THE LAST BOY (47 page)

Tripoli stood hovering over him, waiting.

The old man drew a long, deep breath. He studied his own hands and brought his furry brow together in contemplation. “Well,” he said finally glancing up at Tripoli, “If you look at the prophets…if you read the Bible or the Koran or the Bahgavad Gita, it's really unclear whether they gained enlightenment in a single moment or over a period of years.”

“Christ. Mohammed. Buddha sitting under his tree,” persisted Tripoli.“How long did it take?”

“Forty days in the desert or a lifetime under a tree. As long as it takes,” said the priest with a chuckle. Then seeing the look on Tripoli's face asked,“You’re not kidding about this, are you?”

Tripoli didn’t respond, but pushed on. “When I say the name John, who do you think of?”

“The Bible's full of Johns. And there are numerous Popes named John. John? Well, I think of John the Evangelist. John the Divine— if you’re curious about the mystical. And, of course, John the Baptist comes to mind.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Tripoli.“Yes. I should have thought of that.”

“I don’t get it,” said the priest, smiling with mystification.“And why all these questions?”

“Well, I’ve been reading these books.”

“What books?”

“Well, just certain old books I found,” replied Tripoli evasively. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of translucent paper onto which he had traced the inscription he had found at the very head of the first volume, on what might have been the title page.“I know you’re a biblical scholar and.…Can you read this?” he asked, handing the sheet across the desk.

The priest put on his reading glasses, unfolded the paper, and studied the writing.

“Hmmm. Looks like ancient Hebrew.”

“That's what I thought. Can you translate it?”

“Well, I
think
so…I studied it while I was in the seminary, but…” He squinted.“Let's see. It's addressed to…” he began haltingly,“…‘to the chosen others who…who follow and are granted the right to gaze on these hallowed works, the keepers of…of the Sacred Spirit of Anterra, holders of these eternal truths.”Without lifting his head, the old priest looked questioningly up at Tripoli over the rims of spectacles.

“Please, go on,” he urged.

“‘May this flame continue to burn and shed its light on this noble planet, hear the word of Anterra.’”

“
Anterra?
” echoed Tripoli.

The priest sounded out the letters again. “Yes, An-ter-ra.”

“Does that mean anything to you?”

“Anterra?” He shook his head and handed back the paper. “Never heard of it. This is from those books, I suppose?”

Tripoli nodded.

“And these books?”

“Well, they got me thinking…”

“About?”

“Oh, life and death. Love. Our purpose in being here on the Earth—if there is any. Our responsibility to others. Other people. Other creatures. The planet itself.”

“And what have you discovered?”

Tripoli hesitated to commit himself.“I’m not really sure. But I find myself thinking about things I haven’t thought about before. I’ve always known that I was going to die—as a cop you see death a lot, face it every day. But suddenly now it's taken on a different aspect. I find it frightening and humbling but also, in an odd way, liberating. If I can come to accept my mortality, feel it truly, then I become open to the things that may really be important. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

“Of course,” said the priest. “You know there's a line in
Hamlet
…”

Tripoli shrugged. Except for a few selections in high school, he had never really read any Shakespeare.

“Hamlet says to his Horatio,‘The readiness is all.’”

Tripoli paused, thinking.“Yes, that's good. The readiness
is
all.”

“It's about that boy, isn’t it?” said the priest finally.

Tripoli couldn’t mask his surprise.“What makes you say that?”

The cleric's face crinkled in a smile. “It doesn’t take much to come to that conclusion. You’d have to be all but brain dead in this town, this country, not to have heard about him.”

“The listening,” uttered Tripoli.

