House of Gold (15 page)

Ask him now,
his instincts told him. Sam decided to go for it.

"And we could sure use a guy like you with us."

Sam, a subtle businessman, relaxed, waiting with an inner knowing that
silence was his ally at this juncture.

"I appreciate the offer," Mark didn't hesitate. "But no can do. Maggie. I just...can't."

"I understand. I've accepted that our friends can't follow us. I was shortsighted enough to think some of you might last year, when we got started. Moving is just not God's plan for most people because it's not practical. You've got those tuitions, eh? Ellie still thinks
you and the Pennys and the rest are going to come up to New Hampshire at the last minute."

"Maybe we will," Mark Johnson offered with a tone that was-almost–sweet, but really wasn't. Guys like Mark were definitely not
sweet.

"You know that's not true. If that were true, you would store your food and security items in Bagpipe, not Oberlin."

On rare occasions, even with friends, Sam felt it hard
not to call a spade a spade.

"Fair enough. Then what happens next?" Mark asked.

"Trust in God."

"That's a given."

"I used to think so," Sam said. "Now I'm not so sure. I haven't been a Christian as long as the rest of you. This whole project has been the greatest thing that's ever happened to my faith, Mark, it really has been. Things have always come easy to me–at least that's what Buzz always
tells me. And he's right. I've lived a charmed life–success, great friends, the most beautiful wife in the world, an incredible son, and after meeting Buzz and you and Bill, finding the true faith. What a surprise! But Buzz is right: it all came to me. There has been no struggle, no cross."

Now it was Mark's turn to wonder and wait. Sam was not given to monologues.
This damned bug sure brings
out things in people,
Mark thought now.

"For the first time," Sam continued, "I've run into something that won't come to me. Buzz may or may not have told you this, but I don't believe we'll survive up there. Maybe our odds are better if things do fall apart, and maybe Christopher, Mark, and Pascal will have a better chance of making it, but I don't expect to live. As sure as I know the crash
is coming, I'm also sure I'm too soft to make the adjustment to the new way of life–"

"–you're not soft, Sam," Mark interrupted.

"Let me finish," Sam said firmly.

Mark was taken aback. He had never heard this kind of passion in Sam before–or heard him come so close to raising his voice.

"Sorry, man," Mark apologized.

Ten years ago, Mark might not have apologized, and he knew it.
The difference
between thirty and forty?
his ego piped in.

"No, I'm sorry," Sam returned to his normal tone. "And I forgot what I was talking about."

"You were talking about a new way of life," Mark prompted, his curiosity truly piqued.

"Yes, a new
paradigm.
Or, as Buzz calls it, the new springtime. He eats, sleeps, and breathes this stuff. Whatever you want to call it–a new way of life, a new paradigm–I simply
do not believe that I am...suited. But this realization is also forcing me to trust God, not myself, in order to be able to accept the unknown. My prayer life has never been stronger. Ellie and I are totally committed to our spiritual director now.

"Maybe that solves the mystery of why God would want us to leave everything behind. He's not asking this of us in order to insure that we survive–instead,
God wants to find out if we
can
leave everything behind.

"Some days, the whole project is so overwhelming that I wish I were in your position; you don't really have the professional or financial option to get out of Dodge."

Sam took a deep breath.

Mark reflected that there were still levels of Sam Fisk that he had never seen before. This realization jolted him. It became all the more difficult
to write off Sam Fisk's ideas so-casually, as Bill White had done–although Mark was sure that Bill would never dream of doing so in front of Sam.

Mark picked a long strand of grass at his feet, and plugged it into his mouth.

And when I picture what this town would be like after three weeks with the water off and the lights down and the grocery store shelves empty, I wish I had your options, Sam.

Mark had seen firsthand the underbelly of society during his early years in the bureau. Except for Jimmy Lawrence, another cop, Mark doubted that his friends, even Sam, had any clue how ugly it could get under the right–make that
wrong
–conditions.

Maybe Buzz. Buzz had the imagination. Folks in the suburbs feared the residents in the inner cities. No one said that out loud, of course. But it was
there. Agent Johnson had not the slightest doubt that the now placid–yet amoral–residents of the suburbs would turn into animals under desperate conditions. Law enforcement, rightly or wrongly, gave most of its practitioners a healthy respect for Original Sin–and an experience-based skepticism that Joe Sixpack would magically morph into Mother Teresa when the toilets stopped flushing and his stomach
rumbled.

"So what happens next?" Mark asked again. Both men sensed there was one more mystery left in this conversation.

"Let's pray, brother," Sam suggested, sitting up.

He wrapped his arms around the basketball on his lap. Mark folded his hands and bowed his head. Sam waited for him to begin. In any group of men, even a group of two, Mark was the unspoken leader.

"Saint Michael the Archangel–"
Mark began, and Sam joined in, "–defend us in the day of battle. Be our safeguard against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Hosts, by the power of God, cast into hell satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen."

"Amen," Sam repeated, opening his eyes.
Trust in God.

Their
man-to-man was over.

Or was it? They stood up, and walked to their vehicles. Mark had an old pick-up truck–
de rigueur
in Avon Lake, where he had moved four years earlier to be able to afford a larger house on a full acre–and be a bit closer to Oberlin, where he planned to settle for his retirement.

After they started their engines, Mark rolled down his window and signaled for Sam to do the same.

"Yes?" Sam asked.

"I was just thinking–where do you park your plane?"

Sam thought it was an odd question.

"You mean the company plane? Uh, usually at Burke Lakefront."

Mark nodded. "Ever think of parking at the county airport out my way?"

"Not really; that would be too long a drive from Edwards. I usually leave from the office. Why?"

Mark smiled. "Just curious, is all. Give my best to Grace Kelly."

"And give my best to Maureen O'Hara," Sam rejoined.

It was an old exchange, even though Maggie, an Irish brunette, only remotely resembled O'Hara.

They drove their separate ways.

+  +  +

Later that evening, Mark called Bill White.

"What you doing for the new year?" Mark asked his boyhood friend.

"I'm going to be at my firm's annual New Year's party. I've invited all my customers."

"No preparations–stocking
up food, that kind of thing?" Mark pressed.

"The Red Cross has advised that we keep three days of food on hand. I already have that in my apartment. Have you been talking to Buzz again?"

Mark paused at the other end of the line.

"Sam Fisk thinks it's going to be pretty bad," Mark said finally.

He respected both Bill and Sam's judgment.

"Sam is a talented businessman, Mark. No one's sharper. But
he's also a computer guy at heart. He's a lot like my programmers here. Computer guys always think of everything in terms of computers. There's a lot more to the world than computers. Sam's belief in the ability of a computer glitch to cause a collapse is equal to his ability to make preparations.

"My agency is compliant–and has been since February. Nothing to it. Most of my clients say they're
getting ready. I'm expecting nothing more than the equivalent of a winter storm. My biggest client owns the largest stock brokerage in Cleveland, Mark, and he's forecasting a boom during the first quarter of 2000. But we've been over this before."

"What about Buzz?" Mark asked.

It was a pregnant question. They had both known Buzz since before Mark moved to Cleveland.

"I love Buzz. We all do, but–"

"But?" Mark asked.

"But Buzz is a UPS driver. His head is filled with wacky theories he reads off the Internet. I hate to put it that way. But he believes every end-times prophecy and Marian apparition that comes down the pike."

"That's just not fair. I've never heard Buzz say that this computer thing is part of the end times. Nor Sam. They both think it's a secular problem."

"Yes, it is a secular
problem; that's my point," Bill reiterated. "But he and Ellie, too–both have a
predispostion
to expect tribulations and calamities from all their books and tapes–you have to admit that.

"American know-how is going to take care of it. We invented computers; we'll fix them. Europe isn't far behind, no matter what Buzz's Internet crazies tell him. They handled the Euro conversion just fine."

Bill
White's clipped tone revealed that he was growing impatient–a bored professor repeating a lecture he had given before.

