The Unspeakable (3 page)

“We were spread so thin,” Father Stone later confided in me, “that we could barely serve the folks we had already committed to. And Marbury still wanted more, always willing to load up his bag with more. Looking back, I wonder if he was really just trying to sink us.”

When I relayed this quote that I had from Father Stone to Marbury, he took it in stride, as though he had heard it all before.

Marbury said, “If anyone was trying to sink us, it was God. We just kept getting more. What could I do, turn these poor people away? I already walked away once.”

I just shook my head. “You can't blame yourself for someone dying in the streets, Marbury.”

“I'm not. I'm talking about Pennsylvania.”

What I myself have heard about the trip, beyond the fact that Marbury was discovered wandering on the side of a mountain road near Altoona, Pennsylvania, half naked, his voice lost, missing for an entire week, would be enough to fill the blank side of a match-book. I knew, or rather suspected, only the following:

On Friday, November 30, 1990, Marbury confirms his travel plans with the Reverend José Manuel of Philadelphia, ostensibly to discuss ideas about resource sharing. But he never made it, and
Manuel, assuming that Marbury was necessarily delayed or even had canceled without notice, failed to report his absence to conference authorities for another three days. Add to that the missing travel time and Marbury was unaccounted for almost a week, the time in question.

A few of these days I can vouch for myself. On Sunday, December 2, Marbury checks the weather and gases up his car at a local Fina, for which purchase I have a copy of the credit receipt. He drives 1-94 east through Wisconsin and Illinois, and I have another receipt from a Super 8 motel, right outside of Elkhart, Indiana, where he spends the night. Monday, December 3, after a breakfast of cereal, danish, and coffee, Marbury prepares for the long day's journey across the rest of Indiana and Ohio, then into Pennsylvania. He is warned, at least according to a waitress that I interviewed by phone, who remembers Marbury because of his generous tip, of an impending storm, one centered around the Great Lakes, with all the moisture associated with these lake storms, and it was moving rapidly. But Marbury ignores this information and drives on anyway, hoping to beat out the weather.

Obviously a fateful decision.

Marbury heard my version of the events only to correct them with a quick sweep of his hands.

He said, “Breakfast was bacon and eggs. Nothing mystical there.”

I nodded and opened up my notebook, where along with my file on Marbury I had assembled some of the various accounts from people who knew and worked with him, including the nurses and doctors who handled his case as he was recuperating, after the incident, here in Minneapolis. As far as I knew, no one had heard the entire story before, not even the authorities in Pennsylvania.

“You're writing this down?” he asked.

“I have to, you know that.”

“Then you better get the facts right.”

Marbury explained that he had most of the day's driving under his belt when it started. A light rain at first, outside of Cleveland. It didn't stop him, he said; if anything the rain just made him push harder. At least until he hit the Allegheny Mountains.

“Why didn't you stop in Pittsburgh,” I asked, “instead of continuing?”

“I really thought it would end. Despite the forecast, there were peeks of sun.”

The radio, admitted Marbury, contradicted all of this. Dire predictions of a blizzard filled every station. Warnings of ice storms, massive whiteout conditions, road drifts, and snows of near biblical proportions were predicted. But he didn't listen. Marbury swung past Pittsburgh and into the mountains, through one of those famous long tunnels, and when he emerged again, it started. Snow. Big flakes at first, like in one of those Christmas shake-ups, then gradually harder.

Shelter was being advised on the radio. And many of the roads, now covered and drifting, were becoming impassable. Marbury said that he would have kept on driving that night, probably to his own doom, if not for the one thing that stopped him.

The accident.

Ahead of him blue and red lights cut through the falling snow, obviously the police. In the distance Marbury said that he could see a car, all crushed up like an accordion and turned on its side. Several men in green parkas hovered about, with crowbars, working to free someone. Anyone. Marbury said that he slowed down to a crawl as he approached, out of respect partially, but also because he could no longer see. The snow was now moving in wild swirls, and the men with the crowbars almost had to brace themselves against the wreck to stay upright, or risk getting blown over and down a ravine by the wind.

