Saul's Sacred Quest

By P. L. Root

P. L. Root is a writer who hails from the Western Division of the Empire State. His first collection, The Scrambled, The Poached, and The Fried, included White Rats, the Story of The Year from the International English Honor Society Sigma Tau Deltas publication The Rectangle, as judged by the world-class writer Nikki Giovanni. He has gone on to write or co-write numerous screenplays, including the feature films 603 Holiday Lane, Cherry Crush, and Kings Faith. Additionally, he has written with his daughter Bridget Carolyn Root the childrens book S.O.S.: Save Old Santa, as well as a collection of novellas adapted from his screenplays: Moving Pictures.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 7, 2016
• ISBN: 9781514434178

P. L. Root

P. L. Root is a writer who hails from the Western Division of the Empire State. His first collection, The Scrambled, The Poached, and The Fried, included White Rats, the Story of The Year from the International English Honor Society Sigma Tau Delta’s publication The Rectangle, as judged by the world-class writer Nikki Giovanni. He has gone on to write or cowrite numerous screenplays, including the feature films 603 Holiday Lane, Cherry Crush, and King’s Faith. Additionally, he has written with his daughter Bridget Carolyn Root the children’s book S.O.S.: Save Old Santa, as well as a collection of novellas adapted from his screenplays: Moving Pictures.

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Copyright © 2016 by P.L. Root.

ISBN:                Softcover       978-1-5144-3418-5

                          eBook           978-1-5144-3417-8

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 03/28/2016

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To my twins, Harlowe and Bridget,

as they continue on their Sacred Quests.

And to their mother,

my Golden Goddess – G.

Contents

Prologue

Part I

i.

June 24

ii.

iii.

June 25

iv.

June 26

v.

June 25

vi.

vii.

viii.

June 26

ix.

PART II

i.

June 27

ii.

iii.

PART III.

i.

June 28

ii.

iii.

iv.

v.

vi.

June 29

vii.

June 30 – July 22

Epilogue

PROLOGUE

Some people come from places lush with flora and fauna: places of fecundity, teeming with growth and color and life. Paul Rogers came from a hard place… a place of sand… a place of stone…

Sandstone, New York is a suburb of Rochester near the western edge of the Empire State. Why a suburb was named after a sedentary rock is open to speculation. Most sandstone is in fact found in the dry, hot, sandy stretches of the planet: the Sahara, Asia, Australia, the western deserts of North America. Rochester is not dry. It sits on the southern lip of Great Lake Ontario. The mighty Genesee River – one of the relatively few rivers in the world that flows south to north – dissects it. It is nestled in the heart of the glacier-generated Finger Lakes region.

Sandstone is definitely not a dry place. Its hub metropolis of Rochester is a perennial Top Ten entrant on lists of the least sunny and most cloudy of U.S. cities. Lots of rain in the spring, lots of the white stuff blowing off Great Lake O in the winter.

That it is not a dry region, not a place of sand and stone, perhaps reveals the origin of Sandstone’s name. Things are often called the opposite of what they really are: out of desire for the different, the other; out of the need to cover up a real or perceived shortcoming; or simply out of the great human capacity to bust balls. The giant guy is called Tiny, the short stumpy guy, Slim.

Whatever the reason it was named as it was, Paul Rogers, seventeen years of age, recently a Junior and soon-to-be a Senior in high school – just as soon as his assigned summer school class was successfully completed – was a resident of Sandstone, Burb of Rochester, City in New York, State among the United 50, Nation in North America, Continent on Earth, Planet within the Solar System of a star Spectral Class G2 and Luminosity Class Roman Numeral V, System within the Milky Way Galaxy of the ever-expanding Universe, World Without End, Amen.

PART I

i.

JUNE 24

Paul sat at one of eight polyurethane tables on a concrete patio that stretched behind a row of connected shops in the hub of Sandstone – a little oasis of commerce at the intersection of three major roads that converged in diagonals and prompted its name The Twelve Corners. The shops in this strip were the usual suspects for 21st century American suburbia: a Starbucks, Panera, Subway, Great Northern Pizza, Bruegger’s Bagels, Quik Cutz Hair Salon, a Kinko’s-Fed-Ex Store, plus a couple of token non-chain businesses including a financial advisor’s office and a quaint, over-priced, upscale variety shop endearingly named Keep You Guessin’.

