Prophet

by Frank Peretti

  Video: Shots of the clinic, of patients (their faces turned away from the camera) approaching the door.

  Marian: “So who is the eyewitness the Brewers claim saw their daughter receive an abortion at the clinic?”

  Video and sound of Deanne Brewer: “I can’t say who it was. She wanted to remain anonymous.”

  Marian: “And what about that autopsy report indicating Annie Brewer died from a septic abortion?”

  Video: Pages of the handcopied autopsy report being slowly turned for the camera.

  Marian over the video: “All Deanne Brewer could show us were five pages supposedly handcopied from the original autopsy report. But where is the original?”

  Video and sound of Deanne: “Well, the hospital can’t find it. They’ve lost it or something.”

  Marian’s voice, interviewing Deanne from off-camera: “Well, what about the pathologist who performed the autopsy? Couldn’t he explain the cause of death?”

  Deanne gets flustered and looks down. “Well, we couldn’t find him either. He doesn’t work at the hospital anymore.”

  Cut to Alena Spurr in her office: “It’s harassment, pure and simple. They can’t prove one charge they’re making and yet they come in here and harass us, intimidate us, and scare our patients. You know, we have had trouble with the Brewers before.”

  Video: Old footage from the governor’s kickoff rally. Max Brewer scuffling, slugging it out in a near-riot as an older man stands above the crowd on a planter and hollers. A circle highlights Max so he can be picked out visually.

  Marian over the video: “Indeed Max Brewer was arrested and jailed for trespassing on clinic property and later was ejected from Governor Hiram Slater’s campaign kickoff rally for assaulting the participants.”

  Back to Marian live, in front of the Women’s Medical Center: “So, John and Ali, if nothing else, today’s incident serves to remind us that the abortion battle is far from over, despite the recent public approval of laws protecting the rights of women.”

  John was ready with the scripted question, written for him by Marian Gibbons. “So, Marian, are the Brewers now satisfied that the Women’s Medical Center was not at fault in the death of their daughter?”

  Marian answered from the screen, “Well, John, when I asked Mrs. Brewer that question she said they were not yet satisfied and would keep fighting to find out what happened. So unfortunately the Women’s Medical Center is bound to see some more trouble before this is over.”

  “Okay, Marian. Thanks.”

  Camera One head-on to Ali. “A semi truck carrying two thousand live chickens caused a real flap when it overturned on Interstate 40 . . .”

  John flipped the page of his script. That was that. Funny how so much struggle, pain, emotion, and information could be hyper-simplified, skimmed, and spit out in under two minutes. It went by so fast he had no time to think about it. He had no time even now. The next story was coming up, and it would be his turn in front of the camera. He’d have to ponder all this later.

  MAX AND DEANNE just sat there as Ali talked about the body found near Interstate 40, and John introduced a story about an Army Surplus store’s fiftieth anniversary, and then Ali talked about a house fire. They couldn’t think of a word to say; each was afraid of what the other might be thinking.

  Twelve-year-old Victoria spoke up first. “Mom . . . did you do a bad thing?”

  “No, honey . . .”

  Max slammed the arm of his chair and then leaped to his feet. “Son of a—”

  “Okay, kids.” Deanne roused the children. “Go on into your rooms and work on your homework. Supper will be ready soon.”

  They went. Daddy was angry, and Mommy was crying. It was best to get away from them for a while.

  CARL TURNED AWAY from the television and stared at his canvas, just stared into the white, featureless expanse. He was trying to see his vision again, his goal, his project as he’d imagined it.

  It was gone. He couldn’t recall it.

  RACHEL FRANKLIN WENT back to work, cursing under her breath. John Barrett had not surprised her, not really.

  MARILYN WESTFALL SANK back in her chair and shook her head. People just don’t know, she thought, and maybe they never will.

