"And she's certainly right about that, Sean. But good gracious, I was simply fanning a fly off your toes. Remember what happened to Eduardo? I explained this to Seliah that night. It was an almost absentminded reflex to the bothersome fly. My larger concern was how to wake you up and get you back to your own room so I could get some sleep."
"And when she came into the room you stood up and something dropped into the bedspread that was on the floor. You saw it, too. Remember? You saw it, Father Leftwich. Seliah said you both looked but couldn't find it."
Father Joe swallowed a bite of his steak, nodding, pointing his fork at Ozburn. "I do remember. That part of Seliah's story is accurate also. We found nothing in the bedspread. Nothing under the bed. Nothing at all." Apparently satisfied with this conclusion, Leftwich cut another piece of meat.
"Seliah says that what dropped from your hands was a bat," said Ozburn.
"That's strange, because she said nothing at all about a bat that night. While we searched, we speculated what it could have been and where it could have gone. But it's absolutely impossible that it was a bat. I'll tell you why-because I would never touch a bat with my bare hands. Not in a million years. I fear them."
"Seliah thinks you trapped it in the bedspread, probably crushed it right then and there, and hid it from her."
"But why? For what reason?"
"Just a little sleight of hand is all it would have taken-late, poor light, Seliah still half-drunk."
Father Joe's face flushed and Ozburn saw the anger in his eyes. The priest set down his knife and fork on the plate and looked at Ozburn. "What does she imagine I did with this alleged bat?"
"She believes you used it to give me rabies. She believes I gave it to her a few weeks later when we made love."
"Rabies? You two have rabies, and I caused it? Sean. Sean, what have I ever done to Seliah to give her such a low opinion of me? What have I done to you? Ever?"
"She tested positive for it, Joe. She's in a hospital right now, in a therapeutic coma. They knocked her out and they're hoping she can outlive the virus. She's got just a very small chance of waking up again."
Leftwich leaned back into the booth. His ruddy face went pale. A moment later a tear ran down his face. "This is all wrong. It's terribly and hugely wrong. There was no bat in my room. Did you hear me? No bat. Thus, there is no rabies."
Leftwich stared at Ozburn as the tears came. "Sean. You don't know this about me-how could you-but I studied medicine at Trinity College in Dublin before I decided on the priesthood. I did not graduate, but I came close. So I must ask you-who are these doctors? Did you know that very few doctors have even seen a case of human rabies? Now, look at you, Sean. You don't look to me like a man with rabies. Rabies tests are complicated and best done postmortem. The presence of antigens is not always conclusive. What if this is just a simple misdiagnosis by inexperienced physicians? Down through the centuries rabies has been one of the most misdiagnosed of human diseases."
Ozburn looked at the priest's face, suspended in a pool of bright green light. Ozburn's legs were numb to his knees and he wondered if it was his posture. With great effort he was able to move his feet apart and he felt a tingle of feeling down in his toes. He felt Daisy next through his boot. What a feeling to have feeling.
"These last seven weeks have been a living hell for us," said Ozburn. "Pain. Anger. Agitation. Fear of water, fear of light. Insane thoughts, insane sensation. How do you diagnose that, Father Joe?"
"Well, let's think it through. I can surmise by your vitamins and aspirins that you're not feeling well. You wear your sunglasses even at night, so I know that you're sensitive to light. What if you and Seliah contracted an unusual strain of influenza down there in the cloud forest? A strain that, as Americans, your immune systems were unprepared to fight off? A good strong influenza infection could certainly explain those symptoms, right? In this country alone flu kills scores of thousands of people every year. And certainly you could have given it to Seliah with something as innocent as a goodnight kiss. Yes?"
Ozburn looked at the priest and resisted the urge to bite him.
"Or, what if…" Leftwich sat forward, looked hard at Ozburn and lowered his voice. "What if this rabies tale was invented by Hood and Blowdown, to lure you to Seliah's bedside? Remember, Sean, you and Seliah never talked to this maid. Hood claims to have talked to her. And it was Hood who also forced Seliah to the hospital, correct? Where a doctor sympathetic to ATF could easily have manipulated and convinced her. As she has convinced you. Which was easy because you love her."
Ozburn thought he recognized the tapping of truth on the door of his heart. "But Eduardo said you wanted to see the vampire bats."
"That's a lie from Charlie Hood, Sean. I swear to the god of your choosing that I have never seen a vampire bat. I feel faintly amused at hearing myself deliver that line."
Ozburn thought that the rabies story really did sound like something Hood would come up with. "Eduardo took you to a cave to see them."
"That's another lie from Charlie Hood. And again I will swear that I was not shown a cave."
"You could have captured one in the cave and brought it back to the Volcano View."
"Except that I am too cowardly-and too prudent-a man, to ever dream of touching a vampire bat with my bare flesh. Except that I love you and Seliah and I still believe now what I believed in Costa Rica. I believe you two will do great and wonderful deeds on earth."
"No!" Ozburn swept his arm across the table, knocking the plates and glasses and silverware to the floor in a clattering, shattering symphony. Daisy bolted from under the table, then stopped and watched her master from a distance. Everyone was looking over. The bartender stood with his hands on his hips and the waitress looked up from her order pad and one of the busboys ducked into the kitchen and came right back out with a rolling rack of bus trays.
Ozburn saw all of this outlined in green light. The broken dishes glowed like emeralds. The room began rotating clockwise, slowly, like a great kaleidoscopic mural. He leaned close to Leftwich and hissed into his face. "I don't believe in our God in heaven anymore. I tore him to bits and scattered him to the Mexican wind. Seliah is gone and I am alone. I don't want to do great and wonderful deeds. Shove them up your ass and up the ass of your gutless God."
Ozburn felt his heart break again, like the feeling he'd had when Seliah drove away in her red Mustang. He looked into Father Joe's eyes. Green embers. Ozburn felt the priest's hand on his wrist.
"No words can make me sadder than those, my son. None. You have crushed my heart and I am in anguish for you."
Ozburn rose and leaned over the table and clamped a hand on Father Joe's cowboy shirt. He lifted him up and threw him against the wall behind the booth. Leftwich hit with a loud huff and fell to the booth bench like something suddenly deflated. A painting of calla lilies slid off the wall and crashed to the floor. Father Joe came to rest approximately where he had been seated before. His eyes were wide and welling and he fought to catch his breath. It took a moment. Then he wiped the cuff of his Western shirt across his eyes.
"You're a strong one, Oz."
"You've ruined us. All of you."
"No bat. No virus. This is not a time for superstition and speculation. It is time for the cold light of reason. It is up to you to carry on, Sean, despite your wild fears. Rise to your task or you will be destroyed."
Ozburn stared down at Father Joe for a long moment. He was a little surprised that he could still do something like this. He felt his feet going numb on him again. Then Ozburn looked up at the busboy who would not approach, and at the bartender still glaring at him, and into the faces of the guests, men and women amazed at what they were seeing, at the cooks peering over from the kitchen, at the waitress whose face was filled with fear and sympathy.