Chapter 8

Kelly returned to the Druid College once her responsibilities to the Fusion Foundation were over. Leroy left to move his lab closer to home. Ed was surprised to learn that Leroy had learned to fly and had purchased a private plane. The three-hour drive to his new lab was now just a little over an hour away by plane. Ling, working with Cathy and Mary, was still coming to grips with taking over the financial responsibilities for the house.

They were still short-staffed, but it would be a while before the employment firm could identify additional candidates. Marguerite had tried out the last candidate and selected Mona as her assistant. Mary was settling into her job with ease. Claire still had problems with the mixed marriage, but was coming to respect the wives and understand how it was that Leroy could love them.

Ed made the rounds of the house, making sure that everyone was happy. Satisfied that all was well, he stopped by the playroom where Claire was watching over Betsy. Seeing her father enter the room, she ran over to him and jumped into his arms. She asked, “Are you going?”

“Yes, I am,” answered Ed touching her nose.

She smiled and asked, “Can I come with you?”

“Your mother wants you here,” answered Ed.

“I know, but I want to ride a horse,” countered Betsy.

“Not yet,” replied Ed. He jiggled her in his arms and said, “You know that you are too small to sit in the saddle for hours at a time.”

Betsy made a face and said, “Sit? For hours? No way!”

“That’s what I mean,” replied Ed with a chuckle. He knew how to shut down her enthusiasm.

Shrugging, Betsy said, “I guess you’re going to go now.”

“Yes,” said Ed as he set her down on the floor. He added, “I’m going to miss you.”

“I know,” replied Betsy, “and I know that you love me, so you don’t have to say it.”

Ed chuckled and, after kissing her on the forehead, said, “I love you, Betsy.”

“I love you too, Daddy.”

Ed stood and left the room after Betsy ran back to continue the activities that she had been doing with Claire. He exited the house through the back door and looked around. Tied to a horse trailer parked by the door, his new horse waited for him already saddled. He smiled as he thought of the day ahead of him. John had purchased all of the property from the house to the mountains behind it and Ed wanted to spend the day getting a feel for the property. Untying the reins from the back of the horse trailer, Ed mounted and started to ride around the back yard. He wanted to get a feel for the horse and allow the horse to get a feel for the new owner.

While the horse and Ed got better acquainted, he noticed Dan at the fence waving at him. Wondering what the man wanted, he rode over to his neighbor and pulled back on the reigns. The horse was well trained, requiring the smallest of nudges to convey the desired command. Ed said, “Hello, neighbor. Nice day, today.”

“Sure is,” replied Dan eyingeyeing the horse. He didn’t ride horses, but he did ride a three-wheel ATV. He asked, “You going out into the desert for a ride?”

“Sure am. I’m going to ride to the back of our property and back again. It should take the whole day,” answered Ed.

“Would you mind some company?”

“I’d enjoy it,” replied Ed knowing that he would enjoy having a friend that liked to ride in the desert. He looked around and wondered if Dan thought he was going to hike while Ed rode the horse. Knowing from experience that wouldn’t work, he asked, “Do you have a horse?”

“No, I’ve got an ATV.”

Ed frowned, as he replied, “I’m not sure how this horse will react to the sound of an engine. She and I are still learning how to get along.”

Dan smiled understanding the concern. He replied, “It’s a fusion powered ATV. I don’t like the noise of an engine, either.”

That was a possibility that Ed had never considered. He wondered if Kelly would like to go riding with him if she was able to ride an ATV. “I’ll wait for you here.”

“Nah, go on ahead and I’ll catch up,” replied Dan with a smile. It was nice to have something to do on a Saturday. He added, “It will take me a couple of minutes to get packed up and ready to go.”

“Okay,” replied Ed realizing that the ATV could move as fast a horse over the terrain and had the advantage that it wouldn’t get tired. He watched as Dan walked to his house with a bounce in his step. Nodding his head in amusement, he turned the horse and headed towards the desert. He kept a nice even pace knowing that Dan would catch up with him.

