He knew these dreams were omens, that he needed to stay vigilant. Lately, he could sense the demons. His skin tingled when they were around, sort of like a bat’s echolocation, and he knew they were out there as he and his mother preached. One man in particular unnerved Caleb. He stood near the entrance to the skyscraper, the collar of his wool overcoat pulled high to shield his neck from the wind. He had a resolute face, dimpled chin covered in graphite stubble, and he stared at Caleb and his mother while he ate an apple. Though his eyes were soft, caring even, Caleb didn’t trust him. He knew who Caleb and his mother were, and he was preparing the fallen for the final battle.
“And when the Seventh Seal is broken, there will be a great silence. The seven angels will appear with seven trumpets. An angel will stand at the altar, and the faithful will offer him incense so that he may mix the prayers of God’s people. The smoke of the incense will rise up to God, and the angel will take the fire from the censer and cast it down upon the earth, unleashing lightning and thunder and earthquakes, and upon the screams of the wicked, the seven angels will sound their seven trumpets.”
Eventually, a security guard came to confront them. He was short, rotund, constantly pulling on his belt to keep it around his protruding gut. Caleb recognized him from church. He was a quiet man, a good man, married with three children all younger than Caleb, and he told Caleb and his mother they needed to move on, that if they didn’t, he’d be forced to call the cops. But Caleb’s mother refused to listen. She continued to preach through the megaphone, becoming more urgent, her voice rising in a crescendo, and a crowd formed. A few stragglers stalling their way back to work turned into six, then ten, then a couple dozen, all watching as if a riot might erupt, features frozen in a state of shock, poised to flee if they had to. The security guard called for backup. Three more came, and again the security guard commanded that they leave, more forceful this time, hand near his belt. When Caleb’s mother refused to stop, he grabbed her arm, but she jerked free. He nodded to the other security guards, and they descended upon Caleb and his mother. They knocked the megaphone from her hand, and his mother began to yell her sermon. Two of the guards grabbed her from behind and carried her, lifting her off the ground, dragging her away with her arms and legs thrashing, all the while screaming, “‘And I heard a great voice out of the temple saying to the seven angels, Go your ways, and pour out the vials of the wrath of God upon the earth.’ We are that wrath. My son is the wrath, and you shall repent.”
CHAPTER 5
THE RUMORS SPREAD LIKE THE FLU. CALEB’S mother was crazy. She’d gone bat-shit. Cuckoo. Went off her meds or had brain damage or something. That was why she no longer taught Sunday school; that’s why they no longer attended church; that’s why they’d been downtown preaching Revelation like the end of times was coming as soon as next Tuesday. She’d brainwashed Caleb, started spouting off about the end of the world, that her son was the Second Coming of Christ, and the minister had to step in. Caleb could hear other students whispering about him in gym class, cracking jokes at his expense in the cafeteria. He got pelted with half-eaten grilled cheese sandwiches and snot-riddled napkins. Girls stuffed his desk with notes calling him names: retard and crazy and jackass. The teachers didn’t do anything about it. They acted like they didn’t see a thing when Greg tripped him in the hallway or Marcus hit his books out of his hands. They were, Caleb was convinced, complicit.
At first Caleb tried to ignore it. Turn the other cheek, he thought. Do not retaliate. Take it in the stomach no matter how much it hurt, no matter how much he wanted to tell them to just wait; hellfire was coming for them, an eternal damnation and torture they couldn’t even comprehend. He fantasized about it even, how their smug faces would melt, how their cold hearts would be ripped from their chests, how demons would pull from them their limbs, over and over and over again until eternity, but he didn’t. It would only make matters worse. They’d just ridicule him even more, chastise him and make him even more of a laughingstock. But it was difficult.
