The Visitation (26 page)

Kyle and I prayed together before we each headed for home. I prayed for him, he prayed for me, and we didn’t pray
against
Brandon Nichols as much as
for
him. As mysterious and sinister as he was, I knew, and tried to tell Kyle, that he had an unknown side that needed to be reached. How that would happen there was just no saying, but—

Hold on! What was that in the river? I caught just a brief flicker of it through a break in the trees and brush.

I braked to a stop at the first gravel turnout and turned the car around. On any other day I might not have done that, but today—I don’t know, I guess I was expecting something. I drove back, spotted it again, and pulled off on the opposite shoulder from the river.

Only weeks ago, the Spokane River had been running high from the spring snow melt, its banks nearly submerged, its water pea green from fine, suspended silt. Now it was dropping toward its summer level, changing from green to crystalline blue, and leaving muddy banks where river grass grew tall and sodden drift logs came to rest. I walked to the edge of the riverbank and found out I was right: I really
had
seen the rear end of an automobile just breaking the surface. It was brown with mud and silt, which relieved my concern that I’d come upon a recent accident. By all appearances, the spring current had pushed it along until it came to rest against a huge fallen log. I looked upriver. About thirty yards upstream was an embankment with access from the road. The embankment dropped like a cliff toward the water, but during the spring run-off the water would have been up to the top edge, making it a perfect spot to ditch a car—or have an accident. That thought now plagued me.

The fallen log provided a nice bridge out to the car and I took it, leaving my shoes, socks, and wallet in the grass. The current was brisk, rippling over the log, the car’s trunk, and my ankles. The water was clear, however, and all I needed was an angle to avoid the glare of the sun off the water. Just above the rear bumper, I could see the license plate no more than a foot below the rushing surface.

It was muddy and obscured. Now I had to consider the temperature of the water, the quality of my clothes, and how far I would have to drive soaking wet.

I sat on the log and gasped as the cold water came up to my waist, then swept the mud away with my hand.

I could hardly breathe with the river chilling me, but I remained long enough to memorize the license number. Then, dripping and shivering, I hurried up the log and got out of there.

The effort may have been worth it. The car had a Montana license plate.

I
GAVE BRETT HENCHLE
a call and he came out to the river to have a look, putting on some waders and double-checking the license plate. I didn’t say anything about the car being from Montana and what that could mean. I was hoping he’d make the connection himself. If he did make the connection, he didn’t acknowledge it.

“Okay, I’ll check into it.” He threw his waders in the trunk of his squad car and drove off, leaving me standing alone on the riverbank, feeling let down. I wanted to think well of him. I wanted to believe he would be objective and do his job as a lawman, but . . . he had been healed by Brandon Nichols, hadn’t he?

FRIDAY MORNING,
halfway through my breakfast, I heard a lawn mower cutting laps around John Billings’s place. I knew John wasn’t home, so I had to wonder,
Now what?

I stepped out on my front porch and looked across the street. This was something new: an older, chubby fellow in lemon yellow shorts riding a shiny red Honda mower. Did John hire this guy to do the job Brandon Nichols never finished? Was this the apostle Paul, or perhaps Abraham? Should I ask?

I tried to let it go and finish my breakfast, but two bites of Bran Flakes later, I couldn’t stand not knowing. I put down my spoon, went out the door, and crossed the street. It didn’t take long for the guy on the mower to come buzzing around again. I waved hello, hoping he’d stop.

He did.

“Hi, neighbor!” he said cheerfully. “Just finishing up the lawn here.” He stuck out his hand. “Andy Parmenter.”

“Travis Jordan. I don’t think I’ve seen you before. Are you from around here?”

“Nope, Southern California. The wife and I are up here to visit Brandon Nichols for a while.” He laughed as he said, “Guess that doesn’t come as much of a surprise.”

I smiled and wagged my head. “No, no.”

“Brandon sent me down here to finish mowing Mr. Billings’s grass. Heh. Looks to me like Mr. Billings already mowed it himself, but I guess it’s the principle of the thing. Brandon doesn’t like leaving things undone.” Then he leaned forward over the mower’s steering wheel and spoke intensely, “Have you ever met him?”

