“Dadda,” he whispered. “I am falling, Dadda.”
The old familiar voice from so many years remained silent. Funny how he had come home from the church just two days ago, full of light after begging forgiveness, and yet already the light was gone.
On Sunday he'd decided with simple clarity that watching the television was doing bad things to his spirit. Maybe he should have smashed the glass box then. There was no other way to shut it off since the witch had stolen the knob.
But he hadn't. Then later at night he'd grown bored with the silence and taken the pillow off his ears, just to hear. An hour later he was sitting in bed laughing at the behavior of a crazy fox chasing a chicken. And an hour after that he was turning the dial to find other pictures. Not only the drawn kind either. For the first time in his life he watched in stunned disbelief as a young woman kissed a young man on his mouth. They were not united in marriage. He thought of Adam and Eve walking naked through the garden, but it felt different. It felt dark. And it also felt exciting.
Caleb lay still on the cot and blinked in the darkness. “Dadda, please what's happening to me?”
But he knew what was happening to him. At least he knew a little bit. He closed his eyes and cried himself back to sleep.
“Wake up, son.”
Caleb heard the distant voice twice before opening his eyes.
The light was on and a man sat on the edge of his bed. It was the doctor.
He smiled. “You were tired, I see.”
Caleb blinked the sleep from his eyes and pushed himself to his elbows.
“Don't get up.”
Caleb lay back. The doctor was tall and had a mustache like the Greek Father. He had bags under his eyes too. He put his palm on Caleb's cheek, then pulled an instrument from his pocket and touched the shiny cold end to his chest and stomach.
“Stomach's still going to war. How are you feeling?”
“My whole body hurts.” It was the truth: a dull pain ran through his whole body, and he thought it was worse than yesterday.
The doctor smiled. “Well, the flu will do that.” He reached for the floor and put a tray of food on the bed. “I brought you some chicken soup and crackers. When you're done, take both tablets with the water,” he said, pointing to two white pills.
Then he stood and walked to the door. “I'll leave the light on. See you tonight.” He left.
The soup tasted very good, and it seemed to soothe the pain in his stomach. He drank the last drop, finished the last of the crackers, and took the pills with the water. But a half-hour later the pain in his stomach began to flare up so badly that he couldn't straighten his legs. He used the toilet in the corner, hoping that would help, but it didn't.
He broke out in a cold sweat. What if there was something very wrong with his body? What if he was dying? Oh, dear God, don't let me die!
If God was talking, Caleb couldn't hear him.
He thought about going out and finding the doctor, but the thought of the witch catching him out of the room effectively pushed the idea from his mind. Instead he curled up very tight and began to rock. He sang an old Ge'ez song about the goodness of God.
When Caleb woke again the room was dark. Someone had turned off the light. So it was the next night?
He tried to sit up. Pain shot through his head and he dropped back, moaning. His gut throbbed and his bones felt on fire.
You're dying, Caleb.
The truth of the statement struck him as odd. It was true, though. Somehow he was dying, and he was dying all alone. Dr. Thompson was dying over by the ocean, but not alone.
Caleb began to cry. This was all happening because he had let the black brine into his cup of olive oil. He'd let some of the pure oil spill out and had poured in some black brine. Or maybe a whole bunch of black brine.
I beg you for your mercy, Father. I have sinned and fallen away and I beg you to forgive me.
He sobbed and prayed it again, and then again. Not because he doubted that God had heard him, but because he wanted to. It was becoming his mantra, this prayer. He'd prayed it at the church and several times before that.
He had to urinate, but his stomach hurt so bad that he could not climb from bed. He was dying.
Step into the kingdom, Caleb
. Dadda's old voice ran through his memory.
How?
Do you desire to?
Yes.
Have you confessed?
Yes. I confess. I do confess!
Then surrender. You will give yourself back to your Father?
Yes. Yes, I do. I will do anything, Father.
