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was hunting up government figures on our increased national obesity problem when word of the miracle came through.
    You know how people are always asking “Where were you when …?” When JFK died, when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. Well, to tell you the truth, I was two years old when Oswald killed Kennedy, and I was still in single digits when Armstrong walked on the moon, but I will always remember sitting at my desk in the alcove just to the left of the main altar when news of the Miracle at Miller’s Landing came to me. Initially I was thrilled, as we all were, and I praised God for His power and His compassion.
    Oh, I suppose we’d all read and heard about such things happening, but never in or even near our Miller’s Landing. Helen had been officially dead for two hours and seventeen minutes. Usually, when someone’s revived after that long, their brain is gone because it’s been starved of oxygen, but every now and then they come back just fine, more often from freezing or drowning than any other kind of fatal (or should I say temporarily fatal?) accident.
    Since no one knew anything about Helen, we didn’t know what religion she belonged to, but everyone seemed sure she’d want to thank God for reviving her, and maybe get some counseling from a member of her church, so the word went out to me—I’m the local Baptist minister—as well as to Father Patrick McNamara and Rabbi Milt Weiss, my friendly rivals for our citizens’ souls. I couldn’t find any record of her, not only in Miller’s Landing, but any nearby communities. I wondered if Patrick or Milt were having any better luck.
    I remember that I was having lunch over at Irma’s, like I always do on Tuesdays, when she serves up that wonderful tomato soup, and in came Patrick McNamara. He spotted me and walked over.
    “Hi, Pete,” he said. “Mind if I sit down?”
    “It’s a free country. Until Irma brings the check, anyway.”
    He chuckled at that. “We missed you on the links yesterday morning.”
    “Wedding arrangements. Billy Forrest and Lois O’Grady.”
    “Hey,” he said with a smile. “That’s half mine.”
    “You’re too late,” I said, returning his smile. “She’s converting.”
    “Okay, you win this one,” he said. “But I’ll get mine back.” And I knew he meant next month’s Cain-Connors wedding. “By the way, have you heard about this drowned woman, this Helen someone-or-other?”
    “Yeah,” I said. “I thought I’d stop by after lunch and see if I could do anything for her.”
    “Oh. She’s a Baptist?”
    I shrugged. “I have no idea what she is, but I thought at least I’d make myself available to her.”
    “I was thinking the same thing. And just in case she is a Catholic, I’ll make arrangements to take her confession right there.”
    “It’s got to be more meaningful when you’re mostly dead than when you’re mostly not.”
    He chuckled. “Precisely.”
    I looked out the window. “I wonder where Milt is?”
    “Are you supposed to be having lunch with him?”
    “No, we usually meet over at Herbie’s fish place on Thursdays,” I answered. “But he’s got a smaller congregation than you or me, so I figured he’d be Johnny-on-the-Spot to pick up another member.”
    Patrick laughed. “He won’t find one here . If Lois O’Grady changes her mind, she’s mine .”
    “No,” I agreed. “I meant that if he’s off to see Helen Somebody, he’s got to walk right past Irma’s front window to get to the hospital.”
    I finished my pie and coffee, treated Patrick to a coffee as well, and after I had paid Irma we got up, walked out into the sunlight, and strolled the two blocks to the hospital.
    “Well, son of a gun!” said Patrick. “Look who’s here. What a surprise!”
    “I love you, too, Patrick,” laughed Milt Weiss, who stood at the registration desk. “Hi, Pete.”
    “I didn’t see you walk past Irma’s,” I said.
    “I drove. And since I have a direct line to God, let