The Brunist Day of Wrath

III.1 Thursday 7 May — Sunday 24 May

The King is in his counting house, but no money to be counted. The Wizards have it all. By magic? No, their magic couldn’t pull a coin out of your ear. Probably he just left the back door open. He can’t think of everything. The war is not going well. Treasure Mountain is under attack, its guardian dragon having wandered off in pursuit of succulent maidens. A serious error of judgment, but some things can’t be helped. The forest has fallen to the Cretins, the King’s counselors are bickering confusedly among themselves, and when the Jester, somewhat soused on the royal mead, remarks that the Castle has been caught out like a maiden with her drawbridges down, he is banished to the fields to practice his jokes on the sheep and share their mange and foot rot.

As for the Jester’s daughter, the witless Goose Girl, she is slumped, desperately in need of a smoke, in the back row of the West Condon Township High School auditorium, scribbling idiocies in the notebook on her knees. This chilly spring day chances also to be (the world is suffocating in irony or else it’s the imbedded transgenerational odor of child sweat) Ascension Day, though probably few here other than the Catholic priest, the Lutheran preacher, and herself even know that. Because Tommy Cavanaugh has asked her to, Sally is attending the inaugural meeting of the New Opportunities for West Condon citizens committee, the very one (irony is lost on Tommy) that, thanks to his dear dad, has cost her dear dad his job and condemned him to the donkey stables at the Fort. So do me a favor, Sal… It was Tommy’s assignment to get the young people out to the meeting, and there are a lot of them in here — his old high school teammates and drinking buddies, all the stay-at-home losers, but especially Tommy’s fan club, his exes and wannabes, she of the bouncing tits among them. Tommy himself is back up at university, having had to drive there in a beat-up tangerine-colored Buick Special rented from Lem after his mom’s station wagon got nicked and wrecked over the weekend, so Sally is martyring herself unwitnessed, but she promised to send him her notes, and anyway it’s all mill-grist, is it not? See here how her restless plume flies blithely o’er the welcoming page. Her dad’s Chamber successor and new city manager (no one seems certain just how this has happened, least of all the mayor, who stares out upon the gathered citizenry from his marginalized seat at one end of the stage, his fat round face the very picture of bafflement; Sally makes a little cartoon sketch in her notebook: Simple Simon as a con artist) has just announced his first coup in office — he has interested a big-city consortium called the Roma Historical Society in the purchase and restoration of the derelict West Condon Hotel — and he has been duly applauded. Things are, on this day of Christ’s liftoff, looking up. That’s the message. The city manager is also the de facto chairman of this committee, and he goes on to describe in his crisp monotone all the legal actions they have taken against the illegal encampment of the cult at the edge of town, which is blamed for much that has gone wrong in recent times and which is now trying to steal the mine and its historic hill out from under their noses.

Backdropped by a huge banner in the school colors that says “NOWC” and surrounded by his varsity squad of preachers and politicians, Tommy’s father assumes the podium to let it be known that if the city can acquire the Deepwater property, he will ask the state for funding for a new hospital to be built on it or else an industrial park or a state prison or some kind of recreational facility, maybe a monument to the fallen mine heroes, his very lack of a clear project (he asks the audience for their own ideas, setting off a general brouhaha) evidence that the hill is not his nor will it likely ever be.

This is one tough ballgame, he says — but what he doesn’t say is that he is losing it. The Brunists already have detailed architectural plans for a big church up there — Billy Don has described them to Sally — with groundbreaking set for just a month from today, and apparently, thanks to mischievous Irene, they’re building it mostly with Cavanaugh family money. Which, Tommy says, has left his dad, also not an appreciator of irony, pretty fucking depressed.

Now, as the citizenry argue noisily about how to use land they don’t own and never will (some want to reopen the mine itself — there’s a whole lot of coal down there still, they shout — all the mine structures have remained in place in hopes of its reopening, the city should take it over and run it, it owes that much to the hardworking people who have made this town what it is today), she can see the dismay setting in on the man’s face like time-lapse aging, and he seems to be looking around for an exit just as she is. Somewhere she has written in one of her notebooks: It is the attempt to avoid fate which provokes the calamity. Now she opens her cogdiss page and writes: Calamity is the normal circumstance of the universe. Catastrophe creates.

This page was opened after her meeting earlier this week with Reverend Konrad Dreyer of Trinity Lutheran, now sitting onstage with the other city fathers, smiling that sad patronizing smile that preachers bestow upon the damned. Sally was there to try to find out what it was about him that so baffled her parents and their Presbyterian friends. Without a minister, they’re obliged to go to church at Trinity Lutheran, which is damp and chilly and smells of mildewed hymnals, and that’s bad enough without having Connie Dreyer put them to sleep with his fustian monologues. You should only have to take a metaphysical once a year, as her father put it, twisting the cap off his after-church Sunday morning “spirituals.” Sally and the minister sat out on the church lawn where he’d been weeding dandelions and planting begonia and gladiolus bulbs alongside the broad front steps. He got out his pipe, meaning she was free to hit the cigarettes. Just to be provocative, she had worn her RELIGION IS MYTH-INFORMATION tee, even though it has a split seam under one armpit and wasn’t completely clean — to which he replied, acknowledging the line with a nod, Yes, I can see that. But a myth is not a lie, Sally. It’s a special kind of language used to symbolize certain realities beyond space and time. It is information. God’s a symbolist, you mean. No, on the contrary. Everything he is and does is just what it is and nothing else. You know: I am that I am. We earth-bound creatures use symbolism as one way of trying to understand God’s thought, which for Him is the same thing as His actions. For we and all we think and do and feel are only shadowy and scattered emanations of divine thought, action, and passion. Whereupon, when she asked about passion, he explained God’s love, quoting someone else to the effect that love, as experienced in eternity, is an incessant “dying to oneself” (she took a note, wondering if human love might not be something like that when it was really good), a prefiguring of which was provided by Christ’s life, death, and resurrection, an act of divine love performed for us within the constraints of our own limited human perceptions of space and time, which are not those of infinity and eternity, but of mere extension and duration. He seemed so sure of himself. How did he know all that to be so? He gazed into his pipe bowl as though his thoughts were stored there, clamped the stem in his teeth, took a draw, then said: Well, Socrates would say by intuition, but for me it’s more a matter of faith. And faith in divine governance is just that: faith. Everything else, including church dogma or Biblical interpretation, is achieved by reason and so is susceptible to human error. But so is your first principle, Reverend Dreyer. No, it may be true or false — in this world we’ll never know — but it cannot be subject to error. He smiled. It is that it is.

She knew by then that it would be useless to question the historicity of the resurrection story or dispute the divine inspiration of the Bible or the prophecy of the Last Judgment and et cet, because he would just agree with her or say it could be so, we’re only human after all, and smile his benign smile, the smile he is casting now upon the auditorium, as though to say God’s love is flowing through him and he is sharing it with everyone. The smile of the terminally stoned upon the squares. So instead she asked him what he thought about the Brunists. Isn’t it curious that their religion only got going after what they’d prophesied didn’t happen? He saw through her instantly. You’re going to say the same thing was true of the beginnings of Christianity, he said, and it was her turn to smile. Well, it was, wasn’t it? Jesus told his disciples the end would come in their own lifetimes and it didn’t. He let everybody down, his little cult should have died, but look what happened. Isn’t that really weird? He nodded and said that it was and that there was now a quasi-scientific term for what causes that weird-ness. It’s called cognitive dissonance, which he explained as believing or wanting to believe two contradictory things at the same time, or acting or having to act in conflict with one’s beliefs, and suffering the mental discomfort of that. Trying to resolve these conflicts and ease the discomfort releases a lot of creative energy, for the mind is forced to look for new beliefs or somehow transform the old existing ones. In the case of predicting an event that doesn’t happen, for example, especially when you are publicly committed to it — when, not to seem a fool, you have to go on believing something that’s contrary to the evidence, as with the Brunists or, yes, the early Christians — the dissonance aroused is alleviated by making it come true after all, perhaps by redefining it or rescheduling it, or just by getting more people to believe in the original prediction. So now I know what you’re going to say, she said. If everything flows from God’s head, then He planted this mechanism to make things like Christianity happen, whether or not there even ever was a Jesus. The minister laughed and tapped the ashes out of his pipe. Yes, the Spirit of God, which is everywhere, working from within to influence human imaginations to produce Christ-like stories, symbolizing the truths of God, as a great teacher of mine once said. And if so, it means that something good can come even from the Brunists, in spite of their naïve confusions and most folks’ misgivings. Something intended by God — in effect, engineered by Him. And I will tell you something stranger, Sally. Studies have shown that the less the reward or the milder the punishment, the greater and firmer the change. When it’s more like a voluntary decision, it sticks more. Thus, the failure of Moses’ law tablets. He chuckled, pocketing his pipe. No wonder he had to break them: they were too extreme, too implacable, and didn’t work. The Jesus generation knew better. And the most important lesson of cognitive dissonance is that to suffer is to love. People end up loving what they willingly suffer for, whether or not it merits either love or suffering. They don’t want to suffer and so they have to find some sort of justification for having elected to do so. The more suffering we have chosen for ourselves, the greater the commitment to the changed beliefs that have led to the suffering and the greater the love toward the object of those beliefs.

Her present suffering may be having a similar effect. Chasing Tommy is an amusing diversion from what is now her writing life (yes, she has made that choice — this am who she am, bring on the dissonance and fuck the consequences), but putting up with nights like this, having to listen to her benighted townsfolk rattle insanely on in a suffocating school auditorium, suffering an infinite boredom sinking into total stupor, and not for Tommy’s sake, as she likes to pretend, but merely for the sake of her futile pursuit of him, is ratcheting up that pursuit’s value and her love for its object. Sally does not believe Tommy will ever show any interest in her, but she has to believe, against all odds, he will, else all she’s putting herself through will have been for nothing — even if, on one level, she doesn’t even like him, finding him an insensitive, spoiled, jock-strapped, self-centered nitwit. But, somewhat in the abstract, he’s also beautiful and she loves him. Maybe all the more so since he took her to the brink five years ago, like the Brunists got taken on their stormy hill — and more or less at the same time — then dropped her. Another failed prophecy: They both thought it was going to happen and it didn’t. And won’t. But will. I believe. Such are her vain expectations and the punishments she must suffer in their anticipation. But there’s a limit. When Tommy’s father remarks that it is religion that holds this community together and asks the Catholic priest and the Methodist preacher to lead them all in prayer, she butts out.

A few days later, over ice cream sundaes in the Tucker City drugstore, Sally tries to explain this new concept to Billy Don Tebbett, leaving out the spooky divine engineering bit — the principle being, if you can understand the mechanism, you can escape it — but Billy Don only pretends to listen. He did seem genuinely happy to see her again when they met outside on the street, grinning his flushed awkward grin while pulling self-consciously on his droopy mustaches and squeezing her hand when she offered it, but now he has withdrawn behind his sunglasses once more as if regretting that he has come here. They are regulars now and evoke amused glances whenever they enter; the people all go silent and look the other way, busying themselves with this or that, no doubt hoping to overhear something scandalous again, and it’s not in her nature to disappoint them. The fear of that may be what has made Billy Don apprehensive, or else it’s her Mark Twain tee, IF THERE IS A GOD HE IS A MALIGN THUG, which he’s staring at, though without the usual close-read. He’s probably aware of the actions being taken against the camp by the city, and maybe he associates her with them. She asks if something is the matter and he only shrugs and says they’ve been working harder than ever at the camp and seem to be getting less and less done, and then he looks away. Though this is more an evasion than an answer, she decides to use it, and with her notebook open to her cogdiss page, she says that hard work might be a way of avoiding having to think about anything else, and he looks into her eyes with at least one of his and agrees with a nod that it could be. But when she suggests it might also be a way of inducing or reinforcing belief — that work is a kind of suffering, and the more of it you devote to some cause or other, the more you start to believe in it, have to believe in it — he says, no, it wasn’t anything like that, it was just to prove they can carry on without Ben and Clara.

“You mean Mrs. Collins has left the camp?”

“Well, just for three or four weeks or so. Probably. She and Ben are on a, you know, like, tour of the East Coast churches or something. Ben’s going to sing.”

He’s looking away again. Something’s bothering him; he’s not coming clean. He has made his methodical way down through his sundae, but the old voracity is not there. On a hunch, she says: “What I’m saying is, when you’re only thinking about something — religion, say — you can take it or leave it. But when you start doing something, or have to, especially where people can see you, you get hooked. That is, you hook yourself. Doing creates believing. You know? Almost like it is believing. Or when, for example, something bad happens…”

“Something bad did happen.”

“Oh yeah?” Heads turn in the silence, not to face them, but to position their ears. “Billy Don…?”

“I can’t talk about it. I promised.”

“Is it why Mrs. Collins and her husband left?” He doesn’t reply, just glances up at her then drops his head. Maybe they got into it with somebody and things went wrong and they just ducked out. Which would be a total disaster. But what could have gone wrong? She had all her closest people around her; any fights, she’d have won them. And Mrs. Collins didn’t seem like one to get caught out in any kind of scandal either. So something happened to her to make her leave. But she’s used to trouble and she didn’t look a quitter. You had the feeling she would have stood up against any…unless… “Did they take her daughter along when they left?” This time he doesn’t even glance up at her. “Something happened to her daughter…oh no. Someone in the camp?”

He shakes his head. “No,” he mutters, his head down, speaking so softly he almost cannot be heard. “It was those bikers. They…”

“The bikers? What—? Oh my god, Billy Don! They…?”

He nods and puts his finger to his lips, glancing uneasily around the drugstore. Nothing to be heard but the soft flutter of the ceiling fan overhead. “Your aunt was a real heroine,” he wheezes, his hand in front of his mouth, and clears his throat. “She heard something and went down there and fought them all off with a big branch.”

“She did? Aunt Debra?”

“But she’s not the same now. She seems mad about something all the time, or else just sad. She gets very demanding and at the same time she cries a lot. Nobody’s the same now.”

“That’s an awful story, Billy Don! It’s horrible! Something has to be done!”

“No, they don’t want anybody to know. You have to promise not to tell. They’re afraid people around here will take it the wrong way. You know, like we’re always getting accused of one sick thing or another. And the bikers have all left. One of them got killed. Sheriff Puller found his body and his wrecked bike out on the state road and he said they won’t be back.”

“I heard about that. Some guy driving drunk without a helmet. But their motorcycles are really noisy. You can hear them a mile away. How did they reach the camp without everyone knowing?”

“Well, it was very early, still dark. And they used a car.”

“A car.” Aha. “Saturday. Or Sunday. A week ago,” she says. He looks up at her, surprised. “Friend of mine. His car was stolen that night. Later they found it trashed over by the mine.” She saw Tommy that day. He’d gone out to the motel car park and found it gone. He said it took him a while to grasp that it had been stolen; at first he thought he must have parked it somewhere else, given someone the keys. But he had the keys. He said this happened “after midnight” which she translated to “the next morning.”

“And Pach’, he was there, too.”

“Pach’?”

“Carl Dean Palmers. I guess he was one of them — everybody said so, but he really fooled me. Duke and Patti Jo said he was getting drunk with the bikers in the motel bar the night before. He loved her, but she wouldn’t pay him any mind, so, I don’t know, maybe he just…”

And so that, too. “My friend said he was supposed to meet Carl Dean that morning at the garage, but he got stood up. I guess after all that happened Ugly just took off.”

“Well, not in his van he didn’t. That got left behind. People set it on fire.”

“They burned his car?”

“Everyone was pretty upset. Ben was the maddest I ever saw. He didn’t raise his voice. He just got his gun and started laying the law down. The sheriff came, too. And Mr. Suggs. Reverend Baxter and his family and most all his friends got kicked out.”

“But what did they have to do with it?”

“Well, two of the bikers are sons of his, and the other one was somehow mixed up in it too. They found him near-naked with his face all cut up. He was…”

“Was what?”

“Nothing.”

He has set the spoon down. His hands are shaking. She reaches across the table to hold them for a minute. “Was what, Billy Don?” she whispers.

“He was wearing her underpants. He’d…he’d taken them off her… when…”

Cretin: 1779, from Fr. Alpine dialect crestin, “a dwarfed and deformed idiot,” from V.L. christianus, “a Christian,” a generic term for “anyone,” but often with a sense of “poor fellow.” The word Christian itself was not used in English until 1526. Good name for her Wizards in the woods. But the Castle is full of cretins, too. An internecine battle. Which in the time of knights and castles didn’t mean an internal struggle within a group. It meant simply murderous, fought to the death. Characterized by bloodshed and carnage, a great slaughter. The Castle and the Wizards aren’t there yet, but give them time.

All history as the history of language. A pathology of sorts.

Here’s one for Tommy. There’s an Australian myth in which the Primal Father swallows a lump of sago and shits it back unchanged, the turd then turning into a pig, which the Father names after himself. Look at me! I did this! The people hunt the shit-pig, which by now is confused with the Father, and the youngest son shoots and kills it. But then it’s resurrected for a time, God is great, and it goes around opening women’s pudenda and teaching people how to fuck. Who knows where the youngest son came from. Then the shit-pig dies again and people cut its flesh up and preserve it as “strong medicine.” Some places have strips of dried human flesh they say are relics of the pig-father’s body. Used for faith healing. No new religions, only heresies.

And where were you when the Incarnation hit the fan?

Humor does not displace the terror or hide it from us, but it deflects its immobilizing power. It says here.

Billy Don’s story has left her shaken. She would like to do something about it, but she doesn’t know what. This is all she can do. Write stupidities to herself. It’s a kind of masturbation. Which, come to think of it, is a better idea. To be continued…

Sally is sitting in an old-fashioned oak swivel chair in what was once, she’s been told, the West Condon Chronicle job room. Now it’s used mainly for storage, including the newspaper archives, mostly unsorted. The print shop itself, job press and all — all that remains of the West Condon publishing industry — has been moved into the former editorial offices, where there are windows. They look bleakly out on a broken asphalt parking lot and the ruined backside of the old hotel, but they look out. This room, lit only by a flickering fluorescent, is a win-dowless storehouse of dusty old typewriters and telephones and other nameless junk, stuffed filing cabinets, stacked unlabeled boxes, and piles and piles of moldering paper, including yellowing newspapers and dimming photographs, one small stack now her own. The very disorder has helped Sally find some of what she has been looking for, the breakdown of the filing system having obviously worsened near the end — and then, once out of hospital, the editor himself was soon gone without, apparently, looking back, so whatever was left in the closed front offices just got dumped in here, helter-skelter. Thus, the more random the confusion, the more likely she is to find material related to the events of those tumultuous final days, almost as though, after the damp fizzle of the grand finale, that tumult shrank back into these stacks and continues to roil them.

Her medieval history class at college met early on Monday mornings, much to everyone’s disgust, so she chose this post-Pentecostal one for her visit to the old newspaper plant in pursuit of what she described to the funny little toothbrush-mustachioed guy running the print shop as “thesis research.” She remembers him vaguely as a teacher and some kind of coach at the high school. His current commission: a two-color mailbox stuffer outlining the goals of the New Opportunities for West Condon citizens committee, which he showed off proudly. He took her on a brief tour of the newspaper press and composing rooms at the back with their typesetting machines and antique flatbed press and soot-blackened windows and ancient Coke machine, the dusty concrete floor littered still with lead slugs (she pocketed one), then ushered her into this old job room, pulled on the lights from a dangling string, and clearing it of piled-up binders and ledgers, offered her the leather sofa. She said no — too quickly. She knows where she is. She’s not superstitious, but if she were, she would have said it feels haunted. This whole boneyard of a room does, but especially that sofa.

The first thing she has come on in here is a large stack of the last issue of the paper. Last ever. April 18. The Saturday before the End. Monday didn’t happen here. History stopped, just like the cultists said it would. Huge two-line banner: WE SHALL GATHER AT THE MOUNT OF REDEMPTION! The Brunist evangel to be shipped to the world. It’s mostly a photo essay, as if it were by now all beyond words, or else the editor ran out of things to say. Her dad’s in one of the pictures, standing alongside Tommy’s father, some preachers, and Angela’s father, who was apparently something of a bigwig at the time in what was called the Common Sense Committee. NOWC père. Plus all the cultic stuff of prophecies and song lyrics and relics and doctrines, interviews, letters to the editor. Funny one from an old lady in her nineties who said she was getting a slip from the doctor to explain why she couldn’t make it out to the Mount and giving her phone number. If something started to happen, they could give her a call and she’d ring a taxi.

She has dug around and come up with all the earlier issues back to the April 8 special edition, the one that first broke the news about the cult and created such a furor: BRUNISTS PROPHESY END OF WORLD! across all eight front-page columns. Amazing horror-flick pic of a charred black hand. The Prophet in a contrasty iconic mug shot. Photos of helmeted coalminers. The mine hill with nobody on it. The burned ruins of a house. Squibs about other cults used as filler. The editor was clearly fascinated, as is she, by the long, weird, and often violent history of apocalyptic movements, nowadays known euphemistically as evangelical or fundamentalist churches, and there’s something in every issue, published without comment almost like contemporary news items: tales of millennialists, crusaders, ecstatics, flagellants, flat earthers and faith healers, naked adamists, hermits declaring themselves resurrected kings or sons of God, mystics, martyrs, messiahs, priestly rapists, ritualistic cannibals, visionaries (miraculous white birds flock past with the seasons), and other mythomaniacal eccentrics and criminals of the cloth. But also those who resisted these fantasies and the dire consequences they suffered, beheading the least of it. She sometimes thinks of herself as standing alone, breaking new ground. It’s easy to forget that atheism is as old as theism. And that the ratios haven’t changed much. Nor the power structure. According to the articles, end of the world gatherings seem to have happened several times a year over the centuries — some ending tragically, most comically. She learns, without surprise, that the Rapture idea was never mentioned in the Bible or in ancient times but was invented by a couple of religious charlatans in the middle of the nineteenth century and sold to suckers ever since. The Chronicle editor was obviously an atheist: to what extent was he St.-Pauling this crazy cult into a worldwide church with his deadpan epistles? Over her shoulder the Lutheran minister smiles, puffing on his pipe: God the Engineer at it again.

She also takes a moment to flick through the sports pages of the various editions until she finds a photo of the high school basketball team. Yes, he was cute. Wearing his hormones in plain view like another number on his shirt. Rascality written all over him. No wonder what almost happened at the ice plant almost happened…

After a prowl through the filing cabinets (“Street Repairs,” “Rotary Club,” “United Mine Workers,” “Bowling Leagues”), she comes eventually upon the Brunist folders, including notes about each of the early cultists — some dated, some not. Full accounts of Bruno; Clara Collins; her husband, Ely. In Marcella’s folder: a few typed scraps, photos, some job press proofs of her name in Old English, a couple of them with his name butting up against hers, rough sketch of the Bruno house floor plan. A handwritten background note speaks of her Catholicism, considers it to be more a kind of general mysticism — a thing of nature, not of doctrine. Therefore vulnerable to reinterpretation. To a change of heart. In one photo she wears a shawl or a light blanket as the Virgin often does in paintings, peering up at the camera with almost heartbreaking waif-like beauty. Already somehow looking martyred. Odd background structures. One print dated on the back that must have been taken out at the mine shortly after the disaster. Six different copies of this one. He put in some darkroom time.

Which probably explains that closet door with the small pane of glass. She looks inside: a small room, the cupboard-sized back half for development, plumbed and painted black with black curtains, the front, lit by a red bulb, for hanging wet prints. Lines and clips strung up just above eye level. A couple of curled prints still dangling there, including one of Angela’s father in front of the police station. Looking fierce. The face of vindictive law-and-order. Instead of leaving the room, she pulls the door closed, peers out through the little square window. The sofa. The exact angle of those photos. Somebody must have been in here, either unknown to the editor or arranged by him. She goes to get one of the photos with the shawl, sets it against the far armrest, returns to the darkroom, stares out the window at the dead girl staring back. Could she ever imagine the world as that girl saw it? Get into the head of an otherworldly Roman Catholic, the innocent daughter of aging immigrants, modest and sweet-natured and accepting, as she herself is not? Her poor, working-class family is accustomed to a punishing life. Her older brothers are dead already. Their lives are presumably continuing somewhere else. In the sky. As will hers? The girl doesn’t think about it. Like Reverend Dreyer’s divinity: thought, action, passion, all one. Her brother Giovanni is ill, but miraculously he is alive and needs her. Miraculously? Yes, it was a miracle. The girl believes that. God is mysterious and unknowable, but he is not absent or uncaring.

Sally shakes off her spectral forebodings and stretches out on the sofa, staring up at the ceiling, the photo on her chest. White acoustic tiles. A kind of pocked movie screen. What did the girl see up there? Sally sees nothing. The blank face of the universe. Some cobwebs. She wishes she had a joint with her so she could relax into this. She feels big and awkward. The girl was small. With an enviable grace. Probably Marcella saw just what was in front of her: a strong handsome man who desired her. Whom she desired. What must he have seemed to her? God-like? No, but as one given her by God. What will happen next? It’s like there’s a force out there seeking to penetrate her. Not merely this naked man, but a transcendent force. As if she were uniting with something beyond either of them. She will accept it, for it is God’s way and it is good. So what went wrong? Never know. Something profound. Because God’s in the mix. A wholeness shattered. For now, he speaks her name. Like an endearment. Marcella. He’s crazy about her. Of course he is. Sally has the urge to take her clothes off. She’s a realist at heart. But she forgot to put the hook on the job room door. What the girl sees is the man’s searching gaze, which she meets, more prepared for this probably than he is. What Sally sees is his nakedness, the urgent ferocity of his erection. She sits up abruptly, her hand between her legs. Those cloven Pentecostal tongues of fire. They descended, the Good Book says, into laps. Root and core of the problem…

In Doc Foley’s downtown corner drugstore, picking up what her mother delicately calls her disposables, Sally runs into Stacy Ryder, the young intern at the bank. Sally knows her name because Tommy has remarked approvingly on the body the name belongs to. She introduces herself and Stacy asks what she’s carrying.

“It’s called a newspaper, an ancient human artifact, extinct in these parts.” The fellow running the print shop said there were plenty, she could have it. She tucked into its pages, unseen, a few other items as well, including a print of shawled Marcella, that sports page with the team photo, the Black Hand issue, other photos. She could have taken anything. Would never be missed. If anything, she was rescuing these things from oblivion. She shows Stacy the gaudy headline. “Last of its kind.”

“I’ve heard about that. Before my time here.”

“Sort of before my time, too. I was just a clueless high school kid. Still dialing up Jesus in those days, so I was a bit scared these guys might have God’s unlisted number.”

Stacy smiles. A pretty smile, easy and friendly. She’ll go far. “Pretty crazy. The world can be.”

“You’re not religious?”

“I gave up religion and the tooth fairy about the same time.”

“One of the five percent. Did you know that eighty-five percent of all Americans, including Jews, Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists and atheists, believe in the Virgin Birth of Jesus, but less than thirty percent believe in evolution?”

“Sounds about right. But I have to tell you, Sally, when I gave up religion, I gave up thinking about it, too.”

“Smart move. Not easy in this town, though. Sort of like not thinking about water when the ship’s sinking.”

“The main difference between religion and the tooth fairy was that at least I learned something from the tooth fairy. About money, marketing, the value of raw commodities. In the tooth fairy’s world, baby teeth are an instrument of exchange. Currency. The tooth fairy gave me coin bankable in my world, took the tooth. Probably thought she was getting a bargain.”

“Like the guys who bought this country from the Indians. The problem with teeth, I guess, is sooner or later the mine’s played out…”

She flashes that easy smile again. Some are born with it, others aren’t. “Exactly. So, ahead of that eventuality, I went exploring. Found a friend who didn’t believe in tooth fairies and she let me have one of her teeth when it fell out, in exchange for a finger puppet. I put it under the pillow, waited for several days, but no one took up the option. I figured there must be some principle in play about rightful ownership. But I didn’t believe it. I still don’t. I knew there had to be a less scrupulous tooth fairy somewhere who would make an offer. So I kept the tooth. Still have it.”

They’re both laughing. Sally says: “That’s the best kids’ story I’ve heard since Grandma Friskin told me the one about the constipated Easter bunny.”

“That shouldn’t affect egg-laying.”

“It does for kids, who start by believing rabbits lay eggs. How’s the book?”

“This? It’s pretty silly, I’m afraid. A friend at the bank loaned it to me. Listen. ‘The smile in his green eyes contained a sensuous flame. His open shirt revealed a muscular chest covered with crisp brown hair. His stance emphasized the force of his thighs and the slimness of his hips. She wondered if his broad shoulders ever tired of the burden he was carrying.’ Do you think he’s the right guy for the girl?”

“If the girl’s who I think she is,” Sally says, “it should be the perfect match. She also has crisp chest hairs.” That cracks Stacy up, but even at full throttle her laughter’s of a wistful sort, her green eyes still melancholy. “Ever read Madame Bovary?”

“No. Is it good?”

“Well, it’s about a woman who reads too many romance novels.”

“I probably just said something stupid. It’s a famous novel, right? I’m not much of a reader, I guess. Mostly I read stock reports and spreadsheets. When I read books like this, I tend to read them like financial statements, in terms of risks, margins, potential returns. Emotions as intangibles, collateral, character as intrinsic value. Winning the love game is knowing when to hazard your resources, take the plunge, make the crucial investment decision. Some win. Most lose.”

“Is that how you play it, Stacy?”

“Me? No, I’m a spendthrift gambler. After a drink or two I’ll bet the house on the next roll.”

“Well, you can always pull back and reload. The emotions aren’t finite.”

“Yes, they are,” she says sadly, and looks away.

Sally believes she’s just heard something true. Straight out of one of those ladies’ novels perhaps, but nonetheless true. But she doesn’t understand it. “I guess I don’t know much about the love game. I mostly throw snake eyes,” she says. “Or the money game either, for that matter. What little I have from allowances and carhopping and babysitting you guys have in an account there. Every month you give me a few pennies of interest, which doesn’t cover the resoling of my shoes from the walk to the bank and back. I suppose the bank is making a lot more than I am out of it.”

“Yes, it is. Come in and see me some time and we’ll see if we can’t work out something better. Come soon, though, while I’m still here.”

“Thanks. What’s in that account won’t last long enough to matter. But are you leaving town?”

She sighs. “I’m afraid I’ve already stayed too long. Oops,” she adds glancing at her watch. “I’ve stayed too long on my lunch break, too. Have to get back and save the bank, which according to my boss is the same thing as saving the world.”

“I’ll walk you there. I’m going that way.”

On this balmy mid-May early afternoon, after being buried all morning in an airless dead-paper morgue (more suffering, more love), that way was at first any which way, but now, sitting on a playground swing with her notebook on her lap, her Chronicle memorabilia on the swing next to her, Sally realizes, or discovers, or decides (who’s running this life?) that she’s on her way to the Royal Castle to visit the Dying Queen, as her mother has often asked her to do. She has not had to deal with a lot of death and has held back because she doesn’t know what to say to a dying person. Probably she’ll tell a lot of well-intentioned lies like everyone else. And how will she herself face such a moment when it’s her turn? Better not to think about it. Not on a day like this.

She doesn’t remember noticing the weather much as a kid, but this lush sexy day has reminded her of innumerable unspecific others, going all the way back to her childhood parks and playgrounds. Certain patches of sunshine. The smell and pale summery glow of a dusty sidewalk on which she was playing jacks, even the weedy grass growing in the cracks. The red dot on a spider. On a certain raggedy leaf. While she was squatting behind a bush. Because? Hide and seek? These memories, if they are memories, don’t arise by trying to think about them consciously but bubble up spontaneously out of the unconscious the way dreams do and may have just as little to do with the real world. Probably stored and cooked in the same curtained niches of the mind. She has the feeling these are the sorts of memories useful to writers. Vivid, but imprecise and totally unreliable composites of a possible past, not that literal past itself. She wanted to write down these thoughts, but there was nowhere to sit. At college she’d have found a bench somewhere where she could jot notes, have a smoke, read a page of something. This town has no benches. Then she passed this empty playground offering her a swing. What from this scene will sink into her memory bank to return, unbidden, years down the road? The coaltown cinders underfoot maybe. Remember when…when she could rock on a swing and write to the world and still believe it was something meaningful to do…

She pushes off and swings back and forth a few times, a cigarette bobbing in her lips, her notebook in her lap, but finds she doesn’t like it as she once did. She feels heavy, unbalanced. Her feet scrape the ground, even when tucked under. Didn’t used to. She remembers how the boys would wander nonchalantly in front of the swings, hoping to get a glimpse under girls’ skirts as they swung, thinking they were stealing something, not realizing that, for the girls, having their skirts fly up was fun, though you had to pretend you didn’t see the boys out there. Is nostalgia about the past or only the past self? Whatever, she feels little of it, wants to leave this place, does not expect to miss it.

Riding the Hood, a.k.a. Raggedy Red, steps out of the forest, a.k.a., the dark night of the soul, leaving mother, grandmother, wolf, and woodcutter behind. Let them duke it out with each other.

Soul. As a slapstick comedian? Soul clowns it up: pratfalls of the dead image. Soul and Body as a comic duo on the vaudeville circuit? The vaudeville circuit: a.k.a., the self.

Something Dreyer said: We possess nothing but selfhood and that is on loan, as it were; the whole point in life is to realize this self wholly in the world. (She agreed. They shook hands on this note.)

But what about the little girl who thought the forest was her friend and was devoured by wolves? The Hood will remember her and show others how to avoid her fate. Thus, she too is an abuser of innocence.

History. Memory. Nostalgia for the dead past. Its illusions, falsifications. Documentations of the dead past. Their illusions, falsifications. Themes of the day. Here, it’s Tommy’s mother’s photo albums. What she has of the life she is leaving. Her own bonneted childhood accompanied by doting parents and relatives, her transitions through carefully costumed adolescence and young womanhood, her European travels, her young family. Never doing much of anything, really — just being. Some photos gone astray from their tiny black corner pockets like memory lapses, others torn asunder. A kind of editing going on. A paring down. When Sally asks to see the wedding photos, Mrs. Cavanaugh waves her frail hand dismissively, gazes about absently, as if the album might be hiding somewhere. There are some photos of when she and Tommy were little. Sometimes his brother and sister are in them too, as well as other children and their mothers — but she and Tommy are never far apart. There’s one picture of them in front of a bed of flowers holding hands. Two little kids, the girl taller than the boy. She doesn’t remember that, but she feels it now as if it were happening. In another, Tommy is bawling, holding his arms up to the photographer, she off to one side with a guilty half-smile on her face. What has she done to him? Bad girl.

She wasn’t sure what she’d say when she arrived, but what came out was, “I’m so sorry you’re so sick, Mrs. Cavanaugh.” Plain and from the heart. To which Mrs. Cavanaugh replied, her voice unfamiliarly harsh and gravelly: “The worst has been losing my hair, dear. I hate it. I’d rather have died sooner than to go through that awful treatment. And what good did it do? It made me awfully sick for a while and added at best a miserable month or two. Still, we do so desperately hate to give it up, don’t we?” She sighed, looked up at Sally, looked away again. “I try not to cry, but sometimes I cry.”

Most of her mother’s friends, such as Aunt Debra and Emily Wetherwax, are like part of the family, people you joke with and call by the first name, but Mrs. Cavanaugh, though she’s not that much older than her own mother, has always been either Mrs. Cavanaugh or Tommy’s mother. And not just because of the man she’s married to and how he runs everybody’s life here, but because she has always been, though seemingly unassuming, such a person of quiet power herself — elegant, serene, president of just about everything at one time or another. It has been something of a shock to see her now in her plastic shower cap, scrunched up with her disease and melting into her bedclothes, her eyes dark and beady, spectacles on the end of her pinched nose, lips thin and unpainted, hands like tender claws. Her home care nurse, Concetta Moroni, Moron’s mother, a happy round-faced lady widowed by the mine disaster, was here when Sally arrived and she brought her a glass of ice tea, then took advantage of Sally’s visit to dash off to pick up a prescription and some fresh fruit. Tommy has told her that Concetta is turning his mother, after her crazy evangelical episode, into a Roman Catholic, and, sure enough, she crossed herself when Mrs. Moroni waved goodbye from the bedroom door.

Now she is showing Sally photos of her sorority house at college, telling her the life stories of each of the women in the pictures, whom they married or didn’t but should have, which are divorced or deceased (“I will be one of the first!”), the famous ones, the infamous ones, the lost ones. There are lots of photos taken at school dances with many different guys on her arm — her beaus, as she calls them. Sometimes in funny costumes, sometimes in jackets and dresses, often in tuxedos and formal gowns.

“Is that Mr. Cavanaugh?” Sally asks, pointing at one of them.

“No, that’s someone else.” She glances up at Sally over her wire-rimmed spectacles with a little half-smile much like the one on her own little-girl face in the photo of bawling Tommy. “Bring me the phone, will you, please, dear?”

Mrs. Cavanaugh’s mischievous look causes Sally to hesitate, but only for a moment. She winks (sisters!) and brings the phone on its long cord in from the hallway, waits until she puts the call through (“Is Edgar Thornton there, please? This is Irene Cavanaugh. That’s all right. I’ll wait…”), then slips away, peeking into the other rooms off the hall until she finds Tommy’s. The usual boy stuff on the walls and shelves, probably not much changed since he went off to college. Virtually no books, except for a Boy Scout manual, some baseball annuals and comicbooks, plus a few books he probably had to buy for freshman courses and has never read. Plato’s Republic, Homer’s Iliad, Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams, The Golden Bough. Not much to start a conversation with, except perhaps the Boy Scout manual. Mentally awake, morally straight should be good for a gag or two. She thumbs through for it and finds tucked inside a Polaroid shot of someone’s shaggy pudenda. Guess whose. Why would someone want such a thing? Back to history, memory, nostalgia. Anticipated nostalgia. So: basically good news. If he had some grass somewhere, she’d steal it, but there’s none to be found.

On her way back into the sickroom, she hears Mrs. Cavanaugh say, “No, she’s not from around here; by my calculations, she lives about an hour and a half away,” and she decides to wait in the hall. “A private what? Oh, you mean a detective. Well, thank you, Thorny, but I don’t think I want to know. What in eternity, where we’re all going, does it matter? Yes, I know. He told me he was going to do that. I’m sorry for you, Thorny, but we knew he wouldn’t take this lying down. Bernice? That poor noble woman! Well, you must defend her, Thorny. No, I’ve been cruelly cut off from those kind Christian people. I’m becoming a Catholic now, you see. That’s why I was hoping there was enough money left to go to Lourdes. My new nurse will take me. It won’t be cheap. I’ll probably have to be transported there on a litter.” Sally hears Mrs. Moroni returning downstairs and goes in to warn Tommy’s mother. “What? Oh, I have to go now. Yes, I know you switched to an evangelical church for my sake, Thorny. Now, for our sake, I’m asking you to switch again.”

First tee. “That’s a hook,” he informs her when his drive (“Watch this carefully,” he had instructed her) flies into the woods on the left. When he leans close to show her how to grip the club, Sally has to hold her breath. She misses the ball altogether on the first swing. “Keep your head down! Elbow straight!” The second follows his into the woods, though not so deep. She finds her ball then helps him find his. He explains that there is a course ground rule that allows him to put his ball back out on the fairway. That’s the swath down the middle with the mowed grass. The trees and high weeds to either side is the rough. Which, to the left, is where her second shot again goes and his soon follows. She helps him find it. It is a long hole. Par 12 for beginners. Bogeyed.

Second tee. She thinks about the grip, makes an adjustment, sends the ball not very far but straight down the middle. “How did you do that?” her father asks. She shows him. He tries it. Same result: hooked into the rough. He can’t find the ball. She goes to help but he gets impatient and throws another ball down in the middle of the fairway. “Charge me a stroke,” he says. This time she’s at the edge of the green in four, but it takes her another six to get it in the hole. He claims to be there in five, not counting the three times he moved the ball out of the rough, and says his four-foot final putt is a “gimme,” and picks it up without hitting it, nearly toppling when he leans over.

Third tee. She suggests his problem might be he is standing too near the ball and is hitting it with the heel of his club, which is why it keeps flying left. “I think you should stand back a half step.” “If I stand back any further, I won’t be able to see the dadblame ball.” But he takes a nip from his hip flask and has a try, teeing up the ball, assuming his stance, then stepping backwards. He trips over his own feet and sits down hard, which enrages him. He tells her to mind her own business. He struggles confusedly to his feet, takes a wild swat at the ball and knocks it into the woods again. His mood is worsening. Maybe this wasn’t a good idea after all.

Fourth tee. The hole is called a dogleg, because it has a bend — in this case around the woods that hide the old city cemetery off to the right. Yesterday, Billy Don told her a weird story. Darren supposedly went back there on his own and discovered that the small empty grave they found with the golf balls in it had been filled in. Billy Don said Darren’s face was completely white when he told him this. They both assumed it was a supernatural event, a kind of message from the beyond. “Like we got too close to the truth or something.” She considers knocking her next drive over in that direction and going to take a peek while pretending to be hunting for her ball. But it’s not in her nature to do less than she can do and she is beginning to enjoy swinging one of these dumb sticks with the ball-bopper at the end. Besides, another foursome is closing in behind them and her father will need help looking for his ball on the other side of the fairway. So she sends it down the middle again. By now she is beating her father even when he lies about his strokes.

Fifth tee. He finishes off the contents of his hip flask, and swinging loosely and more or less blindly, sends his drive deep down the middle of the fairway. She is strangely moved by the slow loft and arc of the ball. “Now that’s how it ought to be done,” he says. “But it takes practice.” For once he’ll be able to find his own ball. If he can walk that far. The other golfers are already approaching the green behind them: Tommy and his father, Reverend Dreyer in his straw boater, and the new town manager. The slicker who cost her father his job. She tries too hard to impress and tops her ball, sending it bouncing a few yards in front of them. Her father turns to the royal family and shrugs apologetically, what can you do, instructs her once more, loudly, on keeping her head down, eye on the ball.

Sixth tee. A climb to it from the green. One can see almost the whole course from up here — much of the old abandoned second nine just below, as well. They’d probably sell off that land if there was anyone to sell it to. After her flubbed first shot, she has still managed to reach the fifth green in fewer shots than her father, whose rage is building once more. Perhaps because the consoling hip flask is empty. Another long “gimme” has gotten them quickly off the green and up here. In the distance, one can just make out the Deepwater tipple and water tower, the top of the mine hill. Treasure Mountain. The foursome behind are growing impatient, leaning on their clubs as though in exasperation. Two holding up four. Her father hooks his drive into the rough again. “Heck fire,” he says, and without looking for his ball storms off down the hill toward the clubhouse over on the far side of the distant first tee. Sally tees up, swats the ball cleanly down the middle, her best drive of the day (does she turn to see if Tommy is watching? she does not), then follows her father clubward.

“Well, I think Dad’s offering her a one-way ticket, telling her that after the miracle she can swim back,” Tommy says.

“It’s that bad?”

“No, it’s that cool. He’s thoroughly pissed at what Mom has done and fed up with her religious yo-yoing, but he can see the humor in it, too.” They are talking about Irene’s fantasized pilgrimage to Lourdes. Sally wonders if they’d see the humor in his mother’s organizing an afterlife affair with one of her old college beaus. The Christian illusion of spending eternity with one’s nearest and dearest: it’s such a smalltown idea. As Grandma Friskin says, What’s wrong with Heaven is your damned neighbors. They are sitting at the bar in the country club’s Nineteenth Hole after the disastrous Jester-and-Goose-Girl-on-the-Links Day, her dad, barely able to stand, having been whisked away by her mother. Archie and Emily Wetherwax offered Sally a ride home later if she wanted to stay, and she did. One place Angela Bonali will never show up. Babs Wetherwax and her gum-popping high school friends are at a table by the window drinking Shirley Temples and casting long giggly glances their way, but they’re no threat. “And he’s pretty sure he’s going to get it all back and send a few people to jail at the same time.”

“I know. Your dad’s being awfully hard on Aunt Debra.”

“The preacher’s wife? Well, as I understand it, she sold church property and kept the money for herself. Most everywhere you go, that’s a crime.”

“I think she gave it to the cult.”

“Same difference.”

That she’s drinking beer at a bar alone with Tommy Cavanaugh is both fortuitous and the result of strategic planning. She borrowed the family car while her parents were at church and drove past the Cavanaugh house. Not only was the tangerine junker in the drive, the new college graduate himself was on the front porch having a late breakfast and listening to something with a big beat coming out of the living room. Babysitting his mom. Though Tommy’s welcome was underwhelming, he didn’t chase her off. In fact, he had a favor to ask. When his dad gets back from church, could she follow him out to Lem’s garage to turn in the rental, give him a ride back? His dad’s buying him a red Corvair convertible with white sidewalls as a graduation present and as consolation for not being able to travel to Europe this summer with some of his fraternity brothers, and he’s picking it up on Tuesday, the Lincoln available to him meanwhile as his dad has little use for it after tonight until an out-of-town business meeting on Thursday. Sally was feeling pretty grotty, still wearing the tee she slept in — her THERE’S A SUCKER BORN-AGAIN EVERY MINUTE shirt from her last ice cream parlor meet with Billy D — but she didn’t want to lose the opportunity. Anyway, they say that cleanliness is next to godliness, and she doesn’t really want to get that close. At the garage, after a ceremonial visit to the remains of Tommy’s mother’s wrecked station wagon, being harvested by Lem for parts, he and Tommy had a conversation about Carl Dean Palmers, Lem showing them Carl Dean’s burned-out van he’d been asked to haul away. “Fucking insane,” was Lem’s judgment about the burning of it. Yes, Lem said, he’d heard from Bernice the rumor about Carl Dean joining the bikers and doing bad shit at the camp before taking off, but he didn’t believe it. Not Carl Dean. Tommy said he didn’t believe it either, but later, riding back with her, he said he did. He also said he’d agreed to join his father in a round at the club this afternoon, which explained her own father’s gloomy gin-and-juice breakfast, he evidently having been bumped from his usual Sunday foursome slot by Tommy. So she decided it was time to do the father-and-daughter thing and ask him to teach her how to play the game, making him promise to stay off the sauce long enough to make it around the full nine — a promise he of course never kept. She showered, changed into shorts and a crisp white shirt — one of her dad’s old ones, only partly buttoned, no bra — and after the abbreviated golfing tragicomedy, here she is. “Well, a crime maybe. But not immoral.”

“There’s a difference?”

“Sure. Crimes are defined by lawyers and politicians. In some societies, ripping off the rich and institutions like churches is not a crime, it’s a public duty. Morality’s a private choice. The custom is to obey the law, but to defy the law can be a moral decision.”

“You think she did the right thing.”

Sally laughs. “No, a moral decision can also be a pretty stupid one.” She has been thinking about morality of late. The pursuit of aesthetic truth as a moral act. Concern with the trivial as immoral. Writing faults as moral failures. She’s aware that some people think of golf in the same way.

Tommy excuses himself to go, as he says, drain the radiator, leaving her with her notebook. She adds his expression to her scheisshaus list along with “shed a tear” and “squeeze the lemon.” On the way back from Lem’s garage this morning, Tommy wanted to know what the bad shit was, and though she probably shouldn’t have, Billy Don having asked her not to, she told him about the bikers and what they did. That was probably a moral lapse. What Tommy wanted to know when she told him was what was the girl doing there in the first place? You think it’s her fault, you mean? she snapped. She loves this guy? What’s going on? Of course, to be honest, she had wondered the same thing and asked Billy Don. He didn’t know.

Billy Don was more upbeat when they last met, another two-sundae lap-up day. Still a lot of gloom and apprehension in the camp, but he also had a funny story to tell this time about the night Darren discovered he was sleeping with a prairie kingsnake. He screamed and ran out of the cabin yelping that the Devil was after him, and that set off Colin next door, and they soon had the whole camp in a stir. One of the men killed the snake and then the camp cook calmed everybody down with milk and cookies. This happened just after they moved into their new cabin, which has given Billy Don a little more breathing space, for Darren now views himself as a prophet and is very full of himself, more obsessed and bossy than ever. Aunt Debra is evidently now helping Darren with his prophesying career, having come up with some quirky notions about the bikers and the four horsemen of the Apocalypse that people are taking seriously, and Darren is now treating her as something of a seer like Colin, who Darren believes is, in effect, specially wired for divine transmissions. Why it is that dangerous schizophrenics are so frequently taken as holy prophets, she replied, is one of those timeless mysteries of the fucked-up human race. She likes to use expressions like that because they always make Billy Don grin sheepishly and duck his nose in his ice cream, glancing about the drugstore nervously from under his brows to see if anyone else has overheard her. She showed him the invitation she’d received to Franny Baxter’s wedding and he said it was news to him. About all he knew about the Baxters was that they are said to be living in a field somewhere.

Babs and her friends have stopped lifeguard Tommy to ask him when the pool will open. Memorial Day weekend, everyone knows that, it’s just a ploy to get his attention. It works. Maybe she has underestimated the lure of Babs’ boobs. One of the girls drags a chair over and Tommy joins them. Babs glances over at her. Someone laughs. A schoolgirl titter. Who’s going to pay for these drinks? she asks herself, rising. She’s not.

