Sea Glass (Part 1)
The minister sought out young Louis Sweeney after hearing many accounts of the boy’s abilities from parishioners.
“He can heal people,” they’d say. “He’s got a special touch.” A schoolteacher who had Louis in her third grade class said, “He can see things no one else can.” A woman who had had crippling arthritis told the minister, “He took my pain away.” But others thought the boy was a huckster. His father, Bill, was a drunken fisherman from a family of drunken fishermen and sad, desperate women. The elder Sweeney had been kicked out of World War II for making moonshine out of diesel fuel. “His brain got real messed up that way,” one of the minister’s flock relayed, “and I think his messy brain got passed onto his boy. The boy just knows how to use that mess.”
Whatever his background was, there was fervent talk of Louis throughout the eastern part of the county. Folks brought their sick family members to see him on Shelter Island. The results were often extraordinary. Miraculous. And despite his father’s insistence, Louis refused to accept any money for curing others. He’d take gifts (fresh-baked pies were his favorite), but it didn’t appear that profit was his motive. He couldn't cure everyone. Just certain people. People whom Louis said were “afflicted by the spore.”
It was the Monday after Ash Wednesday in 1957 when the minister decided to take the ferry out to Shelter Island to meet Louis Sweeney. If a miracle worker was operating within parish borders, it was the minister’s ecumenical duty to observe the act firsthand. And if there were heresy afoot, all the more reason to investigate.
The Sweeneys lived on the island’s back bay, where a row of single-room fisherman shacks wound down a dirt road to the waterfront. Even as late as 1957, very few of the families in this neighborhood had cars. They had boats. That’s all they needed to make their way into Sag Harbor marina for groceries, or a doctor, or a hole in the wall, or a kick in the teeth. Whatever you needed. A little more than a hundred years earlier, the whaling business had brought it all and left it. A hundred years isn’t a long time in a fishing town.
The minister decided to drive out from Noyack by himself, in his Studebaker. He was the only passenger on the ferry that morning. Shelter Island was a quiet Hamptons enclave that really only saw out-of-town action in the summer months. There were some eccentrics who lived there year round, including a few big-money Manhattan families who occupied estates on the southern shore. There was an “artist retreat” at the old blubber-canning plant, where rumor held that the guests consorted in narcotics usage. The minister had never had a good feeling about the island. It was too quiet, too removed. There were two churches out there, and neither were terribly active.
As he was turning onto Back Bay Road, his car got stuck in a muddy pothole. It took him an hour in the cold to free it using frozen branches he had to break off by hand and lay under the wheels, forming a ramp of sorts. When he got down to the number eight shack, where the Sweeneys lived, it was almost lunchtime. He knocked at the door and was greeted by Sandra Sweeney, a stocky woman with red, meaty hands. The minister had sent word through one of his fishermen parishioners, and the Sweeneys were expecting him. “You’re about an hour late,” Sandra said.
The minister explained that his car had “fallen into some mud” and it had taken him that long to free it. He gestured to his pants, which were covered in dirt, with a smile. “Apologies on that, ma’am. Sometimes the road rises up to meet me more than I would like it to.” The minister was just into his thirties, and had a spry nature about him that effectively charmed all but the most callous of hearts.
Sandra returned the smile. “Don’t you worry about it. I’d invite you in but the boy is taking a nap. Had two healings in the morning. Took his energy away.”
“I understand,” the minister said. He would wait in his car until the boy awoke, not a problem. Sandra offered him a bowl of fish stew but the minister demurred. It was lent, and he was fasting. He sat in his car and observed the harbor, still active this far into the winter. Men were pulling in nets with light hauls of codfish. A few dogs ate off of what appeared to be a squid carcass on the edge of the shore. Such a foreign land, the minister thought to himself.
The door to the Sweeneys’ home swung open and out stepped Louis. He was taller than usual for fifteen years of age—pushing six foot—and beanpole slim, with a shock of strawberry-blonde hair that was in bad need of a trim. In spite of the cold temperatures, he was only wearing a long-sleeve undershirt. He walked out to the Studebaker to meet the minister. They agreed to sit inside the car and talk.
“Sorry, I was sleeping. We expected you a bit earlier and I dozed off,” he said.
“The work you do is pretty draining?”
“It is,” the boy replied. “Some times more than others. I had two sick come by this morning. Really early. A man who was having trouble breathing. He worked for the rail company. And a girl almost my age. She had sores growing all over.”
“Did they try the doctor first?” the minister asked. He was riveted. The boy had a matter-of-fact conviction about him. If he was lying, he wasn’t showing it.
“Well, the people who come to me, they’ve either tried every doctor and haven’t had any luck. Or they don’t have no money for a doctor.”
The minister nodded. “Would you tell me how it works?”
The boy shifted in his seat, thinking about the question. “What kind of minister did you say you were?”
The minister explained that he was a Methodist, overseeing St. Luke’s United Church in North Sea. He was very active in his parish. He liked to stay connected to the people. “Working class families. Like your community here,” the minister said.
The minister told Louis that he was the talk of the congregation of late. “A lot of folks are interested in your gift. They want to know more.”
The boy summarized it. “I see people’s pain. And I take it away.”
“How do you see their pain, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“You mean, what does their pain look like?”
“Yes,” the minister said. The boy held back, reluctant to dive into any details. “It’s okay,” the minister reassured him. “It’s just you and me here. And it’s my god-sworn duty to keep anything you tell me a secret.”
Louis exhaled and said, “You’re going to think I’m a liar.”
“I promise you I will not.”
The boy looked at him in his eyes and said, “I see their pain as monsters. I remove the monsters. And they become healthy again.”
“What kind of monsters?”
“Some of them look like spiders. Some of them look like fish creatures. They’re attached to the bodies of the sick people. Only to them, the monsters are invisible. These creatures feed on them. That’s what makes them ill.”