The Caleb Collection Page 19

  “Listen to me. Listen to me, Leiah. I don’t care what your skin looks like. You hear me?”

  If she did, she wasn’t responding.

  “Listen . . . please . . .”

  And what could he possibly say that would mean anything to a woman with scars so deep? Her scars went past her skin to her heart. She’d bared herself to him, and now she hated herself for doing so. It had left her with a hemorrhaging heart. She sniffed and lowered her left hand to the table. It sat there trembling.

  Jason moved almost without thinking. He reached across the table and placed his hand over the back of hers. She flinched and he closed his fingers around her fingers.

  For endless seconds he just held her hand. Although her hand hardly showed any sign of the burning, certainly not the damage evident on her arm, it was the first time he’d touched her. And in that moment he wanted to touch her scars. To somehow identify with her. She touched her scars all day long; they were grafted onto her. And now he had joined her in a small way.

  She relaxed her hand, and he pulled it to the center of the table and softened his grip.

  “Look at me.”

  She looked up slowly. She hardly resembled the fiery fighter he’d come to know. Now she was Leiah, the wounded girl who would cry if you looked at her too long.

  “Now I’m going to say something that comes from my heart, and I guess it’s up to you whether or not you believe it. I look at you and I see nothing but goodness. Your heart is as big as the ocean, and I know where all the love in this world has gone to. But it’s more. It’s not just on the inside. You are one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen.”

  He paused. It was a bit sensational, but the moment begged for it. And he wanted to give it.

  “Do you hear me? You have eyes that most women would kill for. Your face is as smooth as cream and your hair’s as shiny as the sea. That’s what I see, soft and smooth. And if this all seems a bit melodramatic, you’ll just have to forgive me. I see you on the street and you make me blink, because I forget how stunning this woman who I met in an obscure monastery in Ethiopia really is.”

  She searched his eyes for a few long seconds, and then a small sheepish grin curved her lips.

  They were like that, their hands together, when Jason saw Donna out of the corner of his eye. He smiled at Leiah, suddenly shy. “It’s the truth. Tell me you believe me.”

  She’d seen Donna walking their way as well, and for a second she looked panicked. But she recovered quickly.

  “I’ll give it some thought,” she said.

  He released her hand.

  Donna saw them pull their hands apart, and she approached wearing a wide grin. So then he was interested in her. She was being beaten out by a woman covered in scars. You see what happens when you get lost in this career of yours, Donna? You let the best ones go and they get snatched up right in front of your nose.

  Actually there was something about Leiah that she admired. She had a fire that blazed true. And truth be told, with the scars covered she was quite attractive. Jason had always been a sap for a sad sack. It was no surprise he was attracted to a beautiful woman who was obviously hurting. By the looks of them, they may very well have just shared an emotional moment.

  “Well, well. Forgive the intrusion, my dear lovebirds, but I was invited to this party, right?”

  She pulled out a seat adjacent to them and sat. “Am I right?”

  “Of course,” Jason said. “Thank you for coming. We were just talking about what a job you’ve done, Donna. My goodness, it’s been what, three days, and you’ve managed to make our little boy the center of attention, coast to coast. Would you like some coffee?”

  “Thank you. I try to do my best. That was the point, wasn’t it? And I would love some coffee.”

  Jason motioned at a waitress, who nodded and went off for a coffeepot.

  “Actually you should be thanking Caleb for his popularity. All I did was get the camera there and check for hidden wires. He did the rest, although I will say he had me going for a while there. Have you ever seen such an innocent kid?”

  “I didn’t realize how much power the camera has,” Jason said.

  “And still there are doubters.”

  “You’d expect that.”

  Donna nodded.

  “I suppose we owe you our gratitude,” Leiah said. She seemed subdued and distant. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Although I will say, you don’t seem to be holding back.” That was more like her.

  “Never. I’ve always said, if you see something that looks worthwhile, grab it before someone else does.” She glanced at Jason. “Unfortunately, I don’t always get there first.”

  “Well, you got there first on this one, didn’t you?” he said without batting an eye.

  “I guess I did, Jason.”

  “And how’s the view from up front?”

  The waitress filled her cup with hot black coffee, and Donna thanked her.

  “The view. Well, for starters there’s the media. Nikolous told me this morning that they’ve received interview requests from over two hundred media sources.”

  “Two hundred? There are that many?”

  “Are you kidding? Trust me—many more. He’s denied them all, of course. There will only be one interview, next week after this has had time to mushroom, and that will be my interview.” She smiled and took a sip of coffee.

  They didn’t look impressed.

  “Anyway, if the next meeting is anything like the last one, the media will be slobbering all over itself. This time all the majors will be there, and with any luck, it’ll just be the beginning.”

  “I’m sure Caleb has his critics in all of this,” Leiah said.

  “Oh, there’ll be critics, honey. But so far it’s a general scramble to explain exactly what happened. There’s your typical wholesale rejection from the most conservative types. Mostly religious pundits.”

  “Really? I’d think the religious folks would eat this up,” Jason said.

