Many Moons

Rectory Work

"This is NOT okay." Mona said, tied to a chair on a pulpit looking out at a sea of heads bowed in prayer inside a large church. It was an impressive turnout for a three o'clock in the morning service.

I couldn't tell the denomination but if I had to guess, would have picked Lutheran. The church had a very modern look to it and I always thought that Lutheran churches looked a bit like space ports, where shuttles would dock for Sunday morning service on the moon.

Agent Winthrop sat me down on the chair next to Mona and made sure our hands were still bound firmly. It was more comfortable to interlock the fingers but it gave the impression that we, too, were praying. I didn't care so much but Mona seemed to be forcing her knuckles away from each other, playing at the ropes.

The agent walked off the raised platform and down to the first row of pews, standing off to the far right, head bowed.

A slender, middle-aged, leather-skinned man with fiery red hair approached. He was wearing a tight, blue, three-piece suit that had never really been in style enough to be considered out of style.

Another occupational hazard of living in Florida was what the sun did to your face, so it was often hard to gauge a person's age with any accuracy. The man in front of me either looked great for a sixty year-old, or awful for a twenty-five year-old. He was probably somewhere in between.

He smiled and held out his arms as he approached.

"Do you know why you are here, my son?"

The sound of his voice carried beautifully across the large auditorium.

I paused a moment then said, "Yes."

A gasp escaped from the audience as every head rose in unison. It was actually very, very creepy. It was like that scene in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the 1978 one with Donald Sutherland, where at the end of the movie he finds Brooke Adams and assumes she's still human too so he tells her he's fine but then she points at him and screams and everyone else points and screams and he realizes he's the last human on Earth.

It was creepy like that only no one was screaming... yet.

"You do?" The man asked, smiling, like a patient adult listening to a child who has no idea what they are talking about.

"You want to talk with God."

Another gasp. The preacher's smile dipped slightly. He looked over at Agent Winthrop who shrugged his shoulders and shook his head.

I noticed that my voice also carried effortlessly and full across the congregation. I looked down and saw that a lapel microphone had been attached to my T-shirt. I sounded great.

"And how do you know this?" he asked.

"I recognize the fabric." I said, gesticulating with my bound thumbs back toward the altar behind me. Blocking the large figure of Christ suffering on the cross was an eight foot tall circular display covered by a beige canvas drop cloth. It was the device from my garage apartment.

"You experienced a miracle earlier tonight." The preacher said. "And now we want to experience it with you."

"Miracles can't be manufactured on demand." I told him.

He didn't miss a beat.

"But isn't that exactly what you did?" He asked, his head bowing slightly while his right hand thrust toward the stage in a mock Elvis impersonation. Subtly, he dipped his left hand into his blazer pocket where he must have pressed a remote control.

A large projector screen dropped from the ceiling and lights throughout the room dimmed. Even I was impressed and I was being held against my will.

There, on the screen, almost thirty feet tall, were me, Mona, Faruk and my dad, all staring at the device in the garage. The angle was odd, raised above us and to the left of the room. The picture was slightly grainy.