A Fool's Journey: Book I, The Magician

By Mark Pannebecker

A Fool’s Journey is a 21-part series of novelettes inspired by the Major Arcana of the Tarot.

If you believe in fate, you might say Benjamin Porter, the protagonist in A Fool’s Journey, is destined to play the role of the Fool. But he’s no court jester. He is a soul untethered by conventional boundaries and relationships, his journey through life is illustrative in purpose and curious by nature. With a perceptive, inquisitive approach, A Fool’s Journey is a postmodern bildungsroman that explores questions we all have through the eyes of a single, modern man. Connecting the ancient arts with the sensuality and violence of contemporary America, the story imagines a life well lived as a roadmap to a personal nirvana.

Beginning in his teenage years, when his primary concerns are immediate and physical, Ben stumbles his way through the friendships, relationships, and setbacks that dot life.

As an adult, he seeks influences that expand his knowledge and challenge the assumptions of his youth.

As he reaches maturity, he seeks to understand the more significant meaning of existence. Is it spiritual or scientific in nature, or are we merely cogs in the spread of a deck of cards in a game of chance, entertaining beings in a world we influence but can never reach?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mark Pannebecker
• Release date: Mar 8, 2017
• ISBN: 9780998724300

Mark Pannebecker

I'm an author of literary fiction and the founder of the St. Louis Indie Book Fair.I'm trying KDP for Book V, The Hierophant and Book VI, The Lovers, so those titles won't be listed here. You can go to my website or Amazon (www.amazon.com/-/e/B00TI17DO8) for copies. Thank you.

Book preview

A Fool's Journey

*Book I, The Magician*

by

Mark Pannebecker

Copyright 2017 Mark Pannebecker

All rights reserved

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this Ebook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy from their favorite authorized retailer. Thank you for your continuing support.

Developmental Editor: Tina Farmer

Content Editor: Blythe Terrell

Copy Editor: Carye Moses

Cover Art and Author’s Photo by Sarah Clayton

Special thanks to Sarah Clayton

and Sarah Marchant.

Table of Contents

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

Book II, The High Priestess

About A Fool's Journey

About Mark Pannebecker

I

The night summoned the renegade David Reynolds and his motorcycle gang, the Company, into its fold. Benjamin Porter knew their routine. The loud music of Southern rock bands like Lynyrd Skynyrd or Molly Hatchet abruptly stopped, and Benjamin ran to his bedroom window to watch the spectacle spill out from the house across the street with no shutters.

The unpainted wooden door swung open and a dozen men, the smallest twice the size of Benjamin, stumbled out of the house in single file, with a few discarding their empty beer cans into a cracked clay pot. They kick-started their motorcycles, and their battle cry roared in the suburban neighborhood as they revved their engines. Cracking and snorting like dragons, Benjamin thought.

Reynolds’ gang wore faded black leather boots, scratched black leather jackets, and small black helmets. Insignias on the front of their leathers reminded Benjamin of his own Cub Scout patches. I had three before they kicked me out for fighting. On the back of their jackets, they wore the Company colors: a simple design of two white skulls facing each other. As the bikers prepared to leave, they maneuvered around a Camaro on blocks, cut across the front yard, or backed down the driveway, never once coming close to hitting each other. David’s always third in line. Their bikes were clean and shining, and the colors exact: black, blood-red, pearl-white. The short, quick procession left the quiet cul-de-sac in St. Louis county, thundering past the two elm trees sentineled at the entrance. Leaving behind the thick smoke of a dragon’s breath.

In the fall of 1975, Benjamin Porter, a tall, skinny fourteen-year-old with black-framed glasses, entered high school and met someone who would move him from observer to player in the world of his neighbors’ motorcycle gang. Craig Marse belonged to that club by birth. His father helped create the Company and Craig’s older brother, in prison for manslaughter, was a member. Craig, a trickster with a slight underbite, had developed his legerdemain to such a degree that many in his circle called him the Magician. In school, Benjamin wondered what Craig, a freshman same as Ben, and David Reynolds, a senior, had to say to each other. To Ben, David—who had moved in across from the Porters last year with his divorced mother—always seemed out of place. On my street and in my school. And now he’s here laughing in the cafeteria with the ruffled Craig Marse. What kind of things makes them laugh? What do they talk about? Occasionally he followed them as they walked down the halls, copying