the closet, put it on and went down to the laundry on the ground floor. When his clothes were finished, he went back to his room, and lay down without pulling back the blankets. From across the room, his cellphone rang and he thought he should answer it but closed his eyes and didn’t remember it ceasing to ring as he fell asleep.
The directions Marc Johansen, MS, MBA, gave him took him thirty miles from the Hilton, past affluent residential developments and a shopping plaza with stores designed after Swiss chalets, past exit after exit of Denny’s and McDonald’s and Ruby Tuesdays and Lowe’s. He realized he was out of sync with the pace of heavy traffic in a large city and, as the stream of cars and trucks rushed past, he kept his rented sub-compact in the right lane, often caught behind lumbering trucks hauling heavy construction equipment.
After a time, he came to a state route that led him to a series of county roads that rose and fell along the edge of the Ozark Mountains, past modest tract houses and trailer parks, and then farther still, past limestone rock faces and wooded areas, until he reached a narrow private road marked with an etched wooden sign reading “Gossage Farms” and turned onto it, creeping uphill between trees so dense their branches scraped the roof of his car. When he crested the hill, the landscape opened onto a lush pasture on both sides of the road, bounded by wire fencing. Spread across it, forty or fifty horses grazed while, a hundred yards off, two figures cantered along a ridge.
Finally, he came to a metal gate at the end of a drive leading to a barn and, beyond that, a broad stone house with a wraparound porch. The gate was closed and he pulled over and got out, struck immediately by the overwhelming stench of manure and damp hay. As he was about to lift the fence latch, a voice called out, “Jesus, don’t,” and a man he hadn’t noticed trotted toward him. He was short but fit, wearing a black Stetson that shadowed his face. His rubber boots and the cuffs of his jeans were caked with what at first seemed graying mud but when he reached the gate, Edward Everett could smell that it was manure. The man lifted the cover on a metal box mounted to a fence post, flicked a switch and a humming Edward Everett hadn’t previously heard ceased.
“We don’t need any lawsuits,” the man said, unlatching the gate. “You can leave your car there so it doesn’t get filthy.” Once Edward Everett was through the gate, the man shut it and turned the current back on, the fence sparking briefly as an insect flew against it. “Be careful where you step.” The man pointed to a dollop of manure less than a foot from where Edward Everett stood, black and green flies swirling above it.
“I’m looking for—” Edward Everett said, trying to watch his feet among the manure piles and yet keep pace with the man who was taking careless strides along the gravel drive, clearly unconcerned when he stepped into one of the piles.
“Me,” the man said, and Edward Everett realized it was Marc Johansen, MS, MBA.
“I didn’t recognize you,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“I have no idea why,” Johansen said, his tone suggesting he might be joking but Edward Everett wasn’t sure. “This is one of my mother’s places and every year I come out and pretend to be a rancher for a week.”
He led Edward Everett to the porch, stopping at the bottom of the steps leading to it to slip off his boots. “Come on in,” he said. “Give me a chance to clean up and then we can get down to business.”
Inside, Johansen left him in a massive great room with a granite floor and a two-story-high exposed-beam ceiling. Along one wall, four large windows looked out onto another pasture, which ran unimpeded for as far as he could see. Dotting it, rolled bales of hay browned in the sun. The room was furnished with several dark leather couches as well as cherrywood coffee tables bearing carefully arranged arrays of thick, glossy magazines fanned out. He sat gingerly on one of the couches, waiting. A rush of water poured through the plumbing as if someone had flushed a toilet, soon followed by a steady hiss.
After a few moments, he felt uncomfortable sitting idly and so picked up one of the