In first period about a week after the rumors had started, Ryan sprayed his pants with a water bottle, turned to the other kids, and announced Caleb had peed his pants. The entire class erupted in laughter, and Caleb burned in indignation. He looked to Mrs. Hall to do something, to say something, to admonish Ryan, to confiscate the water bottle, sign him up for detention, but she didn’t. She just told Caleb to go to the bathroom, to use the hand dryers to clean himself up. As he walked out the door, the other kids laughed. They pointed. They called him Savior. “Oh, Savior,” they said, “the Second Coming of Jesus Christ can’t hold his bladder,” and before he shut the door behind him, he could’ve sworn Mrs. Hall covered her mouth to stifle a laugh.
During lunch, the other kids cut him in line as he filled his plate with bread, the only thing he was allowed to eat. It was sloppy joe day. Waffle fries. Green beans. As always, the cafeteria smelled of grease and ketchup, echoed with laughter and the clacking of plastic food trays against linoleum. Normally, Caleb sat with his baseball teammates, Clifton, Garrett, Russell, and the rest. They’d talk about girls, Ken Griffey Jr., the new Easton C500 that had so much pop even Clifton had a shot at hitting a home run, but ever since the rumors had started, they’d shunned him. They told him to sit somewhere else. To not to talk to them. They couldn’t be seen with him. So he sat by himself on a ledge near the staircase, two feet from the trashcan filled with upturned Styrofoam plates and a black liner caked with uneaten baked beans. Every time another kid went to throw something away, they’d flick a piece of trash in Caleb’s direction until the ground around his feet was littered with empty milk cartons and mustard-stained forks.
He tried to let it go, to quell the anger and humiliation eating away at his stomach lining, and so he buried it deep down inside his body until it hardened and grew in mass like a tumor spreading from his small intestine to his colon. He wondered if this was the type of cancer that had killed his Papa, a mass of humiliation and hurt and angst that just grew until it made his organs shut down and his guts turn into a gelatinous sludge. It seemed likely to Caleb. He’d never known this type of pain before. These were the kids he’d been born alongside, had attended preschool with. It wasn’t just emotional but physical as well, sandpapering its way throughout his body.
Last period was gym class. The boys changed in an old locker room, the tiles and grout long mildewed and smelling of sweat and unwashed shorts. That day they played dodgeball. Caleb had always enjoyed the game. Throwing those red rubber balls, ducking underneath a toss, being the last person alive while his teammates cheered him on from the side of the gym. It was exhilarating. But not that day. That day, as soon as Coach Lyle blew the whistle, his teammates didn’t run for the balls lined up in the middle of the court. Caleb took five or six strides before he realized this, the other team coming straight for him at a dead sprint, and then he stopped, alone, unprotected from the onslaught of his opponents. He got hit in the stomach, in the shoulder, right in the face. Each pelt stung worse than the last, and after they’d thrown every last ball they had, Caleb skulked off over to the side and sat on the bench.
Every game went like that. The second. The third. His teammates selling him out to the slaughter. After the third game, Caleb tried to hide in the back, but the rest of his teammates just isolated him so that he was an easy victim. Afterward, he asked Coach Lyle if he could sit out the rest of the period.
“You want to fail gym class?” Coach asked.
“No, sir. I’m just saying—”
“It sounds like you’re saying you want to fail gym class.”
Caleb stayed in the games. Round after round he was pelted, until bruises formed on his shins and a black eye crawled down his cheek. He felt like crying, but he forced himself not to, choking back the tears from the shame and embarrassment. He didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of knowing they’d gotten to him, that his will had been broken, that he would, if chastised long enough, recant his faith and beliefs and
identity so that he could once again be a part of the group, and so he steeled himself up, took the shots to the face and to the stomach, let the mocking laughter of his peers soak into him like dirty dishwater.
Afterward, the boys were to shower. Caleb didn’t want to. He only wanted to put on his clothes, run out of there before every other kid could, and climb onto the bus for the ride home, enjoy a few hours of reprieve before having to go to sleep and repeat the same day over and over until the end of the school year, but Coach wouldn’t let him. If he didn’t shower, he’d get detention, and so he stripped off his clothes, grabbed his soap, and headed for the first available showerhead.