III.2 Friday 29 May — Sunday 31 May

“She was dreaming that she was playing tag with other children. I didn’t exactly recognize none of them, but you know how it is in dreams — especially someone else’s dream. I was one of the other children and I almost hardly didn’t recognize myself. Whenever she tagged someone, they fell down dead. Really dead. Their flesh melting off. I didn’t run away, the one who was me. I said I wanted to be tagged, but she couldn’t do it. She said that wasn’t the way the game was played. If I didn’t run, I couldn’t be caught. Only it was like I was saying that to the person who was me, and I was impatient that she — I mean, me — didn’t get it.” The country and western singer Patti Jo Glover is telling them the dream that Marcella Bruno dreamt one night inside her own dream. Everyone in Mabel Hall’s caravan sitting room is completely spellbound. Lucy Smith has never heard anything like it before, but the way Patti Jo tells it, it seems completely natural. Thelma Coates is sitting across from her and her jaw has literally dropped. Her bottom teeth are showing. Thelma had said she could only stay ten minutes, but it has already been much longer than that. Her husband Roy has forbidden her to come here, so what she does is hurry up her grocery shopping and dash by on the way home, hoping word doesn’t get back to Roy. He’s a mean man. She has a dark bruise on her cheekbone, and she probably didn’t get that by bumping into something. Lucy’s husband Calvin, who was upset at the way Reverend Baxter and his family were made to go out and live in the fields like animals, would also rather she stayed away from these people, but she always has lots of things to tell him when she gets home and he appreciates that, so he has not put his foot down. He only scowls when she brings him the news, even when it’s funny, to let her know he doesn’t really approve. When they first got married and she did things he didn’t want her to do, he would turn her across his knee and spank her, and though it hurt and sometimes made her cry, it was also kind of fun and often ended better than it began. After a while he stopped doing that, but he can still be pretty severe and occasionally lashes out in a fit of temper that’s not fun at all, though he always apologizes afterwards and they pray together, and when she asks him if he loves her, he says yes.

“Then everything changed,” Patti Jo says. “She was still dreaming and she was still in my dream, but I wasn’t in hers anymore. A man was. I could feel how happy she was at seeing him, and I wondered if it was Jesus she was seeing, but I don’t think it was. For one thing, he didn’t have clothes on and you could see everything and that didn’t seem like something Jesus would do, even in a dream. He was standing in water, or else he stepped into it, and although I was enjoying her dream without thinking too much about it, I could feel Marcella begin to worry. The man dipped his hands in the water, like as if to baptize himself or her or someone, and when he raised them, they weren’t there anymore, just the parts of his arms that hadn’t touched the water. And then I started to worry on top of Marcella’s worrying. The man stepped deeper in the water, or else the water rose up, and you just knew he was losing parts of himself. The business between his legs dipped into the water and when the water went away for a tick you could see that half of it was gone just like you drew a line through. The water got deeper, or else he sank into it, until there was only his head on top. He closed his eyes and his mouth gapped opened and the head floated away like that. And then Marcella woke up crying and I woke up crying.”

There is a moment of absolute silence as they all watch that floating head, and then Thelma Coates puts her jaws back together and says, “That man musta been that newspaper feller.”

“Or else her brother,” says the beauty shop lady Linda Catter. “I mean, if all she felt was just only happiness, and not, you know…”

Bernice Filbert says it was like a dream of wasting away with only the head remaining like a kind of blind repository for the soul, what you might call a rapturing by water instead of by air, and it may be the sort of experience the Prophet’s sister had when she died or else what she was afraid of. It’s always interesting what Bernice wears, and today it’s a one-piece dress that looks like it might have been made out of an old thin blanket, hanging loose in front for carrying things — the sort of thing women might wear in the field when they’re gathering — with a sash around the waist and a scarf over her head.

“Losin’ his hands like that,” says Hazel Dunlevy, the palm reader, “that man in the water, whoever he is, it’s like as if he’s losin’ his future, and I reckon that’s how it turned out.”

“But in dreams things are always the opposite from what they seem, aren’t they?” Lucy reminds them. “So, maybe he’s finding his future. Though it’s not like it’s a happy ending. Unless that’s an opposite too. Crying meaning like she’s really laughing, I mean.”

“In some dreams that’s true,” says Mabel gravely, looking down upon them. “And in some it’s not.”

The others nod solemnly at this, and Hazel says: “As fer a naked man bein’ Jesus, though, accordin’ to what Glenda says, Jesus often takes his clothes off in people’s dreams. Sometimes it’s more like a halo down there and that’s bad news, and sometimes it’s only ordinary, like as he’s one of us again, and that’s good news. If Jesus makes love to you in a dream, she says, that’s the best news of all.”

“Well, I hope that never happens,” says Corinne Appleby flatly. She rarely speaks at all, but when she does it’s deadpan and straight out and always makes everybody smile.

“I guess we need Glenda here to explain it,” Lucy says with a sigh. Glenda Oakes is watching the children, including Lucy’s own, taking them on a nature walk along the creek bed to the beehives and vegetable garden and back, though she’ll switch with Hazel and join them later when Mrs. Edwards arrives, because Glenda is the dream expert and Mrs. Edwards wants some help understanding her boy’s nightmares.

“Actually, I told Glenda my dream of Marcella dreaming,” Patti Jo says, “and she said possibly it was an old dream Marcella dreamt when she was still alive and she was only remembering it. But it didn’t feel like remembering, it felt like it was happening right then for the first time. ‘Well, how do we know what remembering is like for the dead?’ Glenda said. ‘It might be like dreaming.’ She said that a head without a body could mean that Marcella no longer saw that person like she saw him before, so, if the man was Jesus or her brother, it could be saying she was losing her faith, and for that matter the naked man could have been both Jesus and her brother at the same time and others as well and not only men. Maybe her haunting days were ending and the man was just everybody, the head floating away signifying her own growing distance from this world, and she was crying about that. But Glenda said she couldn’t be sure. She’d never interpreted the dream of a dead person before.”

Everybody has an opinion about this, mostly having to do with the difference between a live dreamer and a dead one, all of which pretty soon has Lucy completely beflummoxed. Ludie Belle interrupts all these airy speculations by saying that what she wants to know is what the niggles atwixt his legs looked like before they got melted, and Wanda Cravens asks: “Why? Y’reckon y’mighta reckanized them?” This is quite rude and embarrassing, but her friend Wanda isn’t really clever enough to be rude, it’s just something that popped out, and maybe others are thinking it as well, and it’s hard not to start giggling. But Ludie Belle only winks and says: “I was, you know, only wondrin’ bout it bein’ circumscissored or not, like as it might be a clue to who it was.”

“Well, you know, Glenda asked me that same question, but she wasn’t thinking about whether or not it might be Jesus,” Patti Jo says. “She said that seeing a circumcision in a dream was a good luck omen, though it can also mean that the dreamer is worried about some forgotten detail that might embarrass them if it was found out, just as seeing one that has not been circumcised can mean that the dreamer is not thinking clearly and is refusing to see the truth. I said I didn’t know which it was, or rather Marcella didn’t seem to know — it wasn’t like she was paying any attention to that part. It was just there like sometimes a face is there in a dream but you can’t really see it.”

All of which is finally too much for Thelma Coates, who gasps and says, “Oh my!” and flutters her hand in front of her face as though fanning it and says she has to get back or Roy will have a conniption. When she gets up to leave, Patti Jo also gets up and says she has to go back to the motel because Duke has a new song he wants to teach her for tonight. Thelma can give her a ride as far as the highway crossing and she can walk the rest. Everyone is sad about this; her story about Marcella Bruno’s dream has been really exciting and they want to keep talking about it.

Instead they get back on about Abner Baxter and his family, who Thelma has told them are now living in an abandoned field next to that new campsite Mr. John P. Suggs is building, but without Franny who has left home, if you can call it home, to go live with Tessie Lawson, because she is going to marry Tessie’s brother-in-law, Steve, who is something of a rowdy and a drunk and hollow between the ears, so not much of a catch, but if you’re somebody as plain as Franny Baxter, what more can you hope for? This leaves Abner stuck with Sarah, who is so depressed she can’t do anything except eat all day, and Amanda, who is subnormal and flirtatious and apt to get in serious trouble in a snap if you take your eye off her. They are living mostly off collections at Abner’s preaching, which is not enough for one person, much less four, especially since most of his followers are even poorer than he. They discuss whether Abner’s troubles are mostly his own fault or not, he being the sort of person who cannot keep his mouth shut, and Hazel says that, well, most saints are like that, aren’t they, confessing Christ when they’re told not to? Bernice confirms that the word carved onto Young Abner’s forehead is “liar,” she having read it before she put the bandages on, and Mabel points out that that’s four letters, just like the four letters on Jesus’ cross. Bernice counts them on her fingers and says that, yes, it calculates, though it’s hard to credit the parallel.

Lucy is able to tell everyone about investigations into the mine break-in, which Calvin is helping the sheriff with, and that, in spite of the rumors, no dynamite has been found. Mabel says she asked her cards, and they were not completely clear, but the Magician and Pope turned up, side by side and upside down next to the Chariot, and she took the Chariot to mean their climbing of the Mount of Redemption, hampered by slickness and trickery and false propaganda, so maybe it really was just all a deception to try to keep them off the mine hill like Mr. Suggs says. They all shake their heads in astonishment at the world’s wickedness and agree with that. Lucy is once again amazed at Mabel’s gifts, wishing she had just a smidgeon of them so that the future didn’t always keep surprising her so. The others remark on all the time Mr. Suggs is spending at the camp now with Ben and Clara gone, helping with the management and making sure people don’t bother them. Talk about your saints. Mr. Suggs’ halo is just waiting for him in Heaven, Linda says, and Lucy sees it there, hanging on a hook by the Pearly Gates like a ball cap. Lucy says that Calvin believes the motorcycle gang has split up since one of them got killed and they won’t be seen around here anymore, and that’s a blessed relief. But the damage has been done. It’s so sad. Bernice says that, afterwards, she had tried to give little Elaine an inside wash as well as clean all the blood off the outside, and the girl had coiled up and snarled and spat at her like a snake or a trapped animal. Bernice, being a nurse, is the only one who even hints at what really happened, though everyone knows. And as if what happened to the girl wasn’t tragic enough, now the camp has been all month without Ben and Clara, who are desperately missed by everyone. Will they ever come back? No one knows and many fear the worst, for they left in great despair. They all agree it’s time for Mabel to consult her cards again and she gets them out and shuffles them in her strange sliding way, but before she can turn any of them over, Hazel Dunlevy, looking out the caravan window, says, “Here comes Sister Debra. I reckon I better go’n mind the kids fer Glenda.” As Mabel gathers up the cards, Lucy wonders what they might have said and whether or not this interruption means that a truth that might have been revealed will stop being true, changing the way the future will turn out, and thinking about so much terrible mysterious power sends a little shudder down her spine.

“Blue often stands in for spirituality, hope, positive thoughts. It’s reckoned that a dreamer, dreaming of blue, specially a blue person, even a dead one, may be in the presence of his spiritual guide, and this would seem to be the case here, seeing who the dead man is and seeing as how he speaks wisdom even if it don’t make sense when the boy’s woked up. That he tries to stab the dead man with a table knife is not in itself a bad thing, because a table knife in a dream is a favorable sign pointing to succeeding at your life goals. That it ain’t the right sorta knife for stabbing somebody might mean he don’t really wanta kill the Prophet, but it’s more like a, you know, ritual thing, and a way of loosing his anger that his spiritual guide has been killt. That he sets the body on fire don’t look good on the surface, but fire is a symbol of change and growing up, specially for a boy, and may be trying to show a struggle for him to get control over something — to luminate it, like you might say. That the dead man keeps talking to him and keeps on being blue while he’s burning means the fire must be symbolic and not real. That the boy tries to eat the roasted dead man and does eat part of him can signify he’s just trying to take the Prophet and all his wisdom inside him, even if the part that he eats ain’t normally the place where wisdom can generally be found. Just the contrary, in fact — but contraries are common as sin in dreams. That he seen worms crawling outa the dead man’s flesh whilst he was eating him is a tad unsettling, but given the part he was eating, he mighta been seeing the intestines without recognizing them, and intestines are mostly a positive thing in dreams, indicating steadfastness and gumption, though sometimes they can remind you more like a maze you’re lost in. That he woked up screaming was probably just due to the worms, or what he thought was worms, but the rest was not troubling to him or he woulda woked up before. To be safe, though, you maybe oughta check to see he’s got worms or not, because sometimes dreams tell us practical things we should oughta pay attention to.”

Alone in her cabin Debra has collapsed into tears as she has done so often over the recent weeks, though not in front of others if she can help it — certainly not in front of Colin, who is up at the office in the lodge, helping the two boys unpack boxes into the new filing cabinets. She is so grateful to Darren and Billy Don for taking Colin in as a friend and making him feel important, for he is all she has right now and when he is distressed and panicky she almost cannot bear it. She didn’t think it would be like this. She worries she won’t have the strength to see it through, not even knowing what “it” will be; though, whatever, it doesn’t look good. She has heard others speak of life as a burden, but she has so loved life, she has never really understood until now how it could be. It’s when you start being more afraid of living than of dying, and that awful Glenda is right, it does feel like an elephant sitting on her.

She prays a lot more now — it’s the one time she can let go her feelings without embarrassment — tearfully confessing everything in front of everybody. Or, rather, having taken Ludie Belle’s advice to heart, almost everything; she would never say anything to upset Colin, and she has to be careful not to overdo it, for her emotions can trigger bad episodes and complicate his therapy. But she has often described in her public prayers the terror and inadequacy she felt in the face of what happened that morning in the wild patch on the other side of the creek, thanking God for giving her the strength to do what she never could have done on her own, for she is a weak person and a cowardly one who, without God’s help, would have simply run away or died of terror, rooted to the spot. She has always explained that she went there often for her dawn prayers because it was where she felt closest to God, which is true, but that she could never ever again return, for it has been irremediably contaminated with evil. Her account of events is probably a bit different from what really happened, but she can recall so little of it except as a kind of terrifying blur, it is probably as accurate as any other she could give. When she told Darren and Billy Don that the dark phantomlike figures who attacked the girl made her think of the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and the four angels of horror and devastation, they were very impressed and Darren asked her to tell it again for his tape recorder. He especially liked the part about there being more black angels in the offing, for he said that was his interpretation too, and he has since often spoken of her in prayer meetings as having prophetic powers, so she is now esteemed for that as well as for her bravery, though she does not feel at all brave and all she can see of the future is the terrible trouble she is in.

Even though the place it all happened is now one of such utter horror to her, she nevertheless got up her courage one morning and snuck over by the back way from the vegetable garden to retrieve her abandoned underwear which if found would be hard to explain. Anyone who knows her would recognize them because she always wears panties with colorful flower patterns on them and she has hung them on the line often enough to dry and sometimes has gone around with little else on because they’re not much different than swimming suits nowadays. But they weren’t there. Those evil boys must have taken them. Or…someone did. She felt suddenly like she was being watched and she was too frightened for a moment even to move. The place where the body or whatever was buried seemed almost to start quivering. She thought she heard something behind her like the flutter of hawk or buzzard wings. Her heart raced and tears sprang to her eyes, for she recognized the sound as what she heard that morning behind her back as she scrunched down behind the tree here with her eyes pressed shut. But when she finally turned around there was no one there and everything was silent; only a few bees could be heard, a woodpecker high up in a tree. Afterwards, she thought of what she’d heard as the ghostly flutter of devils’ wings, even though until recently she didn’t really believe in devils, or ghosts either, and probably still doesn’t, and she certainly doesn’t know whether they have wings or not.

She has never dreamt about that morning in the garden, or about devils either, unless she doesn’t remember. Most of her dreams are happy ones, and so after presenting to the women crammed into Mabel’s caravan one of Colin’s horrible dreams, she decided to balance it with one of her own, partly just to lighten her own heart. Colin’s nightmares, from which he usually awakes screaming and trembling violently and needing her solacing embrace, worry her, for she is not certain she understands the difference in Colin’s mind between his waking life and his dreams. Debra has never really believed in fortune-telling, horoscopes, and the like, but since she surrendered to the Brunist message, more things seem possible than before. After what happened that terrible morning, these women have, until today, been so protective and supportive and she has in turn wanted to accept their world and live in it to the best of her ability, to stay close to them. So, after Glenda was able to see Colin’s nightmare about stabbing and burning and then eating the blue corpse of Giovanni Bruno in such a positive and heartening way, she was eager to show them that, even if sometimes she seems nervous and grumpy, down deep she remains the loving hopeful person she has always been. Only it didn’t work out that way. Which is why she is crying now and can’t seem to stop.

The dream she told them was such a pretty one and made her so happy when she dreamt it. At first there was something about flying that had mostly faded from her memory by the time she woke up, as dreams do; she could only remember being on a bridge and realizing that if she pushed against the air she could rise up and fly — it was so exhilarating! She flew to a peaceful meadow with glittery green grass the color of the synthetic grass in Easter baskets and hundreds of beautiful orange daisies as bright as coins, unlike any she’d ever seen, and she knew she had arrived in Heaven. It really exists! she thought in her dream. It was like a place inside a place and oh so colorful! The grasshoppers were a shiny emerald green with eyes like tiny sparkling rubies and the butterflies were all colors of the rainbow, their wings turning luminous when they caught the sunlight, and she remarked to herself how she loved all of God’s creatures, even spiders and snakes and beetles. There were birds, too, and she named them all, though later she realized she had made up all the names, for these were birds with such rich plumage they would put a peacock to shame and were unlike any she had encountered before. She wanted to pluck some of the daisies and make the most beautiful daisy chain ever made, but she knew they would only wilt, so it was better to leave them just where they were, where they could be loved for their own sake. She knelt to kiss one of them. The earth they were growing in was a fertile black loam. How she wished she had some of that in her garden at the camp! Things would grow overnight in it! She dug her fingers into it, delighting in its soft moist texture. And then a funny thing happened. There was an elephant in the garden! It made her laugh to see it. She stood up and looked into its big sad eye and saw such wisdom there, so much knowledge, but how could it ever be revealed? Well, there was no reason it should be. It’s impossible to figure everything out in the world, that’s why one has to have faith. She felt that the elephant was her friend and, although it sort of disappeared from the dream, it would always be there in the way God is always there even if you can’t see Him, and she awoke full of peace and contentment.

Glenda stared at her for a short time with her one eye, which reminded Debra all too much of the elephant’s eye in her dream. The little sitting room was hushed except for the crowded breathing. Then, showing her gold tooth in a smile that was not really a smile at all, she said it was funny how the real innards of a dream get hid away in the pictures, like pride here in the peacock and shame about that or about something worse, what with all those unnatural colors, and the sadness of knowing too much or maybe having too much known about you and what a burden all this hidden knowledge was, as big as an elephant, crushing the pretty flowers with its big feet — Debra thought the elephant was funny! — but the relief of knowing that whatever the elephant knows will not be revealed, meaning the fear that it will be, which goes together with the secret lies when naming the birds, which usually stand for one’s thoughts in dreams. And also how the most important things in dreams are not so much what is there as what is not there, like there are no human beings here in this Heaven, for example, and no children, or even any common animals like dogs or cats, they not being included with spiders and snakes amongst God’s lovable creatures. There’s a lot about money here, she went on to say, and Debra felt certain there was nothing about money at all, Glenda’s remarks about the green grasses being the color of money and also the green grasshoppers with those beady eyes like little warning lights, or even sparks of hot hidden passion, being just completely crazy, even though Debra had to admit she herself had said the bright orange daisies were like coins she couldn’t pick up. It occurred to her that the orange daisies might have been inspired by the flowers printed on her missing underpants, but she wasn’t about to say so. Glenda went on about the orangeness of those daisies, saying that that color, as everyone knew, was associated with the reproduction, daisies themselves being signs of indecision and of being loved and not being loved, and then about her desire to string them together in a chain the way cells get strung together, but her inability to do so, if she tried they’d just die like they always do, and Debra simply had to tune out because she knew what the woman was getting at and it was very cruel. By this time she was close to tears and having a difficult time stopping her lower lip from trembling and was sorry she had come to the caravan and will never do so again. She could not look at the other women, feeling like they were seeing clean through her, like she didn’t have any clothes on, or skin either, just a shriveled heart with pins in it. But Glenda, still staring at her with that one eye, and sliding her tongue over her gold tooth as if to polish it, went on about how feeling at peace with yourself in a dream always means just the opposite, and when she discovered Heaven was actually true, it really meant she did not believe it was, and when, like the daisies, she wanted to be loved for her own sake, it meant she felt she was not. As for the black soil, black always has to do with depression, sadness, and despair, she said, and sometimes hidden desires. “And, well, we all know what dirt means in a dream. And they’s worse things, like what is it you are kissing and what’s your hand doing down there in that wet black dirtiness, but I won’t say them.” But she already had. Debra mustered a kind of smile and a faint trembly thank you, and without looking at anybody, fled to her cabin.

Now, as the sobbing diminishes (Colin will be back soon, she has to get control of herself), she sits up on her bed and blows her nose and sees that Ludie Belle is sitting there on a kitchen chair; she must have forgotten to latch the door. “Go away,” Debra whimpers, her voice just a squeak squeezing out of her clenched throat. “Please. Go away.”

“I won’t be a tiddly,” Ludie Belle says. She holds what looks like an old tattered school notebook and is wearing her half-frame reading spectacles. “My Aunt Pearl gimme this on her death bed. It’s her own way a thinkin’ on dreams. It was near all she had and she desired me to have it. I don’t hold to the belabored unpuzzlin’ a nighttime fancies, which seems to me is mostly made-up stories that don’t make no more sense than the dreams theirselves, so I ain’t never hardly looked at this since she gimme it, but after that little opry over to Mabel’s, I figgered it might throw some luminations on things, like them butterfly wings a yourn done to your purty garden. Aunt Pearl was a sweet ole thing who was always lookin’ on the bright side, much like as you do. We all got doubts about what’s gonna happen to us when we die, but your dreams a Heaven are like a way a reinfortifyin’ your faith and hopes, and meadows and flower gardens is all about tranquility and happiness and bright promises for the future. That’s how I parse out what she’s writ here, for she had a trick a dreamin’ a Heaven too, I only hope she got there. As for daisies, Aunt Pearl was simply crazy about ’em and always hopes to see ’em in her dreams, she says, on accounta they betoken innocence, simplicity, cleanliness, all them things we useta know and still hanker after, cleanliness bein’ about the most we can respire to when the years’ve rid us of the rest. Orange ain’t got nuthin t’do with makin’ babies, not accordin’ to Aunt Pearl, but signifies friendliness, courtesy, a lively personality, and a out-goin’ nature, and that sounds like you down to the ground, don’t it? Maybe she dreampt a orange daisies, too, cuz she was of the same type. And black ain’t all bad neither. If the feeling in the dream is joyful, like it is in yourn, then blackness can signify a aptitude for godly self-sacrifice and seein’ inta the future to go long with it. To dream of a kiss, Aunt Pearl says, betokens love, affection, harmony, and contentment — listen at that! — and what you’re kissin’ ain’t nuthin dirty neither, it’s nature itself, which you love more’n nobody I know.” Ludie Belle folds up her spectacles and drops them in a skirt pocket and goes to the sink to get a glass of water. “Glenda was bein’ spiteful and they warn’t no call for that, but she has got difficulties of her own. Her husband Welford cain’t stop hisself playin’ round, you probly noticed, and so Glenda’s got a natcherl gredge over most single ladies.”

“No, I…” But then she recalls certain scenes in the garden, outside the public shower and privies, here in the cabin when Welford was plumbing in the running water, once down by the creek. She always thought of it as just harmless teasing, his way of being friendly, and she was flattered by it and usually joked back because that seemed the natural thing to do and because she is nice to everybody and does not like to disappoint them. Glenda was never far away…

“Here,” says Ludie Belle, fishing a little white pill out of her pocket and handing her the glass of water. “Swaller this and see ifn it don’t perk you up a tad.”

Debra feels like throwing her arms around Ludie Belle and weeping again, but Colin comes in the door, and with one glance at her, his eyes start from their sockets in alarm like they always do and in his high-pitched voice he demands to know what’s the matter, why is she crying? “I’m not crying, Colin. It’s just the hay fever. You know, like sometimes down at the garden? Ludie Belle brought me an antihista-mine and has just been helping me with the menus for next week. Put on your working shorts and we’ll go down and pick some fresh lettuce and celery and spring onions from the garden for tonight. Also some carrots and new potatoes for the Sunday roast, and we’ll see what else is ready.”

“Fetch me up some cowcumbers and peas and slathers a young sparrowgrass, Colin,” says Ludie Belle. “I’ll see if I ain’t got the makin’s for my mama’s sparrowgrass casserole.” And she winks and blows a kiss from the door, Colin in his eagerness having already dropped his trousers where he was standing and rushed into his bedroom looking for his gardening shorts.

Pat Suggs is no dreamer. If you ask him if he ever dreams, he will say he never does. Nevertheless, he is dreaming. He is in his office at South County Coal, where he trains his Christian Patriots, and they are waiting for the Christ’s arrival. Others are also present — fellow Disciples, or maybe interlopers. It doesn’t matter. It will all get sorted. His humanist adversary, the moneylender, is here. Likewise, the excommie Red Baxter. Sent his boys in years ago to teach that splenetic troublemaker a lesson, but they came back with their own knees broken instead. Next time that won’t happen. He is now Christ’s warrior, not merely a patriotic businessman, and he will be ruthless. The moneylender is out of his water here and he knows it. He has withdrawn to a far wall and looks shrunken, a defeated man. But Pat knows he must not gloat or things could turn around. Pride before a fall. Pat knows the proverb, can quote it whole, even in a dream: Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall. He has used that line when bringing other proud men to their knees, and he will use it again as he quietly and humbly sees to the merciless scourging of the smug banker. Pat knows he is dreaming, so he reasons these things out as he goes along; that way, he’ll be rid of it all on waking up, the lessons learned, but the dream forgotten as if never dreamt. Wosznik, Shawcross, Appleby, others from the camp are here as well. Disciples or friends of the Disciples. But which one, he wonders, looking around the room, will be the Betrayer? Baxter, Cavanaugh may be enemies, false apostles, but they are who they are, nothing up their sleeves. Puller? That new Patriots recruit, Dunlevy? His eye falls on Ben Wosznik. Constancy incarnate, so he’s always thought. Not unlike the Disciple Peter. But there is something tainted about the man now. As if he were harboring a wickedness in his bosom. Or at least a weakness, which in holy battles can be worse than sin. That damaged girl. In Pat’s mind, by choice or fate, she has become an agent of the dark side. What happened to her must have been deserved, or was at least necessary. Part of the divine plan. And for her now, Ben has abandoned everything else. So what is he doing here in the mining office? This dream suggests he will return to the camp, but his presence here may only be to reveal his true role. Having figured this out, Pat decides to erase the dream, wake up, get dressed, have his customary oatmeal breakfast, and go out to the camp. There’s a meeting scheduled, a service, a Sunday buffet, plans to be made for next week’s temple dedication ceremonies.

When he arrives at the camp, however, there’s no one there. The place is a shambles. He checks the Meeting Hall: no buffet tables have been set out. It’s as though the camp has been abandoned for some time. It’s eerie, but there’s probably an explanation. The Rapture? He discounts that. They might all be over on the mine hill, but why would they go there without telling him? Have they all been arrested? If so, he’ll have work to do. Ely Collins’ death message is still hanging by the fireplace. For some reason, that’s reassuring. But then he sees the prophetic date has been changed from the 8^th to the 30^th. That was yesterday. He has missed it. For a moment his heart sinks. Then he realizes that the changing of the date is nonsense. He is still dreaming. Nearly got fooled. He wakes up again, dresses, has his usual bowl of hot oatmeal, waits until he is able to use his own toilet, and goes out to the camp in time for the Sunday morning service.

When he arrives, he feels like it’s the second time he’s come out here this morning; he dismisses the feeling. There’s a cheery freshness to the place this summery morning, but they’ve fallen behind in their projects, he knows, missing the energy and discipline brought to them by Ben and Clara. That damned Puller. The sheriff waited too long to go after the motorcyclists, and see now the consequences. Puller has an official story about the death of that mop-headed biker, and then there’s the one suggested by the since-repaired dent in the right front fender of his police car. No matter. They’re gone. But so are Ben and Clara. He has an uneasy feeling about Ben this morning for some reason. Some new awareness dawning about where the man’s priorities lie.

The church service, he learns, is being held up on Inspiration Point. After checking in at the Meeting Hall kitchen, where the ladies are busy preparing the Sunday buffet (he can smell roast pork), he makes his way up there, speaking with people as he goes. Both Wayne Shawcross and Welford Oakes acknowledge that they will see him later, before lunch, in the church office. Mrs. Edwards, about whom he is seriously concerned, will be there, too. No, no news from Ben and Clara. He remarks that there are more people here than he expected and learns that some of those chased out are drifting back by day, still feeling a part of things. Some help out, some don’t. On his way past the cabin refurbished for the two office boys, he sticks his head in. Already looking too much like some kid’s college room; he’ll have to speak with them about that. There’s something odd about the blond one, though he’s smart and people seem to be taking his arcane decodings seriously, especially with regard to something that’s supposed to happen next weekend. The other one is useful and willing but without much spunk and not completely reliable. Some folks, he thinks, are born to backsliding. Sooner or later they’ll both have to leave the cabin and it will become the official church office.

Outside the sickbay cabin, he nods to Rumpel and Dunlevy, members of his Christian Patriots organization, but not of the camp executive committee; he keeps the two things separate. Both former soldiers, they were with him at the cemetery yesterday for the Patriots’ Memorial Day services, a holiday too much ignored in this country. Dunlevy is a jack of all trades, useful in many ways, but only up to a point. Hard to know for sure what’s boiling underneath Rumpel’s thick skin, the one they call Hunk, but he is, at least on the surface, a simple man, blunt and mostly unthinking. He’s strong and he takes orders well and is a good rifleman, has his own arsenal. Both men were useful in clearing illegal Baxterite squatters off the new trailer park and campsite a few days ago, and he has more projects for them this week.

Cecil Appleby, the beekeeper, conducts this morning’s service on the Point. Reluctantly, as always; he’s no showboat. When ye pray, use not vain repetitions as the heathen do — that’s his style. Shawcross reads the scripture, Hall spouting a few spontaneous verses of his own, and that southern couple, L’Heureux and his woman, are there to lead the singing. Not sure about them. Especially the man, who croons religious songs like they’re love songs and earns his living singing in bars. The woman is more interesting, has some kind of special connection. They may or may not stick, but for the moment they bring a certain quality to these occasions. While Appleby leads them in prayer, staring at his gnarled hands as though the text were written there, Pat gazes across the way at the mine hill glowing in the morning sun. He sees it not so much as a holy place now as a building site. He can see the temple sitting there, but there are still problems to resolve. Pat has learned a few things about Appleby. The man has known tragedy. Apparently he struck and killed a child one day while driving. He was in real estate then, beekeeping just a hobby, and he was on his way to view a new property, probably hurrying to beat a competitor there. He got jailed briefly for involuntary manslaughter, gave up real estate afterwards. Gave up driving, too — his wife does all of that now. He took up carpentry, what he calls the Master’s trade, instead, and got good at it, it being part and parcel of his faith. Kept the hives, added to them, and the two of them became beekeeping nomads, chasing the seasons, picking up carpentry work on the side. Found his mentor in Ben Wosznik. Not because of Wosznik’s preaching, which is minimal, but because of his singing. Appleby doesn’t exactly preach either, he merely leads them in prayer, speaking quietly, sincerely, urgently to Jesus and God. Pat has taken a liking to him. Reminds him some of Ely Collins. Ely exhorted more, Appleby keeps more to himself, but he has Ely’s quiet eloquence. Innate wisdom. Like Ely, he is who he is and is trustworthy to the core.

After the service, he joins Shawcross, Oakes, and Mrs. Edwards in the church office off the Meeting Hall where the lunch is being set out. Oakes offers Mrs. Edwards a chair and she refuses it a bit too sharply. A little huffy recently, but there are a lot of pressures on her — pressures he can’t do much about. There is much to talk about; too much for a one-hour meeting. Mrs. Edwards wastes some of that time expressing her gratitude to him on behalf of the entire camp for all the time and concern he is devoting to them in their present difficulties. He nods in acknowledgement, trying not to show his impatience, then takes reports on the various camp construction projects. Wayne Shawcross describes the completion of the cabin for the two boys and points out the new shelves and filing cabinets installed in the office. Welford Oakes says he is plumbing in a ladies’ restroom with flush toilets in the unused storage room next door and the office where they are sitting is designated for future conversion into a men’s room, so he’s installing waste and supply pipes adequate for both facilities. Wayne reports there was another intrusion and vandalism in the camp yesterday. Somebody got in and tried to pull down one of the lamp posts, and there was an attempt to set Hunk Rumpel’s chicken coops on fire, but they were chased away by gunfire. Mrs. Edwards says that although nothing has been stolen, intruders have also been inside her tool shed. “Probably Baxter’s people,” Pat says. “We chased them off the new campsite. They were retaliating. There’s apt to be more of that. We’re going to be making life ever more uncomfortable for them around here until they get the message and move on.” Mrs. Edwards says that she will be putting a lock on the shed door and only she and Hazel Dunlevy, who has started helping her down there, will have keys.

They briefly touch on the legal harassments. The city’s injunctions, he tells them, are dead in the water. If anything does stick, enforcement still has to go through Sheriff Puller and he has no intention of preventing the church from having free access to the hill. The threat of state and federal prosecutors is a red herring. Not going to happen. He says he has been working with a hotshot lawyer up in the city named Thornton who has taken a personal interest in their case and who assures him the charges of embezzlement and theft against the three women have no merit. What he doesn’t tell them is that Thornton said the cases are similar, but the Filbert/Cavanaugh case is winnable and the Edwards one is probably not. Mrs. Edwards is one of their most dependable and enthusiastic workers; he could not have done without her during this absence of Clara and Ben. She has given her all, but she may have to be sacrificed. If she takes a personal hit, the church may be let off and they can perhaps avoid forfeiting any of the property. He assumes, if she gets sent up and the Rapture happens, being such a loyal and devoted servant, Jesus will find her. There’s her troubled boy, but he’d be best off in an institution anyway. The one consolation is that their adversaries will never get the money. He hopes that will console her as well.

With what little time they have left, they talk about next Sunday’s tabernacle groundbreaking and ceremonial cornerstone laying on the hill. He is bringing in heavy earth-moving equipment tomorrow. He plans to scar the earth in the shape of the temple ground plan with its encompassing circle and to fill the trenches with chalk. He is organizing aerial photography for news releases. Other ministries in the area have been invited, though few will attend. They’ll have to plan on Clara and Ben not being there. So someone should organize the hour-by-hour events. “Young Darren is working on that,” Mrs. Edwards says. They still have to decide which corner is the appropriate one for the stone, given its odd hillside construction. The back of the church, or top of the cross, will be buried in the hillside, while the front will have to be elevated. From the air, it will look like a Latin cross, but the shape of the building will actually be more like a squared-off Greek cross, each wing seven units long with the extra five units at the bottom part of the twelve-unit cross post filled out by broad full-width steps. Oakes wants to know what’s being used for the cornerstone. “We’ll be moving Ely Collins’ remains to the spot and using his headstone, a solid block of granite,” Pat says. “We won’t need the body for the ceremony; it can be brought later. Mrs. Collins has approved this. We already have the headstone. We’re adding a line to it with Sunday’s date. It’s with the engravers now.”

There’s a knock on the door. “Lunch is ready, folks! Come and get it!”

“Should start laying the foundations in a couple of weeks,” he says, rising, “and be ready to begin the actual construction of the temple itself by the end of summer.”

The others look at each other with raised eyebrows, faint smiles. The end of summer! “It’s like a dream come true!” says Mrs. Edwards.

III.3 Sunday 31 May — Monday 1 May

The municipal pool has opened this Memorial Day weekend and the kids are nagging at her to take them, but Dot’s pooped after the exhausting trip to the camp and back. Sunday dinners are a lot of work. Extra cots were brought in out there for last month’s big weekend and they were probably just going to be dumped somewhere and left to rust, so they did them the favor of carting a few of them back here to Chestnut Hills. She has fallen out on one of them. God has blessed them with these small gifts.

“Come on, Mom,” says Luke. “This is the last day it’s free.”

There’s that to consider. Not much is free these days. That pork roast may be their last. It was overcooked like everything else they serve out of that kitchen and she let them know that, not for the first time; she could teach them a thing or two, but they’re set in their southern ways. The rhubarb pie was sour, too, and begging for hot custard. You just don’t serve rhubarb pie without it. What’s wrong with these people? Then old man Suggs had the nerve to tell her that the meals and other privileges of the camp were for the workers only. If they are not there by 7:30 a.m. each day to begin work, they will not be able to share in the camp meals or other facilities. Is he kidding? How is she going to get Isaiah off the can at that ridiculous hour? Whatever happened to give to him who asketh you and the righteous showeth mercy to the needs of the saints? Is this a church, or what? Even finding all her kids in the morning, much less getting them washed and dressed, can take half the day. That old man should have a few to see what it’s like, he’d be making fewer stupid rules.

“They got a big slide. Davey told me.”

“Just let me get my wind, Luke.” Somebody should wipe the kid’s nose. Snot worming out of both her nostrils. Dot would make the effort but she has nothing to use except her skirt, which may not get laundered again soon. “Go get up a game of apocalypse in the back yard.”

“Come on, Mom,” her oldest says. “You’re not tired, you just ate too much.”

“I know, Mattie, but I figured if we weren’t going to be invited back, I’d better store up enough for the rest of the week, and now I can’t move.” It was a good thing she was already well tucked in when Suggs dropped the edict. She managed to make it back for thirds and a half before they took everything away, and she was able to share a whole pie with little Johnny, fortunately not his favorite delicacy, he being still mostly on the bottle. Custard, though, he would have loved.

“Is that how it works? Storing it up?”

“I don’t know. Probably not.” She feels a good healthy snore coming on, Isaiah already at it in the back room of this little prefab — their fourth house since coming here, having used up the first three — but the kids won’t let her drop off. They keep poking and wheedling. “All right, all right,” she says finally, sitting up with a heavy grunt, and they jump up and down and let off squealing and whoopeeing sounds. Let them have their chlorinated dip — they’re all in need of baths anyway, and the pool should sterilize them for a few days, save her time in the long run. Maybe they could somehow make it out to the camp at least one day a week in time to earn their lunches and bring home a few bags full of leftovers to get them through some of the other days.

How does a body survive in such a mean world? It’s not easy, especially with this gang of Blaurock ragamuffins. But Isaiah is a hard worker and strong and fearless, and he’s resourceful at picking up odd jobs, like taking dents out of fenders, lopping off dead tree limbs, pointing chimneys, caulking windows, getting squirrels out of attics and rats out of basements and on one occasion last week a cat out of a tree, though he did that one for free. He has a very Christian attitude toward dogs and cats and does not like to see them suffer, though in hard times past they have also sometimes eaten them. Isaiah’s not inclined to say much, he just wanders the neighborhoods locating problems, points and gives his price. And he comes cheap, so they always invite him back. He brings the money home, she buys food with it. When they run out, they visit a restaurant out on the highway somewhere, walking out without paying, her kids, well-trained, asking loudly just before if they can go out and play. She keeps a list of places and ticks them off as they use them up. These people make such huge profits, it’s a way of helping them tithe. Once, they made the mistake of going back to the same place twice, and on that occasion they had to check off not only the restaurant, but also the state. Which has been a nuisance ever since, it being one of those states in the middle that they always have to drive around to get somewhere else. Wandering one day through what the local Baxter people call Dagotown, Isaiah spotted an old Ford pickup on blocks, and after looking it over he offered to trade their Dodge for it, the old heap still running even if on its last legs, plus enough money to buy used wheels for the truck, part of which he earned by cleaning their gutters and unplugging their downspouts and getting rid of a tree whose roots were threatening the house foundations and sawing it up for firewood. A week or so later they had a vehicle twice as good, and one they could haul things in, though Isaiah had to make a few pieces out of scrap harvested from the truck bed, and visit some church parking lots to borrow the odd doobob or two he couldn’t manufacture himself. Not much room inside for the kids, but riding shotgun at the back of the truck is a big adventure for them. Isaiah’s next project is to build a camper unit for it. They can park it out at the camp somewhere. Meanwhile, they’ve been rotating through various Chestnut Hills properties, living among the cockroaches and mice, who seem to enjoy a comfortable life in this neighborhood, moving to a new house when the old one gets overtaken by filth and disrepair, trundling out to the camp for laundry, telephone, meals, prayers, and the occasional family shower. That will be harder now, though not impossible, she assumes. People having a way of letting her do what she wants if she’s insistent enough. But it’s no big deal anyway — anything that takes a coin Isaiah can make operate without. He can make slugs out of tin cans and roof lead and work magic with a bobby pin. Stuff they borrowed from the camp that they no longer need they have offered up in garage and yard sales, picking up pizza money. They also scrounge through other people’s rubbish, occasionally coming up with a usable or saleable item, though it’s a poor town and not much gets thrown away. They have better luck dumpster diving out at the shopping center; security’s not perfect out there, meaning they usually come away with a few small store samples as well, which they feel they deserve by virtue of the abstemious Christian lives they live.

At the pool, they draw a lot of attention. Stares and giggles. Pointed fingers. The brat at the entrance who does the check-in and hands out the baskets for their clothes comes out now and tells them they can’t swim in their underwear, they have to have swimming suits. Dot tells her those are swimming suits, the latest models, and a good sight more modest than what some of these other little heathens out here are wearing, so lay off. Of course, it would have helped had they been clean, but kids are kids, right? The girl looks for help from the lifeguard perched over there on his high chair at the deep end of the pool, but he is surrounded by fawning young things who keep falling into the water and squealing that they can’t swim — save me, Tommy! The lifeguard’s a pretty boy, tall and good-looking, and doesn’t seem to care about little kids swimming in their underwear, and why should he, for pete’s sake?

Now that she’s in here, Dot is thinking about having a plunge herself, fairly confident that her drawers are more or less immaculate. She had a heck of a time getting through the turnstile at the entrance and was afraid she’d have to keep an eye on her kids from outside the pool’s chain-link fence, but fortunately there was a gate in that fence, and when she insisted, the baskets girl found the key and let her in that way, though she didn’t seem happy about it. Happiness is not something Dot tends to provoke in others, she has noticed, though she’s a happy enough person herself. She sees that one of the half-naked creatures surrounding the lifeguard is that girl who is said to have sucked the life out of the old lady from Florida. Probably she ought to go over and pinch her to see if she’s real. There’s a pallor about her that does not look completely human, but then summer’s just begun. A lanky underfed thing. No way she can compete with those other young beauties, whoever or whatever she is, though that may not be what she’s doing there. She glances at Dot from time to time, maybe because she recognizes her, maybe for more sinister reasons, and once, while looking over at her, whispers something to the lifeguard. Like the devil whispering into the ear of the pious, though that’s probably an exaggeration, in his case at least.

When Dot pulls her dress over her head, she catches a glimpse of the alarm on the face of the check-in girl, who goes ducking back inside the changing rooms building, and she sees that everyone has turned to stare at her. What? They never saw a fat lady before? Little Mark is standing at the edge of the pool with his underwear around his knees, peeing into the water. Markie never could hold it, was in diapers until only about a year ago. He’s cute, like that fountain in France or wherever that she saw on a used postcard once in a junk shop, but these dummies probably won’t make the connection, and most of them are scrambling out of the pool. The lifeguard steps down off his chair, no doubt intending to come over here, but just then Luke pushes another little kid off the top of the slide and he’s drowning. The lifeguard, there in a couple of strokes, plucks the spluttering creature out of the water and hands him up to an older kid, his big sister maybe. Which means that Luke, who is wheeing down the slide, is apt to have a problem of her own that the rest of them will have to share.

There are sirens outside and Dot realizes the check-in bimbo has called the police. She hasn’t even got her toe in yet. The level of tolerance and understanding here is frankly disappointing. Mattie has taken another kid’s green dragon float away from him and the sissy has gone wailing to his mother. So now everyone is watching them. They’re the story of the day. Mattie is biting the rubber float, trying to puncture it. Two officers come in, sweaty in their dark uniforms, trying to appear officious but not succeeding. If there’s anyone who looks out of place here, it’s those guys, not her. The fat one with the Roman nose and three chins tells her to put her clothes on, dress her kids, and leave the pool. The older one tells him he thinks this is one of the families squatting illegally in Chestnut Hills. You know, Louie, he says. Them cultists. He’s chewing something, but it doesn’t look like gum. A nasty habit her own father had. It turns her stomach. She protests that it’s a public pool and a free country, but they don’t seem interested in this line of reasoning. Mattie, meanwhile, has successfully destroyed the green dragon. It floats flat on the surface like seaweed. Her kids are already up and moving toward the exit. They know when it’s time to leave a place. “May the good Lord forgive you,” she says. She tosses her dress and little Johnny over her shoulder, shoves Fat Louie into the pool, and stalks off toward the gate in the chain-link fence, which, she sees, the check-in brat has opened wide.

They stop by the new unfinished campgrounds on the way home to see how Abner Baxter and his people are getting on and to take the wet things off and let the kids dry off running around in the afternoon sunshine for a few minutes. There were no sirens chasing them after they left the pool — they were too busy hauling Tubby out of the drink. “Hey, help!” she heard a girl shout over the splashy floundering on her way out of the gate. “My daddy can’t swim!” So Save-Me-Tommy had some heroics to perform, after all, if not the sort he might have preferred.

The new campsite is fenced off with a strand of shiny barbed wire, NO TRESPASSING signs dangling every twenty yards or so. There is some well-digging equipment standing idle, a small temporary worker’s hut, some poles and big spools of wire cooking in the sun. Dot wonders if there’s anything there Isaiah can use. The campsite is otherwise empty, though there are a few people still camped out at the edges, including Abner and his family, using a tented extension to their old Plymouth station wagon. Jesus will recognize his true disciples by the rusted-out clunkers they all drive. Just the four Baxters now, the mental girl at Abner’s side, holding his hand; Young Abner behind his shoulder, sporting his new red bangs; Abner’s wife Sarah off sitting in the passenger seat of the Plymouth, looking like she might have been there for several days. The defection of their oldest daughter is the cause of much bitterness. One wonders who’s doing the dishes now. The big tent is still up from this morning’s sermon and prayer meeting, with folding chairs set out which she recognizes from the camp.

Abner, scowling his scowl, says he is glad to see her, and others come to tell about their troubles and exchange God blesses. The sheriff has been demanding their driving licenses and car registrations or other proof of ownership on the grounds that there have been some recent car thefts in the area. This is absurd on the face of it because no one in their right mind would steal these cars. But some vehicles have been impounded and fines levied, jail threatened if the fines go unpaid. Some have just left the area, which seems to be the easiest way to get your car back. They have been made to move their tents and vehicles several times, sometimes only across the road — a kind of day-to-day harassment meant to make them want to give it up and go look for a friendlier location. The mayor of Randolph Junction, said to be close to Abner and a tent-meeting regular, has offered just such a place, though without any services, and many have already gone there, but Abner is determined to stick it out here and some of his pals are standing by him. Now there are threats of warrants being issued, which probably means anything resembling weapons will be confiscated, including kitchen knives, screwdrivers, and lug wrenches. Dot fills them in on developments at the camp and the new rules meant to exclude any but the inner circle. “Even the new lavatory is locked up,” she says. “Can you believe it?” Ben and Clara and their daughter have not been seen since they left the camp over three weeks ago and will probably miss next Sunday’s ceremonies on the hill, which, Abner says after dropping his head for a moment at the mention of the daughter, he and his son have been specifically ordered not to attend. Abner says he is not sure he will obey this order. Young Abner nods solemnly at this, his bangs flopping on his forehead, which still looks raw under there. It turns out his brothers and their gang kidnapped him and dragged him to that field to torment him and dressed him in the girl’s underpants just to humiliate him. Dot adds a more detailed note about being excluded from the camp dining table, hoping someone will take the hint, but no one does. In fact, a couple of them have been nosing around the pickup and if there were anything there to steal, she figures it would be gone by now. Isaiah always sets a little money aside for shotgun shells and gas. Maybe there’s enough for a pizza. If not, well, they’ll have to test out the storage theory.

The next morning they awake to grim tidings. Not the writing on the wall, though there’s that, too. “Aw, Mom,” Mattie says after she swats him, “we only wanted to play Battleship and we ain’t got no paper.” “Any paper,” she says. “You ain’t got any paper.” “That’s what I said.” “Well, that ain’t no excuse to write on the walls. Now you take your erasers and see if you can’t get some of that off.” “Our erasers are all wore down.” “Well, lick it and wipe it with your sleeve.” Not that it matters much. They’ll be changing houses soon.

But the really bad news, discovered a moment later, is that everything has been turned off. No electricity, no gas, no water. Which means, among other grave consequences, that the toilet won’t flush. Isaiah who is headed in there now is going to be a very unhappy man. She goes door to door to the other houses in Chestnut Hills where people chased from the camp are living and finds it’s the same story. Everything shut down. They can’t do this. You can’t deprive a person of water no matter how poor they are. She urges them to join her in a march down to city hall to demand their rights. Only a few buy into this plan and most of them drop away before they get there. In the end she’s stuck with her own kids and a couple of yokels from Arkansas who can’t seem to get it in their heads that the Second Coming didn’t actually happen last month and they weren’t somehow left behind. Democracy’s a good thing, but it has its limits. On the steps of city hall, she also realizes she left Johnny at home. How could she have forgotten him? She sends Mattie to retrieve him and tells him to ask his father to bring them back here in the pickup because she might need his help.