The tables were put in as part of a ‘Village Square’ aspect the developers had inserted in their plans to appease the contingent of activists that viewed any commercial expansion on the site as an affront to the sense of ‘community’ that a nation full of people who largely wanted to be left alone to their cars, smart phones, and ear-bud-piped music supposedly held in face of all contrary evidence. The end result was that the Village Square tables were included in the development plan, but the busy consumers flitting in and out of the establishments rarely used them – they were taken over by the demographic that was not quite as mobile and not quite as hurried as the others: Sandstone’s teens.

Paul was closer to the slight than sturdy side of a medium build with stringy hair to his shoulders, a wisp of a goatee. He might be described as an old soul – he enjoyed old music, old television, old movies – but this was more personal predilection, he felt, than anything to do with his philosophical outlook. He knew history was always measured in terms of war, industrial and technological advancements, and – especially since the mid-20th century – pop culture. When he explored older pop, mainly from the 1960s and onward – influenced by what his parents had shared with him – he found he really enjoyed much of it.

The cumulative effect was an intelligent bearing but occasional dips in his self-confidence sometimes betrayed this bearing and you might catch him trying too hard on occasion to maintain it. He was that breed of boy who has been around since the advent of the modern industrialized-society and will continue to exist forevermore – one who sits on the fence, not deliberately, not by choice, but by biology and genetics that have blessed him with a strong mind but maybe not quite as strong a body. Not a wimp, not a bruiser. He was a young man who might one day be a leader in the world, a titan of industry, a tech wiz, a cutting-edge academic, or he might fall through the cracks and on to the slope of a spirit-killing drone job, manipulative relationships, materialistic treadmill, dissatisfaction, self-loathing, poor posture, poor habits: smokee smokee drinkee drinkee, Cheeseburger Monday, Pizza Tuesday, Curly Fries Wednesday, Stuffed Burrito Thursday, D.O.A. Friday. Paul could go either way off of that fence: forward into respect and affluence, or backward into unappreciated and poorly compensated toil. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be. World without end. Amen.

Mandy Norris, sixteen years old, was wispy, freckled-faced, and red-haired. With her vacant eyes, she could have been Squeaky Fromme’s granddaughter. She passed a joint Paul’s way.

I’m good, Mandy, Paul said, waving a hand in pass at the weed.

The refusal sparked a look of disbelief in Mandy’s lackluster eyes. "Dude!? What is wrong with you?"

Paul shrugged. Mandy shook her head disapprovingly, disappointedly. Passed the J to a skaterat named Dino on the other side of Paul. Dino hit the blunt like he was in an Olympic-qualifying event.

Paul had not been smoking a lot of pot lately. He started toking when he was in the ninth grade. Got into it a heavy for a stretch of tenth, and started slowing down over the past year. He still enjoyed getting high on occasion, but he was really put off by the conformist element involved – so many acting as if smoking weed made them mature, or, worse still, edgy rebels.

He did a quick scan of the dozen-plus kids sitting at the tables at the moment. They were not rebels, he thought. Some were tough, and almost all of them had issues – broken families, broken budgets, broken spirits at home; IEPs, 504s, ADHD diagnoses at school. But those were not edgy. They were socio-economic realities; they were educational or medical constructs.

You want to know the main reason I’m not into it anymore? he asked Mandy.

Enlighten me.

Cuz everybody is doing it, almost by rote. Nothing special about it. And the legalization movement has just intensified the trend. Where’s the ritualistic reverence? The marvel about the possibility that one of nature’s plants might be helping to lead humankind to some greater insight about ourselves? People are all getting stoned just cuz everybody else is.

Mandy laughed. You, amigo, don’t need to smoke. You’re on a natural. Where do you come up with this shit: ritualistic reverence, one of nature’s plants leading humankind… I don’t even know what the hell you said, but it was funny… You’re a trip, Paulie Rogers. She called out to the larger congregation: Hey you guys? You know why Paul Rogers here got summer school?

