Searching for Caleb

When I met her she was like anybody else. Except for Rearing white. She did wear white all the time. But I didn't know the about this healing.

She wants Arthur to learn healing too and she even wanted to look at my hands, she wondered if I have the gift."

"Do you?" Justine asked.

"Mama! I wouldn't go along with a thing like that."

"Well, I don't know, at least it would be a new experience."

"I don't want new experiences, I want a normal happy life. But Arthur just won't stand up to her, really he-and now she wants him to develop his gift because hers is going. She thinks it's because of her age. At the meetings they pray and cry, you can hear them everywhere in the house. She reminds God of what she used to accomplish: once she stopped a man in the middle of a heart attack."

"She did?"

"She says she has so much left to do, she should be allowed to keep her gift. She says it's unjust. There are people sick just everywhere, she says, and blind and crippled and suffering pain, and here she is powerless and she can't even stop her own son's headaches any more. She goes on and on about it, calling out so everyone can hear: just because a little time has passed, she says, that's no reason to let her dwindle down this way."

"Well, I should say not," said Justine.

Meg paused and gave her a look. "Are you listening?" she asked.

"Certainly I'm listening."

"I live among crazy people!"

"You should leave," Duncan told her.

"Oh, Duncan," said Justine. She turned to Meg. "Meggie darling, maybe you could just-or look at it this way. Imagine you were handed a stack of instructions. Things that you should undertake. Blind errands, peculiar invitations . . . things you're supposed to go through, and come out different on the other side. Living with a faith healer. 1 never got to live with a faith healer."

"That's what you're going to tell your daughter?" Duncan said. "Just accept whatever comes along? Endure? Adapt?"

"Well-"

"And how would people end up if they all did that?"

Justine hesitated.

"Never mind, Mama," Meg told her. "I didn't mean to mention it, anyway."

So Justine got into the car, but; untidily and with backward glances because so much seemed still unsettled. The troubled feeling was nagging at her mind again. She couldn't quite put her finger on it. She felt as if she had mislaid an object somewhere, something important that would thread through all her thoughts until she found it. But she sat forward briskly and called out the window, "Meggie darling!"

"What is it?"

"If you do have to do bazaar work, you know, if you need any help, I'll be happy to drive down any time and tell fortunes."

"Thank you, Mama."

"You know I have a lot of steady clients here."

"Well, that's very nice of you, Mama," Meg said. But Justine could tell that she had made a mistake. She should have offered something plainer and sturdier-anything but more gifts from heaven.

By the time they reached Caro Mill it was night, and the streets had a dismal abandoned look. The only place open was the diner, eerily lit and vacant except for Black Emma swabbing the counter. "Maybe we could stop for coffee," said Justine. But the car slid by, and neither Duncan nor her grandfather answered. (They had not spoken all the way home, either one of them. Only Justine had chattered on and on until she wondered herself when she would shut up.) "Duncan?" she said. "Couldn't we stop for coffee?"

"We have coffee at home."

"I don't want to go home," she said. "I have this peculiar feeling. I wouldn't mind staying the night somewhere, even. Duncan?"

But he said, "Endure," and turned sharply down Watchmaker Street. She blinked and looked at him.

In front of their house, when the engine had died and the headlights had faded, the three of them sat motionless for a moment gazing through the windshield, as if being borne along on some darker, more silent journey.

Then Justine touched her grandfather's arm. "Here we are," she said.

"Eh?"

He stumbled out, latching the door inconclusively behind him, and Justine slid after Duncan out the driver's side. They went single file up the walk between looming rustling cornstalks. At the porch, they stopped short. A shadow unfolded itself from the steps. "Eli!" Justine said.

"Eh?" said her grandfather.

And Duncan said, "Well, Eli. What have you found for us?"

"Caleb Peck," said Eli.

13

Eli Everjohn drank his coffee white, preferred Jane Parker angel food cake to taco chips, and was perfectly comfortable sitting on a chrome-legged chair in the kitchen. He had to make all that clear before they would let him get on with his report. "Listen here," he kept saying.

"Listen. It struck me right off-" But Justine would interrupt to ask, couldn't she take his hat? wouldn't he be cooler in his shirtsleeves? And old Mr. Peck trudged around and around him, thinking hard, occasionally offering interruptions of his own. "I believe I ought to fetch my notebook, Justine."

"Yes, Grandfather, I would do that."