The mayor’s busy, but he’s not so busy he can’t hear her out. Dot pushes aside the fat girl out front and storms on in. The boys from Arkansas follow her as far as the door. “What the hell is going on here?” the mayor roars out, and then she’s down to Mark and Luke. But it doesn’t matter, she doesn’t need numbers — right is on her side. She unloads her grievances on the mayor, a shady character if she ever saw one, telling him that she doesn’t know who’s responsible for the sabotage out there in Chestnut Hills, but it’s unconstitutional and has to be put right or there’ll be big trouble, and though he has been standing, he sits down again, wallowing a cigar around in his fat leathery cheeks, his beady eyes narrowing. She leans over and slaps her fist on his desk, reminding him that God is on her side and quite capable of serious devastation, and the mayor shrinks back into his leather swivel chair, nearly swallowing his cigar. At least she has his attention. He makes a circular motion around one ear and she thinks he’s calling her crazy and is about to pop him one, but then she realizes he’s signaling to the woman on the other side of the open door behind her to make a phone call. Probably to those clowns she met out at the pool yesterday. Little Luke has found a settee, something she hasn’t seen in a long time, and it excites her. She’s jumps up and down on it with gleeful yipping noises. Dot tells the mayor that children’s health and lives are at stake, and to illustrate the subject, she lifts Markie up and stands him on the mayor’s desk. Unfortunately, Markie uses that moment to let go again, puddling the scattered papers on the mayor’s desk, and she tells him that’s because with no running water they can’t use the bathrooms and now look what’s happened. The mayor can see what has happened. He’s on his feet again and looks ready to make a run for it. Mattie comes in just then, dragging a squalling Johnny. He says, gasping for breath, that Dad wasn’t home and he had to carry Johnny all the way here and he’s too heavy and he dropped him a few times. He doesn’t know where his father is, but probably he went to look for another bathroom — the one at home isn’t any good anymore.

The mayor, outflanked, relents. “Take her over to the utilities manager and get this sorted out!” he commands, probably heard clear across town.

His secretary doesn’t seem to know who the utilities manager is, being a typical underachieving government employee, but then she does know. Maybe the mayor mouthed something. Dot can hear the door slamming and locking behind her as they proceed down the hall. She carries Johnny now and drags along a reluctant Luke, who’s howling that she wants to go back and jump on the bouncy thing some more. They are led to a back room which seems to be part of the city clerk’s office. There’s a guy slumped behind a dusty desk looking three sheets to the wind. “The mayor said to take care of this,” the old girl squeaks and vanishes, not even explaining her case. Which Dot proceeds to do, though it’s clear not much is getting through. It’s still midmorning and this guy is gone for the day. Whatever she says, he just grins and winks. Consequently, the crisis she is describing becomes more of a monetary one, and what with her shouting and fist-banging and little Johnny crawling around on top of the desk and all three of the others now either whining or crying, he finally reaches blearily for his billfold, still grinning stupidly like she’s telling him a funny joke, fumbles for a dollar bill. She snatches the billfold from him, finds three tens, hands it back.

“Hah!” he says and falls back into his chair, casting his grin upon the inside of his billfold.

“And tell the mayor to get those services turned back on or we’re going straight to the Supreme Court!” she yells and leads the kids out of there.

Little Johnny is a load to carry, but Dot decides to toss him over her shoulder and go blow some change from their windfall on ice creams as a reward for her loyal little army, and while walking down Main Street, remarking as she goes on the street’s boarded-up pot-holed post-Armageddon look, she passes a sorry-looking white-haired guy having a smoke outside a shoe store. “Looks like you got some ponies there need shoeing,” he says.

“Well, I got ten dollars,” she says and she shows one of the bills to him. “What can we get for that?”

“Come on in, have a look. Whole stock’s on sale. Should find something you like for that price.”

At first, all the shoes cost ten bucks each, but she says she can’t buy shoes for just one of them, so the price drops to five, and then, when she shrugs and starts to leave, three pair for ten. “Look,” he says, “I’ll even throw in a pair of baby shoes for the little one. It’s your lucky day. Line ’em up and fit ’em out.”

Baby shoes. She hadn’t even thought about that. First any of her kids have ever had. She picks out a pair that look a bit like his father’s work boots. Mattie and Mark are easy enough, liking everything they try on and wanting them all, but Luke has her eye on some pink slippers high up on the wall of shoeboxes. “Not your size, little girl. Try these,” the owner says, showing her a pair of patent leather sandals. But Luke is determined, it being her nature, and starts to climb the boxes, succeeding in bringing the whole lot tumbling down. The man’s right, they’re too big, but Luke wants them anyway. “I’ll grow into them, Mom.”

“When they fit, Lukie, I’ll buy them for you. For now, come and try on these sneakers.”

After that, Luke hates every pair she tries on, so finally Dot makes the choice for her, ignoring her loud, bad-tempered protests. Mattie and Mark are bringing down other stacks just for fun, trying to bury each other in falling shoes and boxes. “You know,” the man says with a sick smile, “you’re like somebody out of my nightmares.” She asks him if he couldn’t show a little Christian charity and lower the price enough to leave her change to buy ice creams for the kids, but by now, in his excitement, Johnny has pooped his britches again and the place is reeking and the store owner’s free hand is closing. “No,” he says, looking like he’s about to gag. “Out. Out!” He herds them onto the street, following them out, locks the door behind him, and hurries away. Probably to go spend up the ten dollars, she assumes, and she wonders if somehow she got cheated.

The boys are jumping up and down in their new shoes on their way to the corner drugstore for ice creams (maybe little Johnny can win them a few more concessions if she fumbles a while for change), but Luke, Dot discovers, has stolen one of the pink slippers, though not its mate, and she’s wearing it, dragging it along with a bare foot. She must have left the other sneaker back in the store. The boys have picked up some extra shoelaces, very colorful, probably for ice skates, and two shoehorns, which they seem to perceive as some sort of knightly weapon, attacking each other as they bounce along. She cuffs all three of them, reminding them that it’s a sin to steal. If the man hadn’t locked the store, she’d march them right back there. They’re probably making Jesus very unhappy — whereupon, there on the corner of Third and Main, Jesus himself makes a surprise appearance, rolling down the street in a sky-blue automobile, driven by an ethereal creature who could be the Magdalene herself, though with makeup on! Dot falls to her knees in the street, fearing the worst (they shouldn’t have stolen those shoelaces—“You see, Mattie, you see?” she cries), and she’s ready to let rip with prayers and confessions and talking in tongues, whatever it takes, but the Master drifts on by and turns the corner at the next block and disappears. She remains there on her knees in the empty street for a few minutes reflecting upon this apparition, wondering if she saw what she just saw, until her kids get restless and ask her to stand up. Come on, Mom, let’s go. They want their ice creams.

By the time they get home, Johnny has lost one of his new shoes. Well, give him a change and walk back and look for it. Not something anyone else would want one of. But there are new locks on all the doors; they can’t get in. Locks are no problem for Isaiah, but he’s not here — the truck’s gone — so she breaks a window and passes Mattie through, and he opens up from the inside. Someone has taken all their stuff. The cots are still there, but without mattresses or bedding. Their clothes, collected possessions, the children’s toys, kitchen utensils, the hotplate and electric fan, everything, stripped away. They have not bought any of these things, but still they miss them and feel like anyone else feels who has been robbed. It has happened to others in the neighborhood, she discovers. There have also been some forcible evictions. Some of the men, they say, had on uniforms or parts of uniforms, but they didn’t look like city police. In fact, a couple of them wore bandannas on their faces like cattle rustlers in the movies. One of them was recognized as that big fellow from the church camp, so everyone knows who’s behind this. One of the neighbors has been out to see Reverend Baxter and says they were raided overnight and many had their tents dragged away and ripped up. In protest, Reverend Baxter has cut the wire fence and installed himself in the middle of the new campground, with others positioned around him like encircling wagons, including people from town, and he welcomes all who’d like to come and help defend him. Many say they plan to go there.

Isaiah returns and she shows him what’s happened and maybe he’s angry and maybe he’s not. Always hard to tell with Isaiah. He goes to work. He removes the locks and drops them in his tool box, and he does the same for other people who are still locked out. He taps a light pole directly for electricity supply and spends a good hour making the connection childproof. When it’s connected, he turns on every light in the house even though it’s still day. He visits the city dump and finds some of their stuff recently deposited there, including their mattresses, or some mattresses anyway, as well as some new things. A toaster, for example. Now all they need is some bread. He has also come back with a load of gallon bottles, milk jugs, and gas cans, and he and a couple of the men take these to a public fountain and fill them up, using the water to fill toilet tanks and allow everyone to flush. Praise God, they say.

As the day wanes, the neighbors gather in the Blaurocks’ front yard, bringing along scraps of food to be cooked or warmed up on the recovered hotplate and shared around. The chosen people. Dot sends Mattie to the neighborhood grocery store to buy five loaves of white bread so everyone can have a slice of hot toast, setting aside one loaf for herself to help allay the hunger the day’s exertions have brought on, and Isaiah goes to the pop machine in the movie house and gets cold drinks for everybody with his magic slugs. He had also brought a broken floor lamp from his dump run, and he now wires it up and sets it in the yard — a heart-warming thing to see there, a lonely beacon against the encroaching night. It provokes a round of preaching, praying, and gospel singing. Someone offers up a prayer for Reverend Baxter in his stand against the Powers of Darkness, and everyone joins in. Dot tells them all about her visit to the mayor and her encounter with Jesus on Main Street, and that leads to more prayers and the trading of miraculous visitation stories and speculations about the end times so near upon them, including the opinion that they have already begun, about which Dot is less skeptical than she was before. Little Luke comes shuffling up in her pink slipper and for no particular reason puts her arms around her, takes her thumb out of her mouth, and gives her a sleepy kiss on her cheek. The boys are already in their beds; Luke’s always the last to quit. Isaiah lifts her up gently and carries her into the house. The way Isaiah has got things done this evening, God bless him, has Dot excited. Later she’ll warm up some water on the hotplate, have a quick sponge bath, and then, praise the Lord, it’s a bit of the old garden of Solomon.

III.4 Friday 5 June — Sunday 7 June

“They’re back! Ben and Clara!” It’s Willie Hall, banging on their cabin door. “Let the saints be joyful’n glory, let ’em sing out loud ’pon their beds!” And he’s off to wake up the rest of the camp with his momentous news.

Billy Don pulls on his jeans and steps out into the drizzly June morning. A dismal day but bright in promise. They’re back. He’s surprised how good it feels. The camp has a rich murky smell. Funky. One of Sally Elliott’s words. So different from the sweet toasty fragrance of dry warm days. Although there’s something oddly exciting about this dense odor, something suggestive, almost sinful (it’s the earth, Sally would say with her little one-sided grin — the earth is naughty, Billy Don), he’s always glad when it lifts, especially after it has sunk in for several days. Billy Don likes the sun. Dusty baseball weather. Weather for lighter hearts. He feels it’s the weather they now deserve with the return of Ben and Clara.

They must have rolled in overnight. Billy Don parked his Chevy down there yesterday at suppertime, after his midweek mail run, having met with Sally over ice creams and suffered his weekly dose of chagrin, doubt, and embarrassed longing, and he had paused to stare, as he often did, at the deeply indented space in the lot where their big house trailer had so long stood, anchoring the camp, thinking then, as often of late: Something has ended.

But now, as soon, renewed. Born again: Sally’s T-shirt. A sucker. Yes, he can’t shake his “appetite for hope,” as she calls it. He wants to believe. In the way that Ben and Clara do.

He sees other believers, full of smiles, emerging from the dripping trees, some under umbrellas, coming up into the Main Square: Wayne Shawcross and Ludie Belle; Welford Oakes; Hazel Dunlevy. Mrs. Edwards steps out on her raised porch next door, Colin, still in his underwear, peering over her shoulder with his usual look of giddy alarm. “We’ll wanta spruce things up, Billy Don,” Wayne shouts, grinning broadly. He’s wearing his bib overalls over a pajama shirt. Such a nice guy. Billy Don gives him a thumbs-up. He loves these people. “Take ’em on the grand tour! Show ’em what we done!” Old Uriah appears, Travers, Hovis, all trailing after Willie Hall, Cecil and Corinne Appleby hand in hand, the whole camp gathering, Willie hollering out: “And, glory be, they returned from searching out the land after forty days, Numbers 12:25! Hallelujah!” And there’s laughter and some congenial amen-ing, and Ludie Belle says: “Come along now, I’ll put some breakfast on! Wanda, go fetch up some fresh eggs from the coops! Davey, you scoot along with your mama and help out! Afterwards, Hazel, let’s us go shoppin’ for sumthin nice for lunch.”

Back inside the cabin, Billy Don finds Darren still in his shorts, hastily clearing off his worktable. He tells him the good news, and Darren snaps back: “I know. Why do you think I’m cleaning up here?”

“I suppose we’ll have to make the beds.”

“I suppose we will.”

Darren is clearly not as happy about the return of Ben and Clara as everyone else. He has been the center of attention and getting his way of late, and that’s likely to change. Or else it’s just him Darren’s cross with. Billy Don has remained skeptical about the voice in the ditch, to say nothing of his roommate’s fascination with Mrs. Edwards’ dark angels story and Colin’s crazy nightmares, which Darren believes to be windows onto the sacred, even if they have to do with killing and eating people. Now he has been finding signs that presumably pointed straight at Carl Dean Palmers’ traitorous attack but that they’d failed to decipher until it was too late. Billy Don had guard duty with Pach’ a couple of nights before everything happened, and Pach’ did say things like they both had to learn to knock women off their pedestals, that they weren’t worth it, and he told Billy Don about brutal fights he’d been in in which somebody might have been killed or at least crippled, but he also said at least there was the van. It was the one thing he had in this world, and though it was hard to tell what all was in there after it got burned, it seemed like just about everything he owned, including his driver’s license. When Billy Don pointed that out to Darren, Darren only said: “Don’t be naïve.”

As for those voice-in-the-ditch tapes, Billy Don has listened to them more than anyone other than Darren himself, and he’s pretty sure things are missing now from when he first heard them. Tiny snippets that might have muddied the clarity of the emerging “message.” When he asked about this, Darren looked surprised and said that if anything was happening on the tapes, then it must be the Lord’s doing and Billy Don should try to remember what has dropped out because what’s no longer there might be more important than what remains. Or maybe it was the Devil’s doing, Billy Don said, and Darren, without blinking, said that was possible, but, if so, that made trying to remember what has vanished even more important.

What Billy Don finds most disturbing is in spite of everything that has happened, Darren has drawn close to Abner Baxter. Two weeks ago on Pentecost Sunday he even underwent baptism by fire. Darren says he admires Reverend Baxter’s principled intransigence and believes that he is the most knowledgeable of all the original Brunists regarding theology, history, and interpretations of Revelation. “He knows, Billy Don.” Billy Don accompanied Darren on the first round of taped interviews, and it was true, Reverend Baxter did seem to have clear vehement answers for everything. He was more comfortable speaking of his faith in the divine mission of the Prophet Bruno than even Clara, and was quick to criticize her “softening,” as he called it, of Bruno’s utterances, supplying Darren with what he claimed to be the Prophet’s correct original sayings. He also gave them a blow-by-blow account of their visit on the Day of Redemption to the Roman Catholic Church, led by the Prophet wielding a mining pick — an event that Clara and Ben and most of their friends were not a part of and never talk about. Reverend Baxter described the Prophet’s violent behavior and showdown with the old priest in glowing terms. He said he considered Bruno to have been a true vessel of the Lord, inhabited by the Holy Spirit. Billy Don then made the mistake of asking: “In the same way as Jesus?” Abner Baxter drew back, his face blooming with astonished rage. “Are you being serious, young man? Jesus was the Son of God!” Darren was furious with him and refused to take him along after that — though, later, Sally Elliott said he probably asked the right question.

Billy Don was curious about baptism by fire, just how they did it. Darren said it was a secret ritual and he wasn’t allowed to reveal anything, though he said the ceremony was preceded by intense group prayers. People who were normally stern and stiff-necked seemed almost to melt, many of them becoming tearful and childlike, their group prayers gradually ascending into feverish chants, sometimes shouting the Master’s name over and over, and he found himself surrendering utterly to them. “It was something like those hypnotizing experiments back in the Bible school dorms. I was told if I truly gave myself to Jesus, it wouldn’t hurt, and I believed that.” Darren fell into something of a trance even as he told about it, and watching him, Billy Don got the impression the ceremony had to do with circles of fire, maybe circles within circles, possibly while blindfolded, and was tied up somehow with the Brunist symbols of the Circle and the Cross. “Then, one moment, it hurt. But not really. It was like the hurt was happening somewhere else.” Afterwards, Darren told Colin about it, and having his own turn is all Colin talks about now.

After breakfast — the prayers today will be thanksgivings: they’re back! — he will clean up the office, which looks great with the new shelves and file drawers and their own mess moved out. Clara should be pleased. First, though, a trip to the can and a quick shower and shave.

Standing alongside four other men, splashing into the metal trough of the men’s urinal, Wayne Shawcross says to the newest arrival: “How close y’reckon y’are to the new restroom being up’n running, Welford?”

“Well, it’s running up right now, but down it ain’t. The water’s plumbed in, but not the waste. Still gotta finish that trench out back for the pipes. I wisht the space was ample enough to haul in some heavy equipment or that the Meeting Hall was closer to the sickbay so’s we could hook up there. But we could turn the faucets on and do a flush to show when Clara and Ben come round and just drain it off out back somewheres if it’s only water.”

“Okay, but seems as how we might as well finish that trench while we’re at it. The ground’ll be soft with all the rain. Can you lend a hand, Billy Don? Uriah?”

“Sure, soon’s I’m done perking up the office. I’ll come round back.”

“Diggin’ is about the only perfession me and Hovis ever learnt, so, heck yes, let’s git it done.”

“Where does this stuff go?” Hovis asks.

“It don’t go nowhere, ’cept prob’ly a pit dug out below. That’s why it smells so sweet back here.”

The others are peeling off and leaving, but Wayne holds back so as to be left alone with Welford. Welford’s a happy-go-lucky sort, a skilled and willing worker and everybody’s pal, but he’s also a little too much like some old buddies in Wayne’s past, back before he was saved. Not bad. Just restless. Reckless. “People ain’t blind, y’know, Welford? Y’better watch out y’don’t git inta hot water.”

Even while he’s saying that, Travers Dunlevy walks in and undoes his fly, and Welford grins and says: “You was saying, Wayne?”

“I was saying maybe we could try’n finish up them new hot water deposit tanks on toppa the showers.”

“Yeah. Hah. Okay, Wayne. Good move.”

Buffet style for lunch is always easiest — let folks help themselves — but with Dot Blaurock present, Ludie Belle decides to dish up the plates so as to be sure there’s enough to go around for the forty or so who’ll be here. Dot has a wild story today about seeing Jesus Christ on Main Street, which is entertaining, but which no one believes. Will Henry has also come out from the radio station on hearing that Ben and Clara are back, and Dot, who made it to the camp with Isaiah and her wild things about eleven this morning and evidently figures that was close enough to 7:30 to qualify for a free lunch, now asks loudly if Will has done any work today. What are the rules around here? She’s a bully and a nuisance, but people laugh tolerantly and let her be, let her pesky kids be, too (the little girl is dragging a filthy pink slipper on one foot and has brought a stray cat to lunch), on account of they’re all feeling so good, rising up today from the down times of the past few weeks. Wayne is near giddy with the joy of Ben and Clara’s return and even erupted in a full-throated table blessing with no food yet on it, many of the others joining in and engaging in what could only be called holy laughter. Ludie Belle has been able to assemble a welcoming lunch of chicken legs, mashed potatoes with chicken gravy, spring peas from Sister Debra’s garden, fresh buttermilk biscuits with honey from the Applebys’ hives (now in full flow), a Jell-O salad with chopped up carrots inside and topped with mayonnaise and canned pears. She has even baked a blueberry cobbler for dessert. The flat-out ebullience of it makes everyone want to sing. “For the bountiful harvest, we praise thee, O Lord!” “Come, for the feast is spread, hark to the call!” “Down in my heart, I’ve got the joy, joy, joy!”

Mr. John P. Suggs arrives, having been called with the news, and while they’re waiting for Ben and Clara, he tells Wayne and Welford they’ll meet in the office after lunch to talk about Sunday, and then he huddles with Hunk and Travers. More mischief afoot, Ludie Belle reckons. She has heard about troubled doings at the Baxter encampment and in Chestnut Hills and Ludie Belle figures those two fellows are mixed up in it. Mr. Suggs’ Christian Patriots. Wayne has been asked to join, but she has cautioned him against it. Too much like the sort of outfits her brother was in cahoots with back home, and he’s in jail now. Doing a lot of Bible reading. Probably come out a preacher like so many bad boys. The camp has been vandalized a few times of late in retaliation or else in provocation, and one night a shot was fired, so things are ramping up in an unpromising way. There aren’t a lot of people in the world who believe in this religion, and those who do can’t seem to get on with each other. It’s hard to figure. Creed. Where it gets sticky. For Ludie Belle, faith is part of the color of life. It goes with the horoscopes she reads, Mabel’s cards, changes in the weather, game shows on TV, Sister Debra’s nature love. Life would be a dull sad thing without it. After death? She doesn’t know. Wait and see.

When Wayne asks her quietly if she spoke with Hazel Dunlevy, Ludie Belle says she did. “I says it ain’t gone unnoticed, and she says, I know it, and she shows me the palm of her hand and says, see, it’s been writ there since she was borned, ain’t nuthin she can do about it.”

“Well, there ain’t neither of them got a spoonfulla sense, but maybe it’ll cool off,” Wayne says. They both know a lot about where such feelings can take a body and are slow to cast judgment.

Little Willie Hall bursts into the hall just then, crying out like that squeaky bellhop in the cigarette ads: “And when he gits home, he calleth t’gether on his friends’n neighbors, sayin’ unto ’em—Luke 15:6!—Rejoice with me on accounta I have jist got back my sheep which was lost!” His wife Mabel comes shuffling in behind with Ben and Clara as people shout, “Glory!” and “Praise Jesus!” and there’s a tearful rush toward them. Ludie Belle feels tears starting in her own eyes. It’s like something hard and heavy they’ve been holding back can be let go of now. But though Clara and Ben greet everyone like it truly means something, they’re both dry-eyed and Ludie Belle can see they’re not the same as before. Scrawnier and road-weary, but more than that. There’s something far off and broken about Clara, clenched up about Ben. Still in need of healing. Well, they can do that. Starting with fattening them up. She calls everybody to the table. Little Elaine, poor child, is not with them. That’s about the first thing everybody has noticed. “She’s ailing,” Clara explains and says no more. Beside Ludie Belle, Wayne whispers: “Clara’s bad hoarsed up and don’t look right.” Ludie Belle catches Mabel’s eye and Mabel shakes her head as she does when a bad card turns up.

Ben, alone, is back where it happened, trying to figure things out. Everything here where the bloodying of Junior Baxter took place was beat down that morning, the grass and flowers torn up and trampled on and all of it darkly wet like it had been raining blood. Now everything’s already grown back, this patch of weedy field wet today from summer rain and squishy underfoot, like nothing ever happened. Hard things happen and then become only ghosts of themselves. He and Clara have been visiting the Eastern churches, and most of the churches were full up and doing well and folks were good to them, treating Clara and him like heroes, hungry for news and eager to show they were all true Followers; but they were completely ignorant of the events at the camp, except those who’d come out for the dedication ceremonies, and even their memories were so different from Ben’s he sometimes wondered if they’d been in the same place at the same time. As for the troubles since: no notion of them. Even the history of five years ago was changing. It has been told so many times and in so many different ways that it often seems to be happening in some other place, a magical place like a Jerusalem or a Bethlehem, and he has to admit that his own songs make that even more so. Ben sometimes tried to set them straight in his quiet no-nonsense way, and they were attentive, but he got the feeling they were mostly only being polite, listening to his side of the story because of who he is, meanwhile waiting for him and all the other original witnesses to die so they could get on with their own version of things.

Kicking about, trowel in hand, Ben finds a water-soaked blue bandanna. So this must be the spot, or near to it, where they found Abner Baxter’s son, gagged by that bandana or one just like it. Probably came off a biker boy. Junior was out cold, his face running blood. They ungagged him and dipped him in the creek to bring him around. Only later did Ben learn from Bernice when she banded him up what was written there, and he knew then that it was probably his fault this had happened. What he told the younger one that morning when he caught them in his old farm shack, setting brother against brother. So he was in some way the cause for what happened to Elaine, too. Probably he should have just shot those boys when he had them in his sights. When he thinks about what happened here, he knows he could kill without remorse, and he knows that, even with God’s commandment against it, the prospect of eternal damnation would not stop him. But how did they know they’d find Elaine and Junior here that morning? Junior must have told them, not suspecting what his brother had in store for him. When he and Wayne and the others found him, Junior was wearing nothing but girl’s drawers. Elaine’s, as it turned out, though she seemed ignorant as to how he got hold of them. He said the same, trying to put the blame on the bikers, saying they must have done that to him while he was passed out. Later, on the road, Ben got to thinking again about their trailer break-in the morning the Baxters arrived. The missing money and handgun. So: the underwear, too, probably. Sick boy. It might also explain the belt he found here in the grass that morning, which Clara said could have been Ely’s. But Junior wouldn’t have walked down here in front of everybody, even in the dark, in nothing but girl’s underpants. Elaine was wearing even less, unless they stole her clothes. Far as he could understand her, they’d both had tunics on. Which made sense, given what they were apparently up to. But, if so, where were they? None to be found here that day and none here now. Whatever could those godless biker boys want with Christian tunics? There are a lot of things that Ben does not understand.

There was another pair of women’s drawers, for example. Didn’t see them at first that day. But, after they had hauled Junior up to the camp and cleared everybody out, Ben had come back here to look around, try to get a picture of what had happened. He found Carl Dean’s baseball cap at the edge of the woods, so that pretty much proved he was here, all right, hard as that was for Ben to take in. Then: a spot of bright color over there in the trees. He thought at first they must be Elaine’s, but they weren’t her size. Not her style, either: bright orange green-leafed flowers on them. When he realized whose they were, he also realized that she hadn’t told them everything. That maybe it was worse for her than she had said.

So today, after the meeting in the church office, he asked Mrs. Edwards to stay behind and help him with some notes of thanks he wanted to send to the Eastern churches. Clara, feeling poorly herself, was not up for the meeting and had left with Bernice after lunch to go check on Elaine in the trailer. The poor child won’t speak, won’t eat, the flesh on her bones thin like a wax coating. Which is worrying Clara sick, sapping the pluck right out of her. The meeting was mostly for his sake, filling him in on the changes at the camp, including the fancying up of the office they were sitting in, roomier now with the two boys out of it (Ben had failed to remark on it when they entered, and he knows that disappointed them), the legal actions being taken against them (“Won’t work,” said Mr. Suggs), the troubles they were still having with Abner Baxter and his people, the cornerstone-laying ceremonies for their new Coming of Light Tabernacle Church over on the Mount on Sunday. But Ben was worn down and worried and the closed office was thickly scented with waxy smells, and his mind kept floating off onto other things. That awful day, mostly — so vivid to him since they returned. So many unresolved mysteries. Young Carl Dean Palmers, just for a sample: what he did and didn’t do.

The first thing Ben asked Mrs. Edwards when they were alone in the office afterwards was what else she could remember from that morning. She began to tremble, and he knew it would not be easy for her. He apologized and said he and Clara would be grateful all their lives for what she did, but he was only trying to figure out some things and put his mind at ease, and he thought he’d start with what she could recollect about Carl Dean. Carl Dean is hated and reviled by near everybody. They’d all heard him tell Elaine the night before, like a threat, that things were going to go bad for her. And he’d bared his chest like a wild animal, scaring the child half out of her wits. He left the camp right after that, his wheels spitting up gravel, and Duke and his woman saw him in his leather jacket drinking with the bikers at the motel, leaving with them later on. Ben heard him coming home late, noisy, drunk. Fell asleep in his van with his feet sticking out. Then, like a taunt, he parked the van right in front of the Meeting Hall before leaving. With a vulgar obscenity hanging over the rearview mirror. But though he’s what some would call rough trade, Ben believes Carl Dean is a good fellow at heart and he does not think it was in him to do what most people seem to think he did. They had a touching farewell up on the Point that morning and Carl Dean said he wished Ben was his dad, and he was sincere about it. Brought tears to Ben’s eyes. He’s not the only one with doubts. At lunch, Wayne and Ludie Belle said much the same, and Billy Don pointed out that Pach’s handgun, driver’s license, and utility knife were in the van when they burned it. Seems like he’d have taken those things along if he was planning on joining up with the bikers. He said Pach’ was pretty ticked off, all right, and he might have liked to kill Young Abner, but he didn’t think he would ever do anything to hurt Elaine, which was what Ben believed. And then Ludie Belle told him about Mrs. Edwards’ apocalyptic angels story and pointed out there was no place for Carl Dean in that colorful gang. Like as if, in Sister Debra’s lively imagination, he wasn’t really there, no matter what she says to the contrary. So that’s what he wanted to know about.

She said she was so terrified, it was like everything was speeded up and stopped dead at the same time, like it can happen sometimes in nightmares, but she did have the memory that that short bearded man with the pockmarked face, whoever he was, was there somehow, though sometimes it was like he wasn’t. When they were burying the body, for example, he didn’t seem to be there. Burying the body? I think it was a body, she said, though it wasn’t very big. But it was heavy. An animal maybe. This was before what happened to Elaine. She stumbled upon them during her dawn prayers and just froze. She was so scared. But it was dark and they were drinking and didn’t see her. They had shovels. Why had she never said this before? She didn’t know. Somehow it was just coming back. Like she’d been too afraid to remember before. The ugly one with the beard may have organized everything and stayed in the background, so she didn’t see him at first. Maybe he had always been one of them and had infiltrated the camp under false pretenses. Colin said he wasn’t who he said he was. No, Ben told her gently. That was Carl Dean Palmers. Sure of that much. Ben had put her underwear in a plain brown envelope and he handed the soft packet to her now. She didn’t open it, just started crying, couldn’t stop, was soon hiccupping with her sobs. He said he was sorry and left her there. He had more questions, but they’d have to wait.

But that explained some things. Why they were burying the body at the camp, Ben has no idea, though, since they may have been lying in wait for Junior and Elaine, it might have been a two-birds-with-one-stone thing. The sheriff found a stolen station wagon later that morning over near the mine — apparently they’d taken the brake off and rolled it down the hill — and it was likely they used it to haul the body here. Made less noise than their motorcycles, too. Accounts for their quick getaway when he and the others rushed down there. Ben doesn’t have much to go on, but he supposes from Mrs. Edwards’ story that the burying must have happened near where he found the flowery drawers. The grave’s probably not too deep, something they dug in a hurry. The trowel he has brought along should be enough. He’s fearful of unearthing a decomposing body, only hoping she’s right and it’s just an animal. But where to start? Everything looks wet and settled, the ground back here in the trees covered with bushes and dead leaves. Could take him weeks, and even then he might miss it. Then he sees it. An area blanketed with dead maple leaves. But under an oak tree. He carefully clears the wet leaves away and finds the patch of disturbed earth where nothing new is growing yet, slightly sunken. About the size of Rocky’s grave, too small for a grown person. A child? A severed head? The thought of digging up such a thing sends a shudder down his spine. Maybe he should turn this over to Sheriff Puller, he thinks, even as he begins to drive his trowel into the wet soil. But what he finds is not a child. Not a body at all. It all begins to make sense. He remembers now the rumors going round before they left. But why here? Because no one would think to look here. Which means they most likely didn’t know Junior and Elaine would turn up, not wanting anyone to know they’d been here. It also means they’re planning to come back. He could report it, but it would throw suspicion on him and the camp, might draw state and federal authorities to the area. They never said anything to any outsiders about the rape, wanting to protect Elaine, so there’d be a lot of explaining to do. They’d want to pin the theft on somebody, and the bikers aren’t around, and they know he and the others have been seen over there around the mine buildings, not to mention the gatherings of all of them on the hill. Which weren’t themselves completely legal, as he understands it from all the disputation. There are people who mean them harm and want to be rid of them and they could use this as an excuse. But he can’t leave it where it is. What if they came back? It weighs too much to move any distance. He’d need help and that would mean telling somebody, and he doesn’t want to do that. Not yet. It’s hard work with nothing but a trowel, but he can shift it far enough that it won’t be easy to find.

When he has done that and refilled and covered up the old place like it was before, he heads back to the house trailer. It’s late in the day. The trailer’s empty. Clara and Elaine are gone. He sees Mabel Hall through the kitchenette window hurrying over from her caravan looking fretful. His chest tightening, he steps outside to meet her.

I have not been a good mother. This is the despairing thought that Clara, seated beside her daughter’s hospital bed, is thinking. I have not paid enough attention. Though it is to herself she speaks, praying the while for guidance and forgiveness, she hopes Ely is listening. She does not feel him nearby, has not for some time now, but she believes he must be, for Elaine’s sake if not her own. They both need him now. Clara has given herself heart and soul to her church mission, which she has always thought of as Ely’s mission, too, and Elaine’s as well, her task to guide her daughter, hand in hand, toward redemption, the end so near upon them. But there was always so much to do, Elaine’s hand was not in hers too much of the time — how much of her devotion to this sacred calling, she wonders, has been worldly pride and vanity? — and now see here, her emaciated child, broken, embittered, lost, her hands shackled, her nose violated by the tube that, seemingly against her will, is keeping her alive. Often during the past few weeks, watching her daughter’s frightening decline, beset by doubt and weariness, Clara has thought she should ask someone else to take over. Hiram maybe. Or her new director of National Media, the bishop of the Eastern Seaboard. She even had a word with him about it. Did Jesus’ mother, cradling her son’s ravaged body, suffer the same doubts, the same regrets? What, at such a moment, does one care about the salvation of the world? She wishes she still had that little porcelain statue of Mary with her bleeding heart on her breast that Elaine gave her. It would speak to her now.

Purity of heart. Something Ely once said in a sermon, asking God he be granted it, and this has been her prayer as well and is now. What Ely meant by it was doing one thing in life and doing it right. It should be a grand thing and a noble thing and a holy thing, but one thing. It’s what true devotion is. On the road out east, between one church and another, she talked about it with Ben. He said he couldn’t define purity, but he knew how it felt. When they moved here to the camp they had it. Often, before that, in the early years, out on the road, too. But it was gone now. It’s still gone.

Bernice lifted her spectacles and took only one look at Elaine back at the trailer and said they had to get her to the hospital. Now. That child is dying. Ben was nowhere to be found. They rushed here in Bernice’s car, Elaine too feeble to resist. The doctor, too, was alarmed. The nurses took measures: emergency measures that Clara should perhaps have disallowed, but she was confused, ashamed, frightened, exhausted herself, the doctor taking note of that, asking questions, personal questions that she brushed aside or answered only in part, growing angry, then apologizing for that, trying not to break into tears, her daughter needing her strength, having so little of her own.

Her worst failing: Elaine has suffered so, and she has not known how to console her.

They left the camp, went east ostensibly to visit the churches there, sing and preach in them and bring the news, but primarily for Elaine’s sake, to distance her from the scene of her ordeal, spend more time together, attempt a healing. Though it was good to get back on the road again, good for her and Ben, Elaine remained tucked darkly into herself, refusing to speak, eating almost nothing. It just takes time, Clara supposed. Time and love. The movement, she saw, was strong and healthy. There were large, enthusiastic crowds wherever they went, and they even thought about settling out there, turning the Wilderness Camp over to those folks still living here. Maybe trying to build this administrative center was a mistake, for them at least; they were missionaries, not office workers. That’s how they were thinking. But word got around about Elaine wasting away and people began to get curious. They started comparing her to Marcella, only a legend to them, but a saintly one, and they wanted to see her, to pray in her company and to hear what she had to say. She had nothing to say, but that seemed to fascinate them all the more. Sick people turned up, asking to be cured. It got to be a little like a traveling freak show, which is how Ben put it one day in anger, chasing a crowd of them away from their house trailer, and they decided to return to the camp, fearful of the effect it might have on Elaine but not knowing where else to go. Besides, there was the Temple of Light cornerstone laying ceremony coming up; people would not understand why she who had brought all this about was not here. Even Ely, though mostly absent, seemed to be insisting on her return. The cornerstone was his tombstone, after all. But the trip back was long and Elaine, now refusing to leave her bed, worsened by the hour, as if the camp, as they drew nearer to it, were drawing the lifeblood out of her.

Ben arrives. He brings a chair over and sits beside her and takes her hand and asks clumsily how the girl is. He can see how she is. “How is it that something so good and holy can turn so bad?” he asks, not of her, just of the room. Of God. “I don’t hardly know what to do,” he says. And then he starts to cry. And she starts to cry. And they sit there for a while, two old people, weeping.

“Boy, this little lady kin sure flap, rare back’n cut down on a ballad! Jist give her a buncha words’n git outa the way! ‘The Trailer Camp Blues!’ So new it ain’t hardly got notes yet and ye heerd it here first in the ole Blue Moon, hottest spot the back side a Nashville! ‘Lost her name in a poker game!’ But she ain’t lost hers! Patti Jo Glover, folks, that’s whom she am! That’s right, give her a big hand, lemme hear it! I love her! And hey, ifn y’ain’t lovin’, y’ain’t livin’! Am I right? So kiss a face there! Go ahead! Won’t do ye no more harm’n a fever blister! And dontcha leave now, ya big sissies, hang in there to the end, cuz we got another big clump a Sattiday night honkytonk, hankypanky, hoedowns’n heartbreak a-comin’ your way soon’s we wet the whustle…

“That was beautiful, sweet thing! Y’really crunched it! Done me proud!”

“Well, I wish I could sing, Duke, and not only hoot and yip. Funny how you can make something just about bearable by only singing about it. And this one’s kinda comical like I guess my life was, though it didn’t feel like it at the time. Thanks for that. And thanks for the beer, too.”

“Thank the feller who runs this flophouse. The beers’re on him, and whatall else we hanker after. It’s the big crowds we been pullin’ in since we teamed up. Folks is comin’ from all over the acreage. Kitchen’s hummin’ and the bar cain’t stock in enough. Him and me we had a talk, and he’s uppin’ our wages, too. You ain’t singin’ fer free no more. And Will Henry says he knows a feller runs a record company who might wanta come fer a listen.”

“Oh…”

“Whatsamatter, little darlin? Thought that’d set y’dancin’. Sumthin gotcha feelin’ blue?”

“I’m happier than I ever been in my life, Duke. I’m so happy it sometimes makes me sad. But, well, I don’t know, it just feels so unreal. You know. Life out at the camp, kneel down to Jesus, hooray for poverty, the end of the world and all that, and then us here in the Moon drinking beer and talking honkytonk careers. I’m sorta lost and I don’t know if Marcella knows what to make of it neither.”

“She been talkin’ to ye?”

“Well, sure, in her way, most all the time. She’s worried about all the problems out there, the way things are breaking up and turning quarrelsome, and about whether the little Collins girl is gonna live or die and just what’s apt to happen tomorrow out on the mine hill, after all that young Darren has done to fever up anticipations and what with the troubles the Baxter people been causing, who knows what they may do next, but maybe that’s just me worrying and she’s worrying on account of I’m worrying.”

“That’s a most entertainin’ notion, Patti Jo. A worried mind inside a worried mind. Ifn I knowed how t’write it in a song, I surely would.”

“What I can’t figure out is exactly why I’m here. Marcella must of drawed me back because she wants something, something to help her find peace, but I don’t know what it is.”

“She was your best pal, Patti Jo. Her family’s all gone. You’re what-all she’s got now.”

“You mean, she just wanted my company? She’s not that selfish. Wasn’t when I knew her anyhow. And anyway we were kinda keeping company already before I come back. Has to be more than that.”

“Well, she mighta only wanted you to have a sweeter life than you been livin’.”

“I thought of that. And I think it’s partly true. It don’t seem a complete accident you and me met up. But that’s got done, and she still don’t want to let me go. For one thing, I think I have to stay now till the Collins girl gets better, and the way she is, that may never happen. Bernice says she’s real bad off, and Mabel is almost afraid to look at her cards. And it’s like if I go, she’ll surely die. I had a dream last night about her and Marcella. They were in a playground, playing like Marcella and me used to do. Jacks and stuff. And then Elaine was in a swing and Marcella was pushing her. She kept going higher and higher and I could see if she went any higher she’d tip over and fall out. I was scared and I ran over and asked Marcella to please stop. She opened her mouth but nothing came out, she could only shake her head. She was as scared as I was, but she kept pushing like she couldn’t stop herself. I knew she wanted me to help, but I couldn’t. It was like my arms weighed a ton. I woke up all in a sweat, tied up in the sheets. I probably cried out and I was afraid I mighta waked you up, but you were sawing them off. Softly, though. It was kinda more like humming.”

“I was probly conjurin’ up a new song. Wisht I coulda wrote it down.”

“You were laying on your stomach. Light from the parking lot was making your butt glow in the dark. It was beautiful. And a solace to me. I leaned over and kissed it for luck.”

“That musta been when I got the rhyme. I don’t recollect what it was rhymin’ with, but the answer was Patti Jo.”

“It helped me get back to sleep again. But now I keep seeing Marcella’s face when she turned to stare at me. Like she’s right in front of me. Her little gold cross on a chain around her neck, glittering in the sun. Her ears sticking out a little. The scared begging look in her eyes. Her mouth open, trying to talk. And Elaine way up above us, about to come falling down.”

“Now, that’s sumthin t’ponder. Not jist a fallen angel, but havin’ one land on ye like a frigerator. Near as bad as gittin’ stars in your eyes. Well, when you’re low or feelin’ fearful, honey, you jist keep smoochin’ my butt, and I guarantee things’ll turn up rosy!”

“It might help if I knew where she was resting. One thing I wanted to do right off when I got here was go put some flowers on her grave. But no one seems to know where it is. I went down to city hall and told them I was a friend of the family, a distant relative, but they said there wasn’t much of that family left and they had no idea where anybody was. They kept eyeing me in a funny way, but finally said I should go ask Monsignor Baglione at the Catholic church. Father Bags has been here forever, a disgusting old priest with an unwashed old man stink about him. He still doesn’t speak much English and my Italian is mostly cusswords, but I was able to tell him directly who I was and why I was looking, figuring he was obliged not to tell anyone. He didn’t know where she was buried neither, only that she’d been excommunicated and so wasn’t in San Luca, and said I should ask down at city hall.”

“They’s some folks out to the church camp reckon she got dreckly transported.”

“Took the body and left the voice behind, you mean? I’ve still got enough R. C. in me to find those rapturing ideas too much like something outa kids’ comicbooks.”

“Y’know, they’s a gent sometimes comes in I could ask. Five-by-five squinty-eyed feller with a fat nose and a buncha chins, you may a seen him. He’s the fire chief now, but he useta be the mayor some years back, so all that mighta probly happened on his watch. He mostly only turns up midweek when they’s not so many people, usually with some wore-out ole bag or another. Got no idea what he does with ’em. On dead nights, when he’s on his lonesome, he sometimes buys me a drink at the bar and gits t’talkin’ in his sad comical way. I’ll tell him a friend’s inquirin’ but I won’t say who. An ole boyfriend or sumthin. But fer now, dear lady, the herd’s a-gittin’ restless. Time t’crank up another round.”

“Okay. At least we don’t have to do ‘White Dove’ anymore. Looks like that bird’s kicked the bucket.”

“No, them two kids’re here. I seen ’em. He’s drivin a sporty cherry-colored ragtop now. But they don’t have time fer warmups no more. It’s jist straight inta the dugout’n play ball!”

“Time for ‘Baby, Let’s Play House,’ you mean.”

“Or jist ‘A Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On.’ But you got me in a lovin’ mood, Patti Jo. My butt’s not customed to such tensions and it’s still jist a-tinglin’ like a little kid suffrin’ first love. Let’s do Hank’s ‘Baby, We’re Really in Love.’”

“‘I Love You So Much It Hurts.’”

“‘I’m Losin’ My Mind over You.’”

“‘Lovesick Blues.’ I really love to hear you yodel that one.”

“Cuz it’s bubblin’ up from the heart, little darlin’. Or from some-wheres in that genral neighborhood. You call ’em as we go. We’ll close with the house theme’n let that rainbo-ho-ho turn the clouds away!”

Stealthily, they enter the camp just after midnight. Ten of them. On the blind side, near the Field of Transcendence, as he taught her to call it. Now that of his suffering, his mutilation. His Field of Affliction. He is the one who knows the routes in and out of the camp in the dark and is their leader. His father is not here, he is Abner Baxter. There are armed guards — he has warned them about that — but they are armed, too. They carry warning whistles that sound like owl hoots in case something goes wrong. It was how he and the girl called to each other. She who is nameless now. Who makes him sick for what happened to her. Angry. She didn’t even try to stop them. It was like she wanted it to happen. The weather has been wet and drizzly the past couple of days. He can feel the damp working its way into his sneakers and socks, creeping up his pantlegs. But it provides a better cover for them. Sounds are dampened as well and the guards will be under shelter somewhere.

Their own encampment was a target last night. Each attack by old man Suggs’ raiders has been more savage than the one before and last night’s could have been bloody. His father had moved them defiantly onto the forbidden campground and many others had joined them. From town, from other campsites, from Chestnut Hills, Randolph Junction. Ready for whatever. Martyrdom maybe. But when a tip about the upcoming raid reached them, Young Abner suggested that they abandon the field for a few hours, hide their vehicles, return after the danger had passed. He had read about something like this in a Bible story. A tactic for a smaller force to frustrate an attack by a larger force without losing any ground. His father, his dander up, preferred a head-on collision, but the majority sided with Young Abner, and so they all melted away into the woods around. It worked. As soon as the raiders had given up and gone home, they were back and setting up camp again. There will be reprisals and there will not always be advance warnings, but last night was a kind of victory for them. And for him. Just desserts for the adversity he’s been through.

He knows that, like Timothy, he must endure hardness as a good soldier of Christ Jesus and be strong in Jesus’ grace, for if you suffer for righteousness, you will be blessed. But what he was put through was totally unfair. It hurt more than anything had ever hurt before. Then that humiliating scene up at the camp in front of everybody. They were so stupid, so uncaring, so wrong about everything. After that, the wounds on his head began to fester and he was sick for a while, and even now there is a nasty itch there that reminds him of his brother’s cruelty. Baptism by the knife: He seems to remember hearing Nat say that and then laugh. Punishment was visited upon the entire family and many of their friends after that, they were all expelled from the camp and sent out into the fields, and for a time he was blamed. His father was especially upset about the girls’ underpants, and he suffered anger and ridicule. He felt like Daniel in the lions’ den. What if Daniel had got thrown to the lions in girls’ underpants? What then? Would they have laughed and scorned?

Over time, however, they began to see his side of it. How he was victimized. Lured to the field. Ambushed. Tortured. Made to wear the underpants. Last night, Jewell Cox blamed it all on Clara Collins’ pride, and Roy Coates said the girl was just asking for it. Young Abner should not have let her talk him into such wickedness, old man Coates said, but you could see how you could be tempted to whip the brat. He felt like whipping her himself. And his father, after pouring out his wrath on Nat and Paulie, acknowledged that the expulsion had strengthened them. There were more followers now, more true believers, more baptisms by fire. Many of these people had given up everything to make the journey here; they were faithful Brunists and did not deserve this treatment. His father above all. “He’s the West Condon bishop and he ain’t done nothing!” Ezra Gray declared last night, full of fury, rattling his wheelchair, and Jewell said, “Nat and Paulie is only boys. They must of fell under the evil influence a thet ex-con Palmers, or whoever he was.” “They went bad a long time before that,” his father said grumpily, his face scowling up like it used to do before meting out the family discipline. This was out under the tent, after the failed raid on their encampment, after they’d set everything up again and were feeling good and congratulating him on his shrewdness. It was when he proposed tonight’s counterattack on the Wilderness Camp. His father was hesitant, but Roy and Jewell backed him, and pretty soon they had volunteers. More than they needed. There’s a big ceremony out on the Mount of Redemption tomorrow, and they’ve not been invited. Has to do with those temple-building plans that have so outraged his father. The thoughts of those in the camp will be on that; good time to catch them unawares.

The plan is to cut off the phones and electricity. It might have been easier to do at the old mine, where the lines come from, but there have been workers over there on the mine hill all day — a lot of digging going on — and old man Suggs probably has people guarding the machinery, which is lit up. Hard to get up there unseen. So they accepted Young Abner’s idea of sneaking into the dark side of the camp. The barbed-wire fence has been extended past where Nat entered, but there’s a gap further down through which they’ve come, crawling through the thick growth of honeysuckle and high weeds. Young Abner has spent a lot of time mapping the camp out, knows its soft points. He’d like to do something awful to the girl, whom he thinks of as having betrayed him — whip her where it hurts — but the trailer parking lot is too exposed. At least with the lights on. The Coates boys, Royboy and Aaron, pushing at each other, have got into some kind of stupid argument and can’t seem to keep their mouths shut in spite of everybody shushing them. Their father Roy gets fed up and gives Aaron such a fierce clout across the ears that he yelps out, and Young Abner has to blow his owl whistle to cover it up. Aaron mutters something and gets another blow from his father on the back of his head that sends him sprawling in the wet grass and this time he shuts up. They creep toward the creek. They can make out one or two of the post lamps through the trees. Maybe we should just knock out the bulbs, Royboy whispers, but Isaiah Blaurock shakes his head, puts his finger to his lips, and slips away into the trees, heading toward the center of the camp. Nobody moves. Dead silence. Even the Coates boys are holding their breath. Nothing happens for what seems like hours. A couple of their group have quietly backed out the way they came.

