Long lost

1

BROCKTON NEXT EXIT.

The sign caught me by surprise. It was two nights later. I'd gone through Iowa and Illinois and was now on Interstate 70, continuing relentlessly east through Indiana. My destination was Ohio. Just beyond Columbus. Woodford. My hometown.

But as I saw the sign for Brockton, Lester Dant's birthplace, I frowned. Although I'd long ago made myself familiar with Brockton's position on the map, this was the first time I'd realized that it, like Woodford, was close enough to 70 to merit an exit sign. Fixated on the dental records that I hoped to find in Woodford, I hadn't focused on Brockton. But at that moment, my attention rapidly shifted. I made the turn.

A two-lane road wound through shadowy farm country. After twenty miles, street lights revealed run-down houses and a bleak main street. Two-story buildings flanked it, some with for sale notices on windows. A sputtering neon sign announced brockton motel, vacancy. It too looked run-down, but with no other choice, I stopped.

A bell rang when I opened the office door. Harsh overhead lights hummed. A puffy-eyed woman in a robe shuffled from a room behind the office. "How many nights?"

I said, "Two," determined to stick around and learn as much as I could.

The elderly woman seemed puzzled that anyone would have a reason for staying in Brockton more than one night. "Cash only." She named an amount, a narrowness in her eyes suggesting that she thought the rate was a fortune, which it wasn't.

When I gave her the money, she looked relieved, handed me a key, yawned, and shuffled back to her room. "Soft-drink machine's outside next to the candy machine," she murmured over her shoulder.

"Sorry for waking you."

"Plenty of time to sleep when I'm dead."

Outside, in the humid night, a single bulb illuminated the parking area. There weren't any vehicles at any of the ten motel units. The key I'd been given was for number one. Imagining that I was Petey I noted that all the units were behind the manager's room. In the shadows, I couldn't be seen if I took a bound and gagged woman and child from my trunk.

The room was small, the sheets thin, the mirror dusty. I stared at my thickening beard stubble. My eyes looked haunted. I was a stranger to myself.

2

"Do you know this man?"

The manager looked as tired as when I'd wakened her the previous night. Her wrinkled mouth left a trace of lipstick on her coffee cup. Behind the counter, she tilted the police photo this way and that. "Not exactly flattering. How'd he get the scar on his chin?"

"Car accident."

"Can't say I recognize him. You another FBI agent?"

"Another?"

"Last year, somebody from the FBI asked me about this guy."

My optimism sank. If Gader had arranged for Dant's background to be double-checked, I was wasting my time.

"He must have done something really bad for you to keep looking for him," she said.

"Yes. Something really bad. Does the name Peter Denning sound familiar?"

"Nope."

"How about Lester Dant?"

"Dant." The woman thought a moment. "That's the name the other FBI agent asked about. There used to be a couple of families named Dant around here."

I felt more discouraged.

"The hardware store's named after one of them," she said, "but the man who owns it now is Ben Porter."

Wasting my time, I repeated to myself. Tempted to drive on to Woodford, I decided not to take anything for granted. "Where's the hardware store?"

3

"I don't know him." Ben Porter was in his fifties, as was just about everybody I'd passed in the sparsely populated town. His coveralls were flecked with sawdust from boards he'd been cutting. "But that doesn't mean much."

"Why not?"

"I never met the store's original owner. I kept the name Dant on the building to maintain tradition."

In a dying town, the word tradition sounded brave. "You don't know any Dants?"

"Like I told the other FBI agent, they're before my time. I moved here only ten years ago." The expression on his face made it seem that he wished he hadn't.

"Can you think of anybody who might know about them?"

"Sure. The reverend."

"Who?"

"Reverend Benedict. The way I hear it, he's been in Brockton just about forever."

4

The white steepled church and the cottage behind it were the only two buildings in town that didn't look in need of repair. On the right, between the church and a graveyard, a path went through a rose garden. Ahead, an elderly man in a short-sleeved blue shirt with a minister's collar had his back to me. He was on his knees, his head bowed in prayer. Then his arms moved and his head bobbed, and I realized he was pruning the roses.

He had a hearing aid tucked behind his right ear. It must have been an excellent model, because he heard me walking across the grass and turned to see who I was.

"Reverend Benedict?"

His wrinkled brow developed more furrows as he came creak-ily to his feet. His old pants had grass stains on the knees.

"My name's Brad Denning. Ben Porter at the hardware store-"

"A fine man."

"-suggested I talk to you about a couple of families who used to live around here."

"Families?"

"The Dants."

The reverend's eyes had sparkled as if he'd welcomed the opportunity to test his memory. Now they became guarded. "Do you remember the Dants?" I asked. "Are you with the FBI?" "No." "Someone from the FBI asked me about the Dants last year," the reverend said.

"I know that. But I'm not with the Bureau. Did the agent show you this photograph?"

"Yes. That's Lester. I told the agent the same thing."

"You're sure of that? It's Lester Dant?"

"He was younger. He didn't have that scar on his chin. But there's no doubt it's Lester."

I felt sick. The theory I'd worked so hard to believe toppled. Lester Dant, not my brother, had taken Kate and Jason. He wouldn't have had a reason to keep them alive.

"Why do you want to know about him?"

"It doesn't matter anymore, Reverend," I managed to say. Hollow, I turned to leave.

" 'Just a routine investigation,' the FBI agent told me."

I looked back at him. "Hardly routine."

"What's wrong, Mr. Denning? You seem in terrible distress."

I hadn't intended to explain, but something about him invited it. In despair, I started to tell him. I tried to keep my voice steady, but the more I revealed, the more it shook.

The reverend stared. He seemed to hope that I was finished, but then I told him more-and more-and his shocked look turned to pity for someone who, because of a boyhood mistake, had been condemned to the torment of hell.

"Lester did all that?"

"Or my brother pretending to be him. That's what I needed to find out."

"God help him. God help you."

"If only God would."

"All prayers are eventually answered."

"Not soon enough, Reverend."

He seemed on the verge of telling me to have faith. Instead, he sighed and motioned me toward a bench. "There are several things you need to understand about him."

" 'Understand'? I hope that doesn't mean make excuses or sympathize, because what I really want to do, Reverend, is punish him. And please don't tell me to turn the other cheek or let God take care of vengeance."

"You just said it for me."

We studied each other.

"You're positive that the man in this photograph is Lester Dant?" I asked.

"Yes."

I felt sicker. Even so, I had to know the truth. "All right then, Reverend." Despondent, I sat on the bench. "Help me 'understand' him."

