The Plan

Chapter 30.

HE HAD BEEN STRUGGLING TO BREATHE AND THE OXYGEN bottle wouldn't help. Penny had called the doctor, but he hadn't arrived yet. Joseph Alo's lungs were filling slowl y w ith fluid. He was drowning from the inside. He had trie d t o cough, but the pressure on his chest was too severe. He c losed his eyes and wished the Lord would take him.

The priest from the Trenton archdiocese arrived at noon and entered the dark room that had the sweet smell of death and medicine. He kneeled by the bed and said a prayer of contrition. As he held Joseph's hand, the dying Mafia don opened his eyes and looked at the priest whom he'd never seen before.

The priest knelt and began the anointing of the sick. He put some holy oil on Joseph's forehead, then anointed each of Joseph's palms. "May the Lord who frees you from sin, save you."

Joseph did not view his excesses as sin. He had simply fought to provide for his family. He had taken on a world that showed him no mercy from the time he was a child, and now he lay in a bed, listening to his lungs filling, knowing he was at the very end.

He closed his eyes and he was a boy again. He was lying on his back in a beautiful green field. He was listening to the birds singing. The breeze was cool and strong… it ruffled his thick black hair. He had so much ahead of him, his life was just starting. And then, an old man in white robes and a long flowing gray beard leaned over him, taking the sun away.

"Are you ready?" the old man said to Joseph, the boy. "For what?" Joseph's voice was the high soprano of his youth.

"Your next journey. I will help you up, but you must go alone."

As the old man offered his hand, Joseph reached up to take it.

In the bedroom, the praying priest became aware that Joseph's hand had just risen above his head. It seemed to be reaching out for something, but then it dropped slowly back to his side.

The priest looked over, but Joseph Alo had passed on.

While Joseph Alo took his last journey alone, Haze Richards began a much shorter one, accompanied by a hundred reporters. It started on the rail platform in downtown Manchester. He said a few solemn words about the need for a unified country before he got on the train. It was the way A. J. wanted it. A common man going into the jaws of certain defeat to help a nation he loved. He took the two-hour train ride into Manhattan with the skeptical press in the seats all around him. Pod people whispered behind their hands, saying he had almost no chance to succeed. Haze sat with his briefcase on his lap, looking out the train window. The rushing Connecticut landscape played like a travelogue with broken sprockets. He wasn't focused on the scenery.

He was imagining what it would be like to actually achieve his dream-what it would be like to be the forty-third President of the United States of America.