"Miracles happen every day," he said. He was the guy who walked around the office with a large wooden cross necklace over his shirt and tie, not someone I would normally be having discussions with. A guy who probably would have tied on his back and dragged around the office a human-size cross if he could get away with it. But it was probably against company protocol and, at least, the company casual dress code. (Sandals were, for instance, specifically excluded in that code).

"They do?" I sipped my machine poured coffee in a paper cup at our table in the company "cafeteria," the one out of which they had taken any real food and left us with day-old sandwiches and pudding cups in vending machines. "Do you have any examples?"

"Of course I do," he said, fingering his cup filled with a hot chocolate-like substance, but without a quick response, looking around the large, mostly vacant room filled with empty tables, as if looking for an answer in that vast emptiness.

"Miracles," he said, still searching the room. "There was that girl, just the other day, on the news. In a coma for months, she was. They had no hope at all for her. Then, just like that, woke up."

"Hmmm," I said, choking on another sip of the insipid cooling drink in my cup.

He was smiling at me, like I should take that as proof.

I smiled back at him. "What about the people dying horrible deaths in all these wars our country is involved in every day, the innocent women and children, the Covid, AIDs and Ebola victims, the people in Africa with their arms chopped off, the terrorist beheadings, domestic violence, the abuse of innocent women and children . . . the Holocaust, for Godsakes! Where were your miracles then, where are they now?"

His smile didn't fade. He answered calmly, confidently, almost cockily, "God has His reasons, His plans for everything that happens and for everyone."

"The Holocaust? There was a plan for that?"

"Ours is not to question," he said, still smiling.

"Of course not. How can you question what seems to have no answer?"

"Ahh, but you're wrong there. There's no way we, with our limited scope, can know what His plan entails. We, in our mortal lives. We've just got to have faith."

"Ha! Faith! Okay." I was getting angry, crumpling my now empty cup, and standing up to leave. "Damn, John, some people will buy just about anything. I guess you're one of those."

He was still smiling at me, shaking his head, as I turned around and walked away.

* * *

It stuck in my craw what he said that day, and through the evening, as I sat down to dinner with my wife, Dena. I told her about our conversation.

"You can't talk to some people, people like that," she said. "There's no telling them anything." She smiled at me, put her hand on mine across the table, as I continued to fume.

* * *

John had gotten hit by a car after work in a crosswalk by the parking garage and both his legs had been broken. The driver had gotten away, just drove off without a trace, no license plate noted by the few people who were present, no description of the car given. Nor had John gotten a look-he'd been hit from behind.

What had been God's unspoken plan for this? I wondered.

A couple days later a few of us - Darrell, Pete, Joe, and I - drove to the hospital to see him. The bottom half of John's body was in a full cast. He was sitting up in bed on top of the blankets, watching television when we got there. He didn't look at us when we walked into the room.

"Hey," Darrell said. "Sup, John?"

He looked down from the television propped to the wall then, and slowly focused on us. He wasn't smiling, had a blank look on his face. A vase with some bright flowers and a couple of greeting cards set on the rolling table at his bedside. No bible, though and, gone was the everpresent wooden cross on his chest. There was no sign of it anywhere.

And…I was just itching to ask…

"So, how you doin', buddy?" Joe said. "That was a bad break…."

I looked at Joe, catching the poor pun.

"Bad two," I said, under my breath.

"Who let you in here?" John said, staring bullets at us.

We didn't move, stopped speaking.

"Who?" Then he started screaming "Nurse! Nurse!"

After the nurse arrived - a large black woman dressed in white with a shock of pink hair-we were escorted out of John's room for getting him agitated.

Another week later word went around that he'd quit the company, and we didn't see him back on the premises again. And that would be the end of the story. Not really sure what happened to John, but for….

A year later I see him in front of a bus stop with a bible in his hand. He is talking loudly to the crowd, quoting lines from the book, dressed all in black, threatening everyone that passes, that scoffs and laughs, with "You sinners are all going to hell if you don't heed His Word!" He is pacing back and forth, bible opened in front of him, his hair shaggy, his beard shaggier, but otherwise seemingly fully recovered, physically, at least, from the accident. I stop in front of him, a foot away maybe. There is an awful reek coming off him, like he hasn't bathed in a week. I wait until he turns around to look at me, waiting for that glimmer of recognition, but, when he does turn, he looks past me, through me, his eyes sort of glazed over, not a hint that he knows who I am anymore. "Hell," he says in almost a whisper, his eyes wide. "You're going to hell." I'm stunned for a moment, don't know what to say, then, hand shaking slightly, reach for my wallet and pull out a dollar, place it in the red Folger's coffee can on the ground next to him. "Bless you, brother," he says. I smile, don't say a thing, then move on, head back to my sanctuary - the safe anonymity of my office, my desk, the closed door - where I can hide behind my bright glowing computer screen.

---

Mitchell Waldman's fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. He is also the author of the short story collections BROTHERS, FATHERS, AND OTHER STRANGERS and PETTY OFFENSES AND CRIMES OF THE HEART, as well as the novel A FACE IN THE MOON. His new novel THE VISITOR will be coming soon from All Things That Matter Press. Mitchell lives in Rochester, New York with his partner, Diana May-Waldman, author of the poetry collection A WOMAN'S SONG. For more information on their writings, see their website at http://mitchwaldman.homestead.com.