  “A lot of them are. But it also threatens a ton of dogma. Think of it. How would you react if you were someone who believed that only the powers of darkness pull these sorts of tricks today? You’d have to either discount the event altogether—some kind of optical illusion or something—or you’d have to pal the kid up with the devil. Trust me, the former is much easier. Either way, most aren’t so quick to draw conclusions. Rabbis, sheiks, priests, theologians . . . they’re picking their way through interviews as if they were caught in the middle of a minefield. Problem is we have an undeniable bona fide occurrence of the paranormal caught on film. They can’t deny it, so they’re forced to at least consider it. But they’re being very cautious.” She shook her head thinking of several interviews she’d seen.

  “Give them time,” Jason said. “Within a week they’ll have him labeled as everything from Moses to the Antichrist.”

  Across the room a television mounted to the wall beside the bar showed images of street fighting in the Middle East. Give them ten minutes and the chances of Caleb’s face filling the screen was pretty decent, she thought. There was a momentum building on this one that came along maybe once a decade or so. In this election year where the race was boringly one-sided, the media was jumping.

  “And what about in the real world?” Jason asked.

  Donna nodded. “There seems to be a consensus that follows Dr. Caldwell’s explanation. She’s making the rounds. Putting a UCLA professor in front of the camera holding up her old wire-frame glasses comes off quite nicely. Of course there are other theories—all the talking heads seem to have one—but they’re pretty much all variations on some sort of psychokinesis.”

  She smiled. “Wait until the next meeting. It’s one thing for one camera to catch something extraordinary. It’s something altogether different when fifty cameras catch it.” It would be a zoo, she thought. Which was fine; she lived for zoos. “It’s gonna be one heck of a ride, and pardon me
for saying so, kids, but I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  “I’m sure it’s a dream come true,” Jason said.

  She grinned. “Close. So really, you can watch the news for a couple hours and know how the world’s reacting to Caleb. You didn’t ask me out to hear this. What’s up?”

  Jason glanced at Leiah, but she was staring across the room. Her mind seemed to have drifted. “What’s the scoop with Crandal?” he asked.

  “The scoop? He’s up about fifteen points in the polls; that’s the scoop.”

  “Come on, Donna. You know as well as I do that something passed between Caleb and Crandal at that press conference last week. You also know that the NSA, an organization that Crandal used to head, ordered the boy out of country shortly after. Don’t tell me this means nothing to you.”

  “Okay, so we have two events that could be strung together. But that’s all we have. Two separate events. On the one hand, you have a lost boy who walks up to a man, says a few nonsensical words about him, and then offers no further explanation. On the other hand, you have the Immigration Service recalling a boy who came from a war zone for security reasons. We need a lot more than that to spend any time on it, Jason.”

  “It’s not the what but the who. The lost boy is Caleb, no ordinary boy. And the man is a presidential candidate who, like I said, used to run the NSA. You don’t find that disturbing?”

  “You’ve asked Caleb about it, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  Jason sighed. “And he doesn’t seem to know.”

  “So now your source is backing out, so to speak.”

  “He’s just a kid!”

  “He’s just a kid? I thought he was a special kid. Look, you don’t just launch an investigation on a man like Crandal without having at least one credible, authenticated source.”

  Jason shook his head. “I’m not saying there is a link, or that Crandal is anything more than a wonderful president-to-be. I don’t even care about politics. But Caleb was recalled on orders of the NSA. That’s worth more than just a quick scan of the word Tempest.”

  “I’ve already looked into it, Jason. I am a reporter, remember.”

  “And?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Then look again. Dig somewhere else. Ask Crandal himself.”

  “That takes time. I’ve got my hands full right now.”

  “With who?” he pushed.

  “With Caleb. With Crandal.”

  “Exactly. This is about both of them.”

  He was right about that, wasn’t he? It might be worth another look. A quick one at least.

  “Okay.” She set her coffee cup down with a clink and pushed her chair back. “I’ll look at it again. Was that it?”

  He glanced at Leiah again, but she still seemed uninterested. This was his concern more than hers.

  “Yes,” Jason said.

  “Then I’ll see you two lovebirds at the next meeting.” She flashed them a grin, turned her back, and strode from the table.

  18

  Day 16

  CALEB SAT AT THE TABLE, swinging his legs under his chair, trying very hard to eat the mush the witch had put before him. It had the consistency of oatmeal, which was okay. But its taste would turn the nose of a goat, which was saying a lot, because everyone knew that goats would eat anything. Anything but mud.

  The world here in America was inside out, he thought. Upside down. Like this food. If America was the land of milk and honey, then their honey was bitter and their milk was sour. Martha insisted that if he ate it long enough, he would learn to like it. But he’d been eating it for many days now, and it wasn’t tasting any better. If anything it was even more bitter than he remembered. He wished she would go back to alternating between this mud and the cheesy worms, but for three straight days now she had stuck with the mud.

  And who said doing something forever made you want it anyway? It wasn’t what Dadda had taught. It was the other way around—desire came first.

  “You cannot see the kingdom of God unless you first want to, Caleb. Unless you desire it. Do you understand this?”

  “Yes. I think so. Do I want to, Dadda?”

  “I don’t know. Do you?”

  “I think so.”

