When We Were Saints (16 page)

"Bye," Clare said, and watched them leave. Then she turned and entered the store again.

Archie watched for a second, but then he saw a plump girl exit the store with a large soft pretzel in her hand and his mouth watered. He watched her climb into the back of a Ford Explorer and ride away.

When he looked back toward the store, he saw Clare coming out with a cup of coffee in her hand. When she caught up to him, she handed it to Archie and the two of them climbed back into the truck. "I don't want you to get too sleepy," she said after he thanked her.

"I hope we didn't dip into our gas money too much," he said.

"Oh, I didn't pay for that," Clare said. "Charley gave it to me for free."

"'Charley'? Who's he?"

"The boy working at the cash register. He was happy to give two weary travelers some coffee."

Archie eyed Clare. "'For free'? I don't think so."

"I asked him if he'd ever read
On the Road
by Jack Kerouac and he had, so we got to talking about that and I told him about our trip and he said he could really dig it. He was planning on his own trip someday."

'"Jack Kerouac'? Who's he? What's
On the Road}
"

Clare studied him a second and Archie shrugged. "What?" he asked.

"You don't read much, do you?"

Archie pulled away from the pumps and rolled out toward the highway. "Sure I do. I read books for school and comics and stuff about art. I love reading about art and artists."

Archie watched the road, looking for his chance to get back onto the highway. Clare said, "Okay—now!" and he sped up, his heart racing. He wondered if he'd ever get comfortable entering a highway. Trucks barreled past them as he got into the slow lane, and he watched for his chance to move back to the center lane, which is where Clare had said it was safest to be. Once he moved over and got up to the speed limit, he relaxed again and asked Clare, "How long do you think it will take us to get to New York, anyway?"

Clare shifted onto one thigh and reached into the back pocket of her jeans. She pulled out a couple of PowerBars. "I almost forgot," she said. "Charley gave me these, too. They're for you."

"Thanks!" Archie grabbed one and tore the wrapper open with his teeth. He felt hungry enough to eat the paper:

"It's about fifteen hours total," Clare said, responding to his question. "That is, if we keep to the speed limit and don't stop too long for gas."

Archie bit into the bar. It tasted like heaven. "That means we should get there around five tonight," he said. "Then what? I mean, where will we sleep and all?"

Clare glanced at him. "What's the matter, Francis? You're full of worries all of a sudden. Don't you know God is looking after us? We're on God's mission now. We will be just fine. Isn't this food and coffee proof of that?"

"What
is
God's mission for us, Clare? I've been wondering that lately. What will we do when we get to the Cloisters? What will we do when we get back home?"

"What we've been doing every day. We'll trust in the Lord. God will show us our mission. This pilgrimage will show us what our next steps will be. You have to trust in the Lord, Francis. God tells us every minute, every second of the day, what we should be doing. Just listen, and you will know."

They drove for several more hours, both lost in their own thoughts. In Virginia, Archie looked out the window and saw a sign for Front Royal. He wondered for a minute what a place with the name
Royal
in it might look like. He imagined a city with streets paved in gold. He craned his neck as they passed the exit, hoping to catch a glimpse of something glistening in the distance, but it looked like all the other exits on the highway.

He turned to Clare, recalling their earlier conversation, and asked, "Have you ever listened for God and not heard anything? I mean
nothing
—like, blank—no one's there?"

Clare shook her head, her dark hair sweeping the back of the seat and making a soft swishing sound. "Never God is always with me—always."

"Yeah." Archie sighed and watched the road.

"The first vision I ever had was at the Cloisters. That's why I say I was born there."

Archie jerked his head around. "A vision? You've had visions?"

Clare grabbed the steering wheel. "Watch the road, Francis."

Archie faced forward and slowed down, regaining control of the truck. A car passed them, honking its horn.

Archie swallowed a bite from his second PowerBar and said, "Like me, you mean. The kind of vision I had, with the trees and all. Like that?"

