Chapter 3: Power of the Outhouse

"What now?" I wondered. I looked out the front window. Rachel's little Metro was smashed against the TV station's big white van. "Rachel!" I yelled and ran outside to check on her. She seemed a little dazed as she sat behind the steering wheel and stared straight ahead.

I jerked open the door and asked her, "Are you hurt?"

"It's my neck. When I try to move my head, my neck hurts. I think something is injured, Forrest."

Without thinking, I stroked her cheek. "I'll call for an ambulance and..." I got no further. That familiar electric tingle was back with a vengeance.

All at once I couldn't talk. Energy flowed through my hand, out my fingertips and into Rachel's face in a continuous surge. It was so intense; I could see a faint green glow. "Oh," Rachel whispered. Her eyes got big around, "Oh, What's happening? I ... I ... Oh my" Her eyes opened even wider. "Forrest, what did you do? The pain is all gone. Oh my, what did you do?" She slowly turned her head toward me.

"Ah..." I answered her in a dazed voice. Then I could think of nothing to say. We stared at each other, mirroring the amazement we both felt. "I ... don't ... know."

"Forrest, I barely turned into your driveway when a big white van came out of nowhere and I couldn't stop fast enough and it hit my little car." She started to sob.

My jaw clenched tight. "Just a moment," I told her in a grim voice. That damned idiot of a newscaster had pulled out without looking. I walked over to the white van and opened the passenger side door.

Jackson Parker stammered, "We were just trying to intercept her and she hit us." He was amazed anyone would dare run over a news van.

I drew back my right fist and hit his nose as hard as I could. I learned later I broke it. All the irritation and frustration I'd felt since this started happening welled up inside me and I struck someone in anger for the first time in my life. "Go away and stay away," I ordered him.

I turned to the cameraman who had been driving. "You have your insurance company contact us. Now get out of here."

I hurried back to Rachel and helped her out of her car. One quick look was enough. Her little Metro she had been so proud of was a total wreck. It would much be cheaper to replace it than to fix it. I took her by the hand and helped her out of her now wrecked little sedan.

"Did, did you feel anything when I touched your cheek??" I asked her cautiously.

"Yes I did, Forrest." Rachel looked at me in amazement. Where you touched me I got all tingly and it went right through to the hurt in my neck. I even felt it in my face." She looked up into my eyes and asked, "What is happening, Forrest? You healed me. It was all so strange, all the electricity going off inside my neck and my face."

"I haven't a clue," I answered her. The seeming enormity of it all came crashing down on me. "I just want things to go back to the way they were. I don't like any of this." I heard the van drive away behind us as we walked back to the house with our arms around each other's waist.

That was the first time I healed a person. Scenes of the flowers and bushes as they came to life flashed through my mind. The rose came to life because I wished for it to do so. On the other hand, when I touched Rachel, I touched her as a gesture of love and because I didn't want her to suffer.

Otherwise, every time I shook hands with a person or merely brushed up against someone they would be cured of whatever ailments they had. There seemed to be a few exceptions, but not many, as I learned later on. I tried to put it out of my mind and failed.

"Forrest, dearest one, please? Let me tell my Bishop, please? Forrest, this is now so far out of the ordinary even extraordinary doesn't apply."

I could sense she was asking me and not defying me. I felt she'd be very sad if I told her no. However I also believed she would respect my wishes this time. "Okay," I told her. "But it has to be my way or no way. I don't want any publicity and whatever happens has to remain under the seal, or whatever Mormons call it. I am damned well not going to be turned into some kind of a religious freak in a Temple sideshow. Now I mean it." Yes, I probably did mean it at the time I said it.

As soon we reached the front door she turned and looked at me. "Forrest, even my sinuses are cleared up." She laughed nervously, "This is so strange. I'll call Bishop Long right now."

I went into the kitchen and poured out the last of the coffee in the pot. She joined me and I pulled her onto my lap. She bent her head down and gave me a gentle kiss. "When should we get married?" she whispered in my ear.

"As soon as the Bishop gets here," I told her. "We'll let him do the ceremony, if he will." I thought a moment and added, "Well, unless you have something better to do."

"I'd like to have my friend Lucy and my folks present when we get married. Can we wait until Wednesday?"

I grinned at her and laughed aloud. "Now we've set a new date, I don't mind at all. I just wonder what Bishop Long is going to say about this. He is definitely not one of my greatest admirers, you know."

"Honey, actually he likes you. His only reservation is you are not a member of the church and said you have no interest in joining. He believes members should only marry members." She kissed me again and stood up.

