by David Kersey
CHAPTER TWELVE – Discovery
“Autry, there’s a WKSO television truck pulling up in the lot.”
“Wonder what that is about? Donna, find out what they want before you tell them I’m here.”
“Hello. My name is Sheryl Smalley, from WKSO public broadcasting in Somerset, an affiliate of WKLW, Lexington. Would Sheriff Autry Kane be available?” The lady handed Donna her business card.
“Can you tell me what this would be in regard to?”
“It’s about a television segment that aired three weeks ago on the “Around Lexington” show. I’d like to show the video to the Sheriff and ask him a few questions. Is he available, or do you know where I might find him?”
Autry appeared, having overheard the conversation. He surmised he would eventually be tracked down; so he would at least accommodate the lady for a few minutes, though he had a good idea where it would lead. He shook the lady’s hand and invited her to his office.
“Thank you for seeing me, Sheriff, I wonder if I could use your computer to show you a video on this disc. If not, I have a laptop with me.”
“We’ll use your laptop, Miss Smalley, I don’t want to tie up my system.” Autry rose from his chair, and circled around his desk to stand behind the lady who was setting up her computer on his desk.
“This was a human interest story we ran three weeks ago. It involves a man who rose from homelessness to a responsible position in the business world. His name is Mel Kenyon. Do you know the name?”
“Let’s watch the video and see. Let me see a face to go with the name.” Autry already knew all about Mr. Kenyon and was preparing what his reaction should be. Should he deny knowing Joshua? The bigger question was why this lady was involving him. He had seen the broadcast and so had Joshua, but there was no mention of Autry Kane in it, so it perplexed him.
The video began with a female interviewer asking questions of a fiftyish man wearing a white shirt and tie. His position at the time of the interview was store manager for Cynthiana Floor Coverings, a job title he had held for one year. The man recounted his story of how a few years ago he had lost his job due to alcohol abuse problems….lost his wife and family to divorce due to his abusive use of alcohol, then street drugs. He finally resorted to living in an alley in downtown Lexington, having sold his only remaining possession, his car, to finance the downward spiral.
One evening, about three years ago from the present, a man appeared in the alley, a man who appeared to be Jesus and who told him he knew the life of pain, struggle, and personal low self-worth. The Jesus-man offered him a quart-sized jar of a liquid, telling him to drink of it in small doses daily; and that in time he would rise above his current station if he wanted to. The payment owed would be to help another as he had been helped. Then the Jesus-man left as suddenly as he had appeared.
After a few days of drinking the liquid, Kenyon told of a newly found stamina that caused him to seek out his brother for help. After a few more days of receiving assistance from his brother, he landed a job as a carpet installer, a trade he had learned years ago.
Eventually, due to being clean and sober and having a new outlook on life, he was promoted to in-store sales, then assistant manager, and now store manager of a new branch operation. The video concluded with Kenyon now living again with his ex-wife and family but plans to remarry were not being discussed at present. He attributed his success story to the mysterious liquid sent from Heaven.
“Sheriff, the Lexington station received numerous emails, letters, and phone calls as a result of that airing. Most of the comments were either scoffing the Jesus angle or questioning what the mysterious liquid was. Three separate emails suggested that the liquid sounded to them like it was something they called NIL, a term none of us had ever heard of; so we followed up with those emails. Guess what? Your name was mentioned in two replies. So here I am; and what can you tell me about both the NIL and the Jesus-man?”
“Excuse me for a minute or two, I’ll be right back.” Autry slipped out the back door of the Whitley City government building then dialed Joshua on his cell.
“It’s happened just like we thought it might, Joshua. A television station is here asking me what my involvement is in the carpet guy’s story. How far do you want me to go with a reply? I could just kick her out and say I don’t know a thing. What do you suggest?”
Joshua replied, “Hang on a second,” and held his cell down to his side. He looked at Namanda for a few moments, but said nothing. Then, “If you and the reporter have the time, come on up here,” which shocked Autry.
“You sure? You know the cat will be out of the bag, and you can expect a mushrooming effect.”
