Prophet

by Frank Peretti

He felt better. “All right . . . Good enough . . . Well, I’m going to take a shower and close my eyes until dinner.”

  “I’ll call you when it’s ready.”

  He hurried through the big house and up the stairs to the bedroom, feeling his nerves starting to ease. Ahhh. His own home, his safe haven, his castle the public—and the prophets—could not enter. What a feeling.

  He took off his suit jacket and tossed it lazily onto the bed, then started removing his tie as he went into the master bathroom, humming a little tune. A good hot shower, yes sir, that was what he needed.

  Oh no. What was that by his vanity sink?

  He stood staring at it, afraid to approach it, unwilling to believe it really was . . . a shoe box. Only when he finally decided it had to be a gag, an elaborate hoax, did he approach the shoe box and remove the lid.

  Sure. Of course he found navy-blue running shoes inside.

  He slipped off his dress shoes and tried on the running shoes. Great fit.

  “Hello,” came Ashley’s voice in the bedroom. “Did you find something?” She had that teasing tone she always had whenever she surprised him with something.

  He was not pleased as he strode out of the bathroom, the shoes still on his feet. “What’s the meaning of this?”

  She was pleased. “Oh, looks like they fit!”

  “Yes, they do!” Slater replied angrily. “Perfectly! So where did they come from?”

  She was taken aback by his angry tone. “Well . . . Hiram, they didn’t cost a thing.”

  He was yelling now. “Where did they come from?”

  And now she was starting to yell back. “From Wade Sheldon!”

  “Wade Sheldon!” The governor was shocked and perplexed. Wade Sheldon and he had worked out together at the health club for a few years now. “Where’d he get them?”

  Ashley was indignant and defensive. “I thought you’d be pleased.”

  “Just answer the question!”

  “He got them from a mail-order catalog. They didn’t fit him, so he thought he’d give them to you. I got them this morning when I went to see Marcy.”

  Marcy. Wade’s wife. This wasn’t making sense. Did the Sheldons know John Barrett? Did Ashley get the shoes from Marcy before John Barrett gave his little prophecy or afterward? How did John Barrett know Ashley would be visiting Marcy? How did he even know Wade had ordered the shoes?

  “What time did you go visit Marcy?”

  “About 10. Why?”

  Slater sat on the bed. He kicked the shoes off as if they were his enemies. “I’m just . . . I’m just trying to figure this out, that’s all. There’s an explanation! There has to be!”

  Ashley had had her fill of abuse for now. “It might be because Wade is your friend, or is friendship that foreign a concept to you?”

  “It’s not that simple!”

  “So what do you think the shoes are, a bribe?”

  “Not a bribe . . . Maybe a trick . . .”

  “Hiram Slater . . .” She told him where he could go and fled from the room.

  6:50 P.M.

  John rechecked his makeup in the makeup room, standing all by himself in front of the huge illuminated mirror and taking some deep breaths just to steady himself. It was getting tough to maintain his professional edge when such conflicting feelings raged inside him.

  One part of him—the professional, go-with-the-flow part—was lashing out at him, chastising him, screaming at him that he was doing a monumental disservice to his profession, to the people he worked for, to the whole industry that had made him a household name.

  At the same time, one steady, unshakable voice from somewhere else inside him—probably his heart, but right now his feelings were too scrambled for him to tell—kept him standing firm on this chosen path, with no other assurance than the knowledge that he was doing the right thing.

  The overall effect of this inward battle was a twisting, wrenching, nauseating conflict that closely resembled a coronary, and he couldn’t wait for the whole miserable experience to be over.

  He was glad Leslie wasn’t here right now. She’d be getting herself in trouble for sure, and he could just imagine how much harder it would be with her stirring things up.

  He was wondering why Ben Oliver was nowhere to be seen. Had he gone home? Had he ducked out the way Loren Harris had? Aw, Ben, you helped get me into this—the least you could have done was walk me to the gallows and say good-bye.

  Why do I even stick around? he wondered. If I’m as good as dead as a news anchor, why don’t I just walk off the job right now instead of prolonging the pain?

