Chapter 23

“It’s hard to believe that she’s been gone for only a week,” Oscar said pushing some kernels of corn around on his plate with his fork.

“I know. I really miss her,” Debbie said watching Oscar. Convinced that Oscar wasn’t telling her the entire story about his visit to William, she asked, “So tell me about William Redman Carter.”

“He seems nice enough.”

Frustrated by the lack of information, Debbie said, “You spent six hours alone with him. What did you talk about for that entire time?”

“We talked the first ten or fifteen minutes I was there and then we just sort of ignored each other for the rest of the time,” Oscar answered without looking at his girlfriend. It sounded stupid when he described the day like that. To keep himself distracted, he lined up a dozen kernels of corn into a row on his plate.

“I don’t believe it. You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Nope,” Oscar answered.

“You’re so curious about him that you ask anyone who talks to him all kinds of questions, but the moment you’re alone with him you ignore him,” Debbie said incredulous. She couldn’t count how many times she had listened to Oscar grill the Reverend Leroy Jones about William.

“You sound just like his girlfriend, Lucy,” Oscar commented.

“What was the conversation like over dinner?”

“No one said much of anything,” Oscar answered. It seemed like every attempt to start a conversation around the dinner table failed miserably. Frowning as he tried to create a second row of corn, he said, “It was pretty horrible.”

“Stop playing with your corn! You only play with your food when you’re trying to avoid a topic of conversation,” Debbie said.

“I’m not trying to avoid the topic; the conversation has run its course. There’s nothing more I can add to it,” Oscar said. He swept the kernels of corn across the plate. He sighed and said, “Georgia will be here in half an hour. You can grill her for a change. She’ll tell you the same thing.”

Georgia arrived right on schedule. She sat down next to Debbie and gave her a big hug while ignoring Oscar. The two women talked for the next five minutes about the great meeting between William and Oscar. He watched them exchange half sentences thinking that if some network specialist ever found how to encrypt so much information into half message packets that all future bandwidth problems would be solved.

After she had gotten the full story, Debbie turned to Oscar and asked, “Did you really stare at the grass for five and a half hours without saying a word to him?”

“That’s what I’ve been telling you,” Oscar growled in frustration.

Gesturing towards Oscar with both hands, Georgia said, “That’s right, they stared at the grass for five and a half hours without saying a word to each other.”

Turning to Georgia, Oscar asked, “So what is he like?”

Ignoring Oscar’s question, Georgia turned to Debbie and asked, “Do you know what the first thing William asked me after Oscar left?”

Debbie looked over at Oscar and grinned as he focused on Georgia to hear the answer. Confident that she knew the answer, she said, “So what is he like?”

“Exactly! Can you imagine that? I thought Lucy was going to strangle him,” Georgia said throwing her hands up in the air.

Frowning, Oscar asked, “So what is he like?”

Giving him a look that was meant to get him to shut up, Debbie said, “You know that’s the only question he’s going to be asking you for a week.”

“I know. William was the same,” Georgia said. Shaking her head in obvious confusion by the men’s behavior, she said, “The entire week he was asking me about Oscar.”

“I could have told you that he would do that,” Oscar said with a shrug. It seemed to him that each had seen the essence of the other, but didn’t trust what they saw. They each wanted to hear the opinions of others to validate what they had seen.

Georgia rose and hugged Oscar. She said, “It’s good to see you again. I missed you.”

“I missed you too,” Oscar said before turning the hug into a passionate kiss. He was hoping to turn the kiss into a visit to his room.

Breathless, Georgia said, “That’s enough for now. I need to talk with Debbie alone for a while.”

Her comment reminded him of the reason why Georgia had gone to visit at William’s house. He hoped that she had resolved some of her issues and said, “Go ahead. I’ll just sit here and wonder about William.”

“Do that,” Georgia said shaking her head.

Oscar watched the pair of them leave. They could have talked in front of him and he wouldn’t have understood half of what they said to each other. Looking at the clock, he realized it was too early to head to class and there wasn’t enough time to do much of anything else. He looked around trying to decide what to do with a spare half hour.

Oliver sat down and looked at Oscar long enough that the younger man became uncomfortable. Finally, Oliver asked, “What is it with you and William?”

The source of the question made Oscar reconsider giving the trite answer. Instead, he asked, “Why?”

“For some reason, I see a black thread connecting the two of you,” he answered giving voice to an observation based upon his gift. He shrugged, “When I see lovers, I see a golden thread running between them. When I see good friends, the thread is silver. Sometimes, I see people who absolutely hate each other and there is a red thread that connects them. This is the first time I’ve ever seen a black thread.”

“I don’t know how to interpret your threads,” Oscar answered feeling just as baffled by the idea of a black thread as it appeared Oliver was.

