A Thirteenth Hour Read online

  A Thirteenth Hour

  And Other Works of John Rizzato

  John Rizzato

  Copyright © 2017 by John Rizzato.

  ISBN:

  Softcover

  978-1-5434-2364-8

  eBook

  978-1-5434-2363-1

  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: 05/15/2017

  Xlibris

  1-888-795-4274

  www.Xlibris.com

  760410

  Contents

  “In the Thirteenth Hour”

  Nature Electric

  “The Wisdom not to”

  “Finding Jeremy”

  “Golden Age”

  “Left Behind”

  A very special thank you to the great team of professionals at Xlibris who worked tirelessly to make my first book my first book possible:

  Mary Flores

  Publishing Consultant*

  Rey Flores

  Agreement Specialist

  David Martell

  Submissions Representative

  Grace Stevens

  Operations Supervisor

  An extra thank you to Dr. Speck of NASA for the encouragement!

  This book is

  dedicated to all the people who work together to make our society more functional and more a joy to live in, rather than a test of faith as my religion: Catholicism teaches we must some-times endure, and for those people who endure tests and provide testaments to faith such as our united states intelligence officers and military personal but not excluding our U.S. military Catholic Chaplains. I would also like to thank all those whose special work in the medical and social sciences fields make our American society a society of kindness and caring who make ALL our lives better and more meaningful. Lastly, I would like to thank my editor Mary Flores at Xlibris books for bearing with me through the trials we shared to bring this book to print!

  “In the Thirteenth Hour”

  It was nine-thirty in the morning. I was sleeping late; because I had been up most of the night at Province Radio Telescope Observatory; which I am in charge of. There is usually less static and cold dessert nights make it easier to work. The clear night sky is rather invigorating and somewhat foreboding as well. I always enjoyed the stimulation of working a night shift, as well.

  The night before we had spent a quarter of our time “bouncing” radio waves off of known meteors to find new ones we might be unaware of. The last two hours of our shift; we talked Astronomy and drank java and ate pastries. It was fun; as well as eventful; if your universe is one of the big questions in your life.

  The phone rang and I was groggy; so I didn’t pick up until the sixth ring. I was confused. I heard the word “lost” and another word “mattress” and also “fell out of the bed of the truck.” I wasn’t sure what words came first. The voice was familiar; it was my wife’s’ cousin; so I felt, contra-wise to the information, reassured.

  The summarized version of what he was telling me; was that my youngest son, four year old Samuel, had fallen asleep in the bed of my wife’s cousin’s pick-up truck on the way to his root farm last night. It was a fifteen, plus, hour trip there, and he had been drinking a friend’s spirits on the way. Samuel had wanted to sleep in the bed of the truck on a small portable mattress; that he could lie on and see the stars before he fell off to sleep. During the trip he and the mattress and his blanket had fallen out of the bed of the truck. My wife’s cousin had stopped and absentmindedly left it open. Samuel might not have even woken up when he fell out of the bed of the truck.

  I was alarmed until I realized he had his blanket and a mattress to insulate him from the frigid dessert air and cold dessert ground. It, suddenly, occurred to me that his blanket was very thin; if I remembered correctly, and I was sure I had. If he was not found by today the experience could be fatal for Samuel; especially if he had to leave the mattress far behind to find shade, and he had to “weather” another dessert night.

  The dessert during winter was a dangerous place. The daytime was hot and drained the fluids from your body, and it was cold enough at night to kill you from exposure to the cold; that brought a question to mind: “did he have any water or liquids?” He, my wife’s cousin, said “half a juice bottle. I’m so sorry(!). I can’t see how I could have been that forgetful? I’ve never been this forgetful! Should I call the sheriff?”

  I responded “yes and give them my phone number!”

  He barely hesitated and said “there’s a problem.”

  I said “what now?!” I said it with a snap to my voice.

  He said “there’s about thirty different combinations; as you know, to my farm by truck. I can’t remember which combinations of trails and roads that I took to get home!”

  I said “calm down,” and I thought quickly; “check whatever you ate or drank last night for impurities or a strange odor, but first call the sheriff and say that I’m requesting search aircraft!”

  He seemed troubled and; so he bobbled his words ra-r-right I’m ha-hanging-up!”

  I said “I’ll call you in an hour!”

  I decided that I needed a cold shower and to get clean so that I could think! I had two years of “med school” that had taught me unclear thinking was a mortal enemy! I showered for forty-five minutes and took every last “piece” of dirt and sand, including body oils, off my body.

  Next I made myself a mug of java and sat down to think. I was alarmed but not as alarmed as I would be. I had five children between the ages of four and ten years old. Samuel, the four year old, was the best behaved of all of them. We usually didn’t worry about him too much; because he was so good.

