Free The Chair by James L. Rubart Page B

cloak, and all who touched it were healed.”
    Mark 5:27–29: “When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, ‘If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.’ Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.”
    Corin leaned back and smiled. Handkerchiefs, aprons, and clothes. Why not chairs? Especially one constructed by Christ.
    And it sat in his store smack-dab in the middle of the picture window.
    Not good.
    When he got to the store he would move it to the hidden vault at the back of his store.
    What next? He needed to talk to someone who knew more than Tori. But who? Corin strolled into his kitchen, stuck two pieces of eight-grain bread into the toaster, and brainstormed. Before the toast popped up he had an answer.
    After slathering both pieces with a robust amount of strawberry jam and pouring himself a glass of nonfat milk, he settled back onto his couch, Googled churches, and dialed the first one listed.
    “Hello, Cold Canyon Community Church.” A woman with voice two ticks beyond perky answered.
    “My name is Corin Roscoe and I’d like to talk to someone about . . .”—what should he say, ‘I found a magical chair that might be healing people?’—“a possible religious relic.”
    “What is it?” The perkiness dialed down four pegs.
    “A chair. Very old.”
    “Have you talked to an antiques dealer?”
    Corin sighed. “I am an antiques dealer.”
    “So why are you calling a church?”
    “I think it might be tied into Christianity.”
    “I see.” All perkiness was gone. “And how is that?”
    “The person who gave it to me said it was made by Christ.”
    The receptionist sniffed out a laugh. “That must be a very old chair.”
    “It is.”
    “She told you it was made by Jesus?”
    “She didn’t right out and say it. But she strongly implied it.”
    “I see.”
    The woman didn’t offer anything else.
    Corin rubbed his eyes. “Would I be able to talk to someone about it?”
    “What would you like to know?”
    “If there’s . . .” Corin hesitated. What did he want to know? If it was real? If it had really healed Brittan? “Did you see the story in the paper the other day about the kid who was healed of his asthma?”
    “Yes.”
    “The chair he sat in was mine.”
    “I see.” The woman again offered nothing more.
    Corin shifted the phone to his other ear. “I was hoping to talk to someone who knows about religious artifacts . . . someone who might be able to explain if this whole sitting-in-the-chair thing and him getting healed is a coincidence or if some kind of miracle really happened.”
    The line buzzed for ten seconds.
    “I’ll tell you what,” she finally said. “If you’d like to give me your name and number, I’ll find out who the best person is to talk to and have him give you a call back. Will that work?”
    “Fine.” Corin gave her the information, hung up, and stared at his cell phone. No one would be calling back.
    He dialed two more churches and had the same conversation.
    Corin didn’t blame them. It sounded like something out of The Amazing Spider-Man. Who was he kidding? He should probably just stick it on the floor with a hefty price tag, write up copy offering up the idea it was made by Christ, and make some coin.
    Who could he talk to about it if not someone from a church? Tori he’d already dismissed, he didn’t have any friends who were religious, and the lady who gave it to him hadn’t followed up on her promise to stay in touch.
    A moment later Corin laughed. He knew exactly who to talk to about it. Maybe not someone who knew about ancient healing chairs, but definitely someone he could probably talk into experimenting on: A. C.
    A. C. rode with him on all his extreme adventures. Why wouldn’t he go on this one? When A. C. dropped off that rolltop desk this afternoon, Corin would get his friend to go for a little ride in the