Chapter 10

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.