5

"And his parents," the reverend said. "You also have to understand his parents." He thought for a moment. "The Dants." His frail voice strengthened. "There were six families of them originally. They lived around here for as long as anybody can remember. That's what my predecessor told me, at any rate, when I was assigned here. But they weren't really part of the community. You couldn't even say that they were part of the United States."

"You've lost me, Reverend."

"They were separatists. Tribalists. Loners. Somewhere in their history-my predecessor had a theory that it went as far back as the Civil War-something terrible had happened to them. They came from a place that they desperately wanted to forget, and they settled around here, determined to be left to themselves."

A bee buzzed my face. I motioned it away, fixing my attention on the reverend.

"Of course, to keep their families going, they couldn't be entirely insular. They had to interact with nearby communities, looking for young people to marry. On the surface, they had a lot to recommend them. They knew their Bible. They owned property. They didn't drink, smoke, gamble, or swear. For a while, they attracted new members, usually from families so poor that marrying a Dant was a step up. But word got around how severe they were, and the Dants had to look farther, mostly among other strict groups, trying to negotiate marriages. Their options became more limited. By the time my predecessor arrived, the families had dwindled to three."

I shook my head, puzzled. "If they were determined to stay to themselves, how come somebody named Dant owned the hardware store?"

"A lifeline. No matter how hard they tried, they couldn't be self-sufficient. Even in a good year, with bountiful crops, there were necessities that they couldn't produce for themselves. To them, Brockton was like a foreign country. The hardware store was their embassy. They exported their excess produce through it and imported lumber, tools, clothing…"

"Medicines."

"No," Reverend Benedict said, "never medicines. The Dants were as fundamental religiously as they were politically. To them, sickness was a sign of God's disfavor. They felt it was a sin to use human means to interfere with God's intention."

"Because of our fallen nature?"

"For which the Dants believed God punished us," the reverend said.

"With a self-destructive attitude like that, it's a wonder the families survived."

"That's the point-they're all gone now." Reverend Benedict pointed a wizened finger toward the photograph. "Except for Lester."

"When did you meet him?"

"After the fire."

"The fire?"

"I'll get to that. First, you need to know that, because the Dants avoided doctors, the town had no idea of the birth and death rate out there. Every so often, emissaries would come to town and get supplies. Mostly men, but sometimes women and children. I suspect that their motive was to show everybody in the family how corrupt the outside world was. It could be that we looked as strange to them as they did to us." "Strange?"

"The effects of inbreeding were starting to show." "The law let them get away with it?"

"Once in a while, a state trooper went out to check on things, but what was he going to charge them with, except wanting to be by themselves?"

"Child endangerment."

"Difficult to prove if the children are well nourished and can quote their Bible."

"Isn't there a law that children have to go to school?" "The Dants hired an attorney who argued that the children were getting an adequate education at home. It came down to religious freedom. These days, I suppose we'd call them survivalists. But they weren't hoarding weapons and they weren't plotting to overthrow the government, so the authorities decided that dragging the Dants into court was worse than leaving them alone. Live and let live became the motto. Until the weekend when Lester's mother was one of the emissaries who came to town." I listened harder.

"Her name was Eunice. She was visibly pregnant, but evidently her husband believed that she wasn't far enough along not to travel. She came out of the hardware store. The next thing, she collapsed on the sidewalk, writhing in pain. Her husband, Orval, tried to make light of it, tried to pick her up and put her in the car. But when he saw the blood on her dress and the pool of it around her, he froze in confusion, just long enough for a doctor and a policeman-we had several of both back then-to notice what was happening and rush her to the clinic that served as our hospital. Orval tried to stop them, but suddenly, it was obvious that Eunice wasn't having a miscarriage. She was about to give birth to a premature baby."

"The creep was willing to risk her life?"

"He didn't do it easily. Orval told the doctor and the policeman that the baby meant more to him than anything else in the world; that he and Eunice had already lost three children to stillbirths; that they'd tried persistently to have another child and finally God had blessed them with this pregnancy. But to rely on a doctor was the same as telling God that they didn't have faith, Orval said. If they interfered with God's plan, the baby would be damned. Orval felt so strongly about this that he actually tried to pick up Eunice and carry her from the clinic. But the doctor warned him that the wife and the baby would die if they didn't stay and receive medical attention. The policeman was more blunt. He threatened to arrest Orval for attempted murder if Orval tried to remove his wife. By then, the baby was on its way, and even Orval realized he was going to have to allow medical help, whether he wanted it or not. Eunice nearly died from loss of blood. The baby nearly died from being so small."

"The baby was Lester?"

"Yes. Orval and Eunice didn't believe in giving their children names that had religious connotations. They compared it to idolatry. No Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John for them. Once you take away the Bible as a source for a name, there aren't many choices. The name Lester was neutral, a default."

"And then?"

"My predecessor retired. I came here to take his place. Before he left, he explained about the community and told me what I've just told you. He said that, despite the doctor's expectations, the baby lived. In fact, a week before I arrived, Orval had brought the child to town to show how healthy the boy was, to prove to the doctor that God's will was the only thing that mattered."

"But…" I felt more puzzled. "What's this got to do with… You said you met Lester after a fire."

"Years later."

I leaned forward.

"The smoke woke just about everybody in town. I remember it was a Labor Day weekend. A heat wave had just broken, so most people had their air conditioners off and the windows open, taking advantage of a breeze. My wife and I stepped outside, coughing, wondering whose house was on fire. Then I realized that the fire wasn't in Brockton. Even with the smoke in the streets, I could see a glow on the horizon, to the south, in the direction of where Orval and Eunice had their farm. I knew that it couldn't be any other Dant's place, because by then Orval, Eunice, and Lester were the only Dants left.

"Somebody rang the alarm at the fire station, the signal for volunteers. But when I got there, people had realized that the fire wasn't in town. There was a lot of confusion about whether we should go out to help them or whether we should let Orval and Eunice pay for insisting that they didn't need us. In the end, the town made me proud. The fire brigade had a truck filled with water. They drove it out there, and a whole lot of people went in cars. But even before we got close, it was obvious from the extent of the glow on the horizon that even a dozen trucks filled with water wouldn't make a difference.

"It hadn't rained in a month. The wind got stronger. On the left, flames streaked across pastures. Sections of timber were ablaze. Far off, a house and a barn were on fire. We did what we could to stop the flames from spreading across the road. Other than that, we were helpless. By then, it was dawn, and somebody shouted toward a burning field. I looked that way and saw a young man stumble ahead of the flames. He swatted at his smoking clothes, reached a fence, and toppled over it. I got to him first. He was sobbing. I'd never seen eyes so big with fear, but it was obvious that they weren't registering anything. He was blind from hysteria. I tried to stop him, but he lurched to his feet and staggered along the road. It took three of us to get him to the ground and smother the smoke coming off him."

