The Caleb Collection Page 35

  “So, what do we do?”

  “I don’t know,” Leiah said. She turned to the boy. “Do you know, Caleb?”

  “No.” He was watching some yellow wisps to his right.

  They stood silent for a few moments. The notion of fledgling Crandal growing into a monster began to feel distant.

  A mischievous grin spread over Leiah’s face. “I know what I want to do.”

  “What?”

  She looked first at Jason and then at Caleb, and then back at Jason, tantalizing him. And then she tapped Caleb on the shoulder. “You’re it!” She tore off, laughing hysterically and looking over her shoulder.

  Caleb looked at Jason, not understanding.

  “It’s tag! You have to chase her and touch her!” Jason cried.

  “And when you catch me you have to hug me!” Leiah called back, circling to her left.

  “Yeeehaaaa!” The boy leapt into the air and tore after Leiah with Jason on his heels.

  They were playing tag. They were jumping and running and laughing and playing tag. And it might as well have been skydiving or zooming through space.

  That’s how this strange, wonderful world made them feel.

  This fruit.

  Sometime during the jubilance Leiah’s left sleeve was inadvertently pulled up to her elbow and left there, unminded. Jason remembered thinking to himself that he could see her flesh, wrinkled up to her elbow. But time seemed to have stalled, and the realization drifted in and out like a distant, inconsequential snippet. Leiah evidently liked the feel of air on her skin because she pulled the other sleeve up as well and waved both arms above her head in the kind of victory dance you might expect from someone whose team has just won a very important game.

  It suddenly occurred to Jason that they should try some things. If the light responded so strongly to simple words like, I love you, what would happen if they tried other things?

  “Leiah. Leiah?”

  She smiled. “Yes, Jason? What would you like, my love?”

  For a moment he forgot what he wanted, because when she spoke, blue light from her mouth washed over him and he began giggling. Then she got to giggling, and it took them a few minutes to calm themselves.

  She stood there with both arms bared, delighted and finally stilled. “What were you saying?”

  “What was I saying? I was saying that we should try some things.”

  “Things like what?”

  Caleb stood ten feet away and answered them. “Try praying.”

  They looked at each other. “What kind of praying?” Leiah asked.

  “I don’t know. Pray for India.”

  “India? How do you pray for India?”

  The boy walked toward them. “Ask the Father to protect the orphans in India.”

  Leiah looked at him and then back to Jason. “Do I close my eyes?”

  Caleb found it funny and he began to laugh.

  “I guess that’s a no,” Leiah said, grinning.

  She turned down-valley and spoke aloud. “Dear Father . . .” She paused and turned to Jason. “I’m going to close my eyes,” she said.

  He just shrugged.

  Leiah faced the valley again, closed her eyes, spread her palms at her waist, and spoke again. “Dear Father.” She paused again, and blue light spilled from her lips as if she were speaking with dry ice in her mouth. “Father, please show mercy to the poor orphan children in India. You are their Father . . .”

  She kept speaking, but Jason didn’t hear any more. Blue light had erupted from her face and blazed toward the horizon. Jason took a step back, stunned. She prayed on, evidently unaware of the light that engulfed her whole face so that he could no longer see her eyes.

  “ . . . I know you will, Father, because you must love them very much and . . .”

  “Leiah, open your eyes,” Jason said quietly.

  She stopped praying and opened her eyes. The light vanished.

  “No, keep praying. Open your eyes and pray.”

  She faced the valley. “Father, I ask that you will . . .” The light bolted from her face and her words froze in her throat. She trembled and then sank to her knees, overcome.

  She continued in a whisper now. “Dear Jesus, please show them your love.” The light crackled as if it were charged with electricity. Leiah began to weep. Beside her Caleb smiled, delighted.

  Jason turned and opened his mouth. “Dear Jesus, Son of God, I ask that you show your love . . .” His eyes were open and he saw the light leap off his face and shoot to the sky. “ . . . to the children of Ethiopia who have lost their mothers and fathers.” It was as though he were speaking through a tunnel of light.

