Caleb Hennessy

Caleb Albert Hennessy, also known as Lucas Brady, also known as Paul Robinson, (April 5, 1944 - July 23, 1966) was a drifter about whom little was known. He was the oldest of five children born to Dana (Hennessy) Anderson, he had a criminal past in Cheyenne, he made his money selling drugs and he took up with the very married Terri Englund. Aside from this, the character remained something of an enigma, though the writings he left behind after his death have begun to shed some light on his troubled past.

Early Life:
Caleb was born in Jackson, to teenager Dana Hennessy, who named him after her deceased father, Only fourteen at the time of his birth, Dana proved to be far from an ideal mother and admitted in book four that she'd grown tired of her son quite easily and farmed him out to whichever relative would have him. Caleb was raised in and around Cheyenne, with various members of his family, and eventually came back to live with his mother and her new husband when he was ten years old. This arrangement did not work out, however, with Dana citing in book four that Caleb did not get along with his stepfather. Caleb's version of the events was more telling: his stepfather was verbally, physically and sexually abusive to him, and his mother did nothing to stop it.

Over time, Caleb realized that in order to make something happen for himself, he would have to resort to illegal means. He was arrested for the first time at the age of 14, for stealing a radio out of a store window in broad daylight. His crimes only grew worse. Soon, Caleb was stealing cars and selling drugs in Cheyenne, and making lots of enemies in the process. In book two, it is noted that Caleb held someone up for twenty bucks, and then knifed him when he didn't give it over fast enough. However, Caleb later insisted this was all a misunderstanding and that the victim of the alleged robbery, Roy Wyatt, actually owed him a substantial drug debt. Caleb was attempting to collect and using the knife for intimidation purposes when Roy panicked and walked into the knife. For reasons unclear (the charges filed against him or something else entirely), Caleb disappeared on Christmas Eve, 1965. He was last seen by his friend Lucas C. Miller, who supplied the following statement to police:

"Cal said to me, 'I'm dead. Forget all about me, I'm dead.' He kept talking about death and dying and being reborn like those Christians, and I didn't know what he was talking about. I thought he was gonna kill himself or something, but he was so calm about it. Like he made his peace with it or something. I think that's where he's at, man. I think he did it. I think he's dead, because he said that night, 'Like a baby comes into this world, I've been born again.' I just feel it. He's dead."

Coming to Haven Park and the birth of Lucas Brady:
As shown in the Wonderful Christmastime interlude, a hitchhiking Caleb was picked up on Christmas Day, 1965 by a man named Jim, who offered to bring him to Haven Park. It was here that Caleb first introduces himself as Lucas Brady, the identity he would assume for the next six months.

Within a month of arriving in town, "Lucas" met Terri Englund in the park, and a slow romance developed. Initially, they shared deep conversations, but soon their relationship grew sexual, a fact that did not escape Terri's overbearing husband Lance. Within months of meeting Caleb, Terri found herself addicted to heroin and ready to leave her husband, but Lance refused to let her go that easily.

In book one, he paid a visit to Caleb, telling him that he knew precisely what was going on between him and his wife, and that he wanted it to stop. Caleb laughed at his assumption that he could just call the shots that way, and told Lance in no uncertain terms that he and Terri were very much in love. This prompted a violent reaction from Lance, while a surprisingly calm Caleb told Lance to leave. Lance did, albeit begrudgingly, but not without the promise to get the drifter out of the picture, once and for all.

A few days later, at Carol Mathison's wake, Lance and Terri argued in the parking lot and were unexpectedly joined by Caleb, who witnessed Lance manhandling his wife and intervened. This proved to be the straw that broke the camel's back, and Lance punched his romantic rival. Terri attempted to get in the middle of it, knowing all about Caleb's fiery temper, but was not fast enough to stop him from pulling a knife on her husband. Terri begged him to just let it go, and they left together, despite Lance telling her that if she left with Caleb, she was not to come back home.

Despite that spectacle, Terri still met with Lance a few days later at First Baptist, for an ill-fated counseling session. After the fact, she told Caleb about this, and he exploded, reminding her that she'd told him that she'd already made her choice. He also leveled the thinly veiled threat that people who betrayed him ended up getting hurt.

Escaping to Casper and the birth of Paul Robinson:
On the night of July 9, 1966, Caleb left the apartment that he was sharing with Terri, for what he later described as a drug deal. The events of the night have yet to be confirmed, but Caleb told Detective Michael Goldman in book three that he went to Laramie that night and someone attempted to rob him there. Later, he returned to the apartment, battered and frenzied, and insisted to a very high Terri that they needed to leave. The only explanation he was willing to offer were that something did not go as planned and while he'd managed to escape with his life, it was only a matter of time before "they" caught up with him.

Taking Terri's car, he drove them to a new life in Casper and assigned them the new identities of Paul and Nancy Robinson. For a few days, the pair lived out of a small motel in Casper, while Terri repeatedly stressed her misgivings about the whole thing. On the morning of the 12th, however, she found an article in the newspaper about her husband's death and immediately made the connection, leaving before Caleb awoke from his night over narcotic overindulgence.

Capture and subsequent explanation:
Caleb discovered that Terri left him at the start of book three, and vowed to find her before she told the cops what she knew. He left the motel in Casper, with the intention of hitchhiking back to town. He was soon picked up by a young girl named Kelly Ann, and Caleb wasted little time carjacking her to get back to town faster. When he arrived, he was immediately apprehended outside Lance and Terri's home, and was hauled into questioning at the Haven Park police station. It was there that he first met Detective Michael Goldman.