"That was Lester?"

The reverend nodded. "He wasn't able to tell us what happened until three days later. After we got him to the ground, something seemed to shut off in him. He became catatonic. We took him to the clinic. He didn't have any serious burns or other obvious injuries, so the doctor treated him for shock. When it was safe to move him, my wife and I brought him here." Reverend Benedict indicated the cottage behind the church.

His eyes saddened. "When Lester was alert enough, he told us about the fire, how the smoke and the dogs barking had wakened him. He'd shouted to warn his parents. He'd tried to run down the hall to their room, but the flames were outside his door, and he had to climb out his window. In the yard, he kept shouting to warn his parents. Past the flames in their bedroom, he heard them screaming, but when he tried to get in through the window and pull them out, the heat was like a wall that wouldn't let him through. The breeze, had spread the fire beyond the house. The barn and the outbuildings, the fields and the woods-everything was on fire. The only way he escaped was by throwing himself into a cattle trough, soaking himself, and running across a pasture while the fire chased him. In the week that he stayed with us, sometimes he woke screaming from nightmares of hearing his parents' screams."

Imagining their agony, I shook my head from side to side. "Did anybody ever learn what caused the fire?"

"Lester said that a light switch had stopped working in the kitchen. His father had planned to fix it the next day."

"I know about buildings. It sounds like an electrical short," I said. "Fire can spread along faulty wires and accumulate behind the walls. When it breaks through, the flames are everywhere at once."

"According to Lester, it was terrifyingly fast."

"And then what happened? You said that he stayed with you for a week."

"We wanted him to stay longer, but one morning, my wife looked in on him, and he was gone."

"Gone?"

"We'd bought some clothes for him. They were missing. A pillowcase was missing also. He must have used it as a duffel bag. Bread, cookies, and cold cuts were taken from the kitchen."

"He left in the middle of the night? Why?"

"I think it had something to do with my being a minister and the cottage being next to a church."

"I don't understand. Lester was raised in a religious family. The church shouldn't have bothered him."

"Their beliefs were drastically different from mine."

"I still don't…"

"The Dants believed that God turns His back on us because of our sinful nature. What I preach is that God loves us because we're His children. I've always suspected that the night before Lester ran away, he overheard me practicing my Sunday sermon. He probably thought he was hearing the words of the Devil."

"And you never saw him again?"

"Not until last year when the FBI agent showed me that photograph."

In despair, I peered down at it-at Lester Dant, not my brother. The hope upon which I'd based my search no longer kept me going-Reverend Benedict looked even sadder. "My wife and I wanted children, but we weren't able to have any. While Lester recuperated, she and I had talked about becoming his guardians. When he ran away, we felt as if we'd lost a child of our own." He turned his gaze toward the cemetery beyond the rose garden. "She died last summer."

"I'm sorry."

"Lord, how I miss her." He looked down at his wrinkled hands. "The last I heard about Lester…" Emotion made him pause. "A month after he ran away, he was in Loganville. That's a town about a hundred miles east of here. A fellow minister happened to mention a helpless young man who showed up one day and whom members of the congregation were taking care of. I went there to find out if it was Lester and to try to persuade him to come back home, but he was gone by the time I got there. If I'd somehow convinced him to stay with us"-the reverend drew a breath-"perhaps none of the tragedies he caused would have happened."

"You did everything possible. Lester's the one to blame."

"Only God can determine that."

The effort of explaining had obviously tired him. I stood from the bench and shook his hand. "Thank you, Reverend. This was painful for you. I appreciate the effort."

"My prayers go with you."

"I need them. You said that Orval and Eunice lived south of town?"

"About eight miles."

"Everything's different now, I suppose."

"An agribusiness wound up farming the land. But not much has changed. If you head that way, you can just make out the burned farmhouse from the road."

6

I don't remember driving south of town. I was so dazed by what I'd learned that it's a wonder I didn't drift off the narrow road and hit something. I really had no idea why I was going out to where the fire had happened. But the alternative was to drive pointlessly back to Denver, and I refused to do that. Payne's words kept coming back to me: "Nothing beats going to the places and people you want to know about." The ruined Dant farm became one of those places.

A sign at the side of the road was weathered, partially overgrown with brush. But something in my subconscious noticed it, bringing me to attention. A large piece of plywood. What I assumed had once been black letters had faded to gray.

REPENT.

That was all, but it was enough to make me realize that I'd entered Dant country. On the right, beyond a pasture, I saw a farmhouse. It was distant, but even from the road, I could tell that it was listing, about to collapse, and that its windows had been broken. The roof on a barn next to it had already caved in.

But the reverend had said that Orval Dant's property had been on the left, so I focused my attention over there and soon noticed scorched stumps bordering fields of knee-high crops. I came to a section of trees, where tall burned timber stood among comparatively shorter, lush new trees. Then the land opened out again, and I saw the weed-covered furrows of a dirt lane stretching back what seemed a quarter of a mile to a wide mound of something near another section of new trees.

A metal gate blocked my way. It had a lock on a chain. I got out and tested the lock, finding it secure. A strengthening breeze carried a hint of moisture. Earlier, the sky had been stark blue, but now it was hazy, darkening on the horizon. The rain wouldn't reach me for a couple of hours. Even so, I reached into the car and got my knapsack, which had trail food, water, and a rain jacket, among other things. The jacket was what most concerned me, but the truth was, I'd learned the hard way that even an apparently harmless walk in the woods might not work out as planned. I'd also learned from what had happened at the rest area four nights earlier. My pistol was in the knapsack.

I felt the pack's satisfying weight against my back as I climbed the fence. Dust puffed around my sneakers when I came down on the opposite side. I started at a walk, but as I looked at the bushes around me, I was reminded of something that Kate, Jason, and I had done the summer before they'd been kidnapped. An architect friend had bought an old cabin up in the mountains. Trees and undergrowth had almost smothered the log building, so one Sunday he'd invited his friends up to help clear the place in exchange for barbecued steaks and all the beer we could drink. Our families were welcome also. Jason had thought it would be fun working next to me, helping to drag the cut bushes away, and I'd felt my chest swell with pride that the little guy had tried so hard. He made Kate laugh when he objected to her wiping the dirt and sweat from his face and making him look like a sissy.

