The Fancy Dancer

were as few and as worthless as Vidal’s and Patti Ann’s. We didn’t talk much, and Patti Ann jounced the baby on her lap.
    Suddenly the desk clerk was bawling through the door, ‘Passengers for Missoula!”
    We wrestled the luggage out through the revolving door of the hotel. The bus stood roaring by the curb, spewing fumes into the clean fall air. In the distance, above the yellowing trees and the dark red roof of the railroad station, the mountains lay in a blue haze— there must be a forest fire somewhere. The mountains had that indigo look they get in fall, when the new growth in the timber has ripened off. A few people were getting off the bus. A young woman waiting on the sidewalk gave a little scream of joy and hugged an old woman. A few people were getting on.
    The bus driver opened the luggage compartment in the side of the bus and showed Vidal where to stow their stuff. There was some discussion abut the dogs, but since Vidal had ropes around their necks, the driver said it was okay.
    Then Vidal turned to me. Our eyes met. Here it was: the last lie—this public good-bye scene with nothing to say to each other and no hugging allowed.
    “Well,” he said, “you’ve got our new phone number. Give me a call from wherever you land.” He sounded hoarse.
    “I’ll do that,” I said.
    He smiled. “So long.” The dogs strained at their rope leashes.
    “Go with God,” I said. My own voice sounded as if I was coming down with a cold. I kissed Patti Ann on the cheek. “You too, honey.”
    “Good-bye,” said Patti Ann, fixing me with her strange blue eyes.
    “Come on, folks,” said the driver. “All aboard. We re late enough.”
    Vidal helped Patti Ann up the steps, then followed her up with the dogs. The last thing I saw was the word ME on the back of his jacket. Through the windows and the heads of passengers, I could see them inside, making their way back to their seats.
    The bus door slammed shut. The bus pulled away from the curb, waited at the hght where I’d waited that night I saw Vidal fighting in the alley. Then it turned out on Main Street with a lumbering metal dignity, and disappeared around the corner column of the City Hall.
    I could hear the roar of its engine dying away along the street. In a few more minutes it would be out on the Interstate, hurtling along at sixty miles an hour. The scorched pastures and the cutover hayfields would whip past the windows.
    I had been sure that I would cry, but I didn’t. There was nothing left inside of me but a great emptiness— as empty and windswept as that Cottonwood countryside along the highway.
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    Getting into the Triumph, I drove back to St Mary’s.
    Instead of going to the rectory, my feet carried me into the church, almost from force of habit.
    The church was empty. Father Vance had said his own low mass, and would now be eating breakfast. Mrs. Bircher had put two new potted ferns on the altar, because the ivies that’d been there all summer had gotten some kind of mite on them. In the bright fall sunshine, the stained-glass windows threw a blaze of color over the empty oak pews. A couple of candles flickered in front of Mary.
    I walked slowly down the aisle.
    Suddenly, out of nowhere, a sweet peace came pouring into my empty heart. It came so unpre-dictably and so fully that I knew right away what it was. I’d never been one for big religious experiences, for the great lights and illuminations that spiritual writers wrote of—never thought of myself as seeking after them. These were more for people like Doric. And yet now, at this unlikely moment of my life, I found myself in the grip of one.
    That breath of divine love came gently and coolly to my fevered flesh and soul. It blew away the emptiness and the aloneness like the white fluff from a last dandelion on some Cottonwood lawn. Loving presences crowded around me, holding me, speaking to me—-thousands of them. Not only Our Lord and His blessed Mother, but the saints and the souls of the departed, and the souls of those still living and those still unborn. They jostled me, whispering: Father, will you serve?
    I sank on my knees at the altar rail. I felt an unutterable sense of oneness with that godly love, that Lover, all those celestial lovers, who accepted me as I was and raised all my senses to a higher order, purifying them and turning them to His purposes. All the shocks and anxieties of that long summer in a small town had finally emptied out all my fears,