Prophet

by Frank Peretti

“We’ve got to go down to the warehouse,” John said abruptly.

  Oh-oh, thought Carl. “What for?”

  “I don’t know specifically. But I need to go back to where Dad and I left off. I need to go back to his office.”

  “GOVERNOR, I PLEAD with you, search your heart and change your course, for if you do not, God will change it for you. Though you have said to yourself, ‘No one sees, and no one hears,’ surely, the Lord sees, and He hears all that you think in your heart, all that you whisper, all that you speak in your private chambers. There is nothing hidden from the eyes of Him with whom we have to do!”

  The prophet was so distant and appeared so small as he stood on the far side of the Flag Pavilion shouting and gesturing, and yet his powerful voice carried over the heads of the crowds, clear and distinct above the clamor and cheers.

  The governor had acted as if he did not hear the man’s words, and yet, try as he might, he could not help but hear them. Now, as he sat in first class on his flight to the TriCities for some more campaigning, he was haunted by how clearly he could replay the whole event in his mind, almost every word the prophet spoke, even the old man’s inflections and cadence. He could also remember how it felt—it felt that way right now—to hear the prophet’s words. It felt the same as being caught cheating by your elementary schoolteacher, or hitting a ball through the neighbor’s window, or being lectured by the high school vice principal.

  “Like Nebuchadnezzar of old, you have set up an image of yourself for all men to follow, a towering image, a mighty image, an image far greater than yourself,” the prophet had said.

  How did that old geezer know about my ad campaign? The governor laughed to himself. C’mon, it’s TV; everybody knows it’s glitz, it’s show biz. Nobody really believes that stuff.

  “But please take heed: the Lord would remind you, you are not that image.”

  Well, people don’t believe everything they see on the tube . . . or on the posters . . . or the billboards. They know it’s a campaign, it’s selling. It’s just . . . image.

  “Though you may say, ‘I am strong and invincible, I tower over the masses, I cannot be touched or harmed,’ yet in truth you are as weak as any man, about to be harmed, about to be toppled!”

  Slater had a hunch then, but he was almost certain now: The old prophet knew. The governor could hear it indirectly through the prophet’s words. That old man knew.

  But he’s dead now. He’s dead. Now he can’t tell anyone.

  “Hiram?”

  The governor looked at Ashley, his wife, seated next to him. “Mm?”

  “Are you all right?”

  That winning smile came to his face automatically. “Sure. How are you doing?”

  “Oh, just fine.”

  She went back to her magazine, and he went back to staring out the window.

  That’s the way it was between them and had been for . . . how many years? She never asked another question after the first one; she never pressed it. He said only as much as he chose to and showed nothing beyond that, and she bought the image, or at least acted like it.

  When they’d first met, they talked about politics, about their classes at the university, about cars, sports, architecture, almost anything. But he would not talk about true feelings, wishes, concerns, hurts, love, needs, sentiment. These were not comfortable subjects, but rather comprised a realm in which he felt lost and without words, like a perpetual novice always stumbling along. During their first years he ventured into that realm just long enough and often enough to win Ashley’s heart, become a family man, and achieve what he considered domestic success.

  But soon thereafter he was naturally drawn to a mistress that would not demand intimacy or vulnerability, but let him stay where he felt safe, self-assured, and powerful: the cold machinery of politics and power. This was a world in which he could truly be the molder of his own fate and, through the System, the fates of others. His god was The Task, his religion The Goal, his creed . . . Well, the rules were derived from the game, and the game’s object was the Goal, and he was very good at writing new rules for new games. In any event, his protective shield could always be in place—the man everyone thought he was.

  Ashley hadn’t understood this shift at first, this change from the courting, calculating aspirant to the slightly warmer and vulnerable charmer who married her and then back to an even colder, more distant, more calculating man of ambition and drive. She had her needs, but he had his work, so they had their exchanges, their scraps, their discussions—and in the end nothing changed. She remained empty and needful, and he remained comfortable. He became what he had set out to become from the very beginning.

