Prophet (21 page)

It was time to begin anew. The light through the windows was perfect, just as he expected. He took brush in hand and stared at the blank canvas. If he could just capture the lostness, the drifting. Yes, the aimless, rootless drifting . . . like a lonely planet without a sun, or a balloon let go, or a sailing ship on an infinite plane of featureless water. Yeah, maybe so.

The brush moved over the canvas. Smallness. The smallness of one tiny dot, one tiny soul in the middle of . . . what? Confusion? Then confusion of an exquisite kind. Not chaos so much as voices, colors on all sides, all in conflict, pulling and flinging, rending, drawing the eyes
this way and that, a battle for the mind, for attention, for belief. The viewer should not rest, so his brush did not rest.

Before long he paused.
It’s coming out the same way again
, he thought.
I’m painting the same old stuff. I’m a little speck being swept along in endless, meaningless circles.

But what about his old man? Where did he fit into all this? Was he attached to anything solid, or was he drifting too? Were they both tumbling in this whirlpool together?

Carl stared at the canvas, waiting for something to awaken in his mind, for some image to leap into his consciousness, through his hand, and onto that blank sheet. Where would John Barrett fit into the scheme of this . . . this reality he was trying to capture? Not in this corner. That would be somewhere. No, not near the center either. Not yet anyway. Right now a void would capture him better, a vacuum somewhere behind the immediate face of the painting. But no. To capture his father, there would have to be some kind of presence, but it would be subtly hidden. So hidden it made him angry. Like life. Like meaning. Like destiny.

All hidden. Teasing him. He was hide-and-seeking with Truth.

He set the brush down. He was getting nowhere. Then his gaze was drawn to the small portable television sitting on the workbench. Grandpa had never had a television out here. Carl had borrowed it from his father’s room. This was his father’s television.

My father. My father’s television. My father is television.

He approached that little machine and stared back at the unblinking screen. It was like a shark’s eye, totally neutral, unfeeling, without a soul.

JOHN WAS SITTING
at his desk, tapping away at the computer console, editing the script for the Five Thirty, when he felt a gentle tap on his shoulder. It was Leslie Albright.

“Got a minute?”

“Sure.”

Leslie pulled a chair closer and sat down. She really was a good sort—a little brusque at times, but those deep brown eyes were kind eyes, always caring, never cold. “After yesterday I don’t know where to
start, but, John, we’ve got to talk this out.” She saw the script on his computer screen. “I won’t take long.”

“I’m sorry about yesterday. I had a terrible day. A terrible week.”

“Yeah, you did. You really did, and we should have remembered. We should have cut you some slack instead of ganging up on you. I’m sorry. Sorry for the pain we caused you.”

John didn’t mean to stare at her, and he didn’t mean to go so long without replying, but it just seemed so different, so rare to have anyone in this newsroom taking this tone, apologizing like this. “I . . . I appreciate that, Leslie. Thank you.”

“And, John, for whatever it’s worth, I didn’t know that was your father at the rally. It wasn’t even my idea to have him in the background.”

He smiled to reassure her. “I know. Tina and Rush put you there. I’ve been able to piece that together.”

“I’m sorry anyway. Maybe I should have just gone with my own better judgment. I should have just stayed up on the stairs. The view was better, I could’ve been heard better, I could have heard the director better . . .” She stopped and looked across the newsroom full of people doing the news. “But I couldn’t. I had to do what I was told.”

“I understand.”

“Yeah, I guess you’ve been there.”

“Sure. You’re out in the field, right in the middle of what’s going on, being told what’s happening by a producer sitting in a windowless room with his own ideas about reality, saying ‘paint it my way, this is the way it really is, show me this, not that.’”

She had to laugh. “Yeah, you’ve been there.” Then she asked, “So what would you have done?”

“The right thing.”

It was a joke. She knew it was a joke, but not the kind you laugh at.

“Well, that’s what I thought I was doing at the time.”

He tried to let it rest. “Well, don’t worry about it. It happens.”

She was still troubled. “But it’s more than just that . . . I don’t know. I don’t mind being the grunt, the soldier out in the field . . . But it seems like something’s controlling all of us, even the generals.” She was struggling with thoughts and searching for words to embody them. Finally she wagged her head and said, “It’s hard to put my finger on it, but . . . it’s kind of like we’ve all walked into the belly of a big monster
without knowing it, and now that we’re deep inside, we think we’re in control, but it’s swimming away with us, anywhere it wants.”

John just shrugged. “Mm . . . I suppose all of life is like that to a certain extent.”

“I suppose. Well, I won’t keep you any longer. Thanks for your time.”

“Thank you.”

She went back to her desk, back to work.

John’s phone rang. “John Barrett.”

“John, this is Ben. Come into my office for a minute.”

Well . . . John was kind of expecting this. Ben Oliver, news director, John’s boss, was calling him in for a meeting. On his way to Ben’s office John passed that little cartoon taped to the back of the news set, the one with the employee minus his gluteus maximus. He began to ponder what it would be like to anchor the news standing up.

Ben’s office was at the far end of the newsroom, just past the weather desk, adjacent to Tina Lewis’s office. It was not a big office, but Ben usually had it so cluttered with books, papers, videos, and memorabilia—the big, full-color photo of Chopper 6, the NewsSix helicopter, was a treasured prize—that it seemed quite small, more like a cave or a . . . a lion’s den? . . . than an office.

Ben was waiting for him. “Close the door and have a seat.” His voice sounded like an old, tired, radio commentator, low and resonant, somber, with just a little bit of gravel.

John closed the door. That meant this would not be any casual, shoot-the-breeze meeting.

Ben was a levelheaded, roll-with-the-punches sort of guy, but his crusty demeanor gave him a reputation as a hothead. Hence the cartoon taped to the wall. He was thin, his face etched with worry, and he chewed gum a lot to replace the pipe he was trying to give up.

As soon as the latch clicked into place, Ben started the meeting, sitting back in his chair, holding a pencil in his mouth as if it were that longed-for pipe, and not looking at John at all, but the opposite wall. “I got a call from this Cudzue, Harley Cudzue, president of the Gay Rights Action League. He wanted to talk to you, but I told him he’d come to the right place, the top, and that his concerns would carry a lot more weight with me, that I’d pass his concerns along in no uncertain
terms to the parties responsible, that I would take care of the whole thing, that I would straighten you out and chew your everlovin’ butt off.”

John was not one to cower. “What can I say, Ben? We made a mistake, and that’s all there is to it. Sorry.”

Now Ben swiveled in his chair and looked at him. “I also got a call from the Catholics. They invited us to come out and get some pictures of the damage to their church before they clean it all up, since we didn’t seem to notice it the first time. They were rather pushy about the invitation.”

John had no comment. He just nodded his head a little, so Ben would know he was listening.

Ben kept going. “I asked Cudzue, if he didn’t have three hundred sexual encounters in the last year, then how many did he have, and he hung up on me.” He saw the questioning look on John’s face and responded, “Well, we said something about him; I was getting his response for the record.” Ben swiveled back toward his desk and chuckled quietly. “He’s had plenty, we know that much. One of his lovers works upstairs in Accounting right now. But let’s get to the agenda here. I talked to Rush about this . . .”

“Oh boy . . .”

Ben looked directly at him. “Hey, he doesn’t blame you. Yeah, he gets hot when you foul up on his show, and even if he thinks you’re right he won’t tell you to your face. But he knows what happened, what we didn’t say, and I told him what I’m going to tell you right now: that you were right in being upset. Your question was a dumb move. I took the flak this time, so you owe me one, but you were right. We didn’t handle the story well. We weren’t fair to either side.

“But now that I’ve patted you on the back I’m going to whip you on the butt. We’ll keep it balanced that way. I’m going to tell you to watch yourself and be careful. ‘News’ is a term we all play with, and we all know it. We do have room, Barrett, slack. We can make choices about what we see and what we say about it, and none of us wants more trouble than our pockets can afford. Private sex lives we don’t talk about. That’s Cudzue’s business, that’s his sex partners’ business. Lawbreaking, vandalism, violence, destruction of property we do talk about, but with our eyes open to cover our behinds.”

John asked, “So you’re not going to send a cameraman out there to video the damage to the church?”

Ben shook his head. “That’s what we should have done, but now we’ll just have to let it cool off. Maybe next time. The train’s left—it isn’t news anymore. But I told Erica to be on the lookout for something nice to say about Catholics, and I think she’s already found something nice to cover about gays, something about the Gay Men’s Chorus doing an AIDS benefit. So we’ll do some good after we’ve done some bad and hopefully come out objective on this thing.”

“Sounds good to me.”

“All right then.”

John stood to leave.

“Oh, one more thing,” said Ben. “I don’t like talking to people like Harley Cudzue. So you foul up again and don’t clear a question first,
you’re
gonna to talk to ’em!”

John smiled. This was Ben’s idea of a slap on the wrist. “It’s a deal.”

“Otherwise you’re doing fine.”

“Thanks.”

CARL HAD HIS
easel ready. He figured he’d start with pencil, just get the portrait sketched out. He knew the subject would be moving, changing rapidly, so a lot of the interpretation, the capturing of the face and the soul behind it, would be up to him.

The clock hanging from the hook above the workbench indicated 5:30. He clicked on the television, and the cold, gray eye awoke, beginning to flicker and flash colors into the room.

Then Carl heard music—quick, compelling rhythms. There was the aerial shot of The City: traffic rushing back and forth, ferries pulling out from the dock.

And there was the voice: “This is Channel 6, The City’s Premier News and Information Station, your number one source for up-to-the-minute news.”

Pictures, fast pictures. It was all the same as yesterday.

The voice said, “And now, from the NewsSix newsroom, NewsSix at Five Thirty, with John Barrett . . .”

Carl was ready. John Barrett appeared on the screen for one second.

And then he was gone, chased away by images of Ali Downs, Bing Dingham, and Hal Rosen.

Well, wait. He’ll be back.

Voice: “The NewsSix News Team. NewsSix at Five Thirty!” And there was his father, sitting next to Ali Downs.

Carl held his pencil to the canvas. This was that opening two-shot again. John Barrett’s face was pretty small on the screen right now.

“A train derailment near Mendleston . . .” John Barrett was saying.

Carl sketched a few lines. “Metro bus drivers are growing concerned over muggings and robberies on Metro buses . . .” said Ali Downs.

Video: Metro buses pulling out of the garage.

Carl sketched some more, at least from memory, from initial impression. He would capture John Barrett somehow, even if it was in tiny, fleeting pieces, moments, glimpses, hints. Somehow the puzzle would fall together.