The small town in Texas where John Carter had grown up had not changed much since Ed Biggers had last visited it. It was as if the place was frozen in time except that the people looked a little older. A handful of the very old had passed and there were babies to take their place. For William, the changes were practically unnoticeable.
Once they reached the house, Ed walked into John's old bedroom and looked at the stark furnishings. The Ansel Adams posters on the wall had faded with time. The books on the shelves looked old. Probably half of the material in them was inaccurate. Ed said, "This room reflects the essence of John. He wasn't flashy. He was a simple man in awe of the natural world around him."
"There are no toys," William commented.
Ed looked over at William with a smile and said, "His favorite game was Hunt the Bug Eyed Monsters. He didn't need toys."
"I remember playing that with him," William said. It had been a long since he had played that game. He realized that it had been a long time since he had played any kind of game.
Running a hand across the wooden footboard of the old bed, Ed said, "I'll stay in his old room while we are here."
"Okay," William said knowing that his father missed John.
Lucy walked around the room and looked at the old Ansel Adams posters. She wondered how long they had been hanging there. The paper felt brittle to the touch. She moved over to the bookcase and looked at the books. Some of the pages looked as if time had gotten the better of them. She said, "I like this room. It has an old smell to it that reminds me of used bookstores."
"I noticed that, too," William said moving up to stand behind Lucy. She leaned into him and he wrapped his arms around her. Looking over her shoulder, he said, "I bet half of the science in those books is wrong."
"I wouldn't take that bet," Lucy said.
Laughing, Ed said, "I bet all of the material in the wilderness books is accurate."
"I wouldn't take that bet," William said with a smile.
Lucy looked over at Ed and said, "Tell me a little about John Carter."
Ed settled on the bed and looked around the room for a moment. In a soft voice, he said, "Most of what you need to know about John is in this room. He was happiest when he was in the middle of nature. It didn't matter where he was; he appreciated the raw natural beauty that he found there. Woods, swamp, plains, mountains, seaside, and desert were all just as beautiful to him. I think that of any man who I have ever met, John's love for the Goddess was absolute and total."
Gesturing to the closet, Ed said, "John was the most self sufficient person I've ever met. He was a minimalist in terms of what he needed. I'm sure that you've heard that old expression that needs are few and wants are infinite. John didn't have any wants. Occasionally he'd say that he wanted to go hiking when he really needed to go. It is a lot like a person saying that they want to breathe when you know they need to breathe to remain alive.
"John would go out into the wilderness for a month with the same supplies that the average person took for an afternoon picnic. He'd have a backpack with a tarp, a little food, a knife, some matches, an old boy scout cook kit, and a change of clothes. With nothing else, he'd be able to live outdoors for a month.
"John cared about nature. He never came out and said it, but I think he was driven to invent the fusion cell to save the Goddess from a long painful death. I know it sounds like an exaggeration, but this planet was dying. I doubt you two could have breathed the air that we grew up with. You could actually see it some days. It smelled vile. His little invention cleaned up the whole world. With cheap power, it became possible to do the impossible.
"It was a noisier world back in those days. It seems to me that everything made noise. Today, you can actually hear a jet fly overhead. Back then, you'd never even notice that it was in the air."
Ed was quiet for a moment and then said, "That picture over there is of John, his older brother, Eric, and Doug Wilkins. Those three were wild in their day. Then one day, John and Doug had an argument with Eric. In a drunken rage, Eric drove off in the car shown in that picture. He wrapped it around a tree and died. John sobered up right away and never drank again. John loved his brother. He loved his family. Family always came first for John.
"Eric was the first great loss in John's life, but it wasn't the last. The next one he lost was Betsy. She was a beautiful woman with a heart of gold. They were going to get married, but she was killed in a refugee camp trying to help women and children living lives of great desperation. Knowing her helped heal me," Ed said looking back at the past.