  He couldn’t remember a precise date when she changed her approach to their relationship. He’d been too busy to notice. But it did occur to him after a time that she no longer pressed him for his thoughts, his feelings. She no longer distracted him with a touch from her hand or an arm on his shoulder. She shared no more secrets. She remained at his side as his loyal wife, but the old sense of closeness was gone. Somehow they’d arrived at an unspoken covenant that they would not speak, not in any real sense. That way things remained comfortable. He had his ambitions, she had the goodies that came with them, and beyond those matters that directly affected the smooth acquiring of those goals, they did not talk.

  Were they happy? They didn’t talk about it. He was The Governor, and she The Governor’s Wife, and for the sake of the call, for the sake of The Image, their marriage was one of external peace, cooperation, and mutual support. Their roles were established, and they played them well.

  So Governor Hiram Slater was alone with his thoughts and his fears as he sat and looked down at the clouds. The prophet was dead. But somehow he found no comfort in that. The prophet’s words were still alive, and his knowledge could have been passed along to someone else.

  Hiram Slater was considering how to expose, quantify, and then contain this threat—at least until the election was over. What the voters didn’t know would not hurt them; and after all, what was good for Hiram Slater was good for the state.

  BARRETT PLUMBING AND Fixtures was open for half a day on Saturdays, but the back office was usually closed up and Jill the bookkeeper was not there, which would make it easier for John and Carl to let themselves in with John’s key and do all the snooping they wanted without raising questions. Chuck Keitzman was working today, moving things around with the old forklift, even with a cast on his hand. He was busy at the moment and didn’t ask any questions; he just said hi.

  John and Carl hurried to the back office, and John opened the main office door with one key, then the door to Dad’s office in the back with another. They stepped inside, and John flicked on the light.

  Dad’s office was still the same, as if he’d only left it a moment ago. The smells were the same: paper, old lumber, a hint of pipe cement, maybe even a lingering hint of the old man himself. The calendar on the wall had not been turned since September 11th, the morning Dad was killed.

  “Now . . .” John said, moving slowly toward the desk, “what we’re looking for is anything unusual, anything that might tell us what Dad was getting his nose into. Carl, why don’t you go through those files, and I’ll see what’s in his desk.”

  Carl went to the file cabinet in the corner. The drawers were locked.

  “Oh, right,” said John, sliding open the center drawer of Dad’s desk. He found a little key right away. “He always hid the key in this drawer.” He tossed it to Carl, who opened the file drawers and began thumbing through the files. “Dad always had little hiding places for things. If I could remember what they were, it would help.”

  Carl was intimidated by all the files confronting him—hundreds of them. “Man, this is going to take all day.”

  John was going through the desk drawers. “Well, do a cursory scan first, just look for anything unusual, and then if we don’t find anything, we’ll look a little deeper.”

  Carl started at the front of the
top drawer and began thumbing through all the accounts, receipts, suppliers. If he’d been intensely interested in plumbing, it would have been exciting. Carl was not intensely interested in plumbing.

  John sorted through the contents of the center drawer, moving things aside, pawing through it a bit. This was the junk drawer, the little-things drawer, the catch-all for pencils, paper clips, stick-’em pads, a jackknife, a few rulers, several small pipe fittings, and several pads of personalized stationery, to name just a few things.

  Top drawer on the right: envelopes, invoices, a flashlight, and some extra D batteries.

  Second drawer on the right: Plumbing catalogs and some trade magazines, plus a few boxes of computer disks.

  Third drawer: Junk. Lots of it. Some gaskets for wall-mounted heaters, a bag of shop cloths, a small radio, and . . . a portable cassette player with headphones but no cassette. John pulled that from the drawer, carefully untangling the headphone cord from the other items.

  A cassette player, a Walkman. Now he remembered it. When he’d first come into this office to have that talk with Dad, Dad had this sitting on his desk. John even recalled how he put it away as they began talking.

