The Fourth Elijah

By Brent Garzelli and Cheryl L. Garzelli

Trent Micucci is highly regarded by his Christian peers and has natural leadership skills in a time when the Church is being persecuted. It is the highly tauted "last days" predicted in both the Old and New Testaments and they cut to the core of a man and what he really believes. Those who are the true followers of Jesus Christ appear and, thoug

• Language: English
• Publisher: Aspire Publishing Hub, LLC
• Release date: Sep 14, 2023
• ISBN: 9781960758835

Book preview

9781960758835-cover.jpg

Brent Garzelli

Cheryl L. Garzelli

The Fourth Elijah

Copyright © 2023 by Brent Garzelli & Cheryl L. Garzelli

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

ISBN

978-1-960758-82-8 (Paperback)

978-1-960758-83-5 (eBook)

Table of Contents

Authors’ Note

Dedication

Preface

Part I

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Part II

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Part III

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

About Brent Garzelli

About Cheryl Louise Garzelli

Authors’ Note

This is a work of fiction. Though some of the names of characters are based on real people we have known or known of, the character’s personalities are a mix of many individuals and do not represent any persons alive at this time.

All scriptural references are from the New International Version (NIV) unless we have specifically stated otherwise. As a Christian of more than fifty-four years, we have made every attempt to make the story conform to the Word of God, but we did not write this book as a theological treatise. Rather, we hope it brings inspiration and entertainment to those who read it and edifies our Lord in every word.

I have drawn on my experiences as a missionary in Costa Rica and Venezuela, a former pastor of several churches, and a United States Air Force Chaplain stationed in Alabama and Panama. Those experiences have been further refined by a near-fatal brain aneurysm and other health problems. Through it all, my faith has grown and brought an even deeper love for my wife of forty-one years, Cheryl, and our daughter, Erin.

We pray that you find only half of the joy reading this book as we found writing it. God bless.

Dedication

For the constant support and love of my wife of forty-two years, our daughter who is the source of my greatest joy, and our dog Chewi, who sat patiently and watched me type every word.

A special thanks to my grandparents for teaching me to love the Lord and to always seek Him. To my college and seminary professors who saw more in me than I saw in myself and to my fellow Air Force chaplains that demonstrated God before me daily. I am a better man of God for having known you.

Preface

Elijah is one of the most interesting personalities in all the Scripture, appealing to Jews and Christians alike. He is used of God in unique ways and is manifested in at least three and probably four different individuals.

Although this book is a work of fiction, there are certain parts that adhere to much of the scriptural testimony. I have made no attempt to explain holy texts or to exceed the stories of the Bible. But the best stories are still those that have endured the test of time, and this story is no different. The story of Elijah has lasted more than two thousand seven hundred years and will not end until the second coming of our Lord. Enjoy the final manifestation of Elijah and another man of God, Moses.

First Manifestation:

Give me your son, Elijah replied. He took him from her arms, carried him to the upper room where he was staying, and laid him on his bed (1 Kings 17:19).

The Lord heard Elijah’s cry, and the boy’s life returned to him, and he lived (1 Kings 17:22).

See, I will send Elijah the prophet to you before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes (Malachi 4:5).

Second Manifestation:

And if you are willing to accept it, he is the Elijah who was to come (Matthew 11:14).

Third Manifestation:

There he [Jesus Christ] was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as light. Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus (Matthew 17:2–3).

Fourth Manifestation:

And I will appoint my two witnesses, and they will prophesy for 1,260 days, clothed in sackcloth. They are the two olive trees and the two lampstands, and they stand before the Lord of the earth. If anyone tries to harm them, fire comes from their mouths and devours their enemies. This is how anyone who wants to harm them must die" (Revelation 11:3–5).

Part I

Chapter 1

When the thousand years are over, Satan will be released from his prison and will go out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth—Gog and Magog—to gather them for battle. In number they are like the sand on the seashore. They marched across the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of God’s people, the city He loves. But fire came down from heaven and devoured them. And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning Sulphur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever. (Revelation 20:7–10).

