An hour later Lisa opened her door to a Western Union boy and read the telegram he handed her with tears running down her cheeks. Matt left a partially undressed patient on a table and rushed home to read the same telegram. It had been dictated by Obie, smoothed out and made legal-sounding by Billy Warren Smith, and as Matt read it a second time, he knew it would stick.
It said, in effect, that Obie was claiming his legal son, whom Matt Daniels had kidnapped at birth. That if Matt Daniels fought this action, Obie would sue him and demand compensation and punishment of the culprits. A photostat of the wedding license would follow, as would a notarized statement from the mother of the child authorizing the father as the guardian, all duly witnessed and stamped. Obie had spent years and many thousands of dollars tracking down his son, and would fight through the courts for his right to keep the son with him. As an atheist, probably a Communist, and a free thinker, Matt stood absolutely no chance of having a decision brought down in his favor, and the harm to the child of a long involved legal battle might well be irreparable.
Matt’s attorney cursed fluently, at Matt as much as at Obie. They should have gone through the legal channels for adoption, etc.; Obie was a bastard who thought he could use the kid now, etc. But in the end the attorney agreed that Matt would not be able to sway a court, not in that section of the country. How many times had Matt taken the kid to church? To Sunday School? What was his own religious background? Lisa’s?
“So you are atheists, and Obie’s a heaven-inspired evangelist. I don’t know where in hell you could fight it out in court and not lose on those grounds alone.”
They tried to get an injunction to retain possession of the child while the case was pending, and they were refused. The judge said there was no case. The child was with his legal father where he belonged. There was no case.
Chapter Five
MATT and Lisa fought and met defeat down the line. They even tried to re-kidnap Blake, but Obie was one up on them here: he had provided himself with security forces and the attempt failed. So the first year passed, then the second and third, and Blake remained with his legal father.
Obie hired a tutor to satisfy the law, but he ordered the bewildered man to leave Blake strictly alone. Blake was teaching himself faster than Obie liked as it was. He read the Bible once through and knew it, could quote from Jeremiah, or Luke, or Psalms, or anywhere else citing book and verse, choosing a quote suitable for any occasion. He could quote from Nietzsche with the same facility, or from Kierkegaard, or the Koran, or any other text that he had come across, but he seldom let it be known that he had read these volumes. Obie regarded anyone who read non-fiction for pleasure with great suspicion. Six months after being taken by Obie, Blake had run away, and had been caught ten miles from the town of Bevel, Texas, where Obie was preaching. His punishment had been swift and painful, a beating administered by Everett while Obie watched in tears, unable personally to wield the belt. He was locked in his room nightly for a month with nothing to read, no light, and no toys of any sort. He was ordered to meditate, and he did so. He had read accounts of hypnotism, Yoga, and other varieties of trance states, and he taught himself to induce trance during the weeks of solitary confinement. He also struggled with and mastered all the in-between states of trance and was able afterward to induce analgesia, or anesthesia, a subjective speed-up of time, a complete withdrawal of awareness, or attenuated sensibilities. He was almost regretful when the period of punishment was concluded.
Blake never mentioned his former life, Matt, Lisa, Derek, or Lorna. He never spoke of his dog, or his friends. He hardly spoke at all, unless Obie ordered him to, and then his answer was short to the point of rudeness, and direct with an honesty that was infuriating. Dee Dee asked him if he liked her hair down or up, and he said the question was silly. She was beautiful either way and knew it, but why did she always have to make someone else say it for her? Everett, desperately trying to make up, asked him if he’d like to go to a circus and Blake said, no thank you, he didn’t like the way Everett tried to pull him to his lap, and he didn’t like Everett’s soft hands on his arm or leg. And Obie said he’d kill Everett if he ever. Everett spent the night on his knees weeping and praying for strength, and the next day he vanished into the slum area of Dallas and didn’t reappear for three days, and for months he avoided Blake. Wanda tried repeatedly to make him understand that she had been hired by Obie, that she was morally bound to carry out his directions, and that it hadn’t been wrong for a father to want his child. Blake stared at her each time without answering, and when she finally pressed him for a reaction, he said, “Probably that’s how the captains of the slave ships excused what they did. They were doing their jobs.” Wanda blanched and launched into further explanation.
Dee Dee tried to talk to Obie about the kid and the effect he was having on them all. “Obie,” she said, “send him back. I’ve been watching the way you look at him. You’re scared to death of the kid.”
“Shut up. Get lost.”
“Sure. You had an itch and you didn’t know how to scratch it. You thought the kid was the answer, but you still got the itch, Obie. Send him back.”
“He’s important. He’s a part of it all.”
“Yeah? For chrissakes, how? He’s a troublemaker, that’s what.”
“Beat it, Dee Dee. I don’t know how. If I knew I’d be using him. It’ll come to me. Just shut up about him.”
Dee Dee went to Billy. “See if you can talk sense into him, Billyboy.”
“Won’t do any good. Obie’s a superstitious fool. He’s his own most tied-up follower, and he doesn’t know what it is he’s following. From the first time he laid eyes on the kid, it’s been different. He never went after a chick like this. There’ve been plenty hot for a quick tumble in the sack with God’s Voice, and he couldn’t have cared less. But the kid… that’s been different. Have you seen the way he watches him? He’s scared shitless over the kid and he doesn’t know why.”
“I’ve seen,” Dee Dee said. “I don’t like all this, Billy. Something’s happening to Obie, he’s changing. I just don’t like it.”
Obie was changing. One day it all fell into place and there was no more mystery, no more tension in Obie’s life, although the superstitious dread that they all had commented on was to remain with him, hidden, ready to pull him again whenever Blake was the issue. What happened at that time, though, was this: Obie found religion.
It came about this way: Dee Dee slammed a car door and caught three fingers of her left hand in it. She screamed with pain, and screamed again when she saw the bleeding bruised fingers. The fingernails would go, maybe she’d have stiff fingers now. She might need surgery. They were staying in a motel outside Detroit where Obie was holding a revival nightly for ten days. Obie had been practicing his sermon when her shrill screams sounded. By the time he got to her side, the others were already there, with Blake in the background watching with large, sober, gray eyes. He was staring at Dee Dee’s ghastly face, not her hand. And still staring at her face, compelling her attention to himself, he went to her and took her hand, not looking at all at the blood and the mangled fingers.
“Dee Dee,” he said softly. “It’s all right. Don’t cry.” She gasped, swayed, and yanked her hand from his and stared at it.
“It doesn’t hurt,” she said. “It doesn’t hurt!” Billy broke the tableau after a moment. “Come on inside,” he said. “Let’s clean it up and have a look.” Obie took Blake’s arm and pulled him along when he started to hang back. Inside Billy’s room Dee Dee let him wash her fingers and examine them closely. She was calm now and almost uninterested in her hand. Her eyes turned again and again to Blake, who avoided her gaze embarrassedly.