He paused at the shrine dedicated to St. Frances Xavier Cabrini. Facts surged to me surface of his mind from some forgotten reservoir, broke like bubbles upon his thoughts. Mother Cabrini. A saint for Washington. In Seattle she had become a citizen in 1909, and worshiped in this very place. Canonized a 1949. she was the first United States citizen to be so honored. from his pocket he drew coins and pushed them into the donation slot. The book of paper thatches was tucked behind one of the candle holders. He lit a candle in a blue glass and knelt to watch it bum before the image of the homely woman in simple garb. He felt consoled by its light and let himself sink into a dream.
First Communion Day. His stiff collar chafed the back of his neck raw. He approached the altar beside a little girl in a white dress with crackling petticoats. She wore a veil over her shining hair and her eyes glowed as she turned them up to the crucifix. He had knelt beside her at the altar railing, the gold and white fence that separated the priest and the holy place from the commoners. He had put out his tongue and received on it the round Host. It was white and stiff and dry, tasting of sanctity. It stuck to the roof of his mouth as he rose and carefully walked back to his pew with the other First Communicants.
He knew it was unseemly to chew it, so he waited patiently until it dissolved into a soggy mass he could swallow whole.
And as it went down, an interior Goodness so real that it warmed him flooded his whole body, making a shiver up his back and tears in his eyes. Never had he felt so Chosen. Jesus Christ was in him and his soul burned with a white flame of purity.
He had tried to play it at home, to recapture that elusive feeling for himself. In the game he was the priest, with a roll of Necco Wafers, and two small sisters who would do anything to get them They knelt before him, wildflower crowned, and responded “amen” as be set the candy on their pink outstretched tongues. It was good, but it was not the same. Only in the church did that feeling touch him, and he longed for a white surplice and vestments of green and gold and purple, and people kneeling before him to be nurtured. The mystical chanting of the choir, the high Sanctus, Sanctus. Sanctus, like a joyous bird rising to heaven. He knew that someday he would stand before that altar, elevating the Host high, his sleeves falling back to bare his arms as the masses behind him bowed their beads and murmured, “my Lord and my God.”
He had become an altar boy, memorizing the mystical Latin responses with ease. He could still remember the tingle on his skin the first time he slipped the black and white robes of his office over his head. He had poured the water over the priest’s fingers from the tiny glass carafe trimmed in gold, had seen him shake the shining drops from his fingertips as he mimicked Pilate’s denial. The white cloth for the priest to dry his fingers on was always folded precisely over his arms, waiting to be mod. And, at exactly the right moment, he had rung the four golden bells fastened to a single handle, let their metal voices cry out in sweet precision at the elevation of the Host. That moment had always closed his throat and made his eyes sting with tears.
He felt a tap against his foot, heard a woman’s murmured “Excuse me.” Like a diver rising from deep water. Wizard took a deep breath of air and looked around him with fogged eyes.
The church was filling with people. There were small family groups, easily identified as they filled half a pew, mothers holding small babies, fathers trying to maintain manners among (rider children. There were old women, their white heads draped in lacy scarves, and older men who sat, eyes lowered and shoulders rounded as they spoke to God. Wizard rose from kneeling at the shrine. The Mass was about to begin.
He left. He looked back as the heavy doors swung closed behind him. The tall pipe organ in the back of the cathedral had begun to sound, and the people rose as one. He watched them sail away from him on a sea of peace, and then the doors closed between them. He pushed through the outer doors into the cold and wind. He stumbled going down the steps and nearly fell. He glanced back once at me golden vines on the front of the cathedral- Once, he had been a branch. Now he was defoliated.
He sniffed as he strode down the street, and then surprised aiselfby coughing. Once he had begun to cough, he couldn’t stop, as if he had loosened some sickness in the bottom of his lungs. He felt his face grow red and hot with the strain of it, for long moments he couldn’t draw in enough air to fill his lungs. He leaned against a building until his chest quit leaving, and then took in short, cautious breaths of the chill air. It had gotten colder while he was in the church. The brief November day was drawing to a close. He was glad of it, glad it was nearly done with. He was tired and suddenly weary. Sleepy was too gentle a word for what he felt. He wished he could just curl up on the sidewalk and sleep. Or in a doorway. There were those who did that, he knew, but he had never been one of them.
Or had he? He coughed again, not as strenuously this time, a racking cough nonetheless. He had walked in the cold ram yesterday, and then slept damp and chill. It was no wonder he had a cough. The only strange thing was that he hadn’t gotten it long before this. He brushed his hair back from his damp forehead, feeling the tenderness of old scar tissue JUSI back of his hairline He took his hand away from it and shoved it deep into his jacket pocket He hunched his shoulders against the evening and began the cold trek to a bus stop.
THE BUS RIDE did not warm him. When he disembarked in the general area of home, he was still deeply chilled. The city seesawed around him. His feet knew where to take him, but nothing looked familiar. He focused himself on the streets determinedly- He belonged here. He had worked a long time to belong here. He knew this place, knew every damn square foot of it. He knew more about Seattle than people that had lived here fifty years. It couldn’t turn its back on him now. He willed ft to be alive, in the frightening and invigorating way Cassie had opened him to. But the building's remained faceless, mere stone and mortar and wood and glass. When his magic had fled, it had taken all magic with it.
He stamped his feet a little harder on the sidewalks, to waken his numbed toes and stir the city beneath him. These sidewalks were hollow. He knew that. How many residents of Seattle knew that the sidewalks were hollow, with enough space beneath them for folk to walk around? Well, it was true. The hollow sidewalks came into being after the fire of 1889, as a wry indirect result of it.
After the great fire, when the whole damned downtown area burned in less than seven hours, the city decided to rebuild itself in bride. No more wood buildings to invite another tragedy like dial. And shortly after that, the city decided to raise the streets and suspend the plumbing mains under them. It was all (he fault of those newfangled flush toilets. They had worked fine, on an individual basis. Folks just piped the stuff out into the garden patch or over the property lines. But when there got to be a lot of them, and folks joined up to funnel the stuff into big pipes that went out into the bay, problems cropped up, The system worked just fine, as long as the tide was going out.
But when the tide came in, the sea paid back a dividend to all the residents in the lower parts of town. The easy solution was to raise the streets and put me plumbing mains under the new, higher streets. The sewage backup would be solved! But by the time the city got around to raising the streets, a lot of businesses had already constructed new buildings. So you had buildings that had their ground-floor store front windows eight to forty feet below street level. People had to climb up ladders to cross the streets. Horses fell from UK streets onto the sidewalks below. In 1891 alone, there were seventeen deaths due (o falls from the street to the sidewalks. It was not a good town to get drunk in.