The Caleb Collection Read online

  He watched them for three minutes before throwing his head into the pillow and wrapping the covers over his ears.

  His chest felt like it might explode, and he began to cry softly. Then he began to shake with sobs. He begged his Father for forgiveness, and he soaked his pillow with tears.

  21

  Day 24

  EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE, maybe every hundred years or maybe every five hundred years, something comes along that makes life on earth very different. That’s what the talking heads were starting to say on the tube. Things like the Industrial Revolution or the discovery of electricity or Mohammed’s penning of the Koran or the death of Jesus Christ. Well, maybe, just maybe we are witnessing another one of those moments. That’s what they were saying.

  It was no longer just an American phenomenon; the mind-boggling footage said just as much in Arabic, or German, as it did in English. You could be a seven-year-old girl walking down the sidewalk and see the pictures on the television through the shop window in Copenhagen just as easily as in Boston. And either way, if you asked your mother if those legs straightening was a trick or not, she would probably shake her head and say something like, “I don’t know. They say it isn’t.” It took the Beatles years to find worldwide recognition; it took Hitler months; it took the boy two weeks.

  Despite the relative autonomy of the Holy Ascension Church, the Archdiocese of the Greek Orthodox Church was beginning to flex its muscles. In a statement made public by Donna, the archbishop was skillfully avoiding any clear position on either the boy or the local parish’s dealing with him. It was too soon to draw judgment.

  In short, although they weren’t enthusiastic about the way Father Nikolous seemed to be thrusting the boy into the spotlight and charging for admittance, they weren’t eager to distance themselves from Caleb either. You could not, after all, ignore the boy’s power.

  Two more meetings had been held since the night the wind rushed through the Old Theater, each two days apart. Nikolous had paid a premium and preempted a big junior-league hockey game and a heavy-metal comeback tour scheduled for the Old Theater.

  He had also raised the price to a hundred dollars a ticket in the orange and red seats, and two hundred dollars for the floor. The boy was pulling in well over a million dollars per show.

  They operated out of two entrances now, a western one on the street for those who could walk, and a southern one facing the parking structure for those who couldn’t. Four thousand people were wheeled in through the southern entrance on the first night, six thousand on the second. It took four hours to get them all situated.

  As promised, Donna had her exclusive interview with Nikolous. When she asked him why he held the meetings so close together, Nikolous told the world there was no guarantee that Caleb’s powers would last, and he recited Dr. Caldwell’s analysis as his reasoning. Either way, as a man of deep humanitarian convictions, he didn’t see how he could do any less. The world needed the boy now, not a year from now.

  Already one consumer advocacy group was making it clear that Nikolous seemed more interested in the ticket price than in humanitarian concerns. A hundred bucks a pop was price gouging. Unfortunately there were no recorded regulations that dealt with the reasonable charge for a boy who could rock an arena with not much more than a nod. At least not yet.

  Caleb had come out with more confidence on each night. He walked with more purpose, and he didn’t look around as though lost for as long. He appeared to be getting the hang of these gigs, as one commentator put it. During the last event he’d even said a few words into the microphone. They were simple words rebroadcast a thousand times since. “You can walk into the kingdom of God with the power of the Holy Spirit,” he said. That was all.

  The words only expanded the raging controversy over the true source of the boy’s power.

  The debate over the authenticity of the phenomenon was already fading. Only the most ardent skeptics (those who had their heads planted so firmly in the sand of their own dogma that they would not accept the existence of the ocean, for example) even questioned the miracles as genuine. And when they did, their arguments came off as silly and embarrassing in the face of what was happening. You can only say the world is flat for so long before even the most common man starts snickering. Evidence has a way of making its own arguments, and in the case of the boy’s authenticity, there was gobs of evidence. Nearly as much as that which suggested the world was indeed round.

