Лоуренс Блок - Random Walk - A Novel for a New Age

“She cured herself of arthritis, Guthrie. That’s all. All cures are the same. They happen when you decide on a cure and manifest it on a physical level. Sometimes you go to a doctor and he gives you something that triggers it. Sometimes you go to a church. Sometimes you go to someone like Jody, who gives you a transfer of energy that starts the process in motion. Then your body remembers what it’s supposed to do, and the bone knits or new skin forms or calcium deposits dissolve. That’s what a healing is, that’s what a miracle is. The wonder isn’t that they happen. The wonder is that they only happen some of the time.”

“Her healing was so fast, Sara.”

“I know. We usually don’t let ourselves mend that quickly because we know it’s not possible. But Mame was in a hurry. If she spent a month healing herself we’d be in Idaho before she was ready to walk.”

“I hope we’ll be out of Idaho by then. We’ll be in Montana.”

“The point is we’d be out of reach. Mame needed to heal fast, so she didn’t listen to the part of her mind that knew you couldn’t walk out from under that bad a case of arthritis in a couple of miles. She healed her spirit by undoing all the knots that she’d tied in it over the years, she let go of everything she’d been holding onto too tightly, and every step she took helped make her whole again.” She considered for a moment. “The first step set it all in motion. But she had to stay with it, she had to walk through the parts that hurt more than the arthritis.”

“Could she have done it without us?”

She spread her hands. “I don’t know how to answer that. People cure themselves all the time without walking across the country to do it. Sometimes it’s a cold, sometimes it’s a shaving nick, sometimes it’s a terminal illness. People choose their diseases and sometimes they choose to heal them. So Mame could have healed herself. She didn’t even have to walk to do it, with us or without us. But she probably wouldn’t have been able to make the choice to do it. There’s something magical about this walk of ours, Guthrie.”

“I know that.”

“It lets people make choices they never could make before. Martha’s sinuses are clear for the first time in years. And Gary’s not smoking. He doesn’t know whether or not to be happy about it, he liked smoking, but when he lights a cigarette he takes one drag and puts it out.”

“I remember what that was like.”

“Sue Anne cured herself of cancer. Most people would probably call that a miracle.”

“When was that? I didn’t know she had it.”

“Neither did she. She didn’t know she had it and she doesn’t know it’s gone, and I’m not sure whether I ought to tell her or not. She knows on some level, she had to know or she couldn’t have made it happen, but she doesn’t have any conscious knowledge and maybe she doesn’t need any.”

“How do you know she had it?”

“I picked it up when I first held her hand. I could see it, a mass in her right breast, and it felt — I don’t know, hot , sort of.”

“To the touch?”

“No, I only touched her hand. I felt heat from the lump in my mind when I scanned her. And then I made a point of taking her hand later that day to see if I got the same reading, and I did. There were some similar hot spots in her uterus, and I believe breast cancer frequently metastasizes there.”

“Jesus. And you didn’t say anything?”

“I wasn’t sure what to do, Guthrie. I’m a blind headshrinker, not a board-certified radiologist. I’m willing to trust my diagnostic skills, but why should anybody else be? If I sent her to a doctor and I turned out to be right, then he would remove her breast and her uterus and that might be enough to save her, or the same factors that led her to create the cancer in the first place might bring about a recurrence. In any event, she’d be in a hospital somewhere.” She smiled. “I thought it might be more efficacious to keep my mouth shut and wait for a miracle. But I decided to scan her every day so that I could monitor the condition.”

“‘Trust everybody but cut the cards.’ And when you scanned her—”

“The cancerous mass was reduced in both sites. That was yesterday morning. By last night the uterus was clear and the lump in the breast was smaller and there was no heat coming from it. And this morning it was completely gone.”

“Jesus.”

“Well, I suppose he may have had something to do with it. Depending on your belief system.”

“What happened, Sara? I don’t mean metaphysically. Where did the cancer go ?”

“To cancer heaven, I suppose. Who knows what happens in spontaneous remissions? The cancer cells died. Maybe they killed themselves, maybe the other cells ganged up on them and ate them. The body does this sort of thing all the time, there are all these little SWAT teams cruising around the bloodstream on search-and-destroy missions.”

“‘The Walk That Cures Cancer.’ It sounds like something from the Enquirer. ”

“I know it does. You know what they say, just because it’s in the Enquirer doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a lie.”

“I know, some of that shit actually happens.”

“My gums are getting better. My dentist says I’ve had significant bone loss, he’s been after me to have periodontal surgery for the past year and a half. My gums bleed easily and some of the teeth are a little loose in their sockets. But make that past tense. My gums don’t bleed anymore, and my teeth are no longer loose, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m regenerating some of that bone. That’s supposed to be impossible, but so what? ‘The difficult we do at once; the impossible takes a little longer.’”

“Except when it doesn’t.”

“Except when it doesn’t. ‘The Walk That Cures Periodontal Disease’ wouldn’t sell as many tabloids, but if it means I get to keep my teeth, I’m not complaining.”

“No, I don’t blame you.”

They fell silent. The moon was a pale sliver, and every possible star glinted overhead. The sky tonight seemed to Guthrie to have depth. Usually it looked two-dimensional to him, like the painted interior ceiling of a great dome, but now the stars appeared strewn at random across an infinity of space.

An owl called in the distance. The sound died, leaving the silence more pronounced. Guthrie said, “Is that what we’re walking for, Sara? Healing?”

“That certainly seems to be a part of it.”

“Sometimes it feels like an encounter group and other times like a visit to a faith healer.”

“It has elements of both, but the intensity is greater here, I think. And so are the results. And when something really dramatic happens, like Mame’s walk, it gives everybody a sense of the possibilities. I don’t know what the limits are. Maybe there aren’t any.”

“Why are some of us getting healed while others aren’t? Douglas has a bum hip, he’s had it since he was in high school, and I haven’t noticed any improvement since he got here. Mame walked away from her arthritis just like that, and his limp’s no better than when he joined us.”

“Maybe he’s not ready to give it up. Or maybe it’s not the healing he came for. Yes, we’re here to be healed. But that’s not the only reason we’re here.”

“What else is there?”

“I don’t know yet. I get flashes of it but I can’t see enough to guess the shape of it.”

He had another question, but he had to force himself to ask it. “Sara? What about your eyes?”

“What about them?”

“Has there been any healing?”

“Of my vision?” She patted his hand. “I’m not going to be getting my eyesight back, love. It’s gone.”