Suddenly one of them waved and staggered forward. Marbury
stopped the car and waited for the green parka to catch up, then in one breath:

“We got a bad one here, mister. The snow's cut off anything behind you. Ahead, God knows. You might want to follow us back to town for the night.”

Marbury agreed and let the engine idle. The scene looked bad. The car had spun into an embankment and then into a tree that almost cleaved it in two. A body was lying next to the car, bloody and unconscious, or maybe dead, Marbury couldn't tell. Someone was working frantically on the body, but the wind and snow just wouldn't cooperate, blowing pieces of the car, a torn airbag, and parts of the dashboard all around.

And then the man in the parka again:

“You're a priest, aren't you? If ever we needed one, Father.”

I interrupted Marbury at this part of his story, an easy thing to do given that I still had a speaking voice and asked him, “How could he have possibly known that?”

“Clergy sticker. It came with the car.”

“But it was snowing.”

“I had to clean the windshield with my glove, it was that bad.”

I nodded and wrote this down. I wrote down everything that Marbury told me for several reasons, not the least being that it was a way for me to organize and structure my own thoughts. Often an investigation would take me where the other person was comfortable going, and I had to be comfortable as well. Even if I didn't always believe in where I might end up.

Marbury went back to the story without missing a beat. He said that a body was lying on a stretcher now, clearly that of a woman, maybe middle-aged. Her body was limp, absolutely lifeless.

The man in the parka again:

“She stopped breathing once, Father. I can't say she'll make it.”

Marbury reached into his glove compartment for a Bible. He
stepped out of the car, the snow and wind driving at his body, and made his way to the stretcher. His feet plunged into the snow and back out again, leaving only deep holes.

Another man screamed:

“I'm losing her!”

Marbury trudged faster. When he got to the woman he said that he fell on his knees, not out of prayer or sorrow, for he didn't know this woman, but because the wind had knocked him down.

“Father!”

On his knees, Marbury started to pray.

As I listened to this story, actually Marbury's retelling of it, I watched the way that he spoke, how forceful his hand actions were, the way he reenacted it perfectly. Every line seemed to weave in at the exact moment, neither detracting from the story nor inflating it unnecessarily. But there was something else. Marbury spoke so convincingly that I felt that I was really there, and the event was right before my eyes when I closed them. I could see everything. From the cops to the woman dying on the stretcher, and that perhaps was the very thing that fascinated me most.

The woman.

In my job, I know of few dying women. My duties as a priest are now strictly administrative, pushing papers and such, but I do miss the energy of a ministry like Marbury's. I bury no one, and except for my attendance at official functions, I might just as easily forget that death exists. Or rather, that I was trained to play a part in it.

“What do you say in these instances,” I asked, “when you pray?”

Marbury gave me a strange look. “I pray for God's will.”

He was doing just that when the sound of bending metal stopped him. The workers were digging in the wreck again, this time with blowtorches and blankets, which meant only one thing. Someone else was still in the car. Marbury said that he went back to his prayers but could concentrate only on the torch, which
sounded like a wild snake hissing and thrashing about in the wet snow. He was about to give up on the prayers altogether, close his Bible and walk off, when he heard a loud voice. It was a child.

One of the workers:

“She's in here. Christ, I can't believe it!”

More commotion and bending metal. Several men in parkas rushed in with spare hands, and great pieces of the car began to shake and move. Then someone reached in and pulled out the victim, a young girl, hardly more than three or four. She looked cold, though otherwise healthy. A worker wrapped a blanket around her, mummy-style, and ran her over to a Ford Bronco, which was now serving as a makeshift ambulance. On the side of the vehicle, Marbury noticed a faded decal that through the falling snow read
WHEELERSBURG POLICE
.

The little girl, now alert, was given another blanket and a glass of water, which she quickly drank. Somebody looked her over and concluded that she was all right, remarkably uninjured. Her eyes darted around, checking out the men and vehicles until she saw the bloody woman on the stretcher, her body now being carried into the truck. The girl winced slightly, but didn't cry.

