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"You don’t know?" "But I hen I get there"

Father Geary stared at hi tiest est man I’ve ever known"

When they set out from the rectory in the priest’s six-year-old Toyota, an hour of light reh the sun was hidden behind clouds the color of fresh bruises

They had been on the road only half an hour when lightning shattered the bleak sky and danced on jagged legs across the somber desert horizon

Flash after flash erupted, sharper and brighter in the pure Mojave air than Ji elsewhere Ten rew darker and lower, and rain fell in silvery cataracts the equal of anything that Noah had witnessed while hurrying to complete his ark

"Su on the windshield wipers

"We can’t let it delay us," Jiet you there," the priest assured hias at night They’dthe day I can’t ot to be in Boston toe But so sun, and in those places the water spilled off slopes, for rivulets in every shallow declivity Rivulets becareiftly into rivers, until every bridged arroyo they passed over was soon filled with roiling, churning torrents on which were borne cluments of dead tumbleweed, driftwood, and dirty white foam

Father Geary had two favorite cassette tapes, which he kept in the car: a collection of rock-’n’-roll golden oldies, and an Elton John best-of He put on Elton They h the rainswept night to the melodies of "Funeral for a Friend," "Daniel," and "Benny and the Jets"

The blacktop glimmered with quicksilver puddles To Jihway a few days ago had now becorew more tense by the minute Boston called to his were darker or h a storht Unless, perhaps, the human heart

The priest hunched over the wheel as he drove He studied the highway intently while singing along softly with Elton

After a while Jim said, "Father, wasn’t there a doctor in town?" "Yes"

"But you didn’t call hiot the cortisone prescription from him"

"I saw the tube It was a prescription for you, o"

"WellI’ve seen sunstroke before I knew I could treat you"

"But you seemed awfully worried there at first"

The priest was silent for a few miles Then he said, "I don’t knoho you are, where you coet to Boston

But I do know you’re a ets And I knowat least, I think I know that you’re a good man at heart Anyway, it seemed to me that a man in trouble would want to keep a low profile"

"Thanks I do"

A couple of h to overwhelm the windshield wipers and force Geary to reduce speed

The priest said, "You’re the one who saved that woirl"

Jim tensed but did not respond

"You fit the description on TV," the priest said

They were silent for a few more miles

Father Geary said, "I’m not a sucker for miracles"

Jim was baffled by that statement

Father Geary switched off Elton John The only sounds were the swish bum of the tires on the wet pavement and the metronomic thump of the windshield wipers

"I believe that the miracles of the Bible happened, yes, I accept all of that as real history," the priest said, keeping his eyes on the road

"But I’m reluctant to believe that some statue of the Holy Mother wept real tears in a church in Cincinnati or Peoria or Teaneck last week after the Wednesday-night bingo ga lady And I’ Jesus, cast on son of i apocalypse God works in e walls"

The priest fell silent again, and Ji

"When I found you in the church, lying by the sanctuary railing," Geary said in a voice that grew mata of Christ There was a nail hole in each of your hands-" Jim looked at his hands and saounds

"-and your forehead was scratched and prickled hat ht have been punctures from a crown of thorns"

His face was still such a mess fro in the rearview mirror for the minor injuries the priest had described

Geary said, "I wasfrightened, I guess But fascinated, too"

They cae at an arroyo where the runoff had overflowed the banks A dark lake had fore of the elevated roadbed Geary bulled forward Pluhts, unfurled on both sides like great white wings

"I’d never seen stigmata," Geary continued when they were out of the flooded area, "though I’d heard of the phenomenon I pulled up your shirtlooked at your sideand found the enflaht have been a spear wound"

The events of recent months had been so filled with surprises and amazements that the threshold on Jim’s sense of wonder had been raised repeatedly But the priest’s story leaped across it, got to hi his spine

Geary’s voice had fallen to little ot you back to the rectory and into bed, those signs were gone

But I knew I hadn’t iined them I’d seen the special about you"

The lightning had fizzled out long ago; the black sky was no longer adorned by bright, jagged necklaces of electricity Now the rain began to abate, as well, and Father Geary was able to reduce the speed of the windshield wipers even as he increased that of the aging Toyota

For a while neither of them seemed to knohat to say Finally the priest cleared his throat "Have you experienced this before--these stigmata?" "No Not that I’m aware of But then, of course, I wasn’t aware this time until you told me"

"You didn’t notice the marks on your hands before you passed out at the sanctuary railing?" "No"

"But this isn’t the only unusual thing that’s been happening to you lately"

Jih renched from him less by amusement than by a sense of dark irony "Definitely not the only unusual thing"