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I can see the convoy of headlights from my window as the swarm of faithful roll across the horizon towards my father’s farm. Chevys, Fords, Dodges and Subaru’s packed with atrophied limbs, clouded corneas and twisted spines drag their mufflers through a wheat field for a chance to sit in the presence of divinity.

A blurb nested between the horoscopes and a crossword puzzle was enough to ignite something in their collective imagination.

My sister had survived her cancer. The doctors were sure her case was terminal, but she survived it. The gene therapy, the relentless attention from vigilant nurses, the diligence and professionalism from the doctors, and the spontaneous remission of cancer known to happen in some patients, were apparently not the causes. According to Father Morgan, I was. Now I’m called the Miracle Child.

A mysterious rash had spread across my legs and arms during the time my sister was running out of options. When the rash dissipated, her cancer was in full remission. I was a suffering soul – a messenger of a god who decided to work through me.

This was a god who saw fit to save my sister from her cancer but not my mother from hers; a god who decided to reward Earl Wallington with a record harvest and cast my father’s farm into record debt; a god who decided to make the figurines in our home bleed while allowing four women and three doctors to be incinerated inside the abortion clinic on Main Street.

My palms are sweating but I’m hesitant to wipe them dry for fear that it’s a part of the process. The last time I wiped them dry Terry Halligan didn’t stand from his wheelchair.

My father told me that it was Terry’s faith and not my ability. He told me not to lose faith in myself. He told me that I had to be strong for all the others that came to our door. But as I watch the headlights bounce towards the house, I wonder if it’s faith that brings these people.

I make my way downstairs and enter the barn my father has converted into a makeshift chapel. I take my place in front of the pulpit and place the large collection bowl on my lap. I can hear the engines shutting down and the sound of doors opening and closing. My father smiles at me before opening the doors and welcoming the throng.

Terry Halligan has decided to make the trip again. He has a new chair – an aluminum frame decorated with racing stripes. It puts a smile on my face. I wonder if I could get a chair like that, but we need every penny to pay back the bank.

My father takes the collection bowl and asks everyone to pray with him for a moment.
After a moment, the people rise from their seats and lineup in the center isle. They walk up one by one so that I can lay my sweaty palm on their foreheads. Some of them shake violently as if gripped by a seizure.

Each episode begins with an explanation of what needs to be cured. Some are suffering from cancer, spinal injuries, genetic mutation, impotence. I touch them and wonder if I’m having any genuine effect. Then Samuel Tate from Norfolk, Virginia asks if I can cure his son of homosexuality. I bow my head and scream inside. I feign exhaustion and slump in my chair. My father asks them to wait a moment so I can gather my strength.

I turn and face the pulpit. People are growing restless but I don’t care. I place my hand on my own forehead and wait for a convulsion to take hold of my body and wrench me from my wheelchair. I want to run from this place. The image of my father, broken and penniless, keeps me.

Father Morgan had told me that I was chosen the moment the carbine ran across my legs. I was chosen by a god who trades miracles for loyalty, by a god who creates all within our domain, then leaves it to us to decide what he doesn’t want.

I wonder what sort of god creates choice as a test. I wonder what sort of god allows me to charge people money to end their suffering. I turn and look at Terry Halligan waiting on line, and I wonder if I should get malpractice insurance.

They come from all over the world and ask for miracles. They come from all over the world and test their faith. I lay my hand upon them and take away their ills. I wonder what sorts of private bargains they strike.

My father waves to the visitors as they drive off toward the horizon. I wonder if Terry Halligan will be back next year. I wonder if he blames himself. My father turns the lights off in the barn, as my sister rings the dinner bell.

We sit at the table and my father leads us in a short prayer. I’m hungry and the smell of the roasted chicken blending with the milky trail of mashed potatoes bastes my throat with anticipation. I wonder what we would be eating if I was not the Miracle Child. If I did have faith.

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According to Wikipedia: Ishi (ca. 1860 – March 25, 1916) was the pseudonym of the last member of the Yahi, in turn the last surviving group of the Yana people of California. Ishi is believed to be the last Native American in Northern California to have lived most of his life completely outside the European American culture. He emerged from the wild near Oroville, California, leaving his ancestral homeland in the foothills near Lassen Peak.

A film about Ishi’s discovery was made for HBO in 1992 called, The Last of His Tribe. It starred Graham Greene and Jon Voight. The film had an impact on me.

The following is a short story that was inspired by the film, and the subsequent research I have done since then.

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The wind takes me like smoke. I am an eagle in the air. No boundaries, just where the vision takes me.

The brush anchored in desert turn to freckles, above the bending river that smiles around a narrow butte. Deep set sockets under shadow of a mesa-brow watch my ascent as I arc to the East and towards the sun.

