The Prospect by Eliot Parker (epub ebook reader .txt) 📖

From what Chaz says you are just a big softy. Nothing like the ‘rough and tough’ pitcher you portray on the mound.”
Olivia was having fun mimicking a monkey and talking in a scruff voice when she mentioned rough and tough. Shane’s reaction was not the same. He just stared at with a blank expression; although she was sure he probably thought she was acting foolish.
Shane walked towards Olivia and circled around the bike, while she watched his maneuvers and turned the back in unison with his movements. Now Olivia’s back was facing the house and Shane was within shouting distance of the back door.
“Well, you like to analyze me, so let me try it on you. I think that you cannot carry on a conversation that does not involve you spreading how much you think you know. So now let me tell you what I think.”
Folding her arms and resting the equilibrium of the bike between her legs, Olivia embraced the challenge. “I am not analytical. I just think baseball players overinflate their significance. You play a game with wooden sticks, leather gloves, and balls. It’s not meant as an insult, just some friendly advice.”
“And you, of course, have so much experience in life and baseball,” Shane replied, licking his lips. He grinned and placed his left hand on his hip. He inhaled a deep breath before speaking.
“I see you as a the girl who probably delivers newspapers because you have some aspiring dream to make something of yourself and you totally enjoy the fact that baseball players are here because it provides excitement in your usually dull and uninteresting life. Shall I continue?”
Olivia was dumbfounded. Standing facing a person she had only met and spoken with twice, she placed some of his comments in context. Since her mom divorced her father four years ago, all she was consumed with was delivering newspapers, and making good grades at Sheaville High School. For the last several months, her eagerness to enroll at Marshall University and take part in the W. Page Pitt School of Journalism and Mass Communications was her primary objective.
Olivia had no friends, mainly because she found solidarity to be the only consistency in what she viewed as an inconsistent world. And for some reason, here was this guy lamenting her characteristics and idiosyncrasies. The whole idea was novice and strange.
“What’s the matter, cat got your tongue?” Shane taunted. “Or maybe I have stumbled onto something.”
“You do not know me Shane Triplet. Just because you play baseball and may be slightly older than me does not mean you know me.” Her mannerisms were frantic and defensive. “I like who I am, what I do, and…and…furthermore, I like what I like and do not like what I do not like. Right now, I do not like you.”
“I’m hurt,” Shane said lackadaisically.
“Look, I have your newspaper bill here. That is why I stopped by. It looked like nobody was home so I waited to see if you would come to the door and pick it up. So here it is.” Olivia outstretched her hand. Encompassed in her tightly wound fist was a yellow envelope with letters printed on the front of it in black ink.
Seizing the opportunity to end this encounter and catch a glimpse of the girl hidden behind the baseball cap, Shane leaned forward. This was going to be good, and he knew it.
“If you wanted to deliver the paper, you should have thrown it on the front porch. That is where you toss it most of the time anyway,” Shane said, trying to sound charming. “Thanks though for the bill. Service with a smile,” he said, giving a very fictitious grin.
He slowly grasped the envelope and prepared for her to let go. While Olivia loosened her grip, Shane snuck his other hand around her back and yanked the baseball cap off of her head. She yelped and strands of her hair jutted from her pony-tail.
“What was that for!” Olivia demanded, now sounding abrupt and irritable. Her right hand immediately covered up a shiny gold necklace.
Shane knew that Olivia was a petite woman but his eyes focused immediately obn her slim build and small breasts. But her complexion had a dark Mediterranean look. She had the most beautiful dark eyes Shane had ever seen. She had two dimples on her cheeks and her dar, raven hair feel down to her shoulders in several ways. Olivia was strikingly beautiful, but in an eccentric and surreal sense. Her beauty was not overpowering, but invited a person to want to step forward for a closer look.
“Thanks for nothing,” she pronounced, picking up the cap from the ground blowing dust and dirt from the bill of the cap. “That was not nice. You are not nice. I need to go. Just make sure you pay that bill by the end of the month.” Olivia was busily adjusting her spaghetti strap top and rearranging a thin gold necklace tied around her neck. Shane had not noticed it before.
“Before you go, that necklace, it has something on the bottom. I mean, most of them do.”
“I like it just fine,” Olivia said, trying to sound as prissy as possible.
“You seem to be concerned about it because you are favoring it,” noted Shane. “Something about that necklace must be special.”
Sulky, Olivia satisfied Shane’s inquiry. “Come here.” She reached out and grabbed Shane’s right arm, just below the elbow. Shane’s arm was smooth and muscular and Olivia could trace his veins with her fingers, if she so desired.
She grabbed Shane’s nicotine stained fingers and placed the charm on his fingertips. Leaning closely, he adjusted his eyes to the small object. Even though Olivia was sweating, she smelled wonderful; almost like a girl who had just bathed in baby powder. When his eyes focused, he noticed one side of a gold cross was attached towards the left side of the necklace. However, there appeared to be room for another portion of a cross to be connected to the pre-existing one. The necklace nonetheless was not gold, but some type of synthetic substitute. Shane observed the color fading at the bottom of the jewelry.
Olivia attempted to stare into Shane’s blue eyes, since they always seemed to glisten when he was focused on something. Instead, because of the position of his head, which just happened to be centimeters from the shimmering cross and inches from her breast, she remained content to communicate to his forehead.
“This is the cross of St. Paul. Paul was one of the greatest disciples and men in the history of the Bible. I try to live my life like Paul did by loving God, trusting him, and being the best person I can be.”
Shane shriveled his mouth inward and shrugged his shoulders, leaning back into a straight standing position. “Just looks like any ordinary cross to me. But, hey, if it makes you feel better about yourself, knock yourself out. I do not know much about Paul though, so I cannot challenge your accuracy on that.”
“You know nothing about the Bible?”
“Well, a little,” Shane admitted. “I know about Adam and Eve and Jesus dying on the Cross of Cavalry and raising up three days later. I just never considered religion important. I am spiritual. Yes indeed. I say my prayers every night and I always say my prayers before any baseball game. I guess you could call me a deist. I believe in a higher power, I just do not attend church and read the Bible and all.”
“You are agnostic!” Olivia said knowingly. “That’s okay I suppose. I do think it is tough to live in this world without God’s help. To each his own, though. Obviously, you do not like listening to what others have to say anyway.” Olivia was speaking very prophetically.
“Yea, and Jesus died on the cross of Calvary not Cavalry. I seriously doubt there were any horses involved.”
“Semantics,” Shane hedged.
“You need to get into church though. I know you will not regret it.”
“It’s funny how you seem to always know what’s best for me. I can make my own decisions.” Shane saw Olivia’s lip quiver and her body sway to the left, still holding the bicycle still between her legs. “I’ll tell you what. You come to one of the Loggers’ baseball games, particularly when I pitch, and I will go to church with you for two weeks. How’s that?”
Soon an awkward moment of silence fell on the conversation like a heavy load of bricks. For the first time in their brief encounters with each other, Olivia and Shane had nothing to say. Olivia, trying to keep her bike balanced by leaning forward, was waiting for Shane to utter more zany demands regarding his bet.
Olivia was determined to not subject herself to being propositioned. In turn, Shane was anticipating another theology retort, but it never came. Disturbed by the silence, Olivia broke the peace while exhibiting a large yawn, although she did enjoy the calmness for about 30 seconds.
“Not a chance, I hate baseball. If you played football, then maybe we would have a deal.”
“Suit yourself. We’re done here, right?”
“Beat’s me,” Olivia responded, tossing her hands into their air. “You were the one that came out here. I am just doing my job, sir.”
“Thanks gal. It was nice being tortured by you again. Please come by the next time you would like to wake me up and give me a bill that I cannot possibly pay at this time.”
Shane had turned to walk back up the steps near the back porch of the house. When he turned back towards the road, he noticed Olivia giving him a salute as she sped off down towards the mouth of the hollow. Shane saw something in the sand as she fled. He skipped back down the steps and onto the street.
Lying in the road was something shiny and small. He reached down to lift up the object. It was Olivia’s golden cross necklace.

