Chapter 28

That evening we discussed with the Stuarts whether they would be interested in working for us full time. They were, but had some issues.

"We have a house near Akron that we would need to sell. We also have jobs that we will need to leave, plus bank accounts and other financial matters to take care of," Will Stuart told us.

""If you would rather still live in Akron, I could install a portal in your house there, so you could travel back and forth to work here," I told them.

"No," Myra replied. "Akron doesn't have a very good economy, and to tell the truth the reason we were so interested in your offer, is that we are tired of battling the winters there. We would rather move here."

"That's fine,"Katie told them. "As you have seen, it will be some months before we are ready to move into the building. We will put you on a retainer to help Frank locate the equipment that we need. We will go to look at what you locate and do the purchasing. We'll also arrange for shipping. Is that agreeable?"

"Yes," Myra told her. "We can easily do that. We know a lot of people in the printing business and should be able to locate what is needed. Since they know us, we may be able to get a better price also."

"Oh yes, we like that!" Margie told her.

Frank and the Stuarts spent Wednesday, the 28th, determining what was needed to do the job that we wanted to do, and made a list of the various models of equipment that would best suit that work. My wives and I went to see Theresa, and offer her the opportunity to join us in the herbal store. It didn't take much convincing. I went home to work on the fields while my wives and Theresa discussed what to have in the store, and when and how to produce it.

Wednesday evening, we found Frank in the large parlor in trouble. He was sweating, pale and shaking.

"Frank, what's wrong?" Margie asked on discovering him. Frank smiled weakly.

"I've been holding out on you," he said. "I have some health issues - cancer and a bad ticker. That's why I was unhappy about things taking so long. I was afraid I wouldn't be here to see this completed. It looks like I was right."

"Why didn't you say something sooner, Frank?" Margie asked and then called Katie in. She explained things to Katie and me, as I had followed her into the room.

"Frank we can fix this if you're willing," I told him. I had memorized the necessary spells while studying for my Third Level exams.

"You can do something like that!?" he asked in wonder.

"Certainly," I assured him. "It's Magic." We took Frank into the den and through the portal to the Otherworld. In the grove there was a large flat round stone. I had Frank lie on it and started chalking the required symbols around him. Brian arrived while I was working.

"Some Medical Magic, I see," Brian said as he walked up to join us.

"Yes, Frank has a bad heart and cancer," I told him as I finished the glyphs and other symbols around Frank. We all joined hands around the circle. Brian was opposite me and my wives were on either side of me. I began reciting the chant and Brian joined me. The flames instantly appeared, and as the chant continued a greenish mist rose from Frank's body and was devoured by the dancing flames.

As the chant ended, the flames died out and disappeared. We all released hands, and Frank sat up in the circle. He looked years younger and just stared at us.

"I ... I feel almost like a young man ... well, a younger man at least!!" he said in wonder and looked at his hands and rubbed his face. Once Frank was standing, I introduced him to Brian, and explained about the Otherworld. Frank was even more amazed.

"This has always been in the realm of fairy tales, something that didn't really exist," he said looking round at the grove and the village down the hill.

"Oh, we're quite real," Brian assured him in English, as Frank didn't speak Gaelic - yet. We showed Frank around the area where we had stayed in the Otherworld before returning home.

On Thursday, a much renewed and revived Frank worked with the Stuarts on machinery and storage layouts for the print shop. In the meantime I took the opportunity to do some work on story number two, which I had been neglecting of late because of everything else that was going on.

I had a notebook that I was using to keep track of things that my Ghost Writer continued to tell me. He was most insistent that I continue and was not to be put off any longer. I spent most of the day writing and only stopped for dinner, which was in the dining room. It would be the last time we would all be together for a while.

The Stuarts were returning home tomorrow, and Frank and I were on the way to St. Louis in the morning. He had told me earlier in his visit that he had a Linotype machine in his garage. It was a model 31, and he had bought it when the paper that he worked for had switched over to offset plates and presses for printing. They had been going to scrap the machine, and he had gotten it and all of their repair parts, spare type magazines and lead alloy for a song and moving expenses. He had maintained it in pristine condition ever since.

Friday the 30th of June, Frank and I had an early morning flight out of Savannah to St. Louis with a short layover in Atlanta. We were at his house in suburban St. Louis by late morning CDT. After setting our bags in the house, he took me into his garage to see the Linotype machine. To say that it was impressive would be an understatement. It was the most amazing collection of gears, cams, tracks, motors and other parts that I had ever seen. It was a very large and heavy machine.

