March 24, 2016
Rio Chama, New Mexico
Myriam waited until Ramsey’s rental car disappeared down Rio Chama’s dusty main street before making the call. The deep baritone voice on the other end said, “Did he take the job?”
Myriam hesitated. She didn’t know if Ramsey would take it or not. The way he brushed off any of her subtle probes to see how he felt suggested he didn’t want it. And then there was their history. His body language seemed to be screaming that he still hadn’t forgiven her for never coming to his aid personally after Peru. Yet there was something about the way he had stood beside his car looking off in the distance toward the shrine that intimated he was interested in uncovering the facts behind the mystery. Then, after Rosa spoke with him, he turned his car around and headed out of town toward the shrine instead of across the street to his hotel.
I wonder what she said? Myriam would have to ask, but not now. Hiram wanted an answer and she could practically hear his impatience coming out of the phone.
“I don’t know, Hiram. It’s hard to tell.”
“I should have been there,” Beecher grated.
“No . . . no that would have turned him away for sure. Give him some space.”
“How long?”
“A couple of days. Come over to the café, we’ll talk about it.”
The phone went dead.
Myriam took a deep breath. She loved Hiram Beecher for his masculinity and strength. He was a natural-born leader and self-made millionaire. He could be as hard as nails, befitting for the CEO of a major West Texas company. But he could be as soft as a box of newborn puppies.
They had met in Dallas four years previous. He was the keynote speaker at a sustainability conference where his company’s recycling and landfill practices were presented as a model for the future. She had just lost her funding at the University of Oregon and had been hired by the city of Portland to investigate whether Beecher’s company, Great Western States Waste Management, should bring their innovative practices to increase Portland’s already green image. Beecher had just lost his wife to breast cancer. Myriam had not been in in a serious relationship since her divorce, unwilling to take the risk again. But something about Beecher had made her fall for him deeply. They had been together ever since.
Now sixty-five years of age, Beecher was a man of contradictions. He loved to hunt and fish but was a vegetarian. He married his high school sweetheart while on furlough from Vietnam. She had been a rock for him but there was very little love reciprocated and no children. And there was a strong streak of moral righteousness that ran through him.
His father had been an itinerant, evangelizing preacher in east Texas, with a heavy reliance on the spare-the-rod-spoil-the-child rule of parenting. Beecher had left home at sixteen and never looked back. After his stint in the army, he returned, bumped around Texas and finally ended up in Abilene. The missing two fingers on his right hand were a constant reminder of the war and the bad things that had happened over there. His Christian faith was one the first casualties.
The only thing that had saved him was his uncle’s garbage collection business in Abilene. It was a steady sunup-to-sundown job. Nights were a blur of bars and women. But two years into it, he had attended a Reverend Billy Paul revival prayer meeting with a group of guys who drove dozers at the local landfill and a few bar girls they’d picked up in town. At one point, half drunk and falling out his chair, he heard the preacher call for witnesses. The girl he was with said, “You’re pa’s a preacher why don’t you go on up and show ‘em how it’s done.”
Reeling, Beecher got to his feet and stumbled toward the small stage. Some bouncers tried to escort him out but it was as if nothing could stand in his way. They seemed to brush past him or trip over their own feet. He found himself unmolested at the foot of the short stair leading to the stage. He climbed the steps and when the preacher reached out, Beecher was all set to tell him to go to hell. But the man’s hand was like a match and it was as if it set him on fire, burning all the alcohol out of his system in an instant like a piece of flash paper. Beecher stood blinking at the crowd. He saw his girlfriend and the other boys from the garbage hauling business, hooting at him to “give ‘em hell.”
But as he had staggered toward the stage, a voice spoke to him in resonant tones. “Be healed, Brother Hiram, and go make a garden of the Earth.”
Struck dumb by the otherworldly command, which he heard inside his head, Beecher swayed on his feet. His friends jeered at him, but their voices were tinny and small compared to the one in his skull. “Be healed, Brother Hiram,” it repeated.