Initially, Caleb insisted that he did not talk to pigs, but when Michael told him everything he'd been charged with, he agreed to talk to him, if he would get him a lawyer. Caleb insisted he is innocent of the crimes Terri accused him of, saying that on the night of July 4, he was in Livermore, Colorado, working on a business deal and on the aforementioned July 9, he was in Laramie. Detective Goldman, however, remained convinced that Caleb killed both Lance Englund and Carol Mathison, and that Terri was the mastermind behind it all. When he realized that Caleb was not going to talk, he got up to leave, telling the kid that he'd completely railroaded him -- which was not a very easy thing to do -- and accused him of using him to get an attorney. Caleb argued that he didn't use anyone, and that he'd held up his end of the bargain.

This prompted Michael to tell him that he already knew who Lucas Brady was, and he already knew who Paul Robinson was, but he didn't know who Caleb Hennessy was, and that would be a very good place to start if he wanted help getting out of this mess. After a few moments, Caleb's demeanor changed, and he spouted off a bizarre tirade, all delivered in the third person. He denounced Caleb Hennessy as "unwanted trash" and a "loser", before announcing that he killed him -- but maintaining that was the only person he'd ever killed.

Later that night, Terri visited Caleb, to speak her piece on the matter (and tell him she is expecting his child). Caleb tore into her for lying to him, for telling the police that he was the one killing people and everything in between, but Terri surprisingly held her own. She told Caleb that she loved who he made himself out to be, but that she hated who he really was, and told him that she knew he killed both her husband and best friend. She also attempted to tell him about her pregnancy, but Caleb called her a liar, and told her to leave.

Captivity and death:
Caleb struggled with drug withdrawal while behind bars, as well as attempting to prove his innocence to a town that had already condemned him. He began to write down his version of the story at the start of book four, and was quickly joined by Joshua Bartlett, who informed him that he'd heard from Caleb's long-absent mother. Caleb wanted nothing to do with Dana Anderson, and told his attorney as much. He insisted that he'd gotten by just fine without her help thus far, and did not need her (nor her high-powered attorney husband) for anything. Joshua urged him to see what Dana had to say, and to hit her up for bail money at the very least, but Caleb wanted no part of it.

Later that evening, he pondered the road that led him to Haven Park. He lamented his decision to trust Terri, as all he'd done was arm her with all the ammunition she needed to sell him out. He also scoffed at how everyone thought he'd changed identities so many times out of guilt. Caleb insisted that he'd been unable to bear another day of the life he was born into (a life that included both sexual and physical abuse, as well as neglect at the hands of his mother and other members of his family), and that Roy Wyatt being stabbed had nothing to do with it. He stressed that he'd never meant to stab Roy Wyatt at all, and that the whole thing was a set-up, because Roy owed him far more money than he could ever conceivably repay, and wished to keep his parents in the dark about his drug habit.

Defeated, Caleb realized that his best efforts to clear his name would not amount to much, as everyone seemed content to blame him for the murders. He realized that he could not live under those circumstances and subsequently hung himself in his jail cell. The next morning, Michael was shocked by the cavalier way that Haven Park PD handled his suicide, and confronted Elton Frazier on the lack of professionalism.

After Caleb's death, his writings began to circulate. In them, he vehemently proclaimed his innocence, while casting serious shade in Terri's direction. These writings made their way to Mayor Clayton Pierce, who informed Elton Frazier that both he and Michael felt there was something more to this story. Referencing the stabbing of Roy Wyatt, Mayor Pierce drew attention to the fact that the witness accounts corroborated Caleb's story that the stabbing was just an unforeseen accident. Shocked, Frazier was forced to consider that perhaps they'd jailed the wrong person.

The Lost Interlude: Another Place and Time:
In part one of the lost Another Place and Time interlude, taking place in the alternate timeline of 1981, Caleb is married to Kelly Ann, the same girl whose car he stole in book three, and is the father of a rambunctious toddler named Josiah. On their way to Colorado, the Hennessy family stops in Haven Park, so he can relive some old memories. At the diner, they meet up with Terri, and he approaches her. He asks her how Lance is doing, and also asks about Brett, saying that he thought of Brett often, as no one had ever been kinder to him in his life. Caleb also relates that he never just stopped caring about her, and that he'd made multiple efforts to contact her while behind bars, writing her several letters a day. Terri says she never received them. Caleb then surprises her by asking if she is the one who sold him out to the police and Terri denies it, pinning the blame on Lance. Caleb asks her to thank Lance for him, as he doubts he would still be alive if he hadn't been locked up. After that, he turns to leave, but Terri stops him, saying she has something to tell him too.

Character conception and representation:
In the original version of this story, the character of Lucas Brady bore little resemblance to Caleb Hennessy. Lucas was a suave businessman, married to Kelsey, and having an affair with Terri on the side. He is arguably the character that changed the most from one version of the story to the next.

In this version of the story, I sought to make Lucas a more rebellious symbol of the time frame the story is set in. I also thought that by eliminating his wife from the picture, the Terri/Lance/Lucas triangle wouldn't be as convoluted, and would have far fewer loose ends.

During Independence Day 's webseries era, Doors frontman Jim Morrison served as Caleb's visual representation.

Trivia:
In the original version of the story, Lucas Brady was the character's given name. When I determined that in this version, it was merely an alias, I asked a friend of mine, former webseries writer Jay Edwards, to come up with a name. Any male name would do, I said. He suggested Caden. I countered with, "how about a name that might've existed in 1966?" Jay suggested Caleb. I told him that he would shit when he found out who he just named, and once he read the big reveal, he did!