True Heroes (26 page)

              Kain rubbed at his shoulder. “It’s my Doctorate project I told you.”

              “No I mean the topic, the content. What’s the blasted thing about?”

              “Oh…,” Kain was a little unprepared for his father’s true interest. He had always held a slight resent ever since Kain changed majors, colleges, and lifestyle away from the cloth and into mainstream media. Psychology called him with a voice that sounded like God’s, but after switching and adjusting, Kain never heard God’s voice again. “The official assignment is ‘do what makes you look good for your final project,’ but I chose to pick a hidden, local hero, interview him, and showcase all my ‘talents’ in one session. Of course, I picked the one guy who really, really doesn’t want to be found.”

              His father assumed his thinking posture. “C.W.,” he grumbled. The older man suddenly smiled and laughed loudly, drawing worried stares from Kain and his wife. His laughter finally tapered off as his lungs were surely exhausted from the effort. He posed another question. “What events is this person responsible for?”

              “Eight or nine different things. They range from opening an orphanage to supposedly saving a couple from losing their home by donating money for their mortgage.”

              The old Padre’s smile grew again, showing off his long-stained teeth before closing his eyes in concentration. “St. Margaret’s Mental Hospital: about ten minutes up seventy-three, exit twelve, left off the exit, right at the stop sign, left at the next stop sign, four blocks up on the right. Ask for Caleb Whitmor. If you head out now, you’ll have plenty of time to get what you need.”

                            -                            -                            -                           

              A few loose rocks rolled across the flattened surface until they fell into the remaining crevices as a nearly invisible field spread across the rooftop. It, with only the slightest hint of blue separating its outline from the thick summer air, seeped over the tiled roof border and sprung out to its very limits at each end—over a mile-and-a-half away. Everything inside the tinted globe felt its tug; it let everything move while never letting anything free. A swift breeze permeated the outer crust and all sub-layers until its very core, Caleb, felt the goose bumps of cool electricity slink across every nerve his spine could offer.

              Something moved into his soft membrane of thinly veiled power.

              “Someone’s here.”

              Caleb opened his eyes and quickly sent them from the roof, over the field of grass and people, and right to the side of the encroaching automobile, all in under a second. He used it to look through the window, noting the black driver, and a high-school picture of Caleb. His outline of energy flew back as Caleb refocused; his sigh echoed throughout the dome on a level only he could hear.

              “Someone’s here, for you.”

              Caleb stood up and pulled it all inside of his body, letting a final breeze stave off the inevitable time when the wind would stop.

---

              “Um, yeah hello. I’m looking for a man named Caleb Whitmor.”

              “All right then,” the small clerical assistant behind the rounded desk—nearly a fortress with the high sides and bars keeping her safely tucked away—cheerfully cooed. “Are you a family member?”

              Her coo did nothing to calm Kain’s raised hackles. “Do I look like a family member?”

              “All right then,” she emulated her original tone perfectly. “I’ll need you to fill this out and check in all metallic objects.”

              “Well, I’m just here to ask him a few questions and I’ll need a pen or pencil.”

              “I’m sorry, but it’s for your own safety. The inmates don’t like new faces and could be violent.”

              Her telephone operator voice bothered him much more than it should have. “Thanks.” He pinned the clipboard against one of the high walls and sped through the common questions. His scribbles ended with his signature and the clipboard finding the jailbird’s countertop. Car keys, two pens, a notepad, and his tiny pocket knife covered the sign-in sheet as the cheery girl dragged them behind the bars. “All right then. I’ve already called ahead to the orderlies to retrieve him and if you’ll just follow the light blue line on the floor, you’ll come to the cafeteria and he’ll be waiting. Light blue remember. The dark blue will have you in laundry.”

              “Light blue got it.” Kain slipped the picture into his hand and internally prayed for the ability to remember everything he’d need for his topic. A loud buzz opened two doors that revealed a nexus of colored lines splitting into their respective oblivions on the white tile. The walls were more colorful than the floors, various areas showing scribbles and obviously hand-drawn figures while others had everything from Tic-Tac-Toe to a small corner mural. His feet treaded as closely to the blue—light blue—line as possible while dodging the slower, jumpier occupants of the hall. His careful journey finally brought him to two open doors with two men in white sitting at a table, talking rather merrily to a bald man with an amused look on his face. The picture fell into its hands, and Kain found himself looking back and forth, noticing more and more quickly that the only difference between the two images was the lack of hair in the present version of Mr. Whitmor.

              Kain walked forward and waved slightly to get the attention of all three. “Caleb Whitmor?”

              The bald one in the middle looked up—two oceans of torment and radiance looking out where eyes should’ve been—and nodded to the men on either side of him. They vacated the table and posted by the doorway while Caleb stood and wiped his hands on his shabby sweatpants. He extended his hand as Kain closed the distance, and stared in astonishment. Kain’s father had assured him that he’d known the boy when he was in high school. If that was the case, Kain had equated Caleb as being at least thirty-eight years old. Even with that mathematical certainty, the picture of eighteen-year-old Caleb looked nearly identical to the one in front of him. He shook Caleb’s hand firmly. “That’s me. Should I recognize you?”

              His voice was calm: not medically calm but as if peace had undone some grip of darkness on the man’s soul recently. “No, no you knew my father, Lawrence.”