  THE STORY RAN again on the Seven O’clock, cut down slightly, but essentially the same. And then the Seven O’clock, like the Five O’clock, ended in a rush, with hurried good nights over push-you-along music, with closing credits against shots of The City, and then commercials one upon another. The News of the Day went by like a speeding train and then disappeared to return at 11 that night and the same time tomorrow to speed by again to return at 11 and the same time the next day with a few chuckles thrown in along the way.

  “MAX, THE NEWS business is a very complicated process, there are a lot of factors involved—” John winced and held the receiver away from his ear, so very thankful that Max Brewer was on the phone and not in the same room. “Max, Max, now listen . . .” Anyone nearby could have heard Max’s oaths and threats squawking out of the receiver. “Max, I can understand why you’re angry, believe me, but I don’t pick the news around here.” More hollering. “Well, yes, I read it. That’s my job.” Max began to tell John what his job ought to be. “Max, you ought to let my boss know how you feel about this. Talk to him, tell him what you’re telling me right now. Well, he’s not here, he’s gone home. But you can call him tomorrow.” Max didn’t seem ready to receive any more suggestions about anything from John Barrett, news anchor. “Max, why don’t we talk some more about this tomorrow, okay?” No way. Click. “Max?” Dial tone.

  “Aw, for crying out loud . . .” John slammed the phone down.

  The day shift had all gone home, and the newsroom was fairly quiet—no one there but the late-nighters, getting ready for the Eleven O’clock. John pushed and pulled—no, he did more than that; he threatened to kill Owen Wessel, the Eleven O’clock producer, if Owen so much as thought of putting the abortion story on that night. Owen got the message. Yeah, okay, John, sure thing. You can trust me.

  John clicked off his computer, his way of clicking off the whole cussed day, the whole miserable mess, the whole circus that made him the clown. He just wanted to get out of there.

  Leslie pulled up a chair and sank into it, looking very tired. She’d stuck around almost three hours longer than she had to, watching the entire outcome.

  “Was that Max?” she asked.

  “Hoo boy, was it ever. Forget the dark alley—I wouldn’t want to meet him in broad daylight right now.”

  She nodded. “I would guess we’ve exhausted our friendship with the Brewers. We’ve blown the whole wad.” She added a thought she wasn’t too excited about. “I could probably call Deanne tomorrow and try to explain this to her.” Then she just sighed through her nose and shook her head despondently. “But how good an explanation am I going to have? Right now I don’t like the explanation myself.” She glanced across the newsroom. “I had it out with Marian and I talked to Rush too and . . . I knew what they were going to say.”

  John supplied the answer. “It was news. It was happening . . .”

  Leslie prompted, “And . . .”

  “And . . . everything in the story was true, factual.”

  “And . . .”

  “And they got reacts from both sides.”

  Leslie threw up her hands, rested back in her chair, and said, “And I am quitting.”

  John stopped short upon hearing that. He shouldn’t have been surprised, but he was. “You sure?”

  She wanted to answer right away, but then hesitated. “I’m not sure about anything anymore. No, I take that back. I know one thing for sure: I’ve let down my friends, I’ve compromised my ideals, I’ve gone with the flow, but . . . at least I saved my precious little rear. Leslie Albright the reporter is safe.” She stopped to brood about that.

  John suggested, “Well, really, did you have any choice?”

  She leaned forward and spoke intensely. “You better believ
e I did! Surprised? Well, it dawned on me today—no, actually I’ve known it all along, but it’s been so easy, so handy to forget—I have a choice. I can choose right from wrong—we all can. The problem is, it’s this beast, John. We’re in the fish’s belly and it’s swimming away with us, remember? Once you get inside this workplace and you get so used to going with the flow and protecting your rear, you don’t even think you have a choice, and you don’t even consider choosing the right thing over the wrong thing, you just do what the machine tells you to do. Sure, you gripe about it in the news car or at the lunch table; you talk about the blind producers sitting in the windowless room forcing their reality on you, telling you what they want to see whether it’s really there or not—but you do it. Even for the dumbest reasons, you do it. I let Tina walk all over me because I was afraid for my job, and you let Ben Oliver crack the whip over you and make you do your tricks because you’re afraid for your job, and when it comes to keeping our jobs, our important, hard-to-get, major-market jobs, we have to be professionals, so right and wrong don’t even enter the formula because we think we don’t have a choice!”