***

The night sky suffered from that perfect clarity that only occurs on fall nights and then only when it has rained all day. It was early October, Indian Summer as most referred to this special season in the Ozarks of southern Missouri, and the foliage had nearly made its annual transformation from the mundane green of early September to the myriad hues of reds, oranges, browns, yellows, and purples. Even on his deck at 12:30 a.m., Trent was enthralled with the beauty of the red leaves of the dogwood tree just outside his bedroom door. It was warm, almost sticky, from the rain, and Trent could smell the damp leaves in the woods that surrounded his home.

His six-pound Pomeranian, no doubt, smelled a different aroma. She lay on her belly looking down at a small copperhead snake. Trent too had seen the little critter but was not alarmed even though the snake was venomous. After killing over thirty of these little creatures, he had found them extremely docile and not the least bit aggressive. Still, he had slain them because he had a small daughter who was prone to pick up everything in reach and show it to her parents. Ellen, who was three years old, did not like nuances. She lumped together all creatures that crawled into one category: worms.

One Sunday afternoon, while her grandparents were visiting, Ellen had interrupted the adults’ conversation on several occasions with an impassioned plea for the adults to come and see the pretty worm. The pretty worm was#1 in a long numerical line of copperheads to meet an untimely death. So proficient had Trent grown in killing the little nuisances that he had simply given each successive worm a numerical value. He went to where his dog watched intently, took his long-handled shovel—which was never far from him—and, with a surgical strike, decapitated#36. The process had become routine for him, and he dispatched the carcass into the nearby woods where Trent knew the possums and coons would consume it completely, long before he had to encounter the foul stench of death. Trent returned to the deck at the back of the house where he liked to be alone from time to time with his God and his secrets.

Trent had a history of being too introspective and not always liking what he found there in the depths of his soul. But this night, he had made a conscious effort to only think good thoughts. Historically, he had possessed an unhealthy humility to the point of self-deprivation, but this night, he was almost egotistical and borderline prideful. He allowed the emotion that he usually held in check to consume him. He thought about how he had single-handedly located the piece of land where his house now stood—a place of special meaning for him since many were the times he had sat under the big hickory tree, now in the backyard, and hunted squirrels when he was a lad. That same tree now provided shade for his deck in the hot days of July and provided countless hours of free entertainment as he watched the antics of the local squirrel population.

Trent was pleased with the house he now inhabited with his wife and child. It was in some senses, a rite of passage for him. His own father and mother had never owned their own home when he was growing up and always rented. This somehow had made him self-conscious as a child, and he had always told his friends that his parents were making payments on their home, since that sounded better than they were paying rent. But now he had joined the throngs of baby boomers who were achieving the American dream by possessing his very own mortgage.

Yes, Trent had it all—the home mortgage, a motorcycle payment, a car and truck payment, and enough money left over to occasionally take his wife and child to eat at the local Cracker Barrel restaurant. Life was good.

Feeling the warm giddy feeling of self-contentment he had sensed very few times in his life, Trent rolled over in his sleeping bag to find a comfortable place on his deck where a nail was not working up into his back. His eyes instinctively began searching the heavens for the constellations he had learned as a child. Trent was five years old when Alan Shepard went into space for the first time, and he could never look at the night sky casually again. He was bitten by the star bug, and like every other boy his age, he dreamed of becoming the next Neil Armstrong or John Glenn. A congenital heart murmur, discovered at the age of nine, had dashed his dreams of being an astronaut, but by that time, he had assimilated a love of the heavens that had endured to the present.

Lying still, he tried to remember again the names of the constellations. He found himself whispering them out loud as he successfully located each with naked eyes. Ursa Minor, Orion, Perseus, Andromeda. Trent had always placed great stock in his eyes, which had possessed the clarity of a hawk when he was a younger man. Now at age forty, he was beginning to notice subtle changes in his vision. He had not shared his concern over the rapid changes in his physical aptitudes even with his wife of twenty years, Shara, with whom he had shared everything. This was just one of his secrets he had chosen to take with him on his night of stargazing. He laid there, with a nailhead strategically placed in the lower part of his right kidney, contemplating what life had brought him thus far and wondering where life might yet take him.

***

Shara had lain very quietly in her bed, pretending to be asleep, when Trent had tried to sneak out of the house undetected. The many years of marriage had brought a profound understanding of her husband and his many unique eccentricities. They no longer bothered her, and she had grown to love him more for them. It was not uncommon for Trent to come in from work and announce that he was leaving within the hour on his motorcycle for the Boston Mountains of northern Arkansas. Shara trusted her husband completely and never questioned his faithfulness to her or their daughter, Ellen. She always knew he would be back when he had renewed his spirit.

The couple’s bed faced directly out a patio door on the deck where Trent was counting constellations. Lying on her right side, Shara would periodically open her left eye and catch a quick glimpse of her husband. She had known Trent since the two were neighbors at the tender ages of sixteen and fourteen, Trent being the elder. She knew of his youthful passion for astronomy and his disappointment in only watching the stars without any chance to travel to them. Shara allowed Trent these times to discover all over again his place in the universe. As she watched his lips move, she repeated the constellation names synchronously, indicating some strange telepathy with her husband. Becoming suddenly aware of how simpatico she and Trent had become, Shara recalled how amused she had been with her own parents’ ability to speak in some sort of truncated language after more than fifty years of marriage.

For a moment, Shara pondered the years of marriage that had resulted in her own shorthand conversation with Trent.

Honey, did you?

Yeah, Shara, it’s all done.

And did you?

It’s on the table.

She was beginning to understand the biblical dictate to become one flesh, but they had become one mind, and she liked the profound changes she was witnessing in herself and Trent. She silently gave thanks to her Lord for all He was doing in their lives and for their wonderful daughter, Ellen. Somewhere during the prayer, she passed into a deep restful sleep, as Trent gazed heavenly through his old childhood telescope, nothing more than a cardboard tube with some mirrors and cheap plastic lenses.

Trent enjoyed using this old relic from his past when he felt nostalgic. This particular night, he was feeling very nostalgic. Trent had always suffered from numerous liver-related illnesses: gallstones, high levels of triglycerides, as well as high cholesterol levels. And earlier that day, the pain in his left great toe had been diagnosed as gout. Turning forty years old had been hard enough on his fragile male ego, but now his body was simultaneously self-destructing. He did not want to share his feelings with Shara who had never had a real illness in her life and who could never understand his sudden awareness of his own mortality. He felt guilty for not wanting to share his feelings but comforted himself that he was taking them to God.

He prayed as he searched the southern skies of the Ozarks. He looked first with his naked eyes, then when he found the star for which he was searching, he viewed it with his old telescope. Suddenly, just barely above the peach tree at the far side of the yard, he spied what he was looking for—Antares. Antares was the brightest star in the constellation known as Scorpius or the scorpion. Like so many stars known as supergiants, Antares is a binary star consisting of one of the largest of known stars and a much smaller green star in a consistent orbit around the larger star. Antares shimmered in the fall night like a ruby under a red light. Apart from the overwhelming beauty before him, Trent was struck by the strange feeling that something was different than the last time he had viewed this star. He could not seem to put a finger on it. Was it the rapid rate of pulsation, the size, the color, the location—he could not be sure. He decided he must break with tradition, put away his old telescope, and set up his new Bushnell.

***

Yong Bae Kim sat looking intently at the skies. From his perch at the Mauna Kea Observatory, he observed the celestial bodies through the eighty-eight-inch optical telescope owned by the University of Hawaii. He had petitioned for time on this telescope nearly three months earlier, knowing that it might be a six- or even twelve-month wait for use of the larger telescopes, which were in much greater demand by students and astronomers alike. Still, it was part of his dream to one day have sole use of the four-hundred-inch reflector telescope located nearby, but for now he was insatiably happy to be gazing at the skies and taking copious notes of his findings. For the past three months, he had been limited to the study of the heavens through his own small telescope, which he had attached to his apartment’s balcony. Contending with the humidity of a Hilo night and the streetlights, he was always left unfulfilled and wanting more. Tonight, he was determined to quench his voracious appetite for astronomy.

Kim, as most of his American friends referred to him, was like that little Korean boy with his first pair of glasses, barely controlling his ecstasy. Kim had been born with terrible vision—20/100 in his left eye. Yet his father had never allowed him to feel like he had a disability. His father often found work for Yong Bae Kim that did not require perfect visual acuity. With four other children, of which Yong Bae was the eldest, there were plenty of chores in the fields where his father raised vegetables to sell at his roadside stand outside of Taegu Air Base. It was at his father’s business where Yong Bae Kim began to learn the basics of the English language and the American culture. He discovered he liked both.

The United States had seemed the only place for a young Korean man enthralled with astronomy; hence, after the death of his father and arrangements were made for the welfare of his widowed mother, Yong Bae enrolled at the University of Hawaii to obtain his Master’s and Ph.D. degrees. He had possessed strong doubts that he would ever be accepted at such a prestigious astronomy program. After all, his undergraduate degree was a hybrid acquired through some course work at Kyungpook National University and the remainder through Yeungnam University, both located in his home city of Taegu. Neither school was especially well-known in the field of astronomy. But the son of a peasant farmer felt extremely blessed to have any degree and the possibility of advanced degrees. Focusing the big optical telescope on a star in the constellation Scorpius, he surprised himself by speaking aloud, Can life get any better than this? There was no one there to answer, but it did not matter to Kim. The question was hypothetical. He already knew the answer.

His giddy mood was suddenly interrupted by anger, not anger from his normal impatience with both man and machines, but anger with himself. He realized that he had spent the past five minutes entering coordinates of the wrong star. He had busily thumbed down the list of stars in Scorpius from the Bright Star Catalog and read off the coordinates of beta SCO instead of those for alpha SCO. He was furious with himself, not only for wasting precious time on the telescope but also because his was an undergraduate mistake. Had he learned nothing in his three years of graduate work? He knew his mental inquiries were only wasting more time, and he returned to his challenge: to observe one of the largest known stars, Antares.

There it was right in front of his best eye. His left eye was still weaker than he would like, but a corrective surgery had allowed him to continue his pursuit of astronomy. Now it seemed that all the pain of eye correction, the years of study, and the distance from family and friends had been worthwhile as the giant binary star glistened. But the smaller companion star, normally green in color, appeared to have lost much of its color and was almost white. Kim wondered if his eyes were the problem or could he possibly be witnessing the transformation of the star into a white dwarf? All he had were questions and no answers, and his time on the telescope was quickly expiring. Squirting some optical drops into his eyes, he refocused the eyepiece and carefully examined the big red star. There could be no doubt he was watching the beginning of the end of a star and not just any star—a gargantuan star.

***

It was just a normal fall day in Washington, DC, if anything could be called normal in Washington. The Washington Post was full of scandals and hints of more scandals to come. The residents of this grand old city, as Americans count grand and old, were scurrying around the beltway to mundane and sometimes meaningless jobs. The early arrivers were discussing the latest sexual scandal of the President with the same enthusiasm and concern as the score of the latest Redskin’s game. The federal workers at the Pentagon and a hundred other government offices did not fret about the security of their positions. After all, they were members of the biggest bureaucracy in the world, and if the head of that bureaucracy happened to die in office, be impeached, or even resigned, nothing would really change in their world. Many politicians had come promising to drain the swamp, but nothing had ever really changed. The federal government weathered huge storms in the past and always survived. This institution to which they belonged was self-perpetuating and only knew how to grow, never shrink. It had not mattered whether Democrat or Republican occupied 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, bureaucrats had always figured a way to out politic the politicians. In some federal office breakrooms, where employees went to recuperate from doing nothing all day, there was a standing joke among the employees that Ross Perot would be elected President before their jobs would be endangered.

