House of Gold (14 page)

+  +  +

"What do you mean you don't have any money?" Buzz
asked Sam in July, on the deck of Sam's house.

"It's not that I don't have money, it's that my money is tied up in the business and in this house," Sam explained.

He had never spoken in detail about his wealth in all the years Buzz had known him. Buzz had just assumed there was a million or more dollars in the Fisk bank account.

"First of all," Sam began, "most of my wealth is invested in Edwards.
Almost all of it. The value of my labor over the past eleven years is 'stored' in the company. Until it sells, I don't have much cash to work with.

"Secondly, Ellie has been giving away more than half my salary since we got married. While we try to live modestly in our Bay Village home, there are taxes and expenses there. We take that one nice vacation every year, of course. But most of our monthly
income goes to charities. Ellie also gave away almost everything I got from my father's estate, which really wasn't much. I have a substantial sum in Christopher's college trust fund–"

"Why don't you take that out?" Buzz interrupted tactlessly.

"It's not as simple as that. I would lose much of it to taxes. I won't belabor you with the details. I have taken all my money out of the market, and between
that and what I had on hand, minus the cost of the farm in Bagpipe, we can just about swing building our new house and the improvements to the property–
if and when
our Bay Village house sells. At that time, I'll have some extra to help you out with your new home, and to stock up on supplies."

This news had rocked Buzz. It would be months before the company officially went onto the market–because
of something called due diligence, according to Sam. If the word spread to the general public about the probability of collapse, the economy could take a dive from one day to the next, making the sale of Edwards less likely. The Fisk house had now been on the market for almost two months with no offers.

"We'll just have to trust God, Buzz," Sam added. "I'm sure He has a plan for the money. If
Edwards sells, we'll have more money than we'll know what to do with. I'm sure Ellie has most of it earmarked for her charities. If it doesn't sell, it doesn't sell. Until then, we'll just have to wait until my house sells. At least your house is already gone."

"Yeah," Buzz agreed. He had actually gotten a good price for it–one hundred and ten thousand. Just enough to build a modest little home
in Bagpipe.

"Trust in God," Sam repeated serenely, putting a hand on Buzz's shoulder.

His calm faith was almost as annoying as it was-consoling.

+  +  +

In August, Buzz and Sam made two trips to New Hampshire and one to Canada to line up contractors. Buzz visited two modular home companies in Quebec, bringing rough plans Mel had created on a home-design software program. Sam found a company in
Berlin that manufactured custom, pre-cut post-and-beam homes, although it would have to be assembled on-site. He began working on Ellie's plan with a consultant there.

+  +  +

In September they finalized plans for their homes, began buying solar panels, purchased a marine-grade diesel generator, lined up a septic system contractor, and then ordered pre-fabricated basement walls from a company
in Massachusetts.

In October the construction of their driveway–a gravel road–was delayed when they discovered that their contractor, a good man, was juggling several clients during his busy season, and was only able to show up half the time.

Both families soon discovered that it was difficult to find subcontractors for electric, plumbing, and finishing work. As with almost all construction work,
there were unexpected delays and red tape–getting a permit from the state for their septic systems and so forth. Most of their contractors had to come from as far away as Berlin to the south (over an hour and a half drive) or from Colebrook, over an hour to the southeast. Almost all the planning had to be done from Cleveland, which caused further delays.

By the end of September, the Fisks' house
had still not sold. Edwards was scheduled to go on the market in January. Buzz and Mel placed the order for their modular home, which was now due to arrive in late October.

+  +  +

The delays with constructing the driveway, then the septic systems, pushed back the excavation of the foundations into early November. The excavation was delayed when a rock ledge was discovered underneath Sam's building
site. This had to be blasted. These developments delayed the delivery of Buzz's house from the modular home company; the two-bedroom ranch didn't arrive until mid-November.

Buzz and Sam flew to New Hampshire every other week. Buzz was missing his classes and had to drop out of chiropractic school, only six months shy of graduation.

Sam began supplementing Buzz's modest income because the big man
was not able to take on as many masotherapy sessions at the clinic. He and Mel and the Fisks had been missing, much to their regret, most of the Penny Parties, although the annual Thanksgiving Buzz Bowl was held without a hitch.