              A tiny grunt escaped the taller, slightly broader man while his endless gaze dropped in thought. They both let the flexible plastic chairs catch them while Caleb continued to think and Kain twiddled his thumbs. He looked at the man’s hand as it rubbed at his chin, noticing very little in the way of wrinkles or other signs of age. “I haven’t seen the good Padre in a long time.” His eyes finally refocused a little further towards Kain’s face. “Well, what can I do for you, son-of-a-Father?”

              He smiled. “Just Kain will do, and I’m not entirely sure I know what I’m doing here. He sent me here because he thinks you’ll be able to help me with a project I’m working on.”

              Both corners of Caleb’s mouth rose to reveal his front teeth, nearly flawlessly white. “I figured the old man would send someone my way sooner or later. See, he’s hell-bent on keeping what little soul I have out of the bottom of the oven. He’s trying to recruit me now with his own son?”

              “Not exactly.” He brought out the picture. “Sorry, but you look exactly like you did back when this picture was taken.”

              He slid the picture across the table.

              “Heh, yeah,” was all Caleb could retort.

              “You haven’t aged at all since this picture was taken. You must use some serious products.”

              Caleb smiled and laughed a few short chortles. “Age isn’t exactly what I do best.” The short show of personality gave way to an entrancement. He shook his head. “I was eighteen here. The year you were born as a matter of fact. I’ll assume you knew that and have done the math, so how old should I look?”

              He added quickly in his head again. “Thirty-eight or thirty-nine by my count.”

              “The former is closer for another few months. I told you I sucked at aging.”

              ‘What the hell is he talking about?’ Kain sat back and quickly dropped whatever riddle he was trying to convey. ‘He is in an insane asylum….’ “Anyways, I guess I’m here to ask you if you know anything about these events.” He pulled a small slip of paper from his pocket, drawing no attention at all from the orderlies.

              “Would you like to talk and walk? Seems a waste to stare at white and grey when there’s a few hundred more colors just outside.”

              Kain nodded his head in mock agreement. “Sure, but I don’t think they’ll let you outside will they?” Caleb stood and walked past the orderlies to wait on Kain. “Who do we need to talk to?”

              Caleb smiled and held out his hand to the hallway. “They trust that I’ll be back by dinner.” The slightly befuddled Kain walked past the smiling guards and down the hall with Caleb at his side. “So what exactly is the nature of your curiosity?”

              “Well, I, uh, am doing a graduate project on behind-the-scenes heroes that make the world a better place and there’s a mysterious person doing all these heroic—”

              “They give out degrees for Hero Research 101?”

              “No, psychology, and my specialty is abnormal psychology of what we deem ‘fringe thinkers.’ We’ve gotta demonstrate what we’ve learned somehow and I thought that’d be creative enough.”

              “Ah a future psychologist in a mental asylum,” they reached a side door which was swiftly opened, “I can smell the irony.”

              Kain handed him the slip of paper through a sun ray. “Do you recognize any of these names? Any clues would be—”

              “I know all of them,” he said before possibly being able to read them all. Kain’s excitement ran high suddenly at the thought of a break. “I made them up.”

              The man turned around a well-kept line of hedges and walked into the center of a group of white tiles, all the while Kain simply stared. His initial excitement over the big break was being stabbed and bled by the logical voices in his head. “How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

              A mid-stride turn on his heels brought Caleb’s body around to Kain’s crossed front. “The first name on the list donated half a million dollars to an orphanage that specializes in special needs children, the second pulled a young lady by the name of Angel out of a fire and was then ignored by the tabloids when she described her rescuer, and the third name, if I remember correctly, donated another quarter-million to the local family outreach program.”

              Caleb turned around and started walking, knowing full well that Kain would follow in earnest. ‘Nobody knew about the second one.’ “All right so if you were them why not come out of the shadows?”

              Caleb smiled from beneath the speckled shadow of a tall elm with his hands arrested behind his back. “I take it this is the part you’re really interested in?”

              “One of them. I want to see what kind of a mindset you have when a hero doesn’t come out and take his bow.”

              “Look at where I am.” He didn’t wave his hand as they stayed clasped. “My frame of mind isn’t right.”

              “Now, see I don’t buy that.”

              Caleb unclasped his hands and leaned his shoulder against the high trunk while crossing his arms. “There’s nothing I’m selling.”

              “No you are selling something. I’ve done three case studies with people. One was too gone to have cognitive thought of any kind, and another thought he was clever and tried acting insane for the judge. You’re reminding me of the second one more than the first.” Caleb chortled and sighed. “It’s hard to act insane when it’s obvious you’re in control of everything you do.”

              “Obvious…yeah. Hm, well you’re little insight has earned you a few warm up questions I suppose. You being your father’s son buys you an answer to that question later.”

              “Fair enough. How’d you get the means to do all this from inside here?”

              Caleb’s eyes, still penetrating with the shady dark failing to conquer any of their color, broke contact for the first time. “I don’t know if your dad told you but my parents died when I was younger, and they had money left to me. Quite a lot of it, enough to put us in here for a long time while I was free to make the few donations that I have.”

              “How did you get that deal?”

              “Oh, I checked myself in so they figure a little freedom couldn’t hurt. Plus I grab lunch for them all the time.” He smiled again, making Kain feel somewhat disarmed. “In any case, the income I have now comes from technical manual writing and investments I have with some high school friends. That’s my means to the ends you’ve highlighted.”

              “But you never appear in the public eye at all. Not even for the ribbon-cutting or the four awards you’ve won for humanitarianism. I never even knew you wrote anything.”

              “Well that’s because you don’t have my pen name on your little list there. You’re actually missing three or four of them.”