Beecher fell to his knees and prayed for forgiveness. He became a born-again Christian that night. With Billy Paul’s help he reformed. He stopped drinking and whoring. He dove in to his uncle’s business learning everything there was to know about running a trash collection company. Then three months later he walked into the shop one morning and found his uncle dead from an overdose of heroin. Spurred by his uncle’s untimely death, Beecher decided at that moment he would dare to be even better and succeed. Over the next fifteen years he had built the small garbage hauling business into the leading waste management company in Texas and the third largest firm of its kind in the country.
The door to the café swung open and Beecher strode in. He smiled at Rosa and said, “Coffee.” His boots clicked against the tile floor, the metal taps sending sparks in front of him like fireworks at a parade. Myriam stood and he gathered her into his arms. “Babe!” he said and kissed her on the cheek.
She held on, liking to be close, enjoying the smell of him like old leather, warm and agreeable.
“So,” he said, “Ramsey’s unsure of what he wants to do.”
Myriam nodded. She sat down and watched Beecher straddle a chair as if he was riding a horse. She kept the amusement from her face. Beecher hated horses even though he owned a ranch with ten-thousand head of cattle and cowboys to run them. When out on the range, he rode a Harley and could make it do anything a quarter horse could.
“Are you certain I can’t do anything to sweeten the pot?” he said.
“I’m sure you could incentivize him, but it would be better to have him reach the conclusion of working for us on his own. Ramsey has always been like that. When he believes the project is his own, he’ll work like the devil’s after him to find the answers.” She smiled at Beecher. “He’s a little bit like you that way.”
Beecher returned the smile. “You know everything about me, babe,” he said.
The warmth of his smile drew her to him and she reached across the table and squeezed his hand.
He studied her face. Strong with a softness about the eyes that hid her true strength —the ability to get a project working and find the right people to make it move along smoothly. Once Myriam had joined his company, she streamlined the operation until they became the most profitable waste management company in the world. She never took a cent in salary. She was five foot seven inches tall, the perfect height for him: Tall enough to nestle in his arms but not tall enough to look him straight in the eyes. Her other quality, complete loyalty, was something he thought he’d never find again after his wife Samantha passed away from cancer.
Beecher squeezed Myriam’s hand in return. I’m blessed, oh Lord, by thy bounty. He kept the smile on his face, the words coming automatically to him, yet he no longer felt them in his heart as he had at the beginning after his conversion in front of the Reverend Billy Paul.
Eight years previous an unexpected visitor had come into Beecher’s office in downtown Abilene. It was the Reverend Billy Paul. The hair on the nape of his neck had stood up when he first saw the renowned evangelical televangelist. The man’s face glowed, cherubic-like, and he had a long gray beard, riven with dark streaks like Moses.
“Christ! What are you doing here?”
“The Lord opens doors whenever necessary, Brother Beecher,” the Reverend Paul had answered softly.
Beecher overcame his surprise and said, “You remember me?”
“Of course.”
Beecher settled back in his chair almost as if a gentle hand had pushed him there. Accustomed to running a multi-million dollar company and issuing orders daily, Beecher suddenly found himself unable to speak. Finally he managed to ask, “What do you want?”
“I am here to invite you to a special meeting this evening.”
“I . . . I have plans.”
“I’m sure you can cancel them.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then you will miss the greatest opportunity of your life.” The Reverend’s eyes narrowed. “This is your big chance and if you don’t grab it, you will end out your days behind this desk growing ever smaller until you are a used-up bit of flesh with no purpose but to keep on living your three score and ten.”
Beads of sweat had trickled down Beecher’s cheek. The Reverend’s words sounded like the voice of God and yet there was no danger behind them. At least no danger as he had experienced in the jungle trails of Cambodia and Vietnam, or in the soft-carpeted boardrooms of Texas billionaire oilmen. The man spoke mellowly as though offering an invitation. Beecher believed he could have declined and the Reverend Paul would have thanked him for his time and walked away. And yet, Beecher found himself nodding and saying yes.
He had buzzed his secretary and told her to cancel his afternoon and evening meetings.