“It’s time, Autry, even though we’re not ready yet. I have my reasons. Call me back if you’re coming.”
Autry returned to his office a few moments after the call had ended. “Tell you what, Miss Smalley, I will hand you a story, but only on two conditions. Number one, you must not use my name or my law enforcement position in any follow-up reporting; and two, you must promise to sit on the story for at least two weeks. I can assure you the story will be a large feather in your cap. Are you willing to agree to those two conditions?”
“I will do both of those. What have you got?” She attempted to hide her excitement since she had never written a story that had sailed above the trash can.
“Do you have a couple of hours to follow me to meet Jesus?”
Sheryl Smalley momentarily pictured her days in Sunday school as a child. Through the years there had been invitations to meet Jesus from well-meaning busybodies, but she had consistently declined. Her father was a saint one day out of the week. The other six days, when he did finally make it home from wherever the booze had led him, he was either unapproachable or to be feared. Yet this invitation was business; and the irony wasn’t lost on her. Some people, including her father, attended church for the sole purpose of being seen; and that was detestable to her.
“I have a couple of hours, and I have a cameraman outside in the truck. I promise I will abide by your wishes but I’d like to shoot some video, ok?”
“We’ll see about that when we get there. Follow me after I pull out front in the SUV.” Autry called Joshua and told him they’d be there in fifteen minutes.
Joshua had put his guests to work after Adele had left. Each of them were chopping the roots and leafy heads off the bulbous beet plants. While they busied their hands, the conversations included Tracy’s involvement with global health issues. Van had been asked what he thought was the most urgent global concern. He agreed that declining health was a great problem, but explained that the potential for a global economic collapse concerned him the most.
Namanda travelled a different road by saying in one word what she thought was and is the greatest concern…….food. Her simple answer caused the adults to halt their cleaving and listen for an explanation.
“In India,” she expanded, “there are two people born for every one that dies. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, one person dies every forty seconds, but another one is born every ten seconds. Worldwide, eighty million people are added to the population in a year’s time. That’s two hundred and nineteen thousand new mouths to feed every single day. Currently, when considering all the seven billion people on the earth, one out of seven will go to bed without being fed for an entire day.
In ten years, it will be one in six going hungry. There are simply too many people; and when you add to the equation the continual depletion of natural resources, the slowly vanishing potable fresh water supplies, and increasing abject poverty, the other side of the equal sign is that future wars will be fought over food, not over oil or religious beliefs. Not just the types of wars we currently see waged, but also chaos within neighborhoods and communities in the not-so-distant future.
What makes it even more threatening is that medical advances will mean more elderly needing to be fed; and that creates a whole new set of problems, when both great-grandparents and grandparent
s are living in assisted-living quarters. Whose responsibility will it be to feed them?
Malthus saw it coming two hundred years ago; yet his proposals were, and still are, considered inhumane. China is currently the only country legislating birth control in any meaningful way; as they should with over one billion citizens. As of this moment, seventy percent of the world’s population would have to die at once in order for agricultural production to equal consumption. I can envision some countries in Africa ceasing to exist fairly quickly; then, in time, some better prepared countries will fall into an anarchy system analogous to that of ancient Egypt or Rome. So my concern is food, or rather the lack of it.”
The silence that followed was interrupted by the musical ringtone of Joshua’s cell phone. During the call, he made eye contact with Namanda while holding the phone to his side. In response to his gaze, she said, “Its ok. I’ll talk with them.”
Joshua knew all too well the concern that Namanda had so correctly stated. He had lived it himself, and witnessed it in several of the African countries he had visited and worked in. Dealing with overpopulation was a recurring theme in his courses at Purdue.
Van was amazed at the girl’s grasp of current issues at her young age. He observed very little incidence of autism other than her occasional ticks and her looking around the workroom while speaking.
Tracy was amazed that her student was so verbose. She had never seen or heard her speak at such length even with her parents. She wondered if the NIL had something to do with it. So did both Joshua and Van.
“Think you can find your way back to the highway?” Autry asked from the opened passenger window.
