Death of a Pharaoh Read Online Free PDF Page A

at night. I paddled in the lake for hours
every day with those inflatable water wings under my mother’s watchful eye
    I hadn’t learned
to open my eyes in the water yet so I couldn’t see if it looked like my
nightmare down there. I spent half my vacation practicing in a bucket until I
could keep them open without blinking. One day I decided to search for the
woman in my dreams. I hugged my mother and left her in the kitchen preparing
lunch. At the time, I barely weighed fifty pounds soaking wet so I figured that
I needed some help. I loaded up my pockets with a bunch of stones about the
size of my palm. The shore was dotted with them. I couldn’t really judge how
many I needed, so I shoved a few more down my pants just in case. Then I
waddled like a duck to the end of the dock and jumped in, as simple as that!
    The first part was
easy. Almost fun, like when you slide down in the bathtub and stick your head
under. The stones did a great job and before I knew it, I was sitting on the
bottom looking at a bunch of rusty tin cans and a slime covered rubber tire. I
spun around in a circle real proud of my new aquatic vision, but the woman wasn’t
there. I wondered if she only came at night like in my dreams and perhaps I
needed to try again after dinner. That seemed the best solution. It was time to
get out.
    Problem was with
the weight of the rocks; I couldn’t even stand let alone swim to the surface. I
panicked. My lungs were already bursting and screaming would only make things
worse. I guess I wouldn’t even be here to tell the tale if that nice Mr.
Sampson hadn’t been taking a stroll and seen me jump in. All of a sudden, the
water above me exploded and a black man stared me in the face just before he
wrapped his arms around me. He was a good person and there weren’t any
nightmares to see, only decency, loyalty and strength. He pulled me to the
surface. He had to work at it somewhat and it wasn’t until I lay on the shore
coughing and sputtering that he noticed all the stones.
    “I better get rid
of these before your parents come,” he said as he pitched most of them into the
water just as my Mom raced down the hill yelling my name hysterically.
    “You won’t be
doing anything crazy like that again, will you?” he admonished me. “It isn’t
right to test the Gods,” he sternly warned as he stepped back to let my Mom
scoop me up in a soggy bear hug.
    Never saw him
again after that but I’ll always remember his face and what he said about
testing the Gods. I’m certain he said Gods, as in more than one. So much so
that I went searching in the Bible, but the only times it mentioned Gods were
in a bad way. The people with the funny names who wrote the thing seemed very
serious about there only being one God and all. Other than that “s” and the
tanning I got from my Dad for playing on the dock, I escaped any serious
consequences for my dumb stunt. Not surprising, it took me years to build up
the courage to get back into the water.
    When I was seven,
I had a fight with one of the kids at school. I had been taking karate already
for two years so I was confident in a scrap. He’d been bullying a younger kid
and I decided to step in. One of the teacher’s saw us brawling and made a
report. The principal called my mother. The next day I knew why I had gotten
into Billy’s face during recess because a week earlier I started to keep a
diary. Every afternoon when I did my homework, I took a few minutes to write
down anything I saw, heard or imagined that day. When I woke up the next
morning, I still wouldn’t remember anything but all I had to do was flip
through my diary to know why I had punched someone in the nose. That notebook
changed everything.
    My Dad served in
the marines and he always encouraged my interest in karate. He met my Sensei,
David, in the first Gulf War. David was my hero. He could smash bricks with his
bare hands and all those things but he wouldn’t hurt a fly. He never let on
that my