I close on standing rock; august giants that shape the breaths of spirits. They run like the buffalo to the north, the gate of each stride straddling my longest memories and my furthest dreams. The winds turn white as they bounce from humped back to humped back. I cross the trail of bowed earth to flatlands.

I can see my shadow below me – the edges swallowed by the tall grass. The blades dance in chains and send waves of golden current rippling across the surface of the swaying sea.

A pack of hunters tumble from an island of trees. Squeaking and growling, nipping and licking, they jump and roll under the growing light. The alpha stands proud with his back to the sun – his eyes like floating torches. He licks his snout and leaves behind a cluster of water moons. They are following a trail that hangs in the air.

I can see beyond the hunters’ horizon to a train of prairie schooners. The canvas sails painted with the colors of the dawn. The hunters are led by the stench of the herded sheep and cattle that follow the train. There are thousands of them devouring a swath across the land, to the West towards California and the sparkling streams of yellow dust.

I saw the dust as a child and wondered what it was. My grandfather told me it was scales from fish that turned to rock like some trees. My mother told me it was tears from the Sun that shot across the night sky, “She cries for the children left alone in the dark. All mothers do.”

I wonder what pulls from the yellow dust at these people. The riders of the train talk of its luster. I have only seen it shine with borrowed light. Perhaps it is what’s left of fallen stars.

I want to throw it back into the sky. Maybe they will follow it there like the hungry hunters they pull behind them.

Noon has come and the train is stopped. There are children running and the men are sleepy. There are fires all around with women preparing food. A man sits with his family. Hair falls from his face like dirty water from a pale cliff. He is smiling and talking with his children.

“Don’t you ever get tired?” he asks.

His boy jumps into the air, his arms spread wide to catch it. He soars high like the raven and squawks his vision to me.

No, never tired, never bored. There is the night that bristles with gods and heroes, there are the veins in the leaves and the paths in the branches to keep my wonder. There is the infinite imagination of nature that cuts the lines in your brow and textures my skin with curiosity.

I sleep because I can’t stay awake longer. Without the dreams to answer my questions in liquid shades, sleep would be death pauses. On loose ground, with pointed sticks, I have drawn the plans for ships with special sails for I have watched the sun and the moon from everywhere but above.

I had many questions, father. Less as my voice sinks, and fewer as my mind fills with runoff from the venerable vessels above me – the still water that grows and rots at once.

The women call for the men and the children. Stew from a cast pot slides like a molten stream. The father opens his mouth and points it towards the sky like a chimney. Bread first, then the fingers, plow up the stuff that sticks to the sides. He licks the salty residue from his lips. Acid snake strikes from his stomach and bites the back of his throat. He swallows it back and drowns it with water from a tin cup.

He starts to write, pausing now and again to look around him. I cannot read his language but I know what it says. He is worried about the people of the plains. The train is traveling through the place of the Lakota.

He is worried for his family and the friends he has made on the journey. He prays to the Great Spirit of his people to keep them safe. He does not know that the Lakota have been herded by the soldiers. He does not know that the yellow dust does nothing to stir the people of the plains.

I enter the dreams of the father. He is wearing a suit with a silk knot around his neck. He has time captured in a golden box with spinning arrows to tell of its restlessness. The hair is gone from his face except for a gleaming patch under his nose, its bristles combed and shaped into ox horns. He sits with his writing in a room with painted paper walls.

His children play at his feet while his wife reads what he has written. He thinks that time is escaping from the golden box. He wonders where he can find more to replace it. He takes the pages in his hands and throws them into the fireplace. He takes his silk knot and throws it into the flames then rises above the camp. He smiles as he looks down at his slumbering family.

The vision splinters from his dream to mine. I watch them sleep as the hunters sniff through what’s been left on the ground.

I wake beneath a canopy of clay wind chimes. Mingling cowbells on a lazy day. I sit and wrap the blanket around me and poke at the orange fire fluttering up from the pit.

The shivering in my bones rattle out through my teeth as I try to wrap the blanket tighter than it will go. The cold earth sucks heat from my body and pulls my head down; burning water inside an ember pops and puts it back on my spine.

Maya comes inside the shack and tosses a log into the pit. Her hair moves in the firelight, shifting with the amber bath around us. She straddles my stomach, her hair soaked and tangled with my fingers. “What did you see?”

“They dream of flying, they dream of family. They’re not cruel in their dreams. They are frightened,” I say as I press my lips to her growing belly.

“What are they frightened of?”

I stare at the log she fed, the bark turned white like burning snow. “I don’t know.”

She pulls corn from our sack and places them near the fire. “My father has seen the bear in his dreams. He thinks it’s the spirit guide to our child.”

“The bear?” I smile.

