Sea Glass (Part 2)
It was bonkers nuts, but the minister could tell that the boy really believed in what he was saying. Louis thought his version to be true. That parasite monsters were attached to sick people, draining the life from them a little at a time, until they succumbed.
“And you can see them?” The boy nodded. The minister was so taken aback by the boy’s answer and its implication that his mind started to swirl. He was trying to stay calm and rational. But this revelation had overwhelmed him. For the first time in a while, the minister found himself without words.
They sat quietly for a few minutes while the minister thought about it. Then he asked, “What do you do with the monsters? After you’ve taken them off.”
The boy gestured to an area alongside his family’s shack. “See that wash basin there,” he said as he pointed to a steel bathtub. “There’s kerosene in it. I carry the monsters out and put them in there. Then they sort of shrivel up and disappear. It took me a while to figure out how to dispose of them. For a while, I’d put them up on the rocks above the beach. And the monsters just sat there, dozens of them, until I dumped some kerosene from a lamp on one and it withered away.”
The minister thanked Louis for the explanation. It was not what he was expecting. Then again, demons of all variety were to be found throughout the Good Book. The minister asked him if he could bring a sick woman to be healed. The boy told him, “Sure. But I can only help the ones that are being afflicted by a monster.”
They agreed that they would give it a shot and set a time. The minister returned two days later with twenty-five-year old May Ellen Jeffers, who hadn’t walked in three years due to spinal inflammation. They were accompanied by May Ellen’s father, Bart, who drove them out in his truck. When they pulled onto Back Bay Road, Louis, Bill, and Sandra were all waiting for them outside. Bill directed them down to the marina area where they parked and collected with the Sweeneys inside of a boat house.
Bart Jeffers guided his daughter inside in her wheelchair, before presenting Sandra Sweeney with a pack of t-bone steaks and a fresh loaf of rosemary bread. May Ellen was nervous. She had the pale look of someone who knew she was dying.
The minister stood in the back of the boat house and watched. Louis washed his hands with a pitcher and a bowl before moving over to the young lady. “So, how does this work?” May Ellen asked.
“I think I can help you walk again,” Louis told her. He circled, studying the girl with an analytical intensity from all angles. Tears welled up in May Ellen’s eyes. Louis asked her to lean forward a bit. He rubbed his hands together and then reached down with one hand in front of her stomach, the other behind May Ellen’s lower back. The boy shifted his hands from side to side. And then he pulled back with his arms extended, as if he were carrying something. An invisible something. Louis moved from the boat house with his arms still extended. The minister peered through the window and could see Louis moving over and laying the invisible something down in a wooden barrel. The boy looked inside of the barrel and waited. Satisfied, he moved back into the boat house.
The color had already started to come back into May Ellen’s face. When Louis returned he stood in front of her and said, “Walk.”
She gave him a quizzical smile and shook her head.
“It’s okay. Stand up and walk.”
Bart Jeffers took his daughter’s hands and helped her to her feet. She said to him, “I think I feel okay.” And then she took a step forward. And another. Bart and May Ellen exploded in tears and laughter as she made her way across the room.
The minister could hardly breathe. He had just witnessed a true blue miracle. Those didn’t happen often. When you’re a man of the cloth, you wait for this day. And when it arrives, if it arrives, it is by the grace of God.
As the Jefferses praised Jesus and thanked the Sweeneys, Louis moved from the boat house with his head lowered. He checked the barrel with the kerosene in its bottom one last time before returning to his house for a rest.
While Louis was sleeping, the minister ran an idea past Sandra Sweeney. He wanted to take the boy into his church’s parish in New York City for Easter Sunday, where they’d hold a day of healing. Sandra was reluctant at first, but when the minister told her that the church would be willing to pay the family a healthy sum for the boy’s participation, she said that she would discuss it with her husband.
The next day, Sandra took a local bus to the parish office where she waited for the minister to return from his hospice prayer rounds. She told him that they would let Louis join him in the city, alone, for a sum of twenty dollars a day. The boy was fifteen. Bill Sweeney had already done three deep-sea fishing trips by the time he was his son’s age. If Louis could draw such a wage, he was obligated to work until the money stopped coming. Any protests would be met by a lashing from his father’s belt. The time for charity was over. In fishing families, you earned your keep. And that’s what Louis would do.
Sandra encouraged the minister to keep on with her son as long as he’d like, and as long as he’d pay. “I suspect there are many sick people in the city,” she said. The minister suspected the same. He advanced her ten dollars to buy Louis a suit, drove her to the store, waited for her to make the purchase, and then dropped her off at the ferry to cross back over to Shelter Island.
It was a cold Monday in February when the minister returned to the ferry station to pick up Louis, as he had arranged with the boy’s mother. The suit fit him well. They parked at the parish and walked with their bags to the train station. The minister explained that a car was a real liability in the city. It was much easier to get around via public transportation. Louis was excited. This was his first trip to Manhattan, and his first time off Long Island.
On the ride west, the minister asked him if he had always had this gift. The ability to see and remove these monsters.
“I only just started seeing them last year. After I looked through the sea glass,” he explained. “I was helping my mom go through the dump yard, where they leave old boats and such, and I found this beautiful, antique glass bottle. It caught my eye because it was a radiant purple. Never seen anything like that before. I held it up and looked through its neck. And everything took on a different shape. I can’t explain it. It was like it made things bend at the edges. With a movement to it. Rising and falling. Like the tides. Like the world around me was breathing. After I looked through the glass, I started seeing the monsters.”
“You still have that bottle?” the minister asked. The boy shook his head.
“My dad smashed it on the ground when I tried to tell him of its effects. Neither of my parents wanted to look into the bottle. Ma swept up the broken pieces and threw them away in the ocean.”
“That must have been scary for you,” the minister said.
“At first, I didn’t think I could take the monsters off. I saw a bunch around, hanging on people. A friend of mine from the neighborhood had been sick for years. There was this thing on his chest that looked like a slithery clam. No one else could see it. It had two tentacles with red spores on the end. I tried to pull the clam off a few times but wasn’t having luck. And then I grabbed the spores. And the thing came unstuck. Took me a while longer to figure out about the kerosene.”
The minister had heard more than he cared to. There was a strange science behind the boy's methods. But the minister preferred to keep a miracle miraculous. “When we’re helping people in the city,” the minister said, “let’s not talk about the monsters or any of that stuff. They’ll trust you more if they believe you’re an agent of God.”
“Do you believe I’m an agent of God?” the boy asked him.
“I believe you have the gift of divine sight and knowledge. Together we will form an agency of God.”
As they pulled into Grand Central Terminal, Louis asked the minister if they could go to the movies someday soon.
“There’s a movie theater on every block,” the minister told him. They walked from the station to their hotel on 40th street, taking in the surroundings. Now and then, the boy would stop and stare. The minister wasn’t sure if he was caught up in the city spectacle, or seeing some invisible beast on a passerby.
Really awesome storytelling. I'm hooked.
Can’t wait for the next installment.