Chapter 4: Green Around the Outhouse

"Hey, wait a minute, this is going too fast. Wait a minute, why should I be interviewed on TV? Give me one good reason," The roller coaster feeling returned with a vengeance.

"There are five thousand good reasons for this interview, all of them your favorite shade of green. Here, sign this, it's your signature card so you can draw on the new bank account I set up for the three of us to use. Keep all receipts and hurry up and get changed." Ralph shoved a bank signature card into my hands and said, "Sign on the dotted line, right next to the 'x' there."

"What's this?" I asked. I began to learn Ralph Pendergast was one of those people who believe, "If it's worth doing at all, do it to excess."

"This is a signature card. The first check deposited into the new account is for five thousand dollars and has already been wire transferred to the account. If you wish to draw on it, you must sign a signature card and then I'll fax it secure to the bank." He looked at me and added, "You are getting five thousand dollars to appear on the TV show 'Dangerous Times.' Now he is going to ask you loaded questions and try to trip you up. But I figure five thousand dollars is a nice cushion to fall on when you trip."

"What do I wear? What do I say?" I was panic-stricken. "I don't know anything about talking on television. Let Rachel do it, she'll be much better than I am at this sort of thing." I could hear a desperate whine in my voice and didn't care. The thought of all those people staring at me...

"Oh no, I'm not about to stand up there in front of some camera. You can forget about that right now, Forrest Eden. I have never been anywhere even close to a television station before. Besides, you are the man with the miracles. I'm just the miracle man's beautiful and adoring bride to be." She had a mean grin plastered all over her pretty face.

"Rachel, for the last time, I am not a miracle man. There has to be a perfectly rational explanation for all this." I looked desperately at Ralph. He shrugged. He wasn't about to get between Rachel and me, at least not this time.

"Forrest, honey, why don't you open your eyes? Everyone else knows you are doing something supernatural. Even the Church hasn't denounced you. And you know how conservative the Mormon leadership is. Wake up and accept the fact you have been chosen."

"By whom and for what?" I asked." I don't want to be chosen for anything. I only want to write my ads, sell my stuff, then marry you and settle down and have three point two perfect children with you as the beautiful mother of those perfect children. Let someone else who wants to be the big shot do this stuff."

I did get my way on one thing; Rachel came to the interview with me. This was no small concession on her part. I refused to go unless she came with me, so she reluctantly agreed. It turned out she was even more camera shy than me.

Ralph grinned all the way to the television station in the fancy limo he hired for the evening. It was my first ride in a limousine. I decided I liked this part of what was happening.

I had seen Hal Gooding on TV before when he crucified some poor person who was dumb enough to appear on his show. I didn't like him, and neither did anyone else I knew. But the man had a higher local rating than even Rush Idiot at his peak.

We were seated and he lobbed a few soft questions at me. Hey, I thought, this isn't all that bad. I relaxed and smiled a cocky smile at Rachel standing off camera as if to say, "He can't touch me." Then I learned different.

Suddenly he started to get nasty. "Next we shall see some clips. Is this you we see here?"

It was a clip of me removing the goat head sticker from the little mamma skunk's paw. Although he played the same clip I had seen already it somehow was very different on TV. Here I looked like some sinister individual who was up to no good. It showed Mama Skunk strutting off after I picked her up and seemed to merely caress her paw. Suddenly it dawned on me that the whole clip had been doctored. "Pretty good trick there," Hal Gooding said with a sneer. "How long did it take to train the little animal to perform for you?"

"You doctored the clip," I accused him. "I have seen the original and it does not show me the way the clip does." I started to get mad.

"All my editors did was to enhance the image the cameraman took. What part of the clip has been falsified? You point to one thing we have added or deleted."

"Well, you make me seem so shifty there," I answered weakly.

"Perhaps it's because there would have to be something shifty about a person who passes himself off as a miracle worker and exploits tiny animals. I bet PETA might have something to say about this. It's pretty low if you ask me." He gave me one of his patented sneers.

"Now the next clip is of the little girl. This is so contrived looking nobody in his right mind would believe you didn't engineer the whole thing. On the monitor I saw the little girl feed the two deer. All the movements seemed jerky and uneven. This time he took a three-minute clip and cut it in half. It looked completely bogus. The people in the audience started to boo when the little girl held up the rose.

"I say you're a fake and a charlatan. What do you say?" Here came another of his patented sneers.

