The Miracle In The Canyon Page #4

N/A

• Mystery

								


Dear Jack
I don’t know, and can hardly imagine, what your life must have been like up until now.  I wish I had the power to go back and change the bad things that happened to you, but I don’t.

The only power that I have, the one that all of us have, is to change what happens now.  I hope you will believe me now when I say I really do care about you more than you know, and I am happy and willing to live up to my promise.  I am now counting on you to live up to yours.
The only thing extra I ask, and I’ve put this in writing to the head Abbott, is for you to be allowed to ride the motorcycle back to this spot once every year.  Once here, I would like you to say a Rosary for the souls of my family and for all the faithful departed.  If you put in a good word for me that would be all the better.

If you do this, I know your new life will be joyous and take on a deeper meaning and more than make up for any troubles that you’ve experienced up until now. If you choose not to keep your promise and go through with ending your life then I forgive you and still love you, but I don’t think you’re going to do that.

May God Bless and keep you.

Fred

Underneath the note there was a folded-up roadmap with a line drawn in magic marker pointing the way to the monastery in New Mexico.

Jack sat down on the curb in front of the motorcycle in disbelief.  There was one more slip of paper folded up in the map.  It was the title to the old BMW.  It had been signed over to Jack.

“He couldn’t have, he couldn’t have, he just wouldn’t have,” Jack kept saying over and over to himself.  Just then a large Park Policeman tapped Jack on the shoulder and asked him if he would mind answering a few questions.  Jack agreed, but then told the officer that after speaking with him he just might be even more confused.  The officer went on to tell Jack that none of their suspicions panned out.  This man hadn’t jumped for insurance money (he was very wealthy), or out of a history of depression, he just jumped.
 
  And None Of The Usual Reasons Seemed To Apply 

After thirty-five minutes of polite questioning, the police officer walked away scratching his head.  On the margin of the map was a scribbled note, “Don’t delay out of any concern for me. Get to the monastery as quickly as you can.”  Jack had told the police officer about Fred wanting him to have the bike and showed him the title that had been left for him.  He did not show the police officer the letter Fred had left and was in fact surprised that they hadn’t checked the bike.  Then it all started to make sense.  If Jack hadn’t read the note Fred left with the desk clerk, he would never have known the seat to the motorcycle opened up.  He was sure the police didn’t know that either.  He was glad no-one was looking when he opened up the seat and took out the letter.  In all the commotion everyone else was just looking the other way.
Jack wanted to go back to the spot where Fred jumped, and where they first had met, but the police had it roped off.

He decided to leave for New Mexico right away because that’s what Fred would have wanted.  The news stations were now calling it The Mystery In The Canyon because only clothes and no body was found.

Jack had never ridden a motorcycle before but had often fantasized about it.  Like most things in his life, he had always come up with excuses as to why he couldn’t ride while secretly envying those who did.  He took to the old bike immediately, and with every hour that passed on Rt #40, he enjoyed the ride more and more.

A new type of guilty had started to set in because he was actually enjoying his new life with every new twist of the throttle and turn of the handlebars.

Chapter Four

Jack pulled up in front of the Old Dominican Monastery with its Spanish Adobe Walls at 2:30 the following afternoon.  He had spent the previous night in Gallup and had actually been able to volunteer at the Dominican Soup Kitchen that was housed in the old Post Office in the center of downtown.  
 
Gallup was very depressed and except for a flourishing Indian Jewelry Industry had very little in the way of jobs and opportunity.  The Friar who ran the soup kitchen listened to Jack’s story and then put his arm around him and led him inside.  Jack was astonished that the story seemed to make perfect sense to this selfless Padre.

Jack spent the night on a cot behind the soup kitchen and after having an early breakfast with Padre Nick headed on his way East toward the Monastery in the New Mexico desert.   It reminded Jack of the pictures he had seen of an oasis in the middle of the Arabian desert.  There were giant cactus and many varieties of flowers surrounded by what looked like an eternity of sand.  Jack loved the sparseness of his new surroundings, but he still didn’t know why.

The Monastery sat atop a sandy hill at the end of a long unpaved road.  He parked the bike outside the two large, padlocked, doors and prepared to knock.  Before his fist could make contact with the old wooden door on the right, a smaller door within it began to open. He stepped through the door as a monk, whose hood was completely covering his head, lead him inside.  The monastery had a quiet about it that rivaled that of the Canyon.  There were three old Spanish buildings side by side, and the main door to the one in the middle was already open.

He asked the monk where they were going and heard back nothing in return. The hooded monk led Jack down a long hallway to another open door on the left.  He knocked on the door three times as he led Jack through and motioned for him to sit down on one of the two chairs in front of the large stone fireplace.  I wonder where they get stone in a desert like this he wondered to himself.

Jack looked up slightly and saw the image of two large and heavily tanned feet in sandals walking toward him at a lively pace.  As he looked even higher, he saw a stocky and athletically built man who looked to be in his mid-sixties with a smile that could have come from an angelic two-year old child.

My name is Abbott Estefan, and I have been expecting you all day.  Early this morning I got a letter from our beloved Fred, telling the details of your meeting.  Before we do anything else, we must pray together to him that your mission here will be successful.  I am certain in my heart that Fred now sits with the Saints in Heaven and is at this very moment looking down on us both --- with love.

I read Fred’s words, and I am still in partial disbelief.  Would you like to tell me in your words what happened, Jack?  Soon Abbott, but not right now, I hope you can understand.”  “I do totally my son. Let’s get you settled and then you can start to feel like one of us.  I know that is what Fred would have wanted.

“When’s the last time you’ve eaten?” Abbott Estefan asked.  “This morning, in Gallup with Padre Nick,” Jack answered.  “Ah, Padre Nick, one of our very finest.  Half Pueblo and half Navajo but all Dominican.  Once you walk through those front doors, all divisions of ethnicity and nationality fade away like the shifting sands.

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