+  +  +

By December they were racing the winter weather. Their new water well had finally been drilled, but they weren't able to complete the complicated cistern and water
lines stretching to the top of the hill (for natural water pressure) designed by an engineer Sam had found from Concord, almost three hours to the south.

Sam had convinced the group to forego hooking up to a power line from the local electric utility; the line would have cost a fortune to bring down from the road. They were then required to locate and hire specialized electricians from Portland,
Maine, to install the custom solar/generator system Buzz had designed with the help of a consultant from Vermont.

The electric contractors from Maine came and went, but the system was filled with bugs. Frustrated, Sam fired the Maine contractors. The ground froze in late December, and the problems with the electrical system made Buzz's house uninhabitable until the spring of 1999.

The road to
the farm became caked with snow and ice, although it was plowed and sanded with fastidious attention by the town, which shared a giant snowplow with Errol. The Henderson Place was almost six miles from the center of Bagpipe.

Their driveway became impassible without a four-wheel drive vehicle, as snow would thaw during brief periods of warm weather, then freeze into ice. Sam traded his Accord in
for a 4WD Subaru wagon, which he gave to Buzz. Sam then leased a diesel GMC pick-up through Edwards, had a plow installed on it, and left it in New Hampshire at the jobsite.

The Fisk's home had still not sold going into the winter slowdown. The Bay Village market had gone soft, and Sam's asking price, although below what he would have wanted under other conditions, appealed to an extremely small
percentage of prospective home buyers.

Despite their original goal of moving to Bagpipe before the new year, both families decided to wait until summer, when Sam's new house was scheduled to be ready enough for a move-in. They spent the rest of the winter and spring in Cleveland, doing research and buying supplies, which they stored in Sam's garage. The supply list was endless.

By February, Sam
ran out of cash, and they decided to wait until the house sold before making more bulk purchases. The Fisks had to wait for Sam's paychecks now.

The Woodwards were also out of extra money. They had agreed beforehand to avoid credit card or mortgage debt, just in case the millennium brought a depression instead of a collapse, and in the event that Sam's business didn't sell at all.

Buzz continued
his daily research on the computer crisis. As 1998 turned into 1999, the mainstream reports on the now infamous Millennium Bug became contradictory and confusing. But the facts he found as he dug deep into raw sources on the Net confirmed his worst fears.

Despite rosy press releases and website announcements from big companies, the mandatory SEC filings and insider user-groups revealed that most
companies and government agencies were missing their deadlines, falling behind, scrambling to find programmers who just didn't exist, and generally mucking things up just as Sam had predicted.

Reports from countries overseas were even more disheartening. Asian countries, already mired in a severe recession, were ignoring the problem. Russia was a basket case, as usual. Some countries in the Middle
East had even announced that they would not bother to try to fix the bug until after the new year, when they could discover which systems were infected.

Numerous government announcements and newspaper reports painted people who were making conservative preparations as extremists, and cautioned Americans not to take their money out of the banks.

It was clear to Buzz that the powers-that-be feared
bank runs and were doing their best to convince Americans there was nothing to worry about. He felt ambivalent about this; the status quo, and the strong economy that came with it, after all, was making it easier for Buzz to complete his preparations.

Denial is your friend,
he thought sardonically,
and it's your friend's enemy.

+  +  +

January, February, and March passed in a barrage of planning,
discussion, family life, and trips back and forth to New Hampshire. They gave up futile attempts to convince their friends that the bug was a threat. Mel even began bringing the boys over to see their grandmother on the occasional after-noon–without Buzz, of course.

As for Buzz, his attempts via phone and email to convince his daughter Jennifer about the threat proved fruitless. Jennifer was now
a freshman at Gonzaga in Washington State, and had been estranged from her father since she was a toddler. Jennifer didn't practice the faith, and, poisoned by her bitter, fallen-away mother, had always considered him to be a religious fanatic. She hadn't called him "Dad" in over twelve years. By her lights, it was clear that his views on the millennium bug made him an
extremist, survivalist
religious-fanatic.

Her mother, Sandy, lived in Florida now, happily remarried to a businessman named Joey Caprizona, a Brooklyn expatriate who owned a sprawling Chevrolet-Subaru-Mazda-Kia-GMC-Yamaha-SeaDoo-Lexus dealership in North Palm Beach.