Suddenly there’s a loud pop and fizz like a firecracker going off. Then darkness. It had seemed like darkness before, but they’d actually been able to make out something of the ground at their feet, the trees beyond, and he realizes the pale light they’d had before was from the camp lamps reflected in the drizzle. They’re gone now and it’s pitch black. “I cain’t see nuthin,” Royboy Coates complains and a shot rings out. “Dad, I’m hit! Oh shit!” It’s Royboy’s brother Aaron. “Oh! Oh! Help!” He’s crying.

They all open fire. Young Abner is shooting, too, but he doesn’t know what at. Just into the night, where the streetlamps used to be. He’s blowing the whistle, as if anyone shooting will think he’s only an owl. Somebody passes him silently on the way out. Isaiah. Tugs on his sleeve. Roy Coates stumbles by, his wounded son over his shoulder like a sack of meal. “C’mon! Let’s get goin’!” he grunts. Young Abner’s already on his way, the rest following his lead as more shots crackle in the night.

No one has slept all night. Except Willie Hall, who seemed not to know what happened. When told of the overnight attack on the camp, he cried out, “Lordy lord! The enemy hath smoten our life clean down to the ground! He’s made us t’dwell in the dark like as those as has been long dead!” For some reason this recital seemed to cheer everyone up, and though somewhat shaken still by the explosive rattle and complete loss of power (the phone lines are out, too, as they’d discovered upon trying to reach the sheriff), they began to get on with the dawning day. Which is possibly the most important date in Brunist history. Or maybe not. Darren is beginning to see weak points in his calculations. Moments when he generalized or extrapolated or slid over difficulties. He was only trying to help. People expect too much. He may have made an error. He is looking for alternative interpretations of what he has collected so far, just in case.

It was what he was doing when the attack happened. Billy Don was on guard duty, so Darren could turn the lights on in the cabin, work at his table. He was listening again to the recordings of the Voice in the Ditch, and just as he leaned in close to the speakers, intent on hearing any least whisper, a sudden explosion dumped him to the floor and the lights went out. He couldn’t see a thing. His heart was pounding. Was it after midnight? Maybe it was already happening! It felt like something in a dream and for a moment he thought that he was dreaming and he tried to wake up. He was startled by a loud knock on the window, like somebody hitting the closed wooden shutter with a hammer. Were they trying to break in? He heard shouts. He recognized some of the voices, crawled over to where the door should have been, and when he found it, opened it a crack and peeked out. Total darkness, but he could see movement. People running around in their pajamas and underwear — some of the men had rifles, which they fired into the woods, toward the creek. A mad hooting of owls somewhere. Flickering light in the cabin next door: candles. He slipped over there, ducking low, found Mrs. Edwards trying to soothe a distraught Colin dressed in nothing but his limp skivvies, howling something about black fire. Darren talked to Colin to calm him down and doing that calmed him down, too. He borrowed a candle from the grateful Mrs. Edwards and returned to his cabin, staying low. Black fire: Colin knew! Billy Don returned, wide-eyed, breathing heavily. “We hit one of them,” he said. “But they got away.” They stayed up the rest of the night talking about it. They sometimes dozed only to wake again at the slightest sound. He felt, in a sense, his prophecy had already come true. Except that it was not an act of God. Just hecklers. Vandals. More like a prelude. A fanfare. There had to be more to come.

When dawn leaked through the morning gloom, Darren discovered that the awning shutter had been struck by a bullet. The loud bang he had heard. Closing the shutter last night may have saved his life. The telephone lines had been cut and the electrical system shorted out. Wayne said the problem may go all the way back to the supply. He and his crew had already begun to work, but a lot of damage had been done, and he let people know it was going to take them a full day’s work, which meant, with today’s ceremonies over at the Mount, power wouldn’t be back on until at least tomorrow. It was a setback, but they had lived without electricity until two months ago, they could live another day without it now. Ludie Belle announced that the Sunday dinner menu would be changed to include as many of the refrigerated perishables as possible. Billy Don said he knew of a pay phone in Tucker City where he could try to call the sheriff’s office, and people chipped in some coins for him to use. The sheriff turned up soon after with some of his officers and they examined the sabotage and talked with Welford and Wayne about how it might have been done. A lot of shots had been fired and they found evidence of that. Darren showed them the window shutter. The sheriff sent someone to ask at the hospital if anyone had been treated for a bullet wound. One. A young man named Aaron Coates. A hunting accident. That was all Sheriff Puller needed. He and his troops swooped down on the Baxter encampment, and according to the reports now coming back to the camp, arrested several persons, including Abner himself. Also, in West Condon: Roy Coates and his two sons. They are being charged with trespassing, destruction of private property, disturbing the peace, and attempted murder.

In spite of the intrusion, the Brunists feel that God is watching over them, and they decide to go ahead with their plans to hold the Sunday morning church services over on the Mount of Redemption, followed immediately by the cornerstone laying. The sheriff has promised police protection and Bernice has agreed to stay with Elaine at the hospital to allow Clara to attend. Afterwards, they will return to the camp to continue to work together on the repairs. It’s the Sabbath, but this is God’s work, and everyone is eager to get on with it.

Mr. Suggs’ crews have already dug a trench outline of the cross-shaped temple site on the hillside, marking the area to be excavated for the foundations, filling it with chalk, and it is larger than anyone has expected. It stirs excitement and people walk all around it as if for luck. Darren does, too. He notices the people watching him. He stands in the middle of the cross and looks around, trying to imagine the tabernacle church in place. Others do the same. They have also dug a special hole for the Ely Collins tombstone, which will serve as the church cornerstone, and an empty grave in front of it where his remains will be laid to rest. The tombstone will be brought later by Mr. Suggs, who will attend the morning service.

They feel somewhat exposed this morning on the Mount and are eager to get back inside the relative safety of the camp again, so they begin the church service as scheduled, even though Mr. Suggs has not yet arrived. Will Henry has joined them, and he and Duke and Patti Jo lead everyone in singing “I Shall Not Be Moved” and “Work for the Night Is Coming.” They ask Ben to join them for his own Brunist hymn, “The Circle and the Cross,” and he does so, though it’s clear the old man’s thoughts are elsewhere. There are over seventy people at the service, including Brunists from West Condon and Randolph Junction and other towns around, but they are not using any amplification, and even when they all stand and sing together, it’s hard to hear anyone but oneself out here on the open hillside. “March on, march on, ye Brunists!” they sing, trying their best to lift spirits. “Forever shall we live! The Cross within the Circle will us God’s glory give!” They give thanks to Jesus for the safe return of Ben and Clara and they pray for the rapid recovery of Elaine and for the protection of their Wilderness Camp, which has become a holy place for them all, sanctified by their own honest labor. Clara and Ben will conduct the cornerstone ceremonies, though Ben says the new song he promised for the occasion, “The Tabernacle of Light,” is not ready. Darren has been asked to speak about the day’s special meaning as a part of the dedication, and he listens carefully to everything sung and said, looking for some way to shape his remarks and prepare them all for another seven-week wait for…for whatever. The sign. He knows they are all desperate for justifying news. It will not be easy. Prophecy is not about what is wanted but what will be. A thought for his mental note pad — the sort of thought that must have gone through Jesus’ head in his own time. Of course, Jesus was the Son of God, but so is everyone else, and Jesus, too, was known to have suffered doubts. Darren feels, as he has often felt, at one with Him. And he has been praying to Him now, asking for His help…

The carpenter and beekeeper, Cecil Appleby, reads from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians: “Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God; and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone; in whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto a holy temple in the Lord, in whom ye also are builded together for a habitation of God through the Spirit.” He stares at his hands for a while, and then he commences to speak to God in his quiet prayerful way, which is his way of preaching a sermon. “Dear God. Hear us, Your humble servants. Our hearts are full today of hope. And fear. Of joy. And sorrow. Of certainty. And doubt. We thank You for the one, ask forgiveness for the other. We are only who we are. Sinners seeking Your eternal company. We are weak and ask for strength. We are slow of mind and ask for the grace of understanding. We are lonely and afraid and ask for Your protective love. We believe in You and in Your son and in the Holy Spirit, and in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting, as promised us by the Holy Scriptures and by Your son, Jesus Christ. In this, we have a simple and abiding faith. We believe that our own Prophet was granted by the Holy Spirit a vision of the last times, which we believe are soon, and we are preparing for them as best we are able. It is what has drawn us here to pitch our tent in the wilderness. When King David ordered the building of a temple for his son, Solomon, he ordered that it be exceedingly magnificent. We are not so proud. Our little Coming of the Light Tabernacle Church will be an expression only of our humble love for You. We are grateful for having our Evangelical Leader here with us on this moving occasion. We miss her so when she is gone, Lord. Her faith and nobility anchor us. Please keep her well and always near us and give her strength and heart through this difficult time. We grieve for her child, o Lord, who has suffered so greatly, and who is now so in need of Your saving grace, Your close loving attention. Please, have mercy on her. Take whom You wish, but we beg You to spare the child. Take me, o Lord, but spare the child. We also ask mercy and forgiveness for the young man wounded last night. He was misled. No one should set brother against brother. Guide him to the truth, o Lord, and all those about him, and forgive them, as You guided and forgave the brothers of Joseph. They have rendered our little settlement powerless and without communication to the outside world; but You are our power, o Lord, and we need none other. It is to You we…”

Cecil Appleby pauses, raises his head. Has he heard something? He has. A voice at the bottom of the hill. It is Bernice Filbert, crying out. She is running up the hill, her long skirt pulled up to her knees, her car door flung open behind her. Clara blanches, staggers, takes an unsteady step toward Bernice. Ben rushes to Clara’s side.

Bernice seems to hear the unspoken question, asked silently and in fear by all: “No, no!” she shouts, clambering up the hill. “It ain’t Elaine! It’s Mr. Suggs! He’s had a powerful stroke! They think he’ll die!”

So there it is. The terrible but justifying sign. All turn in awe and expectation toward Darren, where he stands, somehow apart, not far from the open grave. He remembers that cold wind he seemed to feel when he stepped across those half-sunken footstones in the old cemetery; he feels it again. He nods and knows he has nothing more to do or say. His nod suffices.

III.5 Monday 8 June — Wednesday 17 June

Money. What is it? He doesn’t know. He defines himself by it, but it’s still a mystery. Like the Holy Spirit. It exists and doesn’t exist. You have to take it on faith. If it were more visible, more logical, it might not work. But it’s completely irrational. We use numbers to mask that, make it seem to add up. Calculations as litanies, incantations. Credit as the dispensation of grace. A delusion that works. Stacy’s definition of religion. Not his, but he can live with it. That people see money as the very opposite of the Holy Spirit, as something diabolical, also makes sense. Money as Mammon. Trying to do good with it is mostly a losing proposition. What’s happening here in the bank. Big mistake. Or, rather, “good” in finance means something else. The Golden Rule doesn’t operate here. Misguided generosity is a kind of wickedness. Loose morals. Failure to foreclose is an infidelity. But if “good” is not the same thing as the Golden Rule, it’s not the opposite either. The system requires exchange to work, and exchange involves give-and-take. Some kind of honor code. I’ll believe if you believe, I’ll spend if you’ll spend. It’s how we keep ticking along, using up the world. Misers are sinners who constipate the system. To win it all is to lose it all. Sweeping the Monopoly board is like the end of the world; to continue, you have to redistribute and start over. Another Big Bang, so to speak. Expand and contract, expand and contract, the eternal cycle of the universe. Same as the business cycle. You can’t legislate it — there’s nothing there to legislate — but you can profit off the swings. If you’re a believer. Like Paul said, you have to believe the unbelievable. Become a fool to become wise. A fool for Christ is not unlike a fool for money. That is to say a successful banker. Or a fool for love. Also a mystery. As Stacy wistfully said, laughing at his Monopoly board apocalypse. But also crying a little. Her longing for him is so intense it sometimes frightens him. Talk of leaving has ended. She now has no autumn plans. She has told Mrs. Battles she’ll be staying. You must have noticed, she said, ducking her head and leaning into his chest, I’ve completely surrendered. As has Ted. Long since. Was only waiting for her to catch up. Never let himself be a fool before. Wiser now.

She enters the office with an application needing his signature. Displaying upright bank floor demeanor, knowing she is being watched. No eye contact. Only her flush gives her away. Deep into her throat. And the bluesy tune she is humming between closed lips. One of theirs. What is it? Hah: Baby, Knock Me a Kiss. Ted hopes his grin looks more like a boss’s approving smile and flips the top page of the application over as though studying it. “It’s okay, Mr. Cavanaugh,” she says crisply. “Just sign it before my knees give way.” She leaves primly, as though faintly exasperated, but twitches her hips slightly at the doorway like a backsided wink. What has he just signed? He doesn’t know. Happy as a pup. Another of their songs.

One condition of surrender: give up his obsession with the cult. He can do this. The world’s a crazy place, as unmanageable as economic cycles. Let it be. Suggs moved his heavy yellow backhoes onto the mine hill Friday, began chewing up the hillside. An outrage. There are pending legal actions, even their ownership of the hill is in question. It was like a dare: stop me if you can. Ted had learned they were having some kind of ceremony over there yesterday, the laying of a cornerstone or something. There must be a way. Stacy pleaded. Don’t let it spoil our weekend. He hesitated. For a moment he felt that football in his hands again, had his fingers on the laces. But he smiled, shrugged, booted it out of sight. Felt good. That game’s over. Whistle blown. With Tommy, Concetta, and her widow friend Rosalia sharing the home care duty, Saturday was a night in the city (“important meeting with investors”), yesterday a long drive in her car, a walk in the hills. Wet but beautiful. Maybe their most beautiful time together so far. They drove leisurely over into the next state, where they could wander around, hand-in-hand, unafraid of being recognized, then, somewhat more urgently, back to the motel. They got caught in a downpour between the parking lot and the room, so they shed their wet clothes, showered together, and spent a couple of delicious late afternoon hours in each other’s arms, lit only by the soft forgiving light flowing in through the wet windows and falling upon them like a kind of benediction. Divine sanction. What divinity, he couldn’t say. The days are long now. They dressed by that light for supper.

Nick Minicozzi drops down from his office upstairs, closes the door behind him when he enters. He has news. John P. Suggs is in the hospital. Intensive care. Catastrophic stroke. In a coma. Not expected to pull through. The Collins girl is there, too. She has apparently been starving herself to death. A kind of hunger strike against God for not bringing on the Second Coming, or something. And six men are in jail, charged by the sheriff with various crimes against the Brunist encampment. Apparently their power and phone lines got cut over the weekend. One of the arrested, a young guy, has a bullet wound, and another is Reverend Abner Baxter.

Even before he has fully absorbed it all, Ted is reorganizing his campaign. Breakthrough! He and Suggs have been playing “king of the hill” all spring and the coal baron has been beating him at every move; Ted had all but abandoned the field. Now things have suddenly changed. Pat is a stubborn autocrat, has no partners, only employees, disdains lawyers. It should be easy to tie up his headless empire in litigation, bring an end to the Brunist nightmare. And they seem to be fighting among themselves, making it even easier. He and Nick review all the legal actions they’ve been taking. Nick promises to follow up aggressively. Put on the blitz. “Especially hit hard on the money and property issues.” Maybe they can not only wrest the Deepwater land away from them, but might even repossess the camp itself, reactivate it now that it’s fixed up. Summer camp for the whole area.

“Who manages Suggs’ mining company?”

“The site boss is a guy named McDaniel. Not from around here.”

“See if you can reach him. Tell him he has to get those backhoes off the hill today or risk impoundment. Launch a suit that would force them to refill all the holes and trenches they’ve dug. And let him know you’re doing it.”

Even as he talks with Nick, he’s on the phone. Getting the word out. Fashioning moves. Power plays. He makes one-on-one appointments with all the members of the West Condon Ministerial Association. Books announcement times with Rotary and the BPW, the Masons, the Knights of Columbus. The Fourth of July is coming up. In years past, they held an all-county parade here in town. Could revive that. Find some famous guests — like a pro ballplayer or a movie actor — try to lure the governor down. Book a carnival, organize picnics and ball-games, hold raffles, throw a spectacular fireworks display. Theme of Unity. Progress. New Opportunities for West Condon. Bring in that city group buying the old hotel. The Italian-American angle. Brighten up Main Street. Restore the community spirit. He asks the NOWC steering committee to meet Wednesday in the old Chamber offices. Starting late. They need six months, have one. Have to work hard at this.

Then it’s off to the police station and jail, the hospital, see where the pieces lie. On the way out the door, his glance meets hers, sees the flicker of disappointment. The fool for love has lost his way again. He shrugs, shakes his head. Sorry. Can’t help it. Have to do this.

“Numbers,” Sally Elliott says, blowing smoke out over the porch railing, clouding the day. Ostensibly, she’s here to borrow Tommy’s cameras for a wedding she’s been asked to photograph. “Mathematics.” It’s Monday, his day off from the pool. Summer coming all over itself. Angela is working at the bank, he has the whole sweet top-down day out to himself. Maybe, first thing, once he’s got rid of Sally, he’ll drag Fleet Piccolotti out of his family sausage shop to go shoot some baskets or throw a ball around. Pete’s down on life, a side of him he didn’t see back in high school. It probably wasn’t there. Marriage, family have infected him with it, shopkeeping has. No easy cure, but sinking a few might cheer him up. “A kind of wizardry built on the void. Starts with zero the way religions start with God. Neither exist, but you can build a whole system.” She’s trying to impress him with what she knows about the Brunists, mostly things she’s learned from that wall-eyed kid with the droopy handlebars. If he can be trusted. Is she fucking him? Probably. There’s a bit of a breeze. He can hear the flag flopping about lightly above the porch roof. Traditionally it was Tommy’s duty to raise and lower it every day, but now he and his dad are both busy and preoccupied, so it stays up. When it comes down after Labor Day the house looks naked without it. Like it has lost its loin cloth or something. “Add in fantasy calendrics, a mysterious voice in a ditch, magic numbers and prophetic tombstones, and anything can happen, anything can be true.”

He knows she’ll turn all this into a thumbnail history of Christianity. She can be pretty funny, but sometimes it’s hard to figure out what the joke is. Well, she reads books. Her T-shirt is about all he’ll read today. He doesn’t even know many who do read, not for fun. She may be the only person in town. Those he has known up at college were mostly pretty boring. Couldn’t throw a ball or shoot the shit in an ordinary sort of way. Sally’s different, but then she’d probably be different even if she didn’t read books. On the porch table with their coffee cups and her ashtray are some old newspapers, one of which Sally says is the final edition of the West Condon Chronicle. She has explained all the pictures. He glanced at them. Ancient history. Vaguely remembered some of it, though at the time he wasn’t paying all that much attention. Did remember that black hand. The Claw. A lot of sick jokes about it back then. All this info-gathering began with his telling her he was thinking about going on to grad school in sociology and using the Brunists as dissertation material. That was months ago, while he was still up at school. Now he’s thinking more about law school, but she only laughed when he told her and has carried on as before. Well, she’s lonely — it gives her something to do.

“Now Darren has come up with a new idea,” she says, lighting up again. “The preacher husband of the woman who founded the cult was killed in the mine disaster. They’re apparently going to rebury him under one corner of their new church, and Darren wants to dig a hole on the other side and ask for Bruno’s body back from wherever it is to put there.”

“Bruno’s dead? I didn’t know that,” he says. He’s only half listening. He’s wondering if he should take up pipe smoking.

“Meanwhile, he wants to fill the coffin with a tunic, a mining pick, and his seven sayings.”

“His seven sayings,” Tommy says, repeating her without thinking about it. A mistake. She goes on to quote them all and explain them, offering a few wiseass variants of her own.

The grass is high after the recent rain. Needs mowing. He owes his old man that much for his Bing Cherry gleaming in the driveway. Dandelions popping up everywhere, too. Have to behead the randy little suckers before they go to seed. His first sex: blowing dandelion seeds, impregnating the neighborhood. It’s fun, but what’s disappointing is the sad little nubbin that’s left at the end, the wilt that overtakes the stem. Doesn’t stop you from picking another, though, and having another blow. Maybe he should go for a drive today. Pick up a girl, someone new. A hand job on the highway with the top down, a fuck in the fields. He calls his new machine his Bing Cherry because, one, they’re his favorite fruit and nearly as delicious as pussy, and two, being a poet at heart, he likes the connection to bang, bung, bong. But the car is actually more the color of pie cherries. Which are also delicious. His Cherry Pile? Fleet calls it, or him, Il Cardinale. He sometimes now calls him Holy Father. Sourly. Fleet’s more like a sour cherry.

“So now, after what’s happened, they’re into their Hatfields and McCoys mode. Emily Wetherwax told my mother on the phone that Archie is out at the camp this morning repairing the phone lines that got cut. Electricity’s off, too. He called her from up a pole somewhere and said there’d even been some shooting over the weekend.”

All in all, it’s a wacky story, no doubt at least partly true. No wonder his dad wants to get rid of those wombats. The one image from her story that sticks in his head, even though it was probably made up, is of that redheaded fat boy dressed in nothing but girl’s panties and dumped at his preacher father’s feet like spoiled meat. Hi, Dad. Guess what? He and the girl were apparently in high school at the same time, both of them a couple of classes behind Tommy. She’s a miner’s kid, like Angela, but he doesn’t remember her. Probably not his type. Though she was evidently Ugly Palmers’ type, at least to the extent of gangbanging her with the others. Just as well the asshole didn’t turn up at Lem’s garage that morning; Ugly has just got uglier and was likely looking for an excuse to get into a fight.

“What if,” Sally says, stubbing out her smoke, “all the madness is buried in the language and you can’t get it out?”

He’s not sure what she means (that voice in the ditch?), but as he finds himself staring at her FAITH is BELIEVING WHAT you KNOW AIN’T so T-shirt, he says: “In lines like that, you mean?” She stretches the shirt out away from her tits as if reading it for the first time. No bra under there. The shirt collapses back over her nipples, which are the sexiest thing about her. If Angela were wearing it, to read it you’d have to walk those hills a letter at a time. Though she never would. Not much wit in that girl. “Where do you find those funky tees, Sal? Different one every time I see you.”

“I make them. But they don’t hold up well in the wash.”

“You made that up, too?” he asks, pointing.

“No, that’s Mark Twain. Or at least he got credit for it. Goes back to the Greeks, I imagine, or more likely the Babylonians. Or the guys before them who didn’t have anybody writing down what they said.”

“Great. Mark Twain. You’ve finally named someone I’ve read.”

“Huckleberry Finn?”

“No, I couldn’t get through that one. Tom Sawyer.”

“A kind of role model, I suppose.”

“I did think of him as pretty cool. And we had the same name. I especially liked the snuggle with what’s-her-name in the cave. Lights out, pissing herself with terror, ready for anything. When you’re ten years old, that’s pretty hot stuff.”

“You must have still been in your Tom Sawyer phase when you tried to scare the pants off me with that end-of-the-world line back in high school.”

“Did I? Hah. Did it work?”

“Yes, it got me to praying. I was still in my Aunt Polly phase.”

“You know, they always said that though Tom seemed like a rascal, really he was innocent. But that’s not true. Really he wasn’t.”

“No, neither was Becky. They were both just dumb.”

Ted pulls a chair up at the mayor’s table in Mick’s Bar & Grill and orders up the usual. Mumbled greetings around. His fellow civic leaders. They’re a sorry lot, for the most part, but they’re what he has to work with, and he somehow has to mold them into a team. Several of them are on the NOWC steering committee and he lets them know, over his bowl of thin flavorless soup and a grilled ham and cheese sandwich, about the meeting on Wednesday to work up new plans for the Fourth. “It’s not a sure thing, but Governor Kirkpatrick is out on the hustings that day and said he’d try to fit us in.” What the governor actually said was, “It’s an election year, Ted. You’ve got problems down there. I don’t want them to rub off on me.” But he also needs Ted’s annual contribution to his campaign fund, so he didn’t say no. Mort Whimple, the fire chief, wants to know what the hell hustings are, and Elliott from his perch at the bar says muddily that it’s where you graze sheep. “You know,” he sings, raising his highball glass of iced gin, “‘Home, home on the hustings…!’” Maury tells him Jim’s workweek is now down to an hour a day, and that one not worth much. “The governor offered up some ways the state might help us out and he would use the occasion to announce them.” What Kirk suggested was that they were looking for a location for a maximum security prison. It would take some selling. Doesn’t exactly enhance the neighborhood, but it adds jobs. Ted replied that this was a good place for it. There was an available work force and they could also help fill it.

When he mentions inviting the new prospective owners of the old West Condon Hotel to the celebrations on the Fourth, Mayor Maury Castle mashes out his cigar and growls in his P.A. system voice: “The Roma Historical Society. Who are those guys? I got a feeling it was the Roma Historical Society just got us our new cop.”

Whom Ted has seen this morning over at the police station. Vince Bonali’s loutish son Charlie. Billed hat down over his nose like a Marine sergeant’s, snapping his jaws and fingers, seemingly impatient with the slow pace of justice. Might be useful. Chief Romano is a weak man and things could get rough. Romano’s number two, Monk Wallace, has been on the force forever and is reliable enough, but a slow-moving sort who likes to just sit and chew and watch the world go by. The other two officers are ex-miners, post-disaster charity hires — Louie Testatonda, a soft beanbag of a fellow, and the night duty cop, Bo Bosticker, a drowsy dimwit. They might need a guy like Charlie. By the time Ted arrived this morning, all those arrested Saturday night had already been released by order of deputy sheriff Calvin Smith, pending further investigations by the district attorney. All but Abner Baxter. Romano is holding him on old charges from five years ago, including jumping bail on murder charges and the destructive assault on St. Stephen’s. Dee is still upset about that. Baxter could be heard railing at them from his cell, promising terrible retribution, if not in this world, then the next. When Ted asked what was going on out at the camp, the chief said that Baxter had been evicted a month or so ago over something involving his motorcycle son and his pals. That gang was gone, but the old man remained in the area and was still unloading his usual Bible-slapping crappola in the fields around. What happened Saturday night was apparently part of some kind of feud going on, and it has gotten to the point where they’ve started shooting at each other. One of the Coates boys ended up with buckshot in his backside and according to the sheriff a lot of shots were fired in both directions. Cause enough to close the camp down. If Puller won’t do it, maybe the state will. Ted promised Dee a prosecutorial brief from the city to give him adequate cause to hold Baxter. He’d like to keep the preacher penned up and is disappointed the others have been let out. He wonders if there’s some sort of discord in the sheriff’s office and if there’s some way to use it if there is.

Enos Beeker, the hardware store owner, asks him now if he’d heard about Pat Suggs’ brain attack, and he tells them he’s just come from the hospital. “He’s out of intensive care and into a private room, but he has taken a crippling hit.” When Doc Lewis emerged from Suggs’ private room, Ted caught a glimpse of his former home care nurse, Bernice Filbert, dressed something like a World War I battlefield nurse, at Suggs’ bedside. Bernice started when she saw him and hurried to close the door again. He glared at her, smiling coldly, as though to suggest she’s in for it. And she is. Without Suggs’ help, she’s headed to prison for embezzlement and grand larceny. Burly plaid-shirted man with a thick black beard in there, too. Maudie, a nurse he knew from his own high school days, passed by and told him that was Mr. Suggs’ strip mine boss, Ross McDaniel. “Hardshell libertarian,” she said, inventing another sect. A cute freckle-faced kid back in school with a nice body who put out generously, something of a legend at the Baptist summer church camps out at No-Name, now as wide as she is tall, her dry hair thinning out, her freckles spreading. Still cheerful, though, as she always was, with a flair for the soap-operatic. Learned from her about the Collins girl. “When they brought her in, she looked like a skeleton with tissue-paper skin stretched over, and she’s still bad off. She’s trying to die. Has to be force fed.”

He passes on some of this to the klatch in Mick’s. Not all of it. Shaping the news to his purposes. Including in, including out. The way newspapers and news magazines work, inventing history. Something Miller said, some years ago. Probably in here, over a charred hamburger. He sure did that, damn him. His invented history is still being spun out. Miller did what he could to ruin this town and should have been tarred and feathered on his way out. Ted sometimes misses him, though.

Doc Lewis told him that Suggs had emerged temporarily from his coma, but the stroke was very severe. He asked if Ted knew of any surviving heirs. He didn’t. A complete loner, far as he knew. Pat is mostly paralyzed, he learned, though he can twitch his left hand. He can open and close his eyes, but his face is frozen and he has trouble swallowing. No speech, but all the involuntary behaviors are apparently functioning, and though it’s hard to be certain, deep down inside his insensible shell he still seems more or less alert. So far. As with earthquakes, there’s always the fear of aftershocks. Was he a heavy drinker? “He used to be pretty wild, but he got religion. Now I hear he’s a teetotaler.” Lewis nodded at that. “We’re starting rehab immediately, but the prognosis for recovery is not good.”

Rehab is what Main Street needs, too, but same prognosis. It’s a depressing sight out there. “We’ll have to get rid of those boarded-up shops for the visitors on the Fourth, Maury.” The mayor says sourly that it sounds like a job for the city manager. Ted expects that and ignores it. “Open them up free for craft and art shows, antique sales, club displays, get the shops that remain to put welcoming signs up for the holidays.”

“Dave Osborne’s already got started,” says Gus Baird, the travel agent and Rotary president. “I dropped in Saturday and found him braiding all the shoestrings in the store into a single long strand. Very colorful. Says he has a birthday coming up and he’s making decorations for the party. The strings are gone from all the shoes in the shop, including the ones in the window. Open boxes everywhere. Even the strings from the shoes he was wearing were gone.”

The klatch finds that pretty funny. Ted has known for some time that Osborne is in trouble. At the hospital this morning, he was thinking that if Suggs died he might try to acquire the strip mine operations and move Dave out there to manage them, mining being more in his line of work. But he’s evidently too late. He makes a mental note to drop by. He asks Mick for lemon meringue pie, hoping it’s less than a week old, and that causes another explosion of hee-hawing laughter. He asks what’s the joke and is told the story of Robbins getting slapped in the face with a slice of that pie by Prissy Tindle. Elliott clambers down off his stool to do a rubber-kneed hip- and head-wagging imitation of her performance, one hand on the bar to keep his balance. When he lets go to swing his hand through, he loses it. Hits his head on the way down, but doesn’t seem to feel it. “Hoo hah!” he says from beneath the stools. “Crazy stupid cunt,” Burt grumbles amid all the laughter. He still doesn’t see what was funny about it, but everyone else does, including Elliott, still braying down on the floor. Beeker says he saw Prissy driving through town with a long-haired beardy guy who must have been Wes Edwards, but you’d never have recognized him. “Dancing with the dork,” croons Gus Baird, rolling his eyes. Ted says his probable replacement, bright young fellow named Jenkins, would be here right after the Fourth. “We can put him up in the manse, Gus, get him used to his new home. His first pastorate. May take him a while to adjust.” Elliott meanwhile has been hauling himself laboriously to his feet, grunting and farting, and he gets a round of applause when he succeeds, which he acknowledges by raising his arms and falling to his ass again and having to begin all over.

When Tommy arrives home after work on Wednesday, feeling down, the old priest is just leaving. His mom’s latest holiness whim. Concetta and Rosalia are there, looking smug. He’s just had trouble at the pool with Concetta’s kid and his dickhead cronies. The town’s bummed-out failures. There used to be mines to send them into. Now the only occupation left is street bully. The girls like to pretend to be drowning so Tommy will come out and rescue them, hug them to safety with his arm around their bosoms. He has sometimes played along, good practice, until some of the guys started imitating them, falling into the pool and floundering about comically, crying out “Help! Help! Tommy!” in falsetto voices. He tells them he’s like God, it’s up to him who lives or dies, and they’re definitely not worth saving. Today, though, Moroni’s evil buddy, Grunge Grabowski, doing the falsetto routine, threw little Buddy Wetherwax into the deep end — and Buddy can’t swim. He dove in and dragged Buddy — snorting and choking and beating on him blindly with his little fists, protesting all the way that he didn’t need to be saved — over to the edge of the pool, where Babs, his big sister, squatted, waiting for him, her legs spread suggestively, a few curly auburn hairs peeking out at the swimsuit leg seams. So Tommy had to throw Moroni and his pals out. “Yeah? Let’s see you try, scumbag,” Moron snarled, cocking his fists, his buddies hovering close by. “Nah,” Tommy said. “Not my job. I’ll let the police do it. That’s what they’re paid for.” And he went over to the emergency phone on the pole next to the lifeguard chair. With that, Moroni and his gang left, but not before Moron threatened to be waiting for him when he left the pool. He could handle Moroni, but probably not all of them, so he went ahead and called Chief Romano to tell him there might be trouble, it would be good to have someone just hanging around at closing time, and old Monk Wallace turned up and slouched at the fence, eyeing the girls and spitting into a tobacco tin.

“What’s up with the priest, Mom?” He and his father both like Concetta’s cooking and neither really care what religion his mother adopts next. There’s no more money to squander, she can fly off to Heaven by any route she chooses. Tolerant flexibility is one of the advantages of being a Presbyterian. The priest has left behind a faint musty old man smell. “Been showing him your photo albums?”

“I was taking confession, Tommy, and having my catechism lesson. And, yes, I was showing him these pictures of my aunt’s family on my mother’s side who are Catholics by marriage. He looks grumpy but he’s really quite nice. They call him Father Bags. Isn’t that amusing?”

Those old albums have come to mean a lot to his mother in her illness, though she has also been doing a lot of damage to them, tearing up photos, sometimes whole pages. As best he can tell it’s mostly his father who’s getting ripped out of her story. Tommy has never paid any attention to these albums, but Sally Elliott has recently been given a tour and claims to have seen one of him at about age five with his pants down in the park having a wee wee; she was probably lying, but if it’s there, he might figure out how to have some fun with it.

Fun is mostly what he’s not having. Which is why he’s feeling low. Not how he imagined his glorious summer after graduation. Except for the sporty new wheels with nowhere to go, sex with Angela is about it, and that’s going stale. How do married people do it? Angela sets the agenda now and she doesn’t give him a lot of elbow room. Babs Weth-erwax lingered for a while after the pool closed this afternoon, having sent her little brother on ahead with a friend, and though it was a bit like robbing the cradle, he was tempted to invite her into the changing rooms, but Ramona Testatonda, Angela’s fat spy, was also lingering, watching everything, and he wasn’t yet ready to make the break. Not like that anyway. Not for a juvenile. But maybe it’s about time to close down shop. He’ll miss Angie’s great body and all the things she does with it, but the world is full of great bodies. Bodies are the main thing it produces, and even the ones that are not great can be good for a romp, and what they don’t know, they can be taught. Just thinking this way cheers him up. He’ll spring it on her tonight. After the sex, of course. Thinking it might be the last time will give it a certain urgency. Might be the best night so far. Around the world in eighty ways. He’s already hard thinking about it. First, though, he’s overdue at Her Loins for his weekly supper with Dad. He has been skipping church. Probably in for a lecture.

Alone on a saddle stool at the steak house bar on a quiet Wednesday evening, communing with a double shot of Tennessee sour mash on the rocks. Waiting for Tommy, who is late. Coming from his lifeguard job at the pool. And probably from one pair of thighs or another. That unquiet time of life. Ted remembers it, not all that fondly. But at least he always knew who he was, where he was going, what he’d be doing. Tommy has a new plan for the rest of his life every week. Ted is concerned, sometimes irritated, tries to show neither, knowing how little it takes to set Tommy off. He needs him now. Close by. Needs him, loves him. Loves the others, too, misses them, but he feels there’s a special bond between him and Tommy, something that’s been there since the boy was born. If only he’d take life more seriously. Tommy loves his privileges but not their responsibility. Ted hates those who don’t give a damn and worries his son is drifting down that alley. Probably just a phase. Still a kid. One day, he’s certain, he’ll be handing the First National Bank over to him and be proud to do so. No doubt his own father had the same worries.

Fatherhood was not something Ted thought about. It just happened. He has been grateful ever since. Three kids, all doing well. He doesn’t pray much, but he thanks God for that. He has tried to talk about it with Tommy, what fatherhood means to him, but it only embarrasses the boy. He prefers to talk baseball instead. Cars. Travel fantasies. Tommy jokes about the life here. Calls the people out at the club a bunch of illiterate yoyos. Well, they are, but he hasn’t earned the right to say so. He’s even made some smartass remarks lately about banks and religion, calling both of them social parasites and partners in the power game. What college can do to a kid’s core values. There’s a sociology prof up there Ted would like to throttle. Tommy hasn’t gone to church since he came home after graduation, either. Out most nights. Drinks a lot. Often testy, restless. Good with his mother, though. Patient in a way Ted finds difficult. Tommy is upset about what’s happening to her, of course. It’s a tough thing to deal with, part of what’s making him edgy. Making them both edgy. Though with Ted there’s anger, too. Instead of loving farewells at the end, there’s this betrayal, bitterness, the religious madness, the shattering of their early dreams. If he were the first to go, it wouldn’t be like this. His heart would be full of gratitude. Now Irene is tearing up her photo albums, their long life together apparently without value. The wedding album has disappeared altogether, the photos of him in his officer’s uniform. Stripping it all away before the Last Judgment. At which, she assures him, he won’t do well. Her end of the world is everybody else’s end of the world. People, when they know they’re going to die, can get like that. Then along comes a scheming woman like Bernice Filbert. Who’s hanging out now at Pat Suggs’ bedside. Someone else to get her hooks into.

Though he and Tommy are both on their own the rest of the week, usually eating at different times even when Concetta cooks up a pot of spaghetti and meatballs for them, they have set Wednesdays aside for supper together here, away from the golfing crowd, in West Condon’s only claim to royalty. Sir Loin. Not that the food’s much better here than it is at the Hole. The grilled steaks are usually edible after you cut away the fat, but that’s about it. They come with iceberg lettuce blobbed with French dressing out of a bottle and potatoes that taste pre-baked a week before and reheated, all on the same oval platter. The dollop of sour cream and chives on the potatoes is probably the tastiest thing on offer. He always asks for extra. Well-stocked bar, though. Even a short wine list with the familiar classics. Beaujolais. Valpolicella. Liebfraumilch. Chianti in a basket. California Chablis. Mountain Red. And a pretty assortment of sweetly smiling waitresses in short skirts. Loins on view. The owner is a Rotarian, on the school board, a Methodist, has a sizable mortgage. He begged off from today’s meeting of the NOWC steering committee but promised to help foot the bill for the fireworks on the Fourth. Ted feels like he’s helping keep him afloat by eating here from time to time, as he and Irene used to do every other week or so. It’s not far from the charred shell of the old Dance Barn just down the road. Seeing Maudie a couple of days ago reminded him of it. The big bands that came through. It was different here then.

Can’t recover those old times, but things can be better. Will be. With Pat Suggs out of the way, Ted is feeling on top of the game once more. In control of the clock. Not that he wishes the man ill — tough thing, a stroke, he hopes he doesn’t have to go through it himself — but before Suggs can get on his feet again, if ever, the cult will be out of here, some people will be locked away, the camp will be back in Presbyterian hands, the mine hill scramble will be ancient history, the town under Nick’s sure hand back on a stable footing and free of corruption. He’ll get something out of Kirkpatrick, a prison, National Guard shooting range, whatever, maybe state backing for a coal gasification project. There’ll be more jobs, and more jobs make for more small businesses. Main Street will look like Main Street again. When Irene goes, he can set up Concetta with an Italian place on Main Street. She’s a great cook, could feature fresh homemade pasta, give Mick some competition. One good restaurant breeds another. The street could get famous in this part of the state. Then, when the old hotel is back in operation, they could move her into it. She has kids; it could be a real old-fashioned family restaurant.

Tommy has ideas, too. Until the city consortium got interested in the old hotel, Tommy thought they should make a mining museum out of it, try to draw tourists. Ted regrets his response. What’ll we have? he remembers snapping. Nothing but busloads of school children. The only new business we can hope for is a candy shop with postcards. And who gives a damn about mining history anyway except ex-miners, and they’re jobless and pissed off and would just smear the place with graffiti. That was harsh. Tommy was probably hurt, though he only shrugged and walked away. Well, Ted was depressed at the time, and he apologized, told Tommy what some of the problems were. Later, they got to talking about the idea again in a new setting: How about the old mine? A tour of the horrific disaster with rides for the kids. Upgrade the hoists for a safe but scary drop into the darkness. Get the skips and shuttle cars rolling again down there and fancied up a bit like carnival rides. Everybody wearing mining helmets. Which can be purchased in the gift shop. Wax museum dioramas of the horrors of the disaster itself that light up as you pass. Empty miners’ shoes and ownerless dinner buckets scattered about. Broken spectacles. False teeth. Sound effects: the explosion, the screams, the shouts. It could get famous enough to attract the whole nation. Tommy even suggested re-enacting the Brunist end-of-the-world scene on top of the hill, but Ted nixed that. Who knows what lunatics might turn up, thinking it was the real thing? Enough of that shit.

He chuckles, feeling loose and mellow, talking like a college kid. He orders up another double. Shouldn’t, third already (where’s the boy?), but he’ll limit himself to a beer at supper. Also feeling, somewhat sweetly, melancholic. Maybe it’s the tinny music on the cheap restaurant speakers. All the old songs. Nameless studio bands, but the tunes are enough. Getting sentimental over you… Yes, he is. Silently, he hums along. Stacy is alone tonight at Mrs. Battles’ rooming house. He thinks about her there. All alone and feeling blue. She has admitted that she sometimes masturbates, longing for him when he isn’t there. He imagines her doing that and it excites him—things you say and do just thrill me through and through—and he has to straighten up for a moment and adjust things, pretending to be reaching for his bill clip, which he sets on the bar. He has often thought to visit her there, but that would be too daring. And Mrs. B is a notorious gossip. They’ll be together again tomorrow night. Soon enough. Keep it cool. What we do on Thursdays. Something Stacy says. Probably a line from some old movie. He hasn’t gone to one for years, though they sometimes watch them now on the motel TV. Stacy seems to have seen them all, even the old ones. Knows the plots, likes to imagine alternative ones. That’s what the movies are, she likes to say. Alternative plots. Not like life. Life has only one. That’s sad. But true. Like all these songs. All of you… Never paid much attention to them before. Now he can name them, sing along on some of the lines. I’d love to gain complete control of you, handle even the heart and soul of you… Getting educated. Never too late.

Through the plate glass window with the restaurant name painted in reverse, he sees Tommy’s red convertible pull into the parking lot and swing up near the window, where he can leave the top down and watch it from the restaurant. Tommy waves at him as he climbs out. A handsome boy — tall, lean, with the grace of a good athlete and a big infectious smile. Ted’s chest fills with pride, love, a tinge of grief: all this will pass. He wants to hug him when he enters, and he stands, arms akimbo, meaning to do so, but instead finds himself shaking his son’s hand and asking him why he’s late and why he couldn’t at least have changed out of his T-shirt and shorts for dinner. “Sorry, Dad. Stopped by to see Mom first and she wanted to chat. Why is she so mad at you?”

It was a mistake to come back here. Angela’s idea. Another romantic Saturday night at the Blue Moon Motel with that happy couple, Monica and Pete Piccolotti, meant to stir the dying embers. More like pitching cold water on them. Fleet and Monica have been at each other since they arrived. The hayseed duo, who have gone over the top tonight with gross off-color songs about incest and bus-fucks and trailer park whores (who writes this back-alley crap? and why are all these jerks in here, including the hick in the cowboy hat who runs the local radio station, whooping it up and asking for more?), are now trying to make amends with “Have I Told You Lately That I Love You,” or maybe Angela requested it. Probably. “He’s cute,” Monica says, nodding toward the beanpole singer. “He looks sort of like Jimmy Stewart after he’s had the stomach flu for six weeks.” Which is meant to be funny, but Pete, downing his beer, snaps back, “Have I told you lately that I’d like to stuff that goddamn guitar up that swamp rat’s ass?” He belches loud enough for everyone in the Moon to hear and gets up to go to the bar for another round. Monica says, “That’s enough, Pete,” and he says, “Well, no, sweet mama, it is not.”

Tommy rises to go with him, leaving the girls to talk about what sour ungrateful assholes they’re both stuck with and why isn’t there a nice place to go in West Condon where people dress up a little. Tommy is in a foul mood and Angela has picked up on it and has become snappish herself. And at the same time cloyingly affectionate. Trying to hang on. He fumbled the big midweek bye-bye and now here he is with it all still to do. He used their religious differences, why it was best to accept the inevitable, sad as it was, they belonged to two different worlds, they should call it off now before they got too deep and it became too painful; but, trying to keep the back door open in case he got desperate before this long summer is over, he softened it with too many I love yous, and Angela was convinced they could work it out. In fact, she took it as a kind of provisional marriage proposal and said they should go talk to the priest about it and he was too drained (what a night!) to argue. In fact, while he was brooding over what he might say next (tell her he had become an atheist and his kids would have to be raised atheist? no, a mistake to mention kids at all), he dropped off and didn’t come to until after Angela had already left for the bank the next morning. She left a tissue with her lipstick-imprinted kiss on her pillow beside him. He blew his nose in it. His dad had more business meetings to attend out of town, something about seeing state officials in hopes of landing something big for the town before the Fourth, so after the pool job he had to stay home with his mother the next couple of nights, settle into summertime reruns. Which was a relief, in a way. It gave him time to think, and Angela could sense that and said on the phone he was just using his mother as an excuse not to see her, and like a fool he kept insisting otherwise and making his mother’s condition out to be worse than it was.

But tonight’s the night. Has to be. A clean break. He’d imagined tender farewells, lingering kisses; it’s not going to be that way. He may not even get laid. Tant pis, as they say in Paris, which is where he should be tonight. Where it’s a whole lot easier than this. The only other French he knows is how to ask a girl to lie down with him, and that’s all you need. He had to coax Concetta into staying and to pay her overtime to get the night free, but she and her widow friends seem glad enough to get the work and the money his dad’s been giving him as compensation for missing out on Europe more than covers the cost. Only it’s a waste for a night like this. Except for Fleet, he hates everyone here. What is he doing in this stupid backwater? Naz Moroni was in here earlier with his demented Dagotown pals and there might have been trouble, but they had some women with them — breasty, big-nosed girls Tommy recognized from the pool — and they only made threatening and obscene gestures, which Angie insisted they ignore. If you want to take them on, Fleet said, let me know. Joey Castiglione was with them, or maybe he came on his own. Joey has the hots for Angela and Tommy wished he’d just grab Angie up and steal her away — it would have solved all his problems — but when Joey saw them there, he turned around and walked out again. Tommy thinks back on the college bars, the girls he knew up there, the class they had, and knows he doesn’t belong here. He has to figure a way out. Now.

“You’re trying to break it off with Angie. It won’t be easy, Kit. You’re her fucking be-all and end-all. You’ll have a wildcat on your hands.” The drinks have been made and paid for, but neither of them is in a hurry to return to the table. They drink them there at the bar and order up others. Fleet will be joining them on the golf course tomorrow afternoon, though he says he hasn’t played since high school, can’t afford the club membership or green fees. Tommy wants his dad to arrange some help for Fleet and the store, at least get him a complimentary trial membership at the club for the rest of the summer. “I suppose having babies is the sore point. The Catholic thing…?”

“No, Fleet, the problem is she expects too much. This is a summer fling for me and she wants more than that. Angela is gorgeous and awesome in the sack, but we’ve got nothing in common except for the sex.”

“Well, anyway, that’s something,” Fleet says with a rueful sigh. And it is. Tommy has been taking a more open stance at the pool these days, wondering who might be next, but when Angela turned up after the bank closed this afternoon in her skimpy strands, she simply blew everybody else away. Eye-popping. In fact he felt a touch jealous that others could see so much of her. She’s hot. And his. Does he really want to give that up? “But I know what you’re going through, Kit. Happened to me several times with Monica. And I didn’t even have the religion hangup. Still don’t know if I did the right thing. Of course I was stuck here, had the family business on my back, didn’t have your options. West Condon and a few of the towns around, none of them any better than this one. So one thing led to another and the next thing I knew I was doing the daddy act.”

“Right. Babies. Nasty little boogers. No offense, Fleet, but they’re not for me.”

“Well, watch out, then. I’m sure Angie’s already thinking about what to name it. One thing about Angie, though, she’s like a lot of other Italian girls I know. Once they’ve got their name on your bank account and a bun or two in the oven, you can do pretty much what you like. My mother’s like that. My old man is famous in the neighborhood for acting out all the butcher jokes with his lady clients. A salami Casanova. Why he only has one ear, though I don’t know if it was cut off or shot off or just pulled off. But Mama doctored what was left of it, scolding him like she would a bad little boy, fed him some minestrone and a few shots of grappa and put him to bed, made him go to confession on Sunday, and things went on as normal. Not that great, never all that great, but normal. The missing ear became part of the family legend, the old man’s ridiculous virility badge.”

The radio station guy and his friends have left and the other two are singing “Always.” Angela probably requested it. It means: Turn off the bull, heart of my heart, and come dance with me. When Duke told them “White Dove” was no longer in their repertoire, he and Angie switched to this one as their private theme song. Partly because of the pun that referenced their lovemaking: “I’ll be loving you: all ways…” So here we go. Dance and yap a while, get potted, ship Fleet and Monica back to their babysitter, retire to the room at the back and get it over with. That’s the plan. Doesn’t work out that way.