"Sounds incestuous to me," I grumped.

She smiled at me the sort of smile adults reserve for cantankerous kids. "You shouldn't say such things."

I knew my seeming irreverence bothered her. The problem was that I just couldn't make her understand how I pretty much went along with Tom Paine's view of God, a sort of, "When God tells me what is what, then I'll believe." I couldn't go along with all the hand me down tales told by long dead stone aged guys with their second hand "messages from God."

I wanted my facts provable and repeatable, or at least for me to experience them first hand more than once. There are too many organized religions, each blowing its own horn and claiming to be the True Faith. So far the only thing I knew for certain about the Old Testament was King Solomon's mines did exist back then and are still producing today, even after all those centuries.

The curious bump inside me got activated. "Hon, when I touched you I felt an intense tingling in my fingers. What did you feel?" I thought the best approach would be for me to start a mini investigation on my own.

My search for truth would be independent of whatever mumbo jumbo I thought her Bishop might come up with. I was for sure not interested in any divine intercession or whatever they came up with to explain what was happening. I wanted to know the truth, "Just the facts, ma'am," if it turned out to be "Godly," then okay, so be it. The thing was that, if possible, I wanted to know for certain what had happened.

Rachel described it all to me, what happened to her, what she experienced. "When you touched me, I felt a kind of a buzzing vibration. It seemed to flow all through me. It was like an electric current and it went through my neck, where it was hurt." Her face got a look of wonder on it.

Then she frowned, "And then it seemed to flow throughout my whole face. I saw some sort of a green glow for a moment. After that, all at once the pain was gone. I felt my forehead and face sort of tingle and I could breath freely without my inhaler for the first time ever. It was so strange, Forrest." She hastened to add, "I feel like it was right. I didn't have a sense of anything evil associated with it."

"Then you didn't sense anything, uh religious about whatever it was you felt." I looked directly at her and waited for her answer.

She paused and thought hard. I could see she wanted there to be at least a little bit of divinity mixed in with her personal miracle. After a long pause she answered simply, "No. It felt strange and somehow different from anything I ever experienced before. But, no, I didn't sense anything supernatural at all. But Forrest, remember I am not an authority on the supernatural."

"You know, I love you for your honesty, among all the many other reasons I have for loving you. A lot of the members of your church would have tried to add something extra, just to inflate their positions in your church and feed their own hungry egos. Not you, you stayed honest." I smiled, proud of my true love and gave her an affectionate hug.

She stood on tiptoes and grabbed my head and pulled it down to her upturned face and kissed me on the lips. Her tongue slipped between my lips for a moment then retreated. "I better call the bishop now," she told me in a husky voice. She hurried into the front room and did her calling. I felt the need to get married right then.

Then my thoughts returned to the weird stuff that had happened. The whole thing had started to get to me. Now if this were a movie out of the thirties, you know one of those old black and whites, an angel would come on camera at about this point. He (or she) would give a nice little canned speech and explain all those strange comings and goings and the rest of the movie would be anticlimactic, about the hero's destined tasks.

There were two things wrong with that scenario. First, this was a true living color real life drama with no celestial beings to "explain" things. Then second, I was definitely not a hero. All I wanted right then was for things to go back to the way they were. Another thing, besides the resentment I had toward all the recent events, I was scared. Since I had no blind faith to fall back on, I felt afraid and all at once helpless and alone. It's scary when a big chunk of your reality suddenly changes and you are confronted with the unknown. Imagine standing on the very edge of a cliff and suddenly the lights go out. That's what I felt like right then.

I have to admit though a small part of me loved the feeling of power I got when I thought of what "I" could do. After all, I brought things to life. But there was also the fear of what I didn't know. Perhaps, a part of me wondered, every time I touched a dead leaf or flower, it drained something out of me, sort of like the charge in a battery.

I wondered if there would come a time when I'd "lose my charge" and just keel over and die at some time in the future. No, don't laugh. When a person has no points of reference, his imagination will usually take over and run wild.

We spent the next four hours discussing what had happened and what she had experienced. "Forrest, I am thankful for how, when you touched me the pain went away. My neck hurt real bad. Then you touched me and I felt whatever it was spread through my face and all at once I could breath normally. Don't you have any idea at all how you did it? It, whatever it is, came from you, Forrest. I know this as sure as I'm sitting here. But I'm also goose bumpy over what happened. Maybe Bishop Long can explain it."