He stopped at one point and examined a barrel cactus. There was a small burrow, created by a desert mouse, near the plant. The tell- tail signs of mouse tracks dotted the area around the hole. There were little pairs of footprints with a line running between them made by a tail. A few feet away, another set of tracks that were parallel lines across the desert floor showed the passage of another desert creature. The sand was still filling into the track. A snake had been by here, but it had not encountered the mouse. The last mouse tracks at the burrow led into it. Smiling, he turned the horse so that they would ride diagonal to the snake tracks. After all, the snake had passed by just a couple of minutes ago and he didn’t want to spook the horse.

He looked back towards the house and saw Dan on his ATV moving carefully across the terrain. It pleased him that the guy wasn’t charging over the plants and wildlife in a mad dash across the desert. At least he wouldn’t have to teach the guy to respect nature.

Looking up at the sky, he noticed a vulture circling as it rode a thermal. The wings were outstretched, unmoving, but each time it completed another circuit, it gained another hundred feet in altitude. The vulture moved away seeking another thermal to ride. It was amazing to watch the life created by the Goddess using the power of the God to fly.

The sound of sand crunching behind him announced the arrival of Dan. He stopped next to the horse causing a slight shudder of muscles in its forelegs, which signaled only a slight tension at the appearance of the ATV. Ed was pleased with the reaction of the horse. He reached down and rubbed the horse’s neck.

Dan noticed the interaction between Ed and the horse. Not really knowing that much about horses, he was impressed by it. He commented, “That’s a magnificent horse.”

Smiling at the exaggeration, Ed said, “It’s a good work horse at the end of its career. My buying it was basically its retirement.”

“Oh,” replied Dan.

Looking down at Dan, Ed said, “You look like a city boy to me. Why did you decide to move out here to the wilds of Arizona?”

Dan frowned at the characterization of being a city boy, but it was an accurate description. He answered, “My fear of women had gotten to the point where I couldn’t really relax in town. Women were everywhere. Here, I could get away from them by riding five minutes away from the house on this ATV.”

“Still have that problem?” asked Ed knowing that he had been over a couple of evenings to learn Tai Chi from Ling.

Dan looked at the horizon for a moment and then answered, “There are nerds, super-nerds, and pathological nerds. I’m the last kind and women have tortured me my whole life. I’ve been ridiculed, stood-up, harassed, and belittled in public and in private. On the other hand, I’m obsessed with sex. My body reacts to the female form and that just sets me up for more ridicule. So I guess I still have that problem, but I trust Ling and Claire not to ridicule me.”

Ed thought back to the old days before he met John. In those days, he would have torn Dan apart. He sighed and said, “We live our life according to two major rules. If it harms none, then do it. Protect the weak from the strong. They would never ridicule you. They will push you to be the best that you can be, but never negatively.”

“We aren’t making very good progress on our trip,” remarked Dan deciding that he needed time to think about what Ed had said. He heard the words, but didn’t understand the full implications.

Ed nudged the horse and it started forward at a leisurely pace. Dan started the ATV and rode beside Ed while he considered what the cowboy had said. They rode along silently for a while not talking. Ed felt it was reminiscent of the discussions with John where they would spend most of the time quietly pursuing their own thoughts.

After thirty minutes, Ed stopped his horse catching Dan by surprise. The man stopped and looked at Ed wondering what had provoked him to stop to find that Ed was looking at a hawk resting on a cactus. He examined the hawk and noticed the tension in its body as it stared at a location on the ground. After a few seconds, it flew down and, with a screech, captured a desert mouse. It then lifted off the ground taking the mouse with it.

“The cycle of life,” remarked Ed after the hawk had disappeared from view carrying its meal with it.

“The drama of life,” countered Dan.

“That too,” agreed Ed. It was easy from outside to watch life with an emotional detachment that enabled one to see the cycles of season and the food chain. For the individuals involved, it was a drama of life that counted, a drama marked by birth and death, pain and pleasure, and hope and despair.

Forgetting for a moment about the fact that Ed was a Druid, Dan said, “It makes you wonder about God. Does he help the hawk feed itself so that it can live or does he help the mouse so that it can live? How does a God can make such a choice?”

“The Gods and Goddesses do it by dealing with quantities rather than individuals. Some hawks fail and others succeed, while some mice live and others are consumed. If they need to deal with individuals, they give gifts to a few that can intervene on their behalf,” replied Ed thinking about the activities of the Druids. When there was trouble, Druids stepped in and helped the individuals using gifts bestowed upon them.