  John was getting uncomfortable with this. “Leslie, come on, you’re not being fair—not to the business, not to yourself. You . . . you can’t bring morals into it when there’s news to report—”

  She didn’t raise her voice, but just whispered so hard she hissed. “John, don’t we get to be people? Who are we anyway? I don’t know who I am—or who I’m supposed to be. I don’t know who you are!” She stole a glance around the room, hoping no one was overhearing them. “John, what were we when we talked to the Brewers? Who was I, what was I when I spent all that time with Deanne? Was I just a news-gathering machine or did I really care, did I really feel for Annie Brewer? What do you do, John? Hang up your humanity when you come into the newsroom? Does John Barrett ever feel anything?” She swallowed her emotion and ventured, “You intro’d a story that betrayed people who trusted us, and you did it so well! You were so . . . so professional!

  “Well, I can’t do that. John, the Brewers have been through the machine; they’ve had their two-minute spot on television and now they’re gone; they’ll probably never come across that assignment desk again, but you know what, the Brewers, the real-live, breathing, feeling Brewers, are still out there, still living in that little house with one less daughter, and I can’t just crumple them up, toss them, and go on to the next story.”

  “Leslie . . .” John had to make sure she knew. “I felt something.”

  Leslie was pained as she grappled with that. “Then . . . John, in God’s name, why did we let this happen?”

  John couldn’t fight it anymore. His head, his professionalism, told him one thing, but his heart kept listening to Leslie and to what he knew deep inside. He had to give in. He leaned his elbows on his desk and rested his forehead in his hands. For a moment he said nothing, but then, as if confessing, he spoke in a weak, barely audible voice, forcing himself to say it. “Tina Lewis called the Women’s Medical Center right after you talked to her on Thursday. She told them all about the Request for Medical Records, and she told them about Annie’s code name, Judy Medford. She even spelled it for them. She told Alena Spurr that you and Deanne were going to be there the next morning, and Alena Spurr told Tina about Max Brewer being arrested and his jail time, the whole thing. That’s how Tina knew about it this afternoon.

  “Last night Alena Spurr went through all the records and purged Judy Medford’s name out. She even rewrote the daily schedule by hand so she could omit Annie’s code name.”

  Leslie was speechless. Sure, it’s what she’d thought, and yet . . . this sounded so direct, as if John really knew, as if he’d been there.

  John continued in the same quiet voice, as if he were spilling his guts, confessing secrets he’d been hiding. “Tina is a deeply wounded woman . . . She’s scared, and she’s running, and when she fights and pushes like she does, it’s because she’s trapped, she’s trying to defend herself.”

  Leslie leaned close to hear him better, his voice was getting so quiet.

  John stopped to gather strength and then continued. “Three years ago . . . September 16th . . . Tina had an abortion. It was a boy. The only child she ever had. The anniversary was just two weeks ago, and I heard her screaming.”

  “Screaming?” Leslie whispered.

  John held his hand up. “I heard her screaming . . . Screaming inside. She’s still thinking of him, and every time an abortion story comes along, it reminds her, and so she has to fight it off. She has to show herself, show the world, that what she did was all right, that she had the right to do it, that she isn’t guilty of anything. Leslie . . . when you pitched the story idea to her, you came too close to the wounds.”

  For the first time John looked at her. “It’s not you or me she hates. She’s not fighting against us. It’s the Truth she hates. The Truth won’t let her alone, and she hates it.” He stopped as another thought came to his mind. “And . . . I don’t know who they are, but . . . Annie isn’t the only one. Some other girls have died there.”

  Leslie believed him. “John . . . how do you know all this?”

  He looked as if he would break into tears and shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “You mean . . . What do you mean? I don’t follow you.”

