The Great Thirst Boxed Set

by Mary C. Findley

  Doctor Williams arrived promptly at ten. Keith had a flutter of uncertainty when he looked out his classroom window and saw her get out of a black van. His mind went to the black van incidents from the first week of school and shook his head in disbelief at his own crazy conspiracy theories. A proctor showed up at his door a few minutes later and he practically ran to the teachers’ lounge. His dad unlocked the door and Talia wrung her hands at his side.

  “This is very impressive!” Doctor Williams said, surveying the stacks of materials. “You were able to get everything from everyone in the school district? We have one hundred percent compliance?”

  “I believe so,” Keith’s dad replied.

  “Very good. I’ll go get my technicians and they’ll get to work.”

  “I … I thought we were going to do the scanning ourselves,” Talia faltered.

  “My dear, how did you intend to do that?” Keith didn’t like the sneer in the woman’s voice at all. But she quickly changed to a more conciliatory tone. “My staff is trained in the use of our machines. We have devices that automatically do all those labor-intensive tasks that I’m sure you have neither the time nor the personnel to deal with. Where would you like my people to set up? Worst case scenario, we will be done before school is dismissed, so you can begin the process of returning these things to their owners.”

  “Everything’s here, so I suppose you can do it here,” Mr. Bradley shrugged.

  “Perfect. We’ll be very, very careful. Once we have inventoried and catalogued everything, the website should be updated and all the materials available within a week or two. As soon as 100% compliance is verified, we will send the viewing devices so that everyone can see how all their study and hard work will benefit the world and the future.”

  “That’s very impressive,” Keith said. “Government projects aren’t normally this organized or efficient.”

  “We have been planning for this for a very long time.” Doctor Williams smiled. “It’s the most important project we’ve ever had, and very close to all our hearts as educators.”

  “Thank you for being so reassuring, Doctor Williams,” Principal Bradley said. “Frankly, we were wondering how all this was going to come off. You might see a bunch of work, but to our people, this is precious treasure.”

  “Believe me, Mr. Bradley, we understand what these things mean to all the people they represent. We will treat them with all the care and respect they deserve, and of course, they won’t even leave this building, except in your hands and the hands of those who know best how to treat them. We only want to help you preserve them and enable everyone to share the wealth.”

  “See? Everything’s fine!” Talia whispered to Keith as people lined up to take the Bibles and study materials back ninth period. Mr. Bradley had called parents and pastors and reassured everyone when the black van had departed. Many people who had never even visited the school before showed up to collect their Bibles from the hastily-arranged tables in the auditorium. The also seemed to want to get a peek at the Doctors Ramin, who had evidently become town celebrities. They greeted people and helped with the distribution, still sharing stories along the way. Jayna hugged her Bible and the three notebooks she had already filled.

  “I know I was all brave and stuff,” she confided, “But I did get a little scared when the Men in Black showed up.”

  “Me, too, Jayna,” Keith replied. “And the survey trip is going to be incredible,” Keith whispered back to Talia. “I’m trying to imagine what it’s going to be like living with your uncle for a week.” He gave a nervous chuckle.

  “Never a dull moment,” Sophie smiled. Naddy towered over her, waving two bags of books for emphasis and holding forth about his case of dysentery in Sicily. The owners of the bags tried to snag their belongings, but Naddy hadn’t finished making his point yet and they swung and bobbed like palm trees in a hurricane.

  Naddy and Sophie went with the Bradleys and Talia to return Grandma Bradley’s Bibles and notebooks. Keith saw the van that had brought Dr. Williams and her crew to the school still sitting at the curb. Dr. Williams and a blonde reporter stood behind the van on the sidewalk talking. A cameraman recorded what seemed to be an interview.

  “Look at that,” Keith marveled. “This is the third time reporters have showed up at the school. The third time this year. If the local news channel was doing stories about us, I’d have heard something from the kids.”