“I forgot that you were a Druid. I hope I haven’t offended you,” Dan apologized, wondering if he had insulted Ed by talking about God. In his mind, God was the Christian God he had learned about in Sunday School. It never occurred to him that Ed might view it differently.

“No problem,” replied Ed surprised that Dan was worried about offending him. He added, “There are times when I forget that I’m a Druid. For a lot of my life, I wasn’t a very good person. Then one day, I met John Carter and he taught me how to be a better person. Sometime along the way, I became a Druid. All that did was allow me to help others in ways that were not possible before. I may have met my Gods and Goddesses, but deep inside, I’m still a person with all the faults, flaws, and irrationalities of every other person. I just try not to let them dominate how I behave.”

The comment struck Dan speechless. After that first day when he met Ed, he had researched all that he could about the man on the internet. It had taken him almost an entire day to read the official Fusion Foundation resume for Ed. The man was a giant among men.

He had been surprised to learn that Ed was the head of an entire branch of the Druid Organization. It was the most mysterious branch of the Druid Organization. The cowboy riding a horse beside him didn’t fit what he had thought a religious leader should be. He had expected Ed to act more like a Cardinal, than a regular guy. Dan said, “I guess I don’t understand how you can meet a God and not become something other than human.”

Tilting his head back, Ed laughed aloud as though he had heard the funniest joke of his life. After calming down, he noticed the hurt look on Dan’s face and apologized, “I’m sorry. I don’t understand how you can meet a God and become something other than human.”

Stung by the comment, Dan said, “I don’t understand.”

Ed kicked the horse and it started to move forward. Dan, taken by surprise, had to hurry to catch up. When Dan had caught up, Ed said, “Look around. What do you see?”

“The desert.”

“How does it make you feel?”

Dan looked around trying to really see the desert. Cactus grew in patches around him. A layer of long thorns with sharp tips provided a barrier between him and the meat of the plant. There wasn’t moisture on the ground or humidity in the air. Bare rock covered by thin soil lent a hostile feel to the land. If left alone out here, he’d die from hunger and starvation within a very short period of time. He answered, “Pretty small and vulnerable.”

“It tends to strip away some of that feeling that you’re a master of the universe, doesn’t it?” asked Ed as the horse stepped around a cactus.

“You can say that again,” answered Dan. It was a fact that he tended to feel small in the face of the expanse of the desert. He had to steer around a patch of cactus and envied the fact that Ed could let the horse pick a path through the plants.

“Wouldn’t you say that makes you feel more human?”

“Yes, I guess so,” replied Dan surprised at the characterization.

“You’re looking at a very small part of the Goddess. Imagine the impact of seeing all of her. You’d feel human and nothing else. All that Master of the Universe baloney gets stripped away, leaving behind a real human being - a human that likes to play, to love, to eat, and to make love.”

Dan didn’t comment on what Ed had said, but understood that he was seeing deeper into the soul of Ed than he had ever seen of another human being. It made him think about what it meant to be a human. It seemed that in years gone past, he had forgotten how to play and to love. He realized that he might never have known how to love. It was a fact that he had never known how to make love.

The men continued on their journey, not talking as they each pursued their own thoughts. It was a glorious day with perfect temperature. The sky was that amazing blue color that is only found in the southwest. Not a cloud marred the expanse of blue above them. The result was that shadows were sharp and well defined. The colors were intense and bright. This was the kind of day that recharged Ed’s soul and when he was the most at home in the desert.

Around noon, they were an hour from the edge of the property and Ed began to think of eating. He looked down at Dan and asked, “Are you getting hungry?”

The reminder of food made Dan realize that while he had packed water, he hadn’t brought any food. Embarrassed, Dan confessed, “I forgot to bring food.”

“No problem. I have an MRE. They’re not great, but they are good.”

The men stopped and ate lunch. Dan watched as Ed ate his sandwich, amazed at his total concentration on the food. Seeing the delight that Ed got from his food made him wonder if he actually knew how to eat. They didn’t talk much as they ate. Once done, they mounted up, Ed on his horse and Dan on his ATV.

They reached the edge of the property an hour after finishing lunch. Ed looked around and noticed a dark area that seemed odd to him. He stood up in the stirrups to try and get a better view of the area. Puzzled, he said, “Dan, there’s something odd over there. I’d like to investigate it.”