This morning’s headline angered the Leader of the Free World as he sat in his overstuffed chair in the Oval Office. He enjoyed these early mornings to himself and often sat in his office wearing nothing more than his briefs or, at most, an old comfortable pair of sweatpants. So much did he enjoy his informality that he once addressed the nation wearing his sweatpants, which he kept concealed beneath his desk.

Benton Destined to Bite the ‘Big One’—The article in the Post had already determined that he was not only a lame duck President but a dead duck President. In disgust, Bill Benton tossed the paper into the trash can underneath his desk. Apparently, that bunch at the Post suffered from political naiveté, he thought. Did they not know they were talking about the Lucite Latino? Bill had spent days thinking up this nickname and then had a friend leak it to the local press in San Antonio, Texas, when he was running for mayor. When asked by a young reporter why he had been christened with this moniker, Bill calmly replied, Because I’m smooth and I outlast every storm.

When times turned bad for Bill, as they had of late, he loved to reminisce about his early years in politics, those years of being a councilman and then a three-term mayor of the only major city that would elect a Latino in those days. He could say, without qualification, that he appreciated the people of San Antonio. They had embraced his Latino and Anglo sides. Perhaps this is what had made him acceptable and even appealing to the electorate in that multiracial/cultural city. He had never quite understood himself, but for whatever reason, the city had repeated their affirmation of his politics through five elections. He had never experienced such a strong covenant with any other group of people since.

The troubled thoughts of a nostalgic middle-aged man were interrupted by the intercom on his desk. It was his personal secretary, Jackie Jones, one of the few women he actually respected, at least a little. Jackie could always remind one that she was stuck with her rather blasé name due to making one of her biggest mistakes in life: marrying a worthless man named MSgt Aaron Jones.

Women had always been objects to him; too weak to consider a rival and too devious to take for granted. Hence, he found a need for them to fulfill certain physical needs and had taken one as a wife but only because it was absolutely necessary to fulfill his political agenda.

Jackie was different. She had been with him since those heady days as mayor of San Antonio and even before when she served as the financial secretary of his first political action committee. From the physical realm, Bill found nothing about Jackie even remotely attractive. Rather short, she wore only business suits, which seemed to emphasize her oversized rear end, no doubt acquired from years of sitting in uncomfortable government-issued desk chairs. Perhaps the box of chocolate-covered cherries in her top-right drawer had made some contribution. Yet he found her mentally stimulating, and she had a knack for giving him better advice on domestic policy than did his own political advisors.

Yes, Jackie, responded the President to the irritating buzzer on the intercom.

Mr. Poulos is here for your morning briefing, Mr. President.

Okay, send him in.

Bill did not like Jim Poulos even just a little. He found him arrogant, small-minded, and a racist who had not come out of the closet. Jim had grown up on Ward Parkway just south of the Plaza in Kansas City, Missouri. His home sat in one of the more posh areas of that city. His mother was an heir to the Ward fortune of Montgomery Ward fame, and she had the money to send her eldest child to any school he desired. Educated at Washington University in St. Louis with advanced degrees from Harvard in political science, he was the youngest member of the President’s inner circle at the age of twenty-nine. Bill sensed that Jim felt a sense of superiority because his education had been at the finest institutions while the President had been lucky to graduate from Texas A&M.

Good morning, Mr. President, Jim stated as he confidently strode across the Oval Office in his latest perfectly tailored Halls Brothers suit. Jim would not think of changing tailors now. He made monthly trips back to Kansas City claiming to visit family but spent the majority of his time shopping at Halls Brothers or Gucci. He had dressed for success since he was fifteen years old running for class President at St. Pius High School, and it had consistently served him well.

