Chapter 12

“It’s simple. He wasn’t allowed to talk about it,” said Cole in a quiet authoritative voice. The volume of his voice was just loud enough to overcome the background noise of people eating, but not loud enough to carry beyond the table.

“He still should have told us,” argued Lisa. She looked over at Sharon hoping that her roommate would support her. The tall thin woman looked as if she had something else on her mind.

“Did it hurt anyone for them to hide that from us?” asked Gabby.

“I’m hurt,” answered Lisa. She’d felt betrayed upon learning that Oscar was a Druid.

“No. You’re insulted that you weren’t included in the secret,” said Cole. Looking over at Lisa, he asked, “Do you think you would ever have gotten to be friends with him if you had known he was a Druid?”

“Probably not,” answered Lisa. Considering his actions the first day of classes, she would have probably resented him. She’d seen him as a poor slob in the same position as herself rather than someone slumming.

Mark said, “We’re better off that we got a chance to know him before we discovered that he was a Druid. Let’s face it, I would have probably dropped out by the end of the first day. I’m sure the same is true for you and Sharon.”

“You’re right,” answered Lisa. She looked around the table at the normal crowd. The only one missing was Oscar. Picking up a slice of her toast, she asked, “So how do we treat him when he gets back?”

Sharon looked at the door and saw a naked Oscar enter the first year dining room. He looked happy for a change and moved with a lot more energy than usual. Gesturing in his direction with her head, she said, “Speak of the devil.”

Everyone at the table turned to look at him. Others in the room watched him walk to his dining companions. The volume in the room rose as some of the people whispered about the fact that he was a Druid and others discussed his activities in the Middle East.

Walking over to the table, Oscar could see the uneasy shifting in their seats by his friends and understood they didn’t know how to deal with him as a result of their new knowledge about him. Sitting down, he said, “I never did make it by a potato chip factory to find out how they peel all those potatoes.”

The comment was so unexpected that everyone stared at him wondering why he would bring up the potato chip factory. Looking around the table, Oscar asked, “Isn’t that what we were talking about when our conversation was interrupted?”

Cole was silent for a moment and then answered, “I thought we were talking about Debbie and Georgia.”

“Oh, yeah. You were talking about Debbie and Georgia. I was talking about potato chips,” replied Oscar. He picked up the menu and flipped it open to the breakfast section. He still had forty-five minutes before class and that was enough time to get a real meal. He decided on waffles knowing they could have them on the table in fifteen minutes.

Everyone was silently watching him while he examined the menu. It was obvious to everyone that something had happened concerning his love life since he didn’t have his normal sad look. Unable to contain her curiosity, Sharon asked, “So what’s up with Debbie and Georgia?”

“I never thought you’d ask. We’re now a triad,” answered Oscar with a grin glancing up from the menu.

“A triad? What’s that?” asked Gabby looking around to see if anyone else knew what he was talking about.

“Congratulations,” said Sharon, Abby, and Lisa together. Cole nodded his approval while Mark waggled his eyebrows. Greg looked thoughtful as he considered the news. He wasn’t sure what to make of it.

“We are a threesome,” answered Oscar looking over at Gabby.

“Oh.” She thought about his while wondering if such an arrangement would work for her. It was an intriguing concept. A smile came to her face as she pondered the existence of a rule that good girls did not have a boyfriend and a girlfriend.

It was Greg who asked the question that was on everyone’s mind. “If you’re a Druid, why are you here as a student?”

“I don’t know. You’ll have to ask the Two-Sided One since I’m here on his command,” answered Oscar happy he could talk about it at last. His days of hiding who and what he was were over. He glanced over at the far end of the dining room and saw Oliver watching him with a small grin on his face.

The news stunned everyone at the table since they all understood that it was highly likely that upon graduation he would be serving the God and the Two-Side One. Serving two of the Gods and Goddesses would put him in the highest levels of the Druid Organization. Their friend was close to becoming one of the most powerful people in the country.

Although he didn’t doubt that Oscar was telling the truth, the answer didn’t satisfy his curiosity. Trying to make a point, Greg said, “I’m not quite sure how to go about doing that.”

Oscar laughed and replied, “Neither am I.”

The waitress came over to the table and said, “Sorry, I didn’t notice you arrive. What’ll you have for breakfast?”

“Waffles and coffee,” answered Oscar ignoring the looks from the others around the table. He knew they needed a moment to digest the bombshell that he had just dropped.

“I’ll be right back with your waffles.”

Feeling guilty about not having seen him earlier, the waitress walked away from the table to deliver the order and wait for it to be prepared. She’d ask the cook to rush the order to give him enough time to finish them.

“So what are you supposed to study?” asked Cole trying to figure out what Oscar would be doing in the future.

“I have no idea,” answered Oscar with a shrug. He’d asked himself that question a hundred times and figured he’d know when the time was right. Until then, he’d take the courses he was offered and do his best on them.

“You can’t be serious,” said Cole. He didn’t understand the Gods and Goddesses at all. It bothered him that he didn’t know what they wanted from the people who believed in them. He didn’t believe that it was enough to follow the two rules.

“So you are a servant of the God,” said Lisa steering the subject of conversation to something that was a little more concrete. At least everyone knew he was a servant of the God. That was a topic that was worth a day’s worth of discussion.

“Yes.”

Sensing an opportunity to get a few of his questions answered, Cole asked, “So what do the Gods and Goddesses want us to do?”

“Follow the two rules,” answered Oscar looking at Cole. The disappointment on the young man’s face showed his dissatisfaction with the answer.

“Oh come on. There’s got to be more to it than that.”