  As Jason had predicted, the antichrist crowd was growing. The black-hooded demonstrators had swelled to occupy four entire rows on the right side. Their leader had made it abundantly clear in a dozen interviews that the world was pandering to a child of the devil. Why Nikolous allowed them in was unclear. They made excellent camera coverage, and in their own way they lent added excitement to the meetings, but they also posed a threat to the boy. Jason confronted Nikolous about them once, but the man seemed to think restricting attendance might impact the boy’s popularity. Like all of their discussions, this one proved mostly fruitless. He did persuade the Greek to double stage security, which was something.

  Jason kept his eye on the leader of the cult, which was unnerving for the simple reason that the ominous lizard-eyed fellow seemed to be keeping his eye on Jason.

  At the third meeting Caleb had hopped off the stage and run through the crowd ecstatic, much like he had at the handicap convention. People’s eyes lit up like Christmas lights as he approached, and they leapt from their beds and chairs and danced in the halls after he passed.

  At the fourth meeting he prayed a very long prayer in Ge’ez. He began to cry, and he fell to his knees and appeared to be begging his God. Then he fell prone on his face and lay still. An earthquake hit Southern California that night. Magnitude 4.3 on the Richter scale. It shook the entire Los Angeles basin, but its epicenter was later determined to be under the Old Theater on Figueroa Street. There were no broken windows or toppled trees to show for the quake. There was only a mess of wheelchairs scattered about the vicinity of the epicenter, abandoned by their owners in its aftermath.

  To say that Caleb had become a national sensation would be a bit of an understatement. And this all in the span of fourteen days since first having his face displayed to the nation through Donna’s camera—twenty-four days since first entering the country with Jason and Leiah.

  Jason sat in his living room in the corner recliner, nursing a cup of hot coffee. He stared at the television, only half listening to the talking heads beating the issue to death. Leiah sat on the couch adjacent to him, both legs tucked to one side on the cushions, nursing her own cup—a Tiggers-are-wonderful-things mug someone had given Jason at Stephen’s birth.

  It struck him that she’d been here with him at night like this only twice since coming to America. Not that it meant anything, just a thought. She looked comfortable leaning against the corner pillows, studying the picture tube. Her tan work boots stood heel to heel at the door.

  Burn scars still covered her skin, head to foot. All around her people were being healed, but her condition hadn’t been affected by the boy. Jason had decided that it was because she probably didn’t really need healing. Or at the very least, she didn’t think she needed healing. Plastic surgery was not exactly something someone needed. She hadn’t asked the boy, of course. She’d probably considered and rejected the notion already. Something along the lines of, “Asking would be like confessing that I have a problem. And I don’t have a problem.” Case closed. Some would call her brave and principled. He thought of her more as stubborn. It was a trait she would take to her grave, he thought.

  It was also a trait that would have saved a marriage. On balance he liked it.

  She caught him looking at her. “What?”

  He smiled. “Nothing.”

  “Hmm.” She lifted an eyebrow and turned back to the television. But she couldn’t hide the smirk on her lips.

  Their relationship had slowly warmed after those first few days of cooling in the wake of
the unveiling at Jim’s Fish House. He was beginning to think that she might not hate his guts after all. And he was also beginning to look for reasons to be in her company. Silly little excuses, like meeting for lunch before their visit to Caleb each day. Antonio’s Barrio was on the way, after all. Or like taking a ride together down to World Relief ’s Garden Grove office to talk to John Gardner about the prospects of removing the boy from Nikolous’s custody, when he knew full well there were no such prospects.

  Or like watching this round-table discussion on NBC together. At his house. Not that it wasn’t an important event, but they both knew she could just as easily have watched it at her apartment. Still, she hadn’t hesitated when he’d suggested they watch it together.

  Jason rose from his chair. “More coffee?”

  “No thanks.”

  He walked into the kitchen, topped his cup, and returned. He lowered himself onto the couch beside her, set his cup on the end table, and calmly crossed his legs. The move from recliner to couch felt a bit obvious, and he avoided her look. But it was his couch, wasn’t it? And he did have a better view of the television from this angle. A little better anyway.

