What Pete was saying made sense. He just wasn’t sure he was ready to hear it.
Sensing it was time to tighten the cinch a bit, Pete set his jaw and said as plainly as he could, “Let us buy the ranch, Michael. You know I’m offering a fair price.”
“I know you are,” Michael said, rubbing the back of his neck. “It’s just, this ranch has pretty much been my whole life. I know it’s time to let go, but that doesn’t make it easy. It’s like the whole thing happened overnight. Dad’s death, and now your offer … things came about a little quicker than expected.”
Grover slapped him on the back. “Son, sometimes in life, ya gotta move quick. Sometimes ya gotta jerk the line fast or the big one’ll get away. You know that’s true. Well, this is one of those times! You gotta go for it.”
Michael shifted his feet.
The mortician narrowed his eyes, sensing there was something else. Knowing Robert Johns, he guessed what it was.
He said, “Don’t worry, son. We’ll keep it up, just like Robert would want. You both worked hard to make this ranch what it is. I promise, me and the boys will keep it spit ‘n’ polished. There won’t be a broken fence on the property or a loose shingle on the barn. Come on, Michael! It’s win-win for everybody. My sons get a permanent change of lifestyle, minus the smell of formaldehyde, which they sure as hell wouldn't mind, and you get to start sleepin' in past four in the morning. What do you say?”
For a long moment, Michael said nothing. He just stared out over the fields toward the farmhouse and barn and thought.
Finally, he put his hands on his hips and gave his answer. “I’d say, Pete, old friend, you just bought me a dream and yourself a headache. But, hey, what can I say? Thanks.”
They grasped and shook hands, the older man's free hand gripping the young rancher's shoulder.
“It's my pleasure, Michael.”
“We’ll see if you still say that after your first week of slipping several hundred teats into a milking machine twice a day, then hosing out the muck. Trust me, Pete, some things smell worse than formaldehyde.”
“Yeah,” Pete grunted, “that’d be your coffee. Let’s go get some.” He whacked Michael on the back. “If I live through a cup, I’ll go straight over to my agent to draw up the papers.”
Michael gave him a broad grin, but after a moment it faded. This was it, he realized. Pete Grover had not only repaid the debt to his friend, Robert, in full. He had granted Robert’s son a new life.
6
THINK OF IT AS A LAMBORGHINI
Anna Dawn Hamlyn opened the door on her second day of work at the Biology Building, to find the room filled with the smell of fresh paint. A sound of something metal grating against the floor was coming from Omega's office.
“Dr. Omega?” she queried, dropping her purse on the computer desk and stepping questioningly toward the commotion. “Is that you? Is everything all right?”
“Anna Dawn, yes it is me, no need for concern,” his voice came out the door, sounding almost apologetic.
She poked her head in and couldn't believe what she saw: the renowned Dr. James Omega, perched atop a six-foot ladder, painting the tiny office white!
“What ... are ... you ... doing?” she stuttered.
“The walls were gray. I like white,” he explained over his shoulder as he stretched to hit a corner, just so. He stopped to rub his nose with his sleeve. “Perhaps you can tell me, Anna Dawn, why is it your nose starts to itch the very moment you cannot scratch it? There must be some scientific explanation.”
Anna Dawn put her hands on her hips. “There is; the Universal Law of Prickly Nose Hairs—-basically the same thing that makes you sneeze just when a boy you particularly wanted to impress is puckering up to kiss you good night. You do realize we have work crews to do that. Professors don't paint walls.”
Omega cocked an eyebrow. “By deductive reasoning, then, either I am not a professor or these are not walls. Even more likely,” he pointed to his paint-spattered oxford shirt, “I am not painting them, but myself. What is his name?”
Anna Dawn looked perplexed. “Who?”
“The boy you sneezed on whom you wanted to impress ... if you do not mind my asking.”
“Oh,” she looked at her toes. “He doesn't exist. Just an imaginary friend. By that I mean there are currently no men in my life. Don't you remember I told you they are preparing another office for you? I'm sure they'll paint it whatever color you prefer.”
Omega shook his head. “I do not need, nor do I want, another office. This will do nicely, especially now that I have some ownership in it. As to the other, I do not believe you for a moment. Surely, an attractive girl like you has a whole string of young men lined up at her door.”
Anna Dawn folded her arms and leaned her hip against the door. “This is beginning to sound like an interrogation coming from someone I have only just met.”
“Ah,” Omega rubbed his nose on his sleeve again. “I am sorry, lass. I have a tendency to skip preliminaries with people I like and get right to the ‘up close and personal’ stage. It is a fault I am working on. Forgive me.”
She thought about that. “You're forgiven. Now get down ... please. If you're not happy with the color of this office, I'll just call maintenance and put in a work order.”
Omega smiled, but refilling his brush, turned his back on her to begin anew. “If I wait for a work order to come through, I will have to wait for eternity. Look at this. Look what I have accomplished, all by myself. Two walls in thirty minutes.”
She looked at him oddly, but admiringly. It was plain he was not about to budge and this was one argument she was not going to win. “Not bad,” she said, conceding defeat, and walked away.
“By the way, there is something for you on your desk,” Omega said resuming his work. “Nothing big. Just a thank you for the nice welcome yesterday, the clean office and all. I appreciated it.”
A myriad of thoughts were clicking through her mind as she left Omega and closed the door to his office behind her. This was one strange, hard-to-read, but very intriguing, person she worked for. Certainly, no schmerk.
Maybe all celebrities seem a little odd to the rest of us, she figured, and walked briskly back to her desk. What she found when she got there, wrapped in a cone of newspaper, was a sprig of wild, dawn-pink roses.
From the torrid darkness of Hell into the cool darkness of a clear Earthen night, the spirit creature so recently dispossessed from its seven hundred year prison held desperately to the hand of its powerful Master. They flew beneath a curtain of stars over desert and mountain, through clouds pearly in moonlight and above a black ocean with foamy crests rising and falling below, all in the midst of a heartbeat, all in the space of a thought. In this flight, sense of direction and true passage of time was confused; but the spirit sensed they had covered a vast distance and perhaps, passed into another age.
Looking down, it could see strange buildings, higher than could be imagined, seeming to challenge the sky itself. Palatial structures were crowded shoulder to shoulder and lit with thousands of square eyes, while around their feet scurried small hard-shelled beasts, also with lighted eyes and bright red, blinking tails. The beasts were charging madly along a grid of pathways in seeming chaos and the shade could make no sense of it. Their bleating sounds grew louder as the spirit and its Master came nearer the ground. It was dizzying, fascinating, but too much to take in. The spirit