Lucy and William moved to sit beside him on the bed. Lucy had her head resting on William's shoulder. Tears trickled down her cheek. Ed said, "Beth was a beautiful woman. You will never meet a doctor with such dedication to her profession. She was the kind of doctor who would work on a patient for as long as was required to save them. It didn't matter if it was ten, twenty, or thirty hours; she'd be there fighting death with every spark of life within her.
"Beth was going to be the first mother, but it didn't happen. She was hit by a driver who had suffered a stroke. My first thought was that death was tired of losing to her. Kelly said that the Goddess gave her the highest quality of life available in exchange for quantity of life. I believe Kelly's version."
"The deaths of the women struck John hard. He came to terms with their deaths and then helped us accept them. Sometimes though, you would hear him say that Betsy would have enjoyed some particular sunset and that it was a shame that she wasn't there to share it with him. I'd hear that and think about how a love that could last beyond death was possible."
"Even though he was a private person, John loved people. Despite his love for them, he kept himself separate from them. William, you're like him in that way. You come in, stay a while, and then leave. In the process, you help some folks. After having saved a life or changing a person, you walk away leaving an acquaintance behind. Over his lifetime, John occasionally brought one of them into his life as friend and then family.
"For a long time, John helped people one at a time. Like I said, he really loved people. He saw that helping one or two people at a time was not making a dent in the misery that was the human experience. With his resources he built something that would last generations. The Fusion Foundation has been helping poor and needy people break the cycle of poverty."
Ed looked down at the floor of the room for a second and then said, "I'm supporting you in fighting this crisis of followership for one reason. I think that we need a lot more changes in our political leadership before we can rid this country and the whole world of the forces that feed the cycles of self destruction. John wanted that more than anything. He saw the Druid College as an instrument that could bring around that result."
Turning to look at William and Lucy, Ed said, "You are a lot like John in many ways. He was the smartest human being that I ever had the pleasure to know. I think that both of you are just a little smarter. Don't let that go to your head. Both of you do dumb things on occasion.
"John understood love better than anyone. John had no limits when it came to loving someone. He knew what people needed in order to grow into better people and he gave it without reservation. Don't get me wrong, but I think you both still have a lot to learn about love. You both have placed artificial limits on it.
"John also understood evil better than anyone without being evil. He knew that there were some people who were born without a shred of goodness in them. He did all that he could to protect people from evil. We would spend months tracking down pedophiles, serial murders, and hard core criminals."
Ed stood up and walked over to the bookcase. He looked over the books on it for a few seconds. He said, "John was many things. I guess to me, the most important thing is that he was my friend."
Lucy wiped the tears from her eyes and said, "Thank you for sharing that with us."
Getting prepared for the meeting that he was to have the next day with Mark Howell, William was hard at work at the dining room table when he looked up from the stack of papers he was reviewing. Turning to Lucy, he said, "We have company."
After rising from the couch, Lucy went over to the door and opened it. She found that she was facing a young woman with short black hair. She was about to greet her when a very large crow flew into the house. Rather surprised at the actions of the bird, she jumped backwards giving a small shout.
Looking at the large black bird that had landed on the back of the chair across from William, Lucy asked, "Is that a friend of yours?"
William said, "Hello, Blackie. I take it that Birdie came with you."
The bird answered with a raspy caw. Hearing the crow respond, Lucy said, "I'll take that as a yes."
"Hello," Birdie said smiling at Lucy, "You must be Lucy."
Lucy stepped back from the door enough to allow Birdie to enter the room. As she moved, she said, "Excuse my manners. Please come in."
Birdie entered the house and looked around. It hadn't changed since the last time she had been inside. Turning to Lucy, she said, "I'm Birdie."
"Hello, Birdie. I take it you are a friend of William's," Lucy said still somewhat distracted by the crow that was cawing at William.
"Yes."
Lucy turned to look at Birdie and said, "I'm half tempted to ask how you knew that we were here, but I'm almost positive that you'll answer that a little bird told you."
Birdie laughed at the comment and said, "William said that you were smart."
