Revival

I stood by his new-old car, thinking of the Belvedere, which was now a burned-out wreck, and I almost turned tail and beat feet for home. I wonder how much of my life would have been different if I’d done that. I wonder if I’d be writing this now. There’s no way of telling, is there? Saint Paul was all too right about that dark glass. We look through it all our days and see nothing but our own reflections.

Instead of ru

I didn’t think, just ran to him. He opened his arms and lifted me up so he could kiss me on the cheek. “Jamie!” he cried. “Thou art Alpha and Omega!”

“Huh?”

“Revelation, chapter one, verse eight. ‘I am Alpha and Omega, the begi

I started to cry. I didn’t want to but couldn’t help it. “I’m sorry, Reverend Jacobs. I’m sorry for everything. You were right in church, it’s not fair.”

He kissed my other cheek and set me down. “I don’t think I said that in so many words, but you certainly caught the gist of it. Not that you should take anything I said seriously; I was off my head. Your mother knew that. She told me so when she brought me that fine Thanksgiving feast. And she wished me all the best.”

Hearing that made me feel a little better.

“She gave me some good advice, too—that I should go far from Harlow, Maine, and start over. She said I might find my faith again in some new place. I strongly doubt that, but she was right about leaving.”

“I’ll never see you again.”

“Never say that, Jamie. Paths cross all the time in this world of ours, sometimes in the strangest places.” He took his handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped the tears from my face. “In any case, I’ll remember you. And I hope you’ll think of me from time to time.”

“I will.” Then, remembering: “You betchum bobcats.”

He went back to his worktable, now sadly bare, and finished packing up the last items—a couple of big square batteries he called “dry cells.” He closed the lid of the crate and began tying it shut with two stout pieces of rope.

“Co

“That’s okay. I doubt if I really did anything.”

I was shocked. “You brought his voice back, for criminey sakes! You brought it back with your gadget!”

“Oh yes. My gadget.” He knotted the second rope, and yanked it tight. His sleeves were rolled up, and I could see he had awesome muscles. I had never noticed them before. “The Electrical Nerve Stimulator.”

“You ought to sell it, Reverend Jacobs! You could make a mint!”

He leaned an elbow on the crate, propped his chin on one hand, and gazed at me. “Do you think so?”

“Yes!”

“I doubt it very much. And I doubt if my ENS unit had anything to do with your brother’s recovery. You see, I built it that very day.” He laughed. “And powered it with a very small Japanese-made motor filched from Morrie’s Roscoe Robot toy.”

“Really?”

“Really. The concept is valid, I feel sure of that, but such prototypes—built on the fly, without any experiments to verify the steps in between—very rarely work. Yet I believed I had a chance, because I never doubted Dr. Renault’s original diagnosis. It was a stretched nerve, no more than that.”

“But—”

He hoisted the crate. The muscles in his arms bulged, veins standing out on them. “Come on, kiddo. Walk with me.”

I followed him out to the car. He set the crate down beside the back fender, inspected the trunk, and said he’d have to move the suitcases to the backseat. “Can you take the small one, Jamie? It’s not heavy. When you’re traveling far, it’s best to travel light.”

“Where are you going?”

“No idea, but I think I’ll know it when I get there. If this thing doesn’t break down, that is. It burns enough oil to drain Texas.”

We moved the suitcases to the back of the Ford. Reverend Jacobs hoisted the big crate into the trunk with a grunt of effort. He slammed it closed, then leaned against it, studying me.

“You have a wonderful family, Jamie, and wonderful parents who actually pay attention. If I asked them to describe you kids, I bet they’d say that Claire is the motherly one, Andy’s the bossy one—”

“Boy, you’re right about that.”

He gri

“The studying one. Or maybe the folk-singing one since he got his guitar.”

“Perhaps, but I bet those wouldn’t be the first things to pop into their minds. Ever notice Con’s fingernails?”

I laughed. “He bites em like mad! Once my dad offered him a buck if he stopped for a week, but he couldn’t!”

“Con is the nervy one, Jamie—that’s what your folks would say if they were to be completely honest. The one who’s apt to turn up with ulcers by the time he’s forty. When he got hit in the neck with that ski pole and lost his voice, he started to worry that it would never come back. And when it didn’t, he told himself it never would.”

“Dr. Renault said—”

“Renault’s a fine doctor. Conscientious. He turned up here Joh

“He did say that!”

“Yes, but Conrad wasn’t convinced because Renault isn’t convincing. He’s able to treat the body, but the mind? Not so much. And the mind is where half the healing takes place. Maybe more. Con thought, ‘He’s lying now so I can get used to having no voice. Later on he’ll tell me the truth.’ That’s just the way your brother’s built, Jamie. He lives on his nerve endings, and when people do that, their minds can turn against them.”

“He wouldn’t come with me today,” I said. “I lied about that.”

“Did you?” Jacobs didn’t look very surprised.

“Yeah. I asked him, but he was scared.”

“Never be angry with him for that,” Jacobs said. “Frightened people live in their own special hell. You could say they make it themselves—like Con manufactured his muteness—but they can’t help it. It’s the way they’re built. They deserve sympathy and compassion.”

He turned to the parsonage, which already looked abandoned, and sighed. Then he turned back to me.

“Perhaps the ENS did something—I have every reason to believe the theory behind it is valid—but I really doubt it. Jamie, I believe I tricked your brother. Or, if you don’t mind the pun, I co