Read The Visitation for Free Online

this. It sounds like something that should go in the paper, but . . .” She flipped her palms upward, at a loss. “You’ve been there and back. Any perspective on all this?”
    “Are you skeptical?” I asked her.
    She smiled. “As always.”
    I gave a little shrug. “So am I.” I stole another glance across the room. “So I see a bit of tragedy.”
    “Tragedy?” She set her notepad in front of her and clicked her pen. “May I?”
    I nodded, then mentally reviewed the names, the faces: Sally Fordyce, Arnold Kowalski, Dee and her friends, this couple across the room. I stopped when my own name came up. “This kind of thing reminds me that it’s a crummy world out there, and there are things we have no easy answers for. When people are hurting, they start grasping. When the world hands you a pile of sorrow, you look beyond the world for some kind of relief, or at least an explanation. That’s what a lot of religious experience is all about.”
    Nancy scribbled down my thoughts. “You think I should say anything about the cloud sightings?”
    “If you write about any of this stuff, you may as well.”
    She smiled and nodded, understanding my point. “All the same thing in your book?”
    “I’m not trying to be derogatory.”
    “Sure.”
    “I just want to emphasize that these are very human events. People are involved, and people have wants, wishes, fantasies, earnest desires . . . and pain. Lots of pain. Given that, people can be very creative. They can hear things, see things—you follow me?”
    She nodded affirmatively. “Gotcha.”
    “Off the record . . .” I prompted, and she put down her pen. “I had a lady once tell me she saw Jesus standing right next to me while I was preaching. I knew another young fellow who claimed he saw a demon fly in his bedroom window. Also a little girl claimed to see an angel on top of her neighbor’s roof. People have told me all kinds of things. It’s nothing new.”
    She seemed a little nonplussed. “And you don’t believe them?”
    That question flustered me. I had to work a long time to come up with an answer. “It’s a tough call; it’s so subjective. You have to know the person. You almost have to be the person. The same thing applies here.”
    “So obviously, another witness to the same thing might help.”
    “Well, sure, if I saw . . .” I tripped a little trying to say this. “If I saw Jesus myself, then there’d be a little more, uh, credibility, I guess.”
    She picked up her pen again. “So, do you think this is going anywhere?”
    The question made me laugh. “In Antioch?”
    She winced and snickered. “Sorry.”
    “Well, to be fair, I think the people who’ve had these experiences are hoping it’ll lead to something, that somehow it’ll change things.
    You know this town. Somebody has to get restless eventually.”
    “But you don’t think it’ll lead anywhere or develop into anything?” I felt cynical, which saddened me a little. “I’ve seen it before.
    It’ll come, it’ll go.”
    She clicked her pen and put it away. “Thanks for your time, Travis. You too, Brett.”
    “Think you have a story?” I asked.
    She stood and had to think a moment before answering. “Well, it’s interesting. Maybe that’s reason enough to print it.”
    “Anything interesting is news in this town.”
    She laughed. “That it is. See you.”
    “Bye.”
    Brett Henchle watched her go out the front door, and then told me quietly, “You might be wrong, Travis.”
    I looked at him, expecting a punch line to reveal he was kidding. There was no punch line, only his troubled eyes boring into me. “What do you mean?”
    “I’m not in pain. I’m not religious. I’m not restless. I like my job, I like living here. I didn’t make up what I saw today.”
    That stopped me cold. Brett Henchle saw something? “You?”
    “You want to hear about it?” he asked in a traffic ticket tone of voice. He was challenging my cynicism, I could tell.
    I gathered my