Jim was a natural politician. In his heart of hearts, he did not believe the man now holding the office was worthy to be President. As far as Jim was concerned, his present position was nothing more than an apprenticeship. He was certain he would be President of the United States of America one day, even if he had to bow and scrape before the unworthy man who held the position at present.

Yet Jim never even hinted such a sentiment to his closest friends. This President was unscrupulous, a philanderer, and reckless. But Jim was far too politically savvy to overlook the power of the presidency. This man, Bill Benton, could help him move up the food chain, which is Washington, DC, or send him back to Ward Parkway with his Halls Brothers suits.

"Mr. President, for the first order of business, the Joint Chiefs believe the situation in Bosnia is quickly deteriorating. They do not believe our NATO forces are strong enough to defend themselves in the event of a total Serbian offensive and are certainly undermanned for enforcing the UN directives. They recommend either an increase in manpower and hardware or a timely withdrawal of our American forces before a potential military catastrophe. You will receive a detailed briefing by Colonel West at your National Security Briefing later this morning.

The second order of business, which calls for even more immediate action than the first, is this report in the Post this morning."

Holding the front page of the paper up so the President could see the headline, Jim saw the President’s discarded newspaper in the trash can and quickly threw his own copy behind him into a chair.

Mr. President, how would you like me and the staff to spin this?

Bill had known he was going to have to deal with this matter, but he had hoped it would not find its way into the press prior to his trip to Israel. He had learned one thing in his six years as President: the American Press tended not to ask the really hard questions on foreign soil, and the American people were usually favorably impressed by a peace treaty. They were usually willing to forgive a minor dalliance on the part of their leaders, but Bill knew that things had gone far beyond simple flirtation. Fortunately, the press did not know, and the American people did not want to know. It would just be his little secret. Oh, of course, the young lady involved would know, but she would not say a word. She loved him. Imagine that! She believed this man, who had never fully loved anyone, truly loved her and was ready to divorce the First Lady for her.

Bill almost chuckled aloud as he thought of the irony. He had even told her about his past sexual conquests and told her they numbered in the tens and maybe hundreds. Still, she persisted in believing she was the only one for him, so why should he bust her bubble? Besides, her love assured her silence.

"Now, Jim, I don’t want you to spin it at all. That story is full of speculation and maybes with almost no fact. I’m headed to Israel tomorrow, and the more Presidential I appear, the less interest the American people will have in any sleazy story. I know there is a ‘tabloid mentality’ out there, but most of them don’t vote. The ones who do don’t want to think of their President as a tawdry, hormonal overachiever. By the time I return from my trip, this will be a page 10 story.

Besides, you and I both know where the Post picked up that story. We have a frustrated bunch of congressmen on the Hill that can’t pin a campaign finance charge on us, so they’re leaking stories to the press to try to get us from a different angle. You guys just sit tight until I get back, and I bet there won’t be much to deal with by then."

Whatever you say, Mr. President, responded Jim Poulos.

Jim wanted to tell his President that he was a fool but thought better of it. Only the past weekend, Jim had made one of his weekend excursions to Kansas City. While there, he took in a traveling Broadway show at the Starlight Theatre.

At the intermission, he had stood at a refreshment stand and overheard the conversations of two male staff behind the counter. In reference to the latest allegations of the President’s sexual dalliances, one worker remarked, Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. First, there was Jenny Plant, then Alice Sparks, and now this college girl, Monique Grabowski. They can’t all be telling lies. They don’t even know each other, so why would they conspire to lie against the President? The only thing they have in common is they all say they slept with the President.

Jim had been so shaken by what he heard that he did not stay for the second half of the play. Instead, he considered what impact this new disgrace would have on the President, more importantly the presidency, and most importantly on his own political aspirations. Jim trusted the opinions of these people in his own hometown. In general, he had found the grounded people of the Midwest to be good barometers for new political ideas. If it would fly in Kansas City or Omaha, it would probably fly anywhere. They were people who still considered common sense and good judgment as virtues and blended them with just the right amount of Judeo-Christian ethic.

