Revival

“Oh, honey, I don’t know . . .”

“I feel well enough. I really do.” Astrid cast an apologetic look at Jacobs. “It’s not that I’m not grateful—I’ll bless you in my prayers for the rest of my life—but I want to be in my own place. Unless you feel . . . ?”

“No, no,” Jacobs said. I suspected that, with the job done, he was anxious to be rid of her. “I can’t think of better medicine than sleeping in your own bed, and if you leave soon, you can be back not long after dark.”

Je

Astrid’s returning color was only part of the remarkable change in her. She was sitting upright in her wheelchair; her eyes were clear and engaged. “I don’t know how I can ever thank you, Mr. Jacobs, and I certainly can’t repay you, but if there’s ever anything you need from me that’s mine to give, you only have to ask.”

“Actually, there are several things.” He ticked them off on the gnarled fingers of his right hand. “Eat. Sleep. Work hard to regain your strength. Can you do those things?”

“Yes. I will. And I’m never going to touch another cigarette.”

He waved this away. “You won’t want to. Will she, Jamie?”

“Probably not,” I said.

“Miss Knowlton?”

She jerked as if he’d pinched her bottom.

“Astrid must engage a physical therapist, or you must engage one on her behalf. The sooner she gets out of that damn wheelchair, the better. Am I right? Am I cooking with gas, as we used to say?”

“Yes, Pastor Da

He frowned, but didn’t correct her. “There’s something else you fine ladies can do for me, and it’s extremely important: leave my name out of this. I have a great deal of work to do in the coming months, and the last thing I need is to have hordes of sick people coming up here in hopes of being cured. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Astrid said.

Je

“Astrid, when you see your doctor and he expresses amazement, as he certainly will, all you’ll tell him is that you prayed for a remission and your prayers were answered. His own belief—or lack of it—in the efficacy of prayer won’t matter; either way, he’ll be forced to accept the evidence of his MRI pictures. Not to mention your happy smiling face. Your happy and healthy smiling face.”

“Yes, that’s fine. Whatever you want.”

“Let me roll you back to the suite,” Je

“All right.” Astrid looked at me shyly. “Jamie, would you bring me a Coke? I’d like to speak to you.”

“Sure.”

Jacobs watched Je

“Yes.”

“And you won’t DS on me?”

DS. Carny-speak for down south, meaning to pull stakes and disappear.

“No, Charlie. I won’t DS on you.”

“That’s fine, then.” He was looking at the doorway through which the women had gone. “Miss Knowlton doesn’t like me much now that I’ve left Team Jesus, does she?”

“Scared of you is what she is.”

He shrugged it off. Like his smile, the shrug was mostly one-sided. “Ten years ago, I couldn’t have cured our Miss Soderberg. Perhaps not even five. But things are moving fast, now. By this summer . . .”

“By this summer, what?”

“Who knows?” he said. “Who knows?”

You do, I thought. You do, Charlie.

 • • •

“Watch this, Jamie,” Astrid said when I arrived with her soft drink.

She got out of the wheelchair and tottered three steps to the chair by her bedroom window. She held on to it for balance while she turned herself around, and collapsed into it with a sigh of relief and pleasure.

“Not much, I know—”

“Are you kidding? It’s amazing.” I handed her an ice-choked glass of Coca-Cola. I had even stuck a piece of lime on the rim for good luck. “And you’ll be able to do more each day.”

We had the room to ourselves. Je

“I think I owe you as much as I owe Mr. Jacobs.”

“That’s not true.”

“Don’t lie, Jamie, your nose will grow and the bees will sting your knees. He must get thousands of letters begging for cures, even now. I don’t think he picked mine out of the pile by accident. Were you the one in charge of reading them?”

“Nope, that was Al Stamper, your friend Je

“And you came,” she said. “After all these years, you came. Why?”

“Because I had to. I can’t explain any better than that, except there was a time when you meant the world to me.”

“You didn’t promise him anything? There was no . . . what do they call it . . . quid pro quo?”

“Not a single one.” I said it without missing a beat. During my years as an addict, I’d become an accomplished liar, and the sad truth is that sort of skill sticks with you.

“Walk over here. Stand close to me.”

I did. With no hesitation or embarrassment, she put her hand on the front of my jeans. “You were gentle with this,” she said. “Many boys wouldn’t have been. You had no experience, but you knew how to be kind. You meant the world to me, too.” She dropped her hand and looked at me out of eyes no longer dull and preoccupied with her own pain. Now they were full of vitality. Also worry. “You did promise. I know you did. I won’t ask what, but if you ever loved me, be careful of him. I owe him my life, and I feel awful saying this, but I believe he’s dangerous. And I think you believe that, too.”

Not as accomplished at lying as I’d thought, then. Or perhaps it was just that she saw more now that she was cured.

“Astrid, you have nothing to worry about.”

“I wonder . . . could I have a kiss, Jamie? While we’re alone? I know I’m not much to look at, but . . .”

I dropped to one knee—again feeling like a swain in a romance—and kissed her. No, she wasn’t much to look at, but compared to how she’d looked that morning, she was a knockout. Still—it was only skin against skin, that kiss. There were no embers in the ashes. For me, at least. But we were tied together, just the same. Jacobs was the knot.

She stroked the back of my head. “Still such wonderful hair, going white or not. Life leaves us so little, but it’s left you that. Goodbye, Jamie. And thank you.”

 • • •

On my way out, I stopped to talk briefly to Je

She smiled. “Astrid and I are divorce buddies. Have been since I moved to Rockland and started working at the hospital there. Ten years ago, that was. When she got sick, I moved in with her.”

I gave her my cell number, and the number at Wolfjaw. “There may be aftereffects.”

She nodded. “Pastor Da

“Yes, that’s the most likely.” Although there was also dirt-eating, compulsive walking, Tourette’s syndrome, kleptomania, and Hugh Yates’s prismatics. So far as I knew, Ambien didn’t cause any of those things. “But if there’s anything else . . . call.”

“How worried are you?” she asked. “Tell me what to expect.”

“I don’t really know, and she’ll probably be fine.” Most of them were, after all, at least according to Jacobs. And as little as I trusted him, I had to count on that, because it was too late to do anything else. The thing was done.