Strangers

mean it."
        "I know you do. God help you, my friend, I know you do."
        
        Reno, Nevada.
        A cloud saved Zeb Lomack ' It drifted across the moon before the grip of the lunar obsession had completely reclaimed him. With the empyreal lantern briefly dimmed, Zebediah abruptly became aware that he was standing coatless in the freezing December night, gaping up at the sky, mesmerized by moonbeams. If the cloud had not broken the trance, he might have stood there until the object of his grim fascination had descended past the horizon. Then, having sunk back into his lunacy, he might have returned to one of the rooms papered with the ancient god-face that the Greeks called Cynthia, that the Romans called Diana, there to lie in a stupor until, days hence, he had starved to death.
        Reprieved, he let out a wretched cry and ran to the house. He slipped and fell in the snow, fell again on the porch steps, but immediately scrambled up, desperately seeking the safety of the indoors, where the face of the moon could not work its charms on him. But of course there was no safety inside, either. Though he closed his eyes and began at once to tear blindly at the moon pictures, ripping them from the kitchen walls and casting them on the garbage-covered floor, he began to succumb to his obsession yet again. Eyes tightly shut, he could not see the cratered images, but he could feel them. He could feel the pale light of a hundred moons upon his face, and he could feel the roundness of the moons in his hands as he tore them off the wall, which was crazy because they were only pictures that could not produce light or warmth and could not convey by touch the roundness of the lunar globe, yet he nevertheless felt those things strongly. He opened his eyes and was instantly captured by the familiar celestial body.
        Just like my dad. Asylum-bound.
        Like a distant crackle of lightning, that thought flickered through Zeb Lomack's rapidly dimming mind. It jolted him and allowed him to recover just long enough to turn away from the living room door and fling himself toward the kitchen table, where the loaded shotgun waited.
        
        Chicago, Illinois.
        Father Stefan Wycazik, descendant of strong-willed Poles, rescuer of troubled priests, was not accustomed to failure, and he did not handle it well. "But after everything I've told you, how can you still not believe?" he demanded.
        Brendan Cronin said, "Father Stefan, I'm sorry. But I simply don't feel any stronger about the existence of God than I did yesterday."
        They were in a bedroom on the second floor of Brendan's parents' gingersnap brick house in the Irish neighborhood called Bridgeport, where the young priest was spending the holiday according to Father Wycazik's orders, issued yesterday after the Uptown shootout. Brendan, dressed in gray slacks and a white shirt, was sitting on the edge of a double bed that was covered by a worn, yellow chenille spread. Stefan, choosing to feel needled by his curate's stubbornness, moved constantly around the room from dresser to highboy to window to bed to dresser again, as if trying to avoid the prickling pain of his failure.
        "Tonight," Father Wycazik said, "I met an\atheist who was half-converted by Tolk's incredible recovery. But you're unimpressed."
        "I'm happy for Dr. Sonneford," Brendan said mildly, "but his renewed belief doesn't rekindle my own."
        The curate's refusal to be properly impressed by recent miraculous events was not the only thing that irritated Father Wycazik. The young priest's pacific demeanor was also bothersome. If he could not find the will to believe in God again, then it seemed he should at least be disheartened and downcast by his continued lack of faith. Instead, Brendan appeared untroubled by his miserable spiritual condition, which was quite different from his attitude when Father Wycazik had seen him last. He had changed dramatically; for reasons that were not at all clear, a great peace seemed to have settled over Brendan.
        Still determinedly pressing his argument, Stefan said, "It was you, Brendan, who cured Emmy Halbourg and healed Winton Tolk. It was you, through the power of those stigmata on your hands. Stigmata that God visited upon you as a sign."
        Brendan looked at his palms, now unmarked. "I believe… somehow I did heal Emmy and Winton. But it wasn't God acting through me."
        "Who else