  The discussion on the tube was advertised as a summit—the definitive analysis of the boy’s power. The guests sat around a gray table very similar to the one Larry King hosted from, a slightly off-center half-moon with Donna Blair at its center and the seven experts in a semicircle. They were the leading authorities from the fields in question—religion and science.

  Dr. Caldwell was there on the left. If she hadn’t been a leading authority on psychic phenomenon last month, she was one now. Dr. Shester, a well-known physics professor from Cal Tech, sat next to her. The other five were religious leaders: an Islamic imam wearing a turban—Mohammed something or other—a Hindu priest with a shaved head and a long white beard whose smile would not take a break, two Protestant leaders from opposing camps, and a Catholic bishop. Their names kept popping up under their faces as they talked, but between listening to the overlapping diatribes and thinking about Leiah, Jason hardly cared who they were. For all he knew, they were all wrong.

  Donna was talking to the Hindu holy man. “Yes, of course. But what do you make of the boy’s own words? He’s referred to either Jesus or the Holy Spirit on two occasions. He’s said that the way to walk in what he calls the kingdom is through the power of the Holy Spirit. If you believe he’s the incarnation of a higher power, as you say, why would he invoke a Christian message?”

  “That is quite simple,” the man said with an Indian accent. He would not relax his smile, and Jason found that annoying. “First of all, it is not only a Christian who speaks of God’s Spirit. We all believe in God’s Holy Spirit. And the boy was raised in a Christian monastery, was he not? He will then use what language he knows. He speaks of Jesus, and so do I; Jesus was an enlightened teacher of great wisdom. The boy speaks of God, and of course, so do I. And he speaks of God’s kingdom, which is the Christian way of addressing the greater consciousness.”

  “You are being too general,” the imam interjected.

  “Hold on; you’ll have your chance to respond,” Donna said, cutting off the imam.

  She addressed the Hindu priest again. “I know this is all very controversial, sir, but what if the boy were to specifically validate one religion, say Christianity, and denounce another? What would you then say?”

  “But I don’t think he would, you see.”

  “But if he did. Hypothetically.”

  “If he did, then I would say the same thing that a Christian would say. I would say that he’s a ten-year-old boy and he is mistaken.”

  Donna addressed one of the Christian leaders. “And you, Dr. Clark, would you say the same if the shoe were on the other foot?”

  The gray-haired man smiled. “If Caleb were to denounce the deity of Christ as some of my friends here would, I’d assume that his power does not come from God at all. But he hasn’t done that.”

  “He hasn’t in so many words,” the other black-haired theologian cut in. “But for starters, not everyone is convinced these so-called miracles are real. And—”

  “Please, sir,” Donna interrupted. “You can’t seriously be suggesting that the evidence we’ve all been exposed to is some magic trick. Have you been to one of these meetings?”

  “As a matter of fact I have.”

  “And you honestly question the authenticity of what you saw?”

  “Of course. As do many others.” The others smiled, obviously embarrassed for the man. He cleared his throat. “But that’s not the point. Even if they are authentic, the nature of these events we’ve seen don’t reflect the Spirit set forth in God’s Word. For starters, God is a gentleman. He doesn’t knock people over for no reason. He deals only with willing participants. He certainly wouldn’t knock a cameraman from his feet for the kicks of it. I don’t see how any such thing would bring glory to Christ. And he’s not the author of confusion. How can you see any one of the meetings and not think of confusion? If, and I say if, what I’ve seen is real, it looks totally beyond the control of God’s Spirit.”

  “But you wouldn’t say that Caleb’s power comes from his own mind like Dr. Caldwell would?”

  “If it’s real, no.”

  “Then what is the boy’s source? If it’s real.”

  “I don’t know. But it isn’t God.”

  For a moment they all sat in silence. Then the imam spoke up. “You see, this is the kind of bigoted, narrow view of God that is customary with the Christian. The whole world is rejoicing at the works of this prophet from God, and yet the Christian will throw the boy in hell because he does not attend his church.”