Now, frustrated that I was no closer to finding them, I increased speed along the lane, anger pushing me. I stretched my legs as far and fast as I could, the sun hot on my face, sweat beading my skin, my jeans and shirt sticking to me.

A quarter of a mile was too short. I felt so infuriated that I could have run for miles, as I used to before I'd left Denver. But back in Denver, I'd been hopeful, whereas my frantic speed along that lane was a measure of how strongly I felt defeated.

I reached the end and slowed. The wide mound that I'd seen from the road revealed itself to be the blackened walls of a collapsed wooden structure. Its boards had been reduced to long slabs of charcoal that had toppled into a chaotic pile. Dead leaves were wedged in the gaps. Thorny bushes and vines whose three-leafed pattern warned of poison ivy sprouted from the debris. Beyond, a larger structure (presumably the barn) had similarly burned and collapsed.

Despite the sweat I'd worked up, I felt cold. I told myself that I was only imposing my mood on what I was seeing. All the same, I couldn't ignore what had happened there. Lester Dant's parents had burned to death thirty feet from where I stood. Blackness overwhelmed me.

What the hell am I doing? I thought. I was about to go back to the car, when something beyond the gutted house caught my attention: an area of about thirty by thirty feet enclosed by a low stone wall. The stones had been darkened by the fire. Some had fallen. I passed the ruins, trying to avoid the poison ivy as I approached the walled-in area. It had an opening where a gate had once been, and when I came closer, I saw that the enclosed area, too, was filled with poison ivy, dead leaves, and thorny bushes. But, amid the chaos, I noticed regularly spaced clumps. Stepping closer, I realized that they were small piles of rocks arranged in rows. The pattern was too familiar not to be recognized as a graveyard. Instead of mounds, there were depressions, the earth having settled onto decaying wooden coffins and the moldering bodies within them. The depressions were common to most old graveyards. The only reason they didn't appear in modern cemeteries was that coffins were now made from metal and graves had sleeves of concrete onto which a concrete lid was placed after the coffin was lowered and the mourners had departed.

In that dismal enclosure, generations of Dants had been buried. I imagined the pain and the loneliness with which their loved ones had laid them to rest. What struck me most was how many of the graves were short, indicating the deaths of children. I don't know how long I stared at the graves, meditating about the independent community that the Dants had hoped to establish and how severely their dreams had failed. At last, I stepped away, going around the back of the ruins.

A small animal skittered through trees behind me. A squirrel perhaps. But because I'd detected no signs of life around the place, the sound startled me. There weren't even any birds.

Sweating from the stark sun, I noticed that the storm clouds were a little closer. Wary of more poison ivy, I continued around the back of the burned house. Abruptly my legs felt unsteady. For an instant, I feared that something was wrong with my brain, that I was having a stroke and my balance was gone. My footing became even more unsteady. My lungs fought for air when I realized in panic that it wasn't my brain or my legs. The ground beneath me parted. I plunged.

With a gasp, I stopped, caught at my hips. My legs dangled in an unseen open area. Heart racing, I pressed my hands against the ground and strained to push myself up through the hole that trapped me.

Immediately my hands felt as unsteady as my legs had. The more I pushed them against the earth, the more they sank into it. I dropped again, but not before I flung out my arms, blocking my fall an instant before the widening hole would have sucked me all the way down.

My legs dangled helplessly, my body swaying in the emptiness beneath me. Only my head and shoulders were above ground, my weight supported by my outstretched arms. Hearing muffled rattles below me, I couldn't make my lungs work fast enough to take in all the air I needed. The ground sagged again. As the rattles got louder, I shouted and plummeted all the way into the hole.

7

With a shock, my feet hit bottom. The impact bent my knees and threw me backward into darkness, jolting me against something. My knapsack jammed against my back, the flashlight, water bottle, and pistol in it walloping against my shoulder blades. I cracked my head and almost passed out. A moldy earthen smell widened my nostrils. The furious whir of rattles made me press harder against what I'd struck.

It felt like a wall. It was made from wood that had turned spongy. Simultaneously, I realized that what I'd fallen onto was the rotted remains of a wooden floor. Concrete showed through. It was pooled with water and had soaked my pants. But none of that mattered. All I cared about were the rattles in the darkness across from me and the rippling movement in the sunlight that came down through the hole in the ground.

Snakes. I scrambled to my feet, pressing into a corner. The flashlight, get the damned flashlight, I thought. Frantic, I tugged the knapsack off my back, yanked at its zipper, and reached in, fumbling for the light. In a rush, I turned it on and aimed its powerful beam at the darkness across from me.

The floor over there was alive with coiled snakes, their angry rattles echoing. A moan caught in my throat. I switched the flashlight's aim toward the scummy water at my feet, fearing that snakes would be coiled there. But the green-tinted water was free of them. It was about two inches deep, and I prayed that something in its scum was noxious to them. The floor tilted down toward the corner I was in, which explained why the water had collected there, but to my right and left and in the corner across from me, the raised part of the floor was dry, which was why the snakes had gathered on that side.

How far can a rattlesnake spring? I thought. Twice its length? Three times? If so, the snakes could fling themselves across the water at me. But my fall had startled them, making them dart back before they coiled. Their writhing mass was on the other side of the enclosure, a sufficient distance to keep me safe for the moment.

The enclosure. What the hell had I fallen into? It was about the size of a double-car garage. To the left of the opposite corner, a portion of the wall had collapsed. Behind its wooden exterior, insulation and concrete had toppled inward, exposing dank earth. A downward channel in the earth showed that whoever had poured the concrete for this chamber had failed to put in adequate drainage behind it. Rain had filtered down, accumulating behind the concrete until its weight had overwhelmed that section of the wall.

The gap explained how water had gotten into the chamber. So did the roof-not concrete, but made of timbers with plywood slabs on top (the hole in the roof showed the layers) and a waterproof rubber sheet above that, with six inches of earth over everything. Nothing prevented mice and other small animals from burrowing through the earth, reaching the rubber sheet and chewing through it. Once rain soaked down to the support beams, the process of rot would have begun, ultimately making the roof incapable of bearing weight.

But the chamber had obviously been built years earlier. During that much time, more than just a few inches of water would have accumulated where I was standing. There had to be a crack in the floor that allowed the water to seep away. That would have caused further erosion, explaining why the floor tilted toward the corner I was in.

I stared toward the fallen section of the wall. In the exposed earth, a channel angled toward the surface-the snakes used it to come and go. I wondered desperately if I could dig up through it, piling the earth in the chamber behind me as I went.

