Prophet

by Frank Peretti

  Mom’s eyes were filling with tears. “I’d better not stay out here long. I can see Dad everywhere I look.”

  Carl knew what she meant. This room was just full of Grandpa. His touch and his personality were everywhere. Carl could feel it.

  “But see?” Mom pointed, wiping her eyes clear with her other hand. “Down there at the end, right by the windows. Couldn’t you use that area?”

  They walked down to the south end of the room where a row of large windows would welcome the daylight. Carl looked the area over thoughtfully. In the corner was a large pile of lumber, some kind of project under a tarp, but apart from that there was plenty of open space here. Near the windows was a perfect spot for an easel, and on the next wall plenty of room to hang his paintings. This end of the workbench had space for his paints, palettes, and brushes, and in the center of the area was a fine worktable. During the day the light would be ideal.

  He wanted to be here. “It’ll be a beautiful place to work.”

  “Then that’s that.”

  “But I don’t want to cause any problems, you know?”

  “You belong here.”

  “Well, I mean, with my father. He doesn’t know I’m staying here, and I was afraid to tell him.”

  “Oh, I’m sure he’ll find something to fuss about. But that’s because he doesn’t know you and you don’t know him, and he’ll be concerned for me.”

  “What kind of a person is he?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Ask him yourself. That’s why you’re here.”

  Carl looked around the room again, fascinated, captivated by this world—his world—he’d never known. “I still feel like I’m intruding.”

  “No, now remember, this was my idea.” She touched him, got him to look at her. “Carl Barrett, my name is Lillian Eve Barrett. I’m your grandmother, the mother of your father. And you, young man, are my only grandchild.” She put her arms around him and gave him a squeeze. He didn’t know how to respond to that and just stood there stiffly, his hands awkwardly at his sides. “This is called a hug, Carl. It’s one of the things I do to people I love. You’ll get used to it.”

  He absorbed the hug and the words that came with it and then shyly agreed, “Okay.”

  She let him go and stepped back to smile at him and to even point a motherly finger in his face. “If you get to be a nuisance, I’ll let you know, so don’t be. I expect you to keep this place clean, like your grandfather kept it and your father never did. You can have your father’s old room. The bed’s still there and his dresser. Right now I’ve got my sewing in there and a bunch of boxes from the Women’s Missionary rummage sale, but we’ll cart all that stuff upstairs and out of your way. If you start feeling guilty for mooching off a little old widow, I’ve got plenty of work for you to do around here to earn your keep. I’ll give you a list.”

  He smiled, nodded, feeling a bit nervous, on the spot. “Yeah, okay. Fair enough.”

  “Any questions?”

  “Oh. Well . . .” His eyes drifted toward the pile of lumber and whatever else under the tarp. “Would it be okay if I moved that stuff there? Then I’d have this area all clear. It’d be perfect.”

  She stepped over to the pile and lifted one corner of the tarp, folding it back over the top. Underneath were several planks cut to precise, curved shapes, mingled with finely cut wood ribs.

  “Looks like a boat,” said Carl.

  Mom didn’t answer right away. She seemed drawn by those unassembled parts into another world. Her eyes filled with tears again. “I’d better get inside now. I see Dad everywhere I look . . .” Her hands went to her face and she turned away, heading for the door. “Come in when you’re ready, and we’ll get you moved in.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

  “It’s all right.” She stopped and turned toward him one more time, wiping her eyes, speaking with quaking breath. “I want you here. Dad wants you here too. I know.”

  She went out the door. Carl stood there, unsure of what to do next. He finally heard the back door to the house open and close again. She was safe inside now. She was home.

  Who is she anyway? he found himself wondering. Who was Grandpa? Then he chuckled. Who’s my old man?

  He reached out and touched one of the boat ribs. And for the longest time, he just couldn’t take his hand away.

  MONDAY AFTERNOON, AT ten to 1, John parked in his designated stall under the building, punched in the security access code at the stairway door, and entered the bowels of Channel 6, The City’s Premier News and Information Station. Up one flight of stairs, through the steel fire door, and straight ahead was the newsroom.

  “Hey, George.”

  George Hayami, assignment editor, waved from the assignment desk, an elevated station everyone passed on their way into the newsroom. From the newsroom floor it resembled a sort of lunch counter, built at chest height, from which George, Ruth Sutton, and Diane Bouvier served up a constantly changing menu of fast information. The Desk, as the staff called it, was in many ways the only window in this windowless room, the station’s electronic, telephone, fax, and print eyes and ears that were open to the outside world. On the left end a bank of radios tuned to police and fire frequencies carried the chatter of dispatchers, fire trucks en route, and cops on capers. In the left back corner a radio and telephone switchboard kept the Desk in touch with reporters in the field via radio, cellular phone, and, when all else failed, public telephone. Just under the back counter all the latest City newspapers, plus the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post, were stacked in wire bins, already divided up, folded over, highlighted, and clipped. On the back wall were large maps of The City proper, The Greater City, the county, and the state for quick reference by the assignment editors so they could tell reporters where a story was happening and how best to get there. On the desk below the maps were the computerized feeds from the news services—United Press International, Associated Press, and Reuters. At the other end, sifting and selecting, George Hayami and Ruth Sutton sat at computer consoles updating the “24-Hour Outlook,” a multi-paged, computer printout, the day’s menu of what news was happening and where, what stories were being covered and by whom, who was working, who was sick, who was on vacation.

