The Warning Read online

  Clarke walked over. “Are you all right?”

  “No, I’m not.” Sorrow hung like a leaden weight in his chest. He passed his hand over his eyes. “I just learned Alex has cancer.”

  The entire room drew a collective breath. They all knew the story of Alex. Many of them had grown up with it.

  Agatha was the first to reach him. “Buddy, I’m so sorry.”

  The pastor was one step behind her. His concern was deepened by what he had just been saying. “This is terrible. How can we help?”

  Buddy looked from one face to the other and saw the sorrow and genuine concern. “You’re doing it now. Thanks.”

  “Come on up here.” This from Pastor Allen. His former resistance had vanished. “Are you sure you’re up to this today?”

  “I just want to get it over with.”

  “Fine, fine.” Allen guided Buddy into the chair he normally reserved for himself at the head of the table; then he motioned for everyone else to take their places. “Let’s just bow our heads and have a moment of prayer.”

  Buddy lowered his head with the others, but did not hear the words. Instead, as soon as his eyes were closed, he felt a sense of peace. The words came instantly to his mind. Heal my brother, he prayed. I’ll do anything you want. Just make my brother well.

  He raised his head to find all eyes on him, the entire room waiting patiently. How long he had sat there he had no idea. He looked from face to face, wondering what on earth he was doing there at all.

  Then Agatha Richards reached over and took his hand. She had never been particularly friendly to him in the past. Her family were grown and scattered, and she lived for her missions and her church. She had always viewed Buddy with suspicion, for he had sought to play peacemaker alongside Clarke rather than declare himself solidly for one side or another.

  But none of the former distrust was in her face now. Her sight had started to weaken after her husband’s death, and she wore bottle-bottom glasses that made her eyes look impossibly big. She gazed at him with brimming eyes, her hand gripping his firmly. Then Buddy recalled that it was cancer that had taken her own husband, and he placed his second hand on hers for a moment before rising to his feet.

  Even when standing, he still had no idea what on earth he was supposed to say. So he simply laid it out. He cleared his throat and launched into it without preamble. How he had suffered through more than two weeks of nightmares. How he had seen the Bible passage about a coming famine come alive before his very eyes. How he had fasted and prayed and had received answers. How he had asked for signs . . .

  Right then, before he could tell them what the signs were, a chair slammed so hard against the back wall that Buddy jumped. He turned to see Pastor Allen standing alongside him.

  The pastor’s head was upraised, his eyes clenched shut. He was swaying slightly, his arms outstretched, his hands rigid.

  Pastor Allen was not opposed to movement of the Spirit, but he himself had never been a demonstrative man. His sermons were often punctuated by loud amens and occasional clapping, while many in the congregation sang with hands outstretched and faces upraised. He remained unfazed, simply accepting it and waiting them out.

  But not now.

  His entire body seemed to vibrate, shaking like a tuning fork struck by a divine hand. His neck muscles were so taut they stretched like wire cables beneath his skin.

  Buddy took a step back and then caught sight of the assistant pastor. Clarke Owen was sitting beside his colleague, seemingly caught halfway between laughing and crying. He was biting his upper lip, rubbing one hand up and down the side of his face, up and down, his eyes never moving from Pastor Allen’s face.

  “Praise God!” Agatha Richards rose in trembling stages, her eyes staring up unseeing at the heavens. She reached one hand toward what only she could envision and cried again, “Praise be to the Lord Almighty!”

  “Hallelujah!” Lionel Peters was up now on the table’s other side, his voice charged with emotion. “Hallelujah, Amen!”

  Buddy kept backing away from the scene until he was pressed hard against the wall. He watched as one after another of the committee members began to rise and call and shout and lift their arms and close their eyes. He felt nothing except shock. He could not be the cause of this. It was impossible.

  Clarke Owen rose to his feet, the last to do so. Calm in a joyful way, clearly in control and yet guided with the others. “Brothers and sisters,” he called, and gradually the hubbub faded. “Brothers and sisters, let us pray together and give thanks.”