“Yes, the listening,” echoed the old man. He steepled his hands and stared thoughtfully up at the ceiling. “Well, I’ve been thinking
about that myself. There's a parable in the Bible. In Matthew.” He reached behind him and took the book off his shelf. “Christ talks about a sower who went forth to sow seeds.” He wet his finger and thumbed through the book as he spoke. “Some seeds fall by the wayside and the birds come and devour them. Others fall upon rocky places where there's no earth and the seedlings soon get scorched by the sun. Still others land upon thorns and the thorns grow up and choke them. Ah, here we are…” he interrupted himself, then began to read: “‘…and others fell upon the ground and yielded fruit, some a hundred-fold, some sixty, some thirty.”

Tripoli looked at him eagerly.“You mean…?”

“‘He that hath ears, let him hear.’”

“Oh…” uttered Tripoli.

“What's interesting is that the parable begins with ‘Harken.’ And then there are those last words.” He intoned them again, this time ever more slowly. “‘He that hath ears let him hear.’ We assume that because the initiative is with the speaker that the message controls the hearer. But, Lou, it's just to the contrary. An appeal, even the appeal of Jesus, may be frustrated by unreceptiveness. The inability to listen.”

“And you think the boy is a messiah?”

“No. Of course not. But…through the ages the Lord has, from time to time, as He has chosen them, employed His messengers. It's a question, of course, of our being open to listening. A question of the ground being prepared to accept the seeds of wisdom. Fertile and unchoked.”

They spoke for a long hour after that. Then the priest walked Tripoli to the door of the church.

“If you want to talk further,” said the priest, taking his hand, “I’m always here.”

The faint but insistent tapping kept chewing into the edges of Molly's sleep. She rolled over away from the window and tried to
bury herself into the pillow, but it kept drilling into her consciousness like a rodent gnawing at her ears.

“Huh?” She awoke with a start and shot upright in bed.

Her eyes went immediately to Daniel's cot. He was in a deep sleep. The noise, however, kept up and at last she realized it was coming from her window: a coin or key was being struck against the pane. The illuminated digits on her clock read 3:20. Cautiously, Molly separated the slats in the blinds and peeked out. At first, she couldn’t recognize the man. Didn’t expect to see him with the beginnings of a beard. Then she eased up the blind and asked, “What's up?”

Tripoli motioned for her and she climbed out of bed and unlocked the front door. “What's the trouble?” she asked, standing barefoot in the doorway. The linoleum was cold, and she was still fuzzy with sleep.

“No trouble,” he said in a whisper, slipped in, and closed the door softly behind him.“I just wanted to talk to you.”

“Huh? At three in the morning!”

“I just wanted to make sure Daniel's okay.”

“Of course he is. He's sleeping.”

“Good. Can I see him?”

He looked haggard. She glanced out the window and saw no sign of a car.“How’d you get here?”

“Oh, I was out walking…” he answered nebulously,“…and then just…just came by.”

Molly took a hard look at him. His clothes were rumpled, the furrows in his face were deep, and the skin hung loose around his neck. Town was a good three miles away.

“Have you been drinking?” she asked.

“Of course not!” he retorted.

“I haven’t seen you in ages.”

“Yeah, I know. I’ve been busy.”

“What's up? You don’t look so good. Looks like you lost weight,” she said, surveying him. It looked as if he had shed pounds, and his skin had an unhealthy pallor as though he hadn’t seen daylight in ages. And his eyes burnt with an intensity that frightened Molly.“Are you okay, Trip?”

“Yeah. Sure. Can I see him?” he asked again.“Just take a look at him. I won’t wake him—I promise.”

It was an odd request.“Cripes,” said Molly. Shaking her head, she relented and led him towards the bedroom. She opened the door, and Tripoli tiptoed into the darkened room.

Daniel was sleeping deeply; his eyes were closed and his lids fluttered in dream. His features, nested in the pillow, were cast in a soft repose.

Tripoli went to the bed, knelt down at the edge, and bowed his head, staring down at the boy. He said nothing, did nothing, just knelt there in silence, his chin resting on his hand. It reminded Molly of that strange couple, with their sickly little boy, who had accosted them.