  “Why would reporters care about this tiny school?” Naddy chuckled. “But then, since they are with your Dr.Williams, perhaps it is only the Repository Project they are interested in.”

  “Last week I thought maybe they came because you were here,” Keith said. “There was a reporter in the assembly. I mean, you must be pretty well-known archaeologists, right?”

  “We are not known at all,” Sophie replied. “No one cares about those who study the history of the Scriptures, except to laugh at them.”

  “A reporter, inside the school?” Principal Bradley shook his head. “I’d have been informed about that, I would hope. A stranger walking into the school – it’s a frightening thought. Are you sure, Keith?”

  “I’m sure there was some blond woman with a pro-model camera at the assembly,” Keith said. “Nobody else saw her?”

  “I’ll have to look into whether someone checked a reporter in at the office and forgot to tell me,” Principal Bradley said.

  “It is odd, though, that someone should come to the school three times,” Sophia agreed.

  Dr. Williams’s van drove away as they stood talking.

  “I don’t see that reporter anymore,” Talia said. “Where did she go? Did she get in a car?”

  “No idea,” Joshua said. “I am going back to the school office and check on that business about the reporter being at the assembly last week. You all go on with Keith to my mother’s apartment and I’ll join you there.”

  “My, oh my, oh my,” Grandma Bradley exclaimed as she met Keith, Talia, Naddy, and Sophie in the hallway. “This old lady’s getting killed with company.”

  Uncle Naddy inhaled deeply. “The healing eucalyptus,” he intoned. “This is a good place. A place of wisdom and peace.”

  “These are my Uncle Naddy and my Aunt Sophie,” Talia explained to Mrs. Bradley.

  “Oh, you’re done with these already?” she asked as Keith set the Bibles and notebooks in her basket. “I thought it would take you weeks to copy everything.” She made her way into her bedroom and came back out shortly with an empty basket.

  “Doctor Williams from the Department of Education brought in a special scanning machine and technicians, and they got everybody’s stuff scanned in today, Grandma,” Keith explained.

  “I see. So they had their plans in place.”

  Uncle Naddy suddenly turned deadly serious and took Mrs. Bradley’s hands in his. “Have you only this – what is it called? – The walker? No Scooter-Go-Round, or whatever they call these devices that carry the elderly about?”

  “Well, yes, I only have my walker. It’s good enough to let me make my way next door to the grocery and pick up a jug of milk or some bread when I need to. I don’t go anywhere else.”

  “This will not do. Something better you must have, when the time comes, so that you can go where it is necessary to be safe.”

  Principal Bradley joined them after Keith buzzed him in. “everybody was gone in the office,” he reported, “but I found a record of that reporter who came the first day of school. The form says her name is Jenny Kaine, and that she’s from the International News Network, which I’ve never heard of. Apparently no one checked to see that the form was completely filled out, because there’s a copy of her driver’s license but no contact phone number for her employers. And she is the same one who showed up again last week. The form shows both the visits, but the information is very sketchy. Someone is due for a retraining session on visitor check-in procedures.”

  “Mr. Bradley, my aunt and uncle were saying that Mrs. Bradley sho
uld have a motorized scooter,” Talia said.

  “Oh, she couldn’t qualify for one of those power chairs,” Mr. Bradley protested. “Besides, mom still gets around a bit, and she’d rather use her legs while she can.”

  “Of course. Of course,” Aunt Sophie agreed. “She must keep the blood circulating and the limbs moving. But still, there may come a time of greater need. My husband and I wish to make this gift of the power chair for your sweet mother. Joshua, please do not be offended, but we wish also to make provision for Joana. We propose to install a device to easily carry her chair down the front steps, and a van to allow you to transport her and your mother. Do not refuse us, please. These are great needs, we believe, for coming times. These precious ones must not be held motionless.”

  “What is it that you think is going to happen?” Mrs. Bradley asked.

  “The Time of the Great Thirst is coming,” Naddy replied.

  “What does that mean?” Keith asked.