  A lump rose into his throat. This by a few words of prayer? For how long had he considered the prayers of Christians foolish blabberings? And all the while they had wielded such power?

  Jason looked at the rippling sky, and suddenly the gravity of this entire magnificent display boiled over in his chest, as if it had outgrown his capacity to contain it. It was all so very real—God’s ever-present power streaming over the earth it had created, awesome above the ants who marched in defiance below, blind to it.

  And he had been one of those ants, hadn’t he?

  The sorrow hit him like a sledgehammer dropped from heaven. How could he have doubted such a loving God? He who had fashioned man swirled passionately around him still.

  Jason groaned, suddenly overcome by desperation. He sank to his knees. Sorrow unlike any he had known rolled up his chest, and he begged God to forgive him. A minute ago he had been dancing before his Father with delight. Now he could do nothing but bow at his feet in a state very near agony. But it was a kind of agony that felt pure, like a cleansing fire. His bones trembled under its weight and he began to sob softly.

  Oh, Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder

  Consider all the worlds thy hands have . . .

  Now the emotion poured out of him and he could not finish the thought, much less kneel upright. He bowed to the ground and worshiped his Creator.

  Beside him he could barely hear Leiah praying through tears now—praying for forgiveness as much as for anyone in India. Caleb was praying as well. They knelt on the knoll, swept away by the majesty of their Creator, desperate in his presence, overcome by their dependence upon his love.

  Jason wasn’t sure exactly what happened to the light that streamed to the horizon as they prayed, but it was real and it was crackling with static. Somewhere a little boy in India with a runny nose was having his heart warmed; somewhere a little girl with round eyes had just found food for another day. The notion made him desperate to pray.

  He did that. He stood and prayed, stunned that God would use him as a conduit for such power.

  Somehow Jason and Leiah ended side by side, hand in hand, humbled by God’s presence, silent in the wake of his power. Jason looked into her eyes and then at their hands. She lifted her hand, clasped around his, and they both looked at her arm.

  “That’s my arm,” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Doesn’t seem so bad now, does it?”

  It was twisted and lumpy and looked like the bark of a pine tree. But at the moment it didn’t bother Jason.

  “No,” he said.

  “It seems stupid that it used to bother me so much.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I ran away from Canada because of it. I mean it looks pretty ugly, but who cares? Seems kinda minor when you compare it to this.”

  Jason lifted his free hand. “Can I touch it?”

  “Yes.”

  He lowered his index finger and ran it along her skin. It felt like rubber. He rested all of his fingers on her arm and drew them up toward her elbow. The gnarled skin covered her entire body; he knew that and he even imagined what it must look like: her back and her chest and her thighs, pitted and rough. But it did seem silly right now. Like a woman worrying about the shade of her lipstick before a party, but hardly more.

  “Does it feel strange?” she
asked.

  “Yes, it does. But it doesn’t bother me.” He turned her around to face him and held each of her elbows.

  “I love you, Leiah.” Light spread over her face. “I love you more than words can say.” He leaned forward and kissed her lips.

  She pulled back a fraction of an inch. “And I love you, Jason.” Her hot breath mixed with light and washed over his lips. He held her, overwhelmed with the impulse to squeeze her as tight as he could.

  “Excuse me.”

  They parted to find Caleb standing beside them, that wide smile still stuck on his face.

  “Do you think you would like to have smooth skin, Leiah?”

  Jason’s heart bolted. What was he asking? Leiah looked up at Jason and opened her mouth, but she seemed too flummoxed to speak.

  “I just wanted to know if you would like to have the burn marks taken away,” Caleb clarified.

  “Well . . . yes, I . . . I suppose so. I mean, I don’t have to have them taken away. I’m okay with the way that I look with them. It’s not like I really need to have smooth skin or anything and I . . .”

  Caleb gave a short snortlike laugh and touched her hand.

