Prophet

by Frank Peretti

  Shots of planes landing at the airport. Wendell Southcott’s voice starts explaining how thrust reversers work.

  In the studio John Barrett grabbed a sip of water, and Ali Downs primped, looking into the little round mirror.

  More stories, one after the other.

  Carl had trouble remembering what he’d just seen before he was seeing something else. A fire at a grandstand, a woman’s body found in Dillon Park, three kids trying to kill their parents.

  Cut to commercials.

  WHILE A LADY on the screen tried to get the last precious drops of dish soap out of the bottle, John took another sip of water and looked at Carl, sitting in the dark behind Camera One. “Holding up okay?”

  Carl shrugged, then nodded. The monitors in the news desk were suddenly filled with a blood-red sunrise as the audio carried a deep, rumbling voice. “A new day, a new dawning, broke upon our state four years ago . . .” Oh, so this was Governor Hiram Slater!

  The ad was captivating from the very start, and Carl found himself mesmerized by the colors and the quick-cutting, rapid-fire shots of Hiram Slater, his shirtsleeves rolled up, his brow furrowed as he shuffled papers, consulted with VIPs, talked on the phone.

  Voice: “A growing economy and new jobs. A bold new approach to education for the twentieth century. Environmental awareness. These are the Slater legacy.”

  Then came the shot of the state capitol dome silhouetted against a massive rising sun, the whole picture rippling with heat waves.

  Voice: “The new dawn lives on.” And there was Hiram Slater, his huge face appearing to the left of the capitol dome in stark relief against the sun.

  Voice: “Governor Hiram Slater—for Governor!”

  Wow!

  “OKAY,” CAME RUSH’S voice through John’s earpiece, “gay protest, Leslie Albright on DVE Box, to your right.”

  John checked his script. This would be the follow-up story on Sunday’s gay protest at the Catholic cathedral.

  Countdown from Mardell the floor director. Four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . .

  She pointed, and John read from the teleprompter. “The Catholic Archdiocese has not yet responded to demands made by The City’s gay community in a demonstration at St. Andrew’s Cathedral yesterday, and a gay spokesman says they are still waiting. Leslie Albright is live in our newsroom with an update.”

  Mardell held her hand out to the left, and John and Ali followed it with their eyes, looking to their right.

  “Leslie, has there been any response from the Archdiocese?” John asked.

  Carl followed his father’s and Ali Downs’ gaze and looked at the wall, but nothing was there. Then he heard Leslie Albright’s voice some distance away. “John,” she was saying, “so far the Archdiocese has released only one brief statement maintaining the Church’s position on birth control . . .”

  Carl looked from the wall to his father, but his father was still paying rapt attention to the wall. Where in the world . . . ?

  Oh . . . Carl could see Leslie Albright just out of the camera’s view around the end of the plywood backdrop, sitting in front of that little camera perched on the stand, the flashcam.

  “. . . Harley Cudzue, spokesman for the Gay Rights Action League, is not satisfied.”

  Carl looked at the monitor. Oh . . . here was some guy carrying a sign and looking upset, hollering, “We are here to call attention to the callousness and indifference of organized religion to the plight of gays and straights alike. AIDS is everyone’s problem, and everyone needs to be involved in stopping it.”

  JOHN PERUSED HIS script once again for the scripted question and Leslie’s outcue. He found the outcue: “. . . free condoms available.”

  And the scripted question. Hmm . . . Leslie came up with a different question. Funny she didn’t mention it. But John liked it. It was more probing, more interesting, and definitely more risky.

  Leslie, you’ve got guts, I’ll hand you that.

  CARL WATCHED THE monitor.

  Leslie’s voice: “Yesterday was the first of many planned demonstrations, with several confrontations between gays and parishioners.”

  Video: Homosexuals handing free condoms to parishioners just leaving the church.

  Cut to video: A parishioner and a gay having it out. The gay: “The Church needs to own up to its responsibility! You are to blame for thousands of deaths!” The parishioner: “You people need to turn back to God and turn away from this sin!”

