week.”

“Now I'll tell you a joke,” Janet said.

“Seriously, together we can turn this around.”

“That building on the corner where that kid was shot,” she said, pointing at the burned-out structure with no intact windows. “Thirty years ago it was a warehouse. A hundred and fifty people worked there. Now it's a crackhouse where people from all over the city come to get high. On any day of the week it has more attendees than Reverend Small's church.”

“That abandoned warehouse would be the perfect place to start,” Ramsey said quietly.

She snorted. “Face it, Jonathan. There's nothing to build on here.”

He shook his head. “Give me six months, Janet, and I'll prove to you this is the place for your foundation's money.”

“Six months or six years, no amount of money is going to make a difference here.”

“Six months,” Jonathan insisted. “Six months and Blue Island will be a spotlight city for every rundown community in America. “

She eyed him skeptically. “I don't know, Jonathan. You're asking the Thornton Foundation to shell out a lot of money on a leap of faith.”

“Put two-hundred thousand to start in a nonprofit Blue Island community fund that my company will set up.”

Furlong tapped her front teeth with a long turquoise fingernail. “Three months,” she countered. “If nothing happens that's it.”

“Deal.”

They shook hands.

Ramsey settled into the state patrol car for the long ride back to the hotel. As the car rolled along the deserted streets, he pondered Grange's question—“What did we learn today?” He reran in his mind what had transpired over the last twelve hours.

From a geographical perspective the town was devoid of cultural features and resources. The gathering at the church echoed the gang's worldview. Most were angry men and women with little understanding of why they were economically left behind in a country filled with opportunities. But what really had bothered every one of them was why nobody cared. At one point a chant—“We are people too!”—reverberated through the run-down building for over three minutes. Ramsey's body still shivered from the power of their unified voices.

The patrol car pulled up in front of their hotel. Surprisingly the officer, who had said nothing up to that point, turned to Ramsey and asked sharply, “What's your answer to your buddy's question?”

Before Ramsey could answer, the officer's cell phone lit up. He listened for a couple of minutes. Turning back toward Ramsey, he said in a sarcastic voice, “You're gonna like this. The kid who was shot died twice on his way to the hospital but the paramedic was able to bring him back. He's going to be all right. And here's another strange thing. The paramedic wasn't the usual guy for that shift. No one knows who he is and now he's disappeared.” He laughed harshly. “Dumb luck.”

“Sometimes that's what's needed,” Ramsey said. He paused, then said to Grange, “I know what we're going to do. The people of Blue Island are going to build a sacred place where this kid was shot.”

April 8, 2016
Chicago, Illinois

R
amsey woke up with a start. He was wide awake. He looked at his watch and saw it was 3:10 in the morning. Ideas about what to do with Blue Island rushed into his consciousness. For the next hour he typed feverishly. When he was done he put it in an email and sent it to Grange. Then he sent a phone text telling him to check his email. As quickly as Ramsey awoke he fell back asleep.

Before the first light spread through Chicago's Eastern shore suburbs, Grange had gone to the hotel's business center and printed out Ramsey's recommendations. He read them as he downed three cups of coffee. He highlighted the ones he thought most important:

• Establish a local bank for and run by the people of Blue Island
  
• Provide educational scholarships controlled by the people of Blue Island
  
• Create a large fund to incentivize local businesses
  
• Enforce laws against the upstream polluters of the canal
  
• Provide internships for Blue Island residents of all ages to join the staffs of representatives of the city and county government, their state-legislature representative, and the Illinois senators.
  

But an additional one that really caught Grange's attention was to start a series of talent fairs where residents of Blue Island could demonstrate their skills and talents, after which a blue-ribbon panel
would find buddies with similar talents in thriving communities and businesses across the country, like the old pen-pal system. If someone demonstrated exceptional computer skills, for example, that person would be paired with somebody from Silicon Valley who would help the resident develop their abilities and contacts.

Grange looked up from his musing and was surprised to see Ramsey sitting across from him at the breakfast table. “These are good,” he said.

“They came to me in one of those information dumps in the middle of the night.”

“I really like this one.” Grange pointed to the buddy system paragraph.

Ramsey was pleased with Grange's grasping the most important point. “It gets at the crux of Blue Island's problem. As Albert Einstein said, ‘Problems cannot be solved with the same mind set that created them.'”

Grange replied, “I get it. By always focusing on trying to fix what's wrong, nothing ever moves forward. It's what I call the liberals' blind spot. And then there's the old conservative bullshit that these people are unfixable and it's their own damn fault.”

Ramsey nodded in agreement. “I don't know why I didn't see this before.” He paused for a thoughtful moment. “Maybe it's the Milagro Shrine's power working through me?”

“What?”

“I'll tell you later. It's so clear to me that people need to shift away from concentrating on fixing their flaws and instead focus on developing new strengths. It's so simple.”

“Simple, but hard to do.”

“It shouldn't be. That's when it came to me.”

“Okay. Go on.”

“What's missing are social fields, shared spiritual values that can hold a space for positive development.”

Grange's eyes narrowed. “How you gonna make that happen? Have Jesus appear?”

Ramsey leaned back with a wry smile on his lips. “Something like that.”

Grange's mouth formed a little “o.” Ramsey leaned back in his chair and waited. One thing about his partner, the man never belittled an idea. He always listened, took it in, turned it over, and more often than not added something to it that made it better than the original. This time was no different.