  John picked up a copy, updated at noon, and at a glance could see what was happening and what might be news:

  M! (M! stood for murder) BROCKVILLE—33-year-old Cora Ann Bayley found dead in home. Friend who found her thinks she was strangled. Cops won’t say how she died.

  MURDER PLOT—Three teenagers arrested in Greenport for plotting to kill parents.

  B! (B! stood for a body found) DILLON PARK—Woman’s body found in Dillon Park Sunday (not reported Sunday). Reported missing on Friday. Apparent suicide.

  C! (C! stood for a plane crash) MANILA—We really need to put Southcott on this today. Benson Dynamics is, of course, issuing the usual meaningless doubletalk. Southcott last year reported on similar engine problems.

  F! (F! stood for fire) VARIOUS—Couple of good fires with good flame pictures from Sunday. Yacht in Lake Swayze. Cause? Grandstands at Summerville Raceway burned up in an arson fire.

  And so it went. Three pages of it. They wouldn’t all make it on the air, but John always found the wide selection fascinating, especially when compared to the final script for the evening news.

  He sat at his desk in the back of the newsroom and clicked on his computer monitor. A small, blinking mailbox in the upper-right corner of the screen meant he had a message in his mailbox. Of course, this didn’t mean a physical mailbox, but a message left for him in the computer. He called up his mailbox to retrieve the message.

  Well, messages, plural. A lot of them. “We’re thinking of you, John.” “Much sympathy in your time of loss.” “Chin up, sport, and remember, you’re the greatest.” “God bless you, John.” “Condolences to you and yours.”

  Oh. And here was a message from Leslie Albright. “John,
my sincerest condolences. Please come around to talk. I owe you an explanation and apology for last Friday. Leslie.”

  Well, what do you know. He pushed the tears back down, smiled warmly, and typed in a return message for general distribution through the system: “Many thanks to all of you for your good wishes and support at this time. We’ve got a great team. God bless.”

  He hit the enter key, and the message went into the system just that quickly. He looked around the newsroom. Leslie wasn’t at her desk. She was probably out covering a story, as usual for this time of day.

  He entered the code for her computer mailbox and left her a message—“Thank you for your kind thoughts. Sure, let’s talk”—and hit the enter key.

  Now back to work. Back to business. It was time to look forward, time to lose himself in the rush and hubbub of the daily news. He loved it.

  He hit a series of keys, and the script for the Five Thirty came up on the screen, still under construction. Now he’d find out which stories from the “Outlook” survived the sifting process and would actually be on the air.

  He was betting the fires with the “good flame pictures” would make it. Good video was always a strong seller.

  As for the plane crash in Manila, the plane’s manufacturer was a major employer in The City, so that story was of great local interest and would get into the lineup somehow, whether there was any fresh information or not.

  Two pervading questions that guided news reporting in a local market were, How can we localize this? and What’s hot? If a Benson Dynamics plane crashes overseas, you definitely have local interest because people in the area probably built that plane. As for “hot,” well, if enough planes were crashing and enough people wondering why, that topic would be hot; there would be plenty of cause for related spinoff stories and sidebars. Even if there were no new news, you could still get reactions from people on the old news, you could take a poll, find a relative, look for another angle.

  John could recall other “hot” topics over the past few months. AIDS was hot since two more celebrities had tested positive for HIV; NewsSix localized the story by running a piece on the local gay community and what they were doing to curb the epidemic. The Middle East hostages were hot because they were finally being released after years of captivity, and since the sister of one of them lived in the area, NewsSix had a perfect opportunity to “localize” the story. Sexual harassment on the job was hot since a major politician was accused of it. Gun control was hot after another mass shooting. Crooked televangelists were hot after another TV preacher got caught with a prostitute. News fed news, and hot news fed a lot of news.

  But this was all part of the gauntlet, the gathering and sifting process every news story had to run through before it got on the air. The broadcast news business involved a day-long chain of human, journalistic, and business elements that tugged on the news, often from opposing directions, here promoting it, there opposing it, other times shaping, discarding, or rebuilding it.

  Even though the people who gathered the news made every effort to be professional—meaning objective—news gathering was still a human business. Reporters, producers, and even viewers perceived things differently and held different facets of the news to be important, and that alone was enough to reshape reality, however unintentionally.

  But even after that, the news gathering process still involved a balancing of journalism and business: What are the people out there interested in, what are we as journalists interested in and concerned about, and—this one nobody talked about openly—what material is in the best interests of our News Department as far as ratings and advertising accounts are concerned? It was a complex world.

  Bingo. John saw the Summerville fire in the script for the Five Thirty. The good video of the flames must have sold it to Erica Johnson, the managing editor. And here was the plane crash story. No new information on the crash itself, but to keep the story alive—right now it was hot—Wendell Southcott had filed a piece on how thrust reversers work and how they might have had something to do with the crash.