  Three of them broke out in response at once, but Jason couldn’t tell which three. He flung an arm out to the television. “You see, they don’t have a clue. And if the rest of them think this is God, then why don’t they tell us why God doesn’t do this more often? Or at all, for that matter. Why do a million prayers for the sick go unanswered?”

  “Your lady friend’s making the religious ones look like fools,” Leiah said softly.

  “She’s not my lady friend. And she’s only asking them questions. They should be able to answer simple questions.”

  “She’s pushing them into disagreement while the two scientists sit by to set them all straight.”

  Jason didn’t dispute her analysis.

  The gray-haired evangelical, the boy’s defender, Dr. Clark, was speaking again. “I’m not saying that Caleb’s incapable of making mistakes. As long as he’s human he’ll be making mistakes. But to say he’s authoring confusion or that God doesn’t knock people down because he’s a gentleman is to misplace huge sections of the Word of God. Jesus Christ himself had the people in an uproar, confused over his identity, if you will. They ended up killing him to silence his voice of dissent. Several weeks later his own disciples were accused of being drunk at Pentecost. The biblical record is loaded with incidents of God’s reaching out to man as dramatically and in many cases more mind-boggling than what we’ve seen through the boy. Why are we so surprised to find God alive today?”

  Donna seemed caught off guard. “More dramatic cases? Such as?” She was obviously no biblical scholar.

  “How about the sun standing still? Imagine city walls collapsing on their own, or the parting of the Red Sea, or a woman turning into salt. Need I go on? Jesus fed five thousand with two fish and five loaves. He calmed a storm with a word. And the early church was hardly less dramatic in its demonstration of God’s power. Perhaps the biggest difference between then and now is that they didn’t have cameras then. They had writers, and those writers gave us the Gospels.”

  The skeptical evangelical spoke up. “Yes, they gave us the Gospels, but nowhere in the Gospels did Christ knock people over for the fun of it, now did he? Certainly not pagans.”

  “No, not for the fun of it. But you will remember that the men who came to arrest Jesus—and I will assume they were pagans, given their plans—
fell over at Christ’s words. It’s at the end of John’s Gospel. I don’t see how this is any different.”

  The dark-haired man appeared flummoxed. “Please, you can’t ask me to believe that a host of believing people sitting in a room would all suddenly be healed with no expectation of it. I don’t see the pattern in Scripture, not at all.”

  “God is not bound by our boxes, my friend. If he can heal one, why not ten? And if ten, why not ten thousand? He frequently healed everyone who came to him, not just those with exceptional faith. He healed from a distance, and he healed in the dark. What faith does a dead man have? Lazarus could not form a thought, much less believe, and yet he was raised.”

  “But surely miracles were at the least meant to lead one to faith.”

  “Yes, if you don’t believe in me, then at least believe in the evidence of the miracles, Christ said. We will see where the boy’s miracles lead men.”

  The conversation stalled. Donna blinked and faced the physicist. “Well. What about you, Dr. Shester? You’ve been awfully quiet.”

  The Cal Tech physicist grinned smugly. “Honestly, I really don’t see where this is leading us, Donna. History is strewn with man’s foolish attempts to explain the great questions of life with a few cute anecdotes from the local priest. If you couldn’t explain something, it was because God did it. The world was flat and at the center of the universe because God made it that way. Man was made in six days from dust, and all kinds of other impossible things happened throughout history because God just did it that way. And if our neighbor disagrees or claims that a different god did it, well then we massacre them in a crusade and set the world right. Forgive me if I don’t follow the logic. If we would just apply basic reason to these unique events, I’m sure we would find something very different from God. This is the time to explore new possibilities, not to argue over whose god is responsible. The laws of physics have been redefined a dozen times since Newton first defined gravity. Well, it looks like we’re getting ready to redefine them again, and I for one am excited about the prospects.”