As if on cue, the doorbell sounded. I got up from the couch and hurried out to answer the door. When I opened the door I saw Bishop Long and Stake President Christiansen. They stood side-by-side and looked uncomfortable. Behind them were four old men in black suits and dark ties. They must be pretty high up in the church, I decided. They had to be because they knew who they were without any nametags to remind them. Okay, so I get a little smart assed at times. But I always got a kick out of how the Mormons, whenever they were out on church business, seemed to usually have name tags pinned on their chests.

"Ah, Brother Eden, ah, I believe Sister Nelson called and asked us to come out. She, ah, said you agreed to this, ah, visit." This was the first time I had ever seen Bishop Long unsure and at loss for words. Somehow it made him more human in my eyes and not as much the pompous fat frog as I usually thought him to be.

"Come in," I told them in a stiff formal manner. "Rachel is in the living room." I turned and led the way. I heard the front door close as the last person came through.

Rachel jumped up and hurried across the room to greet the people. "Oh, Bishop Long, I don't know where to begin. Forrest did it to me and I'm confused." Her mouth was half open, her eyelids were at half-mast and she breathed deep breaths through her half open mouth.

"Oh," Bishop Long's own mouth dropped open as he mistook her look of almost rapture for passion of a carnal nature. "Ah, he did what, precisely?" He looked at her, warily of the possible answer. It was obvious he wasn't at all certain he wanted to hear the answer.

"He healed me" she exclaimed.

"Ah," the bishop sighed with relief and then, a worried look on his face he asked,

"Cured you of what, precisely?" The wary look was back on his face again.

"Well, you saw the wrecked car out front?" He nodded. "I collided with a big van and I got hurt. I couldn't move my head because my neck was injured. Then Forrest touched me and I was healed." She looked at me as if I was a miracle worker. She added, "He also cured my sinuses."

"Oh?" Bishop Long's eyebrows raised, his eyes widened and he took a step back. "You, ah, actually experienced this yourself? He didn't hypnotize you?"

"Look," I told him and stopped for a moment. It made me angry when I felt he was trying to twist things around to give his precious church some advantage, "When Rachel wanted to invite you back out, I was reluctant to agree. I went along with her, not because of anything I think you can accomplish, but because I love her and want to please her. Now get this straight, I did not hypnotize her. I don't know how good a subject she would be, for one thing. And for another, I did not hypnotize those plants out in the back yard.

"I'm sorry, Forrest," he answered, "I wasn't trying to imply you had done anything dishonorable or questionable. However we also must examine all possibilities."

Slightly mollified, I nodded. "Well, just so we can get all those questions out of the way at once, I did nothing on my own. I heard a crash out front, I ran around the house and saw Rachel's car and the TV van had tangled. Rachel called to me and said her neck hurt and I touched her cheek with my fingertips. She and I both felt a tingling sensation and she said her neck stopped hurting. Then she said her sinuses were cleared. There you have it."

For the rest of the afternoon and up into the early evening I was interrogated. Questions were asked and I answered as best I could. The old men were general authorities in the Mormon Church. Which meant they were very important. They asked some pertinent and interesting questions such as whether I felt a "presence" of some sort when I did whatever it was. I answered all their questions, no matter how inane I though them to be.

The doorbell rang again and I excused myself to go answer it. A short, dumpy individual with a five o'clock shadow greeted me. "I'm Ralph and you're Forrest. You have a goofy name for a man but your merchandise is all right. He hefted a large suitcase and pushed past me into the house.

"Ah," I said.

I got no further before Ralph spotted the people from the Mormon Church. "Who are these guys? I told you I get first rights on everything." He glared a challenge at the old men.

"Who is this man?" Bishop Long demanded. He frowned and tried to assert himself. "We have no need of interference from outsiders here."

Right then it became obvious Ralph Pendergast was as abrasive in person as he was in his emails and letters to me. He walked up to the foot taller bishop and said, "Look fat boy. I am this man's biggest customer. So you keep out of my way. I have a newspaper, among my many other enterprises, to run and I don't need any amateurs interfering. This story needs to be developed properly and without hysteria. Who else you got here, witches and warlocks?"

Rachel is usually as mild as I am, but Ralph irritated her. She strode up to him and poked a finger in his chest. "You are more obnoxious in person than you are in your emails. Just shut up."

"Who do you think you are?" Ralph frowned at her. She frowned right back.

"I am the woman who is going to be Mrs. Forrest Eden in three days. I have a proprietary interest in whatever my husband to be is involved. Just shut up and watch and listen. Also, go gargle. Your breath stinks."