  Oh, but there came that voice again: Press on, press on, you’re doing the right thing. Finish it.

  Oh, I’m going to finish it, all right. I’m probably going to finish everything, including myself.

  “It’s hard, son,” came a voice from his memory, “to have God show you things and tell you things and then not know what to do with what you’ve been given.” Oh great. Just what I need. Another emotion. John leaned on the counter in front of the mirror as his face turned hot and his eyes flooded with tears.

  More of Dad’s lamentation came to his memory. “ ‘Eat the scroll, John.’ That’s what the Lord said. ‘In your mouth it will taste sweet, but it will make your stomach bitter.’ And He was right. Up front, when you hear things and see things and God entrusts you with knowing things, you think of how privileged you are, how wonderful it is to see Truth parading right in front of you. And then . . . when you try to speak it and nobody listens . . . and you see people heading for a cliff and you just can’t turn them back . . . and when you find out things you would have been happier not knowing . . .”

  John wanted to break right down and cry, but there wasn’t time. The clock on the wall said 6:54. He had to get to the news set and do the 6:56 teaser and then the Seven O’clock, and he had to be on top of it and look good and be the professional the viewers out there had learned to trust, and he couldn’t go on-camera with tears in his eyes and his voice quaking just because he understood for the first time how Dad must have felt standing up on that planter before that hostile crowd . . .

  He broke down anyway, pulling a tissue from the dispenser to sop up his tears. He could only cry in the few seconds he had left. Watching the clock, he made sure his emotions stayed within the schedule, and he pulled a drawer open looking for some eyedrops. Yes, there they were. Hopefully they would get the red out of his eyes before he went on-camera.

  6:56 P.M.

  “Good evening. Coming up next on NewsSix at Seven, a big cutback in orders could mean a big cutback in jobs at Benson Dynamics . . .”

  And then Ali said her lines, and then John gave a quick preview of the crack house bust story, and then Hal Rosen gave a hint of what the weather would be but you’d have to watch the show to find out the rest. The whole teaser went just fine, and they were off the air for a few minutes.

  Then he and Ali checked their scripts and listened for any late changes coming from the control room.

  John could feel his emotions right at the brink of his eyes, but he kept them down. He kept his mind on the script, on Mardell’s directions, on the whole newscast.

  TINA LEWIS AND Pete Woodman, the Seven O’clock show producer, quickly paged through the script for the half-hour newscast. Susan was at her post again, ready to direct.

  “I hear you had trouble with the car wash story last time,” said Pete.

  “Mm, too long, I think,” Tina answered. “But hey, we bumped it from the Five O’clock, let’s see if we can run it this time.”

  Pete found it. “Okay . . . 140. Yeah, it’s going to be tight.”

  “So let’s bump something else. We’ll see how it goes.” Susan could hear something coming but busied herself with her job, wanting very much to keep it. “Camera Two, two-shot of John and Ali. Camera One, head-on to Ali to start. Um . . . is the Barry Gauge commentary in or out?”

  “It’s in, Section Four,” said Pete.

&n
bsp; “Good enough.”

  “Ten seconds.”

  Susan got the show rolling. “Here we go, everybody.”

  Pete counted down, “Three . . . two . . . one . . .”

  The Seven O’clock went like clockwork as John and Ali anchored story after story, taking turns back and forth.

  The first section got long.

  “We’ll bump the high-speed chase with the pickup truck, 180,” said Pete.

  Tina jumped on that. “No, move it to Section Two.”

  Pete objected. “We don’t have room in Section Two.”

  “So move . . . uh . . . move 280, the garbage incinerator, up to Section Three.”

  Pete was getting edgy. “Tina, something’s gotta go, come on!”

  “We’ll see.”

  Pete just shook his head. “We’ll see all right.”

  John and Ali got the word through their earpieces. They would do 160, the big crack house bust, and then cut for the commercial. 180, the high-speed chase, would start Section Two. 280, the garbage incinerator, would start Section Three.