Sunday is a day of prayer, of communing with the Maker of All Things, and Ted Cavanaugh is now approaching that weekly communion here on the gentle climb to the sixth tee. Church is a civic duty; here, faith is personal and real. His general feeling of well-being has been enhanced by a birdie on the fifth and what promises to be a splendid round on a splendid day, one that displays for all to see God’s goodness. Others are usually aware that he likes to be by himself at this time and they draw back into conversations of their own, but this afternoon his son chooses to tag along, probably with the intention of asking some favor or other for his old high school teammate. Young Pete is a decent golfer and the Piccolotti Italian Market is doing about as well as any other business in town; Ted will probably grant it. They can become the chief supplier for Concetta’s restaurant when it opens. She can feature the famous Piccolotti salomeats, as they call them, as an antipasto. He would rather Tommy put this off for another hole and allow him his traditional moment of quiet privacy here, but among his many blessings, in fact chief among them, is his youngest son. Maybe he can express to him something of the feelings aroused by this rise at the sixth tee; perhaps they can even pray together in a manly way.

Tommy skipped church again this morning, as has become his habit; his excuse has usually been that he has to stay home with his mother while Concetta is at Mass, but today Irene’s new Catholic friends organized a wheelchair and transport for her and took her with them. More remarks to face down at Mick’s, no doubt; she’s becoming the town laughingstock and dragging him onstage with her. The boy came home late last night without his car. He hasn’t yet told him why. He’s doing a lot of drinking. Ted hopes he hasn’t wrecked it. Probably just too drunk to drive. A rare act of wisdom. The Presbyterians gathered once more this morning in ever diminishing numbers at the Trinity Lutheran Church, where Ted was at last able to announce the arrival the week after the Fourth of July of their own new prospective minister, the Reverend Joshua J. Jenkins. Jenkins, trying too hard to please, told him on the phone his sermon that Sunday would be on “the intentional community,” which he said was an old Presbyterian topic having to do with the role of churches in communicating “social location” in pluralistic, democratic, ethnically diverse, and loosely structured American society. Ted said he thought that would be over everybody’s heads and suggested something more about what Reverend Jenkins hoped to achieve here in his ministry, and eventually they agreed the title of his sermon would be “An Old Evangel for a New Day.” Much better.

The whole week has gone gratifyingly well. The backhoes have been removed from the mine hill, plans for the big celebrations on the Fourth have been launched at today’s meeting, three of the boarded up stores on Main Street have been opened up this afternoon and a cleanup is underway, the governor has tentatively agreed to fit West Condon into his Independence Day schedule, and a sign has gone up on the old derelict hotel: FUTURE SITE OF THE ROMA LIBERTY HOTEL. A tourist attraction in the past, it could be again. He has met with most of the town’s church leaders, encouraging them to focus their sermons during the run-up to the Fourth on West Condon as a traditional American Christian community, under the theme of “One Nation under God,” and obtaining their tacit support for the moves the city is making against the cult.

The only setback has been Abner Baxter’s attempted escape from jail last night. Back at the third hole, while Tommy was dealing with a difficult lie in the small copse dividing the third and seventh fairways and young Pete was over there helping him decide what club to use, Nick Minicozzi, the fourth of their foursome, filled him in on the events as he understood them. Apparently, when they brought Baxter his supper, he just pushed his way past everybody and stalked out, saying they had no right to keep him. When they tried to stop him, he became difficult and finally had to be physically subdued by Chief Romano and young Officer Bonali. In the process he took something of a bruising, mostly caused by his own thrashing about, and the doctor had to be called. An ambulance, too. Ted asked Nick about Bonali, Tommy having had some negative things to say about him, and Nick said that Charlie was a strong young lad with military training, a bit too aggressive maybe, but given the times it was probably good to have him aboard. “Yes,” Ted said, “that’s what I’ve been thinking, too.”

The rise at the sixth tee is not very high, but the land is flat enough around here that just getting above the nearby treetops opens up inspiring vistas. One can see much of the course, including the abandoned second nine, the pale fields beyond, something of the West Condon outskirts, even the tops of some of the structures over at Deepwater, far in the distance. Soon to be back — thank you, Lord — in safe hands. Perhaps it will bring the old economy back with it. “There’s something I have to tell you, Dad,” Tommy says at his side, and he does. Ted feels his jaw tightening, his peace evaporating. Goddamn it. “She’s lying,” he says. “Drop her now.”

The talk around the lifeguard chair near the high diving board has moved from flirtatious to outrageous thanks to Sally Elliott, who is getting her kicks out of shocking the younger set with talk about body parts and emissions and how to tell if a boy is a virgin or not. There are a lot of cute girls clustered around the chair below him. Word of his breakup with Angela has spread. “Ding dong!” Sally remarked, watching the eager Munchkins dancing around him. But most of them are pretty young and daughters of friends of his parents and he’s not as keen on cherry-picking as he once was, so he is sitting coolly behind sunglasses on his elevated chair, smiling down on the giggly fuss as one might smile at a bunch of little leaguers worshipfully trying to copy your batting stance. Probably he ought to turn off the dirty talk, but Sally’s pretty funny and the kids seem to be enjoying it. At dinner last week his dad got interested in some of the things Sally was telling him about the church camp, especially that blond kid’s kooky idea of digging an empty grave for the missing Bruno body, and he asked Tommy to keep up the connection, so he is doing so. Easy enough. Sally is about the only person in town except Fleet he can have a real conversation with, even if she does tend to get wound up and go off the deep end. Getting anything intelligent out of Angela has been like getting a love song out of a whoopee cushion.

The split has been rough, but as far as he’s concerned, it’s final. He was pretty shaken by the act Angela pulled on him at the Moon Saturday night, but gradually he is shifting it into the picturesque past. Like Mom and her photo albums. Lesson learned. Angie got very cuddly on the dance floor, clutching his neck, his ass, pressing every inch of herself against him, like she was trying to push herself inside him; she seemed wistful, almost tearful, and he began to believe that reality was finally sinking in and he was going to get that sweet I’ll-never-forget-you farewell he’d been hoping for. “I’m just so wet, Tommy,” she whispered, stretching up to nibble at his earlobe. “I want to go to the room right now. I can’t wait.” So, even though they’d just bought a new round of drinks, they said goodnight to Monica, who was all smiles, and Fleet, who winked and shrugged and raised his glass, and off they went. Her clothes were already coming off before he could unlock the door. She tore at his clothing, kissed him all over when she’d stripped him, dragged him on top of her, grabbed his dick with her hot fist and plunged it inside her, locking her thighs around his butt, and started bucking wildly against him. When he tried to pull out, she whispered: “You don’t have to anymore, Tommy. I’m so excited! I’ve wanted to tell you all night! We’re going to have a baby!” He came instantly, almost in panic, but managed to shoot most of it between the cheeks of her ass, or he hoped he did. He freed himself from her, not easy, pulled on his clothes, told her brusquely to do the same, they were going home. And then she did start to cry. Great sobbing tears. What could he do? He put his arms around her, said please, he’d need some time, he was confused, he’d have to think what to do, they’d talk about it tomorrow, and he got her dressed as best he could and out to the parking lot, where they found the car with its tires and top slashed and ugly stripes down both sides, as if someone had dragged a coin across the paint. He heard Fleet and Monica arguing as they came out of the bar and he sent Angela, still sobbing, off with them, Fleet frowning, Monica glaring fiercely at him as he handed her the leftover clothes. He eventually hitched a ride home and spent a sleepless thick-headed night, recalling all the times he’d let her talk him out of wearing a rubber, claiming it didn’t feel real, and how she liked to suck it, then jump on it at the last minute, all her sinister little tricks. What a fool. His dad was pissed off when he told him, but his opinion reinforced what he already knew: she was faking it. When she called, that’s what he told her. That she was lying, just trying to trap him. After all they’d meant to each other, he was very disappointed, didn’t ever want to see her again. Don’t call back. She screamed at him from the other end of the line, but he knew he was right. And that was it. Concetta said the phone rang a few times, but the caller always hung up; it had to be her. It’s over.

The conversation below his chair has moved from nudist jokes and the fine art of nose-picking to the subject of breasts and why boys can show their nipples and girls can’t, and in demonstration of the absurdity of this inequality Sally strips her halter off and suddenly everyone else is very silent. She likes to say she’s got breasts like goosebumps on a chilly day, but actually, after having spent so much time nuzzling Angela’s milk jugs, Tommy finds them not unappealing — small, yes, less than a handful each — but sitting prettily on her chest there in the bright sunshine like overturned teacups, firm yet soft, their little pink nipples standing at attention, belying her pretense at cool. Pretty, but not permissible. “Put your top back on, Sally.”

“I mean, what is it with nipples anyway?” she asks, and takes the finger of a boy standing there gawking and touches her breast with it. “Yeah, right, that feels okay, but I don’t know what the big deal is. Did that turn you on?” The kid is too dazed to speak, can only stare.

“Sally, you are really crazy,” says Babs Wetherwax, somewhat flushed, her hands covering her own breasts as though they were the ones on view. She probably wishes that they were. Certainly more to see.

“Seriously, Sal. There are little kids here. Cover up or I’ll have to throw you out.”

“And are guys’ nips any different from girls’?” she asks and unexpectedly reaches up and tweaks one of his. It’s like getting touched by an electric handshake shocker, nearly sends him right out of his lifeguard chair, and his yip releases the tension below him, setting everyone off to snorting and giggling again, and he can only grin as Sally blows them all a kiss and walks out, still topless, waving at the mothers and their children at the shallow end.

Tommy watches Babs follow Sally’s exit, one hand still clasping her breast, and then she turns to gaze up at him with the sort of stunned look he hasn’t seen since Angela first fell in love with him. Well, why not? Maybe just a drive somewhere, a friendly chat, try to find out how far along in the sex game she is. Even if she’s still a virgin, girls that age are often into blow jobs and finger fucks, and after extreme sex with Angela, that’s probably enough for a while. Make it clear this time that whatever happens, it’s just for fun. She’s still staring up at him, still holding her breast. He winks and grins, calls out to one of the little kids to get back in the shallow end.

He has his weekly Wednesday date at the Loin tonight with his father and he’s driving Lem’s old tangerine junker again, his Bing Cherry in for new tires and top and a paint touchup, but there’s still time and enough left in the junker to make it out to the lakes and back before supper. He figures she’ll wait for him until he closes the pool, and she does. They’ve sent another cop over at closing time. Unfortunately, it’s not the old guy — it’s Angela’s brother, Charlie. When he and Babs step out of the front gate and he has finished locking up, Charlie swaggers over, toothpick between his teeth, and says: “I’d like a word with you, punk. About your fiancée.”

These foolish things… Ted’s back in the Sir Loin saddle, ear tuned to the golden oldies, humming along silently. Second sour mash double on the rocks. Fatherhood, Tommy’s recent crisis. Irene, the Dance Barn, the old days. Legal actions. Plans for the Fourth. Stacy alone, thinking about her. Is there a pattern here? Looks like it. What we do on Wednesdays. Waiting for Thursdays. While waiting for his son. The double now just melting rocks. Orders up a third. Also a pattern. A cigarette that bears a lipstick’s traces… Though she doesn’t smoke. Doesn’t wear a lot of lipstick, either. But it feels right, brings her to mind. But then, what doesn’t? He stubs his out (maybe he’ll give it up), turns his gaze away from the waitresses and their switching little behinds to look out on the sunlit parking lot. Swirls the ice around in his glass as though stirring his thoughts. Days long now. Midsummer soon. Must be this weekend. An airline ticket to romantic places. Rio maybe. Baird has a special offer this summer. Advertised by a lady with fruit in her hat. Or Paris, Hawaii, Rome. A feeling of nostalgia, seeing her in those places. Though they haven’t been to any of them together, of course not. Yet, as if. A late April drive to a river town on a bluff where, holding hands, she told him how desperately she loved him and how lost she felt: more like it. The pale beige cardigan she wore that day with the amber necklace he gave her. Walking past him in the bank, smoothing her skirt down over her rear, knowing he is watching. Pointing down at the shoes she bought from Dave Osborne. Foolish things. That window in the motel room where the milky afternoon light seeps in. The pink butterfly on her tailbone. The ghost of you clings…

He sighs. Feeling good. Sad in some sweet way, but good. Most things have been going his way for a change. The NOWC network is cohering around the plans for the Fourth of July celebrations. Bringing the community together again. Cleaning up Main Street. Poor Dave Osborne. He’ll have to go. Stacy’s purchase didn’t save him. Will try to get him some help. What will they do with all those lace-less shoes? Props for their coalmine horror ride maybe. Pat Suggs remains incapacitated, though some of the city’s court initiatives have been blocked as though the old brawler were pulling strings from his hospital bed. Probably that black-bearded hardshell libertarian. When Nick called him he said he didn’t talk to wops and hung up on him. The backhoes are also back on the mine hill. The ghost of you… Probably just residual knock-on effects from his earlier moves, Nick explained. Good man. Though he wasn’t able to prevent Baxter’s release when some lawyer from Randolph Junction filed a complaint about the injuries the preacher sustained during his attempted escape. If it was one. Maury Castle said that Monk Wallace has a different version. “For one thing,” Maury said dryly, “he says Baxter wasn’t never out of his cell.” Well, the mayor’s a notorious racist, hates Italians, is resentful of Nick, is not to be trusted. Nick is working on getting Baxter rearrested, and the rest of that lot as well, has confidence in the chief and young Bonali. He believes Baxter’s followers are getting counsel from someone on the inside; the chief thinks it might be the deputy sheriff, Calvin Smith. As for what’s happening out at the church camp, Ted monitors things fairly well by way of Tommy’s friendship with Jim Elliott’s daughter, who is apparently having an affair with one of the young cultists. She’s a wild kid, but useful. Her mother was pretty wild, too. Frisky, they called her. “Yeah, I don’t know why,” Tommy said last week at supper, “but Sally talks to me. She’s a kind of comedian, and I think those religious crazies provide her material.” Ted has learned about the rape, the schism, the temple construction, the ripple of new prophecies, and it’s how he found out about their plans to dig an empty grave for Giovanni Bruno’s body. Some sort of symbolic burial ceremony later this month or early next. Only one problem: Bruno isn’t dead. He called to check. So he’s thinking about that. Not such a good thing that the Elliott girl and Stacy have become friends, but in a place like this, everyone knows everyone, there are no airtight seals. He found out when Stacy began describing a racy French novel she was reading about a woman’s extramarital affair that she said Sally Elliott had loaned to her. Maybe, describing it, she was trying to excite him. He once read a French novel called Lucky Raoul that was pretty arousing, but he didn’t remember enough of the plot, if it had one, to tell her about it. Those French. The Elliott girl has also visited Irene a couple of times. So has the Bonali girl, of course. Also a friend of Stacy. Smalltown webworks. Enmeshed in them.

What’s that one? Dum-da-da-da-da-dum-dum… For sentimental reasons… Mmm. Think of you every morning, dream of you every night… Moony old bastard. What time is it? Tommy’s later than usual. Maybe the old orange jalopy broke down. But he could at least call, damn it. Lem is taking his time with the convertible repairs and Tommy is clearly frustrated without it. He claims that Concetta’s son was responsible for the damage and he dragged her out to the car and railed at the poor woman until she cried. Have to caution him about that. Can’t afford to lose her. But Tommy had problems with that same boy at the pool, too — a kid they call Moron. Had to call the police. Says there’s a gang of them. It’s probably time to free his son up from that job. Too exposed. Hire him to work for the NOWC committee, maybe. At least until after the Fourth. The boy is full of good ideas. Would add some youthful energy. Tommy has been through a rough patch (past that now, good riddance), but getting his car back should help. Lem promised that it would look like new when he was done with it. Good old Lem. Works harder than anyone in West Condon. Except maybe the poor mechanic with the face full of nose who works for him. As a miner, Lem was a union hothead who railed against the bosses; now he’s a boss himself and is learning it’s not all haves and have-nots. But still he can’t seem to turn a steady penny. Have to ask the bank accountant to look at Lem’s books, such as he keeps, see if he can offer any advice. Probably mostly clients who haven’t paid up. Lem deserves the best and should be one of the town’s success stories. Da-dum-da-dum-da-dum… The very thought of you. Right. And I forget to do…some-thing… Nearly an hour late. Too much. Irresponsible damned kid. Too much like him of late. Well, to hell with him. Eat without him. What? “Phone for you, Mr. Cavanaugh.” Ah. At last. “Where the hell are you?” But it’s not Tommy. It’s the emergency room at the hospital.

III.6 Friday 19 June

One morning in the middle of summer he awakes to find himself in a strange place haunted by an infinite series of bearded men with hair down to their shoulders. The man sitting up in front of him in the blue purgatorial light and throwing off the comforter as he sits up and throws off his comforter is both familiar and unfamiliar, as are all his reiterations echoing out into the immeasurable distance. He thinks of days of fasting in the desert, when such hallucinations would appear commonly in the deranged euphoria of starvation, and full of self-understanding he rises naked to greet the naked phantasms as they rise, half to greet him, erect as he is erect, the other half their backs turned toward him. There is a stirring at his feet and the head of the woman appears as though by a conjuring, also in endless regression at the feet of all the other bearded men, gazing up at their splendid erections. He turns sideways that all his selves might display them in serial profile. “Oh, Wesley!” she says with a sleepy sigh. “You are so beautiful!”

“To whom, my child,” he asks, looking around in consternation, “are you speaking?”

The good news: Wesley has stopped talking to Jesus. The bad news: he is Jesus. Prissy is frightened, not by this sudden rise to the surface of the being within, but by his expressed determination, now that he fully is who he is, to embark upon his worldly mission, which she is certain can only end in catastrophe, like it did the first time. Happily, Christ Jesus has not lost his lusty ardor and has agreed to start the new day by dancing again their “Dance of the Incarnation,” which is of course all about flesh and the spirit. She has dashed away into the house, careful to lock the studio door behind her for fear he might launch his mission without her, to get her Magdalene costume, which is really just a cotton nightshirt the color of a gunny sack but much softer and which she has discreetly ripped here and there to suggest destitution (was she really a rich lady who bankrolled his movement, as Jesus likes to say? no matter, it’s more fun like this) and offer a few provocative glimpses of the poor sinful body within. Unfortunately, she forgot about her husband Ralph and woke him when she rushed, somewhat underdressed, into the bedroom. The ferocity of his scowl as he reared up in alarm was enough to pulverize a person’s spine, as if his rage were a kind of ray gun, and she did in fact go limp for a moment and had the mad desperate thought that she might ask him for his advice, even though he understands nothing at all about what she is presently going through and thinks of her as little better than a whore. Which part she is about to play, one she admittedly finds easier to perform than that of the Virgin Mary.

It is too dangerous to let Wesley out amid the rabble of West Condon, so to provide him some fresh air, over the past few weeks she has been taking him on drives into the country, where in secluded woodsy places they have danced the dances of the peaceable kingdom, the fall of the sparrow (a challenge to her choreographic ingenuity, which she rose to brilliantly, even as, paradoxically, the sparrow fell), and the parables of the hidden treasure, the persistent widow, and the ten virgins, sometimes mixing these things up for variety, which tends to suit Jesus more than it does Wesley, who is something of a stickler for textual exactitude. Too O.T. is what Jesus calls him, if she understands their conversations rightly. Which is difficult, because until now she has only heard Wesley’s half of them and has had to guess the rest. Today her ingenuity will again be tested, for Jesus has already announced his intention to leave the studio and go forth and preach to the unenlightened and it will not be easy to dissuade him. Although both he and Wesley are stubborn, Jesus is the one more receptive to playful and adventurous notions, saying it takes him back to his carefree boyhood days in Galilee, and she believes she will find a way.

Dressed in his scarlet tunic and flowing midnight-blue robes, fashioned for him by the woman from styles of an era not his own, Jesus studies, somewhat in perplexity, the bearded apparition in the mirror that presumably is himself. How is it that he has been reborn in this confused and faithless Presbyterian preacher, whom he has been wearing these past weeks like a thick scratchy overcoat? A wrapping now shed, though traces remain. This is not his nose, for example, and these fancy rags, richer and cleaner smelling than his own ever were, conceal a lack of sinew and a pallor most unlike him. Perhaps that confused faithlessness is the very reason for his having landed here: soft mud for the planting of the seed rather than the thorny fields of orthodoxy, the stony ground of dogmatic certainty, as per his parable, that seed now become purpose incarnate. He strokes his beard. Too much has gone wrong over the centuries; it has been a history of error compounded by more error. Christianity, as he understands it, is a farce, an embarrassment, its professional advocates a pack of fools and charlatans — his current vessel no exception. He knows what he must do. But is this body he is in strong enough to do it? Though his memory is not clear, he feels certain he has attempted this many times through the ages, and clearly he has always failed or things would not be as they are.

The woman returns somewhat breathless. In her pretty rags. She is all his Marys, among them the Magdalene, dear heart, just as he is Jesus. Not exactly the same as the originals, but yet the same; each essence newly embodied. The substance of her “Dance of the Incarnation”: that which has no body, no form or limits, made visible. Tactile. She puts on some music. Bach. A prelude. Meaning this will not be a quick exclamatory frenzy of the Word becoming flesh, but something more structured, more exploratory, explicative. A peroration.

“I have to go,” he says, impatience overtaking him. “I must carry my message to the multitudes.”

“No, you can’t! Not yet! They’re not ready for you, Wesley! It would be a disaster!”

He stares blankly at her.

“Jesus.”

He nods. “But my time is now.”

“No, it is…ah…tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Yes, at least! There are things we must do first!” Her hand is in his tunic. She is already dancing. “And then the temptation of Christ in the wilderness!”

It’s true. He is still getting his new bearings. His reflected chrysalislike pallor above the puddled robes at his feet is an eloquent reminder of the newness of his advent. She is right, as she often is.

Loose gravel rattles under their wheels as they roll along on small country roads, headed for the wilderness. It’s a bumpy untended road, one Priscilla has never been on before, with scrubby ditches on either side, but at least they have left the billboards behind. They are on their way to premiere her new “Dance of the Temptation of Christ,” in which she will play the parts of both the devil (wild, perverse temptation) and the ministering angels (tender, loving embrace), more or less at the same time, since she perceives this as an active battle for Christ’s soul (did the Son of God have a soul? if so, does God?) with the outcome somewhat open-ended, even if that is not one hundred percent theologically correct. After all, they are skipping the forty-day fast as well, so this is only a creative representation of the general principles intended to show that Christ is above such petty squabbles and meant to be adored no matter which way it goes. In fact, since leaving the highway, she has already begun the dance, her bared breasts (whereon changes are taking place) bouncing as the car bounces over old unused railroad tracks. She steals a sidelong glance at Jesus to see if he is watching. He is not. His new state is confounding him. He has been like a troubled spirit these past couple of months, trapped in the shell of a stranger, and she realizes that subconsciously, for reasons mainly of performance values (no one had ever treated her to cunnilingus before, not like Wesley and Jesus with their doubled appetites, and she loves the feel of his beard nesting in her thighs, trimming it daily to her own pleasure), she has been refashioning that shell better to represent the rising spirit within. He has become what he seems to be.

“Stop the car, please.”

“What—?”

“I wish to get out.”

He opens the door while the car is still moving, perhaps trusting those ministering angels more even than did the Christ in the Bible, and she skids to a stop. Ah. She sees now. They are at the backside of the old mine, the tipple and water tower appearing up there through the scraggly trees. He is already clambering down into the ditch and back up the other side. By the time she has switched off the engine, grabbed up the raincoat she always carries in the car, and gone chasing after, he is striding toward the big yellow earth-moving machines parked on that infamous hill. All she can hope is that it is unoccupied and remains so until she can get him down off it. Whatever made her take this road? She hopes God isn’t punishing her for her latest routines. Perhaps (look on the bright side) He is only giving her an unanticipated opportunity to devise a new one. It is a warm day, and even in her dishabille she is sweating by the time she catches up with her erstwhile dance partner and feeling somewhat light-headed. Undivided Christhood has given him new energy, but she is no longer undivided. Does he understand her delicate condition? She has danced her dances, but he has seemed oblivious to their import. Well, it’s something that has never before happened to him — to either of them; one might expect a certain male obtuseness. She must learn to be more direct. Sometimes a simple two-step is more effective than an arabesque.

“But, Wesley,” she gasps when she reaches him. “Jesus, I mean!” She feels like she’s swearing all the time. “This is not a wilderness!” Strange trenches have been dug here on the hilltop, like mass graves lined with chalk, and she stumbles in and out of them, feeling exposed and vulnerable. Can they be seen up here from the church camp? There is a dance she must do, one that will get them back to the car, but she’s too frightened to think how to start it.

“There’s a tree. It will do. Anyway, I was not thinking of a dance exactly. The place inspires me to something more like a sermon.” He spreads his arms like the beckoning Christ on mountaintops and in cemeteries. “Blessed,” he declaims, “are the free in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven!” There is a resonance in his voice she has not heard before, not even when he was in the Presbyterian pulpit. Maybe least of all then. Though of course this is a different he. “Blessed are the pleasure givers for they shall receive pleasure! Blessed are the demoniacs for they shall be invited to the dance!” Prissy realizes he is composing a love song for her and her heart softens and her fear subsides and she draws near. Perhaps this one tree is wilderness enough. They can use one of those backhoes for the pinnacle of the temple, whence Jesus is asked to leap but is restrained by angelic love. Her dance is taking flight. “Blessed are the lewd at heart for they shall see God! Blessed are the wanton for they shall not want! Blessed are the love makers for they shall produce the sons of God!” He knows. She is so thrilled she wants to cry. Her dances have not been in vain. She reaches for him, but he stays her hand. Something is happening down below. An old pickup truck rattles up on the dirt road, spewing black fumes. The doors fly open and a fat lady rolls out with a child in her arms — three other children scramble out of the truck bed. They come running up the hill. “Wait, Jesus! Wait for us!” the woman shouts. Prissy, shrinking behind Jesus, wants to flee, but he smiles down upon them. “The salt of the earth,” he says and extends his arms in greeting.

“Soon as we seen you, Jesus,” says the enormous woman fallen at his feet (“Rise with my blessing, my daughter,” he told her, but she said it didn’t seem right), “we run right over. We didn’t wanta get left behind. It was Mattie spotted you from up on Inspiration Point, the little sweetheart should oughta be made a saint. I couldn’t find my husband, but you can just reach out and bring him here. Isaiah is a righteous man and should not miss out. It wouldn’t be fair. You know, like how you say anyone who follows you has got to throw off everything and live like the birds of the air and the lilies of the field? Well, he done that, Lord, I done that. These four children here they done that. You got six bona fide flat-broke disciples right off, Master, ready to go where you go.” The three little ones have accepted his invitation to rise and are now circling him curiously, eyeing with suspicion the woman huddled behind him. “There was a whole bunch of us waiting for you up here a coupla months ago. We were dead sure you were coming then — we prayed like all blazes — but we musta got the date wrong. Forgive us for that, Lord. Those two college boys try hard, but they don’t quite have it.”

“Remember the parable of the self-righteous train engineer,” he says, “for whom the timetable was his holy bible and as a consequence of his faith in it he ended up in a notorious wreck.”

“I didn’t know you had trains in your time, Lord.”

“My time is all time.”

“Let’s see if it’s really him, Mom,” the older boy says. “I’m gonna fall in the ditch. If he’s really Jesus, he’ll save me.” The boy stands stiffly at the lip and tips over, yowls when he hits bottom. “See? See?” he wails. Then his brother starts to cry too, and that sets off the baby.

“I had no intention of stopping you in your brazen foolishness, young man,” Jesus says, having to shout over the racket. “For as it is said, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God, or me either. Take it as a lesson learned.”

“You heard Jesus, Mattie, get your little heinie out of there and stop your bawling or I’ll box your ears so hard you won’t hear for a week! You too, Markie. Look how you’ve got Johnnie going! Shut up now or we won’t let you fly to Heaven with us!”

“Mom, he’s not wearing any underpants!”

“Luke, you come out from under there. That’s trespassing and you can go to hell for that!”

It is in his tradition to suffer little children, but there would seem to be exceptions. “If Jesus is God, Mom, shouldn’t he have the biggest one?”

“Luke, I ain’t telling you one more time! We been waiting all our life to get raptured, praying so hard our knees is half ruint, and I ain’t gonna let you go and spoil it!” She drops the squalling baby and bounds forward on all fours, reaches under, and drags the girl out — dirty pink-slippered foot first — and then she has to grab the one called Markie, who wants his turn, and that one starts up again. The little girl hangs on to his ankles with both hands as her mother pulls and were it not for the woman behind him, he would be taking what in this unholy age in which he has landed is called a pratfall; he knows such things because he is all-knowing, but it’s true, he has been slow yet again to appreciate the risks in mixing with the salt of the earth. “Forgive her her trespasses, Lord. She’s a bit wild but — let go, Luke! — she was born that way, so it must be God’s will.” She pries the child’s fingers away and he is free at last, though he has lost his sandal.

“I think it’s curtain time,” the woman behind his shoulder whispers anxiously.

“So, c’mon. Let’s get going, Lord. Can’t hardly wait to get there. Some folks didn’t expect you until after the tribulation began, but I was always a pre-trib dispensationalist, except sometimes when it seemed like the tribulation had already started up, and then I was more like a mid-trib believer. But I was never a post-trib believer — you can ask anyone. I always said it would be like this. And I know everything about the four horsemen and the seven seals and seven trumpets and seven bowls and the abomination of desolation. Just ask me. Those other sinners back there, they didn’t believe me when I hollered out you were over here, so it looks like we’re all the holy remnant you got left.”

“The perfect candidates, my daughter, given the fusty nature of the Heavenly Kingdom, so called,” he says, speaking inside her own metaphors. The unmaking of those metaphors is at the very heart of his new mission. But they can be undone, he knows in his omniscience, only from within. “It would be interesting to see what your daughter made of the angels if she got inside their choir robes. But I’m afraid the time is not now. There is more yet to happen.” He would like now to simply fly away, as the song goes, to vanish suddenly and reappear elsewhere — in the studio, for example — but he has received no favors from above nor does he expect any. Instead, they will have to step behind the backhoes as though into the wings and slip away down the hill behind them. “I must leave you now. But I shall return after a certain time. You must deliver that message to your fellow believers. Go forth, my daughter, and prophesy. Go! Go with my blessing!” It’s a hard pitch and a tough house, but it works. He and the woman make their exit when all their backs are turned so that when they look back from the truck, they will be gone as if they never were.

The truth is, most of Priscilla’s dances are improvisations, their design appreciated only after they have been performed. Because that’s what life is. You visit your minister in his office for counseling and the next thing you’re dancing the Second Coming with Christ Jesus, and suddenly a little self-enclosed pirouette en dedans becomes a grand jeté. You have to stay fit and supple and open to the unexpected. They haven’t got around to the temptation of Christ today as they’d intended, and now they’ll just have to skip past that. Her plan for the morrow, has been all week, is to create an erotic celebration of the summer solstice (the summer solstice is erotic), a “Dance of the Wedding of Heaven and Earth,” with its story of the victory of sun and light over darkness and death while haunted by the simultaneous birth of the Lord of Darkness, and not coincidentally Jesus’ cousin John, followed by the descent toward the winter solstice. At which time her own child is due — a little lord of light — and everything starts up all over again. All this she has meant to script in, while turning the studio into a kind of symbolic forest, celebrating the unconscious, mother womb of dance itself, with Wesley and Jesus each playing their parts, their art their very artlessness. But now with the events of the day, she is having to make adjustments. What they do tonight will be a kind of rehearsal for tomorrow, but she will call it the “Dance of the Transfiguration” in recognition of Jesus’ rise to the surface (but where did Wesley go? she has to admit she already misses him, the dear befuddled man), focusing on the element of radiance—“And his face did shine as the sun” is the text she has chosen — something transfiguration shares with the fires and fairy dances of midsummer. They will anoint their bodies with fragrant oils and use special gels on the spots and dance, after adagio preparations, to the summer storm of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. She hopes only that she’s up for it. The day has taken something out of her.

Before returning to the studio they stopped at the shopping center on the highway to pick up some chop suey, Jesus complaining that he’s had enough carryout pizza for an eternity — why can’t those damned Romans leave him alone? She has never mastered the Dance of the Culinary Artist unfortunately, leaving most of that up to Ralph; she’s too easily distracted, never getting past the burnt frying pan jig. Her contributions to the church Christmas bake sales have always been packaged doughnuts topped with pancake syrup and sprinkled with red and green colored sugar. And there aren’t many carryout choices in West Condon; in fact, there’s only one. They weren’t dressed for a shopping trip, but she pulled on her car raincoat and dashed in to place their order, Jesus waiting back in the parking lot, shouting after her to ask for extra chow mein noodles. When she returned to the car he was gone. Can’t leave him alone for a minute. She found him preaching to some lounging beer-drinking teenagers who laughed and made rude remarks as she led him away, but they can go to hell and almost certainly will.

She finds her appetite has vanished, the very smell of the chop suey making her somewhat nauseous, but nothing wasted, Jesus is ravished and eats both portions himself. The day’s adventures have enlivened him. She had hoped he might be ready to go into retreat for a while, forty days and forty nights, for example, but he is already making big plans, reminding her that she told him his time is tomorrow. I think I was mistaken, she said, but he has paid no heed. Shedding Wesley has given him a new boldness; he is brusquer, more impatient, more demanding, but also more exciting, and a more eager and appreciative dance partner. Wesley was always polite and never took her for granted, but because of his natural diffidence, he often had to be coaxed into the more experimental aspects of the dance, Jesus urging him on from within. Now Wesley is gone as if molted (she has a serpent in her transfiguration dance, too, it’s one of her best movements, and it tumbles neatly into the succulent uroboros position), and the dances are freer and more direct, but she will miss the playful complexities of their old ménage à trois. Jesus, spooning up the last of the chop suey, announces that tomorrow they will revisit Main Street and pass through city hall and walk the various neighborhoods, and he will bring his message to the swimming pool and playing fields and address the foursomes at the country club, and on Sunday they will visit all the churches, that the preachers and their flocks might look directly upon the subject of their hypocritical prattle. Dear Christ, she wonders with a shudder, how will I get through all that?

He looks up and grins around a mouthful of crunchy chow mein noodles, rice and bean sprouts ornamenting his beard, and asks: “Were you speaking to me, dear lady?”

“Oh dear. Was I speaking out loud? I am so confused and exhausted. And I think I may be about to throw up.”

When the woman described her “Dance of the Incarnation” this morning as one of her most abstract (something is happening you can’t quite see) and least abstract (flesh is flesh), she was closer to the mark than she knew, for this paradoxical coincidence of opposites is the very essence of the Incarnation, a moment when the unimaginable ineffable supposedly coincides with its material expression. Videlicet, yours truly — he smiles at himself in a mirror and picks some grains of rice out of his beard. The creator identifies with his creation even as he simultaneously transcends all creation, becoming both part and whole at the same time, a mathematical conundrum. Whimsical amusements of the millennia of theological charlatans who have imbedded themselves in this preacher whose poor carapace he occupies, leaving him with this riddling residue. They also came up with the notion of learned ignorance, which is a kind of unlearning, and there is something to be said for it, if taken seriously and starting with that ruinously falsified history which is the Bible.

Can the Son of God and/or the Son of Man (another teasing conundrum) feel guilt? Yes, he can and does. The bizarrely fanciful apocalyptic delusions suffered by those no doubt well-intentioned but hopelessly benighted followers of his over in the church camp and indeed around the world are largely his own contribution to world history. Such vengeful bloodthirsty ideas had been around for a good while before he came along, but he made them his own, and because of his rhetorical and teacherly talents (yes, he had a certain charisma, he acknowledges, posing magisterially before the mirror, then softening his gaze to a loving, protective and understanding one and reaching out with open hands) and not least his exemplary intransigence, he got others around him to buy in to his claim that the much-prophesied establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth was not only imminent but had already begun to happen and he was the guy with the inside track. Many alive here will see the day and will not have to die, he’d said. Follow me and you’ll make the cut. Where did he get such megalomaniacal ideas? Well, they were in the air, but mainly it was the Baptist, wrongly said to be his cousin, who led him to it. Seduced him with his crazed evangel. Gave him the tools, the lingo, sent him off to round up a gang of his own. They were harsh times. He was pretty desperate. Everyone was desperate. If life were to be bearable, something had to happen. It did, but not what he’d foretold. No matter, people will believe anything. Enter mad Paul, the unscrupulous evangelist scribblers, the Patmos wild man, the remote muddle-headed church fathers (so called) plus a few ruthless tyrants and you’ve got a powerhouse world religion. And then down through the centuries: generations of other desperate people like those church campers out there, borrowing the spiel for equally fatuous end-times reruns of their own. All his fault.

The truth is you’re a fraud.

I know it, but as my jailer once asked, or is said to have asked: What is truth? Anyway, if I’m a fraud, then, as all those coincidence-of-opposites philosophasters would say, I am therefore all the more genuine.

At least you never said anything about your own Second Coming.

Never occurred to me. Somebody else thought up that—“Wait a minute. Who is this?”

After her thin retch (nothing since breakfast, really), Prissy gargles and rinses and, aware that she may have left the studio door unlocked, hastens back, grabbing up Ralph’s brandy bottle on the way and getting hit by his rage gun again. She stumbles (Ralph has been so surly of late; maybe it was a mistake to repaint the back window where he had scratched the peephole), picks herself up and hurries on, fearful Jesus might be on the loose again. He is not. He is standing before the mirror, hands on hips, looking put off with himself. “Why?” he asks, and answers himself: “Because you’re too slow. That’s why.”

“No, no,” she gasps, “I came back as quickly as I could!”

“I have a mission to fulfill! It is time for the Lord to act! If I’d waited for you, we’d be stuck in here until next Christmas!”

“Christmas?” She’s confused. What is he talking about? “That’s the other end of the year.”

“Exactly.” His reflection looks up at her, seeing her there as if for the first time. “Ah. Are you still here?”

“Who,” she asks in a voice she almost cannot hear herself, “were you talking to?”

He shrugs, glares at himself. “Shut up,” he says. “I’ll handle this.”

“I only meant—”

“I wasn’t talking to you.”

“Are you…are you still Jesus?”

“Of course I am,” he snaps. “Who else would I be?” He is glaring at her as he was glaring at himself.

“But then…you were…is it Wesley?”

“Maybe.” He belches, shrugs. “Probably it’s just the chop suey.”

Prissy feels a great sense of relief and joy. Her abdominal muscles relax and she allows the changes taking place there to proceed. They are a family again.

III.7 Saturday 20 June

Midsummer at cock-crow. The day that the earth hesitates in its nervous wobble, begins to tilt the other way again. The day, as they say, that the sun stands still. For lovers of the night it is the worst time of year, for there is so little of it. Few are up to greet so untimely a dawn. The night-duty police officer is. End of Bo’s working day. Dee and Monk and Louie will be here soon, and he’ll be able to go home and get some Z-time, Bo Bosticker’s Zs being a town legend. He has been sleeping beside the phone all night, but that doesn’t count. The garage owner Lem Filbert is another, greeting the rising sun fiercely, angrily, tools in hand, cursing his lazy mechanic in the same manner that he greets, at more or less the same hour, the midwinter dark. He is working on the Cavanaugh kid’s topless fire-engine red fuck-machine, eager to get it done not only because the boy has been badgering him, but because he’ll pay his bill when the job’s complete, as too damned few in this town do. Guido Mello puts up with a lot of shit working for Filbert, including ten-hour shifts, but he’s an old union man from his coalmining days and he won’t start until his shift starts at 7:30, and Filbert, an ex-miner himself, has to respect that, no matter how it pisses him off. Not that Guido can sleep in; his kids wake him as kids do parents all over town and countryside, up with the sun, the little heathens, then cranky all day. And if it’s not the kids, it’s the TV, the telephone, alarm clocks, flushing toilets, banging doors, or just the light pressing in through drawn shades. For prodigal son Georgie Lucci, emerging unwillingly from a sick stupor on the firehouse floor (didn’t quite make it to the mattress), it’s his hangover that forces him into some kind of consciousness, or else its contrary. For Sheriff Tub Puller it’s a nagging toothache, for Hovis out at the church camp his “rheumatiz,” for Lucy Smith the need to fix breakfast for her early-rising husband Calvin and her squabbling offspring. Calvin is headed to the roadside Baxter encampment this morning ahead of his deputy sheriff duties to see how poor Abner is getting on and to let him know that the police officer who beat him up has been suspended. She has never seen Calvin so mad about something. The banker’s wife, having risen before her husband and snuck off to the bathroom on her own, is not sure now she can make it back. Maybe she can just sit here until the home care nurse turns up. She crosses herself, hoping that, under the circumstances, it is not disrespectful. The ex-coalminer Salvatore Ferrero is awakened just as in the old days by what his mammina called il canto del gallo. Some of his neighbors are probably awakened by it, too, less nostalgically. They objected bluntly—“No fucking chickens, Sal!”—when he set up his backyard coops a few years ago to help his family through the rough times after the mine closing, but he has provided each of them with the occasional chicken and sack of eggs and they have grown accustomed to the reek. A rooster is crowing at the Brunist Wilderness Camp, too, displacing the hoots of the resident owls on this day that somewhere in the world is the Day of the Owl and thought of as somewhat sinister. The camp chickens are cared for by Hunk Rumpel and Wanda Cravens, layers mostly for the communal breakfasts, though the cull of cocks and unproductive hens brings meat to the table, too. The little ones always love to watch Hunk kill chickens, which he does by grabbing their heads and whipping them round and round in a great flutter of feathers until the necks snap off and the headless birds flop and stagger comically about the chicken yard. No one likes to pluck the things, though; the task in rough sketch usually falls to Wanda, designated chief chicken plucker, with Ludie Belle Shawcross and the other ladies cleaning up after her. The coops are kept downwind of the trailer park, out in what used to be deep left field of the old softball field, far enough away not to be a nuisance unless there’s an unexpected easterly, but near enough to hear the cock’s morning fanfare.

The bumptious crowing of the rooster was the first thing camp director Debra Edwards had heard as she slipped out of her cabin and set off on her sacramental morning trek, though as she stepped deeper into the woods it faded away, overtaken by the noisy morning chatter of her beloved birds overhead. In spite of everything that has happened, Debra has done her best to keep her chin up and adhere to her daily routines. She has tended her garden daily, weather permitting, harvesting fresh fruit and vegetables for the supper table; has assisted Ludie Belle and the other women in the kitchen and Clara and the two boys in the church office; has policed the entire campgrounds at least once a week; and has — with the help of Corinne Appleby, who brings fresh beeswax to the task — kept the woodwork and furniture in the Meeting Hall polished, all the while caring daily for Colin and their own cabin home. The Blaurock children massacred her herb and flower garden out front, playing some sort of apocalypse game in which her flowers were the condemned sinners, but she has been able to rescue the hardier plants and continues to provide fresh herbs for their daily meals. The cabin is fragrant with them today, for last night she gathered herbs and flowers from her garden and from the woods and hung them on the doors and windows and over the beds, something her Swedish grandmother used to do at Midsummer — for protection, as she said, and Debra so needs protection. She has taken comfort in the camp’s dependence on her and the gratitude of all her friends here; she has also cried a lot. She is crying now. It’s not just the dead bird, it’s everything. She now avoids what was once her secret corner of the camp, but when she can, she still communes with God in her own special way each morning at daybreak, which up to today has been earlier and earlier every day. No matter. She hardly sleeps at all anyway, even when taking the little pills the camp nurse brings her in her shiny black bag. Debra used to pray for sleep; now she only prays she not be sent to prison, leaving Colin on his own.

This morning she has followed No-Name Creek downstream to an untraveled place halfway toward the beehives, and after spraying her under parts against mosquitoes, has squatted beside the creek at the foot of an old wooden footbridge canopied by small trees, out of sight from Inspiration Point, where Ben Wosznik often goes for his morning prayers, her skirt tucked up around her waist, staring in grief through her tears at the body of the little gray phoebe, no doubt another victim of the Blaurock children’s BB gun. Bernice insists she has seen fairies down here at dusk, whispering to each other amid the fireflies and dragonflies and clouds of gnats, and this little phoebe was probably one of them. Do fairies live forever, or are they mere will o’ the wisps, released like mayflies to dance one night and die? And if so, is one night, if beautiful, enough? Should they be grateful? The Blaurocks were here yesterday. Each Friday they turn up just before lunchtime, and each Friday Mrs. Blaurock is told not to come back, but she always does. It is hard to refuse such a big intimidating woman. And her silent, unsmiling husband also seems somewhat ominous. Yesterday, the oldest boy, Mattie, was shooting at birds with a BB gun and Debra took it away from him and scolded him, but his mother grabbed it roughly out of her hands, giving her a push that backed her right up against a cabin wall, and handed it back to the boy, saying she was interfering with his Second Amendment rights. He has no right to shoot my birds! she screamed, fearing she was about to break into hysterical sobs again, but Hunk Rumpel collared Mattie as he ran past, took the gun away, and snapped it in two over his knee. The children started to protest, but Hunk took one step toward them, the folded gun bits in one fist, and they scampered off. Later, they were up on the Point, throwing stones down at everybody in spite. Debra always longed for children of her own, but what if she’d got some like those? Well, the one she has is not all that easy either. She stifles her sobs, wiping her eyes and nose on her skirt hem. Colin, who collapsed after being up half the night from a nightmare about people walking around without any skin on, will be waking again soon and he will need her. Amen, she whispers, and letting her skirt fall, rises to her day.

Bernice Filbert, fairy watcher (they are so common, she doesn’t know why everyone doesn’t see them), has risen at dawn to prepare a lunch for her brother-in-law, just as she rose each dawn to fill her coalminer husband’s lunch pail until that day the mine blew up, taking away a man she never knew beyond his mealtime druthers nor really wished to know. Now, with Lem out of the house, she is plucking her eyebrows and considering the expression she will draw there for the day, a day known for the otherworldly and the unexpected. Open-eyed curiosity perhaps, one brow arched slightly higher than the other, both slightly lengthened to suggest spiritual composure and a readiness to accept whatever might come her way. From Mr. Suggs’ viewpoint: a combination of optimism and professional concern. Bernice has kept her eyebrows plucked since she was a young girl, just like her mother. “You ever seen any of them ladies in the Bible with hairy eyebrows?” her mother would demand, pushing Bernice’s face into the Illustrated Bible pages. “It ain’t lady-like!” And it was true — they did all seem drawn or painted on. Her mother scolded Bernice for everything from uncombed hair to scuffed shoes and just about all between (but not the personal parts, her mother was fiercely silent on the matter, and once, without any explanation, slapped her for flowering her dress before Bernice understood what was happening). But she scolded everyone, it was her mother’s way. She was a permanently dissatisfied woman, as she herself often said. Start by thinking the worst, she would say, and you’re already halfway there. By studying the women in the Bible pictures, Bernice also learned how to keep her hair braided and pinned up under scarves and shawls and how to stand in company and tilt her head just so in conversation and how to make some of the dresses the ladies wore. Today she has chosen a modest but becoming dress of the sort young Esther might wear at the well, though she is thinking more about Queen Esther and how through wile and diplomacy she saved her people, so she has added a lightweight shawl made of crocheted doilies dyed golden and a necklace of colored beads, which, for all others know, might be precious gems.

Her daddy was a miner, nicer than her mother, but easily bullied like Mary’s Joseph was, and not much help when Bernice was being scolded. When he died of the black lung, her mother went to live with her mother, a crotchety old thing even bossier than she was, but by then Bernice was already a licensed practical nurse and married to Tuck Filbert, so she stayed here in West Condon. Tuck was an older fellow who knew her daddy in the mine and always admired the contents of his lunch bucket. She was well past the marrying age and no one else was interested when her daddy, who was already ill with the black lung, suggested it, so without much ado it happened, and there she was, like Ruth and Esther and so many ladies in the Bible, the young bride of an old man, arranged by another old man. Tuck did his duty by her a time or two, but he wasn’t enjoying it and neither was she, so they stopped it, and that was it, and it was enough. Tuck was not much of a husband or even a friend, but leastways he never took hickory to her as she had feared, being forewarned, though she has sometimes said he did, speaking in parables as she often does, for even if he never actually hit her, all those Filberts do lash about fiercely with the tongue, and enough to draw blood. At least to the cheeks.

Her dowry was the wardrobe of Tuck’s mother — who had gotten the flu one winter and passed away without anyone noticing until it was Sunday dinner time — together with a lot of old curtains, table cloths, and other frills the Filbert men had no use for. Bernice adapted all these things to her Illustrated Bible styles, creating interesting collars and puff sleeves and velveteen bodices made out of old pillows. She lengthened the skirts with decorative borders and used beaded cloth belts high up under the breasts with corset-like laces up the front of some of them, and added sashes and brass bracelets and head scarves and an abundance of simple flowing shawls and sashes, often cut from old bedsheets and dyed in primary colors. Her patent leather shoulder bag doesn’t exactly fit, but she needs it in her career, just as she now needs her reading spectacles, which dangle on a plastic chain — an accessory Rachel and Ruth probably did without; at least, it’s something you don’t see in the pictures. Because sandals are not appreciated in this part of the world, she has mostly worn high-top nurses’ shoes, though last week she found a pair of sandals in Mr. Osborne’s shoe store and he was so surprised to see them there he gave them to her for a quarter each. She has been trying them out from time to time, watching the reactions of others. Won’t do when winter comes, of course; in the Bible, it’s always summer.