"Thanks," Mark finished. "I just needed to hear some common sense. So you're throwing a New Year's party?"

"And you're invited, of course. A millennium only rolls around once every thousand years. Ha ha." This passed for a joke in Bill White's book. "And one more thing," Bill
added, as if a thought had just struck him.

It hadn't. He had been waiting for the right moment to lower the boom on Mark's doubt: "The pope has promised that the New Millennium will bring a new springtime to the Church. That's hardly compatible with a computer bug causing the end of the world. Don't you think the pope would warn Catholics if something that horrible was coming?"

"Is that really
his job? Didn't you just say it was a secular problem?" Mark countered, imagining what Buzz might say. "John Paul II is hardly a technology guru. And I read the pope's encyclical on the New Millennium. You're quoting him out of context. There were a lot of
if-then
statements in that document, if memory serves me correct.
If
Christians live according to the faith,
then
a new springtime will come.

"Seems to me the Holy Father was throwing down a challenge, not making predictions," Mark continued forcefully, finding words that surprised himself. "And I read on Catholicity.com that Cardinal Ratzinger, when asked about the encyclical, commented darkly that pruning is necessary before a flower can bloom. Maybe what Sam and Buzz are doing is avoiding some of the worst parts of the pruning."

His articulate reply caught Bill White off guard, as revealed by the long pause which ensued.

"I'm following the pope when it comes to the year two-thousand," Bill said, as if this explained all, as if it showed clearly that Sam and Buzz were patently wrong.

You didn't counter my points,
Mark thought.

Mark had merely been playing devil's advocate, hoping that Bill would lay his doubts to rest.
This conversation was not going as planned.

"Sure. Me too," Mark agreed, but with mental reservation.
The pope has not discouraged Catholics from making prudent preparations.

A Bible passage, a proverb, floated into Mark's consciousness.
The prudent man sees danger and flees, while the fool does nothing and perishes.

"Good," Bill replied, letting it go. "Look at the clock; it's nine-forty-five!
I've got to get some sleep."

Bill's clockwork habits were the stuff of legend. If he wasn't brushing his teeth by nine-forty-seven, his world would collapse.

"Good night then, buddy," Mark responded.

Bill or Sam? Which one should I believe?

After the phone call, Mark went into Seamus's bedroom and stood over the bed, watching his son sleep. Mark shook his head, prayed a Hail Mary, then went into
his own bedroom and jostled Maggie's shoulder.

"What is it?" she yawned.

"I want to make some preparations at the Oberlin place," he told her.

"Have you been talking to Sam about that computer thing again?" she asked drowsily.

"Yes."

"Fine. Now let me go back to sleep," she pleaded.

+  +  +

He hedged his bets. Mark Johnson was not a man of means. His preparations cost a few thousand dollars, which
he took from his modest rainy-day savings, figuring that this damned bug might just be the Mother of All Rainy Days.

He did not feel it was necessary to involve Maggie, who was busy. His preparations, which he weighed alone and carefully, consisted of the following things, which he accomplished with a few hours of research on the Internet, a few phone calls to place orders, six Saturdays of work,
one phone call to Buzz, and one phone call to Sam.

He first installed a big lock on the door and on the lone window in the cabin–it wasn't more than a shack, really. Pouring buckets of water on the roof, he located three leaks, then added a few tar shingles that didn't quite match color.

Working with Seamus, he roughly insulated the little cabin with fiberglass which he left showing. In the paper,
he found a small woodstove at a housesale, and jerry-rigged the installation at the fireplace that was already in the cabin.

He squirreled ammo (shotgun, handgun, hunting rifle), and four gold coins (which his father had given to him as birthday gifts, one each year, during his four years at the Academy) under the floorboards. He picked up four used but clean fifty-gallon drums from a fellow who
owed him a-favor. He filled one with gasoline and "life extender" additives (he already owned a small Coleman generator, which he moved to the cabin). He filled the other three drums with sacks of rice he procured at Sam's Club.