One of the men in the parkas said:

“Your mommy's hurt, but we'll do our best. OK?”

The little girl nodded slowly, again with no emotion.

“She's going to the hospital, where doctors can help her.”

The man snapped his fingers. “Do you understand me?”

“Shock,” said another voice. “Let's move.”

The stretcher was pushed in next to the little girl, who was placed to make room in the truck. One of the men in the parkas, a paramedic, cupped a plastic respirator around the woman's mouth and turned it on. But she didn't breathe.

Someone looked at Marbury. “She needs God now, I'm afraid.”

“Not in front of the girl,” barked the paramedic.

“Oh, she's not all here anyway.”

But the man was wrong.

The little girl saw the woman, and like in some movie, reached over with her hand and touched her on the forehead. What happened next, said Marbury, was nothing short of confusion. The woman on the stretcher, one moment ago dead or steps away from death, suddenly opened her mouth and gasped for air. She gasped like a swimmer underwater who was surfacing quickly and from the depths, that much.

“Did you see that?” yelled the paramedic. “She moved!”

But somebody else had doubts. “Nerves. Those are just nerves.”

“Sure, an involuntary reaction,” said another.

And then the woman took another breath, louder than before.

“Is that involuntary, Father?” asked the paramedic. “You tell me.”

Marbury leaned over the woman and heard her breathing. It was faint, but breathing nonetheless. He shook his head.

“That,” he said carefully, “that I call a miracle.”

Chapter 2

“M
iracles now. Face it, Whitmore. He's pulling our leg.”

The Bishop stood at a large French window, his back away from me. I could see his fingers tapping nervously against his thigh, as though debating something, but he wouldn't tell me what. I had already informed him about my meeting with Marbury the previous day, and the story that he told me about the accident. But he didn't seem to care about hearing any more.

He just said, “Your advice. Remind me to ignore it next time.”

My advice.

What the Bishop was referring to, what he always had tucked away in his back pocket for my humiliation, was this. It was my recommendation that gave Marbury his current position. After he was found in Pennsylvania, debate raged over what to do with him. A few on our staff suggested an extended leave, rest mostly, in hopes that he would regain his faculties and go back to work. Even the Bishop liked that idea. But I knew Marbury. I knew that if something was bothering him, even if he was on the verge of cracking up, losing his mind altogether, no amount of rest would help him out of it. He needed to work his way free. So I suggested an option, a new job, and pushed hard for it to happen.

The Bishop went along, reluctantly. He had serious reservations
about Marbury identifying with this new congregation, a voice- and hearing-impaired church that I had selected for him, and wondered, if not to himself, then aloud, whether Marbury would take this as an official seal of approval for his actions. The call was a difficult one, I knew that. And Marbury would throw every ounce of energy into it, I hoped, eventually giving up this business about his voice altogether just to survive.

He had to. The church was famed for its difficulty. Priests came and went with frightening ease. One stayed on for only a month before asking for a reassignment. Another left under cloudy circumstances, citing emotional duress. Some of the blame, I'm afraid, rests with this office. Many of these men were woefully prepared for service in a congregation where only a handful of its members spoke or could hear, and that pressure alone, the isolation, drove several out. But Marbury wasn't as easy to drive away. For one, he was already mute and isolated, so he seemed to fit right in. And the news of serving there, devastating to some men, liberated Marbury and sent his spirits soaring. That was three months ago.

The healings began shortly thereafter. Marbury instigated a prayer service for various petitions, including personal ailments. My reports tell me that in the beginning the prayers were benign, as well as the cures. But one day a woman appeared in a wheelchair, depressed, almost lifeless. Marbury prayed over her and apparently got carried away, for he called on the power of the Almighty to cure this woman, to cure in fact everything about her. The woman, thinking that God was listening or either just from plain spiritual exuberance, stood up from her wheelchair and walked.