  Hands were joined, and Clarke began the prayer. A low murmuring ran in waves around the chamber. Buddy joined his hands with the others, yet remained isolated and untouched. It was impossible that he had caused such a commotion.

  The prayer went on and on. Buddy scarcely heard anything at all. Three words resounded through his mind, over and over, a litany spoken to the confusion he felt surrounding and filling him.

  Heal my brother.

  –|| TWELVE ||–

  As soon as he was home Buddy retreated to his den. It seemed a center of calm in the midst of the storm. He did not do anything; he merely sat at his desk with the Bible opened and unread before him.

  Molly came in to say good night. She studied his face for a long moment and then brushed the graying hair from his forehead and kissed him and left him without speaking a word.

  The night gathered, and more than darkness crouched beyond the reach of the room’s feeble light. Buddy felt overwhelmed by all that had happened. He opened his top drawer and took out the list he had made. Could that have truly been only a few hours ago?

  Almost in reply there came a whisper, a silent response. Not in words, not this time. But a signal that was understood just the same. Buddy caught a sense of urgent need.

  He slid from the chair to his knees. The Presence gathered and intensified. He took no pleasure from it and little comfort. The future was too formidable. Too close.

  “Make this cup pass from me,” he said, speaking with eyes closed. Clasping his hands to his chest, pleading with all his might. “Give it to someone better prepared.”

  The response was as clear as it was silent. A simple waiting.

  He sighed, understanding the message far better than if it had been in words. He had asked for signs. They had been given. He was chosen. He had promised. He was called.

  He wanted to make his brother’s healing into another sign. Wanted to bargain. But he could not bring himself to do it. Why, he was not sure. But the wrongness was so absolute that Buddy could not negotiate. He could only beg.

  He raised his clenched hands toward the ceiling, and pleaded, “Heal my brother. Please. Make Alex well.”

  The image was instantaneous in its arrival, as though waiting for this moment, ready in advance, prepared long before he was even born. It was that clear, that total.

  Buddy saw his brother. Not with his own closed eyes. The image was far stronger than something of his own senses. He saw his brother in entirety. The Alex of all time appeared in his mind and heart—the young man, the brokenhearted lover, the fallen drifter, the drinker, the salesman, the hollow gourd who had turned his back on the church and refused to be filled. The hearty handshake, the empty laugh. The burly giant pasted around a life of chasing barren dreams.

  With the image came a sense of seeing it not through his own memories at all. He was watching through wiser eyes, seeing a wholeness that was limited neither by time nor anything human. And with this observation came an overpowering sorrow. Anguish over a beloved child who had drifted away.

  There was no time to give in to grieving. In fact, it did not feel like his own grief at all. Instead, his perspective began to expand. He did not retreat from his brother. Somehow he began to see Alex, and more besides, taking in the customers who came to Alex’s lot, then all of downtown, then the entire town of Aiden.

  The broadening did not stop there. The vista swept inexorably outward, carrying Buddy with him. No longe
r was there any question that he was seeing more than his own vision. No longer. The county, the state, the region, and onward. Farther and farther, on and on, until he was looking and feeling for an entire nation.

  He did not stand at some great distance and look down upon his country. He was joined. The connection was intimate. Each person was there, each town and county and state and everything in between. How it was possible, Buddy did not know. But he saw both the individual and the total. And the sorrow would have overwhelmed him had the guiding hand not filtered it. For with the expanding vision had come a growing realization. It was not just Alex who was ill. It was not just for his brother that Buddy should be mourning.

  The illness was an all-pervading malignancy eating at the very fabric of society. It came under a variety of guises, and was called by myriad names, but the source was the same.

  The stain reached from shore to shore, from border to border. Buddy saw it all. He saw and felt a mother’s anguish for a child who was slowly giving in to a deadly disease. He saw and wept for all the cancerous growths that had infected the body of his beloved country.