But how was I going to get past the snakes? As the rattles intensified, I braced the flashlight under my right arm and fumbled in my knapsack, gripping the pistol. Immediately I realized the flaw in what I intended. Even with fifteen rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber, not to mention a further fifteen-round magazine in the knapsack, I couldn't hope to kill every snake. Oh, I could hit most of them. There were so many that it would be difficult for me to miss. But all of them? Killing them, not merely wounding? No way. Besides, I had to consider the effect of the gunshots. The reports would send the surviving snakes into a frenzy, making them strike insanely at anything that moved, even if it meant flinging themselves across the water to get at me. And what about ricocheting bullets slamming back at me?

I pressed harder into the corner. Stay quiet, I warned myself, trying to control my hoarse breathing. Once the snakes realize. you're not a threat, they'll calm down.

I hoped. But I hadn't brought spare flashlight batteries. In a couple of hours, the flashlight would stop working. A few more hours after that, the sun would go down. The hole in the roof would darken. I'd be trapped in blackness, not knowing if the snakes would disregard the water (which possibly wasn't noxious to them at all) and slither close to me, attracted by my body heat.

The meager illumination through the hole in the roof would have to be sufficient. Hoping that my eyes would adjust to the shadows, I shut off the flashlight, conserving the batteries. Despite the cold water I stood in, sweat trickled down my face. Fear made me tremble. Stop moving! I warned myself. Don't attract attention! I squeezed my muscles, straining to control their reflexive tremors.

At first I wondered if it was my imagination. Long seconds after I shut off the light and willed myself not to move, the buzz from the rattles lessened. Slowly, the frenzy subsided. My shadow-adapted eyes showed me the snakes eventually uncoiling, their unblinking gaze no longer fixed on me. Their movements became less threatening. A few went up the channel toward the surface.

But snakes preferred heat. Why had they gathered in the cool chamber rather than remaining outside and basking in the sun? What had driven them down? The question made my skin feel prickly, especially when the few snakes that had gone up returned. God help me, what didn't they like up there?

The rattling had almost completely stopped, just a few snakes continuing to coil. Then, except for the hammering of my heart, the chamber became quiet. Above, I heard sounds past the hole I'd fallen through. The breeze became a wind, whistling through bushes. I heard a rumble that I hoped was an approaching car but that I suddenly understood was thunder. The light through the hole dimmed.

Lightning cracked. The wind shrieked harder. But none of that was why fear squeezed my chest tighter. No, what terrified me was the pat pat pat I heard on the floor, the rain falling through the hole.

8

It came faster. The snakes that were positioned under the hole jerked when the drops hit them. Some slithered toward their companions on the far side of the enclosure. They accumulated on something slightly higher than the floor, a long, flat object that the shadows kept me from identifying, its soft contours having dissolved after years of periodic flooding. But other snakes veered in my direction, the floor seeming to waver as they approached the scummy water.

Some slithered onto it. Rank fumes from the water assaulted my nostrils. I aimed my pistol, trembling, holding fire when I saw that the snakes on the water reversed direction and headed back toward the dry floor. Others had paused at the water and angled away. I'd been right. Something in the water repelled them.

But the rain fell rapidly through the hole, splashing the floor, widening its circle of moisture. A small pool formed, trickling toward my corner. Soon the entire area would be covered. When there wasn't a dry space, the snakes wouldn't have a reason to avoid my corner.

Feeling smothered, I turned on the flashlight and searched for something that I could use to hit the snakes if they came at me. Sections of wood and concrete that had fallen from the opposite wall were too far to reach without putting myself within striking distance of the snakes. As the water spread across the floor, the snakes crowded into a narrower area across from me. It wouldn't be long before they set out in all directions, looking for a place that was dry. I thought about attempting to rip a board from the wall. It might make a club. I had to try it.

Lightning flashed beyond the hole in the roof. The water spread to the snakes across from me, forcing them to pile on top of one another. Some dispersed. They'd soon be everywhere. I shoved the pistol under my belt and aimed the flashlight to my right, looking for a crack in the wall that would give my hands sufficient purchase to yank off a board.

What had been shadows in my peripheral vision were, I saw now, support beams that had fallen from the roof, leaning against the wall. Maybe I could use the beams to build a ramp. Maybe I could climb up and pull down other beams, claw through the earth and reach the surface. I didn't dare worry that the entire roof might collapse and crush me. No matter what, I had to get away from the snakes.

So much rain had fallen through the hole in the roof that the floor was now totally wet. Across from me, more snakes dispersed, rippling over the water. I moved to the right and pressed a shoe against one of the beams that leaned against the wall, to test it. Dismayed, I found that the wood was so rotten that it crumbled under my weight. The sudden lack of resistance threw me off balance. Struggling not to land in the water, I lurched forward and struck the wall behind the beams.

The impact jolted my shoulder. I almost dropped the flashlight. Worse, the noise disturbed the snakes, sending several of them into another frenzy of rattling. I was certain that I'd go crazy, start shooting, and be killed by a dozen bites. My terror so preoccupied me that it took me a moment to register that the wall I'd hit sounded hollow.

More snakes crossed the water toward me. I shoved the other beam to the side and uncovered a door. The nearest snake was three feet away when I gripped the rusty doorknob. I turned it, but the rust had frozen the mechanism. I turned harder, felt it budge, and thrust against the door with all my strength.

It creaked. Another desperate shove, and it suddenly swung inward with a crash, taking me with it. I sprawled on wet concrete, banging my chin but ignoring the pain, concentrating to protect the flashlight. Dazed, I whirled toward the doorway. A snake had coiled, about to strike. I kicked at the door, but its old hinges didn't respond soon enough. The snake leapt. The door banged shut halfway along its body, pinning it, the snake's front half whipping this way and that. The light from the hole in the roof was no longer visible. Only my flashlight, trembling in my hand, showed how the snake was caught. Its agonized movements tore its front half from the door. Its jagged midsection spewed blood as it flopped into the water and thrashed toward me.

I lurched backward. My head banged against something, and as the snake struck the bottom of one of my sneakers, I stood frantically, using my other sneaker to stomp the snake's head, its bones cracking beneath my sole.

The snake's severed body thrashed under my heel, its spastic movements slowing, becoming less violent. When it was finally still, I raised my shoe and aimed the flashlight at the flattened, bloody head. Reminding myself that a prick from its fangs could be poisonous even after it was dead, I kicked the torso toward the door.

When it splashed down, I raised my light to make sure that the door was closed and that no other snakes could get past it. I swung around to find out where I was and if this place, too, was inhabited by snakes. Nothing slithered. No rattling unnerved me. But even though I'd escaped from the first enclosure, I remained trapped.