  The current situation gave me a reminder that I had lost my wife four-teen months ago. The impact of losing Samuel would devastate the other children as well as the rest of our family. The loss would be a burning cut to us all; simply because he is such a good child. I was determined not to let that happen. He deserved better, and I wouldn’t put our family through another loss this soon after my wife had “gone to heaven;” as I and the children were now in the habit of saying.

  True to my statement I called back exactly an hour later.

  “I found it James said triumphantly! There was some rust in the ‘tea-shine! I don’t know how that got into Billy’s ‘shine.’ I helped him work on his ‘still,” distiller, “myself. That thing is two years old;” the liquor distiller, “it won’t rust even if it was fifty years old!”

  I asked, calmer than I felt, “did you call the sheriff?”

  He replied in the affirmative, and he added “the sheriff and state police are out there. The state police have two planes and three helicopters in the air. I was just getting ready t
o go out there myself.”

  I said “don’t do that. The rust you ‘ate’ will make you a little wobbly as well as not clear headed. Wait for the sheriff to come by. Take out any maps of your land along with adjacent lands and fax them to the state police. Do you have their phone number?”

  He said “I’m not thinking” he said with a bass sigh. “I’ll get those maps, and,” he added, “the state police want you to call.” He gave me their phone number. He added again “don’t worry Paul; we’ll get him back!”

  I said “that’s the good thought”, as nice as I could; because I wanted him calm and as worry free as I could manage, to make sure that he did a good job on those maps. I then said “I know we will. Sincerely, thank you James.”

  I called the state police and confirmed that a search was in progress. I got some bad news. By statistical averages: Samuel had a “bare” fifty percent chance of survival. That excluded the possibility that he had died on impact or soon after sliding out of the truck! I shook. I asked the trooper to send me copies of theirs and James’ maps to my work fax number. He agreed and invited me to a steak dinner: “when we get your boy back!”

  I considered the worst possibilities and I shook! I couldn’t lose another loved one so soon. Some people faced hardship bravely; so I used that thought to recover; after all there was a reason for bravery: to tip the odds in ones favor. I was determined to do just that!

  I thought back to the day fourteen months ago- next week. “We had arrived just a little over three months earlier, and she was returning from “the city” hospital where she was a surgical nurse R.N., for the large Catholic St. William’s Hospital. We were going to wait another two or three years for more children, and she loved medicine; so she worked at the hospital an hour away. That was the shortest distance; if she took the highway. She only worked three ten hour shifts; so she could help the maid with watching our three boys and two girls. She also cooked four or five times a week.

  She was thinking of attending medical school to become a physical rehabilitation physician. We had decided that in a year she would take some math and science courses, and then; after a couple more children and concurrent other science courses she would attend “med school.” By that time I could have spent a couple years, in my spare time, writing fiction (my twin love to Astronomy), and I would have put enough information together for a third factual text on our universe.

  I had a “dusty” Science-Fiction novel, I had written it years before, while a medical student. When we first moved to Stonefell Arizona; I had just published my first book on Astronomy. It had five of the first chapters as “popular,” easier to understand, work, and the last seven chapters were P.H.D. “heady” and somewhat theoretical stuff. Writing that kind of thing was my second love to my previous “twin” loves of Astronomy and also fiction authorship.

  The strange fact is that Astronomy had been on the news that past year, and my book had already sold over three million copies. I was also on a government consultation list; so some high ranking government people could call me to summarize astronomical and meteorological fact and theory. I buried myself in work and a second book this past year. Anything to keep from thinking about how my wife Paula had died.

  She had been driving home when a man, with his pregnant wife in the front passenger seat, fell asleep briefly “at the wheel.” The second in time that he was asleep, in this case, was enough to, along with the curve of the road, to put his trucks front end into her mid-size sports car.

  Her left leg was lacerated by a sharp jack that was tucked half way into her drivers’ side door. The man had a severe cut into his right arm, from where he had blocked his wife from too severe a front windshield impact, and his wife had multiple severe cuts to her hands and arms.

  Paula used part of her torn dress to bind her severely cut left leg. It was a shoddy job; because she had to tie tourniquets very quickly for the injured couple. She tied nine tourniquets in total; including the one she tied for herself. She passed out while working tighter and looser on their tourniquets, and instructing the injured couple on what to do. She died of blood loss.

  The couple and their fetus lived, and, to top it off, the doctor at the hospital managed to save the woman from significant scarring. He had a Christmas card from the couple and their one year old son, he had recently received; on his living room mantel.

