“I’d cross myself, but you might think I was joking,” Holland said. “I wouldn’t be.”
As they went through the store, several of the customers reached out to the priest:
“Hola, padre.”
“God bless you, Father.”
“God bless . . .”
They settled into the three chairs in the back room, and Virgil asked Brice, “So, what did you see?”
“I was standing on the church steps looking right at him, at Coates. I saw him jerk like somebody had slapped his back, and then he . . . croaked . . . and looked around . . . and fell over. I thought maybe he’d had a stroke or a heart attack, but then people started screaming, but nobody else fell. I ran across the street, and a couple of other men were trying to get him, and themselves, behind an old concrete planter over there in case there was another shot. There wasn’t. One of the other men was from here in Wheatfield, and he had the sheriff’s department on speed dial and he called them and got an ambulance going. Then we just sat there and held some towels against the wounds to keep him from bleeding out. His wife was with him; she’s a nurse, she knew what to do but was pretty panicky and crying . . .”
“Didn’t hear a shot, or anything?”
“Nothing like that,” Brice said, shaking his head.
“Did you notice exactly how he was standing? Whether he was turned one way or the other?”
“No, I didn’t notice. Wardell was curious about that, too, but I didn’t notice.”
“I called Coates himself after Miz Rice was shot, and he didn’t know exactly how he was standing, either,” Holland said. “He thought he was more or less square to the street. He wasn’t sure, though.”
They talked for a while longer, but Brice had nothing to add about the shooting. He knew more about the wound. “Went right through his thigh, from one side to the other. I noticed that the exit wasn’t much larger than the entry, which I think probably means he was shot with a military-style non-expanding bullet,” he said.
“You know about bullets? Wardell told me the same thing about Miz Rice.”
“I was a chaplain at the Balad military hospital in the early days in Iraq,” Brice said. “I saw a lot of wounds. Most were shrapnel from roadside bombs, but some were bullets.”
* * *
—
When they were done, Virgil and Holland followed the priest through the store to the front exit, and Virgil asked, as they stepped outside, “What about the apparition? What do you think?”
Brice half smiled, and asked, “What do you mean, what do I think?”
“Was it real or did somebody . . . fake something? Or what?”
Brice squinted across the street at the church. “Something happened. We know that for sure because we have photographs. Lots of photographs, quickly converted to postcards. We even have some partial voice recordings, which is more than we’ve ever had at any of the other apparitions. So something happened. And happened before one of the sincerest Catholic congregations in Minnesota. Or anywhere else, for that matter.”
“You sound the tiniest bit skeptical,” Virgil said.
“I believe in the possibility of Marian apparitions,” Brice said. “That doesn’t astonish me. What astonishes me are the other miracles in Wheatfield. It’s inevitable to wonder if they’re related.”
Holland and Virgil looked at each other, and Holland shrugged. Virgil asked, “What other miracles?”
“The miracle of Skinner and Holland, among others,” Brice said, gesturing at the store. “The town could barely support a gas station and yet this store appeared, like magic, barely minutes after the first apparition.”
“C’mon, George. You know the story,” Holland said. He turned to Virgil. “Right after the first apparition, Skinner came running to me and told me what was going to happen. I knew he was right, and we went to work. There was nothing magic about it: this store is the result of several people working like dogs for weeks.”
“I will admit that Skinner is an unusual young man,” Brice said. “Perceptive. In this case, perhaps even . . . clairvoyant.” He shook his shoulders, brushed off some nonexistent dandruff, tugged at his coat sleeves, and said, “I better get over to the church. The management committee is meeting in a few minutes.”
Brice started toward the corner to cross the street, and when he was out of earshot, Holland said to Virgil, “You see, that’s the kind of thing we have to deal with—skepticism, even from the Church. Or maybe he played a little too much football.”
“Yeah?”
“Notre Dame. Linebacker. Had a lot of head-to-head collisions,” Holland said.
“A university devoted to the Virgin Mary—interesting,” Virgil said. “I think he’s probably trying to protect the Church. Its credibility,” Virgil said. “If the apparitions turn out to be a fraud of some kind, they don’t want to be out front vouching for their authenticity. Gettin’ punked.”
“Who would do that? Who could be cynical enough to defraud the public using the Blessed Virgin Mary?” Holland asked.
Virgil stepped out to the edge of the sidewalk and looked up at the storefront sign, “Skinner & Holland, Eats & Souvenirs,” and said, “I have no idea. Nice sign, Wardell.”
“Hey!”
Virgil said, “See ya,” caught a break in the traffic, jaywalked across the street, and called to Brice before the priest entered the church. “Father Brice! . . . George!”
Brice stopped on the steps leading to the church’s portal, and Virgil caught up with him. “If there are no services going on, you think it’d be okay if I looked around the church?”
“Sure. Let me know if you see anything that . . . I should be aware of.”
“I’ll do that,” Virgil said.
Across the street, Holland shook his head and disappeared into the store.
* * *
—
Virgil had been in a lot of churches, most of them Lutheran, but a few Catholic or other Protestant types, as well as a few temples, both Jewish and Buddhist. He’d been in one of them as a result of his job, two more as the result of his relationships with hippie women, but most he’d been dragged into as a result of his father’s ecumenical interests.
As a result, he knew something of traditional church layouts, and, though small, St. Mary’s was traditional, built on the plan of a Christian cross.
Immediately inside the front doors—the portal—there was a vestibule called a narthex. Through the narthex door, he entered the main part of the church, called the nave, which consisted of a clutch of pews with kneelers and was suffused with the odor of melting candle wax. The pews were divided by a wide center aisle like the upright of a cross, with narrower aisles running along the sides. Above these side aisles were colored plaster reliefs denoting the Stations of the Cross, and at the end of each aisle was a rack of red votive candles, about half of them burning.
A transept—an aisle like the crossbar of a cross—divided the pews from the altar and pulpit. There was a bell tower directly above the transept. From the inside, the tower revealed a domed ceiling, also made of painted plaster, with faded angels playing ten-foot-long Renaissance-style trumpets. At the left end of the transept was another rack of candles, this one with white tapers, most of them showing bright, flickering flame.
The Marian apparition had appeared over the altar, which was at the far opposite end of the church when seen from the entry.
Five or six men and three women had gathered at the right side of the transept, where a table and chairs had been set up for the management meeting.