  Cut to video of the guy with the sign again. Title at bottom of screen: “Harley Cudzue, Gay Rights Action League.”

  “Condoms are the answer to stemming this plague, and we will not surrender until the Catholic Church amends its murderous policies!”

  Cut to Leslie, live from the newsroom, with desks and people working behind her.

  Carl looked. His father and Ali Downs were looking at the wall again, while Leslie, only a few feet behind them, talked to the flashcam.

  “So that’s where it stands, John. Regardless of what the Church eventually decides, Cudzue and his fellow gays say they will continue to make free condoms available.”

  As Carl watched the monitor, Leslie suddenly appeared on a screen perched on the end of the news desk. Carl looked at Leslie in the newsroom, then the monitor, then his father.

  My father’s talking to the wall, he thought.

  JOHN WAS READY with his scripted question and addressed it to the wall. “Well, Leslie, how does he reconcile his position with the fact that he’s had over three hundred sexual encounters in the past year and never uses a condom himself?”

  Dead air.

  “Well . . .”

  CARL LOOKED AT the lady sitting behind the backdrop. He was waiting to hear the answer.

  “Well,” she said, her script falling limp in her lap, “that’s a good question, John.”

  Carl detected a note of sarcasm, and now she sat there with a very testy expression on her face.

  AN EXPRESSION JOHN could not see, but could certainly feel in her tone. He’d better let her go, and quick. “All right, thank you, Leslie.”

  On the monitors, the screen that wasn’t there vanished. John and Ali looked toward the front again as Camera One zoomed in for a close-up of Ali.

  Ali started the next story. “The tax initiative for the Public Swimming Pool is in deep water again . . .”

  CARL WATCHED AS Leslie Albright rolled limply out of the flashcam chair, her mouth open and her eyes looking toward Heaven. The first person she encountered back there, she grabbed, gesturing, waving her script.

  JOHN PAGED THROUGH his script, getting ready for the break coming up. There was tension in the air; he could feel it.

  Camera Three’s red light flashed on, and the monitor showed the camera capturing the two anchors plus Bing Dingham, newly arrived, ready at his post at the right end of the news desk.

  John looked into the script mirrored on the glass over Camera Three’s lens and started the close-out for this section. “Coming up next, a two-dollar rubber washer is blamed for a million-dollar flood.”

  Ali added, looking to her left, “And Bing Dingham brings us Sunday’s Sorry Saga.”

  Bing Dingham looked into the eye of Camera One for the close-up shot. “Hey, you’ve heard of the instant replay. Well, how about a perfect repeat of last year’s game against Kansas City? Stop me if you’ve heard this one.”

  Camera Three came on again, showing all three. John intro’d the break. “We’ll be right back.” Music. Cut to commercials.

  John’s earpiece crackled with Rush Torrance’s voice—“What the @$#!!*& was that?”

  Ali heard the question through her earpiece as well and looked toward John for the answer. Mardell the floor director was just now flipping through her script, ready to ask the question if no one else did.

  THE SHOW WAS over. They’d made it through with no further train wrecks. Rush, Ali, Mardell, and Leslie were huddled in the studio around the news desk—around John—every one of them sp
ring-loaded and ready to strike.

  “Where’s Carl?” John asked.

  “Show it to me!” Rush demanded, his finger tapping the show’s script.

  “Carl’s upstairs in the control room,” said Mardell, “but he’s probably on his way back down.”

  “Then we’ll settle this before he gets here,” said John, flipping through his script.

  “What’s to settle?” asked Leslie. “We agreed on the question, we put it in the script, it was there all afternoon. You could have checked with me, given me just a little warning, but no, you had to wait until we were smack dab on the air to make up your own question and make me look like a jerk!”

  John insisted angrily, “I asked you the question I was given in the script!”

  She shook her head in wide sweeps, her blonde hair waving like pennants. “No, no, no, just look at it, will you look at it?”