  A surge of power crackled through the sky, and for a brief moment Leiah vanished behind a brilliant flash of light, as if she herself had become a strobe light. And then she stood there, as if nothing had happened.

  It occurred to Jason that he still held her fingers. He absently wondered if he’d lit up as well. He looked down. The sight of her arms confused him at first, simply because they were not her arms. They couldn’t be; they were white and smooth like cream.

  Leiah gasped and jerked her hand away. Her mouth gaped and she stared bug-eyed at herself.

  “Uhh . . .”

  Jason blinked once. Then again.

  Leiah lifted trembling fingers to her forearms and touched her skin lightly. Her jaw hung open and she ran her fingers up her arms very slowly, as if afraid they might break. She suddenly reached down with both hands and pulled her blouse from her jeans. Her bellybutton was surrounded by perfectly smooth skin, like the vortex of a whirlpool made of milk.

  Leiah stared at it for three full seconds, frozen.

  She looked up. “I . . . I have . . . skin.” Her round mouth spread into a splitting smile. “Eeeeeiiaa!” She dropped the hem of her blouse and threw both arms around Jason’s neck, screeching like a child.

  “I have normal skin!”

  Jason held her and spun around, laughing and hooting. She had normal skin. What a gift! What a gift! Thank you, Father!

  Leiah spun from him and twirled away like a ballerina. She pulled the rest of her blouse out and it rode up her torso, revealing smooth flesh all around her belly and back. She kept stopping and looking at it and pinching it.

  She ran over and lifted Caleb high in the air. “Thank you!”

  “Thank your Father,” he said, but he squealed with laughter.

  “Thank you, Father!” She cried it to the skies. “Thank you, Jesus!”

  Jason thought his heart would explode.

  35

  THE SUN WAS DIPPING IN THE WESTERN SKIES when they finally calmed from their exuberant display of delight. It had been five hours and the light had not vacated them.

  Now they sat on the top of the hill, three abreast holding their knees, dazed by the unique vision that God had given them. They felt sure that it wasn’t necessarily the exact way that things worked, just like Ezekiel’s vision of God wasn’t necessarily a precise vision of how God looked. But it was an equivalent presentation, and either way the power granted each and every child of God was like this: mind-boggling. They had prayed, they had worshiped, they had played, and they had loved. They had reveled in these fruits of the Spirit. In the love and the peace and the joy. In its own way it overshadowed Leiah’s new skin. Not that Leiah wasn’t delighted with her new skin, but beyond that skin, beyond the skin of this world was this other world—this kingdom—and here the power was staggering.

  Through it all, they had all but forgotten that short of this kingdom there waited a world ready to string them up. That a fledgling bird was about to grow into a monster. But now as the day faded, Jason was remembering.

  “How long do you think our eyes will see this?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” Caleb said. “Until he’s finished showing us what he wants to show us.”

  “It would be nice if he could show us what to do.”

  Leiah looked at him. “Maybe that’s it.”

  “You think?”

  “Why not? Couldn’t he show us what to do, Caleb?”

  “He could show us whatever he wants to show us.”

  “But we should ask him, shouldn’t we?”

  “Yes, we should.”

  They sat still. Wisps of red and yellow floated through the air all around them. They were growing used to the wonderful new world.

  Jason folded his hands, put his elbows on his knees, and rested his chin on his fists. He spoke, hardly thinking. “Dear God, give us wisdom.”

  The sky flashed, and a single bolt the diameter of a man’s thigh fell into Jason’s head and then vanished.

  Jason jerked upright.

  All around them the blue air sputtered once, then twice, and then shut off.

  The blue air was gone. The colored wisps had vanished. A sun turned orange by smog was setting on the western horizon. The world had become normal again.

  Jason leapt to his feet and whirled to face them. “That’s it! What’s soft and round and says more than it should?”

  They both looked at him dumbly.

  “Father Matthew’s riddle. The hem of a tunic. Caleb’s tunic!”

  “The riddle he gave you just before we escaped. Caleb doesn’t wear a tunic anymore.”