“So, whatcha reckon, old fella? Am I justified? Ain’t we taught to hate evil and cleanse the world of it and ain’t them biker boys worse’n devils?” In the past, when troubled, Ben Wosznik always talked things out with Rocky, and sitting alongside the dog’s grave on the backside of the mine hill, having hiked over here from the camp as the midsummer dawn opened up the sky, he is doing so now, his dog as good a listener dead as he was alive. Though he misses the reassurance of Rocky’s wagging tail. I love you, it had said. You are right. You are always right. But is he? He’s not sure. Hating is one thing, already a sin, but acting on that hate? Doing something that can’t be taken back? Even if it feels like a holy thing to do? “Catholic folks has a halfway place t’go, Rocky. Maybe they’ll let us in and you’n me’ll meet up there.” He gazes affectionately at the grave and then notices that the small wooden cross he carved for it is standing there all right, but at the foot instead of the head, where he put it. And sideways. He gazes off past the big earth-moving machines (they went away for a day and came back again; old man Suggs must be getting better) toward the old tipple and mine buildings, thinking about this, and sees something he hasn’t noticed before. A bone. They ate a lot of chicken up here, but that’s not a chicken bone. His heart sinks. He knows he is going to have to open up the grave. He might be able to claw it away with his fingers, but if Rocky’s still down there, it’s not really something he wants to get his hands into. He wanders over to the mine buildings to see what he can find and under the tipple, where the old rusty railroad tracks pass through, leaning up against a timber, he comes upon a shovel. New one, still shiny. Like the ones he bought for the camp. He already knows what he is going to find.

“Yo, wake up, little Suzie. Let’s think about livin’…”

“I am awake, Duke. And already thinking. You reckon we could maybe pay a visit to the old Bruno house?”

“Now that’s a early mornin’ cogitation t’stir the dust in the attic, Patti Jo. What’s sparked it up?”

“A dream I just woked up from. Or else I woked up first and then I had the dream. It was about playing with Marcella in her bedroom, like we used to do. And there was something she couldn’t find. She wants me to go look for it.”

“Well, bless her little phantom heart, what was it?”

“I don’t know. Just something. I guess I’ll know when I get there. Since your fire chief friend told you where she was buried, it just seems something I gotta do. We can take it and put it on her grave.”

“But didn’t you tell me that Bruno place was fenced off?”

“Yes, but I don’t think the fence is in very good shape. You can see people have been in there, messing around, wrecking stuff.”

“So, a out’n-out burgle, y’mean. You kin tell what day a the year it is by the craziness it sets off. My ma useta keep me home such days. Said it was the day of the swamp demons. But, heck, why not? Sonuvagun, sounds like fun, so long’s nobody don’t start shootin’ at us. Tonight though’s our big night. The live recordin’ session. Don’t wanta die before we’ve played this ballgame to the last out.”

“I know. Maybe afterwards, if we’re on a high and feel like it. Or after Franny Baxter’s wedding tomorrow. We still gotta choose our songs for that, too. Whaddaya think? ‘A Stranger in My Arms’?”

“I was figgerin’ on ‘You Ain’t Nuthin but a Houn’ Dog.’”

“That should do it. Or how about ‘Face on the Barroom Floor’?”

“‘Sixteen Tons’?”

“Oh my! You do know how to hurt a girl. But we shouldn’t make fun, I guess. Not everybody’s so lucky as you and me. You know, I do admire this pretty thing of yours, Duke. It has always stood me in good stead, as you might say, reliable as the old Orange Blossom Special and quite a ticket when it gets up a head of steam. But it’s got appeal when it’s soft like this, too. Like a hank of warm rope.”

“Won’t stay thataway, you keep tryin’ t’knot it.”

“Mmm, yeah, look a-yonder comin’. Whoo-whoo! Up you go! The rush of the mighty engine! These eggs are something, too. Look at ’em! Never seen any hung so low and mighty.”

“Don’t know why them things should hang at all; never did find a pair a pants t’hold ’em right.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t ought to wear pants, honey. Just let ’em swing free like those Scottish mountain fellas do.”

“Well, that’s okay, I reckon, providin’ it ain’t freezin’ out nor not mosquita season. But awright, all aboard, little darlin’. Ready t’git rollin’ down the line. You tell your friend t’close her eyes now…”

Bride-to-be Franny Baxter has asked Duke and Patti Jo to sing “My Happiness” at her wedding tomorrow because it best describes the mood she’s in, except for the lines in it about evening shadows make me blue, for her lover is lying at her side and she is not blue at all. “Whether skies are gray or blue, any place on earth will do, just as long as I’m with you,” that’s her happiness, a happiness she never thought would be hers. She was unlucky to be born a Baxter, unlucky to be fat and homely and redheaded and kept ignorant all her life, unlucky to grow up with God against her, humiliating her and whipping her for reasons she could never understand except maybe she had just been born bad and because she was a she. For a long time Franny did not think of it as suffering because it was all she knew, but you have to be as mental as her sister to stay dumb forever. And now her miserable Baxter life is over. Though she didn’t think so at the time, coming back here to West Condon was the luckiest thing that ever happened to her. She doesn’t believe in fate, doesn’t believe in anything, but she almost could, so perfect has everything worked out. “I never knowed I could ever be so happy.”

“Me neither, sweetie,” says Tessie Lawson, and she squeezes where she has her hand. “Now all we need is a baby. Let’s see if we cain’t make us one. Startin’ tonight after the stag party. I’ll help out.”

The Honey Moon — the full moon of midsummer — has just begun to wane and is still plainly visible in the early morning sky. Will they see another? the Applebys ask themselves on their way to their hives. Whether they do or not, Cecil says, he is certain the bees will; for what would the Heavenly Kingdom be without honey? Isn’t that the Gospel promise: milk and honey? “I wonder,” Corinne wonders, “if they will still have their stingers there?” It is the time of year when the hives are rich to overflowing, which is how the moon got its name. The camp table can use only a small portion of the bounty, so they sell the excess at local markets, tithing to the camp from the profits. Their hand-lettered labels this year say “Wilderness Camp Honey,” and there is a simple line drawing of a cross in a circle. Cecil’s artwork. Corinne has added her usual line from Proverbs: “Eat thou honey, because it is good; and the honeycomb, which is sweet to thy taste.” On their way to the hives, holding hands as they often do, they come upon Mrs. Edwards, looking somewhat woebegone, poor thing, though she greets them cheerfully and they wish her God’s blessings. When she has passed, Cecil remarks on her devotion to the camp and to the Brunist faith and the price she is paying for that. “Not all devotion is holy,” Corinne says mysteriously.

For an interpreter of dreams to wake from a dream in which she is dreaming of the present reality — that her children are playing on the floor of their house trailer, building a toy church camp with blocks and sticks and scraps of paper and cardboard, and that her husband is brushing his teeth in the shower room, as each are — means that the interpreter’s mind is rejecting the efficacy of symbols and her powers of analysis are fading. As she rises and pulls on her bathrobe and pads to the kitchenette to start breakfast, she realizes she has been dreaming about rising and donning a bathrobe and reaching for the skillet that she is now reaching for. It’s as if she were still in the dream, though she knows she is not. It does, however, make her feel like she is living simultaneously within two realities, which are nevertheless the same in all respects except that they exist in two different places — one inner, one outer — and are running at slightly different speeds, neither more real than the other. This is not like double vision (she has only one eye, after all) but more like a single vision with two surfaces. And Glenda Oakes knows that she will be living in these paired realities all day, the longest and most testing of the year.

Welford emerges from the bathroom in his shorts and undershirt with a good-morning smile on his face, humming an old church tune, one learned in childhood, and she finds herself thinking about it as if it too were from a dream and not really happening. An omen of some sort… And He walks with me, and He talks with me… Perhaps it will not be a good day. But then, few are.

Stacy Ryder does not confuse dreams with reality any more than she confuses Alaskan goldmine stock with blue chips. Nevertheless, she is aware that dreams can leak into the real world and warp it the way that intangibles can infect the balance sheet, color investment. God is such a dream; a nightmare, really, an inherited liability from the infantile origins of the race. But love, too? A culturally sanctioned delusion layering raw unlovable instinct? Reason says it may be so, but maybe reason is the real dream stuff, the vaporous detritus of instinct no less than love is and of less intrinsic value. Such are her thoughts as she awakes alone on a sunny Saturday morning in the tower in which she is kept by love. Her dream was about loneliness, as is her waking. After the disruptions of the past two days, they will at last be together again tonight, though she knows her lover’s presence, even here in this bed, will not completely take the loneliness away. In anticipation of his imminent absence, it may even make it worse, though there are moments — of tenderness, of sexual union — when love’s illusions seem almost like realities, moments when time pauses, and the loneliness evaporates. Such a state, only partly made of orgasm but rarely without it, is what she strives for. Except for these ephemeral moments of ecstatic communion, however, love and the objects of love do not quite coincide but exist only as tantalizing possibilities. This, roughly, is her theology.

She is grateful that, in spite of everything, he kept his Thursday date. Even if only for an hour. He was in need of comfort, and though she felt the abyss between them (so much of his life she can never share), this was good, too, as he unburdened himself of his sorrow and fury, while, straddling his chest, she kneaded his brow and temples. The lovemaking that followed was more of consoling empathy than of passion, but sweet in its aching intensity, and she felt blissfully at one with her circumstances. Though her lover lives a life from which she is largely excluded — their own love less like life than theater, this generic motel room its principal stage, they two gifted strangers cast for parts in a show destined only for a short but brilliant run — she has grown accustomed to it and sometimes wonders if entering into his larger life would deepen their love or end it. If love is a fantasy, better that it be played out in fairytale spaces in allotted patches of time apart from time.

That Thursday morning had begun alarmingly. Her boss and lover had met her young friend Angela at the bank door, and handing her a final check, had brusquely dismissed her. Only later, called in for a brief “business meeting,” did Stacy learn why. “The doctor said he’d only seen nasal trauma that serious after car wrecks, and then the vic tims were usually dead.” Angela’s vengeful brother Charlie. Wearing brass knuckles. “My son said the sonuvabitch was in his police uniform, fully armed, driving the squad car.” He was soon on the phone to his lawyer, the police department, the mayor, pounding his fist on his desk as he spoke to them. His rage was understandable, but it unsettled her for the rest of the day, and only when he embraced her that evening and whispered that he loved her and needed her did her anxieties begin to fade.

He has much to do today, but will still join her for dinner. Meanwhile, after she has showered and breakfasted, perhaps she will drive over to that pretty river town on the bluff, where he took her two months ago and where he said he loved her and she said the like. A day of deepening mutual investment. A mortgaging of the heart. Angela will be free today, poor girl, and were things not as they are, she might ask her along for company. Angela could probably use a friend. Not to be, though. Angela gave all of herself, but never freely. Possession: the dark side of love.

She hates him. She loves him. She wanted to kill him, but she’s so very sorry about what her brother has done. She wishes she could care for him, show him the depth of her love: that he could say such things and she could still forgive him in the spirit of her religion and of the Holy Mother, universal emblem of compassion, and could love him, even with his face such an ugly mess, and sacrifice herself for him. “You make me want to die, Tommy,” she told him on the phone, “but I’ll live for the sake of our baby.” Her body under the thin white sheet does indeed look somewhat like a corpse in its winding cloth. If Tommy were to come in and see her, lying lifeless, it would break his heart. And then there suddenly appeared before me… Imagining him there at the foot of the bed, gazing down upon her, Angela V’s her legs and smoothes the sheet down around her body that this last tragic sight of her might be seared into his memory. As she closes her eyes, she can see his brows drawing together in that agonized expression that overtakes him at the moment of climax, the deep sigh of contentment he always releases replaced now by a groan of sorrow and remorse, and she presses the sheet into her crack with one finger to remind him of what he is missing and will now miss forever. He will never find anyone like her again. So young. So purely in love. So passionate and giving. So beautiful. That stupid Wetherwax twit doesn’t even come close.

Angela Bonali is not one to lie abed, yet she cannot bring herself to rise and face the long empty day. By this time on a Saturday morning she would be up and bathed and preparing herself for her job at the bank, drying and arranging her hair, applying blush, mascara, eyeliner, lipstick, dressing herself with that devotional care for which she is known. Her father (she can hear him now, up bumbling about) opposes her six-day work week, saying she is being exploited, but she loves the bank, would happily work there all her waking hours and for half the money. So different from the bitter prison of this dilapidated house, with its old man smells and bad plumbing and flaking yellow paint and muddy yard. Like a scabby old woman with her makeup cracking. In dirty underwear. She has often imagined Tommy in his father’s office in the sort of tailored suits his father wears, she with an office of her own but mostly out on the bank floor, greeting customers and chatting with the tellers, making it such a happy place that it could not help but prosper and earn her husband’s loving gratitude, and her father-in-law’s too, if he is still with them and has not died of grief or retired to a golf course in some warmer place where they can visit him with the children at Christmastime.

Christmas makes her think of snow, so she opens the diary she keeps by her bed to revisit their night at the ice plant in April during the freak snowstorm. “I lay panting, my chest heaving, gasping in sweet agony,” she wrote then. It was one of the most beautiful nights of her life. How his hands searched out every inch of her. It was a kind of delirium that sometimes overtakes her again, just thinking about it. “Over and over, my body melted against his in golden waves of passion and love and the world was filled with him!” It was, she was. She remembers the pure clean whiteness of the snow which fell all around them as they lay there in his mother’s station wagon, and which she felt as a kind of divine purification, erasing the black sins of her Dark Ages, which were not sins against God or the Church so much as sins against herself. A pitiless demeaning of her own body, her own precious soul. When she remarked on the beauty of the snow, Tommy said, “Yes, but so short-lived.” She has written that in her diary, because though it was not something she wanted to hear, she is always honest with herself. At least he didn’t say it would soon get dirty. Which in turn reminds her of the Polaroid photo she keeps tucked in the back of the diary. Though they tore up and burned all the photos they took together (or at least most of them; Tommy has done a very naughty thing, unless he was just teasing), this is one she took of him while he was sleeping, stretched out on top of the motel bed, his feet dangling out over the foot, so tall is he, his delicious manliness fallen languidly between his open legs on its lumpy little pillow and nuzzled against one lean muscular thigh. The finger of God. Her only regret is that she did not find some way to get herself in the picture. When she confessed all this to Father Baglione, she did not tell him she kept the photo. She kisses it, hoping Tommy feels a certain mysterious tingle of desire down there as she does so, and tucks it back in its hiding place.

Tommy left her once when she was young and vulnerable and then returned to her, unable to resist the woman she had become. He will return to her again; she has to believe that. Her news frightened him, but he has a noble heart and he loves her, he has said so over and over; he will do what’s right, and when he sees his son — she has already decided it will be a boy — he will be proud and will love her even more deeply than before. Perhaps she was premature in telling him, but she was afraid he was about to leave her, and she didn’t dare to wait. If she is wrong (she is not, she knows, a woman’s body tells her such things), she will say it was a miscarriage, and she will cry over the terrible loss and he will pity her and hold her close and beg for her forgiveness. And she will grant it. Pressing her hand against her belly, she can just feel the little heartbeat.

The first sinner to visit his confessional this morning, the Reverend Father Battista Baglione knows, kneeling before a crucifix for his morning prayers, will be, as always, the widow Signora Abruzzi. It is she who, seemingly sleepless, brings him at dawn and dusk each day the news of the neighborhood in the form of her confessed sins of ira, invidia, and calumnia. An incurable and cruel gossip. Not always reliable, but always interesting. What his mama used to call una tremenda pettegola. Last night it was mostly about the Vincenzo Bonali family, what is left of it, and their current catastrophes, including violence, lost employment, and mortgage foreclosure caused apparently by the end of the shameful affair between the daughter and the banker’s son — the sordid details of which are all too familiar to him. A child utterly lost to the sins of the flesh but whose heart still belongs to the Church. The widow hinted at a pregnancy out of wedlock and recounted previous salacious episodes in the girl’s life. Oh my God, I am heartily sorry, the widow said as usual in her prayer of contrition. But she is not. The priest adds a prayer for himself—“O Mary, Queen of the clergy, pray for us…”—then rises and enters the confessional to await the orange-haired widow’s newest dispatches. This morning, however, she is not the first; another widow has usurped the honor. A good woman who has served her church, family, and community well, and who has found a new convert for the Holy Mother Church. “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” she says, then whispers that she has been stealing from her employers. “You must return what you have taken and repent of your sin,” he says sharply. “But they have so much, Father, and we have so little.” “God places such temptations before us, my daughter, to test our strength and our faith. You must do as I say. And you must pray for forgiveness.” He assigns her a stiff penance. Father Baglione’s parish is not blessed with great wealth. He does not want to lose such a valued convert.

It is in the early morning that Vince Bonali most misses his wife Etta. Even when times were hard — during the long winter mine strike, for example — she always had a hot breakfast ready for him by the time he reached the kitchen. Sometimes little more than her German potato pancakes and homemade applesauce, made from bruised apples she bought cheap, but always delicious and satisfying. He has long since realized that she often did without so he would not go hungry. The thought always makes him tearful and does so now. This house they shared… This morning all he could find was a stale piece of bread which he toasted and buttered with cooking lard, topping it with sugar and the last sprinkle from the dusty cinnamon shaker. Etta would have been proud of his resourcefulness. But he is still hungry. He has taken his morning walk around the block, sum total of his daily exercise. He has opened his last beer and sunk back into his old porch rocker, where he now passes his days, wishing them away. Earlier last week, while things were still going well, his son Charlie bought him a quality fresh cigar, now half smoked, and he tucks it into his jowls, pats his pockets for matches. None. Have to light it at the stove. Later. He remembers when they bought this house. Such optimism then. Good job, union officer, steady pay, low mortgage. Figured on paying it off in ten or twelve years. Handy with tools, he put a lot of time and energy into the place. Rundown now. Never finished that paint job he started five years ago; it all looks the same again. The little picket fence he made lies broken and trampled. The cement Virgin, a Christmas present from Angela, leans in the mud as if losing her footing. Inside, nothing works as it should. No matter. No longer his anyway. He has refinanced it many times over just in order to scrape by and owes more now than the original mortgage. Angie’s job at the bank has protected him. That’s over. He has been notified. Papers are being served. He’s being locked out of his own house.

On his way out to the car, Ralph Tindle hears banging on the studio door. “Ralph? Ralph? Is that you?” he hears his dear helpmeet call out. He knocks on the door: “Hello? Hello?” “Ralph! He’s escaped! He locked me in! Let me out!” He knocks again. “Hello?” “Ralph! What are you doing? Quickly! He may be in trouble!” He knocks again. “Anybody there?” “Ralph! Please! Don’t be annoying! It’s urgent! I have to find him!” He smiles, locks up the house, and, humming that old Salvation Army tune, “Let Him In,” the frantic banging on the studio door playing in the background, gets in his car and drives away.

“Eh, cugino, what’s this with our ragazzo? He called. He feels you are not protecting him.”

“Charlie don’t need protection, he needs discipline. You unloaded a lotta trouble on us. He’s your fucking ragazzo, not mine. You should keep him in line.”

“Ma che minchia…? He’s apprehending a criminal, has to use a little force…”

“The kid he hit is the lifeguard at the city pool. He was just closing up.”

“That’s your story, hunh? Don’t sound very helpful, Dee. There was a broad…”

“A young high school kid. She was the one who—”

“Sua puttana…”

“No, he’s been seeing someone else.”

“Charlie’s sister, right? And he dishonored her. She’s got a bun in the oven and he’s dumping her for this new piece of ass. Hey, it’s a family thing, Demetrio, what can you do?”

“Charlie was in uniform, armed, driving the squad car, used excessive force — even if there had been a crime, and there wasn’t. He’s got a mountain of serious charges on his head right now.”

“So, what’s the kid’s price? We can take up a collection.”

“It won’t work. His father runs the bank here and everything else.”

“So, all right, we call up the kid’s old man, let him know how expensive this could be for him.”

“I wouldn’t. He’s a pal of the governor, congressmen, has a direct line to the FBI through some old college buddy. Get him into it, he might have some more questions to ask.”

“…”

“Charlie is suspended pending an investigation, but I have to fire him and bring criminal charges. If I don’t, I’ll be out of a job, facing charges of my own, and Charlie will get taken in anyway.”

“Well. You disappoint me, compagno. Ma che cazzo, maybe we could use someone on the inside…”

“As I understand it, Nick, they assume Bruno is dead, some sort of mad doctor atrocity or other, and are planning a symbolic burial out on the hill in the next couple of weeks. I figured we’d ask to have him released to us for a day and take him to his own funeral. Things are boiling up again out there, and maybe this will give them something to theologize about for a while.”

“They don’t usually like to release mental patients.”

“I think I can get the governor’s intervention on this one. Kirkpatrick has been looking for an excuse to duck out on our Fourth of July parade. This would be a useful tradeoff for him.”

“There are some risks.”

“I think we should take them. Now, what’s happening with that sonuvabitch who assaulted Tommy? The girl’s been fired and mortgage papers have been served on the father. Why hasn’t the city gone ahead with a criminal prosecution against the asswipe who’s responsible for all this?”

“I’m still checking into all the legal issues, Ted. Meanwhile he has been suspended from the police force.”

“What does that mean? I walked by yesterday and he was still in there.”

“His movements have not been restricted. If he has friends…”

“Nick, that’s not good enough. A cop in uniform beats up an innocent civilian: that’s a crime.”

“Well, I know, but it can be tricky. We can assume he’ll put up a stiff defense. Want to have everything in place before we get involved with the courts. You also asked about getting a parade permit for the Fourth. That’s been done. And the bank picnic will be set up out on the high school football field, with part of the raffle proceeds going to the school’s athletic program. Working out the contract arrangements now.”

“All right. People will want to use the unoccupied Main Street commercial properties to exhibit or sell things. Let’s offer them small grants for fixing them up. Stick a notice up on the old Chamber of Commerce windows. I’ve put Tommy in charge of the parade and the fireworks. We’ll have a small brass band for the parade made up mostly of school kids from here and the towns around, fire engines and police cars, at least one float built by the New Opportunities for West Condon steering committee, and some marching groups like the American Legion, Knights of Columbus, what’s left of the miners’ union, the Christian Patriots—”

“Isn’t that J. P. Suggs’ private militia? They’re just the Klan under another name.” “I know, Nick, but the request came through the sheriff’s office, and it seemed better to fold them into the community on the day than to exclude them, especially with Suggs himself out of the picture now. We’ll have an essay contest — what it means to be an American, that sort of thing — and I’ve got people rounding up raffle prizes.”

“You can probably get a whole bunch of shoes from Dave Os-borne.”

“Yes, he’s a problem. We have to close that embarrassment down before the Fourth. Wouldn’t want the governor to see it, if he did turn up. I was also wondering if we might make some use of the old hotel? Display the town history in the lobby or something?”

“It’s not in great shape, but I suppose it’s doable.”

“Maybe we can get the prospective new owners to put a little money into it. Nick, what do you know about that group, the Roma Historical Society?”

“Not much. Italian Americans. With money. I think one of them is from a family that used to live here twenty, thirty years ago.”

“What family is that?”

“I’ll ask.”

“Unh-hunh. Nick, did the Roma Historical Society have anything to do with the hiring of Charlie Bonali?”

A guy comes in. Vaguely familiar. He’s wearing some kind of scarlet desert smock with blue robes. He announces himself as Jesus. Yeah, that’s probably who he looks like all right. “Son of God? That one?”

“Verily, my friend. The same yesterday, and today, and forever. All hail. But what is this? None of your shoes have laces!”

“Yeah, it’s a kind of plague. One your old man didn’t think of.”

“I count it more a parable, whose meaning as yet escapes me, though I will search for it.” Jesus points down at his feet, one sandaled, one bare. “Behold my feet,” he says.

“First thing I noticed when you came in.” Dave shows him one of his hand-painted CLOSING DOWN SALE signs, not yet up on the front door. “Perfect timing. First two pair free today.”

“I was hoping only to match the one I have.”

“All out. There’s been a run on those things. My entire stock got wiped out in a single day. Must be the weather. But I may have just the ticket. What size is your foot?”

He lifts the bare one to look at it. “I’m not sure. It belongs to someone else. But nine and a half, I’d judge.”

“I think you need to wash that foot, no matter who it belongs to.”

“Well, it has had no rest. If you will wash it, my friend, I will make you a disciple, for he that humbleth himself shall be exalted, as I myself, in a foreign tongue, have been erroneously quoted as saying.”

“That’s mighty generous, pal. I appreciate your pitch, but it’s not my line of work. Nor discipling neither, which is strictly against my principles. But, here, try these on. What do you think?”

Not far away, in the city firehouse, Georgie Lucci is pleading with the fire chief: “C’mon, Mort. Be a buddy, goddamn it. Lemme drive the engine in the big parade.”

“With your record, Georgie, I wouldn’t let you drive my kid’s tricycle, if I had a kid and he had a tricycle, which, thank God, I don’t and he don’t.”

“Is that a long way round of saying yes, Mort?”

They are drinking Mort Whimple’s double-strength coffee, Georgie sweetening it with the hair of last night’s mutt. Another big one tonight: Stevie Lawson’s bachelor party. Have to get braced for it. They’ve already dipped into Steve’s sister-in-law’s gift to them, which accounts for this morning’s hangover, but there’s plenty left. They’d hoped to book the Blue Moon Motel for the party, but he and Steve have been banned from there and they’ve got bouncers now, and besides, they’re dead broke and limited to the bottles of cheap rye supplied by Tessie, so it’s a B.Y.O.B. drift about town tonight. At least they’ll be welcome wherever they go.

Mort fills him in on all the raunchy new songs those hillbillies have been singing out at the Moon, songs about whoring in buses and trailer camps, a jukebox-killer sex maniac, and a new one called “The Night My Daddy Loved Me Too Much,” which Mort says so shocked the locals they couldn’t even clap or hoot afterwards, they all just sat there with their jaws gapping. But after a moment of dead silence everybody started hollering for them to sing it again. “The old beauty I was with started blubbering and couldn’t stop, like it had just happened to her. I never heard nothing like that before, not in mixed company.”

“That’s pretty wild,” Georgie says, sucking up coffee and wondering if he can hit Mort up for a plate of bacon and eggs over at Mick’s. The pressure’s off him now that the mayor has canceled his reelection campaign in the Italian neighborhood, but it also means most of the commissions have dried up. “I gotta hear that.”

“Well, tune in the radio tonight. They’re going live. Some big-ass record company is turning up. They’re headed for the big time.”

When Vince Bonali sees Sal Ferrero arriving with a bag of eggs and a plucked chicken, he nearly breaks into tears again, so he lurches to his feet, bites down on the cigar, and growls: “Hey, Sal. What the hell. Come for the goddamn wake?”

“Yeah, soon as I heard, Vince. That’s rotten news. What’s up anyway?”

“Oh, nothing special. Angela’s fired and probably knocked up, Charlie’s suspended and may get sent to the pen, and the bank’s taking my fucking house away. I’m out on the street, Sal. Other than that…”

“Jesus, don’t cry, Vince. Look, I’ve brought some eggs. Had any breakfast?”

“Lard on stale bread, Sal.” He’s not talking, he’s croaking. “You can’t beat that at the Ritz.”

“Well, come on then, buddy, let’s scramble up the eggs. I also snuck out some bacon. I’m starved.”

At the stove, stirring the eggs with a fork while Vince brews up a pot of weak coffee from the last grains in the can, Sal says: “Listen, Vince, I can take out another loan on my house, and me and Gabriela, we can cover you for a few months and see if we can’t get this sorted out.”

“No, it’s not the mortgage. They’re after me, Sal. I won’t let them drag you down too.”

“Well, at least let me talk to Gaby’s cousin Panfilo. He’s a pretty good lawyer. Maybe he can fight this thing.”

“For free?”

“Sure, for free.”

Though he knows nothing will come of it, that somehow cheers him up, and he carries his coffee and plate of bacon and eggs out to the porch, feeling like he’s getting control of his life again. This is my house, asshole. My whole life is in it — just try to take it away.

Dreamers often remark on the vividness of their dream worlds, which are not perceptions but are very much like perceptions (where does all that stuff come from?), and at the same time on their instability, their dissolving boundaries, their lack of continuity. John P. Suggs is not a dreamer, as he has often said, but were he, he might describe his waking life as like one. Lights come and go. Sounds and talk make little or no sense; it’s like spinning a radio dial. The people at his bedside fade into one another. His personal nurse will be speaking to him in her yattery way and she will grow a beard and become his surly mine manager. This is not what really happens — he knows that, he’s not crazy — but it’s the way his damaged mind is processing the random fragments that it registers. His own thoughts are no better. He hears himself thinking things he doesn’t understand himself. He’s never quite asleep, nor awake, either. But he has these moments of lucidity, and he has to use them. He and the camp nurse — she’s not completely stupid — have worked out a rudimentary eye-blink code. Voiceless, he must act; there is much he must do, and the only action left him is instruction. He waggles his working finger, his call for attention. She pulls a chair up to his bedside with pencil and paper in hand.

Down the corridor from Mr. Suggs and beyond the double doors in the women’s wing, Clara Collins-Wosznik slumps despondently outside her daughter’s room, consulting with the doctor on his morning rounds. He talks too fancy for her troubled mind, but she nods her head at whatever he says. While he is talking, they wheel a dead body by, sheeted head to toe. Clara says a little prayer for the dead person, for herself, for Elaine. Were the doctor not here, she would drop to her knees. So much sadness in God’s world. It is getting her down. She has been able to resume her leadership duties at the camp, working several hours a day in the office in and around trips to the hospital, catching up on the budget and inventory and essential letter-writing, restoring all the weekly practices such as Bible study and Evening Circle, which had somewhat dropped away in her absence, and meeting with all the people out there individually to plan out the rest of the summer, but the old energy and concentrated attention are not there. She feels like a prisoner of her own creation, able to do what’s demanded of her but no more. It’s still only morning and she’s dead tired. She knows it’s just from worrying and told the doctor so when he remarked that she did not look well and would she like to visit him for a check-up, maybe some blood tests, an X-Ray? She said she didn’t have time; she’d pick up again soon enough when Elaine started getting better. What she’s most distressed about this morning is that the poor child has been put back on the feeding tube again, her hands strapped to her sides, ankles in shackles, head in a kind of brace, and that ugly coiling thing snaking out of her nose like her innards are being pulled out through her nostrils. It is an image to rival the worst of the punishments of the Last Judgment. Ben, who has been somewhat distracted and not his old easygoing self, said in the office last week that maybe they just ought to spare her this suffering and leave it all in God’s hands, that they can’t keep on feeding her that way forever. She was upset by this and told him so, though she knew he was in deep pain, loving the child as if she were his own, and fearing for her. Truth be told, Clara has had similar thoughts and did not object when they stopped using the tube for a time to see if Elaine would go back to feeding herself or at least allow herself to be fed, and she was not sure she wanted the tube back if she didn’t. There’s a nurse out here who has been able to talk to the girl a mite and she did get a few spoonsful down her, but then Elaine clamped her jaws shut and that was that.

“Of course, emaciated females often suffer from amenorrhea,” the doctor is saying in his kindly but frustrating way, “but the urine samples seem to indicate…”

Clara doesn’t know what the doctor is talking about but is too ashamed to ask and she certainly doesn’t want to talk about urine samples, so instead she brings up the issue of forced feeding again. It was just such an awful thing, couldn’t they maybe stop it?

“I’m afraid she seems determined to starve herself,” the doctor says. “We could let her do that to herself, I suppose, but not to the baby.”

What?

“Unless…”

“What are we gonna do about Elaine, Ben? She won’t eat and won’t talk and won’t bestir herself. She probably wouldn’t breathe if she could find a way to stop. I can’t hardly bear to look on her with that thing up her nose.”

“Maybe it ain’t right to make her suffer so. Maybe we should just only leave her be. Let the Good Lord decide.”

“How can you say that, Ben? She’d just go and die! We can’t let that happen!”

“No…but then I don’t know what.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t of come back here.”

“It woulda been worse for her out on the road.”

“I know. (She sighs.) But, well, it’s not right to say it, Ben…but this don’t feel like—”

Darren, hearing someone outside the door in the main hall, hits the pause button, hides the tape recorder under a loose stack of paper, goes to check. It’s only Hunk hauling in a stack of wood for the partitions in the new women’s restroom next door. Hunk grunts and nods and heads off to the kitchen for breakfast, which may or may not be his first one. He eats enough for three or four people, but then his wife and kids hardly eat anything at all, so it comes out even. Clara, Darren knows, is at the hospital, Billy Don is sleeping in after night guard duty, and Mrs. Edwards will be down at her garden by now. The only one he’s not sure about is Ben, but he’s not likely to come to the office unless Clara is here. So, unless Billy Don staggers over early, he should have the place to himself for another hour at least for this urgent task. Which is his alone. The Prophet’s final resting place has been dug. The Fourth this year is on a Saturday; Darren has scheduled the graveside ceremony on the Mount the day after. He is not sure exactly what will happen but he must know everything he can know before then. Ben is less involved since he got back. Darker in mood. God has been a little slow to act, he has said on these secret recordings. Clara said he mustn’t talk that way, but she also seems full of doubt. Maybe those who opposed the temple were right, she allows at one point on the tapes. And now these thoughts that he’s just been listening to from a week ago about abandoning her mission here. Darren, sitting in the office, door closed and locked, ponders this waning conviction, which may be part of a larger scheme of things. It’s almost as though what happened to their daughter was ordained so as to weaken the present church leaders’ resolve, or to expose their hidden weakness, make them more vulnerable to the rise of new, more intransigent leadership strong enough for the end times. Clara and Ben have been brilliant at getting the message out, creating a large movement, playing their part as Ely Collins in his martyrdom played his, but now a new phase has begun, and maybe — Jesus himself had no patience with family sentimentality — they’re not up to it. Perhaps Abner Baxter should attend the ceremonial burial of the Prophet. It might be useful for him to hear these tapes. Darren punches the play button, leans his ear into the speakers, keeping the volume low.

“—home no more. Them Baxters has near ruint it for me…”

“When Clara cries, it sounds more like Balaam’s donkey.” Bernice Filbert, using the private phone in Mr. Suggs’ room during one of his blanked-out times, is describing Clara’s newest crisis to Florrie Cox. When Bernice took a break from her bedside duties in Mr. Suggs’ room a while ago, she walked down the corridor to see how Elaine was doing, and she found Clara down on her knobby knees, looking red-eyed and broken. “Near worse off than her own child,” she tells Florrie. Clara wouldn’t say anything past the noises she was making, but Bernice guessed the problem right away, for she had picked up rumors from the nurses — and the girl’s face breaking out like that, those tiny give-away bumps on her nubbles — rumors confirming what she had been worried about since the day it all happened. She tried to help that day with her nursing skills and miracle water, which does not work for everything, but which, if she could have used enough of it, might have worked for that, but Elaine fought back like a wild thing. Of course, she was scared to death and hurting, but it was more than that; something had got inside little Elaine and it was changing her. “Now the prognosis are that the child is on a straight path to the madhouse if she don’t die first.”

“That’d be a shame,” Florrie says. “I hardly don’t know what to think.”

Bernice remembered that Reverend Hiram Clegg has worked some exorcisms, from what they were saying when he was here a couple of months ago, though when she said to Clara they should ask him back, Clara squeezed up her face like she was having gas pains and shook her head no. She hasn’t told Florrie any of this, simply saying that Elaine has taken a turn for the worse, is back on the feeding tube, and Clara is in a dreadful state. Mr. Suggs is shifting out of his more or less silent seven-sleepers state into his lively speaking-in-tongues mode, which is sometimes followed by a short period of furious clarity, but more often is not. The one thing he seems to appreciate at those times is when she dabs his forehead with her miracle water and recites the magic words, something she did every day back when he was unconscious in his coma, and it does seem to make him better, if only for a moment. She also sometimes adds a drop of miracle water to his bath water, but this so far seems less efficacious. Florrie, hearing him carrying on in the background, asks after him, and Bernice says he’s about the same, though some parts of him are shriveling up and some parts are getting longer. She can hear Florrie trying to imagine what parts she is talking about, so she adds: “His nose, for example,” and doesn’t say whether it’s growing or shrinking.

“Mostly, he looks next thing to a dead man, Florrie. He’s outa his head more than he’s in it, but at them moments when he’s got his wits about him, he’s full up with notions, and he keeps me trotting.” At such times, they use an eye-blink code, which she proceeds to explain to Florrie. “We got blinks for numbers and letters and all that, but mostly we do it by me asking him questions and him blinking once for yes and contrariwise not blinking at all. Like, I say does it begin with A, and he just lays there, and I try other letters and finally I say does it begin with F, and he blinks, and I try A again, and he just lays there again until I get to L, and he blinks, and I ask, you mean Florrie? And if he blinks we go on to the next word, and if he don’t we keep working on that one.”

“Really? He ast about me?”

“No, for goodness’ sake, I was just giving a for sample, Florrie. Showing you how hard this is.” When Mr. Suggs’ brain attack struck him down, Bernice felt struck down too, for he was what stood between her and a life in prison. But one day a lawyer from the city turned up. Big ballooned-out gentleman with a bunch of chins, dressed in a tailored suit with a hankie in the pocket, and a tailored shirt, too, because all his buttons were fitting just right. Shiny shoes and shiny up on top as well, with just a few yellow-dyed hairs pasted down. He said he knew the sick lady she and Florrie had been caring for, but, no, he wasn’t a friend of the family. It took a lot of eye-blinking, but eventually Mr. Suggs gave the lawyer limited power of attorney, witnessed by her and Maudie and the physical theropest who sits him up every day. The lawyer, whose name was Mr. Thornton, worked out a salary for her, saying she was sort of like a private secretary, taking dictation in this special way, and he seemed to hint that if all went well, there’d be more for her, though he didn’t say exactly what “well” was. He also promised her he’d fight all the thieving and embezzlement charges against her and he did not expect any of them to even get to court because everything was on the up and up, he himself had seen to that. At first she’d thought he might be one of those rascally humanits, but now she knew who he was because she had helped Mrs. Cavanaugh place the calls. Mr. Suggs was so tired out by all these negotiations that he slept for a whole day after, and the first thing he asked when he woke up the next day was where did that lawyer go he was just talking to? “I only wisht I was a better speller, Florrie.”

“I can’t, Billy Don. I’ve promised a friend I’d go for a ride with her this afternoon. But let’s meet up later. It’ll be light until nearly midnight. My folks are going out with friends and have given me the car and supper money, so instead of ice cream, we can go share a pizza or something.”

“Well, I’ll have to miss the evening prayer meeting, but sure, why the heck not?”

“Okay. Tucker City, in front of the drugstore at eight. Got that hole dug for your prophet?”

“Yup. Two weeks tomorrow.”

“Sounds like a crazy party. I may put on a party hat and sneak in.”

“Well, huh, I wouldn’t…”

“Yes, we heard from the governor, and I suppose we can do this, if proper precautions are taken. But, well, we, ah, treated him surgically to ease his anxieties, Mr. Cavanaugh. The patient won’t give you any trouble, but he may not be of much use to you…”

When Debra opens up the garden shed, she notices that things have been moved around again, but the lock wasn’t broken and nothing seems to be missing. Hazel Dunlevy, who sometimes helps out, has the only other key, so when she turns up, still looking half asleep, Debra tells her about what she found and asks if she saw anyone going in or out. “No, that was probly me,” Hazel says, yawning. “I was jist only tryin’ to ease the wheelbarra out.” Hazel doesn’t do much work, but she’s good to Colin. He shows her his hands every day, and Hazel, with her dreamy freckle-faced smile, tells him something a little different each time. She likes to say that the way the lines cross in his palms is not like other people’s, meaning that he will always have a life different from theirs, and certainly that is true and does not need a palm reader to prophesy it.

It’s a lovely day, perfect for the year’s longest, and her garden is overflowing, all their hard work of the spring now coming, literally, to fruition; but her spirits are not lifted by it. She awoke somewhat tearfully, and she is at the edge of tears still. She tries not to think about it, taking every moment as it arrives, but they could come after her, she knows, at any time. She has followed Christ’s urgent command to the letter and she is about to be punished for it. Her friends here at the camp could not be more supportive, but they, like she, are mostly penniless and living by a different law from that of the world around them. That world, finding such earnest holiness impermissible, would punish them all if it could.

Mr. Suggs has warned her that if the Board of Deacons brings a suit against her and her husband for misappropriation of church funds, he would be happy to pay for her defense, but he did not think they could win. As an alternative, he offered her a flight to any destination of her choice, and enough to live on for a month or two. And she’s ready to leave — the camp’s not the same anymore, not since what happened to poor Elaine. She loved the time without phones or barbed-wire fences, without electricity, the deep woodsy nights unspoiled by artificial light, nothing to be heard but the owls and crickets, and all that is over, it’s time to go. But when she asked, he did not offer money for Colin and she could never leave without him. And now it’s too late. Mr. Suggs is no longer able to be of help to anyone.

She believes she could face this ordeal with a peaceful mind were it not for Colin. A few minutes ago he brought her a little bouquet of marigolds and oxeye daisies from the field bordering the garden, gazing up at her sweetly from under his funny straw hat, and she had to stop herself from wrapping him, weeping, in her arms; she wiped the tear that did escape and smiled, though she knew her lip was trembling, and told him they were beautiful and she loved him very much. And now what will happen to him when they take her away? Can he even survive without her? Having given herself to Christ, she would now willingly sell her soul to the devil to keep Colin safe and happy. Maybe she has already done that. The therapy that he demands and needs, she is well aware, is at best unorthodox, not something she could ever talk about with others, even Ludie Belle. But when, a trembling uncertain child, he slips into her bed at night and folds himself into her and, whispering, calls her mother, it is all so clear and simple, so pure, so innocent and loving. The end is coming. She and Colin will have to face judgment. She is not afraid. She is ready. It is the impending crisis that frightens her. Perhaps she needs to get away from the camp to think about it. Find ways to prepare him for it. Take him over to the state park for a hike, or out to the lakes. A picnic maybe. Yes, she’ll pack a picnic. They’ll take a walk through the bird sanctuary and nature preserve at the edge of the lakes, have an afternoon picnic together at one of the lakeside cookout areas. She looks over at him weeding the pea patch and smiles when he looks up. And he smiles back. Her funny little nuthatch. It will be all right, she thinks. Somehow.

Knocking out the little back window was easy enough, and she threw some towels over the bottom of the frame, but it has taken forever to get rid of all the jagged splinters on the sides and top so as to be able to crawl out of the garage without getting carved up, and even then, in her desperate haste, she misses one small shard, which snags on her artfully torn Mary Magdalene costume and adds an incidental rip down the back. Prissy Tindle races to the house for a quick change and also some chocolate cookies and a glass of milk, but finds the doors locked. That Ralph! Her car raincoat is in the studio, where she took it off last night, and she does not want to crawl back through that window, so she’ll just have to worry about it later. No time to lose!

“The Brunists think their guy is dead, done in by the Jews and atheists who control mental hospitals, so they want to hold a ceremonial mock-burial for him. They don’t know where the body is, so they’re going to bury a mine pick and one of their tunics, a flashlight and other weird stuff that was never his but is now.” They are rolling along through a countryside much prettier than that around West Condon, on their way to a river town on a bluff that Stacy has visited before, a favorite spot of hers and one of her present love’s holy places, though she doesn’t say so. Stacy has told Sally about Ted’s plans to bring the brain-damaged prophet of the cult to his own funeral and said she wondered what all that was about. “The problem is: Mr. Bruno isn’t dead,” Sally says. “So your boss has got up the bright idea of surprising them by bringing the deceased to his own wake.”

“The way you say it, you don’t think it’s going to work…?”

“They won’t believe it. They don’t want to believe it, so they won’t believe it. They’ll figure he’s a ringer, just another dirty trick.” She fumbles about in the glove compartment for a matchbook, lights up again, blows the smoke out the open passenger window. Sally is a tall, gangly girl, rather plain but in a dramatic way, with a darting gaze, no makeup, and snarly hair. She says she likes to wash her hair, rub it roughly with a towel, and then, without looking in a mirror, let it dry any which way. A new hairdo with every shampoo. Not your everyday romantic heroine. Her breasts under her T-shirt, which today reads GOD DOESN’T BELIEVE IN ME EITHER, don’t amount to much, but she goes braless, unwilling to make them amount to more, as though to say she doesn’t give a damn. But smart and funny. Certain guys would go for her. Some girls, too, probably. “So, tell me,” Sally says, “how are you getting on with the big cheese you work for?”

“I don’t think I can do that.”

“I think you can, Maury.”

“Why don’t you have your fucking city manager bust him? I’ll bet a nickel he’s dragging his heels, too, ain’t he, Ted?”

“Maury, you and Dee either arrest Charlie Bonali and bring criminal assault and battery charges, damn it, or I’ll personally see to it you’re jailed for corruption and racketeering.”

“What the hell you talking about? Put in an honest day’s work around there, what do you get? A knife in the back. Anyhow, I might prefer jail. Stay healthier that way.”

“Let me warn you, Maury. This is becoming a federal case. The FBI is taking an interest. They’ll have some tough questions to ask. I’ll see you over at Mick’s. We’ll talk about this.”

Jim Elliott, always Mickey DeMars’ first customer of the day, is having an encounter with Jesus Christ, who has come in and introduced himself and asked for an egg sandwich. “Give us this day our daily eggs,” he said. This is not something he has expected. Jesus does not call him Jim, he calls him Paul. Saint Paul? Good grief. This is ridiculous. Or maybe it is not. Is he Paul or was he ever? His memory is not too good, especially after a few. It’s possible. What isn’t? He decides to go along with Jesus, raising his glass of gin to him (hmm, empty; he signals Mick for another). Why not? No skin off his back, as the saying goes. Which is a strange one, now that he thinks about it. They flayed a lot of guys back then. Roman fun. Was Paul one of them? Is this guy dangerous? He is wearing shiny gold lamé slippers like foot halos, which definitely look right on him and convince Jim that he is who he says he is. More or less. What does that mean, “more or less”? Well, he looks the part, but what is he doing here? This is not his time and place. Is it? What the heck is happening? Jim sees that his glass is already half empty. Jesus must be helping himself. Good for him. He slides the glass toward him and asks Mick for another for himself. Mick does not know what to make of all this. Jesus calls him the Good Samaritan and Mick shrugs and rolls his eyes. “I got a feeling I ain’t gonna get paid for that sandwich,” he says in his squeaky voice. “Don’t worry,” Jim says grandly. “It’s on me. Not every darned day you get to buy Jesus Christ an egg sandwich.” Not that the fellow is all that appreciative. “You’re the spooky con artist who invented all those lies about me,” he says. “Who, me? Never!” “You repackaged me and sold me on the international market as some kind of alien-from-outer-space carnival act. Eat the flesh and drink the blood,” he says, tapping his gin glass, and Mick refills it. “You made all that up, you deceitful quack!” “Listen, gosh darn it,” Jim says, his dander rising, “I don’t care if you are Jesus Christ. I’m not gonna take this lying down!” But, after his abrupt and ill-timed lurch from the stool, that’s exactly the circumstance in which, a moment later, he finds himself, his head hurting from where he banged it on the way to the floor. He could get up. Probably. But it’s not worth it. “Shut up,” Jesus is saying overhead. “I know he’s not Paul. You think I’m crazy? It just feels good to let fly from time to time.” Mick says, “I didn’t say nothing,” and Jesus says, “I know that, I wasn’t talking to you.” Oh oh. Another one of those. This town is full of them suddenly. Is it catching? Jesus drinks off his glass of gin and then slugs down Jim’s as well. Car doors slam outside. Voices. “I tell you the truth,” Jesus says, hovering above him, his bright robes fluttering, “it is — to quote that whimsical mental case, John, who was pretending to quote me — to your advantage that I go away.” And, sandwich in hand, he exits by the back door as the mayor and his pals come in by the front. “Well, if that’s not the berries,” Jim says, holding down the rising and falling floor with both hands, and is greeted by the newcomers in the affable manner that is their daily lunchtime custom.

“We won’t have to do this soon, will we, you naughty little pooper?” says Dot Blaurock while changing Johnny in one of their many little Chestnut Hills homes. Jesus is already in the neighborhood, wandering around, appearing and disappearing. It’s happening. The latter days, the end times: she’s in them. And she has been chosen. “Go forth and prophesy,” he said. Well, if Johnny could keep his diapers clean for five minutes she would. A kid with dirty diapers does not help to draw a multitude. When she raced back to the camp to tell everyone like Jesus told her to, no one believed her. What’s that line about a prophet in your own county? It’s true. Deaf ears. Well, tough luck for them. Out at the other campsite, Abner Baxter’s people were more willing to listen. “I was watching them all the time,” she said, “and suddenly they weren’t there anymore.” They nodded at that but wanted to know more about that woman who was with him. In all the pictures of the Rapture, Jesus is strictly on his own. She might have been Mary Magdalene, Dot said, but she wasn’t sure. She didn’t look well. Maybe she was somebody who’d just been resurrected from the dead.

Her older kids rush in now with the news that they saw Jesus at the shoe store downtown. “What were you doing in the shoe store?” she wants to know. She can’t keep track of them. She should stand them in the corner for a while just to know where they are. But the corners in this place aren’t all that habitable. Isaiah’s going to have to open up a new one for them.

“We got a job! Look!” Mattie shows her a stack of flyers announcing a closing down sale. “When we’ve put the rest of these on everybody’s porches, we get some candy and more new shoes! Gotta go, Mom!”