  John found it. “Okay. Right here.” He didn’t read it out loud because it said, “Leslie, can we expect more demonstrations of this kind?”

  His silence was rewarding for all of them. They had a glance-exchanging party right then and there.

  “Well?” asked Rush.

  John was nonplussed. “It said that thing about the sexual encounters and him not using a condom . . . It was right here.”

  Mardell suggested, “Well, did you see it on the teleprompter?”

  “Well, I think I read it here, but . . .” Rush was already back to the teleprompter table, scrolling through the long paper strip, the script that was projected on the front of the cameras. “Nope. It’s the same here.”

  It was too perfect. Too flawless. Too much without any explanation. John smiled wryly and suggested, “Okay, it’s a gag, right? Who did it? What’s the occasion?”

  No one cracked a smile. Least of all Rush. “Do you want the gay rights activists storming this place?”

  “Rush . . .”

  “You ought to see what they did to that church! You want them doing that to this place? I’m not going to have that on my head!”

  Ali tried to intercede. “Rush, all right, it was a mistake, okay? Maybe it was a gag. It was a bad gag, but—”

  Rush was too riled to turn back. He counted the items off on his fingers as he listed them. “They broke the windows out, they spray-painted” (Rush didn’t mind repeating the graffiti verbatim) “all over the walls, they broke a bunch of glassware in the church, and urinated” (Rush’s language was not so gracious) “all over the altar! You want those people coming in here next?”

  John was shocked, disgusted. “They did what?” He looked at Leslie.

  Leslie nodded.

  John looked puzzled. “I didn’t know that.”

  “Well, now you know. You know what kind of garbage we’re up against every time we have to do a gay story. So use some common sense, will you, just a little common sense?”

  John was not satisfied. Something was gnawing at him.

  “But . . . we haven’t shown any of this. We haven’t told anyone about it.”

  “You better believe we haven’t!”

  John could feel some anger building. “Now wait a minute. The gays virtually ransacked a church and defaced property? . . . Was anyone arrested?”

  Leslie answered, “Not that we know of.”

  “Not that we know of? Did anybody ask? Did we get any pictures of the damage?”

  Rush was incredulous. “Yeah, right, John, like we’re going to show everybody spray-painted profanity during the dinner hour! You want to take the phone calls?”

  Leslie piped in, “John, not all gays are like that!”

  Now he knew he was getting angry. He locked eyes with Rush again. “Rush . . . everything you told me, everything they did—it was happening, wasn’t it? And we were there, weren’t we?”

  Rush threw up his hands and started walking away. “Oh boy. I’m outa here.”

  John went after him. “No, now, Rush, don’t walk away. It was happening, and we were there, and now you’re telling me it wasn’t news?”

  Rush turned and stood his ground. “Listen, we’re not here to discuss that! We’re here to discuss you fouling up, that’s what we’re here to discuss!”

  John threw a question at Leslie. “Was it true?”

  Leslie wasn’t ready. “Was what true?”

  “Three hundred sexual encounters, never uses a condom. True?”

  She thought it over, then nodded and admitted, “Well, one of his friends says he’s proud of it.” But she was puzzled. “But how did you know about that?”

  Rush cut in. “John, c’mon, that has nothing to do with this story anyway.”

  John didn’t buy that. “Oh? Maybe it just depends on who we’re covering, which way the political winds are blowing, who we want to protect . . .”

  Rush tried to control his voice but didn’t do very well. “John, wake up and smell the coffee. We are in this business to inform, not inflame.”

  John could see inflaming videos playing in his head this very moment. “Yeah. Yeah, right, Rush.” He was reaching full temper and purposely lowered his voice. “Where was all this journalistic idealism last week?”

  Rush rolled his eyes, shook his head. “John, we’re not trying to hurt anybody!”

  “Well, you can tell that to my father!” He started out of the room.