"How are we ever going to move this?" I asked in amazement.

"I still have all of the wooden boxes that we used to move it here. All we have to do is disassemble it, box it, and then ship it to Statesboro," he told me with a smile.

"And you can reassemble it!?" I asked, looking at the complicated machine.

"Oh yes! This is my baby. I know every part of her and how she goes together. Also the things she does and doesn't like. It will only take a few days to disassemble her, and box her up. Then we can ship her anytime. You'll be on your way home in no time," Frank assured me.

"I'll be home before that," I told him. "I'm going to install a portal from here to the house that the Stuarts were using. Our house has enough portals already."

"You can do that?" Frank asked again in amazement.

"Yes, just tell me where to put it, so it won't be conspicuous," I told him. I installed the portal before we started work on the Linotype machine, and brought my wives here to see it. They were as amazed as I had been. It only took us a few days to disassemble and box up most of the parts to the Linotype. We then contacted a freight company to move everything to our building in Statesboro. We had rented two large storage containers and had them delivered to the rear of the building to hold everything until the building renovation was finished.

The building tearout was finished by the end of July and the roof and floor had been repaired. New doors had been installed, and the building could now be secured every night. I had used spells to create a new warding stone and placed it in the building. I could turn it down during the day when workers were there, and turn it up when the work crews left.

It was late September before the interior of the building was completed, the exterior had been painted, and awnings were installed over the large front windows. In the interim, Frank had found, and we had procured, a late model Chandler and Price Craftsman 14.5 x 22 inch Letterpress printing press. It was motor driven and had an automatic paper feed system that could be disconnected for hand feeding. It could also be used for stamping foil, embossing, and diecutting. The press was in excellent condition, but hadn't been used in several years. It would require cleaning before, and oiling after, reassembly but would soon be ready to work.

During this time, a number of other things had also been going on. Since convincing Theresa to run the herbal store at the end of June, all three women had increased the size of their herb gardens by doing a second planting in some of the unused fields, and hoping we didn't have an early frost this year to kill everything.

Of course there were still the regular crops that required attention as well as the occasional maintenance on the MT tractor. By July we were beginning to harvest the early crops and had plenty of vegetables for the table in addition to starting on canning and freezing for this year. Herb collection also started in late July. Our four daughters were excited that their gardens had produced herbs just like their mothers' gardens. Their Mothers had shown them what to look for, and how to weed as well as when to water and how much water to apply to the plants.

Thanks to the success of my first book, I had acquired what are termed 'Early Readers' to go over my second book. These are people that read the manuscript and suggest changes and corrections. One was my old History Professor from Georgia Southern, who was enchanted with the details in the stories. Sean had also approached a couple of their people who were well acquainted with the history of Boston to also go over the manuscript and suggest any needed corrections. It was easy to e-mail the chapters to all of them, and to discuss any changes they thought were necessary.

I spent a good bit of time in the July thru September time period finishing the second story, and going over the various corrections and changes that had been brought to my attention. There were places where the diaries were at variance with what appeared to be the common wisdom as reported in the history books and legends. In that case I went with the diaries, as those people had actually been there, and had, rightly or wrongly, written down what they had witnessed. All else I treated as rumors or stories that they had heard, and made that distinction in the story.

The Stuarts were also busy during this period. They located a couple of used presses and other necessary equipment that was for sale at very reasonable prices. The first was a Ryobi 3200PFA, 13 x 18 inch offset Perfector press. It could print on both sides of a sheet of paper in the same pass and could easily print 6,000 sheets an hour, not that we intended to print that quantity of anything. The second press was an A.B. Dick 9810XC. It was an older machine than the Ryobi, but was in very good condition. It took the same maximum size sheets as the Ryobi. They had also located a computerized plate maker, bookbinding equipment, and other miscellaneous equipment like paper trimmers.

Many of these purchases had been arranged with, or through people that they knew. The prices had been very reasonable, and the condition of the equipment better than expected. Of course this was equipment that they themselves expected to use, and they didn't want trash or things that would be difficult to use. Frank and I visited each location to inspect and pay for the equipment. We then arranged to have it crated and shipped to our building in Statesboro. It was often easier to use the portal to Frank's house and then drive to where the equipment was than to fool with airline tickets and renting a vehicle. It was often quicker also.

By the time the building was finished, our storage containers were full. We started moving in on Monday, the 25th of September. We hired some local laborers to help with moving the heavy presses and the Linotype machine into their places in the building. We retained a couple of the brighter ones to help in re-assembling the equipment.