Doors open at noon, the fliers say. It’s almost noon now.

When the banker reaches Mick’s Bar & Grill, he finds it empty, except for the former Chamber of Commerce secretary on the floor, drunkenly crooning a Sunday school tune. Even the proprietor is gone. Then he spies the flyers on the tables. The sonuvabitch, knowing he’s facing foreclosure, is spitefully stripping the store of any recoverable equity. The bank can put a stop to that.

It is noon in West Condon. The sun will never be so high in the sky again for another year. It drenches the town’s unkempt streets in an all but shadowless light. As the solstice is associated with the birth of John the Baptist, it is sometimes said to be the day that Salome lifts her veil, and indeed nothing is veiled. One’s own shadow is just a small black puddle underfoot, the size of one’s girth. Children play at trying to jump out of it. Under this saturating midday light, a crowd is gathering on Main Street, where crowds have not been seen for years. Many are clutching flyers announcing a closing down sale at Dave Osborne’s shoe store. First two pair free. Others are there by word of mouth or by announcements on the radio or flyers posted on shop windows and telephone poles, hoping they don’t need the flyers as vouchers. There are large hand-painted signs taped to the door and front walls and a tumble of laceless shoes in the window, but the store is locked. People press up against the window, peer in under cupped hands, knock on the front door. More are arriving every minute, trying to squeeze in toward the front. The shop owner appears in the inner dimness, waves at them, points at his watch face, holds up two fingers. “Two minutes!” someone shouts over his shoulder at the restless mass, and his shout is repeated by others. The owner is standing on the stepstool he uses to get down shoe boxes from the top shelves, trying to adjust something overhead. Changing a light bulb, maybe. Or hanging decorations. His movements are explained by those in front to those behind. Tied and netted around his legs like clownish pantaloons are all the debris of his trade: shoe horns, foot measuring devices, boots, floor mirrors, shoe-shine paste and fluids, and thick bouquets of shoes with their tongues hanging out. He is holding in his hand a colorful strand that some recognize as the rope he has been braiding out of shoestrings, and this amusing explanation is offered to the others pressing round. The shop owner steps down, pushes the stool back a yard or two, steps back up on it, loops the shoestring rope around his neck and jumps off. He swings toward the window, his feet belting the plate glass with a blow that causes the crowd to fall back, swings back into the dimness again, his hands reaching reflexively for his throat, then dropping away, swings forward and kicks the window again. At first his eyes bulge, staring fiercely at all those in the street as he swings, feet striking the window ever less resoundingly, then they cloud over. This seems to last forever and no one speaks under the noontime sun. There are soft thumps and then there are none. The banker arrives and kicks at the window and right behind him come the town cops. They smash their way in (people are screaming now, shouting, issuing astonished expletives, pushing forward for a better view or else backing away in horror) and cut the shoe salesman down. A siren can be heard like a howl of grief or anger. The crowd parts for the approaching ambulance. Inside the store, the police officer, Louie Testatonda, picks up a brown paper bag on the counter next to the cash register and asks: “What the hell is this?” A child rushes in, snatches it from his hands, dashes out again. “Stop her! She’s stealing the evidence!” he cries, but the child is gone.

Lucy Smith was getting her hair done in Linda Catter’s Main Street beauty shop when some noisy little kids came by with the shoe store flyers. Linda said she hadn’t been able to afford new shoes for over three years and that this was her chance, so they dashed over, mid-perm, Lucy’s hair still in curlers and wrapped with piled-up wet towels. Well, what they witnessed was not gratifying and certainly there were no new shoes to be had, though Lucy saw people running away with armloads before the police locked the place down. When the poor man kicked the window, Lucy nearly fainted, and she still feels sick. As soon as they cut him down, Linda ran back to her beauty shop to call everyone she knows, and Lucy followed her there on shaky knees, sinking back dazed and nauseous into her chair in front of the mirror. Where now she sits, staring aghast at the pasty white face staring back under its thick white turban and looking only half alive, listening to Linda tell and retell her grisly tale. Lucy recalls her last visit to Mabel Hall’s caravan, when Mabel turned over the card of the Hanged Man, next to the Tower card. The Hanged Man was hanging by one foot, not his neck, and he looked quite peaceful with his legs crossed like he was sitting upside down watching TV, but the Tower was being struck by lightning and exploding apart and people were falling or diving out to die on the rocks below. It was quite terrifying, really. Mabel said it meant that there is a great calamity on the horizon, but one must surrender to the inevitable — something like that. But how does one know what’s inevitable and what’s not? If something is after you, can’t you run away? Maybe it’s like in dreams, when you want to run but can’t. Lucy was frightened then and she is frightened now. Was what just happened the calamity? Or was it only the card before it? Between Linda’s calls, she asks if she can please phone her husband. “I was so scared, Calvin,” she tells him. “Pray for him,” Calvin says calmly. “He was not a practicing Christian, but he was a good miner and a good man. I owe my life to him.”

As do many men in town, guided up through the blasted and gaseous Deepwater mine workings by Osborne that night of the disaster that killed ninety-seven, Dave the night manager at the time, a miners’ miner who had begun at the face and risen through the ranks. He knew Old Number Nine like the devil knows hell, as Cokie Duncan puts it, smoking and spitting with fellow miners out in the street in front of the store, squinting into a sun they still mostly avoid. Cal Smith’s boss, Sheriff Tub Puller, now pushing grimly through the milling crowds to confer with the town police, is another who reached the surface that night thanks to Osborne. As is wheel-chaired Ezra Gray, who made his wife Mildred push him all the way here as fast as she could in hopes of a free pair of shoes, Dave’s kicking of the window like a kick in the teeth. That’s how Mildred would put it later to Thelma Coates. Some years back, before he was night manager, Dave was Ezra’s faceboss, best he ever had. Ezra resented Dave becoming a downtown businessman, a kind of betrayal of his own kind, and now just see what it has come to. By the time Thelma Coates gets the phone call from Linda Catter, her sons Aaron and Royboy have already run back from town with the alarming news, and she and Roy set off for Main Street, the boys running ahead. Thus the word spreads and scores of others turn up in front of the shoe store, though the body is gone and the store is locked, the broken windows taped up with flattened cardboard shoe boxes. Witnesses of the suicide detail the event to the newcomers, and some who were not witnesses do, too. It’s Ramona Testatonda who brings the sad tidings to the Bonali household in a call to her friend Angela, who in turn carries them to the front porch, where her father is sitting with Carlo Juliano. Mortgage foreclosure has been their bitter theme, the Juliano family also walking the edge, and is now more so, Carlo arguing that it’s that which has brought Dave Osborne to such ultimate despair. “That goddamn bank is killing this fucking town,” Vince says, biting clean through his well-masticated cigar. As his daughter runs back in to call Monica Piccolotti, his son Charlie comes out, digging at his crotch as though that’s where the problem lies buried, and tells Carlo he plans to do something about the way things are and they should talk about it on the way to Main Street to see for themselves what has happened. There they run into Nazario, Ange Moroni’s boy, with his hangabout pals, cigarettes dangling from the corners of their sullen lips. Moroni compliments him for busting the banker’s son’s ugly honker, and Charlie fills them in on the persecutions he and his family are suffering as a consequence from the bank, the city, the county, not to mention all the fucking heretic churches, including that maniacal god squad out at the church camp who once tore up St. Stephen’s with mine picks. He pops his knuckles, and working a toothpick around in his teeth, nods his head toward the sheriff and his deputy, now in a huddle with the banker and the mayor, and says, “Look at them racist pricks over there bunched together. Dreaming up some new shit. See? The sheriff’s eyeing us. They’re all in cahoots. Fucking Klan all over again. We gotta do something about it before we’re all mulched garbage.” Moron grins icily under his rumpled fedora and nods at his pals. Moron’s mother, Concetta Moroni, was here earlier, but is gone. She had slipped away from the Cavanaugh house for the shoe sale, witnessed the shocking scene in the store window, which she feared was some kind of divine admonishment for her own sinful greed, then fled when her employer showed up at the store and kicked the window in, and she is now, having told poor Mrs. Cavanaugh all about it, showing her patient, who is a bit dopey today from all the drugs she is taking, how to pray with the rosary she has given her — an old one that her husband Angelo received from his grandmother but rarely used, though it was in his jacket pocket when he died. She hopes God will perceive this gift of a family heirloom as penance and compensation for things she took and cannot give back. Later, she will call all her friends and they will meet after working hours in someone’s kitchen to talk about this strange event and what it means to their sad little town and their own uncertain futures. At the hospital, Concetta’s out-of-favor predecessor in the Cavanaugh household, Bernice Filbert, has heard the ambulance wheel in, and after she gets the news from Maudie, she hurries down to Elaine’s room to let Clara know. Clara is still as woeful as those two wailing Marys outside the tomb of Jesus and she only half registers, but Ben has arrived and he takes the news sorrowfully. “He was a friend,” he says in his tired rumbly voice, “and a good man. I’m mighty sorry to hear it.” When she calls the camp, it is young Billy Don Tebbett who answers, and he promises to get the word to others, especially people like Willie Hall, who worked in the mine with Dave Osborne. The first person Billy Don calls, though, is Sally; her mother answers the phone and tells him Sally is not home, is there a message, and though he is somewhat confused by this unexpected connection with someone he has not ever really thought about before except in the abstract, he blurts out the story of the shoe store owner hanging himself in his own shop window, as understood by Bernice Filbert, who wasn’t there. In Bernice’s version, he was found hanging in the window with a closing down sale sign pinned on him, and it is that version that Susanna Elliott carries to Main Street and shares with others.

“His sidekick, Dirty Pete, is a thick-bearded docklands thug, dumb as a rock, as you might say, and Big Mary I see as a kind of badass guerrilla leader of the right, organizer of monks, nuns and popes, violent, ruthless, intransigent. A giant. Indestructible, but heartbreaking in her lonely grandeur. The real power behind the Sweet Jesus Gang.” Far from the Main Street buzz of West Condon and ignorant of it, Susanna’s daughter Sally is describing for Stacy, over Cokes and sandwiches, one of her new story ideas. They are sitting in the Two-Door Inn, a mawkish imitation of an English tea house with exposed beams and wall lamps with fringed red shades, paper placemats shaped like crocheted doilies and plastic menus — if you ask for tea, which is not on the menu, you get a grocery store teabag and a cup of hot water — but, silly as it is, it is dear to Stacy’s heart. “Her krypton is her virginity: if she loses that, she loses all her power, so she is brutal in preserving it. I’ll call the story ‘Christian Love.’”

“You think that’s the sort of person Mary really was?”

“I have no idea, but neither did the clowns who wrote the Bible. They made up one character, I can make up another. If she catches on, it’ll change a lot of church art. A whole different comicstrip.”

Stacy is laughing again, has been all through the drive and lunch, worrying only that it might edge into hysteria, for she’s feeling quite giddy, unable to stop thinking about the time she was here with Ted and all they did and said that day. Today there are crowds of tourists with small chattery kids, but that day they were alone, or at least that’s how she remembers it, the world around them little more than a painted backdrop, with the prettified melodies of old love songs tinkling away on the sound system, a kind of charm bracelet music she seemed to hear even when they were standing out on Lookout Point, hand in hand, staring dreamily down on the rich muddy river ripe with spring, and feeling the surge of it. Probably the same songs are playing now, but they’re lost in the noisy chatter. She has had to fend off Sally’s curiosity about life at the bank and outside it, about the amber necklace she is wearing and how she spends her weekends, and when they came in here Sally remarked that the place seems to have some special meaning for her, so Stacy made up a story about a teenage love affair consummated in this village, the amazement of discovering sex for the first time, partly based on a forgotten true story that actually happened at a ski resort, and she even found herself describing the boy’s body, which was not at all like Ted’s body, yet somehow reminded her of it. Just because it had all the relevant parts probably — all the “bits and bobs” as English tea house habitués might put it. She was tempted to tell Sally the real story, or something like it, especially when she realized Sally jealously suspected the young boy she was describing might be Tommy Cavanaugh — it would be the fastest way to disabuse her of that idea — and she so longed for someone to talk to about it, but she couldn’t risk the scandal. It would end everything. So she has bit her tongue all day and kept changing the subject. It is how she has learned all about the Brunists — more than she ever wanted to know — but as told by Sally, it has been mostly an entertainment, full of amusing and horrifying and insane incidents. The terrible mine disaster, the lone survivor, the cult that formed up around him, made up of over-educated occultists and ignorant evangelicals possessed by the Jesus demon, their shy privacy shattered by the cynical local newspaperman who infiltrated the cult and then exposed them to the world, their naïve prophecy about the Second Coming and end of the world taking place out at an old slag heap which they called the Mount of Redemption, all of it becoming a huge international media event — a bizarre carnival, really — and ending in catastrophic failure. Out of which has grown this new religion with scores of churches and thousands of believers, while the little town itself, which purified itself by chasing everyone off, including the newspaper editor, has sunk into what Sally called the slough of terminal despond, probably quoting some book or maybe Shakespeare. “It’s all so depressingly predictable,” Sally said. “Round and round. It’s like living inside a palindrome.” Stacy already knew some of this, though not so pessimistically, for Ted is a market optimist and always has a positive outlook, but the story that was new to her was that of the prophet’s sister, which Sally described in intimate detail, based on secret photographs she has seen, admitting to having found the couch of the girl’s apparent deflowering and stretched out on it and felt the fire of that ill-fated romance. Stacy, who couldn’t help but imagine Ted as the ravisher, remarked that it all sounded like the makings of a good novel, but though Sally agreed that it probably was, it was not, she said, the sort she’d ever write. Whereupon she began describing some of her story ideas, which have struck Stacy as sometimes pretty funny, but mostly way too weird. Stacy says she likes more realistic stories.

“Like those ladies’ romances you read, you mean,” Sally says with a grin, picking at her teeth with a fingernail. “The conventional way of telling stories is itself a kind of religion, you know, a dogmatic belief in a certain type of human perception as the only valid one. Like religious people, conventional writers follow hand-me-down catechisms and look upon the human story through a particular narrow lens, not crafted by them and belonging to generations of writers long dead. So conventional writers are no more realists than these fundamentalist Rapture nuts are. The true realists are the lens-breakers, always have been. The readers, like your average Sunday morning churchgoers, can’t keep up with all this, so the innovators who are cutting the real mainstream often go unnoticed in their own time. It’s the price they pay. They don’t make as much money, but they have more fun.” Sally brushes some crumbs off her chested slogan, causing GOD to wobble as though calling for attention. Or nodding his agreement. “Tight-assed little paragraphs laid out in order like snapshots in a photo album are not for me. I don’t want a life like that either.” Sally has been fumbling edgily with her pack of cigarettes. She needs to get out into the open air. Stacy asks for the bill. “Recently I went to visit Tommy’s mother who’s dying of cancer and is pretty much bedridden, the poor woman. We spent a lot of time looking at her photo albums. You know, the usual parade of bygone days lying like corpses against those funereal black pages: childhood, college, family, kids, travels, and so on. I’m in some of them, playing with little Tommy in the park, making him cry, that sort of thing. What’s odd, though, is that she’s mutilating them. Ripping people out of photos, trashbagging whole albums. As far as I could tell, it’s mostly images of Tommy’s dad that are getting edited out. Who knows why. Maybe she feels he isn’t paying her enough attention, or she thinks he’s playing around, or she’s just mad that she’s dying and he isn’t. But, whatever, the more damage she does to them, the more interesting they get. They’re an ugly mess, but there’s passion now. Art.” Sally is smiling. Stacy isn’t, though she’s trying. “I asked her if she had three wishes, what would she wish for? I expected her to say something like not to have cancer or maybe the end of all cancer in the world or else something vengeful to go along with what she is doing to the photo albums. But instead, she said she wished we were all better prepared for the disappointment that life is.”

“Oh…! That’s so sad…”

On West Condon’s Main Street, the lunchtime klatch has reconvened at Mick’s Bar & Grill. Georgie, tagging along with the fire chief, needs a drink badly after what he’s just seen, but so far, no one has offered him one. Whatever made Dave off himself like that? Georgie can conceive of doing things that might leave him with limited chances of survival — he’s seen all the old war movies and has imagined his own ill-fated heroics (after a consolatory fuck or two with the village darlings) — but jumping forever into the night like that for no better reason than love or money makes no sense to him. Old man Beeker of the hardware store, munching away, says if things don’t get better on Main Street, he’ll be the next to tear up his ticket, and others echo him, though Burt Robbins says the problem was that Osborne was just another blue-collar meathead who couldn’t make the class jump. His snarling remarks always piss Georgie off, the more so when aimed at a solid guy like Dave, his body not even cold yet, but he keeps his peace and probably, because he can never turn it off, even has a stupid grin on his face. Is it bad luck to see a guy swing like that? Probably, but so is everything else.

The mayor, who dumped the shoe store on Dave in the first place, comes in and lights a cigar and orders up a soup and a club sandwich, looking both solemn and pleased with himself. They ask him what he was talking about with Cavanaugh, and Castle says in his booming, cheek-blowing way that the banker has been pressuring him to lock up Charlie Bonali for busting his kid’s nose in a squabble over a girl, and he suggested to the banker if he wants to have a wop war he should get Puller and Smith to be his hired guns, knowing what they think of dagos. People laugh sourly at this. Just what is being laughed at is unclear, though Georgie has the idea it might be his own kind, so he orders up a plate of bacon, cinnamon toast, and three easy overs, and figures it’s the mayor’s treat. Stevie has told him that since old man Suggs’ brain burned out on him, his manager has taken over and might be hiring again, and he might not share Suggs’ grudge against the Roman church. McDaniel is an outsider, hopefully ignorant of Georgie’s history, so maybe he’ll go check it out, though it does sound too much like work.

The imbecilic spugna on the floor has been blabbering something about Jesus Christ being nothing but a deadbeat freeloader, so finally Mort Whimple asks Mick what the hell Elliott is talking about, and Mick confirms that the crazy preacher who thinks he’s Jesus had been in earlier and polished off a sandwich and a few glasses of gin on Jim’s tab. Earl Goforth says he saw Prissy Tindle out in front of the shoe store, running around frantically in the street looking for the preacher in nothing but a raggedy nightshirt and showing her ass out a rip at the back, and there are further remarks from other witnesses, not all complimentary, on this remarkable sight. Georgie, tucking into his eggs, wonders how he missed that. “In case she comes in here looking, Mick,” Robbins says, “lemme have a slice of that lemon pie.”

Who does come in is Elliott’s wife. Nice-looking lady in a crisp lemony frock who knows everybody and gets friendly greetings. “Come on, Jim,” she says, trying to haul her husband to his feet. So much dead weight. “Give me a hand, Maury,” she grunts. “Whuzz happenin’?” Elliott asks. “Whereza party?” “It’s naptime, Jim. The party’s tonight. You have to sober up so you can start over again.” Georgie pops the last bite into his mouth and helps the lady get the dipso off the floor and out to the street and into her car — a lot of people still wandering around out there in front of the shoe store — then just drifts off, figuring on a little sonnellino of his own somewhere in preparation for tonight’s big stag party for Stevie. Maybe his old lady would trade him an hour on the sofa for the story of Osborne’s suicide.

“I don’t think you go anywhere,” Luke says. “I think they just stick you in the ground like they did Gramma and you stay there forever. I think it’s a big mistake to die. I don’t ever want to do it.”

“That’s stupid, Lukie,” says her big brother around his jawbreaker. “What about the Rapture? Mom’s gonna get really mad if I tell her what you said.”

“Go ahead. I’ll tell her you thought Jesus is just some man in a fake beard.”

“Like Santa Claus, you mean?” one of the other kids asks.

“Yeah,” says Mattie. “But meaner.”

“Well, Santa Claus can be pretty mean, too,” Luke says, and some of the other kids agree with that.

“He gave Ma a black eye last year,” one of them says.

Markie starts to cry and his jawbreaker pops out and lands in the gutter. Mattie wipes it on his cutoffs and gives it back to his brother to stop his crying. The three young Blaurocks are sitting on a curb in Chestnut Hills under the midday sun with all these other kids, peeling the rubber off their sneaker soles and sucking on the all-day jawbreakers given to them by the shoe store man who has just gone off to the other world — even if that world, as Luke would have it, is only a hole in the ground. Meanwhile, their mom is traipsing from door to door in Chestnut Hills with little Johnny in her arms, telling everyone about Jesus and the hanged man. Mattie is skeptical about these Jesus sightings, but Luke says their mom is seeing him because she wants to, and because of who she is, that makes it so. “If Mom wants something to happen, it happens.” No one argues with that, not even Mattie. There are always people in and out of their house now. It’s almost a kind of church, whichever house they’re in, changing houses being about the most fun thing they do now. Most of the kids know that Luke is completely mistaken about what happens after you die. When some glad morning the roll is called up yonder, they’re all going to fly away, fly away, to join the angel chorus and rest at Jesus’ feet (won’t it be so sweet), joyfully carried on the wings of that great speckled bird to gather at the river in that fair land where the soul never dies, at a better home awaiting over on God’s celestial shore up in the sky, Lord, in the sky, where the silver fountains play upon the mountain high and the milk and honey and healing waters flow cleft for me. They know that. They have sung all the songs and heard all the stories and they know the truth. And Lukie does, too, she’s just being contrary, as usual.

The fragrant Chester K. Johnson, chronically unemployed ex-coalminer, odd-jobber, smalltime thief, cardsharp when sober (not often), and unregenerate wiseass, contrarian by nature, rises, bearing the scars of many battles, from the stinking beat-up sofa in the American Legion Hall above the Main Street dime store where he has spent the morning after an all-nighter so heavy it has obliterated all memory of the day that preceded it. Perhaps there was a poker game up here at dawn; he doesn’t recall. His empty pockets provide no clue, whereas a coin would be something like positive proof and also token for a coffee somewhere. The place is filthy but not so filthy as his own wretched waterless and powerless dirt-floor hutch at West Condon’s hardscrabble edge, wherethrough have drifted, along with the multitudinous vermin, some three generations of Johnsons, if his restless fucked-up clan can be measured by generations, he the last of known whereabouts, known to him anyway, default inheritor of the family estate.

He stumbles off to take a leak and to check in the cracked mirror the hair on his face, which he scrapes off about once a week to stop the itching, the nearest thing he has to a calendar, the days otherwise passing without remark. He decides it can wait another day or two. When did something of sustenance last pass between his broken teeth? Nothing chewable comes to mind, his daily nutrition mostly provided these days by the froth of fermented grains, and that rarely of his own purchase. In short, he is hungry or probably hungry. Maybe he’ll hitch a ride to Waterton. There are a couple of doddering whores over there, including the sister of one of his old mine buddies killed out at Deepwater, who have taken him on as a sort of charity case, and who may be willing to stir up a pot of beans and rice for him when they see his sad condition. Also, he can get his monthly bath and still be back in time for Georgie Lucci’s stag party tonight for Stevie Lawson. Tomorrow, Stevie is marrying one of the Baxter girls, the fat ugly one, though the poor dingdong, who has the brains of a turnip, doesn’t seem to know how it’s happened. The thought of married life makes Cheese queasy, though he’d happily marry anybody’s mother if she’d cook for him and wash and mend his clothes and give him a bit of money for booze and women.

Down on the painfully bright street he finds a lot of people milling about — too many, the town cops among them (what the fuck is going on?) — so he ducks down an alleyway, figuring he might as well check out the trash cans behind the Pizza Palace for a scrap of breakfast, and there encounters a bearded midday drunk in fruity gold slippers, a blue bathrobe, and a hiked red nightshirt pissing against a wall. He’s so crocked he thinks he’s Jesus Christ. “Behold, our belly’s like wine which hash no vent and’s ready t’burst iz wineskin!” he declares, letting fly. Chester Johnson knows this legendary personage primarily by way of his own fulsome and frequent curses, pronounced through his missing teeth as Cheese-us Christ, whence his nickname, his customary unwashed state also playing its part. “Where am I?” the drunk asks confusedly. “’Iz brick wall looks f’miliar.” He leans forward, knocking his forehead against it, leans back. “Hah! Must be wunna the fourteen shtations. Back onna glory trail…!” What is he talking about? No idea. He looks like he might have escaped from that religious zoo out at the church camp near Deepwater. Which means he’s open game. “It hash been said the ’vents of my life reveal the mind of God,” he goes on, talking too loud as drunks do and sweeping his free hand through the stagnant alley air with its heaped-up rubbish and overloaded trashcans. “Look about’n wonder!” As he splashes against the wall, Cheese considers rolling him, but he sees the sucker has no pockets in that smocky thing and his legs under it are bare; might be a lark and a way to get the day started, but there would be no profit in it. It’s like the loony is reading his mind, though, because the next thing he says in his thick-tongued slur is: “So, whish are you, my friend? Good thief’r bad?”

“Huh, gotta be the bad one,” Cheese replies with his usual loose grin, feeling vaguely threatened by something beyond his ken but wondering at the same time if there might be some fun to be had in this, a story to carry with him to Waterton as entertainment for the girls. As an old carny barker uncle who took up preaching as a hustle once told him: Jesus Christ, buster, is the hottest fucking freakshow on the midway. Always envied that uncle; his women, his money. “Ain’t never been a good nuthin nor never aimed t’be.”

“A wise choice,” this alley Jesus says, dropping his skirt and wheeling blearily around to look him over. How did he get so tanked without pockets? He must have a tab somewhere or else he has generous friends. Maybe he could tap into that. “The good thief got locked up for eternity inna Holy Kingdom, a bitter fate. You don’ want that.”

“Hellfire, no,” he agrees, and spits through the gap in his teeth. His preacher uncle laid the whole Jesus story on him, at least the hairier bits, though Cheese remembers only the parts about the flood and the animals, the lady who got screwed by a bird, and then the weird zombie act at the end, which his uncle said was the real zinger and key to his good fortune. People are scared to die, he said, and they’ll cough up anything if they think they can get out of it. He recalls nothing about thieves, but the Jesus character did gather a gang around him, and who knows what they got up to?

Chester is about to suggest, somewhat in jest, that, if Christa-mighty has no objection to a little healthy thieving, they ought to pal up, when the guy, with a wicked grin, says much the same thing (Cheese feels like the fly is open on his brain), declaring they could be “laborers together for God” against “iz ’bominable pit of c’ruption inna pois’nous grip of the moneylenders.” Cheese can go along with that to the extent he understands it, but, holy shit, what the guy wants to rob is the bank. “Come along now! Returning to the people whuzz rightly theirs is not theft! Follow me!”

Against his better judgment, which is generally about the same thing as his worst judgment, he does so, and is led by way of the alleys into the back door of the downtown hardware store. Everyone is either out there among the crowds on the street or on the phone in the office — the store is at their disposal — but before Cheese can fill his pockets with some items of his own, his partner loads him up with a gallon can of black paint, picks up a wide house-painting brush and a screwdriver, and marches him out again. Weaving along tipsily in his golden slippers, he leads them right out onto the sunny street and over to the bank corner, where he pops the lid on the can Cheese is holding with the screwdriver, dips the brush in (“I know, I know, be not anxious!” he mutters, though it’s not clear who he’s talking to) and commences to write across the bank wall and window: HE HATH SWALLOWED DOWN RICHES, AND HE SHALL VOMIT THEM UP AGAIN! He steps back, admiring his authorship, sticks the brush back in the paint. Cheese is a slow reader and is still trying to puzzle it out when he is grabbed by the town cops, Monk Wallace and Louie Testatonda. The drunk is gone. There’s a crowd around, whooping it up, some calling his name.

“Hey, it wasn’t me!” he protests. “It was fuckin’ Jesus Christ!”

“Sure it was,” says fat Louie, gripping his nape like you might a cat.

“And you’re fuckin’ George Washington!” says Monk, handcuffing him.

Never mind. They’re applauding him. He’s a hero of sorts.

Now she can’t stop throwing up. It’s okay. She wants everything that’s inside to come out anyway, no matter how much it hurts. Something has got into her, something evil, and she has to punish the body that let it in in hopes it can be driven away. It’s her own fault, she knows that. Even her Pa has abandoned her in her wickedness. Elaine used to talk daily with her Pa, but she is no longer worthy of him. She prays to him and to Jesus and to God, but she hears her prayers in her head like empty echoes. She must go looking for him and beg his forgiveness. If he loves her, and she believes he does — he must—he will forgive her. But to do that, she first has to die. Only it’s so hard. Elaine has come to realize that crossing over is the hardest thing in the world. The sinful body just keeps fighting back. Her Ma is in the room with her. Her Ma’s husband Ben. A nurse. Also the camp nurse. She hates them all, but she knows that the hatred in her heart is not her own, for there is a badly damaged self buried deep inside that loves them more than anything. There is also someone or something else in the room. She can’t quite see it. It’s a kind of shadowy hotness. She hopes it is Jesus or maybe her Pa, but she does not think it is. She thinks it is something horrible. That it is just waiting for her to die, unprotected. Unhealed, unsaved. And therefore unable ever to see her Pa again. Only the camp nurse knows what is really happening and she tells her quietly in her ear what she must do: There is something bad inside her and she must get strong enough that they can get it out while there is still time. Elaine understands: She must eat to die. If it makes her sick, that is only part of her martyrdom; she will welcome it. The thing inside her is resisting furiously, but, with a nod, she agrees to do whatever the camp nurse wants.

Things that get inside and change everything. Love, for example. Or something like love but less than it and worse than it. The palm reader Hazel Dunlevy sits alone, Mrs. Edwards having taken Colin for a ride, on a little wooden stool in the middle of the sunny vegetable garden staring, somewhat terrified, upon the earth’s ripe vegetal wantonness. Animals, too, they just go at it, can’t help themselves. Those flies: in midair. Men and women are caught between pure divine love and the sinful love that drives all nature. But even God’s love can be excessive, can’t it? Just look what He did to Mary. Is that a sacrilegious thought? She knows he is there before he speaks. A kind of shadow, not his own, that goes wherever he goes. “Well, lookie here,” he says. “It’s little Miss Muffet…all by her lonesome…”

Things that get inside and change everything. Fear. Appetite. The love of Jesus. Of Satan. Of Mammon. For Ben, it is unassuageable rage that has invaded him. Some might say that it is a holy rage and he sometimes wishes it might be, but he does not think that it is holy. It is a hellish black thing that fills him up, fattening itself on all that he once knew himself by. Blinding him, shutting up his ears. But there is nothing he can do except pray and have faith that God will not desert him in his darkest hour. Sitting beside poor little Elaine’s bed, suffering her suffering, he made his mind up. Or it was made up for him. By what got inside. Now, after he drives Clara back to the Wilderness camp to get Elaine’s room ready, he has work to do. The things he has to make he has used but has never made, but the principle is simple. Along the road back to camp, there are a lot of illegal roadside fireworks barns popping up, as usual this time of year. Never been legal, but nobody does anything about it. Should find something in one of them that can be made to work.

“So many things has gone so wrong,” Clara says, as much to herself as to him. “I didn’t never imagine it to turn out this way.”

“No.” Clara’s faith is still intact, as is his, but her will is being tested. And her strength. It’s like something vital has been sapped right out of her. She cries a lot more now, moves more slowly, often with her head down, is tired all the time. The latest bad news is that Hiram and Betty Clegg have been arrested in Florida and charged with something like what got Sister Bernice and Sister Debra in trouble. Has to do with that dead woman’s estate. Mrs. McCardle. Hiram got hold of it through the doddery husband, somehow, but it turns out there are children, and they have brought legal action against them and the church. And it looks like only some of the money ever reached the church. Something has got into Hiram, too. “What does Ely say?”

“It’s been a while. But today I felt him in the room, watching over Elaine. I think it was him. He didn’t say nothing. He was just there.”

What Ben felt in the room was utter hopelessness, but he doesn’t say so. “I’ll drop you off at the trailer,” he says, pulling into the camp, nodding at Hovis at the gate. Hovis draws his fob watch out of his pocket and meditates upon it. “I got some errands to do.”

Wayne and Billy Don are throwing a baseball back and forth in the sunshine in front of the Meeting Hall, and Wayne raises his hand and comes over to get the news about Elaine and to ask about what they should work on next. Ben answers him but feels he is growing distant from all this. Probably what he has just said has only confused the man. He tells Wayne they’ll talk about it later, when he gets back for supper and tonight’s prayer meeting.

Down in the trailer park, little Willie Hall hoists himself out of his heavy, redwood garden chair and comes over, Bible in hand, to tell them about the suicide—“Behold, I seen Absalom hanged in a oak!” he exclaims — and Ben and Clara nod and say Dave Osborne was a good man, it was a terrible thing, they must all pray for his soul, and Clara shows signs of tears again, though she hardly knew Dave. Willie asks about Elaine, and Clara says she’s getting better, they’re bringing her home, and Willie runs off, spouting good-news verses, to tell Mabel.

“What is it you gotta do, Ben?”

“I found some things. They make me figure we’ll likely see more a them biker boys.”

“What things?”

“Just things. Things they’re gonna want back.” Clara gives him a hard look, one mixed of pain and uncertainty. “I love you, Clara, and I love Elaine,” he says, “more’n I ever loved anything in the world.” Then he grins, feeling a little foolish. “’Cept maybe Rocky,” he says.

“Why are you telling me this, Ben?”

“Well, sometimes I keep things too much to myself. I just felt like, whatever, you oughta know.”

She leans toward him and rests a hand on his shoulder. And then her head. “Be heedful, Ben. I need you so.”

Doesn’t make things any easier.

Darren Rector has watched from the Meeting Hall windows as Ben and Clara’s old muddy pickup rolled in. Not long after Mrs. Edwards and Colin, with that scared-rabbit look on his face, rolled out. In Clara’s and Ben’s grave faces he has seen no sign of good news. They are at the edge of cataclysmic events that will impact upon the entire universe, and Ben and Clara are still preoccupied with their little family tragedy. And it is a tragedy, as earthbound events go. Very sad. Poor Elaine is starving herself to death. Doing, as if obliged, the Marcella thing. Odd how exemplars create themselves without ever knowing they are doing this. Perhaps, unwittingly, he is doing so himself. Elaine will receive her reward in Heaven, and Ben and Clara are both good Christian souls whom God will surely take to his bosom, but they are no longer reliable leaders for the end times hard upon them.

Darren has not been standing at the window waiting for their return. He has been watching Wayne and Billy Don playing catch. As though nothing were happening. That peculiar unawareness of most of the world even when at the very edge of the end of things. It’s almost a sign of it. A shying away from looming reality, which is awesome, and from one’s personal responsibility before it. Jesus’ ceaseless reminder, generally ignored, of the need for hourly preparedness. The virgins who kept their lamps trimmed in anticipation of the bridegroom, and those who didn’t. Most didn’t, don’t. That’s the very heart of the story. To be among the chosen, you have to work at it every minute of every day. It’s the ultimate final exam. Billy Don has no excuse. He has been privy to everything. It’s that demonic girl. Well, too bad for him. Darren is learning not to be angry about it. Sometimes he even feels sorry about the horrible fate that awaits his friend. Though not very.

Darren has spent the day devotedly poring through his tape recordings in search of further hints of God’s ultimate intentions, planning his symbolic burial ceremony at the Mount of Redemption, and drafting an urgent open letter to the churches in the form of a mimeographed pamphlet. The letter is ostensibly from Clara Collins as the Brunist Evangelical Leader and Organizer, though in its pamphlet form it does not require a signature. He would show it to her, but he does not want to intrude upon her grief and worry. She has often relied upon him to produce such mailings for the church. The letter speaks of the recent history of the Brunist Wilderness Camp, including the many improvements and increased security made possible by member contributions, the presumed author’s warmly welcomed return to the camp headquarters with her husband after their eastward travels (the author thanks the host churches for their kind hospitality), the carving out of the foundations of the new Brunist Coming of Light Tabernacle Church on the Mount of Redemption and the laying of the cornerstone; but it also tells of the ceaseless harassments and intrusions, the unjust legal actions being taken against them, the formation of a sinister organization in West Condon whose stated objective is to crush their movement, the brutal assault (not otherwise specified) upon her own daughter that has left the child at death’s door, the ruthless beating while under police custody of the bishop of West Condon, and the armed attack on the camp, though without naming the perpetrators of the latter, it being Darren’s firm belief that the event was driven by a divinely ordained internal dynamic, its protagonists selected from among those available. The camp has been stoutly defended, the letter says, by the county law enforcement agencies, by Brunist friends in the Christian Patriots, and by their own brave camp leaders, but is ever in need of stalwart and faithful defenders. After writing that line, Darren decided to capitalize Defenders, thereby, he realized, suddenly creating a new category of membership and one that might draw further numbers to this area in case of need.

The letter also describes, in the third person, his own prophecies and revelations and the church’s current plans, organized by him, for a symbolic burial of their assassinated Prophet on the fifth of July, making it clear in the announcement that all Brunist faithful are invited to that memorial ceremony and urged at least to celebrate it in their own way wherever they are. But how, he wondered, should he refer to himself? “Prophet” and “visionary” seem too ostentatious, clerical titles like “church secretary” insufficient. He thinks of himself as the “church historian” or “scribe,” but these have a stuffy academic ring to them. Finally he has settled on “evangelist,” news-bringer, a general term that places him humbly among all “evangelical” believers (Clara would like this) and at the same time sets him among an elite and celebrated yet subservient Biblical company, capable of prophecy but not defined by it, sometimes allowing Sister Clara to add a qualifying adjective or two to add specificity and a note of approval. The pamphlets have been run off and the envelopes have been typed. All that remains is to fill the envelopes and seal them, which he must do now in time for the afternoon mail. Now that Clara is back, he will also have to hide away the tape recorder and his unedited working notes. Darren has a locked office file drawer with his own key, keeping there his secret tapes, his private copy of the book On the Mount of Redemption and those other disturbing photos used by Billy Don for improper purposes, and various personal items such as his diary, Clara’s twelve-sided pendant, and the revolver he came upon a few days ago down where the rape and the armed incursion took place. What they call in the Western movies a six-gun. Though in principle he does not approve of firearms, and along with Sister Debra and others, unsuccessfully opposed their use in the camp, the startling discovery seemed more than mere coincidence; the gun lay glittering in the dark weeds like a personal, if somewhat foreboding, message from the beyond, dropped there specifically for him. When he picked it up, it seemed almost alive, vibrating with veiled purpose. He has fired it once, just to test it, shooting out a window at the back of one of the mine buildings over by the Mount of Redemption during the heat of day when the sound was less likely to carry. He found himself shamefully excited and could not resist a fierce moment of sin right there in broad daylight, under the very eye of God, repenting of the sin even as he was committing it, but reasoning later that it might not have been a sin at all but rather, given the nature of God’s strange gift, a kind of symbolic prayer of thanksgiving.

“Hello, Nick. Calling from home. Here checking on Irene before heading out to the club with Tommy.”

“Terrific day for it, Ted. Do you need a fourth?”

“Thanks, but Tommy and I have things to talk about.”

“Is Irene—?”

“About the same. Concetta’s here. But, Nick, I just heard that, after everything else that’s happened today, the bank has been vandalized.”

“Yes, graffiti painted across the east wall and window. Something from the Bible, I think. Getting someone to clean it up now. They’ve arrested a man named Johnson.”

“Johnson? Chester Johnson, probably. Bad seed. In and out of jail so often he should be paying rent.”

“That’s him. But he seems all but illiterate. Everyone says it was really your mad preacher who did it.”

“Edwards?”

“He must have sprung his cage. That dancer has been running around all afternoon like a headless chicken with her feathers up and tail showing looking for him.”

“I think I caught a glimpse. Are we ready to make those arrests?”

“There are still some jurisdiction issues, but, yes, the warrants are prepared for our boys to enter the church camp and we know where the minister is being kept.”

“So what’s holding things up?”

“Well, I was going to do it early next week.”

“Do it today.”

In the melancholic penumbra of St. Stephen’s, waiting for Father Baglione to turn up so she can take confession, Angela Bonali prays silently to the Virgin Mary, asking that the Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy, intercede for her in restoring Tommy Cavanaugh’s temporarily lost affection. He is confused and frightened, O holy Mother, and does not understand his true self. There are many different images of Mary in the church — the pious Virgin, grieving Mother, triumphant Queen of Heaven; Angela has chosen to pray before a more voluptuous and youthful Mary, smiling sweetly, the curly-headed Baby Jesus at her ample breast. The sight of the infant nuzzling his mother brings tears to her eyes. I live my life in sorrow, she tells the Virgin, calling upon the White Dove song she shared with Tommy. Darkness hides me where I kneel to pray. I thank you, dear Mother, for your promise to help me in my need today.

Mary knows of course about the anal and oral sex and the dirty pictures and all the rest of it, and Angela can only hope that the Blessed Virgin in her Heavenly wisdom, for all her lack of experience, can understand and forgive. When she sees it through the Virgin’s eyes, it does look a bit sordid. But from deep inside herself, when lost in his embrace, suffering shivers of delight, it is mysterious and beautiful. Cosmic. It helped us feel so much part of each other, O holy Mother. We became as one person, it was really divine in the true meaning of that word, and I felt closer to God than I’ve ever felt before. She can see how Mary might not be convinced. It’s just so hard, she whispers, feeling a pain in her chest (and also in her rumbling tummy — she is starving!), to be a woman. Please don’t let me fall back into my dark ages. You remember how awful that was. I couldn’t bear it!

Gazing at Mother Mary looking down upon her so lovingly, no matter how sinful she might be, Angela is reminded of her own mother, whom she misses terribly. They came here often to pray together, though the last time she prayed alone. It was the day of her mother’s funeral, the loneliest and saddest day of her life. Her dad always barks a lot and stomps around the house like the most important person in the world, leaving his cigar butts and ashes all over the place, but her mom, big and warm and kind, was just quietly there for her. Someone to talk to, to lean on. She let Angela know just how she felt but she never scolded her. Now Angela is the woman of the house, cooking and cleaning for a sullen old man and a despicable bully of a brother, earning until now the family’s only steady income, and all her brothers and sisters expect this of her, so long as the old man is alive. A woman! It’s hard to believe she’ll soon be twenty! She crosses herself, feeling Death’s chill blowing past. Sancta Maria, Mater Domini nostri, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc, et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen.

In catechism class, Father Bags always insisted on learning the Latin prayers; Angela was good at it and still remembers them. Deus meus, ex toto corde poenitet me omnium meorum peccatorum… I am sorry for my sins. Which, in Latin, seem less personal, less shameful, more like just the way the world works. One night, when Tommy caught her crossing herself before making love, he asked in his joking way if she thought that would make the sex better. She said she was only asking that their love be blessed. But wasn’t she sinning? No, not really, she said, gazing upon him, feeling almost feverish with desire. It was okay because she loved him with all her heart and would love him forever. That made him grin and blush, which was pretty unusual for Tommy Cavanaugh. His erection dipped slightly, so she knelt and kissed it as she might kiss the toes of a saint. And then, because one thing usually leads to another, not as she might kiss the toes of a saint. His manliness always thrilled her. Well, his whole beautiful body did, his handsome face, his excited gray-blue eyes, his smile of pleasure, his strong long-fingered hands and the way they gripped and stroked her. “His searching hand seared a path down my abdomen and onto my thigh.” She has written that in her diary. Should she tell Father Bags that in confession? How would you say it in Latin?

She realizes that her thoughts have drifted away from prayer and she tries to return to it. Salve Regina, Mater misericordiae. Vita, dulcedo, et spes nostra, salve… But she is too hungry. Ad te clamamus, she cannot. All day she has been suffering a wild desperate craving for a banana split with scoops of strawberry and chocolate ice cream, hot caramel sauce, maraschino cherries, nuts, and whipped cream. It would be the worst thing ever for her diet, but these mad cravings happen to expectant women and she is almost certainly having to eat for two now, isn’t she? And she hasn’t had a bite all day — the refrigerator was empty, Charlie having cleaned it out — no wonder she’s hungry. She could devour a pizza, too. With double cheese. But after the banana split. Father Baglione has arrived and is shuffling about by the altar with his shoulders above his head and his big nose in his cassock like an old buzzard. Perhaps this is not the best moment for confession. She begs the Holy Virgin not to let her monthlies come — not yet, anyway — whispers another Salve Regina and prays that her father’s house be saved, and leaves the church. Was the old priest scowling? He always scowls.

Father Baglione is known for his scowling sobriety. The scowl is a gift from his Lombard forebears; the sobriety he has acquired in consequence of it. If a playful spirit came naturally to him, as to most children, it did not sit well on his countenance and inspire playfulness in others, except at his own expense. He was known derisively from a young age as Bags and was often the victim of bullies and practical jokers. He therefore abandoned the playground and withdrew into scholarship — which he was not very good at, never having mastered his new language — but as a poor immigrant boy, he had few other options, and soon enough, relying on diligence, he found himself in seminary, where jollity was less of a virtue, memorization more useful than reason, and Latin closer to his mother tongue. His face was there deemed a pious one and he adopted that reading as the true one, achieving a reputation for humble self-denial and implacable orthodoxy. His father was a New York cobbler, but he had immigrant uncles who had taken up coalmining, and so willingly accepted a parish in coal country among natives of his own country, supposing it to be the first step into the ecclesiastical hierarchy. But Latin, he has come to learn, is not the persuasive language of accession in the American church, nor is humility its channel. So here he remains, dear old dour old Father Bags, a living portrait of the communal gloom. He knows that others, gazing into his face, sense that he has seen into the very depths of their sinfulness and is appalled by it, and they are intimidated by that, and reveal more than is probably their intention. Today his scowl is deepened by his sense of the impending danger posed by the cultists at the edge of town. The church must be protected against further criminal assault, and these deluded madmen operating under the guise of religion must be stoutly resisted. Resistance requires unwanted meetings with representatives of other local churches, who deem themselves — though unrepentant schismatics and heretics and ignorant beyond belief — to be Christians, and having to listen to their nonsensical pieties and tedious Biblical quotations. The translation of the Sacred Scriptures into vulgar tongues and thereby its transmission to the uneducated and inflammable masses, as Father Baglione has often remarked, was one of the great calamities of human history.

“Do you hear it, Colin? Listen! Tea-kettle-tea-kettle-tea-kettle-tea! That’s a little wren calling. It’s hard to see them because they’re mostly down on the ground, hopping around in the tangle, looking for insects. But showing off up there, making sure you can see him, is what looks and sounds like a bunting. See? High up in that maple? Dark as a little ink spot but purply and gleaming in the sun. An indigo. That pretty warbling song, do you hear him?”

“I want to go back to the camp.”

“I know. We’re going back. But first we’ll walk through here and see how many different birds we can find, and then we’ll have a picnic by the lake. It’s our little holiday. I’ve fixed your favorite peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and have brought potato chips and cold sodas and chocolate chip cookies for dessert that Ludie Belle baked just for us and even some marshmallows to roast if you want to.”

“I want to go back to the camp.”

It has been his litany since they drove out through the camp gates, but it is so peaceful and beautiful here in the lakeside bird sanctuary, more like the church camp used to be before it got so civilized. Debra feels certain that if she is patient he will warm to it and begin to enjoy himself and be grateful afterwards for their little midsummer treat, and they may be able to talk a bit about what might happen next. He could even like being away from the camp so much he’ll be willing to think about leaving it for good, just the two of them. The golden age of the camp has passed; it’s time to leave. They can go somewhere where no one knows them and she can get a teaching job, or work as a social worker or a librarian, and take care of him for as long as she lives.

“Can we go back to the camp now?”

“Are you afraid? Don’t be afraid. You’re here with me.” He only glares at her as if at a stranger. “Oh, look, Colin! Don’t move!” she whispers. “A hummingbird!” She nods toward a coral honeysuckle shrub where the little ruby-throated bird with its hypodermic beak, hardly bigger than a June bug, hangs in midair, its pale wings an invisible blur, its tiny heart pounding away over a thousand times a minute. Success at last! Colin watches it with awed fascination. Her own heart is pounding, too. She so much needs today to go well. Colin reaches out as if to touch the bird and it darts away.

“I want to go back to the camp.”

“Oh, Colin…” But he is already halfway to the car. She has to run to catch up. Overhead, a single bird sets off in alarm, arousing a flock and causing a ripple through the trees like a shudder down the spine.

“Help me, Lord. Show me what’s wrongful and what’s needful and what to do if something’s both.” Thus, under the shower, the penitent sinner, Christian songsmith, and unassuming man of peace, Ben Wosznik, weighed down with fury and awe and despair, pleads for illumination as the cold spray needles him. He has done what he can. He has run his errands and he has crafted the caps and fuses, saving the crimping of the fuses for such time as they might be needed. The old sticks are sweating their nitro and are dangerous, telltale crystals poxing some of them, but everything is buried safely out of sight and reach. The hard face they’re to be used on is not a wall of coal, only history, but it’s just as black and impenetrable and just as likely to blow out on you.