That night, Reverend Paul had taken Beecher to a clandestine meeting of the Brothers of the Lord. Hardened by the destruction of the Twin Towers on 9/11, the group was focused on attempts across the country to water down the strict interpretation of the Bible. When they found such wayward churches, they worked to bring new mega-churches into the neighborhood. They even created their own seminary to produce ministers to fill the open positions in each new neighborhood. Beecher had quickly risen to a leadership position. That leadership had brought him to Rio Chama and the Milagro Shrine.
“So we leave Ramsey alone for a few days,” Beecher said to Myriam.
“Yes, that’ll give him time to get back to me and say he’ll take the job. And we can set up people to help him.”
“Clever girl.” Beecher smiled.
Myriam basked under the warmth of his smile. It made her feel as though she belonged.
All her young life she had strived to become the leader of every high school and college club she joined. But once out in the real world, she had never been quite good enough to join the upper elite of the paradigmatic and theoretical thinkers of human geography. She had chosen human geography because it was open to women and because as a facilitator she could make things happen for other people’s projects. Ever pragmatic, she had married for wealth, not love, and now had two grown sons. She was well off as a result of an amiable divorce settlement.
With her children out of the house, she had gone back to work at the urging of a longtime friend and of the chairman of the Geography Department at the University of Oregon to manage a major research grant directed at understanding the geographical distribution and migration of religious minorities in the country. Like everybody else who managed grants, she had used the money for many projects beyond the stated purpose, including her private project in Borneo, studying the effects of modernization on indigenous tribes living in the island’s rain forests. When Ramsey nearly died in Peru without fiscal accountability, the National Science Foundation had investigated her entire project and rescinded the money.
The University would have kept her on teaching a summer class for teachers of Advanced Placement human geography, but lecturing wasn’t her strong point. Managing people and projects was. So when Portland offered her a position managing the city’s sustainability efforts, she took the job.
Beecher squeezed her hand again. “Penny for your thoughts.”
“I was thinking of when we met.”
He laughed. “I bet you thought I was a fourteen-carat asshole.”
“Not at all.” His eyes narrowed. “Well, maybe a little bit. But then you bought me carnations.”
“Your favorite.”
“How did you know?”
“I guessed.”
“It’s been a good four years.”
“The best,” he agreed. Beecher sipped his coffee.
The first three years of their relationship had flown by in a whirlwind of trips around the world. He quickly learned that she shared his deep and abiding interest in protecting the world’s special places, from endangered ecosystems to ancient ruins. Throughout their courtship Beecher had resisted visiting the shrine because of its purported commerciality. But then a remarkable twist of fate occurred right after Reverend Billy Paul had ordered he look into the Milagro Shrine.
Beecher was astonished by the power of the sanctuary. For him it emanated an aura of purity that no other place on the planet could match. He was overwhelmed and immediately put up $50,000 of his own money to help maintain the shrine. And of course he assured the Reverend Billy Paul that all was well. That was all in the beginning before he discovered the truth.
Myriam had become more involved with its caretaker Adam, taking a personal interest in his physical recovery from the motorcycle accident that had left him nearly dead and in a coma for six weeks.
“He’s like nobody I’ve ever met. There’s even a sort of luminescence to his presence,” she had told Beecher. She began spending more and more time there and with Adam. Often Beecher would join them as they strolled around the grounds chatting with visitors and pilgrims who were eager to talk about their experiences.
Beecher had never once been jealous of her attention to the man. There was no need. For one thing, Adam didn’t appear to have an agenda with anyone. He devoted himself entirely to the shrine and its visitors. And it was clear that Myriam was as much in love with Beecher as he was with her.
Beecher sipped his coffee. Myriam leaned forward and kissed him lightly on the cheek. “I need to powder my nose, honey.” He rose as she did. She smiled and said, “That’s what I love about you. You’re old fashioned, like a wild west cowboy.”
“I have a white hat, too,” he said, loving her.
Watching her walk off, he murmured, “It has been the best.”