Something happened inside me. "You want fake? I'll show you fake." A black rage took me over, a terrible rage. I stood up and advanced toward him. His eyes widened and he stepped back and stumbled and fell onto the stage floor. Two of the station's security people came toward me to drag me back. They touched me and seemed to be thrown back away from me.

I touched Hal Gooding's cheek and felt the familiar tingle and something else. His eyes opened wide in horror. I drew my hand back. There was something hard about the tingling sensation. I had punished him somehow. Something went badly wrong; I knew it had from the feeling within me. I knew I had done something to him and was afraid it was very bad. He sat unmoving on the floor, eyes opened wide in horror. He looked off in the distance at something only he could see.

I was sorry for my outburst of anger. Somehow all the anger and fear I had built up inside me since my trip to the outhouse the previous Saturday was released into him. I reached down and took hold of his hand and helped him to his feet. The "good" tingle came and most of what had been done was removed. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to lose my temper. Are you all right now?"

"You're real." he said in a hushed voice. "You're not a fake. Oh forgive me for doubting you." he started to kneel in front of me.

"Come on and get up. I'm not a holy man. Don't embarrass me, or yourself. Just get back up on your feet." Until it happens to you, you have no idea how weird it feels to have someone bow down to you. Well, unless your name is Hillary or Donald rump. Then I guess you expect and even demand it.

He began to cry. Great tears flowed down his cheeks. "I have been so wrong all my life. From this day forward I shall go forth and do good works." What was it with this guy? Was everybody in Utah going a little nuts? Maybe it was the water.

I held out my hand to Rachel and she took it. I pulled her out of her chair and said, "Let's get out of here."

"Mister? Can you really make people better?" I looked down toward where the voice was coming from. In front of me was the most hideously twisted young boy I had ever seen in my life. He appeared to be about twelve or thirteen years old, maybe more, maybe less. I had no way to tell for sure. He stared up at me with an air of forlorn helplessness. "Would you please help me? I can't pay you much."

He saw the horror in my face and started to turn away in sad surrender. A woman came hurrying up and started to tug at him. "I'm sorry, Mister Eden. Chucky was in a car wreck and it messed him up real bad. His heart was damaged and the doctors say he can't take any more operations. Can you help?" She had little hope in her voice. Her own face told a story of privation and suffering and sacrifice.

I looked back down at the boy and told her, "I don't know what I can do here. I'll try. I'm pretty new at this sort of thing." I touched his cheek and felt a great surge of the vibrating force start somewhere deep inside my brain, in the depths of my very soul. It went down my arm and out my fingers into the poor kid's face.

We stood there, my fingers welded to his cheek. A soft green glow surrounded both the boy and me. We were enclosed by a pure white inner aura within the green outer glow. He stared up into my eyes and I saw a change slowly begin to take place. His young body began to straighten itself and he stood taller and more erect.

The scars began to slowly disappear from his face. The milky gray left eye became a match for his good right eye. The twist disappeared from his mouth as his jaw regenerated and became firm. His sparse, splotchy hair began to regrow even as I watched. I hardly dared breath as the transformation continued. I was more afraid than I ever had been at any time in my life. It was all so strange and eerie.

Then with no warning, the electric tingle began to fade and the green glow disappeared. The white glow surrounded us a while longer, then slowly dimmed and faded away. I blinked as I came back to the reality of where I was again.

This time when I looked down I saw a homely young freckle faced boy who appeared to have never been injured in his life. Nervously I patted his shoulder and said, "You be a good kid now." I felt I should say something profound. However no great and memorable words came to me. I took Rachel's hand and walked out of the studio. There was dead silence behind us.

The limo was still out front waiting for us. Ralph had a strange look on his face as he pushed the door open and scooted over. "What happened in there?" he asked. "I don't know what it was you did, but it sure impressed everybody in the audience. What was it with the green light? Can you turn it on and off when you want?" He had watched us on a small TV in the limo.

"Hal Gooding hired the woman and child to be in the audience. He planned to ambush you, Forrest. He planned make you out to be the most evil man since Jim Jones." Rachel was as angry as I have ever seen her. "Forrest, how do you feel? Are you all right?"

"I guess so. What happened back there? I felt like I almost killed Gooding with my anger. I wanted to hurt him." I shook my head to clear it. "The boy, is he okay? What happened?" I felt confused.

I leaned back against the back of the seat and closed my eyes. I went to sleep. The next thing I heard was Rachel shrieking, "Oh no."