When May of 1999 zoomed around, the Fisks' house in Ohio finally sold, and to most Americans, the world pretty much looked exactly how it had looked in May of 1998.

+  +  +

When Melanie married Buzz, they had tried to conceive a child right away and Buzz had hit the target on the first try. After Markie was born, the on-demand, all-natural breast-feeding delayed Packy's arrival for almost three years.

Mel's fertility kicked back into gear in March of 1999. It was a difficult decision, but they decided to try to postpone their next child in order to avoid giving birth
in January of 2000. In June, despite their best efforts to learn Natural-Family Planning on the fly, Buzz hit the target again.

Mel was pregnant.

Chapter Six

The Insurance Policy

"Oh honey," Mel said. "I'm so ashamed of myself."

"Why?" Buzz asked.

They were both looking at the little red plus sign on the pregnancy test. They had decided to see what was what after cleaning the dinner dishes.

"Because I never wanted to be the kind of woman who ever regretted being pregnant."

They were standing on either side of an island counter in the kitchen
of their two-bedroom apartment on the second floor of a typical 1940s Lakewood double-decker. Buzz was leaning his elbows on the counter, his eyes level with Mel's. Packy was napping in the bedroom. Markie was watching a Gumby video in the living room. Moving boxes were everywhere. They would be heading to their new home in Bagpipe in one week.

He looked into her eyes for several long moments.

She wondered what he was thinking. He hadn't shaved in three days, and his crewcut was getting a bit too bushy.

How come I don't look into your eyes like this anymore?
he thought.
Does this happen to every married couple?

There was something
powerful
about looking into his wife's eyes. Something he had forgotten.

Yes,
that
was it.

"You're the one I love," he told her plainly.

This earned him an
elfin smile. She leaned over and gave him a peck on a stubbly cheek.

"I know. But this baby will come in March of next year. Terrible timing, end-of-the-world-wise."

"I don't know about that," he said, still looking her in the eyes. She looked down at her hands. "We tried to learn NFP. I still think it was the night we rented You've Got Mail–"

"Oh stop!" she gasped, then slapped him on the arm.

"Ouch. What I mean is, we were open to life, and if you're expecting, then we'll just give God the benefit of the doubt. This child is meant to be. Maybe he'll be a bishop or a saint or a carpenter with ten children who each have ten children–and by using NFP we were screwing around with his destiny. We'll just have to trust God."

"How come you always assume they're going to be boys? Trust God,
trust God, trust God–you're starting to sound like Sam," she observed after a moment.

She turned and placed the plastic test-square on a shelf in the cabinet. He side-stepped the counter and snatched her arm, then spun her around, pulling her into his embrace.

"And what's so bad about trusting God?" he asked, lowering his forehead to touch hers, his voice low and intimate.

She refused to look
up at him.

"Nothing."

"Come on, Sweet-Sweet," he urged softly. "Tell Dr. Buzz vhat iz dee problem?"

She turned her head, pulled out of his embrace, and walked out of the kitchen.

"I said nothing!" she called behind her, stifling tears.
He's not going to see me cry.

He saw her go past Markie to the outside balcony.

He looked up at the light fixture on the ceiling. There was no use trying to talk
when the scarlet fire was blazing.

He followed her out and found her on the wooden bench, crying silently, hugging herself. He lowered himself to the bench next to her and gave her what she really needed.

He held her, and said nothing.

They moved to New Hampshire four days later. The Fisks were set to move after the Fourth of July. Edwards had not sold yet, but the economy was humming right along,
and Sam insisted that it was just a matter of time before an offer came in.

+  +  +

It was a chilly evening at the Rocky River courts, and all the hoopsters had gone home except for two six-foot-six friends. One, beyond the foul line, was thin and lanky. The other, standing under the rim, dressed in sweats, had the well-muscled, Olympian physique of a decathlete. From afar, this herculean specimen
seemed as limber as a thirty-year-old. He was, in fact, in his mid-forties, a former All-American football player.

The lanky man launched a graceful jumper with slow, perfect form. The ball clanged off the rim; the massive one, Mark Johnson, enveloped the ball into one enormous hand, then effortlessly zipped a pass out beyond the foul line to Sam Fisk, who in one smooth motion fired again.

Swish.
Another pass. Swish.

"That's ten. My turn," Mark called out, keeping the ball, then dribbling past his friend as they switched positions. Mark's first three jumpers clanked off the rim.