  And . . . hmm, was he recalling this correctly? When Dad was saying something about knowing something, having something he really wanted to share with John but couldn’t, he almost opened the third drawer. “I’ve got things I’ve learned today, just this morning,” Dad had said.

  A Walkman in Dad’s desk was a little strange. It didn’t seem like Dad to have one of these on the job. Dad was always thinking, always counting things; his mind was always hard at work. What would he want with this?

  “Carl . . .” Carl turned. “I might have something.”

  They flagged down Chuck Keitzman as he came by on the forklift. He recognized the Walkman immediately. “Hey, so there it is! I’ve been missing that!”

  “Oh, so it’s yours?” John asked.

  “Sure,” said Chuck, taking it back. “Your dad wanted to borrow it and . . .” Chuck hesitated. He’d talked himself into a corner. “Well, he never got a chance to return it, obviously.”

  “When did he borrow it?”

  Chuck thought a moment, then recalled, “Oh . . . it was that Monday right after the . . . well, you know, when he was at the governor’s rally and got on television, the Monday after that.”

  “The Monday I came to see him.”

  “Yeah. Right.”

  “Did he ever ask to borrow it before?”

  “No. I’m the only one who uses this thing around here, and only when I’m loading with the forklift or doing something where I don’t have to think too much.”

  “Well . . . would you have any idea . . . did he say what he wanted to listen to?”

  Chuck shook his head. “He just asked to borrow it for a little while, that’s all.”

  John thought out loud, “Jimmie was here that day . . . he said Dad had a visitor . . .”

  “He’s out in the yard.” They went out to the loading dock. “Hey, Jimmie!”

  Jimmie recalled the visitor. “Yeah, I remember telling you about that. There was one guy who came to see John about 10 in the morning, and after that John just stayed in his office and wouldn’t come out.”

  Chuck put it together. “Sure. After that guy left, that’s when he borrowed my Walkman, and I guess he was sitting in there listening to something, I don’t know.”

  “Do you know who the guy was?”

  Chuck and Jimmie drew a blank.

  “Never saw him before,” said Jimmie.

  “What did he look like?”

  Jimmie shrugged. “Young dude, wearing a suit, carrying a briefcase. He looked like a salesman to me.”

  “Color of hair?”

  “Dark brown, maybe black.”

  “Height?”

  “A little shorter than me.” Jimmie was a big man, over six feet.

  “Race?”

  “Anglo.”

  John was getting frustrated. “He didn’t leave a card or anything?”

  Chuck suggested, “Maybe we could ask Buddy. He was working up at the counter. He must have talked to the guy.”

  “About how long did he stay?”

  Jimmie and Chuck looked at each other again as they agreed on an answer. Jimmie tried. “Man, I don’t think it was long at all. Just a few minutes.”

  Chuck nodded. “For all I knew, the guy was just asking directions. He was in and out, that quick.”

  “Well . . . here’s your assignment, guys. Find out who it was. If you see him again, if you know anybody else who might know anything . . .”

  They exchanged a look that said, That’s a tall order. “Okay, Johnny, we’ll do what we can.”

  John turned to Carl. “Let’s take another look in Dad’s office.”

  A thorough search turned up no cassette tapes of any kind. Now John was all the more intrigued. “Let’s get back to Mom’s. We’ll check the car, the shop, the tape player in the living room, we’ll ask Mom . . .”

  SUNDAY MORNING THEY went to church with Mom, something Carl had been doing regularly as part of his lodging agreement with her, and something John was ready to try again, for better or for worse. It wasn’t all that bad.

  The Pentecostal culture and worship style—pull out all the stops and get on with it—were distinctive, of course, and something you either liked or didn’t, but God was there, and John could sense His presence.

  And once again he heard God speak. He could hear God’s voice in the singing, in the testimonies, in the love and sharing, and especially in the written Word of God. John knew that voice when he was ten, and he knew it now. Jesus is the Good Shepherd, he recalled, and His sheep know His voice; they recognize that same old ring of Truth, that same durable, virtuous tone, and, of course that same, unfading love and mercy. Perhaps John wasn’t home yet, but he felt close.