William rose from the table and held out a hand. Blackie flew to it and continued to talk to him. Entering the living room, William said, "Blackie says that things haven't been the same without you around here. He wants to know if you're going to take him with you when you leave."
"I hadn't thought about it," Birdie answered looking at the crow in surprise. She said, "Sure, I'll take him with me."
Satisfied, Blackie took off and flew through the door that Lucy was still holding open. She looked out the door and then closed it. Shaking her head, she said, "That was different. It is not very often that we get visited by a crow like that."
Birdie laughed at the comment and said, "I'm sure that stranger things have happened around William."
"True," Lucy said.
For the next two hours, Birdie told William and Lucy what had been happening in town. She filled him in on what was happening in the lives of the people that William had known. It was a pleasant visit.
Colt had been standing in the hallway and heading towards the door to answer it when he had observed Lucy jump back as if pushed by someone. He had pulled his gun and nearly fired upon the crow and the figure standing behind it. A hair more pressure on the trigger and there would have been a dead bird. He might have been able to stop in time to prevent killing the young woman.
Having returned his pistol to the holster, Colt had stepped into the backyard. Barely able to control his anger, he said, "I damned near shot that bird."
"If I hadn't realized it was a bird, that girl would have joined it on the ground," Colt said looking around for something to break. There wasn't anything at hand so he stomped around the backyard trying to work off some of his anger. He was going to have a long talk with William one of these days.
Representative Mark Howell was busy talking on the phone and didn't see the pair of men enter the room. There was a young college coed who wanted to help him get elected. She was very attractive and kept telling him that she'd do anything to help him. His fertile imagination was considering all of the things that she could do for him.
William and Ed entered the office without announcing their presence. The secretary had taken one look at them and told them to go right in. Amused by the look on the secretary's face, William took a seat. He gestured to his father to take a seat beside him. Ed had his hands over his ears. He didn't know who the woman at the other end of the phone was, but he was tempted to tell her to run for the hills.
Seeing that his father was ready to explode, William said, "Excuse me."
Embarrassed at being caught attempting to seduce a young coed, Mark Howell spun around in his chair ready to give his visitors a piece of his mind. He had given his secretary explicit instructions that he wasn't to be interrupted for any reason. Of course, he had always joked that a natural disaster, a catastrophe of epic proportions, or Druids dropping by for a visit were the exceptions. Staring at the two Druids, he wasn't too happy that one of his exceptions had come to pass. He spoke into phone, "I'll call you back."
After hanging up the phone, Mark asked, "What are you doing here?"
"I'm here to talk to you about your future," William said. His father gave him an odd look as there was both a truth and a lie to his words.
Mark Howell sat back in his chair with a broad smile on his face. He said, "Well, I'd be happy to have your support. My opponent doesn't have much of a chance of winning. His platform is weak and he is under funded."
William shook his head and said, "You're putting the cart before the horse. I'm not here to support your campaign."
"You're not?" Mark asked with a frown. He had heard a rumor that a pair of Druids were getting involved in selecting people to run for office.
"That's right," William said, "I'm here to ask you to withdraw from the race and to endorse a specific person as your successor."
"Why in hell would I do that?" Mark asked.
Sighing, William said, "So that you can spend the rest of your life with your family."
"Are you threatening me?" Mark asked leaning forward. He had a pistol in the top left drawer of his desk. He put his hand on the handle of the drawer.
"No, I'm not threatening you," William said. He waited for ten seconds to pass knowing that his next choice of words was important. He didn't really want to be the one who gave the man this news. He said, "You have a terminal disease and, even with my warning, you won't survive six months after the next election."
"What?" Mark asked staring at William.
Ed stared at William hearing the truth in his voice. He said, "He does?"
"Yes. He has pancreatic cancer," William said looking at his father. The prognosis was bad.
"I don't believe this. What makes you think you can come in my office and spout nonsense like that," Mark asked getting angry. He had heard that Druids acted like they knew things that others didn't.