She kisses me and holds my face. The tip of her nose traces a line across my brow, then along the ridge of my nose and down to the ball of flesh that’s anchors it above my lips, “If it’s a boy, you can teach him to hunt and fish.”

I kiss her hair, “And to ask, and to dream, and to follow his visions.”

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People are mingling, laughing, telling bad jokes and making small talk around a coffee table on a Saturday night. The gathering is scored by an ipod library set to random. After a slight pause, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers vibrate the powered mini-speakers with “The Waiting is the Hardest Part” — no one seems to mind. A conversation about the latest episode of “LOST” derails for a moment when opening power cords from “Man in the Box” by Alice in Chains shakes an empty plastic cup on the TV stand. Someone exclaims, “I love this song!” and the resident expert on time-travel plot lines continues his explanation of wormholes to three, wide-eyed brunettes. 

In the next room, several people are huddled around a charismatic redhead. She’s putting the finishing touches on a hand-rolled J, telling a story about the time she attended an Alice in Chains concert and saw two guys making out in the parking lot. A Kevin Smith-looking dude in a hockey jersey shakes his head before taking a long toke. A familiar bass line bounces in and someone asks incredulously, “Vanilla Ice?” Everyone in the room seems relieved when they hear David Bowie’s voice.

Someone’s looking for a bottle opener in the kitchen. The dip is going fast and the hosts are wondering if they should’ve gone with buffalo wings instead of the honey-barbeque. Two sisters, sitting at the breakfast table, squabble over the details of a trip they took to Jamaica in front of two brothers sitting across from them. The brothers listen to the story while playing air guitar to “Voodoo Chile” by Jimi Hendrix. The way-too-pierced girl, who works at Barnes and Noble, looks over the humus. Just as she reaches for a whole wheat pita square, “Just Like Heaven” by The Cure starts her head bopping. The sisters screech and the brothers groan.

“Freedom” by Rage Against the Machine blasts the air, The Ting Tings’ “That’s Not My Name” cuts in after only a few bars. The Ting Tings are interrupted by Beck’s “Qué Onda Guero” shortly after the guy coming out of the bathroom asks, “Are you fucking kidding me?” Metallica and The Beatles are passed over for Pearl Jam and The Beastie Boys; AC/DC, Janis Joplin and Cold Play never get their turns, but Radiohead, Talking Heads, Big Head Todd and Portishead get theirs. 

It’s 10:30, more beer arrives, a second joint is rolled, the couple making out on the couch finally come up for air. The last tray of bite-sized pizzas slide out of the oven, the third pitcher of sangria is ready and the four new people walking in are introduced to a barrage of handshakes and nicknames. A small group of smokers make their way out to the balcony as Pete Yorn’s version of “Do They Know It’s Christmas” stops all conversation.

Then the question is asked, “Whose ipod is this?”

An inquisition convenes in the living room and evidence is presented. Meatloaf, Phil Collins, Air Supply, REO Speedwagon and Journey are among the most incriminating. A defense is mounted by Jane’s Addiction, Soundgarden, The Ramones, The Clash and Bob Dylan, but the jury isn’t swayed. Street creds offered up by the likes of Robert Johnson, Tom Waits, The Dead Kennedys and John Coltrane are dismissed out of hand because of the presence of Berlin’s “Take My Breath Away”. Sentimental favorites are taken out of context, guilty pleasures are simply found guilty and “Ant Music” is sentenced to death. There is no reprieve, no continuance is granted and sentencing is not put aside pending appeal. Judgement has been rendered. The accused ipod is banished and escorted to the land of Ridicule by a mob of WTFs. 

A Nano takes over for the condemned. The couple on the couch get back to making out, the charismatic redhead picks out a bud for a blunt, the sisters down tequila with the brothers as Maroon 5 takes the stage. The sisters screech, the brothers groan and the guy coming out of the bathroom asks, “Are you fucking kidding me? I thought we got rid of this shit?”

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He told me about a time he ate dinner off a dead guy’s chest. It wasn’t to shock me, and it wasn’t chest pounding, it was just something that happened to him. The same way someone spelled “retard” on his forehead with sunscreen, when he fell asleep at the beach.

His unit had taken eighteen hours to get into town. All he had to eat that day was half a protein bar at six in the morning. When his unit finally broke through and settled in, he ripped open his only bag of rations and spilled chicken cacciatore onto the chest of a corpse.

 “I just ate the part that wasn’t touching anything,” he told me. Like that was going to take the edge off the story or something. A month later he told me he was the only surviving member of his unit, and the doctors had no idea why.

 A year after that, he lost his job. He told me he was thinking of joining up again — go to Afghanistan and get paid for it. “I got kids, I got bills,” he said.

 I didn’t know what to say. How do you tell someone who ate dinner off a dead guy, because he was hungry for a day, that he shouldn’t go to Afghanistan to feed his kids?