  “You think so? Thinking so is not wanting. Come, let me tell you a story.” He drew Caleb in with one arm and began to walk across the room aimlessly.

  “There was a man who discovered something in a field one day. A shiny object that flashed in the sun. When he bent down to examine it, his heart nearly lodged itself in his throat. He jumped up and looked quickly around. Nobody had seen him. His hands began to tremble, and his breathing became short. He could not take the object, because it was not his to take, yet it was very, very valuable. But he had to have it, you see. No matter what else happened, he realized in that moment that he had to own that treasure.”

  “Gold? Or was it diamonds, Dadda?”

  “Maybe a thousand diamonds in a chest. Enough to make him pace frantically as he plotted how he could own it. Now let me ask you a question, Caleb. Does this man want this treasure?”

  Caleb had nearly jumped with his answer. “Yes!”

  “Ahh, yes. If you want to walk into the kingdom, you also must have this kind of desire. Without such desire, the man never would have done what he did next.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He covered the diamonds so that no one would find them, and then he went home in a frenzy and sold his house and everything he owned.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he wanted that field, Caleb. If he owned the field, he would also own the treasure. And he really, really wanted the treasure. So he gave up everything and bought it. It’s that way with the kingdom. You must want it like the man wanted the treasure.”

  “And then you sell your house.”

  “And then you surrender everything for it,” Dadda had said.

  Caleb bent over his mush at the table and smiled at the way Dadda’s eyes sparkled when he told his stories. Dadda had borrowed that one from Jesus, he later learned. As he did most of them, actually.

  Caleb had already been walking in the kingdom, but Dadda was helping him understand how things worked. And that day he’d learned that desire tended to open the eyes as well as the heart.

  He pushed another spoonful of the mud into his mouth, swallowed as quickly as possible, and then took a gulp of water. A shiver ran down his back, and he cleared his throat. Three more spoonfuls, maybe. But they would have to be big.

  The last one was in his mouth when the witch walked in.

  “Every last drop of that had better be gone, boy,” she said in her snotty tone. She slammed the door, clacked across the concrete floor, and peered over his shoulder. The bowl was pretty clean, and for a second Caleb found some satisfaction in that. It really wasn’t so bad when you were done. Not everything in life was meant to feel good. Things like washing floors and scrubbing pots and washing your hands were just part of what it meant to live in this world in the meantime.

  So in the meantime in America, he would eat this oatmeal mud stuff, and that would be like scrubbing the floors. They kinda looked the same anyway.

  Martha humphed and pulled at his shirt. “Let’s go.”

  Caleb stood and marched ahead of her. He’d never seen her happy. She was all mixed up, and for that Caleb was sorry for her. But in these last few days, since that meeting in the big theater, she had stomped around like a leaking olive jar, and it wasn’t oil that spilled from her seams. It was evil.

  Caleb had almost forgotten about the box she called the television, but he heard the sound as they came to the hallway, and a shaft of heat ripped up his spine.

  He halted instinctively. For five days now she had left the frightening light box on except for when Father Nikolous visited. And for five days Caleb had shut it out by curling up tight and singing or sleeping. But the moving pictures weren’t like scrubbing the floors or eating the mud. T
hey felt like a disease. Not one in his flesh, but one that wanted to eat at his mind.

  He’d found a small knob that shut it off the second day. But when she’d walked in and seen what he’d done, she’d screamed at him and fixed it so that he couldn’t shut it off.

  “What’s wrong, boy?” Martha asked behind him. “Get on with it.”

  He took two steps and then stopped again. Maybe he could persuade her. He turned around and looked up at her large frame.

  “Excuse me, Auntie. I really would like it if you could please turn that box in the room off. It would make it much nicer for me.”

  “Oh, it would, would it? Get!”

  He flinched at her tone, turned, and entered the hall. The sound grew louder as they walked. The squealing laughter of the drawn figures. He just had to tell her that this was not good.

  Caleb stopped and turned around again. This time she put both fists on her hips.

  “But they’re not nice pictures. They’re cruel and very bad and they frighten me.”

  “Is that a fact?” She wagged her head like she always did, mocking. “Well, have you ever thought that you needed a little frightening? Huh? No, I suppose not. You’re too busy having your life laid out all nice and neat like a bed of roses. Everybody running to serve you. Do you really think you’re that special? That you deserve to have special comforts? That you should not face the same fears every other boy in this world faces?”

  Most of what she said came out in a blaring rush, and all of it came out in English, so he wasn’t sure what she meant.

  “I don’t like it,” he said.

  The hall was dark and he couldn’t see her face well, but he could feel her anger rise. She stepped forward and snatched him by the collar. Then she shoved him up against the wall so that her knuckles pressed into his throat, nearly cutting off his breath.

  “Now you listen to me, you little spoiled brat!” She breathed heavily, and Caleb felt his bones tremble.

  “You make me sick! What makes you think you have the right to anything? Anything! You’re nothing but a spoiled child. You know in Turkey, my father used to beat me every day. Every night after he came home from the alehouse. Even when I was a good little girl. So I wouldn’t grow up like him, he said. And do you know what, it was a good thing. Because I didn’t grow up like him!”