  He started gathering things together, preparing to leave. “Leslie, all I know is . . . well, please don’t quit. Please stick around and . . . there’s more to this, that’s all. The beast doesn’t have to win. We don’t have to let this fish swim away with us. Something will happen, something will break.”

  She had her doubts. “Well, I don’t . . .”

  “Well, think about it, will you? Give it some time. I’m giving it time. Do the same. If you don’t you might miss something.” He got up from his chair. “I’ve got to get out of here. I’ve got to get to Carl.”

  He seemed so urgent she became concerned. “Is he all right?”

  John shook his head as he put on his jacket. “No. He saw the newscast tonight and . . . well, I’d better get over there.”

  CHAPTER 19

  PAINT WAS EVERYWHERE. The canvas was all but invisible under splatterings, smears, globs, and dashes of paint of all colors. The walls were speckled and splattered too, as were the floor, the windows, and several of Carl’s other works.

  And he was still digging it out of jar after jar, clenching it out of tube after tube, throwing the stuff blindly, crazily, his vision blurred with tears. He whimpered, sometimes he growled, lashing at the canvas with his brushes, beating and whipping the paint in merciless, exploding patterns.

  His universe had exploded into meaningless, detached particles.

  “Carl!” John burst into the room and right into the middle of Carl’s painted scream. “Carl! Stop it. Please.”

  “I don’t hear you!” Carl cried. “I don’t hear anything anymore! I don’t see anything! I don’t know anything!”

  John tried to grab him, to contain him. “Carl, c’mon now, you’re making a mess . . .”

  Carl thrust him away. “What’s a mess? What’s art? What’s love, what’s hate, what’s Truth? I don’t know, and neither do you!”

  “Carl . . .”

  Carl spun around, his face spattered with paint, his hands covered with it, his eyes the eyes of a savage. His words were rehearsed; he’d been brooding on them with every splash of paint. “I needed answers, and the whole world ignored me! I sought for God, and He gave me you! So I looked to you for Truth and . . . and you blew up my universe and cut to a commercial!”

  “Okay, Carl . . . okay. I know it’s hard to understand. It’s a complicated business.” John looked at the splattered canvas. “And if this is what you think of me . . . well, I don’t blame you—”

  “I’ve already painted you. I’ve painted the only father I could find.”

  “I’d like to see it, Carl.”

  “I can’t find it. Nobody can.”

  “What
do you mean?”

  “I cried at Grandpa’s memorial service. Did you know that?”

  John was surprised to hear Carl bring it up. “Yes. I wondered about it . . . I really wanted to know why . . .”

  Carl looked all around the shop, at all the machinery and tools set in their places, hanging on their hooks, tucked into their slots. “Because he knew something. He knew where he was, who he was. If he’d been alive just a little longer, I could have gotten to know him, we could have touched, you know?” He took one more look around the room and then cried, “I don’t belong here!” and ran for the door.

  “Carl! Carl, don’t go! We can talk it out!”

  Carl slammed the door behind him, leaving green, blue, red, and black paint smeared on the knob.

  And John was alone, standing in the middle of the most intense work Carl had ever created. All around, on every side, could be seen chaos, anger, despair. The little shop that Dad Barrett had built and organized with such purpose, such care and love, was now disrupted, desecrated, by an explosion of placeless, meaningless colors.

  And in the middle of it all the little television on the workbench was still chattering its nonstop, clamorous message: buy, buy, buy, have, use, indulge, forget; laugh, laugh, laugh at everything, care for nothing; look at this, look at that, now look at this, it’s new, it’s now, it’s different, it’s wild, it’s naughty, you’ve never seen anything like it, don’t miss it!

  Then another nauseating, overdone ad: “In these times a man of integrity is needed to keep you informed, a man you can trust!”

  John cursed. As if this stupid tube’s chatter isn’t bad enough, now I’ve got to hear another Slater-for-governor ad! He reached for the on-off knob, that precious escape route back to sanity.

  “John Barrett!” the tube trumpeted. “The voice of integrity, bringing you the world as it is!”