Then believe.
Believe?
Of course he knew what belief was. It was the faith that had lived in his mind every hour of his life. The simple knowledge that the kingdom of God was here for the discovering, just behind the skin of this world. That in the kingdom the rules were different. He had known so without doubt. Until just these last couple days, of course. Now the truth of it felt distant.
A small sputter of light lit his mind and then faded.
He blinked. Distant but not gone. He smiled and his heart surged with comfort.
“I believe,” he said aloud. “Of course I believe. I have always believed.”
The light in his mind's eye stuttered again. And then again.
He rolled to his back, wide-eyed. “Yes! I do believe! I really do believe!”
Suddenly the world turned white and his heart began to float. It felt like that anyway, like he was suddenly floating off the bed, when he knew very well that he was lying on the mattress.
He rolled onto his stomach and began to sob, but this time with joy.
My Father, forgive me. You are so tender and kind; I don't deserve your love
.
The light lapped at his mind and spread warmth through his bones. He lay for a long time just resting in the light. He was home again, and now that he thought about it, he no longer really cared if he died. In fact, it would be lovely to see Dadda again.
It wasn't until a couple of hours later that he decided dying might not be the best thing right now. His stomach still hurt very badly. But that wasn't a problem now, was it?
No, it wasn't.
He touched his belly and asked God to take away the pain. Like a vapor rising into the air, the pain vanished.
Caleb smiled. Yes, that was really no problem at all.
Thank you, Father. Thank you
.
A light ignited in Caleb's mind and he gasped.
He was seeing the woman again. The one who looked so familiar from his vision. The woman was looking at him with wide eyes. Caleb watched in horror as again a very large bird swooped from the sky toward the woman. Fire blasted from its beak and its mouth gaped wide. It was going to eat the woman! It was, it was!
But then the vision vanished.
Day 34
T
HEY WERE TWO WEEKS AWAY FROM THE ELECTION
and all of the national polls had them twenty points up in the race. It was an unstoppable tide, and Crandal was swimming in it.
The modified DC-9 was over St. Louis on its way to Washington when Roberts answered the phone call that changed the mood of the morning.
It was Banks. Did they know that the kid had another meeting last night? Roberts jerked in his seat and politely excused himself from the entourage who were chatting amiably with Crandal. He slid into the last row.
“What do you mean? What meeting? He was practically dead!”
“Not unless you call practically dead attending a private party with a bunch of rich snots and dazzling them with healing tricks,” Banks said. “From what I hear he made a bundle too.”
“Caleb did this? Last night? She said he was practically dead. Why didn't she call?”
“Because she's an amateur, Roberts. For an extra fifty I'll do her too.” Banks chuckled. “Actually she said that a doctor took the kid off her hands. She said she thinks the kid healed himself. Can you get a load of that?”
This was impossible! Roberts glanced up the aisle where Crandal's booming voice laughed loudly.
“He said some things,” Banks said.
Roberts spun to the window. “What?!”
“Don't worry. It was only a handful of people without media. But she said that he talked about a bird eating a woman, and he thought it might have something to do with Crandal. The people there weren't laughing.”
“Okay, listen, I want you to go to the orphanage and end him. This is crazy. Just go in there and kill him!”
“No,” Banks shot back. “It's too risky. I've got my cover set at the Old Theater. It's big, it's public, and I've got the bases covered. Don't overreact here.”
“Overreact? You've been telling me you've got things covered for two weeks now! Now he's talking and you're telling me not to overreact? My head's on the line here.”
“And mine's not? I told you, there were no cameras.”
“Where's the kid now?”
“He's back in her care.”
“And she's back on the poison.”
“I told her to double it again. He's getting enough to turn him purple by tomorrow night.”
“The next meeting?”
“Yup. And his last. No calls this time, Roberts. I'm not going through this again. If he walks onstage, I take him.”
“And there's no way to take him before?”