XIV

Frank Miller stomped down the sidewalks of downtown Sheaville like a man possessed. The town was unusually busy for a Friday morning. Usually, the walk down Maple Street would have taken him fifteen to twenty minutes to complete, but today, he zoomed past everyone and they resembled beams of color sliding past the corner of his eye. In Frank’s opinion, when something needed to be done, delays were not acceptable, especially when it concerned Morton Mitchell and the state of affairs in Sheaville.
Morton Mitchell was in the midst of his second term and third turn as mayor of Sheaville. During the thriving days of the logging mill, Mitchell always believed that Harlan Shea was doing a disservice to the community by working the men of Sheaville too hard and not compensating them properly, although no worker ever complained to Harlan about low salaries. Of course, Morton’s motives were not altruistic; he always contended that he was underpaid as a foreman at the mill.
He vented, publicly and privately, that wages that were not as competitive as logging mills in other parts of the United States or the rest of the world and that the low wages would turn Sheaville into a ghost town. At the time, everyone thought he was preaching rapture in throughout the small community. Eventually, the men would leave and Sheaville would become the place Morton predicted. The mayor was successful in using many of his predictions as a campaign to promise an economic resurgence in the town, but six years later, little had changed.
Morton’s personality coupled with an arrogant and obnoxious demeanor forced Frank to see him as a man with one virtue: