Prophet (28 page)

“Yeah. Yes, please.”

She went into the kitchen—it was divided from the dining room by a counter and some stools—and started making the sandwich. It was a special picture, her standing there at the counter, slicing the homemade bread with that same bread knife and dropping it into that same old toaster. How many times in his life had she done that for him?

And this old, faithful kitchen! There’d been some changes over the years—new wallpaper five years ago, a microwave about that same time, and a light fixture to replace the old white globe that Dad broke with a ladder he was carrying through. But overall it hadn’t changed much. The dark walnut cabinets that Dad put up years ago still gave the kitchen its warm atmosphere. And the smell of the place, that smell John associated with home, with love, with growing up, was still there.

Mom seemed the same too. Her hair was silver now, and her shape a little rounder, but her glow, her spirit, the depth of her love and convictions were always the same. And just as always, she was there when her son needed her.

She finished the sandwich, sliced it in half on a plate, and set it in front of him. Then she sat quietly across the table from him just to be there. She knew he’d speak when he was ready.

He took one bite of the sandwich and realized he wasn’t hungry. With a sigh he set the sandwich down and attempted conversation. “I’ve been having some real problems, Mom.”
All right . . . Now how in the world do I describe what’s been happening to me?
“I think . . . well, you remember how when I was in college, the things I was doing . . . the drugs and all that . . . well, I think—”

The front door opened and in came Carl. John stopped abruptly, resenting the intrusion.

Carl was visibly surprised to see his father there and didn’t seem entirely comfortable about it. “Oh . . . hi.”

John said curtly, “I thought you were at a concert?”

Carl crossed the living room and plopped into a chair at the table looking tired, worn, even shaken. “I walked out.”

“Who was playing?”

“Bloodie Mary.”

John felt his stomach turn. Bloodie Mary. He’d seen them walk by on a T-shirt more than once tonight. His disfavor showed plainly on his face. “You’ve got nothing better to do than put your money in
their
pockets?”

Carl was immediately defensive. “I left early . . . I got out of there.”

That calmed John a little. “Well, that was a wise move.” Then another thought, brewing in his mind, broke to the surface, and he spoke it. “Boy, if I ever catch you using drugs . . . !”

Carl got mad. “I don’t do drugs.”

“Well, you better not or there’ll be hell to pay.”

Mom asked quickly, “What happened tonight, John?”

Suddenly he wasn’t as willing to talk about it. “I . . .” He looked at Carl again. “I think I had a flashback. I heard once how, if you took LSD years ago, the effects could still pop up again years later. I don’t know, but maybe that’s what’s happening. I started seeing things, having
hallucinations.”

Mom seemed intensely interested. She leaned forward and asked, “What did you see?”

John wasn’t ready. “I don’t think I can describe it. But it scared me spitless.” He paused to gather some thoughts, any thoughts. “Maybe what triggered it was seeing all those kids virtually living in that mall, buying up all that . . . that junk as if their lives depended on it!”

Carl asked flatly, “What else is there?”

John gave Carl a quick warning glare and kept going while he still had the thought. “I saw . . . it seemed like a huge . . . well, there was this black hole or something, and the whole mall was sliding into it, and people were being sucked in. But it was like they didn’t want to know it, they didn’t want to see the . . . the black hole. All they wanted to do was keep buying things and keep watching the televisions and listening to the music, and they didn’t want to see what was happening, and so . . . they never got away, they just got sucked in.” John looked at them and shook his head. “I can’t describe it. It was weird, that’s all.”

He couldn’t say any more. He took a bite from his sandwich just to fill the gap in the conversation.

Carl thought about it for a short moment and then spoke quietly. “They’re all running. They know the black hole’s there, but what can they do about it?”

John glared at Carl again. “What are you talking about?”

“It’s death . . . annihilation . . . the whole universe going down the tube, and people know they can’t do anything about it, so they try not to think about it. They buy stuff—they try to have fun any way they can before they get sucked in. That’s what I meant when I said, ‘What else is there?’”