All her adult life Myriam had had trouble sleeping. After a particularly bad night she wandered around the grounds of the shrine and had come across one of the many vendors who set up shop on a small strip of land beside the parking lot. These were mostly Native Americans and a few others who sold their wares to pilgrims and tourists. She approached a battered old Ford pickup with blue doors and red stripes across the hood, like a painted face. The owner had erected a makeshift ramada from a tattered, blue plastic tarp. It stretched over the bed and on either side and past the back. He sat on the tailgate, a faded, black ten-gallon hat covering his head. He was an old man with silver hair in long braids down his back. Behind him in medicine bags were his wares. If Carlotta Moore had not told her he was the one whose Indian medicine was the best, she would have passed him by for one of the newer looking gaily colored stalls further along the road.
“Excuse me, sir. Do you have any wild chamomile or sage tea?” Myriam had asked.
The man raised his head and gazed at her quietly. Gray eyes scanned her like a benediction. “You’re having trouble sleeping?” he had asked.
She nodded. “I seem to fall asleep right away but then I wake up, maybe forty-five minutes later and I can’t get back to sleep. It’s happened three days in a row and I’m exhausted.”
He had smiled, his teeth white and even. He reached behind him and pulled a beaded bag from among the others. It was the color of tanned deer hide. The adornment was porcupine quills in the manner of plains Indians before the arrival of Europeans to America. She recognized the style from artifacts she had acquired for the University of Oregon’s Museum of Natural and Cultural History.
“Here, a gift from Coyote to help you sleep,” he had said, his voice soft, the words cadenced like he was saying a prayer.
Myriam’s eyes widened. “Are you sure? Coyote is the trickster. Perhaps it will have the opposite effect.”
“Among the Lakota it is iktomi the spider who is the trickster. Coyote is the bringer of change. Tonight, you will sleep and you will dream I am sure.”
She quickly replied, “I’m one of those people that never dream.”
With a gleeful twinkle the old Indian reached out and touched her forehead. “Make a tea just before bedtime with a spoonful of this. Steep it fifteen minutes then strain it and drink it right away.”
“How can I pay you?” When she offered him money he shook his head.
“Got to go.” The Indian suddenly danced off laughing and talking to himself. He walked into the sage and piñon pine surrounding the shrine, never looking back.
Myriam had thought him a very odd character and might not have heeded his words, but that night, being desperate for sleep, she followed his directions. The world of dreams descended upon her like a vision. She found herself in the middle of an ancient city of mud and straw and bricks. The reek of sewage and the stink of humans and animals were overpowering. She brought her hand to her nose and saw the skin was white and some of the fingers shortened and deformed. She touched her face and her nose was a stub, the cartilage eaten away. She gasped in fear as she recognized the disease—leprosy. She started to wail when a figure clothed in white approached her.
He stopped and stood before her. Reaching out with a long fingered hand, he touched her forehead and said in a deep voice filled with compassion, “Be clean.”
Immediately the leprosy disappeared and she was made clean. Myriam recognized, from within her dream, that this scene was repeating the biblical miracle of the cleansing of the leper. She looked up, expecting to see the shining radiance of Jesus Christ. Instead it was a stranger whose face was covered by a dark haze. Only his eyes shown through with benevolence that warmed her. The eyes were strangely familiar and she thought they might belong to Adam.
The stranger said, “See that you tell others who I am. Go, show yourself to them, for a proof to them.”
When she woke the next morning, Myriam remembered the dream and had called Beecher right away. She told him all about it.
Myriam returned to the table. “I have to go, dear,” she said, opening her purse. Beecher put out his hand. “It’s on me.” She pouted and said, “One of these days you’re going have to let me pay for something.” She kissed him on the cheek and walked out of the restaurant.
Beecher watched her drive off. She doesn’t suspect, he told himself. Ironically, her request to be allowed to pay had in its own way already been granted. After all, her dream had inadvertently set in motion a bizarre, spiraling set of events.