"Yes, I've had that, too, but this one was when I was in the Langon Chapel of the Cloisters. There's an altar there on one side of the room, and it has this high dome ceiling and these narrow windows, with arches set into the thick stone walls, and there's a stone canopy over the altar and the light from the windows was shining down through the little pillars of the canopy onto the altar. And there, in the center of the altar is a wooden carving of the Virgin. She's holding Jesus on her lap, only Jesus is missing his head.

"I had noticed there were lots of statues and carvings there in the museum, with plaques saying that these were statues of the Virgin and child, but the child was missing. Mary would be standing or sitting with her arms cradling the
ait,
because at some point over the centuries Jesus had broken off. I thought it was sad that even in these statues, Jesus had been torn from his mother. So I went up to the altar and kneeled before it, and I spoke to the Virgin and told her I was so sorry she'd lost her son. Then I prayed, with my head bowed because the sun was so bright, and when I finished praying, I looked up and the sun had moved and I could see the Virgin's face. She was crying, Francis. It was real—real tears. I touched her face and it was wet. I licked my fingers and they were salty. And when we get there, if you look you'll see a crack running through the center of her eye and down her face. Her tears have left a deep crack in the wood."

"'Real tears,'" Archie said, moved by what she had told him. "I can't wait to see her."

Clare nodded. "Yes, you'll see her I've seen her tears three times now, and each time I have I've come away changed. My eyes are opened and I see the world differently. I receive gifts."

"What kind of gifts?" Archie asked, glancing over at Clare, who stared out the windshield as if she were gazing upon the Virgin right at that moment.

"One was the gift of other visions."

Archie looked at Clare and saw a pained expression pass over her face. A moment later it was gone. "What kind of visions?" he asked.

"I'll tell you about them sometime, but not now, okay?"

Archie shrugged. "I guess," he said, wondering at all the secrets Clare seemed to have. It seemed she was always pulling another one out from behind her back every time they had a conversation. He never knew what she would tell him next.

"So then," he said, "what about the other gifts? Can you talk about them?"

"Well, another one is the gift of extra perception, I guess you'd call it. All of a sudden I could look at people and know things about them most people would never guess. I found that I just knew things, like this one's just been laid off from work and that one's afraid his baby might be deaf."

"You read people the way your father does."

"Yes, but even more so."

"So if I see her crying, I'll be like that? I'll be like you?"

"I believe so, Francis. I hope so."

Archie sighed. For whatever reason, God had deserted him up on the mountain the night before; he felt sure that when he saw the statue, God would return to him again—and he couldn't wait. He wanted to see the tears. He would cry with her he decided. He would mourn the Virgin Mary's loss.

"It changes you," Clare said, breaking into his thoughts. "You can't help but love people when you see inside them like that. Everybody is just trying to do the best they can with their lives. Some people make really bad, even evil choices, and others make good ones, but still, they're just trying to survive and do the best they can." She nodded to herself.

Archie shook his head. "I don't think murderers are doing the best they can."

Clare looked at Archie. "Oh, but they are. They are sick, but they are still God's children."

Archie glanced at her startled by her vehemence. "But murder isn't the answer to anything, or rape or any of those things. That's not doing the best you can; it's doing the worst."

"Some people lose their way; they turn from God and they make the wrong choice, an evil choice, maybe, but still they're just trying to survive as best as they can."

Archie shook his head. "Hitler? Saddam Hussein? No way!"

"You don't think God loves them, too?" Clare asked.

"I don't know, maybe, but it doesn't mean I have to."

"If you hope to be like Jesus, it does."

Archie shook his head. "If that Virgin at the museum can make me feel love for those two—well, that I've got to see." Then Archie remembered his grandmother and he said, "Sometimes people get healed on pilgrimages. You can pray at a shrine or something, and the person you pray for gets healed in an instant. You think if I prayed for my grandmama she would be healed? She's so ill. I'm afraid about leaving her really. That's the biggest thing about this pilgrimage that worries me. What if—what if she's dead when I get back?"