  “John . . . !” Leslie called after him. He was just about to dismiss her with an oath and a gesture, but bumped into Carl first.

  Dead air. No script. No one could think of what to say. Carl was staring at them, each one of them in turn.

  As one, they relaxed. They became pleasant and smiled. They looked a bit stiff, but they smiled and chuckled anyway.

  Ali came up with a quick ad-lib. “Well, Carl . . . now you’ve seen how we do it!”

  CHAPTER 8

  THE WARM-TONED, low-lit, heavy-beamed restaurant known as Hudson’s offered a much needed escape, a pleasant place to get away from the station and everything that had happened that day. John often came here after work. He was known and recognized by the lady at the reservation desk, and tonight, happily, she gave him and Carl his favorite table near the gas-fired stone fireplace.

  After that big mess on the Five Thirty, the Seven O’clock was an uphill morale and concentration battle all the way, and now John was tired. Spent. This had been a dreadful day after a devastating week. His mind, and maybe his life, seemed to be on the edge of something disastrous, and his career was currently careening through a minefield of bad breaks, foul-ups, and embarrassments. What a time to be sitting across the table from his son, a stranger, wondering what in the world they would talk about.

  Looking at Carl, he was almost afraid to ask what was on the kid’s mind. Carl had been silent up to this point, not open to much conversation, just perusing the menu. His complexion looked a little warmer in the glow of the table candle, but he did not look happy. He seemed troubled, constantly and unrelentingly troubled; his eyes, though directed at the menu, didn’t seem to be reading it. He seemed to be thinking, thinking, thinking.

  John piped up, “The prime rib is good. I’ve had that a few times.”

  “Mm,” was all Carl said, nodding slowly. Up came the waitress, a pretty black girl not too long out of high school. “Hi, I’m Rachel. I’ll be your waitress tonight.” She seemed a little tired too. Well, John thought, I know the feeling. “Are you ready to order or should I give you a few more minutes?”

  John was ready and was surprised to find that Carl was too. John ordered the prime rib. Carl ordered the chef’s salad.

  Rachel took the menus and left. Now there was nothing to look at but each other.

  “So what did you think of the station?” John asked.

  “It was . . .” Carl took time to choose the right word. “. . . interesting.”

  John figured he’d better deal with that little scene after the Five Thirty. “Oh, it can be interesting all right, some days more than others. Like that conversation you came in on the middl
e of . . . that was another one of those things that make the news business . . . well, like you say, ‘interesting.’” Carl was looking at him and listening. Okay, John, just maintain a flow here. “When you’re in this business there’s a constant challenge, a question out in front of you, What is news? What’s important and what isn’t? What do the people really want to know about? It all revolves around how you define ‘the people’s right to know.’”

  “It ended up on the floor,” said Carl.

  John didn’t understand, obviously. “Hm?”

  Carl became stronger, his voice more firm, his eyes reaching directly for John’s. “The people’s right to know. The news. I stood in the control room and watched the producer toss page after page on the floor.”

  John smiled and nodded. “Sure. When all you have is a half hour, you often find you can’t fit everything in. That’s why we’ll often do some last-minute cutting.”

  “So what happens to the news that gets tossed?”

  “Oh, we might run it again at a later time if it’s still current.”

  “What do you mean, ‘still current’?”

  “Well, still happening, still . . . still news. Fresh news stories are breaking all the time, and if a story misses the train the first time, well . . . unless we can use it for a follow-up or something . . .”

  “So if it gets tossed on the floor, it probably won’t make it on the air.”

  John thought for a moment, then admitted, “Well, chances are it won’t. Events happen too fast, and if the train’s left . . . I guess it’s like a contest, with winners and losers. But most of the time the stuff that gets tossed is dispensable.”

  “So it isn’t really news?”

  “Oh, it’s news, sure, but it’s dispensable news. I mean, to be honest, it’s news that people would enjoy, would find interesting, but they can do without it.”

  Carl nodded thoughtfully, digesting that.