I was in a tunnel roughly five feet wide and twenty feet long, with a ceiling I could touch if I raised my hand. The end opposite the door was choked with the objects I'd banged against: blackened timbers and other debris from the fire. Unlike in the first chamber, the concrete of the walls and the floor hadn't been covered with wood. The ceiling, though, had the same poor design: timbers with presumably plywood slabs, a rubber sheet, and earth on top. The timbers had not yet fallen, but water seeped between them, and eventually the timbers would rot to the stage of collapse.

As I noticed two rusted metal ducts that went along the ceiling and into the chamber, the rain streamed from the ceiling in greater volume. Rivulets poured down through the wreckage at the end of the tunnel. The water on the floor rose to my ankles. The crack at the door's bottom was too narrow to allow the water to drain. I was trapped in what amounted to a cistern.

How much rain could a strong June storm unload? An inch? Two? That didn't seem a threat unless you considered the expanse of the ground above the tunnel and the square footage of the burned house, both of which collected the water and funneled it into the five-by-eight-by-twenty-foot space that held me. The water probably wouldn't rise all the way to the ceiling, but there was a strong chance it would get high enough that I'd have to dog-paddle to keep my head above the surface. But how long could I do that as the water chilled me and hypothermia set in? Once I started shivering, I'd be dead in three hours.

In fact, I'd already started shivering. My flashlight showed wisps of my breath as I splashed toward the debris that blocked the tunnel. I braced the light between scorched boards, its slanted glare making it difficult for me to see as I grabbed a burned timber and strained to tug it loose. The effort made me breathe faster. Inhaling deeply, I coughed from the smoky odor coming off the wet wood.

I pulled harder and freed the timber. With a minor sense of triumph, I was about to shove it behind me, when the debris shifted and caused the flashlight to tumble. I grabbed for it, but my fingers only grazed it. As it flipped from my grasp, I lunged, using my hands like scoops to catch it the instant before it would have fallen into the water. I pulled it to my chest, treasuring it. Almost certainly, it would have stopped working if it had gotten soaked. The panic of nearly having lost my light made me shiver more severely.

The chill water rose to my shins. I tried holding the flashlight with one hand while I used the other to pull at the boards that blocked my way, but I couldn't get a decent grip. Reluctantly, I again tried bracing the flashlight among the debris, but it almost fell the moment I pulled out another board.

My pistol dug into the skin under my belt. It gave me the idea of cramming the flashlight under the opposite side of the belt, but there wasn't room. Think! I told myself. There has to be a way! I took off my knapsack, opened a side pocket, and shoved the flashlight into it. When I resecured the knapsack to my back, the light glared toward the ceiling, but when I leaned forward to grab at debris, the light did what I wanted, tilting in that direction.

My frenzied movements echoed so loudly that my ears rang. Breathing stridently, I pulled out more boards, thrusting them behind me. Water poured down through the debris and rose to my knees. No matter how hot I felt from my exertions, I couldn't stop shivering. I freed another board and stared at a soot-smeared concrete step that led upward. With greater determination, I pulled two more boards loose, found another step, and felt a growing surge of hope. If I could uncover enough steps so I could climb above the water, the danger of hypothermia would lessen. I had food in my knapsack. I'd be able to eat and rest, conserving the flashlight's batteries, using them only while clearing the stairwell.

Desperate, I grabbed a timber and dragged it free, about to shove it behind me, when I heard a crack and gaped up at a huge plug of debris snapping loose. I tried to scramble back, but a jumble of scorched timbers and boards crashed down on me. The force took my breath away, knocking me toward the water. I didn't dare let the flashlight get soaked! Deafened by the reverberating rumble, I fought to raise myself, to keep the knapsack from filling with water. I pushed at the timbers weighing against me. I thrust the boards away. I grabbed something that didn't feel like wood. It was round and soft.

I screamed when I realized that I was holding the snake, its severed body drooping in my hands, the fangs of its crushed head close to my arm. As I hurled it away, a floating timber knocked against me. I fell. The foul water went over my head. It rushed into my ears, crammed my nostrils, and filled my mouth. Gasping, I bolted to the surface, coughing, spitting out soot-tasting water, struggling to breathe. I wiped at my eyes, frantically realizing that my lack of vision had nothing to do with water in them.

The flashlight had gone out.

9

In absolute darkness, my other senses strained to fill the void: the echo of waves splashing and wood thudding against the walls; the feel of my wet clothes clinging to me; the taste of soot and dirt; the stench of the water making me gag. My most extreme sense, though, was terror. Afraid to move lest I touch the fangs of the dead snake floating around me, I stood rigidly, trying to keep balanced in the darkness while I listened to the lapping of the waves slowly subsiding. Soon, all I heard was water streaming from the roof and through the debris in the stairwell.

My wet knapsack was heavy on my back. Blind, I took it off, looped its straps over a shoulder, and carefully took out the flashlight. I shook it. I pressed its on/off button. Nothing. I unscrewed its cap, removed the batteries, dumped the water from the cylinder, and blew on the poles of the batteries to attempt to dry them. After reinserting the batteries, I pressed the button. The darkness remained total. No, I was wrong. My eyes, straining to adapt to the blackness, became sensitive to a slight glow on my left wrist- the luminous coating on the hour marks of my watch. The speckled circle floated, disembodied.

I poured water from the knapsack, put the flashlight in it (and my pistol, which had dug deeper into the skin under my belt). Then I made sure that the pack's zippers were tightly closed and strapped it to my back. Meanwhile, the cold water rose above my knees.

Move! Wading, I groped ahead. I flinched from a chill, clammy, pitted surface, belatedly identifying it as a concrete wall. When I'd lost my balance and fallen, I must have gotten turned around. Now I had to make a choice: right or left. One direction led to the door, the other to the choked stairwell.

I eased to the left, pawing through the darkness. Something pricked my hand. Oh Jesus, I'd touched the snake's fangs. Jerking my hand back, grabbing where I'd been stung, I felt an object stuck in my palm. No. A splinter. Only a splinter. I'd scraped against a board.

I'd found the stairwell. As my watch's luminous dial zigzagged ghostlike in the darkness, I tugged at boards. I yanked at timbers. I pulled and heaved, shoving debris behind me. My hands were in pain, cut and gouged, but I didn't care. I had to clear more space before the water rose fatally higher. My shoulders ached, and my back throbbed. My mouth became dry. I had trouble getting air down my throat and finally had to pause to take my canteen from the knapsack and gulp water, making my mouth and throat feel less swollen, able to get more air.

But the brief rest didn't give me energy. I felt light-headed and realized that carbon dioxide was accumulating in the tunnel, becoming denser as the water rose. I didn't need to worry about hypothermia. I was going to die from suffocation.

With a greater frenzy, I grabbed sightlessly for debris and hurled it behind me. I freed one step after another, working higher, but the water followed, tugging at my hips. I felt unsteady. My mind whirled. Even though I couldn't see, spots wavered in front of my eyes.

The air thickened. My movements slowed. Debris floated against me. When a timber broke in my hands, I jerked backward, almost falling into the water. Then I pulled a chunk of wreckage, releasing not only it but a pool that had gathered in the ruins above me. With the force of a broken dam, it rushed onto me, so strong that it swept me off the steps, knocking me against floating timbers. I was dazed, barely able to keep my head above the surface. I flopped one arm and then the other against the water, trying to swim but remaining in place.

I was so weak, struggling not to sink, that it took me a moment to notice that the air had a hint of sweetness. I stared toward the stairwell and feared that my mind was tricking me, because the darkness was shaded. I saw vague contours of the wreckage. Gray filtered down. Bolstered by the fresh air seeping in, I found the strength to swim to the stairwell. I wavered up the steps and pulled at timbers, the gray beckoning, urging me upward.

When I finally squirmed up through an ooze of soot, squeezing past the jumbled skeleton of the collapsed house, the sky was thick with clouds. The air turned grayer, making me think that the hidden sun was setting and that in my delirium it had taken me all day to burrow up from the stairwell.

The cold rain persisted. It pelted me, but the grime that covered me was like grease and wouldn't come off. I clawed up through wreckage. I strained and dragged myself higher. Several times, boards snapped in my hands, threatening to hurtle me back into the pit. My blood-smeared fingers hooked onto the top of a foundation wall. I pulled myself over, flopping onto mushy ground. It took me several minutes before I could stand. As I plodded through mud, I wondered if I'd have the strength to reach my car.

10

Steam rose around me, but I couldn't get the bathwater hot enough. The cold penetrated to my bones. To my soul.

What use had the chamber served? I kept asking myself. Why had Orval, who'd possessed construction skills, not built the roof with concrete? What had been the purpose of the two ducts that had gone along the roof of the tunnel and into the chamber? If the chamber had been a storage area, there wouldn't have been a need to panel the walls, cover the floor, and use insulation. I couldn't make sense of it. Unless…

"Where they kept me a prisoner was an underground room," the man who'd claimed to be my brother had said. Not Petey, God help me, but Lester Dant. Why would Orval and Eunice Dant have kept their only child in an underground room? The horror of it made my mind swirl.

The puzzle of the roof's poor construction now became clear. By working after dark, using no more than the lights from the house, Orval could have dug the space for the tunnel and the underground chamber without anyone who drove by noticing and wondering. Working at night, he could have mixed concrete in small amounts and used a wheelbarrow to transport it for the floor and walls of the tunnel and the chamber.

But the ceiling would have been a problem. To construct it properly, he would have needed to make concrete slabs. Once the slabs were ready, however, he would have needed a small crane to hoist them into place: precision work that would have required more than just standard illumination from the house. Outsiders would have noticed and been curious about so much light in back of his house after dark. Better to be cautious by using wooden beams for the roof, easily and quickly installed. Or maybe there'd been a deadline. Maybe Orval had been forced to compromise with the roof's construction because a timetable was hurrying him.

Sickened, I added more hot water to the tub, but I still couldn't chase the cold from my soul. Making me even colder was my uneasy conviction that I hadn't learned everything I could have out there. I was sure there was something darker. God help me, I didn't want to, but I knew I had to go back.

11

I walked along the lane to the ruin. The time was a little after ten the next morning. My night had been fitful, sleep coming only toward dawn. My nervousness grew as I stepped closer. I removed my pistol from a fanny pack that I'd bought. Clutching the weapon helped to keep my scraped hands from shaking. The thought of the snakes made bile rise into my mouth.

I paused where I had the previous day. From the lane, I couldn't see the spot where I'd fallen into the chamber. It was as if the earth had sealed itself. But I had a general idea of where the tunnel and the chamber were, and I plotted a direction that avoided them.

I studied the long grass for quite a while, on guard against the slightest ripple. Finally I aimed the pistol and took one cautious step after another. Weeds scraped against my pants. The poison ivy seemed harder to avoid.

I took a wide arc around the back of the house, approaching a group of trees behind the house. The previous night, I'd imagined the design problems that Orval had needed to solve. Insulate the prison chamber. Get heating ducts leading into it. But what about ventilation? One of the ducts would have taken air from the furnace in the house. The other duct would have returned air to the furnace. A closed system.

That would have been adequate if the chamber had been merely a storage room. But if I was right and the chamber had been a cell, the system would have needed to be modified so that carbon dioxide and other poisonous gases didn't accumulate and kill the prisoner. To prevent that from happening, there would have had to be another duct into the chamber, powered with a fan, to bring in fresh air. The logical place for that duct would have been just below the ceiling, but the snakes had prevented me from noticing the duct if it was there.

The outlet would have had to project above the ground. Otherwise, it would have gotten clogged with dirt. But how had Orval disguised it? The area behind the house was flat. After the fire, the townspeople would have swarmed around the wreckage, hoping to find survivors. They hadn't stumbled over the vent. If they had, they'd have wondered about its purpose and eventually have discovered the underground chamber. So where in hell had Orval hidden the outlet so that nobody had found it back then?

The trees were the obvious answer. Between fallen logs, or inside a stump. Ready with the pistol, I continued through the weeds and long grass. The sun was hot on my head, but that wasn't the reason I sweated. Each time a breeze moved blades of grass, I tightened my finger on the trigger.

I reached the trees, where the grass was welcomely shorter as I crisscrossed the area. Whenever I nudged a log, my muscles cramped in anticipation of finding a coiled snake. I picked up a stick (making sure that it was in fact a stick), then poked through leaves that had collected in hollow stumps. I found nothing unusual.

But the outlet had to be in the area. I turned in a slow circle, surveying the trees. Damn it, where would Orval have hidden the outlet? Ventilation ducts became inefficient the longer they extended. The outlet had to be somewhere among the charred logs and stumps. Everything else in the area was flat.