“I know where I am, Sheriff. This is the old maintenance building; but it sure is more remote now than it was years back. If you have to get back to work, I can take it from here. Thank you again for taking the time to see me.”
“Remember, don’t use my name or office in your story. Ok, I’m outta here, got a wreck on 27 to check out.”
Sheryl, still seated in the passenger seat of the TV truck, dialed her station manager. “Eva, I may have fallen into some four-leafed clover. I am at the old Park Service maintenance building. Jermaine and I are gonna do some filming outside, and then guess what? We’re going to meet Jesus! Oh, my God.”
Sheryl clicked off the phone when she saw the robed, bearded man approaching the truck. She didn’t know if she should cross herself, or genuflect, or whatever people do at a time like this. She felt silly, but she was not alone. She noticed Jermaine hiding his cigarettes, and his eyes were as big as saucers.
“Hello, I am Joshua. Welcome.”
It took a moment for her tongue to loosen; then, “Hi, I’m Sheryl and this is Jermaine. May we talk with you for a little while?”
“Of course. Just so you know, I have company and you will need to seek their approval before videoing them.”
“That’s fine,” Sheryl said, while she and Jermaine poured out of the truck. “I’ve been here before, years ago. It has changed quite a bit, especially the road up to here. It’s all overgrown.”
“Yes, it has changed. The big heavy equipment isn’t stored up here anymore, and I don’t have many visitors,” Joshua explained as they neared the barn entrance.
“Whoa! I expected a barn with hay bales and a tractor or something. Not this! It’s a forest inside a building.”
“I guess you could say that; it is like an arboretum, but it really is a laboratory. Come let me introduce you to some special people.”
Van stood while Joshua introduced the newest guests to the older ones. “Please have a seat and tell us to what do we owe this great pleasure?”
“Well, my station ran a segment……….”
“Yes, that was me in the alley three years ago, and here is the NIL. Would you like some?”
Namanda rolled her head back. “haHA.” Her outburst got the attention of Sheryl and Jermaine.
“Ok, now we can move on to more important things. First, this is Dr. Jamison Vance, a professor of behavioral sciences at the University of California at Irvine. This is Tracy Dobblelaere, a teacher at the University of Delhi, in New Delhi, India. And finally this is Namanda, perhaps the most brilliant mind on planet Earth. And I am simply Joshua, a man of no means. What do you think your television audience needs to hear as a result of this visit?”
Sheryl fought the urge to stammer, but she wasn’t going to let the short circuitry of conversation unnerve her. “Well, first, Mel Kenyon would like to send his eternal thanks to you.”
“I’m glad to hear that; but I am even more pleased that he has enrolled in the Big Brother program and is making a difference in the life of the young and troubled Jackson Burnside.”
She quickly scribbled the name in her notebook. “The television audience has voiced suspicions about Mr. Kenyon’s story. They want to know about the Jesus man and the mysterious liquid. You could say they are nonbelievers. How would you like me to respond to those two suspicions?”
“You can say that the man in the alley, referring to myself, was also at one time a homeless man just trying to make a difference, just like someone else had done in my former life many years ago. You see, I made my home in that same alley when I was just fifteen years old. And the mysterious liquid is essentially what you see in front of you, though it’s gone through many modifications since then.”
“You dress like Jesus. You look like Jesus as far as we know. Why are you doing that? Are you an evangelist or something?”
“I will tell you something I’ve told no one else other than my people in Arizona. I have been severely burned on my body. I wear the loose fitting clothing for comfort, and the beard hides some of the scarring. I in no way hold myself out to be Jesus. No man can do that.”
“I am so sorry to hear of your burns. How did that happen?”
“I was trying to save an animal trapped inside a forest fire. I came out worse than the raccoon did; and I was one of sixteen people injured in the fast moving fire that ran through the reservation. Luckily, there were no human fatalities.”
“When you say reservation, do you mean an American Indian reservation?”
“Yes, the White Mountain Apache Reservation in Arizona near the New Mexico border. I lived there as a youngster, and later returned for a few years.”