Clare reached up and touched Archie's shoulder, "Trust in the Lord," she said. "I used to have high fevers. I'd get them three or four times a year I would come close to dying every time. The first time I saw the Virgin's tears was when I was visiting my aunt, and I could feel the fever building in my body. I always knew a fever was coming because everything would take on a molten appearance, as though the people and things I looked at were the ones with the fever and they were melting from it. I would become color-blind, too. I wouldn't just lose certain colors, like green and red; everything would turn to a sickly yellow-white. Anyway, when I prayed and spoke to the Virgin that first time and told her I was sorry that she'd lost her son, I saw her tears and I felt the fever leave. My body cooled in an instant, and I could see colors again. I reached up to touch the tears and to taste them, and I knew I was healed. So fear not, Francis, your grandmother will be well."

Archie felt tears welling up in his eyes. "Wow!" he said, gripping the steering wheel harder. He couldn't wait to see the Virgin and child with the missing head.

Clare patted his shoulder. "Just trust in the Lord," she said.

"Trust in the Lord," Archie said to himself, over and over recalling his last visit with his grandmother with the oxygen and the IVs—"Trust in the Lord."

Archie was so lost in thought, he didn't hear the siren at first, and it wasn't until it was close upon them that he saw the lights flashing.

A
RCHIE PANICKED
. He turned to Clare. "What are we going to do, Clare?"

Clare's eyes were wide with panic, but she again placed her hand on the steering wheel to steady Archie.

"Turn on your blinker and look for a chance to pull over," she said, her voice trembling.

Archie looked to his right, but the traffic was heavy. Cars were all around him. "We're stuck! I can't get over"

Archie's hands began to shake. He looked at Clare and saw that her face was ashen. He had never seen her scared before. He checked the rearview mirror The police were staring right at him. "Great, they're going to think we're leading them on a chase." Archie looked at the right and left lanes. Both sides were still blocked. "What are we going to do?"

"Pray," Clare said. She closed her eyes and hummed. The color returned to her face. Cars began to pull over to the side of the road and a space opened up. The traffic had slowed down. Archie signaled and got into the slow lane, then pulled off to the right side of the road behind a Toyota and stopped. He pressed his forehead against the steering wheel and prayed.

The police car sped past, its siren still blaring.

Clare and Archie looked up at each other for a minute, taking in the fact that they had not been stopped. The siren was not for them. Then they both broke up laughing, and Clare said, looking at all the cars trying to pull back onto the highway, "There are an awful lot of us guilty people on the road."

Archie took a deep breath and signaled to get back onto the highway, and soon they were under way again. They drove a long distance in silence, both lost in thought. Clare hummed and Archie watched the highway, ignoring his grumbling stomach. The PowerBars and coffee had only made his hunger worse.

The farther north they drove, the heavier the traffic became, and at one point, just outside of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the traffic came to a halt. Archie rolled down his window and leaned out to try to see what had stopped them. His first thought was that the police were searching all the cars for two runaways, but then he reasoned that was unlikely and he relaxed. He saw a mother in the car beside him passing sandwiches back to her children. A boy, who sat in the backseat next to the window and closest to Archie, looked between his two slices of bread and smiled at what he saw. He closed the sandwich and lifted it up to take a bite. Then he saw Archie staring at him and he rolled down his window, got up onto his knees, and held the sandwich out to him. Without thinking, Archie leaned out and took it. "Thanks," he said.

The boy put his finger to his mouth and rolled the window back up.

Archie nodded and looked at the mother who had been too preoccupied with her other two fighting children to notice the exchange. He turned to Clare. "Look what I have, a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. That kid in the blue car just gave it to me."

Clare didn't seem surprised. "God always provides," she said.

Archie bit into the sandwich and then offered it to Clare. She took a bite and handed it back saying, "You have the rest; you're driving."

"It's delicious," Archie said, biting into it again. "That kid doesn't know what he's missing."

Clare nodded and wiped her mouth with her hand. "Maybe he does and he gave it to us anyway. Think about that, Francis."