The next day, prior to his return to Washington, DC, Jim impersonated a pollster and stood outside the main post office in downtown Kansas City. During the previous evening, he had typed out some questions, which he felt would elicit some heartfelt responses from his hometown electorate. In blue jeans and a sweatshirt, no one recognized him or would some of his immediate family since they assumed he slept in a Halls Brothers suit, as he conducted his impromptu survey.

Most people had not argued for killing the President or even impeaching him, except for that one ardent Republican in from his Kansas farm selling his hogs at the Stockyards. He had made some lewd comment about letting one of his flesh-eating hogs snack on parts of the President’s anatomy.

But Jim had still been concerned since the consensus opinion seemed to favor further inquiries into the private habits of the President. It had seemed to Jim that the smoothest politician he had ever known, the President, had played far too fast and loose with his private life and people were becoming concerned that this behavior might spill over into his public decisions.

The President ended the briefing by pretending to read a Department of Agriculture report on the drought in the South. Jim knew this signal from a hundred briefings before. As Jim gathered his notebook and some memos together, he did so with intentional languor. Walking slowly toward the Oval Office door, Jim looked over his shoulder and said, Mr. President, in the event you change your mind regarding responding to the story, would you like for me and my staff to compile a bullet paper with four or five possible spins we could put on it?

No, Jim, don’t waste your time. There’s absolutely no need to respond. You can better use your time putting the finishing touches on that speech to the UN for me.

Yes, Mr. President, Jim responded as he hurriedly left the room. He, with his keen political instincts, knew the President was taking the winds of change too lightly and that he could be blown away by them. Jim’s challenge was to not be blown away with the President, should the worst case scenario come to pass.

***

Bill sat in the Oval Office, alone again. He was thankful to be rid of that smug irritant, Jim Poulos, and could now return to more peaceful thoughts. It was nearly an hour before his National Security briefing, so he telephoned Jackie and told her to hold all calls while he studied the disaster relief proposal submitted by the Department of Agriculture and FEMA. Jackie pretended to believe him and promised to hold all calls. Bill sat back in one of his overstuffed chairs and closed his eyes with the proposal close at hand, for appearance sake. He allowed his mind to drift away from the problems of the present, knowing he had the resourcefulness to deal with them later, and recounted his childhood.

His mother had been born in El Valle, Panama, and Bill had loved to visit his family there when he was a child. His father too was born in Panama but to much better circumstances. Bill’s paternal grandfather had been an employee of the Panama Canal Commission, and Bill’s father had been born in the Gorgas Army Hospital, not at home like his mother. Bill’s father, William, was a true Zonie, who had blonde hair and blue eyes, but spoke fluently in Spanish and English. In his senior year at Balboa High School, William had felt claustrophobic in the Zone and enlisted in the United States Air Force. He wanted to see the world, but when the Air Force discovered he was fluent in Spanish, his first permanent duty assignment was Howard Air Base, Panama, just across the canal from where he had grown up in Balboa. It was during William’s first leave from the maintenance shed that Bill’s father and mother had met.

While walking through an open-air feria or marketplace in El Valle, Bill’s father had stopped to look at some unfired clay sculptures, common in the mountains of the Pacific coast of Panama. From behind the counter, he heard a young lady’s voice ask, "Usted comprarla?" (Are you buying it?) William, Sr. had later told his son that he had never heard a voice as sweet as that of his mother. He was smitten.

El Valle was only an hour and half drive up the Pan American Highway from Howard AB, so the two young lovers met every few days after duty hours. Even though Bill’s father was only an Airman in rank, he did own an old car and was considered to be rich by the standards of Bill’s mother, Rosa Diaz. Rosa’s father, Sr. Domingo Diaz, and her three older brothers were all wood craftsmen. They owned a small sawmill and made hand-carved mahogany doors, which could be found in some of the finest palacios in El Valle. Though popular for his art, Panamanians considered Sr. Diaz a campesino and paid him little for