  They marked their scripts. Ali finished the crack house story. They did a quick tease of stories coming up and went to the commercial.

  “Okay,” said Susan through their earpieces, “remember, we’ll start Section Two with 180, the high-speed chase. Camera Three, head-on to John. Stand by.”

  Section Two went smoothly, and the change worked well, even saving them a few seconds. They filled the time with cute anchor chatter.

  Commercial break.

  Pete shook his head. “Okay, Tina, Section Three coming up, and there’s too much there.”

  Tina already had the problem solved. “Push 370, the campaign, forward to Section Four.”

  Pete could count. There were too many stories in Section Four and not enough time. “And what do we bump?”

  Susan muttered to herself but loud enough to be heard, “I bet it won’t be the rhinoceros.”

  Tina heard the wisecrack but remained steady and determined. “Bump 430, the Slater Story. We’ll do the campaign, then Barry’s commentary, and finish out with the rhinoceros.”

  Pete balked for just a moment. “You’re . . . uh . . . you’re sure?”

  Tina showed such incredible patience. “Oh, excuse me, was I unclear?”

  He caught her gaze and gave in. “Okay. You’re the boss.”

  He found 430, the Slater Story, and pulled it out, dropping it page by page onto the floor. “430 is out.”

  John got the word through his earpiece. “Heads up. We’re pushing 370, the campaign story, ahead into Section Four, and we’re bumping 430, the Slater Story. Slater is out.”

  John felt more conflict deep inside—anger at being double-crossed mixed with the naughty joy of escaping a responsibility—crushing disappointment mixed with a relief John felt uncomfortable about feeling.

  He could see Ali flipping through her script and tossing the pages onto the floor. He found the pages in his own script, pulled them out, but kept them to one side. He was definitely not going to toss them onto the floor.

  “Stand by,” said Mardell, ready to count down.

  As John looked her way, he could see—or did he imagine?—a vast crowd materializing behind those three cameras. He could hear their voices rising as if a sound engineer were slowly bringing up the volume.

  Almost immediately he recognized them. They were the crowd at the governor’s kickoff rally, and now he was standing above them, up on that planter, in Dad’s shoes, wearing Dad’s overcoat. They were jeering him, chanting, shaking their fists, waving signs.

  He blinked the vision away.

  Mardell counted down, “Three . . . two . . . one.”

  She pointed at them, and they started Section Three.

  The newscast galloped through Section Three, and Section Four proceeded as a foregone conclusion. First came the latest update from the gubernatorial campaign, with both candidates making their splashes and Slater looking a lot better on television than Wilson. Then came a prerecorded Barry Gauge commentary, but John didn’t hear a word of it.

  Then came the home video of the rampaging rhino, with plenty of time to include some of the really great shots—the rhino charging, hooking its tusk under the Land Rover and just about turning it over while a man with a rifle struggled to get a safe aim. The video was cut short before the rifle was fired in the interest of good taste.

  Music. Busy music. It was time to go.

  Camera Two, two-shot of John and Ali.

  John started the closing. “And that’s it for NewsSix at Seven. Thank you for joining us.”

  Ali took her turn. “Stay tuned now for the premiere of a new Channel 6 TV magazine, Here and There, coming up next.”

  “Good night.”

  More music as Camera Two zoomed out to include more of the news set.

  Commercial.

  Mardell waved. The show was over, the cameras were off. “Okay, everybody, good show.”

  “Good show, John,” said Ali, gathering up her script. It was the first time she’d said anything to him all night.

  “Thanks.” John reached for the pulled pages—430, the Slater Story. “But I still have one more story to do.”

  “Huh?” Ali watched him, perplexed.

  John held the script in front of him, faced Camera Three even as the cameraman backed it away to park it, and began to read. “A week after Governor Slater went public with the abortion death of his daughter Hillary, new questions are being raised . . .”

  Ali rolled her eyes. “John . . . come on. Let it go.”

  “. . . Did the governor know from the beginning how his daughter died . . .”

  “John!”