  As for Carl . . . “Let’s work on the boat,” he said. Sunday dinner was over, they’d all cleaned up and loaded the dishwasher, and Mom now was reclining in Dad’s easy chair, a quilt up to her chin, resting her eyelids. John thought that activity—or nonactivity—looked terribly inviting, but Carl’s idea prevailed easily, and they went out to the shop.

  “I’m checking it out,” Carl admitted as they began to fit the boat ribs for gluing. “Hey, I want God to be there—I want Him to exist. And if He’s there, I want Him to speak to me. But right now . . . well, it’s kind of wait and see.”

  John was marking the keel for drilling screw holes.

  “Okay, I can understand that.” What John really understood was that Carl was testing everything, examining everything, especially his father, to see if any solid ground was beginning to take hold under all that shifting sand. Wait and see? John had the same feeling about himself even now. God he was sure about. John Barrett was another matter.

  Not to change the subject entirely, but slightly, John said, “Well, let’s hear these tapes.”

  Dad owned a small radio/cassette player and used to listen to preacher/teacher tapes and music while working out in the shop. It wasn’t hard to find; Dad had it in its rightful place on a shelf above the workbench, a shelf labeled “radio.” Now they had it perched on the workbench near where they were working, and beside it was a stack of cassette tapes gleaned from Dad’s car, his bedroom, the shop, the living room stereo, the closet, and anywhere else Mom could think of where Dad might stash tapes. Most of the tapes were preacher/teacher tapes and were so labeled. Some were copies of old phonograph recordings Dad put on tape so he could listen to them out here or in the car. But some were suspiciously unlabeled, and John wanted to review them carefully.

  So began an afternoon of old-time religious culture as John and Carl began gluing and fastening the boat together. They heard southern gospel quartets, one after the other, with thundering bass singers, soaring tenors, and tinkling pianos. Then there was Brother So-and-So bringing life to you from the Such-and-Such Church somewhere in California. And last Ea
ster’s cantata by the church choir, recorded from the back of the sanctuary and sounding ten miles away—Sister Schmidt still came through above all the others—followed by a very distant, fuzzy voice speaking to a pro-life rally from behind a thick curtain of tape hiss. The clock kept turning, and the tapes kept rolling, and John tried to work on the boat while keeping one finger available for the Fast Forward button. It didn’t take long to determine that a particular cassette was not going to bring any significant revelations about Dad’s death or whatever he may have discovered, and yet . . . John sometimes delayed ejecting the cassette because the contents did something else for him: it brought back vivid memories of his father.

  They worked, they listened, and occasionally John would remember.

  “Sixteens,” he said with a chuckle. “Dad was really into sixteen penny nails. That and Atco tar.”

  “Huh?” Carl asked. It was a fair question.

  “Well, sixteens . . . I mean, they were the binding element that held every major project together, like this shop we’re standing in. It wouldn’t be here without good old sixteen penny nails. But you could use ’em for all kinds of things: you drive ’em into the wall and hang stuff on ’em, use ’em for stakes and markers when you pour concrete, pick your teeth with ’em . . . I mean, they’re just a very straightforward, no-nonsense, functional nail. Dad loved ’em.”

  Carl nodded without comment.

  “And Atco tar . . . Boy, there was always plenty of that.”

  “What is it?”

  John only had to look under the workbench to find a can of the black, gooey stuff. “You use it for patching leaks in the roof. You know, gluing roll roofing or three-tab together, sealing up flashing, covering over nailheads. Great stuff.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “But Dad used it to seal up the wounds in the fruit trees too, and it worked great and it was cheap. I mean, we’re talking function here, good down-to-earth function.” And then John laughed. “Like Vicks.”

  Now Carl laughed. Vicks he knew about—that all-purpose, gelatinous goo with the strong, camphoraceous smell.