"Call your doctor and make an appointment. He will confirm everything that I've told you," William said.
"This is an outrage," Mark said.
Looking Mark in the eye, William said, "You've been experiencing pains in your upper abdomen. The pain is relieved by leaning forward a bit. You're appetite hasn't been good lately. You've lost about five pounds over the past couple of months, but you've chalked that up to your loss of appetite."
The symptoms were all too familiar to Mark, but he wasn't willing to accept the diagnosis. Rising from his chair, Mark said, "Get out of my office."
Sighing William said, "I could have waited to tell you, but you'd have died before the election was held. By coming here today, I've given you an extra year of life."
"What do you want from me?" Mark asked. He'd always heard that having a Druid show up in your life was either a very good sign or meant that a disaster was looming.
"I want you to go to your doctor and have him give you a thorough examination. Insist that he gives you an ultrasound examination of the pancreas. Let him know that a Druid suggested it. Once you've gotten a diagnosis, then we'll talk again. I'll be in the area for a week," William said.
Mark couldn't avoid having his doubts. He did have the symptoms that William had mentioned. It wouldn't hurt to have a doctor check him out. He said, "I'll do it and if he determines that I don't have cancer, I'll make your life miserable."
"William is telling you the truth," Ed said.
"Who are you?" Mark asked realizing that he hadn't gotten the names of his visitors.
"I'm William Redman Carter and he's my father, Ed Biggers," William answered.
Mark had heard of Ed Biggers. The man was famous in Washington as the human lie detector. He stared at the man as a chill went down his spine.
William rose from his seat and said, "Believe it or not, I've given you a great gift."
"Right. You've told me that I'm going to die," Mark said.
William said, "I'll stop by in four days. We'll talk further at that time."
After the Druids had left his office, Mark Howell stared at the telephone on his desk. He hit the intercom and said, "Marcy, clear my calendar and put through a call to my doctor."
Outside, Ed said, "That wasn't a very pleasant visit."
"No, it wasn't," William said in agreement with his father. He didn't like having to give someone that kind of news. He said, "I hate doing that."
"I guess it reminds you of Happy Harry," Ed said looking over at William.
Nodding his head, William answered, "Yes."
Ed looked over at William realizing that he didn't want to talk about the subject. He understood and kept quiet as they made their way to their car. He asked, "What's next?"
"We talk to Joe," William answered.
"So I guess it is back to the house," Ed said.
William shook his head and said, "No, there's a burger burner on the way home. Joe will be there."
"You and your burger burners," Ed said shaking his head.
William smiled and said, "You'll like this one. They have great onion rings."
Joe was surprised to see William enter the burger burner. He had been headed towards one of the tables after picking up his burger and fries. Joe said, "Hello, William. I was going to come by your place this afternoon."
"I know," William said distracted by the menu over the counter.
Seeing that William's fascination with fast food hadn't changed, Joe grinned and said, "Go ahead and order something. I'll be over there."
"Thanks," William said stepping up to the counter.
Joe looked over at Ed and said, "I take it you are with him."
"I'm one of his fathers," Ed said somewhat amused at how easily distracted William was by the chance to have a fast food hamburger.
"You must be proud of him," Joe said.
"I am," Ed said thinking it was unusual for someone of that age to make that kind of comment.
"I'll let you get something to eat," Joe said. He gestured to the table and said, "I'll be over here."
Ed got in line behind William and studied the menu. Shaking his head, he thought about the number of fast food places he had visited on this trip. In the couple of weeks they had been on the road, they had visited more fast food places than he had been in the first thirty years of his life. He looked down at the tray that was slid in front of William and said, "Oh, I see you've ordered for the two of us."
"Oh, sorry. I forgot about you," William said giving his father a smile that conveyed his embarrassment.
"That's okay," Ed said staring at the quantity of food on William's tray.
William sat down at that the table with Joe and asked, "So what's up with you?"
"I'm just waiting for Wanda to graduate," Joe said. He remembered how William had suggested that he would be the supporting character for two women. So far, there was just the one woman in his life.