No, I realized with a chill. Not everything. The graveyard. On my left, about fifty feet from the chamber, it looked so bleak that it discouraged me from going near it. A perfect place to…

I stepped from the trees, entering the long grass, and the first rattle took my breath away. I stumbled back, saw the snake under a bush, and blew its head off. The reflex and the accuracy with which I shot surprised me. Hours and hours of practice no doubt explained my reaction. But for over a year, hate and anger had been swelling in me. More than anything, I wanted to kill something. No sooner had I shot the first snake than a second one buzzed. I blew its head apart. A third coiled. A fourth. A fifth. I shot each of them, furious that the snakes seemed to be trying to stop me. My shots rang in my ears. The sharp stench of cordite floated around me. Relentlessly, I shifted through the grass. A sixth. A seventh. An eighth. Pieces of snakes flew. Blood sprayed through the grass. Yet more kept rattling, and it seemed that it wasn't my pistol but my raging thoughts that shot them, so directly and instantly did their heads explode the moment I fixed my gaze on them.

The last empty cartridge flipped to the ground. The slide on the pistol stayed back. As I'd done hundreds of times in class, I pushed the button that dropped the empty magazine. I drew a full one from my fanny pack, slammed it into the pistol's grip, pushed the lever that freed the slide, and aimed this way and that, eager for more targets.

None presented itself. Either I'd frightened the rest away or they were hiding, waiting. Let them try, I thought in a fury as I picked up the empty magazine and proceeded more relentlessly through the grass. Reaching the graveyard's low stone wall, I climbed over. Brambles and poison ivy awaited me. The place was too foul even for snakes.

The piles of stones in front of each grave made my nerves tighten as I stepped forward. Glancing behind me, I thought I detected a slight furrow in the ground, where earth seemed to have settled. It was so minor that I never would have paid attention to it if I hadn't been looking for it. Faint, it ran from where I'd fallen into the chamber. It went under the graveyard's wall. Even less noticeable, it led to the grave nearest the underground chamber.

A short grave. A child's grave. Angry, I knelt. I pulled away the pile of stones at the head of the grave. For a moment, I couldn't move. The stones had concealed an eight-inch-wide duct sticking up. The duct had a baffle on it so that rain would pour off and not get into the ventilation system.

I was right: The chamber had been a cell. I remembered the long, flat object that the snakes had piled onto to avoid the rising water. Over the years, the object had so deteriorated that, in the shadows, I hadn't been able to identify it. But now I knew what it was. The remains of a mattress. It had been the only object in the room. There hadn't even been a toilet. Had Lester been forced to relieve himself in a pot, contending with the stench until his captors took it away? Their son? The horror of it mounted as I stared at the child's grave that they'd desecrated to hide their sin.

12

Reverend Benedict was where I had met him the previous day, kneeling, trimming roses in the church's garden. His white hair glinted in the sunlight.

"Mr. Denning." He stood with effort, shook my hand, and frowned at the scratches on it. "You've injured yourself."

"I took a fall."

He pointed toward my chin, where my beard stubble couldn't hide a bruise. "Evidently a bad one."

"Not as bad as it could have been."

"At the Dant place?"

I nodded.

"Did you find anything to help you locate your family?"

"I'm still trying to make sense of it." I told him what I'd discovered.

The wrinkles in his forehead deepened. "Orval and Eunice held their only son prisoner? Why?"

"Maybe they thought the Devil was in him. I have a feeling a lot of things happened out there that we'll never understand, Reverend." My head pounded. "How did Lester escape from the underground room? When the fire broke out, did Orval and Eunice risk their lives to go down to the basement and free him? Did the parents somehow get trapped? In spite of how they'd treated him, did Lester try but fail to save them, as he claimed?"

"It fits what we know."

"But it doesn't explain why he didn't tell everybody what he'd suffered. When something outrageous happens to us, don't we want to tell others? Don't we want sympathy?"

"Unless the memory's so dark that we can't handle it."

"Especially if a different kind of outrage happened out there."

Reverend Benedict kept frowning. "What are you getting at?"

"Suppose Lester somehow got out of that room on his own. Or suppose the parents released him every so often as a reward for good behavior. Did Lester start the fire?"

"Start the… Lord have mercy."

"One way or another, whether they tried to rescue him or whether he got out on his own, did he trap his parents? Did he stand outside the burning house and listen with delight to their screams? Is that something he'd have wanted to describe to anyone? But that's not all that bothers me."

"Good God, you don't mean there's more."

"I'm from Colorado," I said.

The apparent non sequitur made Reverend Benedict shake his wizened head in confusion.

"Every once in a while, there's a story about somebody who went into the mountains and came across a rattlesnake," I said. "Not often. Maybe it's because the snakes have plenty of hiding places in the mountains, and they're not aggressive by nature- they prefer to stay away from us. But Indiana's a different matter. Lots of people. Dwindling farmland. Have you ever seen a rattlesnake around here?" "No." "Have you ever heard of anybody who has come across one?"

I asked.

"Not that I can think of," the reverend said. "A farmer perhaps. Rarely."

"Because the spreading population has driven them out."

"Presumably."

"Then how come there are dozens of rattlesnakes on the Dant property? In southern states, in Mississippi or Louisiana, for example, so many snakes might not seem unusual, but not around here. What are they doing on Orval's farm? How did they get there?"

"I can't imagine."

"Well, I can. Do you suppose that the Dants could have been practicing snake handling out there?"

The reverend paled. "As a religious exercise? Holding them in each hand? Letting them coil around their neck to prove their faith in God?"

"Exactly. If the snakes didn't bite, it meant that God intervened. It meant that God favored the Dants more than He did the people in town. If you've got a bunker mentality, if you've got a desperate 'us against them' attitude, maybe you want undeniable proof that you're right."

"It's the worst kind of presumption."

"And I suspect it destroyed them."

"I don't understand."

"You said that there were three Dant families when Lester was born. By the time of the fire, only one family-Orval, Eunice, and Lester-remained. You wondered if the other families might have moved away or had gotten deathly ill. But I'm wondering if the snakes didn't send the Dants a different message than they expected."

"You mean the snakes killed them?" the reverend murmured. "The Dants would never have gone to a doctor for help." "Dear Jesus."

"Snake handling would explain how so many got to be out there. The Dants brought them," I said. "What it doesn't explain is why the snakes remained. Why didn't they spread?"

"Perhaps they stayed where they belonged."

At first, I didn't understand. Then I nodded. "Maybe. That's a foul, rotten place out there, Reverend. I think you're right. If I were in your line of work, I'd say that the snakes are exactly where they feel at home."

Several bees buzzed my face. I motioned them away.

"Just one more question, and then I'll leave you alone," I said.

"Anything I can do to help."

"You mentioned that after Lester ran from your home, he showed up in a town a hundred miles east of here, across the border in Ohio."

"That's right."

"What did you say it was called?"