  Here and there were islands of light, flickering candles of life. No words were needed now. No convincing necessary. For a reason that Buddy did not understand, he had been selected to speak with them. To carry the message and pass on the warning.

  Suddenly the why behind his being chosen no longer mattered. The unspoken lesson had carried with it all the explanation he would be offered, all that really mattered. Buddy had been called. Despite all his failings and all his misgivings, no matter what anguish he himself might be facing in his own life, he had been called.

  The perspective faded as quietly and gently as it had appeared. No indication of the force behind it, nothing of the experience’s immense infinity remained. Instead, the room returned to focus. Buddy was back, and his life was changed forever.

  The Presence whispered to him then, in words for the first time that night.

  –|| THIRTEEN ||–

  Thirty-Six Days . . .

  Monday morning Thad Dorsett entered the bank in a foul mood. He had taken his boss’s advice and spent the weekend away. In Chicago, however, not New York. His first trip to New York would be as a king, not a weekend wanna-be. Still, Chicago held more than enough diversions to keep one returning veteran satisfied for a weekend.

  Yet returning from the big city to Aiden, Delaware, was a bitter way to face another Monday. Thad grunted in reply to his secretary’s cheerful greeting and poured himself a cup of coffee. His throat burned, his mouth tasted gummy, his tongue felt slightly furred. The insides of his eyelids seemed coated with sand from too little sleep and too many hours spent trying to have a good time. He stared out the bank’s rear window, slurping his coffee and willing his body to wake up. The day outside was as grim as the town.

  Thad was not so weary as to be blind to the way the bank’s employees treated him, playing at being polite but not meaning a thing. He turned so that he could watch Sally at her till. Even she had started keeping her distance. He felt another set of eyes on him and looked over to where Lorraine sat behind her desk, watching him like a disapproving hawk. He stretched his tired face into a parody of a smile, but she did not even blink. No question who had been talking to Sally. As soon as he found a way to rid himself of Korda, that Lorraine was history.

  Korda. The thought of that measly little guy getting in his way twisted Thad’s uneasy stomach even tighter. And the way the others in the bank treated him, that was even more galling. Thad had seen it happen dozens of times. All the guy had to do was walk in the door, and every face in the place lit up. Like he was some kind of potentate instead of another small-town loser.

  Thad couldn’t stand to watch another of Korda’s entrances. He carried his cup back to his office, saying as he passed his secretary’s desk, “As soon as everybody gets here, have them come in.”

  Monday morning arrived dark and rainy. Buddy drove along streets he had known all his life, feeling as though he was saying farewell. He was not leaving, not yet. Yet the when no longer mattered.

  He looked out his rain-washed windshield and saw his own future. The trees were still verdant with the weight of summer’s leaves, but it was only a matter of time before autumn came. Only a matter of time. Buddy listened to the windshield wipers snap back and forth, and wondered if there had ever been another moment when he had felt so helpless.

  He arrived just as the bank’s managers were filing into Thad’s office for their regular Monday morning meeting. Buddy entered and slid into a seat in the far corner. He remained locked in his own private reverie through the report on accounts and outstanding loans. He said nothing as the previous week was reviewed. Nothing sank in very far at all, in fact, until Thad Dorsett rose and addressed the gathering.

  “Interest rates have taken another rise, as all of you know. Or should know, if you’re doing your job.” He gave his dangerous little smile. “Unfortunately, too much of the bank’s loan business is tied to fixed rates. This can only grow worse, as rates are predicted to go even higher. So here is what I want you to do. Make a list of all our customers with fixed-interest loans. Ignore the mortgages; we don’t hold them anyway. Star all those who use their loan arrangements for rollover credit—the small businesses with salary accounts, that sort of thing.”

  Buddy was paying attention now. His focus was locked on the branch’s manager, with his dark, swept-back hair and his tailored gabardine suit. Dorsett continued. “We’re going to catch them in a double pincer. Starting today, no further increases on their loan balances will be permitted. And the rate of repayment will be increased by tripling their minimum monthly payments.”