  “. . . and if so, was he involved in a cover-up that may have cost at least one more life?”

  Ali gave up and walked out, shaking her head in disbelief.

  John could see the rally mob again, still moving by like a churning river, bothered by his words, waving their signs, telling him to shut up. He kept reading. “Governor Slater claimed he had just learned Hillary did not die from mislabeled drugs but from abortion malpractice . . .”

  Mardell felt terribly awkward standing there behind the dead cameras while John kept reading the story. Was she supposed to stand there and listen or what?

  John looked at Camera Two now. It was closer, even though it was one big dead machine. “Pathologist Dr. Harlan Matthews confirms the cause of Hillary’s death, but insists the governor knew the cause of death the day after it happened.”

  Mardell exchanged a look with the camera operators, and their expressions all agreed—this guy was finally losing it.

  “Let’s get out of here,” said a cameraman.

  “Yeah, don’t give him an audience and maybe he’ll stop,” said another.

  Mardell and the camera operators left quietly.

  John had no audience but the dead cameras and the vast crowd he saw in his mind. He kept going. “Hillary received an abortion at the Women’s Medical Center on the 19th of April. Shannon DuPliese, a close friend, drove Hillary to the clinic and then home to the governor’s residence, where Hillary died a few hours later.”

  CARL TURNED OFF the television feeling a little disappointed. “He said he was going to do the story on the Seven O’clock too. I wonder what happened?”

  Mom reached out and took his hand. “Carl . . . he’s doing the story. Right now.”

  Carl was puzzled, but he trusted her. “What do you mean?”

  She pulled him down, and he sat next to her. “He’s speaking the Truth right now. I don’t know who’s listening, but he’s doing what he has to do, I know.”

  UP IN THE control room the monitors were cold, black, and silent. There was no sound. Susan was picking up the pages she’d tossed on the floor, still musing about what had happened. Tina was brutally tearing hers in half and throwing them in the waste can.

  Pete was standing by the window that overlooked the news set. “What’s John doing dow
n there?”

  John kept reading as the lights on the set shut down and the room went semidark. “When Shannon was awarded the Hillary Slater Memorial Scholarship, she soon realized the scholarship came with a price—her silence. After the death of Hillary Slater, the Women’s Medical Center continued business as usual. There was no investigation of malpractice.”

  Now Susan and Tina had joined Pete at the window.

  Pete chuckled incredulously. “He’s doing 430, the Slater Story.”

  Susan was awestruck. “He’s doing it anyway!”

  Tina murmured, “Like father, like son” and turned away.

  John slowed down as he read the final lines of his narration. The clock wasn’t running now, and he would never get the chance to read the lines again. “A month later Annie Brewer, a high school senior, died from an abortion she received at the Women’s Medical Center.” And then there was silence. No commercial break with its bright lights, loud music, new cars or cold, inviting bottles of beer. No angry throng seething and ranting around him.

  Just silence. John could almost sense his words still echoing somewhere in the room.

  He’d said it. He’d done the story. He laid the script down gently, respectfully, and then sat there for a moment, leaning on his elbows, his knuckles against his chin, just decompressing, allowing himself to feel.

  It was so quiet. Had it ever been this quiet in his life before?

  “Barrett, you are one weird fellow, you know that?”

  Ben Oliver was standing at the other end of the news desk. How long had he been standing there?

  “Hi, Ben.”

  Ben rested his elbows near the spot where Bing Dingham usually did his sports reporting. He just stood there and studied John for a moment. “So Tina bumped the story.”

  “It got on the Five O’clock, but she bumped it from the Seven.”

  “You lost out to the rhinoceros.”

  “Afraid so.”

  Ben laughed derisively and threw in a well-woven curse as well. “Yeah, I know . . . I should’ve been here. But I won’t lie to you, John . . . I just plain didn’t want to be. It would’ve meant trouble, the kind I don’t like and don’t need any more of.” He sniffed in disgust. “I couldn’t have made much difference anyway. You push your weight around too much, you get accused of bending the news, you know?”