Oscar leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table. In a very serious voice, he said, “You think that is such a little thing.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Let me ask you to imagine what the world would be like if more people followed those two rules. Poverty, war, and hunger would disappear. We’d have utopia if everyone only did things that hurt no one. The weak would only exist because of natural disasters and the whole world would help them recover. It is not such a little thing that they ask us to do.”

Staring open mouthed at Oscar, Cole had an epiphany. For the first time since arriving at the college, he understood the full implications of the two rules. They weren’t just rules for individuals; they could also apply to whole nations. What came to mind was a fantastic vision of what could be.

The waitress returned with a waffle and set the plate down in front of Oscar. Sharon, realizing that he didn’t have syrup, fetched one of the syrup containers from one of the stations. She set it down in front of Oscar.

“By the Gods and Goddesses, why hasn’t anyone said that to us before now?” asked Cole.

Cutting a square out his waffle, Oscar stabbed it with his fork. Just before putting it into his mouth, he answered, “Every Druid here has been telling you that since the first day of college.”

Stunned, Cole stood up and left the table to be alone with his thoughts. Of all the people at the table, he was the most introspective. He needed to internalize what he had just learned and that required being alone. He headed towards the administration building to take a walk outside knowing that he’d miss a class, but he had other things in his mind.

Oscar took his time eating his waffle. The discussion raged around the table as the others discussed what Oscar had said. It was clear that none of them understood what he had said with the depth and clarity of Cole. They each took a part of what he said for examination and thought.

Before Oscar finished his meal, Debbie came over to the table and sat down with a bowl of cereal and a pitcher of milk. Smiling across the table at Oscar, she said, “Good morning Oscar. Sleep well?”

“Very well. I was nestled between the two most beautiful women in the world,” answered Oscar.

His comment turned everyone’s attention to Debbie. She was besieged by questions about the relationship. Gabby was wondering if Debbie had suddenly become bisexual. Abby was curious about what it was like sharing Oscar. In answering their questions, Debbie barely had enough time to eat her bowl of cereal before it was necessary to head to class.

After walking with Debbie to her class, Oscar made his way to his classroom. Arriving just in time, he entered and took his seat. He had just sat down when the instructor, Dr. Ron Marcus, came over to his desk and dropped a book on it. Looking up, Oscar asked, “What’s this?”

“The book you are to read. You weren’t here when I handed out the books to the other students,” answered the professor.

Oscar looked down at the book and then looked up again sharply. Surprised by the book on his desk, he asked, “The Bible?”

“Yes. Do you have a problem with that?” asked Dr. Ron Marcus.

Although he was about to argue that he was a Druid and didn’t believe in the Bible, Oscar thought about it for a minute. He looked at the green-robed Druid who had given him the book to read and knew that any argument he could generate wouldn’t last a second. This was a literature class and the book had been assigned as literature. Accepting the assignment, he answered, “No. I was just rather surprised.”

“Good. You have a little less than four weeks before your paper is due on it,” answered the professor as he returned to the head of the class. He knew it was a little unfair to hold Oscar to the same deadline as the other students since he had been called away in service to the God. However, it would have been unfair to the other students for him to do otherwise.

Oscar flipped through the pages and realized that he was going to have read it every chance he had. For the next fifty minutes, the professor lectured on the use of symbols in literature and the importance of understanding the symbols in order to interpret the material properly. Oscar listened to the lecture carefully. It was obvious from the lecture that the Bible was the source of many of the symbols used in literature. He knew he would have his work cut out for him in order to make a passing grade in this class.

When the lecture was over, Oscar went to the front of the room. After the other students had left, he said, “Excuse me, but I have a couple of questions.”

“Only a couple?” asked the other Druid with a wry grin.

“Yes. The first question I have is -- the Bible is really two books, am I supposed to do one or both of them?”

“It is actually a lot of little books organized in two parts, but you’re to do all of them.”

“Well, the assignment is to analyze the book in terms of the symbols it contains. There are two kinds of symbols contained in this book.”

“And they are?”

Oscar answered, “There are the symbols that resulted from this book and there are the symbols that were used in the book.”

Pleased that Oscar had grasped the critical distinction, the Druid answered, “The latter, of course. If you want to truly understand the book, you have to understand the symbols used within it that were current when the book was written. Those are the symbols used to convey the meaning intended by the authors.”

Oscar hung his head at the impossibility of the assignment and said, “Okay.”

Leaving the classroom, Oscar found Debbie waiting for him at the door. She took one look at him and asked, “Let me guess, you’re behind on your assignments.”

“Worse, I’ve been given an impossible assignment,” said Oscar with a groan. He understood the assignment would require him to go through the Bible line by line looking for symbols contemporaneous with its origin. For all he knew, it was likely that most of those symbols had not propagated into current times.

“You’ll do alright. I know you,” said Debbie. She kissed him on his cheek and then said, “We better head to our study groups.”

They walked to the library and left each other at the last minute. As Oscar took a seat, one of the members of the study group commented, “I see that you are walking around holding hands with Debbie. Did something happen finally?”

“Yes. We’re part of a triad,” answered Oscar wondering how long it would take the news to spread around the campus. Bad news usually took about three hours. He figured that good news would take longer to spread.

“About time.”

Oscar put the Bible on the table and asked, “So what did I miss?”

“A bunch of Druids kicked ass on some terrorists while you were gone,” answered George with a grin. He was tall with blond hair and an athletic build. He’d attempted to join the Army, but had failed the physical because he had flat feet. George entered the college in the hopes he could fight terrorists by serving the God. His motives were purely personal since he’d had a family member die as a result of terrorist activities.