Nobody was sure why – they all knew Paul as a solid student. But he had told Mandy. "Cuz he wrote an essay in US History that was deemed ‘offensive in tone.’ He put a few F-bombs in it and Mrs. Breck got hot flashes from them."

The stoners laughed. Mrs. Breck doesn’t like the word because it hasn’t happened to her in so long! Dino said.

Paulie Boy refused to rewrite it, Mandy added, and now he’s stuck with us in summer school.

Good job, Rogers, Dino said. Stupid move but good job!

It really wasn’t the language, Paul said. My thesis was that if a nation were immoral – as say, hypothetically, the USA could be construed – then anyone in the employ of that nation’s government is immoral by extension: military personnel, politicians, bureaucrats, teachers. That’s what pissed her off. I implied that she could be immoral.

The Breck Girl doesn’t like being called immoral, Mandy said, laiughing. She don’t play that.

I don’t understand what you just said, Rogers, Dino said. But if it pissed Breck off, I support it.

There was more laughter and one of the other stoners said: And I know who I’m hiring to write my papers for summer school!

Paul was not a full-timer at these tables like Mandy and most of the others. In the summer, a lot of them clocked in here by ten in the morning and stayed til the last of the shops closed up at ten at night and the cops would shoo them away to find adventure elsewhere. And the majority of the table crew was definitely summer school de rigueur.

Paul had never attended bonus session school from late June to mid-August – but he was scheduled to this year. He was certain that the inclusion of teachers in the immoral category had been what stuck in Mrs. Breck’s craw, but she insisted it was the offensive tone of the essay, pointing to his use of a few four-letter words in it. Paul had countered that their use added stylistic punch to the paper. He and Breck had stalemated in searching for a resolution. Paul refused to rewrite the paper and Mrs. Breck refused to relent from her insistence that he do just that. The administration wanted the issue to dry up and blow away, but when it didn’t, they ultimately backed Mrs. Breck. She and the administration did have the irrefutable evidence of the four F-Bombs Paul had inserted in the paper to fall back on in case the ACLU, Moveon.org, or The Society For The Right To Tell Anyone To Fuck Off Anytime You Felt Like It picked up the cause.

Mrs. Breck gave him a zero and informed him ipso facto that nobody could pass her course if they received a zero on one of her major assignments, whether or not their average was still above 65 – as Paul’s was. Paul, on principle, dug in his heels. His mother pushed for him to rewrite the paper and save himself the headache – and herself the embarrassment – of his being subjected to summer school. But she realized that Paul had gotten a bit of a charge by his act of civil disobedience, and when his father had subtly encouraged him to hold his ground, she relented. It was his summer to ruin, she figured, and she felt that ultimately it might be one of those life lessons everyone had to go through in some form or the other – and going to summer school for throwing in a few distasteful words in a thoughtful if misguided essay wasn’t as bad as an arrest for some thoughtless act of vandalism or violence that were other common life lessons for so many teenage boys.

And so, like almost every single one of his current cohorts behind the Sandstone Starbucks, Paul was awaiting the start of summer school the following Monday.

One of the stoners attempted a standard maneuver on his skateboard – a basic curb hop – and fell on his ass. The others broke up laughing. Though not a full-timer, Paul had put in enough part-time shifts back here to know that this was the standard operating procedure: the rebels-in-their-own-minds sat and skated and smoked as the worker bee adults from this area buzzed in and out of the hives labeled Panera and Subway and Fed-Ex and Starbucks.

The older folks left the kids alone for the most part. The regulars back here smoked enough cigarettes to allow them to fire-up the joints occasionally. So long as the content of the smoke cloud was more tobacco than cannabis in origin, nobody said too much. Of course many of the young professionals and spin-class moms and yoga devotees who frequented the shops here hated any kind of smoke: it was evident from the looks and occasional comments they gave on their way in and out of Frappucino-Land, but on the whole they regarded the youthful congregation like they did an ugly and unfortunate animal at the zoo: let the turkey vultures sit back here and smoke the start of their lives away because, honestly, the unstated belief was that they didn’t have too much to look forward to anyway. And of course there would always be a need for the mindless class to wash the windows and the dishes and the asses of the very old and the very young, and if the price was to let them choke off the oxygen supply to their brains with tobacco and pot, then so be it.

