Free Fallen Masters by John Edward Page A

chuckled, because he was repeating something his ninety-year-old grandmother had told him when she would sometimes complain about the aches and pains of aging. She had been dead for eight years now, but she had been such a vivid part of his life that he still remembered her fondly, especially her sense of humor.
    His body clock might tell him it was 5 P.M ., but he clearly had morning mouth, so he brushed his teeth, then turned sideways to look at his body. Now, that he was still happy with. He had been blessed with good genes and a muscular build that enabled him to maintain the body of a Greek statue. It was still clearly defined but required a daily workout regimen in order to be sustained.
    Realizing that sleep was not going to be an option, he decided to get a jump-start on the day of media and press interviews. The Moses Mosaic was his third novel, following hard on the heels of two previous international bestsellers.
    “A writer?” Miss Hall had said. Miss Hall was his freshman high school English teacher. “Dawson, I don’t mean this as a put-down, but you have dyslexia. The first time you turned in a paper, I thought your name was Noswad.”
    It wasn’t just the dyslexia Dawson had to overcome. It was also that he was following in the wake left by his brother, Boyd, who was two years older. Boyd’s transgressions were infamous, and he had left all the teachers embittered and predetermined not to let another Rask run amok in their classroom.
    But Dawson, despite, or perhaps because of, the legacy left by his brother, excelled in high school, not only in academics, where he overcame his dyslexia, but in athletics, becoming a conference champion cross-country runner. A writer for Profile Magazine , while doing a piece on Dawson, wrote:
    It is fitting that the bestselling author, Dawson Alexander Rask, ran cross country in high school and college. Cross country is a grueling sport that pits the runner against himself as much as against the other participants. It requires strength of body, as well as strength of character. Dawson Rask’s character, Matt Matthews, exhibits those very traits, and one must wonder, as one always does, if Matthews isn’t Rask.
    Dawson had been born and raised in Decatur, Illinois. His grandfather had served in the Korean War, his father as an army draftee in the early 1960s. When he came back he began teaching at Milliken University in Decatur, becoming a full professor a few years later. Dawson’s father didn’t talk much about his military service, which included a two-year tour in Vietnam in 1965 and ’66—and when he did talk about it, it was always some innocuous story or a humorous event. He never talked about any combat experience, and Dawson would not have known that he won a Silver Star if he had not accidentally found the medal and the citation.
    Because of his father’s position, Dawson could have gone to school at Milliken very cheaply, but he chose to attend Washington University in St. Louis, instead. Washington U. was a fine school with a great academic reputation, and he was able to put together several academic scholarships, including one scholarship from a beer company, simply because he was the son and grandson of veterans. He also chose Washington University because, while it wasn’t in his hometown—and he did want to get out on his own—it wasn’t so far from Decatur that he couldn’t make it back home on long weekends.
    His brother flunked out of Milliken, as well as Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville. He wasn’t dumb; in fact, Dawson knew that his brother was quite intelligent. But it never was a matter of intelligence with Boyd. It was Boyd’s psyche. He was a congenital troublemaker who was caught drinking when underage, and using pot when he was older.
    As he had in high school, Dawson ran track and cross country at Washington University in St. Louis. One good thing about running in high school and college is that the athlete could