He never did have a good shot. The ball always felt like a pebble in his fingers. Years of weight-lifting had not destroyed his coordination, but his touch was now almost completely gone. He had taken to wearing
contacts to make the basket less blurry, and wore a brace on his left knee–an old injury.

He managed to sink three of his next seven. The drill was complete. The giant and the beanstalk sat down on the old wooden bleachers next to the court to imbibe the perfunctory Gatorade, sweat dripping from their brows and chins.

Mark had called Sam at work and asked for this one last night of hoops before
the Fisks moved to New Hampshire. Sam had been much too busy with preparations and trips to New Hampshire to play pick-up this year. Mark, and even Buzz before he moved away, and the Man, had kept up the hallowed tradition of summer hoops in Rocky River.

Opus Dei Bill White had retired a few years earlier, blaming an increasingly debilitating back condition. Those who remained were of course older,
and a bit slower, for sure, but were still good enough on their best nights to reel off a few wins against the quicker, younger players who dominated the regular games here.

But time had taken its toll; two years ago, the Man had ended an era by abdicating his role as Rocky River Court Judge to a younger man with the unexciting and unmysterious name of John.

On some nights, a few of the other
oldtimers could still be heard telling new players about the legendary team consisting of Mark, Sam, Buzz, the Man, and Deadeye Bill White. The Scaps.

Buzz had rustled them all together ten years ago, and Ellie had come up with the name: The Scaps (short for scapulars, which Buzz, Mark, and Bill always wore while playing). The Scaps had won the most exciting game in the history of Cleveland's
annual charity tournament, the Revco Ten Thousand, against another legendary team from the East Side, the highly-favored Infernos, led by Cleveland hoop legend, Dante "the Italian" Curry. It seemed as if the whole city had seen the game between Dante's Infernos and the Scaps on cable TV.

In local basketball lore, the upset had been the basketball equivalent of a high school team beating the NBA
Champions.

"That's Mark Johnson. He got over twenty rebounds against the 'fernos, who never knew what hit them. And there's Buzz Woodward–he shut down Curry
and
he nailed a forty-five foot bomb to ice the game!" In fact, it had been a thirty-five footer, but the distance grew with the years, and Dante had scored almost all the points for the Infernos.

"And the Man, he was the captain. Did you
know he won a national championship playing football for Notre Dame? What's the Man's real name? Boy, you
are
ignorant! Yo,
nobody
knows his real name, 'ceptin'
his mama.
Most folks don't think the Man even
got
a real name. And lemme give you some advice, snot-fer-brains–don't you go asking 'im if you wanna keep playin' on
his
courts."

Still, it had been so many years ago.

The years between your
mid-thirties and your late forties were like dog years,
Mark thought now.

Mark and Maggie Johnson. He the FBI agent. The other Catholic Power Couple besides the Fisks in the social group. Pioneer homeschoolers–Maggie had founded the first Catholic homeschooling association in the area, and was well-known and respected in the diocesan offices. Four children, three older girls all turning out well
and a boy, the apple of Mark's eye. Mark's son Seamus was Christopher Fisk's best friend.

As Sam sat next to Mark now, it was hard to imagine that Mark's marriage had been on the rocks ten years ago, just before he met Sam Fisk. Mark had put in for a transfer to Ohio to take a less-demanding assignment in the white-collar crime unit. This enabled him to rebuild his marriage by spending more time
with his wife and children, and to be closer to his boyhood friend, Bill–Opus Dei–White.

Mark was now director of the unit, and basically rode a desk. In recent years, for the sake of his family, and with no regrets, he had turned down two offers to head more important posts outside of Cleveland, effectively ending any linger-ing ambitions for a more successful and better-paying career.

The sun
had set now, and the vapor lights were flickering on. A lone jogger passed on the path on the other side of the courts. These were two men who spent most of their lives doing, not saying. The Gatorade bottles were empty.

"How's the knee?" Sam asked finally, breaking the awkward silence.

"It's only pain," Mark said, a familiar doxology.

A minute passed. Mark stood up and stretched, keys in hand,
as if to leave, resting his weight gingerly on his bum knee.

"You came to ask me something," Sam leaned back on the wooden plank behind him.

"It's about the damned computers," Mark stated.