"That's good," William said. He gestured to a young woman across the room and asked, "Who is she?"
"That's Melissa," Joe answered looking at where William had pointed. One of the problems of living in a small town was that everyone knew everyone. She had just graduated with her law degree and had returned home for the summer.
As William dunked a French fry into the little paper cup of ketchup, he said, "She sure seems interested in you."
Seeing the dirty looks she was sending his way, Joe laughed at what William was suggesting and said, "She thinks I'm some sort of dumb jock."
"Interesting," William said after eating his French fry. He turned and gestured to Melissa for her to come over to the table. She stared at him for a second. William made gestured to Joe and then back to her while making kissing gestures with his lips.
Melissa glared at William thinking he was making fun of her. Furious, she rose from her seat intending to give him a piece of her mind. She didn't appreciate jocks making fun of her like that. She couldn't help the way that she looked.
Joe stared at William as if he had lost his mind. As she approached, Joe said, "She's going to kill you."
"No, she's studying for her bar exam and needs someone to help her," William said just in time for Melissa to hear him.
Melissa was not amused, but was surprised to learn that the stranger seemed to know a little too much about her. Her step faltered as Joe said, "You mean she's the other one?"
"That's right, Joe. She's the other one. She needs your support," William said unwrapping one of his hamburgers.
"What are you talking about?" Melissa asked glaring at William.
William smiled and answered, "Melissa, I'd like to introduce my friend Joe. Joe, this is Melissa. You two are going to make such a lovely couple."
"Who are you?" Melissa asked looking at William like he was insane. He ignored her question and took a bite out of his hamburger. She stood at the head of the booth with her hands on her hips staring at him. She repeated her question, "Who are you?"
Ed arrived carrying his tray. Overhearing the question and seeing how irritated she was, he answered, "That is William and he's a pain in the ass at times."
William laughed and said, "I thought your service required you to tell the truth."
"It does," Ed said with a grin.
William turned to Melissa. He reached up to her face. Tracing a finger along the scars that marred her features, he said, "When you're ready to run for office, come visit my mother. She'll take care of your scars."
"How dare you?" Melissa asked as tears welled up in her eyes. People stared at her scars and often commented on them when they thought she couldn't overhear. Seldom did they make such ugly comments to her face.
Unmoved by her tears, William answered, "I dare because I want the best for you and Joe. Your future depends upon Joe helping you. Joe's happiness depends upon supporting you in the pursuit of your dreams. Your dreams involve political office and you won't win with those scars. My mother can remove those scars."
"You don't know what you're talking about," Melissa said.
"William knows what he's talking about. Kelly can remove those scars, but it will be painful," Ed said opening the salad he had ordered. There wasn't too much that one could do to ruin a salad, even in a fast food place.
"I've seen a dozen plastic surgeons. Don't give me that line of bullshit," Melissa said glaring at Ed.
"My wife is a Druid healer," Ed said opening the little packed of salad dressing. He glanced up at her and added, "She can remove those scars."
Melissa stared at Ed wide-eyed. It was hard to believe that they were suggesting that a Druid healer would bother with her. Too soft to hear, she asked, "Who are you?"
"What will Wanda say?" Joe asked.
"Wanda? Wanda Sultimier?" Melissa asked. She had heard that Joe was dating Wanda, but she hadn't believed the gossip. Shy little Wanda wasn't the type to attract the attention of a jock.
"She'll be fine with it," William said.
"Wanda?" Melissa repeated.
Nodding his head, William said, "She's a lot like you. Her sexual horizons grew in unexpected directions while she was away at college, too."
Melissa's face burned with embarrassment. Ed said, "You need to learn a little tact, William."
Looking over at his father, William said, "I said exactly what needed to be said and I said it exactly as it had to be said. I know when the future depends upon every word I say."
Ed shook his head and said, "I hear the truth in your words, but I find it difficult to believe."
Lazlo Zalezac