  While this was still being digested, Thad went on. “Not only that, but we’re going to issue each of these people new credit cards. We’ll send them a personal letter signed by me announcing that as valued customers we are waiving our normal account charge and offering them our new Platinum Corporate Cards for free. With a twenty-thousand-dollar credit ceiling.”

  Buddy could remain silent no longer. “That’s disgusting.”

  Thad did not seem surprised to hear from him. “No, Mr. Korda. It is highly profitable.”

  “Credit-card debt carries the bank’s highest interest rate. Last week’s rate hike pushed the accumulative over nineteen percent.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Those fixed loans and rollover credit accounts belong to our bank’s oldest customers.”

  “Deadbeats who need waking up,” Thad snapped, his face reddening.

  “They aren’t deadbeats,” Buddy heatedly replied. “A lot of small businesses are being operated by the third generation of the same families. Businesses who started around the same time as this bank. They’ve trusted us with their accounts for over a hundred years.”

  “I remind you, Korda, that your loyalty should be to the bank and its policies. You—” He stopped at the sound of someone knocking on the door.

  Lorraine poked her head inside, then said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Dorsett. But Mrs. Agatha Richards is here.”

  “Tell her I’ll be right with her,” Thaddeus Dorsett said. At the death of her husband, Agatha Richards had inherited three large companies and was now one of the bank’s wealthiest customers.

  “Mrs. Richards,” Lorraine replied, “wants to see Mr. Korda.”

  Buddy felt as though he was propelled from his seat. “I’m going to write all my customers,” he announced grimly, “explaining to them what’s behind this scheme. I’ll instruct them to destroy the cards and refuse to pay the increased minimum payment.”

  “Do that,” Thad snarled. “Be sure to send me a copy. I’d be delighted to show our central office what sort of assistant manager I’m saddled with here.”

  “Can I get you a cup of coffee, Mrs. Richards?”

  “No thank you, Lorraine.” Agatha followed Buddy into his office.

  “Mr. Korda?”

  Hearing Lorraine call him by his las
t name was so surprising he turned back. “What?”

  “Coffee?”

  “No, no, I’m fine, thanks.” He watched her softly shut the door, and wondered what had Lorraine acting so demure. “Why don’t we sit over here by the window. What can I do for you, Agatha?”

  “I just wanted to tell you how thrilled and moved I was last night.”

  “Oh.” Buddy slid into the settee facing Agatha.

  Agatha was not a gushy sort of woman. She stood an inch higher than Buddy but looked even taller, as she held herself rigidly erect. She gripped her purse in her lap and kneaded the top clasp with beringed hands. “I feel so honored to have been there at the outset. I’ve never been one to go in for gifts of the Spirit, but—”

  “Agatha, please stop.”

  “I just can’t tell you . . .” Her mind finally registered Buddy’s quiet words. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Stop. I don’t know how to make it any plainer than that.” He knew he was being too harsh, but he could not seem to help himself. “This is hard enough already without your gushing all over me.”

  “Why, Buddy Korda.” His words caught her totally off guard. “I thought you’d be delighted.”

  “Well, I’m not.” He could not bear to have her finish. “The last thing I want is for people I’ve known all my life to start treating me like I was some kind of—” He started to say, some kind of prophet, but stopped himself just in time. He finished lamely, “holy man.”

  Before Agatha could collect herself, there was a knock on his door. Lorraine timidly stuck her head inside and said, “Please excuse me, Mr. Korda—”

  “Not you, too, Lorraine.”

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  “Never mind. Never mind.”

  “Reverend Owen and Reverend Allen are out here.”

  “Well, show them in.” Buddy rose to his feet. Agatha remained planted where she was, giving him an odd look. Buddy looked at her and said, “I suppose you told Lorraine all about it.”

  “I didn’t have to.” Her gaze did not waver. “The whole town is talking about you.”