  “Thirsting for the Word,” Mrs. Bradley responded. “But going thirsty. We do need to be prepared for such a time. I’m sure your gifts are well-meant. I accept with thanks, and Joshua, you had better accept what they offer for Joana too.”

  “This van; it will be able to carry the beloved mother’s power chair, and Joana’s chair. You shall have all of these things by the time we return from this preliminary trip,” Naddy declared.

  They parted from Mrs. Bradley after a time of fervent prayer, with many embraces. “Be careful with what you’re going to find over there,” she admonished them. “What you’re going to look for, and what’s looking for you.”

  “We shall,” Naddy promised, patting her hands between his great mitts.

  Chapter Twenty-four – “What Do You Want from Me?”

  Talia dragged Keith away from the windows of a travel agency with posters of Greece and Turkey destinations. They were spending the day in the “big city” shopping and finishing up preparations for the trip. “We’re going there,” she laughed. “You don’t have to look at pictures.”

  “The history of the lands we will visit is like a huge press,” Naddy explained as they climbed into a rental car. “Wine, olives, cheese, words, all are squeezed, and the faithful were squeezed, by war, by persecution. Sometimes they flowed out to other places. Sometimes they went into hiding. Sometimes they hid in plain sight.”

  “They hid in plain sight? How can you do that?”

  “So many ways. Let me give you an example from European history. In Spain the Jews, the Marranos, as the Spanish called them, publicly claimed to have converted to Roman Catholicism under the threat of the Inquisition. Jews have the Mezzuzah, the little box on the doorpost containing Scripture. They would still have that box, but it would be part of a whole design, carvings around the doorway, and none would notice the container for the treasure. Even for the Moors, the Moriscos, it was so. In a country where one ruler proudly displayed no less than five severed Moorish heads on his coat of arms, these people lived and served Islam, but very cautiously.”

  “I’m glad Christians don’t have to do that in America,” Keith said.

  “Really? You think you still have religious freedom in America, do you?”

  “Sure we do.”

  “Nonsense. How many people have been discharged from their employment for such trivial things as wearing a pin with the Pledge of Allegiance, containing the words Under God?”

  “What? Nobody.”

  “You are wrong. How many teachers have been disciplined for having a Bible on their desks – not even showing it or reading the Word to students, but reading it themselves during times when the students have seat work?”

  “They can’t stop you from doing that. How do you know this stuff? You don’t even live in America.”

  “In America you have a saying, ‘to keep the ear to the ground’, I believe it runs. I have been a long time keeping my ear to the ground. I listen, I watch, I see the chipping away that goes on. Christians are supposed to turn the other cheek, to bear all things, to be longsuffering, to always be loving. You see, the enemy has used our own Scriptures against us, just as the evil one used them against our Lord in the wilderness temptation. I read of someone who pointed out that Satan used more Scripture in one conversation than many faithful use in hours of ‘fellowship.’”

  “I never thought about that. We get together for a youth activity and we play basketball, eat pizza, and at the end we have a devotional.”

  “Exactly. Even when we have a choice, it is divided into tidy packages. Why do we not ourselves always try to press out the Word stored in our hearts, to make it flow out into all parts of our lives, not just the ‘devotional’ parts? Do we regard it so lightly, that the basketball and the pizza, they are given more time? What do the Scriptures say, over and over and over again? They call for meditation. They call for prayer. They call for tucking the Word into the heart. They do not call for the basketball or the pizza.”

  Keith laughed uneasily. “Right. But look at our Bible as Literature class. That’s spilling over into the kids’ lives, into their families’ lives. We had no idea it would take hold like that.”

  “It is the Word. That is what it does, if we truly let it. What do you think will come of this archival project they scanned your Bibles for?”

  “It could be the greatest thing that ever happened. So many people use computers and the internet for Bible study already. It might tempt some of these people who don’t use the internet to get online. You can meet people all around the world. You can study with them. Getting school students involved in it can only be good, right? And you saw it yourself. They didn’t take anything. They gave it all right back. Didn’t even bend a page out of my Bible. I checked.”