He didn’t even wait for the water to get warm. He lathered up, poured shampoo over his head, and was rinsing when it happened: a push. He fell forward against the tiled wall, his forehead cracking against it. He slipped a little, hands grabbed him from behind and pulled him backward. When he landed, his shoulders and the back of his skull hit so hard, pain rocketed up his neck and throbbed in his ears. Soap covered his face, so he couldn’t see his attacker, but he could hear him. It was Sammie, a large Cherokee boy with cue balls for cheekbones and arms so long he could nearly touch the rim when he tried to dunk. He was just as tall as Caleb’s dad and already had the shadow of a mustache above his upper lip.
“You think you’re something special?” he asked.
Caleb knew better than to say anything, but he wanted to. He wanted to scream, he wanted to punch, he wanted to call on the wrath of God and banish him to hell, but he held it back, braced for what he knew was to come.
“Huh?” Sammie kicked him in the ribs. “You think you’re better than us? You think you’re a saint?” Caleb tried to block the assault with his arms, but he wasn’t quick enough. As the kicks kept coming, Caleb swore he felt the bone inside his chest snap in two. “Get up, fucker. Get up, Jesus.”
The other kids laughed.
Caleb jumped to his feet, fists balled to his sides, but he didn’t know how to use them. He’d never been in a fight, never had to defend himself. It was an unfamiliar situation, and the words of his mother echoed inside his skull: turn the other cheek, but don’t you ever become a victim.
“Oh, so you think you’re tough, huh?”
Six kids circled him, Sammie, the biggest, in the middle. Caleb’s teammates beside Sammie. “Hit him,” they said. “See if he bleeds. Hold him down and see if he can walk on water.” A rage built up inside Caleb. His skin vibrated. He tasted copper. He could feel the blood slam against his fingertips.
Caleb swung.
He connected with Sammie’s jaw. Solid contact. Sammie’s face turned to shock. Eyes wide. Jaw dropped. A slight bruise appeared on his chin, but he didn’t go down. He just screamed. He balled his fists, and all Caleb could do was cover his face with his arms. The blows came from all over. Two fists. Three. Four. They hit the back of his head and his neck. His ribs. His stomach. All the air Caleb thought he owned escaped him in one, quick gasp, and they didn’t stop until Caleb hit the ground, where it took all he had just to wheeze.
Caleb hobbled home and told his mother what had happened. Evelyn prayed and drove him to the same hospital his Papa had died in. When they walked into the emergency room, he was stricken with fear he was going to die. He knew it to be irrational—he was bleeding, but not badly. Mostly, it had dried up and coagulated into a soft scab on the side of his face. He touched it with his fingertips, but it hurt too bad to explore it. The doctor who saw him was young and nice. He had a short, well-manicured beard and smelled of hand sanitizer. He spoke like he was telling Caleb an inside joke, leaning forward, asking him with a sly grin what the other guy looked like. In all, Caleb had to have six stitches above his right eye, and they put a lead blanket over him and X-rayed his legs and arms and ribs, but the images came back negative. No broken bones, no hemorrhaging, just deep bruises the color of overripe plums. The doctor and nurses were nice to him, and they asked Caleb’s mother if she’d like to call the police, to press charges against the other boys, but she declined. “God will take care of them,” she said, and Caleb had no reason not to believe her.
The next day, the taunts lessened. Caleb wore a sling on his left arm, and he had a bandage above his eye. Kids and teachers alike avoided him altogether, not calling on him to answer questions in social studies class, not making eye contact while in the lunch line getting their tater tots and hamburgers. Coach Lyle allowed him to read a book in the gym’s rafters instead of playing kickball with the other kids, all of them perhaps thinking that if they just ignored the problem, let Caleb’s cuts scar over and his bruises fade to a soft, pea-green color, that it would go away on its own, that what they did hadn’t really happened at all but rather was just a bad dream, a hiccup in a normal week, but that wasn’t the case. After school, the principal wanted to see Caleb’s parents, and so Caleb remained out in the hallway outside his office after school. It was quiet. All of the children had gone home to do their homework, eat dinner, do their chores, and play video games. The teachers were probably grading papers or walking their dogs, maybe catching a drink down at Chili’s, chatting up a former student about what she was doing with her life. Caleb always felt weird when he saw a teacher outside of school. It was like seeing an animal out in the wild, a deer or mountain lion, not confined to a cage in a zoo.
