The Miracle In The Canyon Page #7

N/A

• Mystery

								


For 24 more years Jack repeated this same yearly ritual to the South Rim.  The Motel was eventually sold and torn down, and a new Holiday Inn Express was built where the old Yavapai Motor Lodge used to stand.  Jack always stayed at the Holiday Inn Express with a room facing East like the one he had at the old Yavapai Motel. He was now in his early seventies and each year the trip took longer to get to the Canyon.  The bike was still properly maintained and running well, but the effort it took to ride it all the way, tired Jack out, and every year it seemed like the Canyon got further and further away.

Abbott Estefan had died several years ago and Father Jack, or Abbott Gato, as he was now called was in charge of the Monastery.  Jack had been ordained in a very private ceremony almost fifteen years before. Fred’s children and grandchildren had proudly attended the event in their father’s honor, each of them placing a wreath at the base of their father’s statue, the Patron, in the garden around back.

As he promised he would every year, Jack checked into the hotel at the South Rim.  It had recently changed its name again to a Best Western.  Including the first time he had stayed here, the time he met Fred, this was the 25th Anniversary of his visiting the Canyon in Fred’s honor. 
He said: “Hi Tammy,” to the pretty young girl working at the front desk.  “So, you’re still riding that old motorcycle all the way from New Mexico?”  “I am, and God willing, I’ll get back there to resume my duties in a couple of days.”  “Well, my dad said to remind you again that you have a standing offer for the Motorcycle if ever, and whenever, you decide to sell.”

“Sorry Tammy, but like I told your dad last year, this motorcycle is going to take me all the way thru the pearly gates.” “Oh Father, you’re such a kidder, but if you do change your mind, my dad will drive over to the Monastery and pick it up.”  “Thanks Tammy and thank your dad again for the kind offer.”

“Are those phone calls still coming in every morning?” “Every morning at seven a.m. like clockwork, Father, except on the mornings you’re here.  It’s old hat around here now and part of the DNA of this place.  I don’t know what we’d do if they ever stopped.”  “I don’t think you need to worry about that Tammy, tell that caller that I said Hi every time he calls.”  “I will Father, he seems to get a real kick out of that.  Two days ago, we weren’t sure what was going on because at exactly seven a.m., the phone rang and in the same voice as always, the caller asked for Gato.  When we acted confused, he immediately corrected himself and said Jack, could you please tell me the room number of Jack.

“We’ve got you in #888 as always Father, and it always amuses me that we don’t have any other rooms that start with the number eight.  Do you know why we have one room in this hotel out of sequence with all the others, numbered 888, when every other room starts with a letter followed by three numbers?

“The rooms on this floor go from A100 to A165.”
“No, I really don’t know why that is, Tammy, I just know that I’ve always been in Room #888 and I like it that way.  Nothing like tradition right …”

Jack went back to his room and as was his habit said the Rosary before getting into bed.  The next morning, he was outside the restaurant when it opened for breakfast at six.  He liked talking to all the vacationers coming to the Grand Canyon, especially those visiting for the first time.  “God’s greatest creation on earth he would tell all those he met.  He had also become something of a local celebrity, and several local orders of both priests and nuns would come by the South Rim during his yearly visit and ask for his blessing.

No-one ever asked him specifically why he was there, but everyone knew, and it was now local legend that it had something to do with that Jumper who had gone over the edge so many years ago. Today was the actual 25th Anniversary of Fred’s taking his place and stepping off into the Canyon.

After another sparse breakfast, Jack walked the short distance down the canyon road to the rim behind the Pinyon Trees that he had visited so many times before.  He sat on the same rock that he was sitting on twenty-five years before when Fred came walking through the trees.  He began to pray.

He looked down into the loose dirt at the base of the rock and thought that he could still see the impression that his handgun had made in the soft canyon silt. He wondered at his advanced age if his mind had started to play tricks on him.  Two of his closest friends at the monastery had been stricken with Alzheimer’s this year, and as he watched them slowly drift away, he prayed that it would never happen to him.  

Every memory he had of this place seemed to come rushing back at once.  Everything seemed so real.  Not surreal, but really real! He closed his eyes again and prayed. He wondered to himself if these mini retreats, with little food and sleep, at his age, might be getting to him.  He wasn’t sure how long he had been praying but when he opened his eyes, he saw it was now dark.  “Could an entire day have slipped away that fast he wondered, or maybe I really am losing my mind.”

He looked into the sky for any trace of the sun. It was all the way back over his left shoulder in the direction of California, the land he had come from, and the place where everything that happened to him had been so bad.
As he got up to leave, he heard a rustling in the bushes.  He thought maybe it was a black bear, or perhaps a couple of honeymooners coming to the rim to profess undying love.  He called out to the noise in the bushes, but nothing answered back.  He walked deeper in the direction that the sound had come from, but it was now so dark that his aging eyes were failing him.  It was then that he remembered that he had forgotten his Rosary Beads and had left them back on the rock.

As Jack turned around to go back and get his Rosary, his eyes went completely blind.  There was a light that he had never seen before coming from the Canyon’s edge, and it seemed to be shining only on him.  To the right and the left he could still see darkness, but the brilliant beam of light that he couldn’t understand was following him as he walked blindly back toward the rock.

As bright as the light was it did not hurt his eyes, and it seemed to be drawing him closer and into its power.  As he got near the rim, he could feel the light totally envelop him, both body and soul.  As he got to the Canyon’s edge, he could see the light take shape as it drifted level with his view.  In the middle of the flashing brilliance was the face of Fred who was now smiling at him in the way he had remembered from so long ago.  Fred’s arms were opening wide as he said through the light …

“Father Jack, you have kept your promise when all I had to give you that day was love.  You have returned that love to me twenty-five fold. I now release you from your promise so you may go back and live peacefully the rest of your days.  What we did here together will forever be understood by those willing to give freely and totally of themselves.”

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