  “Are you trying to convince me, or yourself?”

  “They said they respected our faith. They thought it was important.”

  “I respect the huge dog with many teeth that guards my neighbor’s yard,” Naddy smiled, pointing out a ferociously barking animal as they pulled up alongside a bistro. “But what if I persuade that man that I cannot sleep for the barking, that I do not feel safe. He must build a high, strong fence. He must get a chain. He must put a muzzle on his dog. These are reasonable things, already laws in civilized countries. But his dog can no longer do what he obtained it to do. ‘Oh, look, what an admirable dog he has’, we can say, when it is restrained and silent and troubles us no more.”

  “But everyone whose opinion I value, everyone I love, said we should do this. I mean, you two were right there helping us carry the stuff out to the church van Sunday night.”

  They ordered coffee and pastries. “I think maybe Uncle Naddy’s just playing devil’s advocate with you,” Talia ventured, shooting some sharp looks at her uncle.

  “Talia tells us that you are ‘safety man’ at your school,” Sophie said. “She says how much you and your father care for these children, and for your beautiful sister and grandmother. We want you to keep on doing that, to think ahead and to plan for the safety of these you love and honor. This is also the tradition, the heritage, of those who protect the Word. You are better fitted to help our cause because your heart leads you to behave so.”

  “I didn’t always think like that. My mother and father were already taking care of Grandma, and then Joana got sick. My mom worked sixty or seventy hour weeks, and my dad still has two jobs.

  “I took off like some oblivious teenager, because I had scholarships and grants for college and no debt, and got my own place and my own car. When my mom dropped dead from a heart attack, I realized that I’d quit being Mr. Safety and started being Mr. Selfish. Dad and I sold everything we could possibly do without. It wakes you up, when something like that happens.”

  “Certainly,” Naddy responded. “But Keith, consider that there are causes even more important than helping your family. We are called to put Christ and His Word first, even before fathers and sisters and grandmothers. Sometimes we must understand that God wishes us to en
trust to Him the care of those we love. You see how God has led my wife and I to offer our help with the transportation for the beloved ones. So your burden is eased and you can devote more of your thoughts to assisting our cause on this survey.”

  “You think you can fix everything with my family because you have money and we don’t? Well, there are some things money can’t fix. The doctors have no idea how to make Joana better.

  “It’s not just a matter of money. It’s being there when your family needs you. I’m going with you on this trip because you invited me, and you’re paying the way, but don’t think I’m ever going to leave my family and go running around the world on this mission you have. God gave me a mission to look after my family a long time before I met you people.”

  Keith jumped up and took off running. The others called out to him but he was in no mood to stop. He had gone to college here and knew the city fairly well, but he finally ran out of breath in a park. He folded over a bench and tried to get his breathing back to normal.

  “No way,” he gasped as what looked like the same black Sprinter van he had seen too many times already squealed around a corner on the street at the edge of the park. It tore out of sight as the Tesla and the familiar rental car pulled up alongside the black wrought-iron fence.

  “The van,” Keith said, still trying to get air, but flailing and pointing. “The black Sprinter!”

  All three of them stared at him. “Here? In the city? You saw it?”

  “You didn’t? Are you people blind? It blew past one second before I saw the Tesla. Wait, how did you find me?”

  “Please don’t be angry,” Talia said as she finally discovered a way through the fence and ran up to him. “They do it to me too. The new cellphone we got you for the trip? Uncle Naddy can track the GPS.”

  “Why do I feel like I’ve suddenly become part of some super-secret spy mission, and you are counting on me to save the world whether I want to or not?” Keith demanded. “Who are you people? Why did you come to our town? What are we to you? Why did you even need our participation in this trip? What’s going on with these Golden Testaments, and why in the world would you need our school’s help, or my help, to get them?”