Grange nodded, a smile crossing his broad face. “I see where you're going. The place where the kid was shot. Turn it into a sacred place, right?”

“Bingo.”

“You'll need a buy in from the community and I don't mean the elders. Those gang kids would be perfect. Do you have an idea how to get them on board?”

“I'll take a couple of them down to Rio Chama, New Mexico. The young woman Maggie would be perfect.”

Ron nodded thoughtfully. “That shrine . . . it turned out to be something a lot different than you thought it was going to be, huh?'

“It's not just a place for healing. It's . . . it's transformative.” A frown came over Ramsey's face.

Grange noticed. “What's the matter?”

“Still missing an important piece of what's going on there. And I just realized, I've been missing it since the day I got interested in sacred places.”

April 10, 2016
Grinnell, Iowa

I
t had been two days since Ramsey returned from Blue Island. During each of those days his thoughts hovered around his experiences at Rio Chama and the fate of Adam. The shrine was calling him back figuratively and literally. Before he did anything, though, he had one thing to do first. He drew in a sharp breath. He wasn't looking forward to it, but he had to find out something crucial from his mentor Orensen.

It was Saturday morning. Ramsey set his Earl Grey tea aside and turned on his computer. Bringing up the Grinnell college athletic departments webpage, he checked the listings of events. Grinnell was hosting the final men's swim meet of the season against archrival Carleton College. Ramsey knew Roger Orensen would be there. The professor emeritus religiously attended every meet as the psychological and spiritual coach for the athletes.

Ramsey arrived at the natatorium halfway through the meet. The air inside was humid and hot and smelled heavily of chlorine. Spectators occupied bleachers along the far wall beneath a banner proclaiming “Go Grinnell Pioneers.” The two swimming teams clustered at the far end of the pool on either side of twin diving boards.

The room was deathly quiet and Ramsey wondered if some athlete had been injured. Then he saw that the diving competition was in full swing with the audience silently watching every performer and politely clapping at the end of each dive.

Ramsey looked for Orensen in his usual spot on the Pioneers' bench beside the head coach. He started in surprise. The space was empty. He scanned the crowd and saw Orensen talking to middle-aged woman. Pointing to the next diver, she bowed her head and Ramsey could see her body shake in silent sobs. Orensen bent beside her and whispered in her ear. The woman suddenly stopped crying and wiping her tears away watched the young man stepping out onto the end of the diving board. She waved. He smiled and then turned around, his body rigid in concentration as he prepared for his next dive.

Orensen leaned back against the bleacher behind him. As he did, a different woman came into view on his other side. Ramsey strained to make her out. There was something about her that was deeply familiar. A chill ran through his body. It was Paige. At that moment Orensen spotted Ramsey and gestured for him to come over.

April 10, 2016
Rio Chama, New Mexico

M
yriam got up, confrontation burning on her mind. For the past few days she and Hiram, using his connections, had looked deeply into the shrine's ownership and finances. To their surprise they uncovered that the board controlling the Friends of Rio de Milagro Shrine turned out to be a sham. The ownership of the property had been transferred four years earlier to a holding company in South Africa. The agent for the holding company was Raphael Núnez. A bank in Santa Fe had set up a trust to operate the finances of the shrine while maintaining the appearance of a nonprofit organization.

Myriam felt particularly humiliated and angry. She sat on the board and a year ago she had convinced Hiram to ask for a seat as well.

A board meeting was planned for 5 o'clock this afternoon. Raphael Núnez would be there, and so would Father Michael. Both men would have to answer some questions. But before that, Myriam and Hiram needed to do something important. It was Rosa's last day at the Rio Chama Café.

Myriam and Hiram pulled up to the Café. Their usual parking place as well as two others on either side of it had been taken over by an early model Winnebago painted green, yellow, and red. They had to find a spot down the street in front of the hotel.

The restaurant was decked out for a party. Rosa's cousin and his wife and their children and about thirty other family members Myriam didn't recognize swarmed to greet them.

“Thank you for coming,” Rosa said, hugging Myriam. “I was afraid you wouldn't be able to make it.”

“Almost didn't. Had to park way down the street,” said Hiram. He hooked a thumb at the Winnebago. “Whose heap of junk is that anyway?”

Rosa reddened slightly. A booming voice from the back of the room cut through the chatter. “That would be my heap of junk and I think you should apologize for hurting her feelings.”

Myriam turned at the familiar voice. “Pete!” she exclaimed. The tall, lanky redhead came over grinning. They hugged briefly and he shook Hiram's hand. “She doesn't look like much on the outside, but if you have a few minutes I'll give you the nickel tour—microwave satellite antenna, solar powered nickel hydride batteries, sonic shower, Tempurpedic bed, MacPherson struts, a fold-out galley with a convection oven, and a hybrid engine that purrs like a Rolls Royce. It'll make touring the U.S. like being in a five star hotel every night.”

“You're leaving?” asked Myriam.

“We're leaving,” answered Rosa. She held up her hand and showed an engagement ring. “Pete proposed last night.”

Hiram asked, “Where did you find the money for that ring?”

“I sold the Café and Pete—”

“I traded in my trusty 1958 Nash Rambler, Nellie Bell, and I had a few extra dollars stashed from working for the South Africans. I figure I won't be seeing them again and I'm no longer needed around these parts. So it's off we go.”

“We're going wherever wind and whimsy take us,” added Rosa.