The golem shook his head.
'I didn't make you? My hands ached for a month after digging all that clay from the riverbank. Now you're telling me I didn't make you?'
The golem rose from the steps and lumbered toward Miles, towering over him by several feet. He turned him as one might turn a paper doll and gave Miles a gentle shove toward the door.
'You don't have to get physical,' Miles complained. 'I get the point already.'
The golem shook his head, pointed to the shotgun leaning in the corner by the front door, and then pointed to the back of the house.
Miles' face brightened. 'Oh! You want me to guard the rear of the house?'
The huge gray man nodded solemnly.
'Wade, too?'
Again, the nod.
'You're a good man … ah, thing, Hershel. I like you. You don't carry on a conversation worth spit, but I like you. And,' he looked up at the expressionless face, 'for all of us, I thank you.'
The golem looked upward, toward the Heavens.
'Thank Him? Oh, I have, Hershel. A hundred times each day.'
The golem nodded and walked back to the steps, slowly sitting down, his massive arms dangling by his side, daring anyone to enter the territory he was given life to protect.
Wade was on his feet, shotgun in hand, when Miles reentered the house. 'You heard?' Miles asked.
'The golem is smart,' Wade said. 'To think about the rear of the house.'
'Smart?' Miles looked startled. 'How can he be smart? He don't have a brain. He's clay, from the river outside of town, and that's dry half the time.'
'He's smart in ways we won't ever understand,' the editor insisted. 'You may have molded him, old friend, but the Almighty breathed life into him.'
Miles smiled. 'Least I get credit for something.'
'This is going to be the most difficult part, isn't it, Sam?' Jane Ann asked. 'The waiting, I mean?'
'You've asked me that before. No. I told you: the most difficult part lies near the end. And you are not prepared to face it. Not yet.'
She smiled, and she was beautiful. 'I try not to think about it.'
'It's time you did; time you began preparing. Get my Bible.'
She walked to the table, picking up Balon's Bible. 'You want me to read the twenty-third psalm?'
Balon smiled through his mist, projecting: 'Never anticipate a command.'
'Yes, Sergeant.'
'Read psalm three. Read how the Lord will sustain you. Read it again and again until you know it by heart.'
She sat with head bowed, reading aloud, again and again.
Finally, Balon said: 'Now read psalms five and twenty.'
She read and reread those, then looked at the mist.
'Now the twenty-third,' he told her.
Then he had her read 46 and 90, and of the 119th, she read Nun.
Balon thrust: 'Now read them again and again. Take comfort and keep the faith as you do so, for His words will sustain you.'
She looked at the mist that was all she had ever loved on this earth and said, 'I love you, Sam Balon.'
'Read!'
'Isn't this lovely, my dear?' Falcon asked. 'I find it so mentally refreshing to ride through all of nature's beauty.'
'It is beautiful,' Lana replied. 'I feel … so peaceful here.' She smiled at him. 'And I'm glad I'm with you, Mr. Falcon.'
'Thank you, dear. But just Falcon, please. I am too conscious of the differences in our ages as it is.'
'Oh, that's silly, Falcon. You're the most handsome man I've ever met. Would you be offended if I asked a personal question?'
Would you be offended if I shoved this cock of mine in your pussy? Falcon thought. He smiled, riding behind her. And then in your mouth and up your ass? 'Of course not, dear.'
'Well,' she turned to smile at him, 'how … ah … old are you, Falcon?'
Four hundred and seventy-seven, he thought smiling. Or was it four hundred and seventy-eight? 'I am forty- eight years old, dear.'
She twisted her lovely ass in the saddle and said, 'Oh, that's young, Falcon!'