John wasn’t in the mood for this. “Carl, I don’t want any big . . . message here . . .”

“I just think that’s what you saw.”

“What I saw was a hallucination.”

“Yeah? Well, I saw something tonight.”

John said, “Yeah, I’ll bet you did,” and took a sip of coffee.

Carl looked away in anger. “You don’t even give a rip, do you?”

John was ready to grapple. “Hey, I know what you saw, Carl. You’re looking at an old Hendrix fan, a Doors fan. My money helped get all
that crap started. I know what you saw.” Then he added, “And yeah, maybe you’re right . . . maybe I don’t give a rip. Why should I care if you devote your time and money to . . . to cheap exhibitionism . . . contrived thrills . . . outrageous conduct and antisocial behavior?”

“Hey, now hold on, man . . .”

“Why should I be upset when I sit in the mall and see a nonstop parade of kids all wearing that stuff and wandering around with ten-second attention spans and then find out my son’s part of the same great tradition?”

Carl slammed the table and cursed. “Are you going to listen to me or not?”

“Boys!” Mom tried to caution them both.

Carl held back on the volume but still held his finger in John’s face. “Don’t you talk to me about exhibitionism and . . . and contrived thrills and outrageous conduct! Not when you’re the one showing us the kook in England shooting everybody and the lady keeling over in the zoo and cops beating up blacks night after night and dead, burnt bodies from the war—”

John was riled and ready to fight. “Carl, that’s news!”

“Oh yeah? Then Bloodie Mary is art!” Carl dropped back into his chair in a huff.

John devoted his attention to his cup of coffee.

In that one moment of brooding silence, Mom tried hard to find something to say to build a bridge between her son and grandson. “Well, I’m glad you two are in such strong agreement.”

Carl calmed himself and started over. “I saw something at the concert tonight and that’s why I left. Well . . . I didn’t
see
something . . . I just . . . thought of something.”

John had put a check on his temper as well. “So what did you think of?”

“You really want to know?”

“Yeah. Yeah, tell me. I’ll listen.”

Carl stared at the table and kept control of his voice. “Bloodie Mary . . . They were taking us somewhere. We were all going with them, we were following them, but nobody knew where.” He was playing back the memory in his mind. “Everything they told us to do, we did. Everything they did, we did. We did it all together. We were like
one big . . . one big organism, one big machine. And I kept asking myself, Where’s this machine going? Where is it taking us? And I didn’t know. I kind of felt trapped. I just had to get out of there.”

John mused quietly, “Use enough wattage, lights, volume, show biz . . . and brown gets moldy when it rains.”

“Huh?”

“They follow you.”

Carl thought about it, then nodded. “Maybe we’re all following something and don’t even know it.”

“And we don’t know where either.”

A sad despair filled Carl’s eyes. “Maybe down that big black tube you saw.”

John looked at Mom. “So you weren’t just being sarcastic, were you?”

Mom shook her head. “I think you’re both upset about the same thing.” Then she added, “But you know what I really think? I think God’s talking to you.”

John loved his mother. He wasn’t about to hurt her feelings. “Yeah, well, maybe so.”

She wasn’t bluffed. She repeated, just as sure of herself, “I think God is talking to you. He’s trying to get through.”

John smiled at her. “Okay, Mom.” He wouldn’t let himself consider what Dad had said about the cries of lost souls.

Carl was more interested. “Grandpa was into that, wasn’t he?”

Mom only replied, “He was very close to the Lord, yes.”

John was quick to respond, “Well, I’m not Grandpa. I’m his son and I’m proud of it. I believe in God, but I don’t think God does things like this.”

Mom smiled, actually amused. “Well . . . Daniel saw four great beasts coming up out of the sea, and Ezekiel saw dry bones come together to form a nation, and Peter saw unclean animals lowered from Heaven in a big sheet, and the Apostle John saw the glorified Christ and the whole book of Revelation on the Island of Patmos. Why wouldn’t the Lord want to show my son a shopping mall being gobbled up by a big vacuum cleaner?”