“Yes. On this very spot, as a matter of fact.”

“He’s a wonderful man, isn’t he?”

“Is he?”

“Well just look at me. Retired executive, rich, successful—and miserable, until we came up here. Now here I am, sitting on a lawn mower mowing a stranger’s lawn and feeling like a real human being for the first time! Brandon will do that for you!”

“Nice mower,” I commented.

“My contribution to the cause. I’ve already mowed George Harding’s RV park—that’s where the wife and I have our motor home.” He reflected, shook his head in wonder, and said, “You just can’t believe the sense of community that’s growing up at the ranch. People are helping, sharing, loving each other. In all my life I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ve never felt so glad to be alive.” He looked around the neighborhood. “This town’s a perfect place to start over and do things the right way. You’re going to see some changes around here!”

THE CHANGES STARTED
that very day, without announcement or warning. Norman Dillard didn’t know what to think when six strangers showed up at the Wheatland Motel with ladders, brushes, and rollers, ready to give the old place a face-lift, free of charge. George Harding’s dream of converting some of his land into an RV park flashed into reality as Andy Parmenter, his wife, and four other well-to-do Californians pitched in money and labor to get the place up to snuff. The Sundowner Motel, Gary Fisk’s rundown enterprise, needed new plumbing and wiring; a plumber from Yakima and an electrician from Seattle showed up together to do something about it, compliments of Brandon Nichols.

Michael the Prophet became the energy, if not the brains, behind a project to repaint the white line down the center of the highway through town. A local artist joined that crew and painted colorful heads of wheat at each intersection and rain clouds to mark the location of the fire hydrants. “Soon the multitudes will come,” Michael proclaimed as the rented line painter wheeled by, “and springs of water will burst forth upon the land!”

“NO, NO,
my life isn’t different, it’s—it’s like it’s real, it’s a life. It’s like I’ve started living after being dead all my life. I just can’t believe it!” a young girl with green, braided hair told a television reporter. She was operating a forklift, placing trees in big planters along the street. “My life used to be such a mess, and now it’s, it’s like it’s just together, you know?”

“We were doin’ drugs,” said a big guy in a red tank top with blue-black tattoos on his arms. He looked at his two buddies installing the park bench near the new swing set in the newly mowed and weeded park with the new sign out front, CEPHUS MACON MEMORIAL PARK. “Yeah, all of us, we were in the drug scene big time, but that was a dead end.”

“And now you’re disciples of Brandon Nichols, is that right?” asked the newspaper reporter.

The man nodded. “It clicked, that’s all. Nichols knows.”

His two friends liked the sound of that. “Yeah, Nichols knows!” they yelled.

Armond Harrison didn’t look good in person and looked even worse on camera, but that didn’t stop him from waxing verbose when given the chance. “We are now coordinating with the local businesses to carry out a major renovation of Antioch’s historic district, hoping it will represent what we are as a people, a melting pot of different backgrounds, convictions, and ideals all living in harmony. This is, I believe, what Antioch stands for, and this is the ideal to which Brandon Nichols has lent his voice. At the core of our hearts, nothing is new here. But the time has come to bring our common vision into a tangible reality. We—” At this point, his lips kept moving but a reporter talked over him. Those who saw the news clip say his lips moved without sound at the beginning also, and the volume didn’t come up until he got to “—this is the ideal to which Brandon Nichols has lent his voice.”

Armond made it a point to get his people involved in the wave of goodness that swept over the town. Many of them were skilled craftspeople—masons, painters, dry-wallers, carpenters, concrete workers—and he wanted them seen as they turned out and pitched in, helping, joining, working hand in hand with the Nichols bunch. He never bothered to mention that he and his people were being paid for the work they did, meaning there was some hard practicality hidden behind all that benevolence. Few of his people asked probing questions, but all understood the money was coming from the direction of the Macon ranch.

Even Penny Adams, the girl with the healed hand, was moving into the realm of goodness. Out of the blue, she walked into Florence Tyler’s little clothing boutique and offered to vacuum and dust. Florence didn’t trust her, at least up until today, but things seemed so magically different in the town that she got caught up in it and gladly handed Penny a dust rag. Penny said nothing about what she expected to be paid. She just set to work, humming quietly to herself. Florence waited on customers, all of whom were buzzing about the changes happening in the town, and she marveled.