  “But he did then. We have to find that tunic!”

  Caleb stood. “God told you this?”

  “No. Yes! I don’t know. I just remembered your father’s words. And I think I know what we should do.”

  “What?”

  Banks had made three trips to the car during the day, once for food, and twice to stretch his legs. He had reported in to Roberts, who was still in D.C. with the big man. Evidently the world was hanging in the balance over the kid, although Banks didn’t really see what the big deal was. Sure the boy could do some strange stuff, but he was just a kid, who would soon be dead.

  Truth be told, he could probably wrestle a full million out of Roberts for the hit. Especially now that the rifle had been found. There was a panic in the air and as long as the boy was alive, the threat he posed to Crandal was alive. The only real way to terminate that threat was to snuff the kid. And while the world went nuts speculating on what might have happened to the boy, he had them pinned up a lone country road with no escape.

  Banks smiled and lifted his field glasses to his eyes. The light was failing fast, but he was in no hurry. He would have to pull the car into the intersection again once darkness hit; couldn’t have the foxes sneak past in the middle of the night. The road hadn’t been used during the day, which was odd. You’d think a sportsman or a hunter . . .

  Banks froze. A low rumble carried through the thin air.

  He swung the glasses up the first fork. But it lay empty and brown like it had all day. Somewhere a car was driving, though. He could hear the rush of tires on gravel.

  He jerked the binoculars to the second fork. A white Bronco filled the view.

  Banks’s heart hit the roof of his throat. He grabbed the rifle, popped off the scope cover, and swung it in line with the onrushing vehicle. The Bronco was blitzing over the road, spewing billows of dust from the rear wheels. They were in a rush.

  But the rush would end in a head-on with a bullet. Smack!

  The car was still a good four hundred yards off, and Banks clicked the scope up to full power. The windshield shimmied in his view. The driver sat with both hands on the wheel. He had the same red shirt he’d worn at the meeting. What’s wrong, buckwheat? No
shower in the woods?

  The seat beside Jason was empty. And behind him . . .

  The low sun splashed light across an empty rear seat. Where were the other two, then? The kid. A finger of panic rode Banks’s spine. He had to kill the kid first! He was the primary target. He’d taken out a secondary first in Nicaragua once and lost the primary because of it. Things changed once there was a killing. Just like they were changing now back in the city because someone had found the gun.

  The blazing Bronco was within a hundred yards now, and Banks backed the power off on the scope. Jason was coming out alone. For supplies maybe. He couldn’t shoot.

  The white vehicle approached the fork and then roared by. Banks caught a glimpse of the floorboards as it passed. No low-lying bodies. He pulled up the gun and watched the Bronco disappear in a cloud of dust.

  His pulse thumped in his ears. “Gotcha,” he muttered.

  He rose, gathered up his binoculars, and returned to the car. His wait on the rock was over. The game had just changed. He would have to wait for the Bronco’s return, sure. And the Bronco would return, because up there in those cold hills waited the kid and the woman. Jason wouldn’t be leaving without them, unless he intended on returning.

  But in leaving, he had inadvertently tipped his hand. He had removed a chunk of ambiguity. He had eliminated one of the forks. The kid was somewhere up the fork to the left.

  Which meant that as soon as the Bronco sped back by, Banks would go on a little hunt.

  He chuckled and bit into a day-old sandwich.

  A night hunt.

  It was a good day to be alive.

  Jason approached the Texaco and eased the Bronco to a roll. There was one other car at the pumps: a yellow Volkswagen Bug. The trick here was going to be getting out without being recognized. The fewer people that saw him the better.

  He parked the Bronco on the side by a large white cooler that read ICE. His mind still buzzed from the day’s exhilarating experience. It was hard to believe that less than an hour ago he’d been spinning through the grass, arms locked with Leiah, who kept commenting on the fact that her skin was smooth. For a tidbit that had hardly seemed important to either of them several hours earlier, the healing had taken on symbolic importance that tied a bow around the whole experience. One day that bow would come in handy.