Free In Love by Christmas: A Paranormal Romance by Sandy Nathan Page B

President Clinton’s going to be there. Let’s see if we can catch the ceremony on TV. It may make you feel better about what a black man can do.”
     
    Turned out they’d missed the presentation, so they channel-surfed the news. They stopped when the screen showed a couple of English newscasters standing in the dusty road leading to Leroy’s reservation. The unmistakable loaf mountain poked up in the distance.
    “Well, Clive, still no sign of the hundreds of people who disappeared only a few miles from here.” The announcer looked like the raven-haired version of every newscaster Leroy had seen since news of what happened at the Meeting exploded around the planet. The camera panned the sky. Black military helicopters shot toward the Mogollon Bowl and the setting sun.
    “Only a few miles up that road on reservation land, a mass murder as horrifying as the Jonestown/Guyana massacre occurred.”
    “That’s right, Edmund. Thousands of Native Americans came here for a spiritual retreat led by a famous shaman.” An artist’s conception of Grandfather filled the screen.
    “Thousands went, but thousands didn’t return. We’re going to cut to New York City and Paul Running, the head of the Running Way, a prominent Native American spiritual group. Paul is a shaman himself and witnessed the disaster.”
    “Paul Running Bird isn’t a shaman!” Leroy cried. “He’s a been my grandpa’s student for twenty years and didn’t learn a thing! He wasn’t in the Mogollon Bowl when it happened.”
    “He’s on every channel,” Doug said. “He’s the new face of Native American spirituality. The massacre is just what he needed.”
    Paul’s sonorous voice quivered with emotion. “It was hideous …”

8
    Out of the Ballpark
    L ords Martingale, Surcingle, and Pontificate joined Lord Ballentyne, Doug, and Leroy at the Heritage course of the London Golf Club. He was introduced all around. They already knew Doug. Everyone knew Doug.
    The English Lords were as polite as he’d seen them portrayed on Hermitage Estate: Upstairs and Down. He and his dad sat in front of their TV every Sunday night and discussed the plot for days after each episode. The people around him could have been in the show. The Lords looked him over without staring. One finally said, “How tall are you, Leroy?”
    “I’m six foot, eight and a half inches tall. In my socks.”
    They tittered politely.
    “You could be a basketball player,” Lord Surcingle said.
    “Yeah, if I knew how to play basketball, I could do that.”
     
    Leroy did fine at lunch. He’d grasped silverware well enough to make it through the meal in fine form. He grew more anxious as they approached the golf course. The London Golf Club—a private club—said ritzy in an exceptionally low-key way. Brilliant green grass swathed everything: green lawn mowed close. Mowed extremely close. Bushy. Sand patches nestled in, ringed by trees. Wide avenues of lawn turned abruptly around lakes that looked like they were there to swallow golf balls.
    Leroy realized that this was probably a difficult sport, even if it was stupid. How much had the Lords paid for him to whack up the turf from his first step on the course to his last?
    “I hope you all know that I’ve never played golf.”
    “Doug told us that. Give it your best shot, old fellow. We’re playing for fun.” That was Lord Pontificate.
    “All right. I just don’t want to have to replant this course at the end.”
    They laughed.
    Leroy dropped into the inner state where he lived when he healed. Relaxed, vigilant without being tense … “What club do I use, Doug? The big wood one?”
    The Lords tittered and then stared, open-mouthed. Leroy’s ball soared past theirs, landing in the middle of the fairway.
    “This is kind of fun,” he loped after his ball, making the mistake of trying to carry his own clubs.
    “The caddy does that, Leroy.” Doug was plainly delighted. When they got to the green, Doug whispered, “Do not