Caleb had never seen the school so empty. There wasn’t anybody there to berate him, to tease him, to throw crumpled pieces of paper at him. There was no one to laugh at him, call him the Savior, asking him in a mocking manner to pray for them and to save their souls. Instead, it was quiet. It was peaceful. It was like he could hear every noise echo against the cinderblock walls. Somewhere around the corner, wheels squeaked against the linoleum floor, followed by rhythmic, quick footsteps. He wondered who the person might be, if it was a teacher or a janitor, someone he knew, someone he could still trust.
“You told him that? You told Caleb he is Jesus Christ?” Caleb’s father’s voice boomed from inside the principal’s office. Caleb couldn’t see him, of course, but he knew the expression he wore on his face, full of incredulity, full of shame. He’d never been a believer like Caleb and his mother. He went to church, sure, but there was always a soft monotony to his voice when he prayed, so that even Caleb knew it wasn’t genuine.
“This isn’t a conversation we should be having here,” Caleb’s mother said.
“Mrs. Gunter,” Mr. Owen, the principal, said, “you and your son are telling everyone the end of the world is coming and that you and Caleb are to usher them into heaven. The other parents, they are worried. And rightfully so. Especially after what happened at the church and the disturbance downtown.”
Caleb had always liked Mr. Owen. Usually a quiet man, he often had bits of his lunch left in his mustache. Potato chips, mostly. Plain, salted, greasy. The occasional breadcrumb from a turkey sandwich. Never did he raise his voice or talk down to a student. He treated them like he treated his teachers, with respect. It had made Caleb always feel like an adult around him, the only time he ever felt that way other than when he was with his mother.
“I can’t even believe this,” Caleb’s father said. “How am I going to be able to show my face anymore? How am I going to be able to go to work? Face our neighbors? Our friends? They’re all going to think we’re crazy.”
“Maybe you should stop worrying about what others think of you. You don’t have to answer their questions. You don’t have to be ashamed.”
“You’re going to have to answer some questions, Evelyn. That’s for goddamn sure.”
Caleb had heard his parents argue before. They’d fought over pedestrian things: the mortgage payment, the credit card bill, his and Jonah’s eating habits, the friends they were hanging out with, voicemails left on their answering machine Caleb didn’t understand. But never had it been this bad. Never had their tones been so accusatory. So pointed.
“I think it would be best if we all just calmed down a bit,” Mr. Owen said
.
“Please,” Caleb’s mom said, “do not take the Lord’s name in vain.”
“Oh? You mean our son? Is Caleb going to come in here and smite me, Evelyn? Is he going to damn me to hell?”
“Don’t be melodramatic, Earl. It’s not a good look on you.”
“I can’t even believe this is happening.”
“What exactly is happening?” Caleb’s mother asked. “I still don’t quite understand what we’re being accused of.”
“You’re not being accused of anything,” Mr. Owen said. “We’re just trying to find out what is going on. That’s all.”
“Okay, sure. How can I help?”
“Yes. Fine. Please, enlighten us, Evelyn. Where did Caleb get this idea?”
“What idea?”
“My god, Evelyn. Don’t act dumb. Ever since your stepfather died, you’ve been acting crazier and crazier, and now you’re telling people our son is Jesus Christ. What isn’t there to understand?”
Caleb wanted to sink into his chair. Grow smaller until he was as tiny as a molecule, slip into a crack in the floor and disappear forever.
Into Captivity They Will Go Page 5