Although Frank and the Stuarts had made several layouts for the equipment, and I appreciated their work, I had a definite idea of what I wanted, and wound up changing part of their layout. As a means of attracting people's attention, I had the Chandler and Price Letterpress placed where its operation could be viewed from the central window in the storefront. We also placed the Linotype machine where people could watch it operate through the window. The other presses and equipment were placed in the remaining space along with storage for printing supplies and finished product.

We had a sign painter paint "MAGIC INK" in large gold letters on the front window, but the sign was high enough that it didn't interfere with people watching the equipment as it operated.

The bookstore initially carried only my first novel and some books on Magic by other printers, but it was open. The herbal store only had a limited stock of salves and other herbal products at present also. They both had tastefully painted signs on their front windows. It was at least a beginning.

After the equipment was positioned and re-assembled, Frank and the Stuarts got busy getting everything in working order. Much of the work was very technical and required a detailed knowledge of exactly how the press and other equipment functioned, should look, and how to do the required work correctly. My wives and I helped where we could, but we just didn't have the background or technical expertise to do more than assist the printers and do the grunt work.

The one thing that I was good at was repairs. There were some parts of the presses that required replacing, as they were worn or hadn't been properly cleaned up when the press was taken out of service. I used spells to return those parts to like new condition, much to the surprise of the printers. The same was true for areas of dried or caked on ink. The Magic involved required more energy and advanced spells than the others possessed. We already had plenty of ink, paper and plates on hand, as Frank had ordered all of that ahead of time.

The Stuarts had moved here at the end of September. They sold their house in Akron, and moved into our daughters' house where they had stayed on their first visit here. We had moved the furniture there to the other house. They definitely liked the winter here in Statesboro better than the ones in Akron.

By this time my wives had finished putting the first two diaries in the computer in both English and Gaelic. They downloaded their files for the first diary to Myra, and she created the plates for the Ryobi press. It was a job she had done many times and she was a professional at it. From the plates, the Ryobi printed four pages at a time on each side of a sheet of paper - 8 pages. While the printing didn't take long because of the speed of the press, press preparation and getting things registered correctly for each run was time consuming and exacting work.

As each run of pages was finished, they were folded and trimmed. The signatures, as they were now called, were then put into the correct order, punched, sewn and then bound into finished books. Frank had been running the covers on heavy cardboard stock on the C&P press. We hired a couple of bright college students to help part time with the work. Myra was also in charge of the bookbinding, and had taught my wives how it was done. They supervised the college students, mostly females, and were hard taskmasters. The finished diaries were sold in our bookstore and on the internet site that we had a local computer business create for us.

The diaries in English had been the first priority. Once those diaries were printed, the ones in Gaelic were printed, and we sent several copies to Patrick in Dublin. He apparently showed them to a number of people, as we soon received requests from him and others for more copies to sell. It appeared that they were very popular in Ireland.

There was one other complication that came up in September, besides plowing under the remains of the harvested crops, and maintenance on the MT tractor. My wives came to me at the end of August with a request. It was something they had been thinking about for a considerable period of time, and had finally decided to do something about it.

"Mark, there is something we would like you to do," Katie said one night in bed after the children were asleep.

"What, Sweetie?" I asked, as she rubbed her naked body against me.

"Since we can never allow people to know that we are married," Margie said from my other side, as she also rubbed her equally naked body against mine, "we would like you to change your name."

"Change my name!?" I asked, surprised.

"Yes," Katie added resuming the persuasion, as Margie kissed my neck. "We would like you to change it to Mark Kent O'Connell."

"Mark Kent O'Connell!?" I asked in shock.

"Yes," Margie said from my other side, and as I turned to look at her, Katie began kissing my shoulder. "We could adopt you, and you would change your name. That way our children would have a Daddy with the same name they have. We wouldn't have to admit that we are married that way, and it would make you part of our family."

"You could still keep your original name on your books. It might not look too good to have the O'Connell part on them," Katie added.

"I need to think about this," I told them, but I wasn't given any time to think about it that night, as my wives kept me way too busy until we all slipped into an exhausted, blissful sleep some time later.

The next day I spent considerable time thinking about what my wives had requested. There were a number of things to be considered. I didn't consider my own reaction, as they were my wives and they considered it important, and that was good enough for me. But how would my parents take the idea of me becoming an O'Connell? Would they think I was crazy, or didn't care for them anymore? My siblings were sure that I was crazy anyway, so that wasn't really a consideration. There were all of the financial problems a change of name would create to consider. Of course women had those problems all of the time when they got married, so it wasn't insurmountable. It just required work.