“So are you an Apache Indian?”
“I speak the language, and it got me into Purdue, so I guess I am.”
“I don’t understand. Your mother and father, they were Apache?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think my mother was; and no one knows who my father was. My mother died the day after I was born. But have you ever seen an American Indian with a beard, or blue eyes? It’s a long story, and there is a lot to talk about. While these important guests are here, you should take advantage of it. You will find that all three are more interesting than me.”
“Ok, but tell me about what some of our listeners have called NIL? What is it, and may Jermaine and I sample it?”
Joshua poured two small cups, then decided to fill all the cups. “Just do as I do.” He held the cup under his nose, then told them to wet their lips with it, then take a small sip. “It is mainly comprised of mineral water, but it also has the essential chemicals derived from all the different plants you see in this room, plus some others. It is not toxic or a narcotic. You should feel its effects in a few minutes. Sheryl, if you really want a story, you should direct your questions to my quests. You’ll see.”
She turned to Van. “You are from California. What brings you here?”
Van was not about to undercut Joshua’s lead. “As a psychologist, I wanted to take advantage of this opportunity. Joshua and Tracy and Namanda, those three, I don’t think you realize what those in my field would pay to be in my chair just now. It’s them, not me you want to interview.”
“Ok, so Tracy, what would bring you from India to this lesser-known part of the United States?”
“I am here as the temporary guardia
n of Namanda. We have made the long journey because of this.” Tracy held her sake cup in the air.
“Ok, Namanda, what brings you to this country?”
“Him.” She smiled but did not emote the tick laugh while fixing her gaze on Joshua. “In a country of the blind, a one-eyed man is king. Like the Ecuadorian valley of H.G. Wells, my India along the west and north is cut off from reach of sane men. The Muslims to the west infiltrate the Hindus in the former princely state of Kashmir. The Sikhs along the west and north do not cloak their hatred of Hinduism. Now the Chinese are allying with the Pakistanis to instigate border raids just to be bullies. The territorial dispute over the Himalayas is simmering, but the fear of escalated conflict is blowing in the wind. My family and I have converted to Christianity; and, as it is said, we have no dog in that fight.”
Namanda had not removed her eyes from Joshua all the while she was speaking. “Because of my gift, my family has been asked, but commanded is a better term, to move to Fazilka near the Pakistan border. They want me to identify the Hindus that are selling information to adversarial interests. Because of that, and since our faith separates us from the community, we have made the decision to leave our India and move to America.
Yes, I am here for this,” she held up the cup, “and because my family wants to be uncontrolled and I want to be free from seeing what others cannot see.”
Joshua looked at Tracy. “Yes, I knew,” she responded without having been asked. “I will be staying in New Delhi. The Mehras will be returning to India with me, and it is their hope to complete the transition to the United States within three months. It must be kept quiet, for Namanda is a highly prized commodity in her country. Actually she would like to stay here, while her parents complete the move.”
“Does Adele know about this?” Joshua asked.
“No, she doesn’t. We couldn’t risk talking about it on the telephone. We had hoped to tell her today but she flew out of here before we had the chance.”
Joshua thought a moment, then, “Sheryl, I am going to ask to terminate the interview. It is important that your story only focus on me and the NIL. You may video me, the vegetation, and a jar of the NIL. Do not video any other person or any feature of this property. Understood? It is quite important.”
“I can do that,” Sheryl lied.
Joshua ushered Van, Tracy and Namanda into the workroom to continue the beet detail, before allowing Jermaine to video himself, the barn interior and a jar of the NIL. Once the filming session was completed, Joshua escorted the two to their truck, making sure the exteriors of the barn and cottage were not filmed. He then offered to meet with the studio in Somerset if a live interview would be deemed worthy.
He handed a jar of NIL to both Sheryl and Jermaine, gave them his cell phone number, and suggested they call him when their jars were empty. Joshua parted with, “As happened with Mel Kenyon, see if in yourself you can leave that which lay behind and seek that which lay ahead. God bless you in that pursuit.” He watched the television truck exit knowing that change was imminent.