Coming of Age: Volume 1: Eternal Life Read Online Free PDF Page B

second largest bank. China was planning to extend its high-speed rail system westward from Chengdu into the Tibet Autonomous Region and Lhasa. With the Continuing Currency Crisis, American labor—especially of the advanced technical kind—was potentially the cheapest in the world, and Praxis Engineering & Construction needed to exploit every opportunity. Essential to their bid strategy was allowing these high-level functionaries to meet with the nominal head of the firm, practically one of its “ancestors,” in a social setting. An ancestor’s work, it seemed, was never done.
    And besides, Praxis had wanted the opportunity to take Richard aside and ask how they were going to handle the financial fallout of the St. Brigid’s mess. The verdict, and the wallop that would come with it, loomed larger each day as the trial drew to a close. But Richard was avoiding him this morning, wasn’t even making eye contact, and Praxis had felt himself getting angrier and angrier.
    Then he noticed, as he swung his Two Wood for the last time, that his shoulders were feeling achy. Also, he briefly thought he might have pulled a muscle in his left biceps—but he put that down to being out of practice. In truth, he had not touched a club in two weeks, maybe three. By the time he was on the green, however, he was panting—short, sharp, hard breaths—and the fairway wasn’t that steep. He thought the two Chinese officials were giving him anxious looks, but Richard was totally involved in his own golf game. Richard played seriously, to win, and not to make nice.
    Praxis was staring at his son, wondering why he couldn’t at least flub his putts once in a while, so their guests, who were good but not great players, might feel better about themselves, when someone hit him in the chest with a baseball bat. Wham! Pain shot across his whole front, as if his ribs and arms were being broken at the same time.
    Without remembering exactly how, Praxis was suddenly lying on his side. His vision was cocked. One eye seemed to stare across acres and acres of brilliant green grass, clipped as smooth as a billiard table, while the flag that was held by his caddy, Sam—whom everyone called “Peaches,” either because he had come from Georgia or because he brought peaches from home for a few favored members—was receding into the distance at a million miles an hour. The other eye was looking up at the edge of the tree line, with the soft, misty blue of a San Francisco morning sky looming beyond it, and a sea gull cartwheeling up there, drawing closer and closer.
    A face appeared above him, hidden by its own shadow. John Praxis thought he should know that face, but now he just couldn’t remember. All he could hear was the screaming of the gull, a single word repeated: “Papa! Papa!” Praxis knew he should be scared, but he was more concerned for that gull and its own sense of panic.
    Then somehow he was lying on his back, and a Caterpillar 120 road grader was driving across his chest. The pressure of those massive, cleated tires was making rubble of his bones while the shiny, angled blade cut deeper and deeper.
    His vision closed to a tiny white circle, a closeup view of smoothed feathers from the gull’s immaculate white breast, which glowed like white neon. And suddenly Johnny Cash was singing, in his ears or in his mind, “Down, down, down … to a burning ring of fire …” as the earth sank beneath him and the darkness enfolded him.
    * * *
    Not until his father fell over on the golf course did Richard Praxis have any idea that something was wrong. The Old Man had always been the strong one, the healthy specimen, the sturdy oak among the bending, compliant willows and bamboo trees that were other men—including his own children. That morning his father had been playing slowly, sure, but then his golf game was usually careful and methodical, practicing his swings and assessing the ground before each shot. He had been rubbing his left shoulder a