Breann Nye, purple-tinted hair, mid-size platters in her ears, moved about somewhat like a blind person, as if she were directed by something beyond the prosaic sense of sight. Paul had seen her practice and hone this effect since sixth grade when she had begun to infuse her natural oddness with a mystical vibe, adopting the role of soothsayer for Sandstone’s middle-schoolers. This identity had continued through high school, although by ninth grade most of her peers found it most soothing when she wasn’t saying anything at all.

She took a seat next to Paul and flashed her deck of Rider Tarot Cards at him. Read for a dollar? she offered – capitalism polluted even the mystical.

Paul had always reserved a slice of admiration for Breann, something about her earnestness of purpose – he wondered if maybe she had actually willed herself into being truly clairvoyant, perhaps at least slightly. He shrugged and produced a dollar from his pocket.

Go ahead, he said. Hit me.

Adroitly, Breann spread the deck in front of him. Paul plucked three cards from various spots in the deck. Breann took each one and placed it face down on the table’s laminated surface. Flipped the first one up.

The Three of Wands, she said as the two of them looked at the card’s illustration. On it, a man with his back turned to the viewer stood calmly upon a high embankment watching a distant vista of bright yellow. On a golden ocean in this distance, ships moved across the sea. There were three poles – wands – stuck in the ground around him, and the man gripped one of these staffs.

It’s a card of new possibilities, Breann said with the certainty of Ph.D. addressing a 101-level class. Although it means you have much work to do, it also attests to the strength and determination you’ll need to persevere in pursuit of your goals. It speaks of optimism, a new way of life, a fresh career.

Dig it, Paul said. I need a fresh career.

She flipped over the second card. It was more ornate than the Three of Wands. A royal personage donned in medieval battle regalia stood in a chariot being pulled by two sphinxes, one black and one white. Castles flanked the wheeled carriage on both sides in the background. Stars of all sizes graced its canopy.

The Chariot, Breann said. A powerful card of the Major Arcana. It foretells of conflict and internal struggle.

Gulp, Paul said.

But it also contains the potential for resolution, Breann said.

Sigh of relief, Paul said.

The Chariot indicates that you have the energy to pursue a desired goal and fight for what is important to you.

Inspiring.

The two sphinxes that draw the chariot symbolize a dilemma the Charioteer must solve, Breann continued. "He or she must steer a middle path between conflicting thoughts and feelings.

"You got a problem? Yo, I’ll solve it," Paul suddenly sang, rap-style. Check out the hook while my DJ revolves it.

Breann gave him a baffled look.

Vanilla Ice? Paul asked. You’re not into Vintage Hip-Hop?

Breann shook her head – gave Paul a look similar to the ones many people gave her.

Proceed, Governor he said.

She flipped the third card. An oversized golden chalice sat on a platform hovering above a body of water. From the sky overhead, a white dove was in flight, heading directly into the chalice. The Ace of Cups, Breann said. A beautiful card. It portends emotional fulfillment. The start of a relationship. It’s connected to the Element of Water that rules emotion and feeling. It symbolizes creativity, fecundity, the feminine life-giving power.

Give it to me straight, Paul said. Does it mean I’m gay?

Only you can answer questions regarding your own identity, she said.

I answer no.

So be it, Breann said. Know this: the main message of The Ace of Cups is that Love, Not Power, is the ruling force in our lives.

So be it, Paul said.

He pulled out another dollar and tipped her. Breann gave him a dignified nod of thanks and moved on to search out other potential clients.

Paul stood and strapped on his bicycle helmet. "Well, Comrades, I’ll see some of you at Escuela de Verano on Monday."

What do you mean? Dino asked.

Summer school, Mandy said.

I know that, Dino said. "What does he mean he’ll see some of us? We all have summer school!"

As the stoners laughed at Dino’s funny, Paul climbed onto his Diamondback bicycle. Before he shoved off, a cell phone chirped. Mandy pulled out her phone and glanced at it. And then, almost instantaneously, more chirps and buzzes. Almost every one of the members of this sample set of American youth began pulling out his or her smart phone (they all didn’t have a smart phone – the number