Blessed Child (25 page)

“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

C
ALEB 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. They 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!”

She dropped him down and stepped back. Her hand came across his face like a whip.
Smack!

“So don't you dare talk to me about what you do or don't like! You have no right. Now get in there!” She thrust her finger to the door.

Caleb ducked under her arm and scooted down the hall, his face throbbing with pain.

“I swear, if it weren't for the others, I would take a buckle to you, boy!” she mumbled after him.

He opened the door, ran to the bed, and leapt onto the mattress.

The door slammed, and then she was gone.

He sat shivering in the corner of his bed for several minutes, allowing the sting on his cheek to fade. He'd never been hit. And now that he had been, his mind was not dealing with it well. But she had been beaten every day? What kind of man could do such a thing? The devil could do it.

“Can the devil enter the kingdom of light, Dadda?”

“Never. He is stuck in the kingdom of darkness.”

So then if he ever did want to flee the devil, he would only have to enter the kingdom of God? His father said that was right. Yes, that was about the sum of it all.

The television was squawking in the corner, casting pulses of red and blue light against the wall. Caleb ignored it and closed his eyes.

For a moment all he could think about was that big witch, swinging her hand. He began to cry softly, and he wasn't sure why; the pain had already left him. He tried to cleanse his mind, to fix it on good things and on God, but it wasn't cooperating.

He lay down, curled into a ball, and began to hum. That helped.

Half an hour or maybe an hour later, Caleb opened his eyes and found he was facing the television. The colors skipped across the screen in a kind of intoxicating dance. A furry blue animal with jagged teeth was running upright on tiptoes wearing a wide grin. In its right hoof was a red shirt torn in half. The blue animal was laughing.

Caleb gawked at the scene. It was fascinating and terrifying at once. Stunning. The blue animal had torn someone's shirt off his back, it appeared. And it was laughing as if such a thing made his day bright.

Caleb slammed his lids shut and squeezed them tight.

And what happened to such an animal? Having torn the shirt from the back of some sad child, what happened to the animal? Would it simply wander off the screen laughing, or would the boy run after it and take his shirt back? Could such a deed be left uncorrected?

The question grew in Caleb's mind. He tried to put it out, but he had to know what happened to the blue animal. He listened but heard only strange sounds. There was no speech. There was only
whizzing
and
banging
and
popping
. But Caleb could not bring himself to look.

And then there was a loud
boom
, and Caleb simply had to look.

He opened his eyes and saw a small boy tiptoeing the other direction, grinning like the animal had, with large sharp teeth. He held a coat of blue fur in his hand.

It took a moment for Caleb to understand what had happened. But then he did and his mind wailed in protest. He cried out, curled up tight, and rolled away from the television. This time he covered his head with his pillow and begged to see the light.

They were in the San Francisco Hilton Hotel Monday night when the question came to Crandal, right on schedule, as expected.

The six days since the boy had blown the lid off the Old Theater had been quiet. At least on the outside they had been quiet. On the inside things were festering. But the boy had said nothing at all in public, much less anything about Tempest. With due consideration Roberts had decided to join Crandal in San Francisco for a morning of campaigning on the wharf and a string of interviews that evening. They were a good fifteen points up in the polls and coasting.