After she had told Beecher about her dream, he had decided to contact the popular cable television show Psychic or Psycho? This popular series based in Phoenix, Arizona featured investigators who debunked psychic phenomena. Paying them a sizable advance, he persuaded them to explore the Milagro Shrine. Working under the guise that the results would soon become an episode in their popular series, the three-man, two-woman team had agreed to his proposal, and spent four days with their equipment, examining every aspect of the place and shooting copious amounts of Polycentrism Interference Photography. PIP was a remarkable new video processing technology that captured bioenergetic fields invisible to the naked eye. A scientist named Harry Oldfield invented PIP in the late 1980s, using advanced microchip technology. Oldfield developed a scanner that could provide real-time moving images of the energy fields associated with living things. He believed that the future of medical diagnosis lay in finding an effective scanner that could see imbalances in the body’s energy flows. Beecher had even provided the crew with the money to purchase the most advanced form of this technology available.
The film crew had initially focused their attention on the cottonwood tree, spending two full days and nights following groups of pilgrims who had traveled from the East Coast to spend a week at the Milagro Shrine. Though a number of men and women glowed with reports claiming they had been healed in the presence of the tree, none of the equipment registered even the tiniest anomaly in the biofield surrounding the cottonwood. The Christ Chapel was next, and then the xeriscape garden with its maze of trails. Again nothing out the ordinary had been detected emanating from any of the structures or plant life at the Milagro Shrine.
The only hiccup had occurred on the second day of filming. The film’s producer, Gil James, had approached Beecher, his jaw set and an angry glare in his eyes. He wasted no time complaining. “Hiram is there any way you can keep that little shit Raphael Núnez from following us around?”
“What’s he doing?”
“Asking a lot of stupid questions and getting in the way of the crew’s interviews with the pilgrims. I’d like to wring his neck.” The producer’s beefy hands squeezed an imaginary foe.
“I’ll see what I can do, Gil. But really Raphael’s just a small time opportunist. He’s the chairman of the Board of the Friends of the Shrine and the local real estate broker.”
Gil raised his voice. “Keep him away from my crew and equipment, or,” he laughed harshly, “he’s going to find out firsthand if this healing stuff works or not.”
Beecher had spoken to Núnez and the man had backed off, watching the production crew from a distance.
After they had finished taping, Beecher accompanied the crew when they returned to Phoenix, where the footage was carefully examined on the production company’s HD screens in their studio. What he saw had amazed him as much as it did the psychic busters. The cameras had definitely caught a number of people whose bioenergetic signatures displayed well-recognized ailments such as cancer and other diseases in black and dark red auras. One elderly gentleman, whose prostate initially appeared like a giant red cantaloupe on the screen, had his condition return to normal by the second night of filming. Others showed significant brightening, with the blackness dissipating and their bioenergetic fields moving towards more symmetry. Sometimes people’s bioenergetic fields were closed. For a few nothing had happened. As astonishing as those revelations were, the most remarkable aspect recorded by the technology was an unusual energetic background signal that permeated all the footage.
The next revelation had rocked Beecher even more. It was footage taken by a woman intern who had walked around the Rio Chama de Milagro Shrine with a small hand-held camera. She had caught the caretaker, Adam Gwillt, on camera in the presence of two young girls ages ten and twelve. They were sisters, both suffering with Hodgkin’s disease.
As Adam talked with the two girls and their parents, the film captured the largest and most perfect bioenergetic field surrounding the caretaker that the show’s team had ever recorded. In fact, it was larger and clearer than images recorded of long-time Buddhist meditators or even the Dalai Lama. But even more astonishing was the effect of his aura on the two girls. Their fields had merged with his for a short time, and by the time the crew finished filming, the dark mass indicating the lymphoma had disappeared.
After much discussion and tweaking of the PIP’s processing technology, the conclusion was that the pervasive background had somehow come from Adam.
Myriam’s dream had been prophetic and now Beecher had proof Adam was the source of the shrine’s healing power. Shaken by the findings, he had immediately taken possession of all the footage and paid an additional large sum of money to the producer to keep everything quiet.
Returning to Abilene, he had contacted the Reverend Billy Paul, telling him what he had discovered and about Myriam’s dream revealing Adam as the next Christ.