Chapter 10
I tried to sleep in the car for a while but I couldn’t settle down, so I drove home, wondering what the hell had just happened.
Outside, the off-ramps to Corvallis, Eugene, and Cottage Grove swam by, and soon the road was lifting me out of the valley into the black woods between Roseburg and Wolf Creek.
All the while, a dim kaleidoscope was revolving in the back of my brain.
Every twist of the cylinder sent new shards of color into the pattern, new shadings of fear, awe, gratitude, and disbelief.
Every arrangement a new consequence, a new ramification.
It was a miracle I’d witnessed, there was no other way to describe it.
I’d been present at a miracle, the resurrection of a dead body.
I’d seen it with my own eyes, more or less, and possibly even manifested it with my own mind.
On the charred mountaintop, in the brightening smoke, I’d bowed my head and focused my thoughts and somehow, through me, the strings of the universe had been strummed.
Invisible circuitries had been reversed.
It turned out performing a miracle was nothing like the religious movies would have you believe.
There hadn’t been any shafts of light beaming through clouds, no arias resounding in outer space, only a sense of extreme smallness and humility.
I didn’t feel power or glory whatsoever. I felt like a tiny bug.
Did I even believe in a miracle like that?
I asked myself, driving alongside the shining Umpqua River.
In some ways, I supposed I did, generally speaking.
I believed in the miracle of existence itself, which was to say, the universe as an unbeginning, unending explosion bringing forth everything that ever was and ever would be.
That was a miracle, wasn’t it? And then, in that tumult, somehow, fragile life had occurred, which was also a miracle.
Everything was a miracle from this point of view.
A plum was a miracle. An oak tree growing from an acorn was a gigantic miracle.
Overall, I felt like I experienced an appropriate sense of wonder at the miracle of creation on a fairly daily basis.
But what about an actual miracle abrogating the laws of nature?
That was a little tougher, though in some ways, I guessed I believed in those, too, or at least didn’t entirely not believe in them.
Within the swirling cosmos, I could acknowledge that many strange things occurred.
Inexplicable healings, odd transfigurations, bizarre coincidences.
I had a friend who’d had a stroke at the very moment his mother had died across the country.
How could you explain that, except as his mom’s soul somehow transporting across time and space and touching him?
I had another friend whose father’s voice had appeared on his answering machine days after his father died.
How could that happen, barring a small miracle?
I didn’t see the universe as some rational computer, running on glassy algorithms. It was more like a cloud of chaos, filled with wormholes and wind shears, built on strange resonances and entanglements. Science had already proven that.
But the thing I’d experienced: that was something else again.
A miracle in the old style, a Lazarus-type event, a Jesus kind of thing.
It was a miracle implying communion with an omnipotent consciousness, possibly a personal covenant with a divine force.
Did I believe in that kind of miracle? That kind of God?
It was easy enough to believe in the little miracles of normal life, the minor serendipities that came from a positive attitude.
That was just the basic law of karma. You got what you gave.
You reaped what you sowed. Sometimes things came back in unexpected, mystical-seeming ways.
But magical favors from a hidden, all-powerful creator?
A distant being capable of remaking reality at will?
Was that really how the universe conducted its business?
I drove onward, passing dark valleys and open vistas, thanking God, doubting God, too exhausted to come to any conclusions.
I was still too deep inside the experience to see anything clearly, still too tangled up in the mountain’s energies.
I caught sight of my pinched eyes in the mirror, my face coated with ash.
The long days of smoke and fire had utterly wiped me out.
It was too soon to put words on anything.
Somehow I kept the car inside the lines and wended my way home.
I left my bags in the back seat and went directly to bed.
I woke up hours later in darkness, the room hot, the moon a white hole in the black sky.
I had smoke in my hair and in my clothes.
I got up and showered and went back to sleep. I woke up again and it was morning.
I stayed in bed for a long time, letting the world reknit around me.
My muscles were sore from the hours of digging and raking but my bedroom was the same as it had been a couple of days earlier.
Two dresser drawers were still open, and a pair of jeans was spilling onto the floor.
My nightstand still held the same stack of partly read books.
I could hear the familiar squeak of a hummingbird outside, interrupted by the familiar croak of a crow.
I got up and dressed and went to the kitchen and made my oatmeal.
I put on water for coffee and used my favorite cup.
As I ate, I checked the news. I discovered the fires were still raging in the Cascades, metastasizing out of control.
The Suttle Lake Fire had bled into the Barrel Fire and was oozing toward the Orient Creek Fire.
They’d called up crews from as far as Kansas.
The volume of trees being incinerated in the Cascades was equal to a nuclear bomb going off.
And yet, here at home, the air was clean. The wind was favoring us.
I thought about driving back to the mountain to help the guys on the line, but sitting in my kitchen, surrounded by my familiar pots and pans, I had a hard time convincing myself it was a good idea.
They needed manpower, but I knew I wouldn’t be much use.
I had no training. I probably wouldn’t even be able to get up the road.
Already, it seemed, my normal life, with its normal parameters of risk, was reasserting itself.
I scrolled through my messages and wrote to all the people who’d checked in, reassuring them that I was okay.
Only then did I allow myself to think about the miracle again.
I sat at the table and tried to reconstruct the last few days step by step, searching for the moment when reality had warped and delivered me into the ear of God.
I remembered driving to the lodge; I remembered fighting the fire; I remembered finding Sarah under the collapsed earth at dawn.
Up until that point, the laws of nature had held fairly steady, but somewhere in that area they’d gone astray.
I thought about touching her. I thought about those few steps I’d taken away from her body and imploring the universe to bring her back, and the minute later when she was standing there, alive.
Already, my memory was getting tricky. There were big blank spaces in my recollection, abrupt jump cuts, lots of smoke.
Certain angles and sense impressions were heavily favored.
Was it possible that I’d misjudged? That I’d failed to notice some major clue?
Sitting in my kitchen, I had to allow for the possibility that Sarah hadn’t been dead when I’d found her, even if in the moment I’d been absolutely certain.
I remembered taking her limp wrist and searching for a pulse.
I remembered watching for her breath. I remembered staring at her and believing that the weight of the landslide was terminal.
But maybe I’d been too hasty. If only I could go back in time and get another look, I thought, I could erase the doubt.
But time didn’t open its back door like that.
I kept approaching the moments from different angles, at different speeds, rotating the information in my mind.
I thought again about driving back to the mountain, this time with a measuring tape and some chalk and string.
But what would a pile of rocks and trees tell me?
The site was already compromised, blasted by fire and wind.
The suspects had all vanished. There was no video to watch and rewatch at superslow speed.
I was left with my own meager powers of memory and reason.
At the moment, I couldn’t decide whether it seemed more ridiculous to believe in the miracle or to doubt it.
Eventually, I knew, I’d have to fall on one side or the other.
I couldn’t just pretend this was one of the false choices that life presented.
Whatever truth I drew from this experience, whatever interpretation, excluded the other completely.
I’d always assumed miracles were meant to confirm faith, but apparently not this one.
I knew one thing, at least: now that Sarah was alive, I didn’t want to lose her.
Washing my oatmeal bowl, tidying the house, I found myself thinking about Abraham.
That was another miracle on a mountain; that was another deal with the Almighty.
Kill your son to prove your faith, God had said, and Abraham had obeyed without question.
He’d walked Isaac to Mount Moriah, bound him, raised his dagger, and then, at the last moment, the ram had appeared and Isaac had been spared.
Would the universe let me off the hook like that, too?
Would I be shown that kind of mercy if I kept my promise?