That sounded so silly John couldn’t help laughing. Mom was a good sport. She laughed along, but still gave her head that little tilt
that meant she was serious and said, “You just wait, John. One of these days . . .”

“Okay, Mom, okay. Message received and filed. You too, Carl. Thanks for your input. And I’m sorry I climbed on you like I did.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry too.”

John rested his elbows on the table and relaxed a bit. “I’ve had a lot on my mind lately, that’s obvious.”

“Yeah,” Carl agreed. “We all have.”

They talked a while longer, not about anything vitally important; they just needed to depressurize. John got a little more into his sandwich and Mom made one for Carl.

Finally John returned to a pressing matter. “Carl . . . what do you think about the Brewer situation?”

Carl brightened a little. “You’ve been thinking about that?”

“Oh yeah.”

“What about the Brewers?” Mom asked.

Oh-oh. John had to be careful. Mom knew about Annie, of course, but what Max had said about Dad’s death . . . well, that was nothing more than a very thin lead, and nothing to concern her about. “Oh, it’s just Annie, and how she died. I’m bothered about it.”

“So am I,” said Carl.

Mom nodded. “And so was your father.”

“So let’s do something about it,” said Carl. “We’ve got to be able to find out something.”

John looked at Carl, that weird, young man who seemed so lost, so far away. And yet . . . their vastly different worlds seemed to have common ground in this one situation. “You . . . uh . . . you want to go after this?”

“You bet I do,” Carl answered.

“Well . . . so do I. I still don’t know if this is going to be a news story or not, but what the heck, so what if it is or isn’t? It was important to Dad, and if it was important to him, it’s important to me.”

“And me.”

“Well . . . okay. Let’s do it.”

Carl brightened. “All right! Where do we start?”

John had been thinking about it. He was ready even now with some first steps. “Mom, would you happen to know which doctor Dad
and Max Brewer took that handwritten autopsy report to?”

Mom thought the answer was obvious enough. “Dr. Meredith.”

“Of course.” Dr. Meredith had been the Barrett family doctor for years.

“Max and Dad went to him, and he explained it. I wasn’t there, so you’ll have to go ask him about it and get it straight from him.”

“Okay, we’ll do that. Now, Carl, I thought of one other thing. I don’t know what good it will do, but since we’re scraping for anything and everything, we should get Annie’s attendance records from Jefferson High School and see if she was absent the Friday before she died. I think Deanne Brewer can go to the school and get those.”

“Okay. I’ll call her and get that started.”

“But listen now, this is important: Before Deanne goes to the school herself and asks for the attendance records, see if you can find out from her just which classes Annie was taking in the spring trimester of last year. Then have her contact those teachers and get their attendance records first. I’m just guessing and hoping that, even if the school office tries to cover up her absence, maybe some of her teachers won’t be in on the secret.”

“Okay.”

“So . . . you call Deanne Brewer and get started on that, and I’ll check with Dr. Meredith about that autopsy report. I want to hear what he has to say before I try to track down the pathologist . . . uh . . .”

“Denning, I think.”

“Yeah, Denning. Oh . . . one more thing. Rachel Franklin, the waitress. If she can find anyone who was riding on that van with Annie . . .”

“I’ll call her tomorrow, just say hello, kind of remind her.”

John took one last bite of his sandwich—it was a little dry by now. “Well . . . let’s do it.”

Carl was excited. He even gave his father’s shoulder a light punch, a rare show of enthusiasm. “Let’s do it.”

THE NEXT MORNING,
John drove to the office of Dr. Irving Meredith, the senior Barretts’ general practitioner.

Dr. Meredith was a kindly sort, an older fellow who looked a bit like Mark Twain, though his smooth voice and mellow personality
broke that image right away. He’d known John and Lillian Barrett for years and was glad enough to see John Barrett Jr. the next morning between appointments. They went into his office, and John showed him a photocopy of the handcopied report. Dr. Meredith pulled his glasses from his pocket.