  These were stories passed down from the assignment desk and then approved and assigned at the 9 A.M. meeting around Erica’s desk, where Ben Oliver, the news director, Tina Lewis, the executive news producer, and the producers for the Noon, Five Thirty, and Seven O’clock shows met with reporters and writers to decide what would be news that day. From there, with their marching orders from Erica, the reporters went out in company cars with their assigned cameramen and got the video footage and pertinent information so they could put together their video packages, their perception of what was happening. The writers would remain in the newsroom and get their information over the phone, from the papers and wire services, from the public information officers of the police departments, or any other reliable source, and then write a story to accompany some separately shot video—or perhaps no video at all, the anchor would simply read it.

  Then the stories were all sifted again, this time by the show producer, who placed each one where he or she wanted it within the half-hour time slot, which really meant twenty-two minutes of actual news time plus eight minutes of commercials.

  Finally, whichever portions of the stories were to be read by the anchors were proofread by the anchors, and that was where John was right now.

  Okay, here was a story about gubernatorial challenger Bob Wilson speaking at his kickoff rally. After last week’s story—the one John hoped everyone would forget—the public was no doubt curious about how he would respond.

  And here was a hate crime story about a cross burned on a lawn out in Woodard. Racism was always hot; people were interested in that.

  Oh-oh. A gay/AIDS story. These were hot but also tough to do because they were so politically and morally loaded and stirred up a lot of cross fire. This story was a follow-up on a Sunday demonstration by gays during a Catholic Mass. Ah, this was where Leslie Albright was today, gathering this story. She’d be on-camera, reporting live from the newsroom during the Five Thirty broadcast, sandwiched around her video package. John perused the script for the question he would have to ask her. Hmm. “Leslie, can we expect more demonstrations of this kind?” John chuckled. He already knew the answer to that one, but he made a mental note: John, remember, you don’t know the answer to a scripted question.

  Here was a story about one of the ferries that carried commuters across The Bay breaking down, and that would be of interest to the commuters who rode that ferry. The volcano still erupting in the Philippines was a big story that all the other stations and papers were covering, so naturally NewsSix would be covering that. But this story about a lady finding a tarantula in a bunch of bananas and suing the grocery chain probably qualified as filler or maybe human interest. There was certainly no plague of tarantulas threatening the area as of yet.

  Speaking of filler, here were some more stories of that nature: the new uniforms for the Irish Girls’ Drum and Bugle Corps (and whether or not you could join if you were not Irish or not a girl or didn’t care to wear a skirt) and an oyster eating contest! These were bound to end up on the floor if time got tight.

  John continued to scroll through the script just to give it an overview, tapping away on the PgDn key. He’d be spending most of the afternoon proofreading and polishing, as would his co-anchor, Ali Downs. Most of the stories had already been assigned to either Ali or John and marked with an A or a J, but both anchors read and edited all of the script in case either one missed something—and to make sure the stories made sense and were understandable and readable. Sometimes the script could tie your tongue up and had to be changed.

  Anyway, this was great. This was life as usual, and John was happy to let himself become lost in it, absorbed by it. Now he could just work on getting normal again.

  Normal. Something about that word made him think of Carl. Oh brother . . . Carl . . . He’d gotten a call from him that morning and set the whole thing up, but he still hadn’t cleared it with the front desk. He picked up the phone—
>
  He spun his head around even as his hand held the receiver. The scream came from across the room. A woman. An accident. Something terrible.

  He bounded from his desk and weaved through the maze of desks toward the sound.

  Now he could hear words. “I didn’t do anything . . . I didn’t do anything! Leave me alone!”

  The reporters, writers, producers stayed on their phones, kept at their computers, even conversed with each other. Good grief, what was wrong with these people? They didn’t care! They didn’t even turn their heads!

  “What’s happened?” John asked Hal Rosen, the weatherman.

  Hal, a lanky, good-natured guy, was at the weather desk, shuffling through weather wire copy and watching the computer-enhanced satellite photos on the monitor. At the look on John’s face he jumped up, alarmed. “What?”

  John heard the woman’s voice again. “Get away from me! Please! I haven’t done anything!”

  It was coming from Tina Lewis’s office.

  “Tina!” John dashed into her office with Hal on his heels.

  Tina was facing the wall, a script in her hand. At the sound of their entrance—and it was not a quiet entrance—she spun around, startled and irritated. “What in the world—”

  “Are you all right?” John asked, his words rushing with urgency.

  She slowly, deliberately dropped the script on her desk and demanded, “Don’t you ever knock? I don’t recall inviting you in here.”

  “She’s okay,” said Hal, ready to look elsewhere.

  “I heard you screaming,” said John.

  She glared at him, even let her mouth drop open with incredulity. “Screaming?”

  John saw her glaring at him the way she always did.

  But then, in a weird dissolve, the glare melted into an anguished expression, the head thrown back, the eyes running with tears, the mouth contorted in a scream of agony. This face cried out, “You leave me alone! I had the right! It was my right!”

  John froze. He stared at her. “Are you . . . are you sure you’re all right?”