I WAS GLAD TO BE ON THE SIDELINES
watching when the local ministers started to react to all this. Sid Maher was happy, neighborly, and neither for nor against it. Burton Eddy encouraged his congregation to join up, pitch in, and be a part of it, for this kind of unity, he said, was God’s purpose for all of us on earth. Bob Fisher felt no hesitation in questioning Brandon Nichols’s doctrine and intentions, but apart from that, he kept preaching according to the same format in the same order of service he’d always had at his church. His people, being warned, went ahead with a dessert auction and spaghetti social and hardly felt a bump. Father Vendetti encouraged his people to participate with anything that would be good for the town, but he reminded them that Our Lady also had its own charitable programs that should not be neglected.

Paul Daley was quite flustered when he talked to me about it. “I feel ambivalent,” he said. “Nichols and his people are doing good works and that’s good, but by joining him in doing good, we could be making his teachings and claims look good, which could be bad if Nichols himself proves to be bad, which means it could actually be bad for us to be doing all this good. But in not joining him to do good, we all look bad.” He shook his head. “Whew! He has us over a barrel, doesn’t he?”

AT THE END OF THE DAY,
Florence Tyler was beginning to feel some ambivalence of her own. After Penny Adams had dusted, vacuumed, and left, Florence went to a dress rack to show a customer a cute flowery dress and discovered the dress was gone. She said nothing to the customer, but did take a look at the accessories rack, where she discovered a bracelet and necklace were also missing. The customer left without buying anything, and Florence, convinced she could have sold that flowery dress, began to imagine how right it would be for Penny’s healed hand to be crippled again.

IN THE BACK
of the Antioch
Harvester
and Office Supply, Nancy Barrons was bent low over her desk, carefully checking some contact prints with a magnifier. Kim Staples, her assistant, reporter, photographer, and lab tech, stood nearby to hear Nancy’s verdict.

“I can’t believe how everything’s happening all at once,” Nancy commented, her face only inches from the photo sheet.

“I ran my legs off today,” Kim reported, “and I still didn’t get it all. I just got word there’s a roofing party going on over at Maude Henley’s.”

Nancy looked up from the prints. “You’re kidding.”

“I think it’s the same people who fixed up the flower beds in the park.”

“The Berkeley transplants?”

“Yeah.” Kim pointed to a sheet of prints and Nancy took a close look with her magnifier.

“Heh. Yeah. Kim . . .”

“Yeah?”

“Is that really that guy’s rear end sticking out?”

“Oh, did that get in the picture?”

“Man, with all this charity going around you’d think someone would give him a decent pair of pants. Oh brother.”

“What?”

“There’s Armond Harrison again.”

“He was there. What can I say?”

Nancy straightened up to scan all the contact sheets before her. “He was at the sandblasting in the ‘historical district,’ the painting of the Wheatland Motel, the placing of the trees on Main Street. . . .”

Kim pointed, “And he was there for the refilling of the white line painter.”

“How many Armond Harrisons are there?”

Kim gave a little shrug. “He likes to have his picture taken.”

Nancy gave an irritated huff. “We ought to be charging him for all the free PR.” She started circling her selections with a white marker. “Okay, let’s run this one of the sandblasting, and this one of the tree planting. Is there a picture of the park without Armond in it?”

Kim tapped on one.

Nancy circled it. “And then maybe you can get a shot of the roofing job at Maude Henley’s. But no Armonds and no rear ends!”

“You repeat yourself.”

Nancy laughed. “I wasn’t going to say it.” The bell over the front door jingled. “Ah, a customer.”

Kim took two steps into the store area and stopped dead in her tracks. “Oh . . .”

Nancy stood and looked around the room divider.

As soon as the customer walked closer and removed his baseball cap, she recognized Brandon Nichols.

“Hi,” he said.

Anyone else could have come through that door and Nancy would have felt relaxed and neighborly. The sight of Brandon Nichols made her feel instantly . . . objective. “Hello. What can I do for you?”