"Are you still a skeptic?"

"Yes."

"So, what is there to talk about?"

Mark looked over Sam's head, uncharacteristically avoiding his eyes. He sat back down. There, that was better. They could both look at the
court together.

"I've been hearing things in the office. You know, a lot of bureau guys are ex-military. Seals. Delta Force. Black ops. We all have contacts."

Sam didn't respond, asking
And?
silently.

"And there are some interesting conversations going on around the water cooler. Did you know the National Guard is preparing for a national deployment in December?"

"In fact, yes, I did know that."
Sam nodded. "Buzz told me he read something on the Internet about a nationwide drill last month. There were official denials after leaks from concerned guardsmen. Then some kind of statement about anti-terrorism."

"That's the official version. It was purportedly an anti-terrorist exercise. Inside word says the operation was bug-driven. Tell me something, how many terrorist organizations have the
resources to attack the entire United States at the same time?"

"The question answers itself," Sam replied gravely, but keeping his voice light.

There was a lull.

"Seamus is gonna miss Christopher," Mark finally said.

"You can always come visit."

"Yeah, we'll have to do that later this summer, after you get settled in," Mark replied.

Both men knew this was a script, and that there would be no
visit.

"And we'll come back to Cleveland. I've still got Edwards to run until it sells. If it sells."

"Right," Mark finished.

He turned to Sam, looked him in the eye, opened his mouth, then closed it. Hesitation was not a Mark Johnson trait.

This bug has a way of throwing people off-balance,
Sam thought.

"Mark, I know what's eating at you. There's still time to do something, to get ready."

"It's
not that, Sam. I've been thinking about doing a few things out at the Oberlin place. Storing up a few–emergency supplies. Security items, if you get my drift."

Security items,
thought Sam.
Guns. Ammunition.

Buzz had been bugging Sam about this very kind of security item.
Mark is an FBI agent, after all.

"You can't eat gunpowder," Sam observed sagely.

"Maybe not."

"There's always New Hampshire–"

"Maggie would never go for it. I know her. She can be pretty hard-headed..."

"Kinda like Ellie?"

"Worse than Ellie."

Both men chuckled. Maggie had thrown Mark out of the house for several months, way back when, before they met Sam.

"Besides, it doesn't make any sense for us to run off to New Hampshire. It's too late, for one thing. And what would I do for a living up there?

"The nearest FBI office
is in Manchester. Then I've got Sarah's tuition at Thomas Aquinas College, Angela starts at Steubenville next year, and Meggie's thinking of going to Magnificat High. I'm going to have to mortgage the house again come fall."

So you have been thinking about it,
Sam thought.

"The housing market is soft," Mark continued, starting a new thread. "Seems like more and more houses are going on the market.
Makes me wonder if this bug isn't starting to get under the skin of some other families–but nobody is admitting it out loud.

"Maggie knows two Protestant families from her home-schooling group who're doin' just what you and Buzz are doin', only they're goin' to Wisconsin. Sayin' God told'm to bug out–and half their church is bugging out with 'em."

Sam noticed that if Mark talked in long paragraphs,
by the end, he sometimes reverted to his clipped New Jersey accent. Buzz was the same way.

"My house was on the market for a long time before it sold," Sam stated, rubbing his chin.

"Sam, I don't know much about computers. I'm just a dumb jock with a shield, but..." Mark was lost for words.

"But it's all so overwhelming, right," Sam finished for him. "It's impossible to prepare for the end of
the world."

Mark affirmed Sam's statement with silence. Then, after a minute, as if finishing the thought, added, "But that hasn't stopped you and Buzz from trying."

"I'm pretty sure that what we're doing is what God wants for us," Sam explained. "Our spiritual director has been in our corner since day one. God has helped us find a perfect location, and helped us build two houses under difficult
circumstances.

"You have no idea how hard it is to build up there. Contractors are scarce, and the few good ones are extremely busy during the short summer season. We're not going to finish half the project we planned.

"Even so, I am certain that what we're doing is
not
what God wants for everyone. I'm sure of it. It's too hard. Maybe He got me and Buzz started on this...this project," Sam always
had trouble
naming
what they were doing, "...because I could afford it and because Buzz was just crazy enough to go along with it. You know how he is. Ellie and I wouldn't dream of doing this without him and Mel."