My eyes popped open and what I saw looked like a riot scene from a horror movie. We were back at my place. My house was mobbed. There must have been a couple of hundred people milling around in my yard. My big front picture window was broken and some guy hammered on my front door with his gloved fist. "Driver, keep on going," Ralph ordered tersely. "It started faster than I thought it would. We stay in a hotel tonight."

"What are all those people doing there? What are they after?" I asked in confusion.

Rachel cut in, "They're after you, Forrest. They want you. This is the first of your fanatical following. You and Ralph had better stay in a motel tonight and I'll take a cab home."

"No." I told her. "I want you to stay with me tonight."

"Forrest, not tonight, not any night, not till we're married," she told me in her firm no nonsense voice. Then she ran out of words.

"Rachel. I just want you near me. You are all that keeps me sane right now. I just want you near me. Honey, I'm scared." Normally I'm not a sniveler or a whiner, but I would have gotten down on my knees begged her to stay with me if necessary. The incident at the TV studio and then the one at the house shook me up a whole lot.

Ralph called ahead and reserved a suite of rooms at the Marriott in downtown Salt Lake City. He paid the limo driver as soon as we arrived and ordered another ride to be ready for us by eight o'clock in the morning. He saw me stare and said defensively, "Well, it beats trying to get around town in a smelly taxi. Besides, it's all tax deductible."

We hurried inside and registered. Ralph told the bellboy to send a clothier up first thing the next morning to fit us from the skin out. The bellman nodded and led us to our suite. There was a sitting room and three bedrooms. I looked around in wonder as Ralph tipped the bellhop fifty dollars. He saw my look and said, "You might as well get used to it. You are a celebrity now. Celebrities tip well or get bad publicity."

"Look Ralph, I would not wish this on my worst enemy. Why would I want to be a celebrity?"

Patiently Ralph explained, "Whether you like it or not, you now belong to the masses. Every con artist and whacked out nut in the country is going to be on the lookout for you. You will find in the next few days you had over a thousand classmates and a hundred best friends in the first grade alone. And none of them ever heard of you before tonight. Get used to it," he told me not unkindly. He went over to the bar and opened a cordial of brandy.

"He's right, Forrest. What's done is done. You can't put the toothpaste back in the tube." Rachel patted my face and said the magic words, "No matter what happens, I love you." It seemed to me everyone kept speaking in trite old sayings. I hugged her; thankful she was there to help keep me sane.

Ralph turned on the TV and we saw me as I stood over Hal Gooding like an angry character from a religious movie. I was hypnotized as I watched the young boy and me enclosed in a pale green aura. I moaned as he became whole, bit at a time. Rachel had tears in her eyes. "Forrest," was all she could say.

After we watched the whole episode at the television station five or six times I was ready to turn in. Ralph told me, "I called and hired some off duty deputies to go out to your house and stand guard and keep the idiots at bay around your house. We need to get the gates up and working."

I nodded and went to bed. Surprising enough, I dropped right off to sleep and didn't wake up until I heard the door to my room open and Rachel's voice said, "I'm scared, Forrest."

I raised my head up off my pillow and said, "Come here." She sat next to me on the edge of the bed. I sat up, put my arms around her waist and said, "I love you so much it hurts."

"Thanks, I needed to hear you tell me," she whispered in my ear, kissed me on the forehead and left.

The next thing I heard was the knock on my door that woke me. Rachel called, "Forrest, the clothing person is here." I slipped into my pants and staggered out into our common sitting room, still only half conscious.

An attractive woman with a tape measure in her hand stood waiting for me. I backed away and said, before she could measure me, "I know my sizes. I wear a forty-two regular coat; my pants are thirty-two waist and thirty-four inch inseam. My shirts are sixteen and a half neck and a thirty-three inch sleeve. Ralph and Rachel will order what I need to wear." It's not so much I'm prudish, but I didn't want some strange woman measuring me while Rachel watched. Rachel smiled at my embarrassment.

Then I realized I had turned my life over to the two of them. I was emotionally numbed out and confused by the speed with which things happened. Right then I was unable to make any decision at all of any kind.

Ralph explained what we needed in the way of clothing then gave the woman her own measurements. I grabbed up the house phone and called down for room service. "Send me up a pot of coffee and a cinnamon roll." I handed the phone to Rachel so she could order. Ralph followed the young woman from the clothing shop downstairs.

"You have a ten thirty appointment at Church Headquarters," Rachel told me. "Then we go over to the temple for an interview with the Quorum Of The Twelve. Forrest, do you realize how unusual it is? I don't think there is a precedent for this. Doesn't it just fill you with awe?"