Daniel, as if sensing Tripoli's presence, smiled in his sleep. His face reminded Tripoli of angels one saw in frescoes painted on the ceilings of Italian churches. Tripoli reached out and lovingly stroked the little boy's cheek with his fingertips.

“I’ve got to get to sleep, Trip,” whispered Molly into his ear, breaking the spell. “I’ve got a full day ahead of me.”

Together, they slipped out of the bedroom. Tripoli took Molly's hand as they stood in the darkened kitchen. “We’ve got to protect him,” he said, his voice soft and throaty.

“Well, of course!”

“Nurture his gifts.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You can’t send him to school,” he said right out.

“Who…?”

“Daniel told me. He's worried. You can’t do it.”

“Of course I can. And I will. And I
have
to.”

“Putting an exceptional boy like Daniel in an ordinary school is ludicrous. It's a recipe for disaster. Believe me. Look, I’ve got a much better idea. I’ve thought it all through. We don’t have to get married right away if you don’t want to. You could just move out with me. And Daniel loves my place. There's plenty of room. It's in the country. We’ll fix it up together.”

“Do we have to talk about this now, at
three
in the morning?”

“You can stay home with him.”

“But I don’t want to stay
home.
I like to work. I’ve got to have some kind of life too.”

“Okay, then
I’ll
stay home with him.”

“And take care of him?”

“Sure,” he said.“We can school him at home. I’ve got it all figured out.”

“Oh, you’re going to quit your job?”

“That's no problem. I’ve got a little bit of savings that’ll carry us through until the spring. I’ve got lots of land. Then we’ll start growing crops. The soil isn’t the greatest, but we can grow enough for us and then some to sell. I was thinking of doing vegetables. Maybe beans and tomatoes. Some melons.”

“Trip!”

“And we’ve already got some animals. They’ll have babies. We’ve got milk. Cheese. There's wool.”

She tried to interrupt, but he kept excitedly pushing on. The more he talked, the more he sounded like Danny. Like a little kid. The less like a life's partner.

“Trip, will you do me a favor? Just go home and go to sleep,
please.
”

“The wild fires and hurricanes, the heat waves and floods, the crops that have failed in Canada and…I suddenly understand,” he said with an intensity that frightened her.“The world's on the brink
of catastrophe! And we’ve got to do something—”

She looked at him as if he were a stranger.

“The tornado that hit town,” he pleaded, clutching both her hands in his.“You saw that with your own eyes, right?”

She realized that she had made the mistake of nodding, and that had launched him further. He started going on about some books he had found, about Anterra, the spirit of Anterra.

“
Anterra?
” she said.

“I’m a little punchy, I realize that. I haven’t slept much. And maybe I’m not making perfect sense right now, but—”

“Well then go home and go to sleep.”

“Daniel. You don’t understand how important he is. He's the key. The link in the—”

“And let me go back to sleep, too, willya?”

She pushed him out the door, but he was still rambling on, even as she locked it behind him.

After he left, Molly couldn’t go back to sleep, much as she needed to. Was Tripoli, she wondered, turning into another one of these fanatics who believed that Danny could make the lame walk and the blind see? Obviously he was going through a rough time, still blaming himself for the old man's death. School, she thought. Of course he had to go! Keep Danny at home? That would just isolate him further, make him yet more different. The poor boy needed a chance to live his life, make friends, play in a school yard, for God's sake. Baseball. Basketball. Football. Molly didn’t care what. And she wanted a life for him, not just for herself. She wanted him to dance and fall in love with a nice girl, have a decent job, not become a mystical goat herder. All she desired at that instant was to save him from the world, not burden him with the task of saving the world from itself. If it was burning up, that wasn’t his making. Oh, dear God, she thought, help me do what's right.

“It just hit me!” said Rosie bolting upright in bed. She rolled over
and shook Ed, who was sound asleep.

“Huh?” he said, slow to rouse. ‘What the…What's going on?” He blinked in the darkness trying to focus.