  I had been thinking of her less lately, and our memories of being together tended to be better and more cherished. I was even thinking of studying for and taking the state medical board to be a Doctor of Medicine. I had deserted Medicine for Astronomy at Paula’s insistence. It was my avocation and love at the time. She was right, and I thought adding a M.D. to my credentials wouldn’t be a bad idea; as a life goal. I had at least loved medicine at one time; or maybe it was just that I loved Paula.

  “I love you.” I almost heard Paula’s voice.

  I pulled out my director’s, of the observatory, notebook and used an old trick. I reversed the pocket notebook and started writing on the back page of the first page, contra wise, of the small notebook. That gave me a book of references, and made it easier to refer to that, and less cumbersome on the whole to carry around. Like a doctor I knew that one notebook was easier to use and to keep track of than two.

  I had an idea. If Samuel was near “his” mattress and it was out in the open I might be able to “shoot” radio waves around and get a muted retort. The direction of the radio waves, from a radio telescope, could travel was limited by “plane” width, but the possible power it engaged was high. I did some statistical figuring and supposed that by my doing that his survival chances would be raised by at least ten percent! I needed the maps, though, to accomplish this. My “cell” pinged and I knew where the maps were at: Province Radio Telescope Observatory. I “dog trotted” to the car.

  I reached the car and had that feeling that I had forgotten something. I almost heard Paula say “don’t forget the tablet and some extra batteries.” I said “thanks, I hope you heard that?” Two minutes later I was on the highway off the annex to Province Observatory.

  Once I was at the observatory I ordered Jake out to the radio telescopes. I had summarized the situation and he moved. There wasn’t much he could do, but he swore that “those radio telescopes will get the best maintenance ever.” I was reassured, and I was happy to have someone on site to fix any repair problems that may occur. “I’ll check them by eye,” he added. It was good to keep “hands on,” but we already had a very good secure video monitoring system. We had government contracts that had to be performed. Still I was relieved.

  For half and an hour I checked the maps and did calculations by hand. There were some old abandoned vehicle land marks and I used that as additional ricochet posts. In an additional hour the radio telescopes were set up, and I began using them. I had eight possible positive responses. I called the state police and they diverted aircraft to those areas. I used the next forty-five minutes to log more co-ordinates and check my calculations. Forty minutes after that the state police called with a definite negative result “but we’re busting our asses!” That statement helped abate my fear and cheered me a little.

  Jake checked in with me and agreed to take over the search. I was worried that my lack of sleep might have dulled my wits a little. From his laptop/tablet he could direct the search as well as I; even better; he was a top flight engineer.

  I had part of a thought. I tried to focus on it. Just then Paula walked up to me from the front right side of the comfortable executive chair that she had given me for my birthday. It was the last gift that she had given me.

  “Paul you’re a bright astronomer and mathematician. You can think of something. Try and relax!”

  “It’s not that simple. The aircraft have heat signature infra-red gear. We might have to wait until it gets cooler to ‘pick him up.’ It may be close.”

  She said “don’t, only, leave
this to other people. You’re making yourself a permanent victim of circumstances. I’ve seen patients fight much more to return to a much harder life than ours.”

  “You’re right! I’ll start with the internet!” I looked at my tablet and looked back where she had been standing, but she was gone. I realized suddenly that I had seen her ghost.

  I am not a big believer in the supernatural. I definitely believe in divine planning well above any had belief in aliens. I was stunned. I had seen her and it was real.

  I shook a little. It took me twenty minutes to come to the conclusion that she had been there to “spur me on.”

  “Not exactly right. You see I was here to distract you. She gave me a slightly wrinkled smile: “I took something similar to a wager, but not quite that, in order to see you. Things seem, from here, a little more complicated than in heaven.” She opened the lids of her eyes a little. “Are you surprised?”

  I felt natural. I didn’t feel that I was hallucinating, but my heart raced.

  “You don’t have the calm of grace. It’s what most people get when they see a ghost. You feel just like you would on any other day; with the exception that you see me! Notice the nurse’s uniform with the silver R.N. insignia? It’s different than that I wore here.”

  I noticed the difference then and also how uncommonly “white” the uniform was. Can you stay?!” I said that excitedly. She looked aside for a second and I heard her say “maybe something can be arranged.” She then took my hand. It felt warm and gentle.

  I said “was that really you talking to me earlier today?”

  She beamed a little. “Yes. And don’t attach any special significance. I was only trying to soften the impact of my appearance. I didn’t want you to die of sudden heart failure or stroke.” You see- “Yes,” I asked a little alarmed. “You see,” she continued, “you have no grace or protection when you talk to me; it has something to do with the protection of ‘peoples’ free will.”