Mischa Berlinski - Fieldwork

Then a young man with long hair and sideburns in the front seat of a pickup truck called out, "Hey, Miracle! I got a ticket for you."

David walked over to the truck. "You're not going?"

"Nah, she's sick. We gotta go." He pointed to a young woman shivering in the front seat of the pickup truck, her arms tightly crossed in front of her chest.

The woman groaned menacingly, and the man turned in her direction. "Listen, you're not goin' to ralph, right?" he said. "My brother just got this fucker deep-cleaned — upholstery, carpets, everything."

David felt a sudden sympathy for the woman. "You want to wait a little while, see if she gets better?"

"Nah, we gotta go," the man said. "It's gonna be a frickin' great show too. I just know it too. I always know. We drove all the way down from Portland, and—"

He waved his hand in a what-can-you-do gesture, handed David the ticket, and drove off. David shouted thanks in the direction of the retreating vehicle, and then thanked God.

The Lord, David would later tell his listeners, the Lord works in the strangest ways. But that is surely the essential point, he would say: He works!

By the time David had wandered back the length of the Lot, the Dead had taken the stage.

The guy in the parking lot was right, David told his audiences: It was a great show, proving once again the wisdom of the old Deadheads, who said that you needed to go to every show to see a good show, and you needed to see every good show in order to see a great show. The day was so hot that Bob started spraying the crowd down with water from the stage — and in the audience, someone thinks: Those are little drops of Bob himself, floating out of that rubber hose, little refreshing drops of Bob himself.

It was somewhere in the second set, just after "Uncle John's Band," when the miracle happened, and what could it be called but a miracle? David heard the angels singing. He was lying on his back in the grass, his long arms at his side, a damp towel across his eyes, his fingers dug into the earth, his mind wandering, when Jerry introduced a familiar melodic line into the musical chaos for the which the Grateful Dead are known. Jerry was playing something that David recognized from his childhood— and how did Jerry know that tune? But Jerry knew so many tunes, country and folk, the blues, Spanish canciones , even an occasional Scottish hymn. Jerry played out that melody a little more, playing so sweetly that it could have been Grandma Laura singing as she bathed David in the running waters of Eden River when he was four years old. David sat up straight and listened more intently.

Then the angelic chorus began to sing in four-part harmony:

There were ninety-and-nine that safely lay

In the Shelter of the fold.

But one was out on the hills far away,

Far off from the gates of gold.

Away on the mountains wild and bare,

Away from the tender Shepherd's care,

Away from the tender Shepherd's care.

The angels mingled their majestic voices with Jerry's reedy tenor, and David began to cry. David felt his soul separate from his body and he knew that he had died and was being welcomed into Heaven. Now he had come Home. He thought of his grandfather wandering through Chinese villages, desperate to tell the people what he knew. David could feel his soul floating vaguely over Oregon, and from his perch in Heaven where the angels sing, David could see the white shore of the dark Pacific, and then huge waters and stormy seas, then a line in the ocean where it was night, and far in the distance, across the ocean and high in the hills, David could see Dyalo villages in darkness.

In the story the Walkers told of themselves, this was the miracle that brought David back home.

The creature that got off the plane a week later, although definitely David, was not at all the person Norma had expected.

She had not expected that her sullen, good-natured, shy, slouching, adolescent son, a boy capable of spending whole days on the couch watching the goldfish, would be transformed into the young man who exploded off the plane. There was no other way to put it. Right there at the arrivals counter of the Chiang Mai airport, David picked up his Grandma Laura, all eighty-odd years of her, right off her feet. Norma knew that Thomas had been nervous about how to greet his own son; but David overwhelmed the anxieties by enfolding his father in his long arms— my , Thomas looked little next to David; he must have grown, and that long hair and beard only made him look bigger — hugging him with such ferocious intensity that when finally the two untangled themselves, Norma noticed that her husband's light green eyes were damp. David winked at his mother over Thomas's shoulder. She really hadn't expected all that hair.

Norma was so glad he was home. But everything about him was different. He walked differently: the last time Norma saw David, he used to shuffle. Norma could not count the number of times that she had said, "David, pick up your feet. David, don't walk like a turtle. David, stand up straight." Now David strode through the airport terminal out into the hot Chiang Mai sun, spreading his long arms like the wings of a huge bird. Then they got to the house, and David strode inside, his long arms sweeping back and forth in huge arcs. Only when David had entered the house, in the process hugging, kissing, and embracing no fewer than twenty aunts, uncles, sisters, brothers, and cousins, not to mention a goodly portion of Chiang Mai's Christian community, sometimes taking two or three relatives into his long arms at the same time; only when he had flopped himself down in his old place on the couch and asked if there was anything to eat in the house, did Norma really recognize her son.

A few days after his return, the Walkers had a party for David. A party in the Walker way of thinking was simply normal life plus a cake, and it was Norma who baked the cake that night and made the frosting. After the guests had gone home, David told his family about the miracle that brought him home, about the moment when he had heard the angelic chorus singing.

When David said that he was sure that he had died, Norma shivered. Am I the only one here who thinks this is weird? she thought. She had heard Raymond's story ten thousand times; but that was Raymond , and long ago, and in the war. But to hear the story from David's own mouth, to hear David— David! — who had always understood her so well, so much better than anyone else, speak of rising up into Heaven and hearing angels singing hymns, for just a moment Norma felt lonely, lonely and more than a little frightened, looking around that room and wondering just who these people were that were her family.

The next morning, when Norma woke up, David was already gone. He left a note. "Great to be home. Back soon. Love you all & bless. David."

He wasn't home again for almost a month, no phone calls, nothing.

David came back suntanned and a little bedraggled, his sweaty hair showing the first hints of dreadlocks. Norma was determined not to show how bothered she had been by his absence.

"Oh, honey, I'll put a plate on the table for you," she said. "Lunch will be ready in a jiffy."

"Thanks, Mom. I could eat a horse." David had an odd grin on his face, and was whistling tunelessly. He was an enthusiastic but incompetent whistler.

Norma went about rearranging the plates on the table to make space for David. There was a plate for Laura, who hardly ate anymore, then Raymond, then Thomas, then a place for herself, near the kitchen, then David's little brother Paul, who ate enough for a small army, then a plate for David's big sister Ruth-Marie, who was pregnant again, and then a plate for David, slouched against the doorway. He really needed some new clothes; those things on his back were almost rags.