“There's reasons why I've made it this far, and I'm not messing with those reasons. The Old Theater's all set.”
Roberts took a deep breath and thought about not telling Crandal.
“Don't worry, Roberts. I've seen my share, and I don't see how this turns bad. By eight o'clock tomorrow this deal's done. Get some rest.”
“I hope you're right, Banks.”
His phone went dead.
Jason sat with Leiah in the coffee shop at four on Friday afternoon, only half interested in Donna's latest interview with Nikolous on national television. The Greek was saying nothing new, and Donna was asking the same old questions. They only skirted the real facts, and the real facts were these.
An estimated twenty-three million people watched Caleb's failed attempt at healing the small child in leg braces on Tuesday night. It was by all accounts a pathetic scene. Caleb's collapse had the spinsters talking late into the night. The religious folk took it the hardest. Understanding why a person with psychic power might fail was easy enough. A whole range of factors could be accounted for. Fatigue, stress, even something as simple as a bad hair day. But trying to explain why God could falter so dramatically had more than a few pundits stuttering.
The event was the boy's sixth nationally televised appearance, not a career by any stretch. But the previous five consecutive events brimmed with stunning power had already made believers out of half the world. They could not agree on exactly
what
they believedâevery religion had their own take on the boy, and within each religion there were a half-dozen major positions on the phenomenon. But for the most part, everybody agreed that Caleb's power was undeniable. He had become an instant icon for their particular belief system.
During the five events, the boy had not spoken very much, except through Leiah on one occasion, and she refused to comment on camera. It was clear by what he did say that Caleb was a devout follower of Christ, but this didn't deter the Hindus or the New Agers or even the Muslims. He was a ten-year-old child who had been raised Christian; of course he would sound Christian. That did not mean Jesus Christ was God alone, as most Christians claimed. It only meant that Caleb was exceptionally gifted by God, whoever God was.
In a strange way the boy had brought unity rather than division among the people of faith. Unity and hope. God, whoever he was, did care and was reaching out to humanity.
Of course, you always had your kooks, in this case those who simply didn't believeâthe
I'm-an-atheist-despite-the-facts
crowd. They still hung on to the absurd notion that it was all somehow a conspiracy to reinvent God, the sham of all shams. And if you looked real close, you would find wires and rubber legs and all sorts of devices that made what they all saw on television possible.
In any event, Caleb's failure during that sixth meeting on Tuesday night sent ripples throughout the world. It was either
See, I told you so,
or somber stares of disbelief.
Which was why when Mary Sue Elsworth stood before the cameras on Friday morning and told the world that she'd been healed by young Caleb at a private dinner Thursday night, the media went into a feeding frenzy. Mary Sue was a well-known Hollywood actress who'd broken her leg in a Sunday skiing accident, and she stood free as a bird. She even did a little jig for the cameras. And she wasn't the only one; there were about a hundred people there, and as far as she knew, they all got healed.
It wasn't surprising that when three thousand tickets for a Saturday-night event went on sale for a thousand dollars each that afternoon, they were sold out within the hour.
Caleb was back.
But none of them knew what Jason and Leiah both knew as they silently watched the madness on television: Caleb's gut-ache was back as well.
Leiah turned to Jason, shaking her head. “They don't know how to lighten up, do they?”
“If he fails again, they'll lighten up. Although I'm not sure that would do us any good.”
“Well, it can't go on forever.”
“You're right, but I'm having trouble seeing how it ends. It looks more and more like a no-win scenario.”
“What do you mean? Eventually we need to get Caleb out of this mess. That's a win scenario.”
Jason glanced back at the television, where Donna had just concluded an exclusive, and then turned back to Leiah. “Maybe. But not if someone really is still trying to harm him. Especially if it's NSA related. Let's say all this goes away and Caleb becomes just another ordinary child. Chances are they'll still ship him back to Ethiopia, and as far as we know his life is endangered there.”