“I’d like to understand your relationship with him.”

“Same here,” Oscar replied very serious. He bit his lower lip and wrinkled his brow in concentration. Finally, he said, “In a very strange way, William and I are competitors. There’s only one spot in the universe and we are each competing for it.”

“What spot is that?”

“I don’t know. You say that he’s a prophet of sorts and he says that I’m to bring peace to the Middle East. You’d think that we each have our place, but somehow we interfere with each other,” Oscar said. It was the closest he could put into words what he meant. Shrugging his shoulders, he said, “You tell me. In what way does the fate of a fortune teller interfere with the fate of a guy who is going to blow up the Middle East?”

“Who said that you are going to blow up the Middle East?”

Snorting, Oscar asked, “How else will there ever be peace there?”

“Did you read the biography of John Carter?” Oliver asked.

“Yes, it was very interesting. It gave me a lot of insights into the Carter Clan,” Oscar answered.

“What did you think about the sections that I marked?”

Shrugging, Oscar said, “It makes me wonder what it would be like to know when you’re going to die.”

Shaking his head, Oliver asked, “What would you do if the Gods and Goddesses were to ask you to die on their behalf?”

“I’d do it without hesitation.”

“Why?”

Getting serious, Oscar said, “When I was under attack in Afghanistan, there was no way I could have survived without the intervention of the God. My life since then has been a gift and what a gift it has been. I don’t break things anymore. You have no idea how much that means to me.

“I’ve gotten to love two women who are drop dead gorgeous. There isn’t a man alive who wouldn’t love to have two women who look like them in their life. I can’t even begin to tell you how great they make me feel.

“I’ve been allowed to see things that I didn’t think possible for me to see. I’ve seen exotic locations, sunrises and sunsets over the desert, and good people learning how to be better people. I actually got to spend a year looking at fifty naked women almost every day. That is a nerd’s ultimate fantasy and, before I began my service, I was the ultimate nerd.

“I am well satisfied by what they’ve done for me. I’ll gladly give up my life if they ask it of me. What kind of person would I be if I were to turn my back on them after all they’ve done?”

“Interesting,” Oliver said.

Sighing, Oscar said, “It will be good to return to my service as a warrior. As much as I enjoy studying religion, I don’t think that my studies can lead anywhere. I mean, can you imagine what would happen if I tried to convert the Middle East to Druidism?”

“You’d last about fifteen seconds,” Oliver replied with a laugh. He knew that would be true.

Oscar glanced at the clock and said, “I better get to class. I and all zero of my classmates are studying the Holy Grail.”

“Ah, King Arthur.”

“Not entirely. It seems that rumors persist that the Knights Templar had something to do with the Holy Grail,” Oscar said with a shrug. Keeping all these different legends distinct seemed to be an impossible task. Frowning, he said, “Everyone who was anyone in Europe over the past two thousand years claimed their power was based on some sort of religious artifact from the times of Christ. At least people won’t be digging up the bodies of Druids in the future to steal some body part so that they can claim they own a great relic.”

“Cremation does tend to make that a little difficult,” Oliver said disgusted at the idea of someone praying to his thighbone. Oscar drifted off to class leaving Oliver at the table thinking morbid thoughts.

This year was particularly difficult for Oscar. The first year, he had been surrounded by people. The second year, he had Sandy as a roommate and spent a lot of time with her. This year, he was basically alone. Sandy’s program had heated up and she was occasionally traveling to attend lectures by modern philosophers. His roommate was majoring in physics and was always off with his classmates working in the lab or studying.

He still had two classes with other students, a home economics class and a health class. Neither was the kind of class that their name suggested. Oscar had initially protested taking the classes, but after a week into them he was glad to be taking them. He particularly enjoyed the study groups since it gave him a chance to interact with people again.

The health class was not the typical health class. Although first aid was taught, so was the ability to recognize many common ailments. They wouldn’t be doctors, but they could diagnose, based on physical symptoms, hundreds of common health problems they would encounter in their lives outside of the campus. The course didn’t stop there; it also went on to cover the health care system in horrible detail.

The home economics class wasn’t about cooking and sewing. It was about the economics of running a household. It wasn’t a business class, but covered all of the practical things about businesses that a person living in the United States needed to know. This covered everything from how to arrange bail from a bail bonds business to how to invest money via a brokerage firm. It wasn’t a government class, but covered all of the government agencies and their responsibilities.

His favorite study group, of all that he had ever been in, was the home economics study group. Every Monday they were given a different case study to work out how to improve the situation of a family or business. They would spend the entire week working out a solution. There was always lively debate about various approaches to the problem. Sitting down, he asked, “What are we working on this week?”