The camp’s communal showers have a new electric hot water tank that is turned on for six hours each day. The tight little shower in their house trailer has no elbow room, so after the hot water is off and the others have gone, Ben sometimes likes to come up here for a cold shower on his own. Sometimes, on good days, he thinks up new songs here, sometimes he just hums old ones, listening inside them for the grace he seeks. “The darkness deepens, Lord with me abide…” He’s humming that now. In the deepening darkness of a bright afternoon. A darkness poor Dave Osborne jumped into. Ben occasionally finds the young, curly-headed office fellow in here at this time as well, but the boy never stays; if he comes in while Ben is here, he always apologizes shyly and leaves immediately. That’s what has happened today. Darren is a strange boy with strange ideas, but also smart in a way Ben is not, nor could ever be. Consequently, though Ben respects him and listens to him, they never have much to say to each other. Ben gets on better with the other one, Billy Don, who is also a good Christian boy with some Bible college ideas but more down to earth. Thinking about those two boys, he is reminded of Carl Dean Palmers and the last time he saw him, that terrible morning, just below Inspiration Point, wearing his leather jacket, ball cap, and red boots, the lad’s beard still wet from a predawn shower. It was when Carl Dean said he wished Ben was his dad, filling Ben’s heart, and then to Ben’s sorrow he said goodbye and they hugged. Ben wishes now he knew how to reach him. He might be able to talk with him about this thing he’s thinking of doing. Maybe even get some help. He wonders if he will see Carl Dean again if those biker boys come back. He does not think he will.

Elaine is taking food again, only a bite or two of dry toast and a swallow of milk so far, but it’s a change of attitude, so they’ve agreed to release her today after the doctor makes his afternoon rounds. After his shower, Ben will take Clara to the hospital in the truck so she can ride back with Elaine in the ambulance. But the girl is not well. She does not look like she will ever be well again. A cruel punishment for such a pious child. And for her pious mother, too, who is near broken by it. About Bernice’s idea of trying exorcism, Ben doesn’t know. The child does not seem to be herself, it’s true, and anything is worth trying. But it’s not amongst his notions of how God works in the world and tends His souls, notions learned mostly from Elaine’s father, that gentle righteous man who set Ben on the true path all those years ago and brought him home to Jesus. “Grace is not something you die to get,” Ely used to say in his sure quiet way, “it’s something you get to live!” Ben has been working for some time on a song with that line, to the tune, loosely, of the old church number, “I’ll Go Where You Want Me to Go.” Another melody he has been humming of late: “I’ll do Your will with a heart sincere, I’ll be what You want me to be.” He may introduce the song tonight at prayer meeting, if he can get the second line right.

Though Ely’s spirit seems to have withdrawn from his wife and daughter of late, Ben has felt him close by all day, and he is reassured by that. Ely seems to be saying, just by being there, that there is man’s work to be done and Ben must do it, though he promises him no peace from the sin of it, nor does Ben expect such a promise. Contrarily, Ben has not felt Jesus close by, not for some time. Moses, more like. As he said to Clara at the hospital this morning, “I’m feeling more Old Testament than New.” “I know,” she said. “But we’re New Testament people, Ben. We have to bear up.” But she was crying and did not stop crying.

When Ben unearthed the first batch of dummies down where the attack on Elaine took place, he supposed he had found it all. Only when he chanced on the second smaller lot in Rocky’s violated grave did he realize the bikers must have buried their haul in separate parcels. More than anything else it’s that careful planning that convinces Ben they’ll return. How much is there? Sheriff Puller told them what the old inventory showed, but it was assumed to be out of date, and at the time no one took it seriously. But maybe they should have. The two parcels Ben has found would be only about a fifth of that inventory amount, meaning, if the number’s right, there may be five or six other locations — or even more, depending on how they split it up. After finding the heap in his dog’s grave, he paid a visit to his old abandoned farm shack where the biker boys holed up while they were here, figuring it was a likely out-of-the-way place for them to stow such things. He rooted about and took up floorboards and followed all their tracks, but he turned up nothing. Now, though, under the sharp cold spray, it comes to him like a revelation: that pile of small unburnt logs in the old wood cookstove. Everything else a shambles and those clean logs stacked as neatly as a kid’s building blocks. He’ll stop by there on his way back from the hospital.

He’s just drying off, thinking about this, when Wayne Shawcross comes running in. “Ben! It’s the police! She ain’t here, but they’ve come to arrest Sister Debra!”

“They put a full-court press on Fleet, Dad. Fleet said Charlie picked up a pear and ate it with his mouth open while leaning on him. He was pretty sure Moron and Grunge and the others were pocketing other stuff from the store, but Charlie was wearing his brass knuckles and had all his attention. When he told Charlie the pear cost a quarter, Charlie tossed the core at him and told him to keep the change and try to keep his arms from getting broken.” They’re on the fifth green, Ted putting for a par. Tommy is understandably struggling with his swing today, trying to see with blackened eyes past his smashed and bandaged nose. They’re not keeping score. They’re having the conversation they missed at the Loin on Wednesday, when Tommy ended up in hospital. Tommy has been telling him now about a phone call he got from young Piccolotti after Charlie Bonali and his gang, including Concetta Moroni’s badboy son, visited his Italian grocery this afternoon, threatening him with dire consequences to body and business if he didn’t join his Knights of Columbus Volunteer Defense Force and contribute to arming it. “They also call themselves the Dagotown Devil Dogs, Fleet said.”

“Devil dogs. Old wartime nickname for Marines. Probably reliving his days in the military.”

“Well, that’s another thing, Dad. Charlie was only in the Marines a few weeks before he went AWOL. Something Angela once told me. He ended up doing brig time and getting busted out with a dishonorable discharge.” Nick only said Charlie had military experience. But he must have known. When he gets back to the clubhouse, he’ll call Nick and Dee and demand Charlie’s immediate arrest. Now. You’ve got sixty minutes. Ted sinks his putt in spite of hitting it too hard, but after two tries and another long lie, Tommy gives up and picks his ball up.

“And that thing they have about the Corpse, it’s like they’re queer for each other, just like fucking priests and the corpse of Christ.” The ex — U.S. Marine recruit Charlie Bonali is treating members of his newly-formed Knights of Columbus Volunteer Defense Force to afternoon beers in Hog’s Tavern, a dark little bar in the Italian neighborhood once popular with coalminers but now a little-used relic of times past. Hog Galasso has been dead for over a decade, but subsequent owners have seen no need to change the name, nor for that matter to clean it up or improve its reputation. The Hog is what it is, a local legend and landmark, scarred and rank and joyless. Charlie picks up his bottle and sucks long from it, looking like he might bite the top off and eat it, then signals for another. “They’re like a mob of sick monks who whip themselves all the time just to show how holy they are.” At the request of his enrapt younger comrades, Charlie, popping his knuckles for punctuation, is recounting his brief unhappy life in what he calls the “Marine Corpse” with its “little tin soldiers in toy uniforms.” “They’re always horsing around, grabbing each other, and the ones who don’t touch, they’re often the weirdest of them all, vicious little jerkoffs who get their kicks out of seeing other guys get their balls twisted. Killing for them is a kind of faggoty flirting with the Corpse. Trying to make out.” Charlie belches fulsomely, examines his fingernails, polishes them on his unbuttoned blue police shirt. He is being arrested today but only laughs about it. “For me, killing people is just a job. It’s no different from stepping on ants. And I like having a piece in my hands. Makes me feel like I am who I am. I’ve erased a few suckers, had to. That’s why I’m back here for a while. There was a hood on the south side of the city working for the Old Man who decided to set up for himself. He said he didn’t see any need to continue the partnership any longer, they could just be friends. So the Old Man sent me and some other guys in to waste him, make him a lesson for others. Now I got nothing against this motherfucker, it’s just a matter of politics and territory, like in the last war the old farts are always bragging about. The dude had trouble with piles, and he went to a private clinic every so often to get his asshole doctored. We ambushed him there, only it turned out he’d been expecting us and had brought a lot of artillery with him and we were the ones who got ambushed. The shit was really flying. Talk about getting your ass reamed! But one thing I’d learned from the Corpse was to stay cool and keep a steady finger. Soon as I saw the receptionist was not at her desk, I just ducked out of sight, snapped my Sten onto automatic, and then at the first lull, stepped back in and blew them all away. They were shooting back, but they missed. They were trying too hard, like the sarge used to say. Six of us went in there, but only three of us got out, and one of them was badly shot up. I carried him out on my shoulder and later him and the other guy told the Old Man all that had happened. I was a hero. I mean a real hero. Those candyasses back in the Corpse would have shit green to watch me. So I got a rep now, I got respect. The Old Man smiles when he sees me. The other big guys aren’t so sure. They think I might try to take their place someday.” Charlie smiles a crooked smile at the rigid glassy-eyed faces smiling back. “And, hell, they’re probably right.”

Reverend Konrad Dreyer of Trinity Lutheran, home from his pole-fishing excursion to the lakes with his two small sons (they have caught three little sunfish the boys will share at supper), is seated in a lawn chair in his sunny backyard, which is also the church’s backyard, a stack of books, his briar pipe, and a pitcher of fresh lemonade on the table beside him. The boys are off to the city swimming pool with his wife; he has this delicious late afternoon to himself. All around him: the green lawn he has nurtured, the flowers and fruit trees he has planted. Butterflies. Songbirds. The midsummer sun is still high in the sky and warm — warm enough for T-shirt and shorts, but not yet smotheringly hot as it soon will be in the weeks ahead. On his return from the lakes, his wife told him about the suicide of the shoe store man and said that Police Chief Romano called and wanted him to please call back, and he did so. Officer Romano said the deceased listed his religious preference as Lutheran and he wondered if the Reverend knew him or his family, as they were looking for possible surviving relations. Connie said, sorry, the man was not a member of his congregation and he did not know him. That’s not surprising, he was not known as a religious man, the police officer said, but he had received a request from the secretary of the United Mine Workers local asking if Trinity Lutheran could host a memorial service for the man as they regarded him highly and wished to honor his passing, and Connie said that they could and that they should call him personally to schedule it. During summer vacation time, activities at the church dwindle, it should not be a problem.

In tomorrow’s sermon, it is his intention to take on some of the more contentious issues being raised by faddish theologians: the death of God; the supposed fabrication of a Jesus who never was by way of ancient mystery cults and pagan spring deity myths; the invention of Christianity by Paul and the later gospel writers, none of whom knew Christ (if he existed); the contrary “truths” hidden in the Apocrypha, suppressed by the church fathers; Herod’s slaughter of the firstborn; the myth of John the Baptist; the “dubious” legends of the Virgin Mary, and so on. Thus his afternoon’s stacked reading. He will not argue separately against these naïve opinions but will rather contest the appropriateness of approaching the sacred by way of profane reasoning. In his early days at university as a philosophy major, before Augustine and Aquinas led him into theology and eventually the ministry, Connie, thinking he might have talent as a writer, took a memorable English course in which the professor convinced him that well-made fictions were true in ways that history and scientific formulae were not. Amusingly, the professor used the “Three Little Pigs” story as an example and actually made a kind of theology out of it. This concept of lies that were truer than truths corresponded nicely with his own belief in the “spirit” of history as opposed to history’s supposed facts and made him feel at one with what he was even then calling “the creative force of the universe.” It helped him to see that myths were not falsifications of history, but rather a special kind of language for grasping realities beyond time and space, realities of the eternal order, and to understand Christianity as the gradual shaping of a sustaining human vision, one impervious to the aberrations of history and the pretentious intrusions of misguided scholars. As such, it is true, even if it is not “true.”

He pauses, takes a note to that effect, then returns to the book in his hand, which examines the historical evidence behind the four Gospels, finding little, and none at all for the existence of any so-called Jesus of Nazareth. Whereupon, out of the blue and as if in manifest refutation, Jesus appears before him, dressed in a crimson tunic with a dark blue robe over his shoulders and accompanied by a flock of small children. It takes him more than a moment to recognize Wes Edwards. The transformation is quite remarkable. This is not the real Jesus, of course, but the one popularized by Western art: pale, straight-nosed and high-browed, with a well-trimmed beard and flowing auburn locks (has Priscilla been adding highlights?), and costumed straight out of the Renaissance masters and European cathedral windows. “Hello, Wes,” Connie says, standing and offering his hand. Which is not taken. “How good of you to drop by. I was just thinking about you.”

Wesley glances back over his shoulder, frowns. “I think it’s you he’s speaking to,” he says, peering down his nose. “Yes, yes, I know he’s a fool, and foolishness is a sin, but, as has been said, God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise. He believes, as he says, in ‘learned ignorance,’ so let us help him along in his belief.” His focus lifts to rest on Connie. He smiles. His gaze is steely and unwavering, yet mischievous. He picks up the book Connie has been reading, thumbs through it thoughtfully. Much has changed in Wes’ demeanor. He has lost his old crinkly-smile, lip-nibbling manner, is more aggressive, self-assured. He almost is who he pretends to be. When Wes pauses at a page, Connie prepares for a discussion about Jesus’ own existence in history. Instead, Wes tears the page out, folds it into a paper airplane, and tosses it into the still air. It floats gracefully for a moment before dipping to earth, and Wes rips out another page.

“Hey, wait a minute—!”

The children clamber about, tugging on Wes’ robes, asking if they can make airplanes too, and he smiles and spreads his arms and says, “I place before you an open door.” Whereupon, before Connie can stop them, the children snatch up his books, spread out over the back yard, and commence to tear the pages out. Connie manages to grab hold of the last of the books, but the child screams so bloodcurdlingly he lets go of it again.

“Wes! Please! This is terrible! Make them give them back!”

“Wes, I’m afraid, is indisposed. And I am disinclined.”

“But how can you? This…this disrespect for…!”

“Nonsense. There is altogether too much mystification of the written word. Especially that insignificant branch of fantasy literature known as theology. It is right that, like fancy, these pages take flight. Think of them,” he adds, as a paper airplane floats past right in front of his nose — Connie ducks and bats at it as if at a pestering moth—“as angels bearing such pompous human folly on their wings as to fill thy mouth with laughing.”

The big children are showing the little ones how to fold the planes and set them dancing. Meanwhile, they help themselves to his lemonade, drinking straight from the pitcher. A little girl, her cheek bulging, offers him a sticky jawbreaker with her fingerprints on it from a filthy brown paper bag. He fears he might be ill. At which point Priscilla Tindle shows up in a breathless tizzy, wearing only a torn nightshirt. “Oh dear Jesus! Thank Heavens! I’ve been looking all over for you!” she gasps, tears in her eyes. “Come! We have to go!”

“Woman, why weepest thou?” Wesley asks with a faint self-mocking smile, winking over her shoulder at Connie. Connie can see that her gown is ripped down the back and she is wearing nothing underneath it.

“The police have been at the studio!” she cries. “They came to arrest poor Wesley! Hurry! You must save him!” The children gather behind her, pointing and giggling. One of the little boys sails a paper plane in that direction, but it veers away shyly. It immediately becomes a game like pin the tail on the donkey and they are all trying to hit the target with their paper planes. She turns to them. “The police are trying to put Jesus in prison! We have to stop them! Tell them he took a bus out of town! Tell them he ascended into Heaven! Anything! But don’t let them find him!”

After they have all scattered, Connie, somewhat shaken (he was not made for life’s rough and tumble), wanders his backyard collecting books and pages. He has decided to postpone his truth-in-fiction sermon. He is too disconcerted to carry on, and summer is anyway too frivolous a time for it. Besides, let’s be frank: those in his pastorate prefer a simple — and brief — communion service with a few Christian homilies tossed in, caring nothing for these bookish disputes, which just put them to sleep. He is, as Wesley himself has reminded him, only talking to himself.

The drive back from the lakes is a disaster. Debra makes the mistake of trying one last time to talk Colin into leaving the camp with her, taking a sudden turn onto the highway as she’s crossing it, and Colin in panic tries to leap out of the moving car; she has to hit the brakes and grab him. She tries to pacify him in the old way, but he slaps furiously at her hand, shrieking wildly. “Don’t touch me! They won’t let me into Heaven!” She promises him, crossing her heart, that they’ll go straight back to the camp, just please don’t try to jump out of the car again. She drives very slowly, her heart pounding, tears in her eyes, one foot on the brake, Colin glaring at her in terror and gripping the door handle all the way back. As soon as they reach the camp gates, he does jump out of the car, tumbling onto the road, then leaping up and running toward all the people rushing their way, gripping his crotch, screaming hysterically that she’s been doing terrible wicked things. “To this!” My God, has he opened up his pants? She sinks into the car seat, leans her head against the wheel. She only wants to die. “It’s the police!” people are shouting outside her window. “They came to arrest you! Darren kept them out, but they’ll be back! You can’t let them see you!” She doesn’t move. She doesn’t care.

“The Virgin Mary told her that the cancer was eating her mind. If she could kill the cancer in her mind before it was too late, the cancer in her body would just melt away.” Concetta Moroni is in Gabriela Fer-rero’s kitchen with her friends, Bianca and Gina and Francesca. The kitchen smells like a chicken coop with a kind of perfume on top, but they are all used to it by now. The five of them have gathered, as they often do in one kitchen or another, for a late afternoon coffee, drawn together today by the shoe store man who hung himself in his shop window, which Concetta witnessed (she gasps and crosses herself each time that terrifying scene pops back to mind) and Gabriela, picking up her prescription, saw just afterwards, when they were cutting the poor man down, and then Francesca saw the body when they brought it to the hospital. They all agree that it was the bank’s fault, and Concetta expresses her pity for poor Mrs. Cavanaugh, having to live with that cold heartless man who only knows about money and is holding the whole town to ransom. “Mrs. Cavanaugh said the Virgin Mary telling her that was like a dream even though she was wide awake, and I said, no, it was a miracle, a visitation.” Her friends all nod at that, though Gabriela says maybe it’s all that morfiend she’s taking. Gina, who is the mayor’s secretary, wants to know how you cure mind cancer. “Like you cure all cancer, Gina,” Concetta says. “Prayer. The only thing that works. If God wants you to die, there’s nothing you can do, but you can always ask. Mrs. Cavanaugh and I may go to Lourdes to ask up close.” She opens a little silk pouch and shows them the woman’s rings, including her wedding ring, which Concetta is supposed to sell to raise the money for their trip to Lourdes because Mr. Cavanaugh refuses to give her any. Bianca tells about a friend who went to Lourdes and got her hearing back, and Francesca says if the Virgin is visiting Mrs. Cavanaugh here in West Condon, maybe they don’t have to go to Lourdes. Francesca works as a receptionist at the hospital and is therefore their expert on medical knowledge, and she says that the best thing for mind cancer is hot compresses.

“Look at all those wires and panels and dials those sound guys have set up. Looks like an execution chamber in here.”

“Yeah, not that I ever seen one. Nor won’t never, I hope, knock on wood. Ifn they was any wood around to knock on…”

“You can use my head, Duke. Nothing up there right now but wet sawdust. The way they’ve set us out on the floor like this is scary. I’m so nervous I have to pee every five minutes. I just only hope I can remember the words tonight.”

“I ast about the setup and ole Elmer lifted up his Stetson to reset his hairpiece’n declared it was time fer us to step out inta the crowd’n be somebody.”

“Elmer?”

“Elmer Jankowski. Happens that’s Will Henry’s real monicker, wudja believe? One a them recordin’ fellers let the cat out. Always figgered Hank Williams backwards couldn’t be his genuine tag.”

“Oh. I see. Funny. Well, I’m changing my name, too, Duke. We gotta fix the sign out front and be sure it gets spelt right on the record label. I’m changing it to Rendine.”

“That’s my name.”

“I know. I don’t mean it like a married name. It’s just who I am now. Who you made me. It’s like that song of yours, the only good thing that’s happened. I wanta mark it somehow. Patti Jo Rendine. It’s the only name I want now for the rest of my life. And nobody knows it’s your real name, not even those record company guys. Just only you and me and your mama. You can think of me like a kinda cousin. A kissin’ cousin.”

“Well, purty lady, gimme a smack to show me whom you am. Yep. I reckanize you now, Patti Jo Rendine. Gimme me another, dear cuz, jist fer ole times’ sake.”

“Mmm. That feels almost too good to feel good, Duke. I always thought I knew too much about love and the disappointments of love, but I’ve never known anything like this. And thanks, I do appreciate your not being mad about the name.”

“Mad? Patti Jo, you’re the best doggone thing happened to the fambly since great granpappy Rendine figgered out howta make likker outa swamp moss. But, y’know, them record fellers said ifn one of our songs take off, they wanta git us round to other radio stations’n agent us inta gigs in bigger places. We may hafta load up the ole Packard’n hit the road. You gonna be ready fer that?”

“Well…sure…”

“What does Marcella say about it?”

“Don’t worry, it’ll be okay. She’ll let me know when it’s time to go.”

“Hey, that’s a nice line for a song.”

“What is?”

“She’ll let me know when it’s time to go. Like, they’s this feller shacked up with a beautiful gal who’s the restless sort, y’know, always havin’ to try on a new man from time to time. She’s beautiful’n he’s gonna enjoy her while he can, even knowin’…she’ll let me know when it’s time to go.”

“I can almost hear it now. But that’s not me, you know.”

“No, sweet angel. It ain’t me neither.”

It has been a long day for Police Chief Dee Romano, and it’s getting longer. That mess over at the shoe store filling the streets with restless gawkers. Vandalism at the bank. He jailed that wiseass Johnson, put up with his shit for a while and let him go. Cavanaugh and Minicozzi on his back all day. He has been ordered to lock up Charlie Bonali before sundown or heads will roll. Charlie himself turned up at the station, still partly uniformed, snapping his fingers and ignoring Dee’s orders to turn in his arms and equipment. When he told him that when the city attorney sends the charges over he’ll have to arrest him, he only laughed. Bunch of younger pezzi di merda hanging on his elbow, chewing thick wads of gum and grinning malevolently, most of them wagging beer bottles and calling themselves the Knights of Columbus Volunteer Defense Force. Charlie’s private army. Demands came in to arrest the Presbyterian minister and his wife, but when they took the phony warrant out to the church camp to pick up the wife, they got turned away by a blond kid needing a haircut; got a better one now. Monk and Louie, meanwhile, haven’t been able to find the preacher, even though that loony has been staggering around in plain sight all day making mischief, his girlfriend chasing him with her tail on view. They’re still out there, somewhere. The city attorney calls again to tell him Bonali is at Hog’s Tavern and ready to turn himself in, letting him know that he has spoken with Judge Altoviti and bail will be granted, the money for it already in hand.

Louie and Monk return, finally, and he asks them where the hell they’ve been.

“Lookin’ for that preacher. A little kid come in and says he seen Jesus over to the bus station and begged us not to let him go away so we run over there. Turns out they ain’t been a bus through in more’n two hours and none due soon, but they was another kid there playing the pinball machine, and when we asked, he said he thought Jesus had gone to get a pizza while he was waiting for a bus.”

“Whaddaya mean, playing the pinball machine? That thing’s been tilted for years now.”

“Well, he was pretending then. The crazy preacher wasn’t at Rico’s pizza joint neither, but they was a little girl playing jacks in the street who said she seen him and heard him talk about going to preach out in Chestnut Hills. She said some funny lady with a bare bottom was driving him and she pointed in the direction they went. We grabbed the cruiser and rolled out there, but Chestnut Hills is mostly a slum for the homeless nowadays and we couldn’t find nobody who seen him — until we come on a coupla kids sitting on a curb, and they said they seen him at the big stone church in town where they was flying paper airplanes. That sounded pretty nutty and we was about to give up, figuring we was getting the runaround, but we supposed they musta been talking about the Lutheran place, so we stopped by there anyhow, and sure enough, the preacher there said the Jesus guy had been there, and the kids, too, making paper airplanes, and even the lady with the nekkid patoot. He didn’t know where they’d gone.”

“What are you sucking on, Monk?”

“Jawbreaker. One of them little kids gimme it.”

Romano is beat and ready to call it a day, hand the station over to Bo, but before he heads home, he and his two lieutenants have one final run to make to complete the list of his day’s failures.

It’s that time of day: When shadows fall and trees whisper day is ending… An old song, as the country singer Duke L’Heureux would say, but a new virgin of it. The people of West Condon have been through this longest day countless times, and at the same time it has never happened before; they have often reached this tender time of evening, but not the tender time of this evening now softly upon them. The midsummer sun is still posted as high in the sky as it ever gets in midwinter, but it has begun to lodge in trees and duck behind buildings, offering a gentler, kinder light. Work for most, if they have work, is over, and they are, often with a drink in hand, considering the possibilities of the long twilight ahead. There are gatherings on front porches, at backyard grills, in the town’s bars and eateries, over picnics at the parks and lakes, on baseball diamonds, cinder basketball courts, the golf course, on street corners. Dave Osborne’s shop-window suicide has thrown a weird cast upon the day and much of the talk is about it. Those who have seen the rogue Jesus, believed by many to be an escapee from that crazy church camp sect, parading drunkenly about with his rascally troop of kiddies and that frantic lady in the ripped nightshirt have these tales to tell as well, and as with the day itself, everyone has heard such stories before, and yet they are all completely new. Those gathered on Vince Bonali’s front porch have the additional treat of son Charlie’s comical account of his arrest by the clowns who pass for town cops and his subsequent release on bail. Charlie’s stories go down well, supplemented as they are by a case of cold bottled beer provided by him, and even his father knows better than to butt in. Their church organist running around in the streets with her behind on view was also witnessed by Emily Wetherwax, out shopping for hamburger and hotdog buns for tonight’s picnic out at the lakes, and she describes the sight on the phone to Susanna Elliott. She and Susanna have agreed they’ll take the Wetherwax car out to the lakes and both are excited by the old-fashioned wienie-roast fun ahead. “I even picked up some marshmallows,” Emily says. Emily has been asked to help out down at the bank as they have lost one of their tellers and are shorthanded. Her husband Archie is somewhere up a telephone pole just now, Susanna’s Jim is snoring on the couch, sleeping off one hangover to get ready for another. “Remember, Em, how on hot nights,” Susanna says as her daughter Sally comes through the door, “when they wouldn’t let us into the Dance Barn because we were too young, we used to dance in the parking lot, listening to the music coming through the open windows?” The banker, in from the links, hears from his bank lawyer and city attorney the story of Charlie Bonali’s arrest and his release on bail, as granted by Judge Altoviti, and asks, “Did we contest it?” “We queried it,” he is told. This is not the answer the banker wanted to hear, but he is into his second sour mash whiskey and is already thinking ahead to his upcoming night at the highway motel (the light outside the Nineteenth Hole windows, which face onto the putting green, is just right) and he lets it go. The nearness of you… The woman he’ll be seeing has just dropped the Elliott girl off at home and is on her way out to the motel. She has not heard the stories of the man dressed like Jesus or even that of the suicide, but she has heard the story of the torn scrapbook photos and she remains gloomily haunted by it. Perhaps she will have to cancel tonight’s supper date. The various stories, though not that one, are going around the pool hall, too, where the organizer of tonight’s big stag party for Stevie Lawson is doing his best to scratch up some coin for the festivities by challenging the hangabouts in there to games, and Georgie has held his own, two bits at a time, but the truth is that he can’t shoot for shit since Lem Filbert laid into him with that crowbar and crooked up his arm. Georgie damns the hothead many times a day, and he damns him now. Lem is still at work, one day like another, pissed off that his bonehead mechanic has knocked off early. He’s having second thoughts about the big new loan he has just signed on for at the bank; he’ll have to work twice as hard just to meet the payments and he doesn’t know how he can do that.

It is late in the afternoon, shortly before supper, when the West Condon police arrive at the Brunist Wilderness Camp on their second attempt to arrest Sister Debra Edwards for appropriating all that money from her rich folks’ church and giving it to the camp. The shadows are lengthening, the birds are into their evening concert, the fireflies are dancing their fairy dance down by the creek. Mabel Hall’s friends have already gathered in her mobile home down in the trailer lot for today’s reading of the tarot cards and have been idly gossiping in anticipation of the main event while waiting for Lucy Smith and Hazel Dunlevy. Things have been busy over at the Collins trailer which they can watch out of Mabel’s caravan windows. Poor half-starved Elaine was brought home from hospital in the ambulance today, exciting everyone (“Let them through! It’s little Elaine! Clara, Bernice, too!”), for Clara and Ben have not been the same since they got back and they reckon only Elaine’s improvement, signaled by this release from hospital, will change that. Bernice, who is the only one who has been allowed in and out over there, has assured them that the girl is eating again, explaining that Elaine is possessed by the devil, maybe more than one, and that when she is strong enough to survive it they will attempt an exorcism, but Ludie Belle, who got a close glimpse of Elaine when they were unloading her from the ambulance, says she reckons “she’s a-breedin’,” and that stirs thoughts of a darker sort, though few get expressed. “Devils getting in do the same effects,” Bernice explains solemnly, arching her brow. They have all wanted to go pray with her and see for themselves, but Elaine is too weak for visitors.

Then suddenly Mabel’s husband comes busting in to tell them that the police have arrived to arrest Sister Debra. “Lord have mercy! The wicked is at the gates a the righteous!” Willie cries. Ludie Belle is the first one out the door, the others quickly following.

They see Ludie Belle’s husband and Ben running up the hill ahead of them toward the Main Square, and when they get there several of the other men are there, too. The sheriff who was here earlier has left, so Billy Don has run into the Meeting Hall to try to call him from the office phone. The three policemen have paused at the gate, and Ben and Wayne go over to talk with them. It’s a tense moment but people are being polite. The police read out the charges and show Ben the new warrant and Ben says quietly that he’s sorry but it’s his understanding that the camp is outside the town’s jurisdiction. The police, who do not seem very intent on their task (it’s Saturday night and they’re working people too), point out that the warrant now covers the entire county and that if they wish to call the sheriff they may, but he will be obliged under the law to carry out the same arrest. Which explains to most who hear this conversation why the sheriff has gone away and why Mr. Suggs made a final offer to Mrs. Edwards to give her money to leave the area immediately, which she, in her distress and against the advice of her friends, has turned down.

Even now, while Ben and the police are talking, she steps mournfully out of her cabin wearing only a loose wrinkled summer smock and floppy thong sandals and walks to the gate to turn herself in. Her eyes are red and streaming still, and two or three of the women start to cry, too, including Lucy Smith, who has just arrived with two of her little ones and is watching all this from outside the gate, and then her children start to cry. Sister Debra has given so much of herself to this place they now call home, and if there is some question about where the money came from, there is certainly no question that Sister Debra has kept none of it for herself. She has been devoted to them as they now feel devoted to her. Ludie Belle and Linda and Corinne and all the others flock around and interpose themselves between her and the police, Ludie Belle berating the police fiercely for picking on the poor saintly woman, but Sister Debra says in a choked whispery voice that it’s all right and she steps past Ludie Belle and through the gate. The police say she might want to take an overnight bag. She shakes her head and walks toward the police car, but Ludie Belle and Corinne run into her cabin and throw a lot of things into a canvas bag they find there and bring it and a cardigan out to the police, Ludie Belle still giving them a piece of her mind. Hunk and Travers have a word with the older policeman with the bent rusty badge, and the officer shrugs and spits a wad of chaw.

As if all this isn’t bad enough, young Colin, without any pants on, bursts from the boys’ cabin past Darren and starts screaming out the same dreadful accusations against his mother as before, somewhat alarming the police and everybody else, Darren trying to drag Colin back to the cabin, telling him if he carries on they’re going to lock him up in an institution again. One of the police officers, the one in charge, sighs and asks Ben for the boy’s name, and Ben hesitates and looks around at the others but finally he tells him, adding that the boy is Mrs. Edwards’ adopted son but he is not completely right in the head. The police officer nods sadly and apologizes to Ben, saying sometimes there are things he has to do he’d rather not do, and Ben nods back gravely and the officers get into the car with Sister Debra and drive away.

In Mabel’s caravan afterwards, the talk is mainly about the arrest of poor Sister Debra, bless her heart — she looked like something was completely broken inside — and about the terrible things Colin was saying. Could they be true? Ludie Belle will say only that he is a troubled boy with special needs and that Sister Debra is a loving and caring person. They can read that however they like but, as Christians, always with charity in their hearts. Bernice was not in the caravan when they got back. She has probably returned to Mr. Suggs’ bedside at the hospital. She hardly ever leaves it. There are people who want to put her in jail along with Sister Debra, and only Mr. Suggs has the money and power to stop that from happening, so it’s a “desprit needcessity,” as Ludie Belle puts it in her extravagant way, to keep him ticking even if the tick is more like a t-t-tick now. Well, they all need him; God grant him a full recovery and a long life. Lucy remembers that last week Mabel turned up the Wheel of Fortune card upside down, along with that dark ace which could mean bad planning, and she wonders if that wasn’t a prophecy of these latest events, and everyone agrees it may be so, and turn expectantly to Mabel. Sister Hazel Dunlevy has not arrived but they decide not to wait for her. They will have supper together soon, before the eight o’clock prayer meeting down at the dogwood tree, joined there by some old friends from the Church of the Nazarene who are becoming Brunists tonight. There is just time left for Mabel to spread and read the cards, which now she is shuffling expertly with her eyes closed in solemn meditation. They wonder if they will learn more about Sister Debra’s fate or little Elaine’s or even their own, God save us, and whether or not, on such a day, the Hanged Man card will reappear. “I have noticed,” Glenda Oakes says, gazing with her one eye upon the fluttering cards now sliding into each other and coming to rest, “that Jesus is not in the deck.” “No,” Mabel replies in her soft feminine voice, so different from what one might expect from a woman her size. And then she opens her eyes to look at Glenda. “He is the deck.”

“I reckon I shoulda went to Mabel’s by now.”

“Yeah. But it’s too late. I skipped out on Wayne’s crew, too.”

Too late. Yes. It surely is. She shudders, sighs. Too late. Too late already that first time up on Inspiration Point. They have stepped out of the shed and walked the garden rows and picked a few weeds and wildflowers and eaten some berries and they have gone down to the creek to splash fresh water on their faces and private parts and they have even walked the path back toward the Meeting Hall a ways, but they keep coming back here. Like they can’t help it. She looks at her palm. “I’m skeered about the next part. But I thank the Lord this part got wrote in before.”

“Y’figger the Lord’s had anything to do with it?”

“He has to do with everthing. All what signs they are — in people’s hands, their dreams, Mabel’s cards or tea leaves — is jist misty windas into God’s mind. Who’s thunka everthing already on accounta He’s perfect’n all-knowin’. It’s all been worked out. Back when time begun.”

“What about this purty little part down here? Is that a winda into God’s mind, too?”

“Has to be. It all is. Think y’kin read it?”

“It says your heart line’n fate line is seriously crossed up, but it don’t matter none on accounta how splendrous it is.”

“Yes. And how sad.”

“Don’t see that part. But here, lemme use my tongue’n turn a page…”

“Oh…!” We are, she thinks, making darkness our home tonight, and a warmth creeps through her, and another shudder. “Yes…”

“It’s suppertime. Hungry?”

“No…”

When Sally Elliott suggested they bring their pizzas out here to the lakes, Billy Don had no objections. Neither did he object to the two six packs of cold beer Sally picked up at the liquor store around the corner. They took Sally’s folks’ car rather than his old pea-green Chevy, which they left parked at a broken meter back in Tucker City to save Billy Don gas money, and he appreciated that. He has appreciated everything. It’s a gorgeous evening, sliding easily into twilight. The lake water is unruffled and the birds are singing and the crickets are doing their hiccuppy thing and the pizza is delicious and he’s pretty sure he is in love, though he’s new to the idea. Probably she could kick him in the shins and he’d appreciate that, too. He has filled her in on the arrest of her aunt Debra, which upset Sally a lot, and her sadness made her seem prettier somehow. Behind a man’s frayed white shirt, open down the front and buttoned at the cuffs as protection against the mosquitoes, she is wearing a T-shirt tonight that says GIVE ME A HUG — I’M AT THAT AWKWARD STAGE BETWEEN BIRTH AND DEATH. He’d like to do that and maybe he will if it’s not too late (it probably is, darn it), but she jokes a lot and he’s not sure she really means it, and he’s even less sure she means it for him. She’s friendly, but not friendly in that way, though maybe it’s just the way she is with everyone and she really likes hugging and is trying to tell him so and he should stop being such a coward. It would help if she wasn’t so smart. Tonight it has been how any dumb notion, no matter where it comes from and especially if it can be pictured, can become what she called a motif (he asked her to spell it) and then get borrowed and used around the world, notions like messenger birds and human sacrifice and magical virgins and holy mountains, which become the common currency of religions everywhere and contribute to the universal madness. Not everything catches on, of course. Back in the Dark Ages, she tells him, they used to celebrate midsummer with cat-burning rituals, and those aren’t so popular anymore. When he tried to change the subject to something more in the hugging line by remarking that he felt like tonight was almost like living in a dream, Sally said that, yes, life was a kind of dream all right, but it’s mostly a dream dreamt by others — the hard thing being to figure out how to wake up. He had told her about Glenda Oakes’ dream interpretations, more or less in the same clumsy sentence, and she said that’s what preachers and theologians were: charlatan dream interpreters.

Now, over pizza and beer at the lakeside picnic table, listening to the crickets and birds, distant boat motors, the occasional floating voices out on the lake, the dry crackle of firecrackers at other picnics, he has shown her Darren’s latest newsletter to the church membership. It’s the copy intended for Reverend Hiram Clegg, which he plucked out of the bagful before mailing them this afternoon. Reverend Clegg has problems of his own right now and is probably even in jail, so they may not even have the right address. “Sometimes I think Darren is completely crazy,” he says, watching Sally read, squinting in the dimming light, “and sometimes I think he’s the only one who knows.”

“Right the first time, Billy D,” she says around a mouthful of pizza and she punches open another can of beer. He sips his slowly, it being the first he’s had since before Bible college; Sally has just finished off, with a wink, her third one. When she calls him Billy D, he doesn’t know if that’s a putdown or a come-on. “The ‘remarkable prophecies of the brilliant young visionary evangelist Darren Rector’ as revealed in all modesty by the brilliant young visionary himself.”

“Well, the letter is from Mrs. Collins. Or, you know, that’s what…”

Sally only smiles, lights up another cigarette, sets it on the edge of the table, and takes another bite of pizza, and with a happy shrug, so does he, trying to keep his moustache out of the melted cheese, and he also finishes off his beer and reaches into the ice for another one. He’s sure she wants him to hug her. “Darren is living in the realm of the supernatural,” she says. “The natural has dying in it, the supernatural doesn’t, it’s as simple as that. Dying is too much for most people. So what are you going to do if you don’t live in the majority’s crazy made-up world? Steer clear if you can and duck when they have guns in their hands. Speaking of which, any more attacks on the camp?”

“No, but everybody’s pretty nervous. Including me. I had the watch last night with Welford Oakes and he said he thought he heard something and told me to sit tight until he got back. I suddenly heard all kinds of noises and thought I saw a whole army creeping around out there in the trees and I mighta fired off a shot but I was hunkered down behind a thick bush and didn’t want them to know where I was. Besides, it mighta been Welford. I thought he’d never come back, and when he did he was smoking and humming to himself and said it was just some animal, rooting around down in the vegetable patch.”

Sally is laughing. He likes to hear her laugh, even when she’s laughing at him. It’s a lot better than making him feel like an idiot just because he’s a Christian. “Would you ever shoot someone?” she asks.

“I think I already did. Just buckshot in his rear, though.”

“Got him while he was running away, hunh?”

“Well, I didn’t know that. It was dark and the bullets were flying and I was hiding behind a tree and shooting backwards over my shoulder.”

Sally laughs again (that wasn’t exactly true, but he wanted to hear her laugh), takes a long drink, then belches noisily like a boy. “Whoo!” she says, and belches again. “I think I need some powdered toenails!”

“What?”

“Powdered toenails. Just the thing for heartburn. Grandma Friskin told me. Like chewing the bark of a tree struck by lightning when you have a toothache and eating twenty crickets with wine to cure asthma.”

“I guess that would cure most anything.” He’d like to know what works for a near-fatal case of raw throbbing horniness. Well, he knows what works…

“Mmm. Listen to the little buggers sounding off. It’s like a mass protest. Maybe they think we took their name in vain.” He’s trying to figure out how to get back to the hugging idea, when Sally rubs out her butt on the sole of her sneaker, scuffs it into the earth, lights up another, and says, “Best folk-wisdom healer of all, though, is water. Especially on a night like tonight. A midsummer night’s dip heals everything.”

“Like baptism,” he says. “Another, what you call it, motif.” The word feels funny in his mouth but he’s glad he can say it.

“Right on, Billy Don. So what do you say, after it gets dark, just for our health, we go for a little skinny dip?”

Her faith is in question, her heart is full of doubt. It is a faith that has sustained and protected her since she reached the age when she could think for herself, and now she is unsure of it. As it is the only faith she has had, she has become, she recognizes, something of a fundamentalist. She has trusted it absolutely as other people thoughtlessly trust their God, a kind of unconditional first principle, and she is losing that certainty. He arrives in his colorful golf clothes, carrying an overnight bag, and asks her to join him in the shower, and she hesitates, never having hesitated before. Undressing, knowing his eyes are upon her, she wonders if her apostasy is transparent. But under the cool spray and lathering hands, that sense of oneness with the universe common to all mystical religions returns, and she gratefully surrenders to it, lets her tears flow with the waterfall, and tries, eyes closed, to think of nothing but this unique sudsy moment of existence. After they dry each other off, he walks her over to the window, ostensibly to gaze out upon the fading midsummer evening, but in reality to gaze upon each other sweetly costumed in that soft light. He turns her to face away from the window and kisses her slowly from nape to heels, nipping her buttocks in his teeth as he passes by them, his large strong hands squeezing them gently, passing between them, his tongue licking at her anus and the backs of her knees, and what she sees in the full-length mirror across the room is her shadowy silhouetted presence, like someone only half-formed, the framing window glowing like a nimbus, the man she loves behind her, his features softly lit by her body’s reflective glow, kneeling to kiss her feet before rising slowly to repeat the ceremony from heel to nape, his hands caressing the parts in front. He murmurs, as he kisses his way up her body, how exquisitely beautiful she is and how much he adores her and needs her, and she knows the reply to this but is silent for once. She has always thought of her first principles as something that came spontaneously to her — by inspired insight, as it were. But she probably had to learn them. All religions are learned, Sally said. To escape them, they have to be unlearned. Most people don’t want to do that. She doesn’t want to do that. Sometimes this unlearning comes from personal effort, what Sally calls the hard work of waking up. Sometimes it just happens.

“What does anything mean if dying’s at the end of it?” asks Guido Mello, still feeling loose from his after-hours beers on Vince Bonali’s porch and unwilling to go to his unhappy home yet. He is sitting at a lackluster round of four-handed penny-ante poker up at the Eagles Social Club with Cokie Duncan and Buff Cooley and one-armed Bert Martini, and they’re blowing off about Dave Osborne’s suicide. There is a pile of laceless shoes rescued from Dave’s store on the table next to them, but none of them match. So it’s a kind of memorial instead. They are all ex-miners and knew and respected Dave, and Bert has just remarked that suicide sucks all the meaning out of life and he doesn’t understand why anyone would do that. “Thing is,” Guido adds, “thinking about dying can be worse than the thing itself. So, only two ways out: buy into some God-and-Heaven bull or knock yourself off. Anything else is chickenshit.”

“God and Heaven ain’t bull and you oughtn’t talk that way,” Bert says angrily.

“Count me in with the chickens,” says Cokie Duncan, who rarely says much of anything at all, and spreads his hand, which has a jack and two kings in it. “Here’s Jesus and his two fathers,” he says morosely.

“I will say, if I ever did such a thing, and I wouldn’t,” says Buff, tossing his cards into the pot in disgust, “that I wouldn’t waste the occasion. I’d take a few bigwig assholes with me.”

“Why, Buff?” asks Guido, his nose still smeared with auto grease from his long day as a slave at Lem’s garage. It’s rumored that Guido’s wife is pregnant again and he doesn’t know how she got that way, though her own old man is a prime suspect. “You’d just be trying to paste meaning onto where there fucking ain’t none.” If he had the words for it, he’d say: Pure suicide is a mere cancellation of the self as a solution to an otherwise insoluble problem. But he doesn’t have the words for it.

Just when they’re feeling their most miserable and wordless, Georgie Lucci turns up with six or seven other disreputable drunks, including Stevie Lawson, whose stag party night this turns out to be, and some boxes of hot pizza from the Palazzo di Pizza. “Enrico give us these for the party,” Georgie says, and they open up the boxes and screw the top off a new bottle of rye whiskey. They learn that Lawson is marrying one of Abner Baxter’s girls tomorrow, though no one, including Stevie, quite knows how this has come about. “We’re making the rounds. Rico’s joining us when he turns off the ovens. Plan to end up in Waterton and get Stevie laid by three whores at once. It’s our wedding present. Cheese has set it up.”

Johnson grins, showing his scatter of teeth. His hair has been chopped back. He’s bathed, shaved, and is even wearing a new silk shirt, gift of one of the Waterton ladies of the night. Johnson is famous for the graffiti he painted on the bank wall today and they all compliment him for it. “It was me and Jesus,” he says, and they all laugh at that though they don’t know what he means exactly, never having thought of him as a religious-type person.

They toast Lawson and his bride. “Is she good lookin’?”

“Well, there’s plenty of her,” Lawson says, and they all laugh again. They figure he must have got her pregnant somehow when he was working out at the church camp for Suggs. He doesn’t deny that and they make jokes about the physical hazards of fucking holyrollers when they got the spirit on them. They aren’t funny jokes, but everyone snorts just the same.

“I hear the place to be tonight is the Blue Moon Motel,” Buff says. “They’re recording them hillbillies live.”

“We been there,” says Stevie Lawson, his speech already slurring. “They throwed us out.”

“We’re letting the show out there get revved up and then we’re going back with a squad big enough to open that door like Moses parted the red-ass sea,” Georgie says with his usual me-ne-fotte grin. The Eagles Club is redolent with hot garlic and bakery aromas and nobody is thinking about suicide. “Give ole Duke and his lady some background hooting and hollering that’ll drown out how bad they’re singing. You guys come along. We got booze should last us till dawn.”

“Grace is not something you die to get, it’s something you get to live!” Ben Wosznik is singing, his guitar slung over his weary shoulder. Such a sadness in him these days; but his song is not sad. “Of all God’s gifts, the gift a grace is the greatest He can give!” It’s his new song using Ely Collins’ famous line, and it’s a good night for introducing it, for they have seven of their old Nazarene friends in their midst, all of whom were church members in Ely’s day and loved him as man and pastor, and it makes them feel more at home. Clara has been speaking regularly with the Nazarene elder Gideon Diggs, and as they have been without a pastor for some years now and share close confessional ties, these seven have decided to join their fellowship in the Gospel and become Brunists, most of them asking to be baptized with light. Other old friends are known to be attending services led by Abner Baxter, so there is still hope they will all be together again someday. With the light lasting so long these days, the Brunists hold their evening prayer meetings, weather allowing, down here by the dogwood tree. Its blossoms are long gone but have been replaced by bright red berries — like drops of Christ’s blood, some say — that help to feed the camp’s population of squirrels and birds. The sky is a softer eventide shade of aqua blue now, wearing like a ghostly mask the waning moon, already palely risen, and a golden light has settled in as if the whole world were being haloed. The seven new Followers are a welcome addition tonight (Darren has invited them all to the consecration of the two graves on the Mount of Redemption on the fifth of July and they have all said they will be there), for several of their own camp regulars are missing — both Dunlevys, for example; poor Sister Debra, for whom they have all prayed; Welford Oakes (missing at supper, too; after the service Bernice will check to see if Welford has a problem she can medicate); Hunk Rumpel, who has a training session with the Christian Patriots this evening, which is probably where Travers Dunlevy is, too; also the gospel singers, Duke and Patti Jo, who are committed to a recording session tonight of Duke’s new song, which may not be a completely Christian one; and young Billy Don as well. Maybe it’s the good weather: not always worship’s best friend. Billy Don’s absence seems to have got Darren’s dander up, probably because he needs help in coping with Colin, who has been more or less out of control ever since the arrest of his mother. When the song is finished, Clara walks over to Ben and takes his hand in both of hers and thanks him, and they all thank him and bless him, and then, with apologies and a prayer that the grace Ely spoke of and Ben sang about be granted, she takes her leave to return to their trailer to watch over Elaine. Poor Sister Clara has been badly beat down by recent events, but there are heartening signs of renewed life in her now that her daughter is back home and beginning to eat again. In her wake there are spontaneous prayers for her and Elaine, who, their Nazarene friends are told, may be demonically possessed and needing all the prayers they can offer up. Gideon Diggs says he once knew a Hungarian lady over in the next county who did exorcisms and he’ll try to find out if she’s still around.

The Nazarene visitors are startled by a noise out on the periphery that sounds like repeating gunfire just as Ben is about to lead them all in singing a verse or two of the hit parade tune “Whispering Hope” (“If, in the dusk of the twilight, dim be the region afar…”), and Wayne explains that vandal-types have been driving by all week and tossing firecrackers and cherry bombs into the camp; it’ll probably tail off after Independence Day. Meanwhile, Colin keeps crying out that he wants to confess. “Not out here under the tree, Colin,” Darren urges. “It’s not right.” “I got something here to calm him down, Darren,” Bernice says in a whisper that carries everywhere, indicating her patent-leather handbag, “but it has to be done with a needle, so if you can—” That sets the boy to screaming hysterically and running off toward the cabins, Darren chasing after to be sure he doesn’t harm himself. Some of the women exchange knowing glances with Mabel Hall, for in her reading of the tarot cards before supper she turned up cards that meant either the destructive use of fire by the clash of opposites (Glenda asked what kind of fire was meant and Mabel said all kinds) or else chaotic unmanageable energy and loss of direction provoked by new family or community arrangements created by exigencies beyond their control, and they know now which was the right one. That’s how it is: mostly bad news in the cards these days. Well, they can only hope…

Hope, as an anchor so steadfast,

Rends the dark veil for the soul,

Whither the Master has entered,

Robbing the grave of its goal…

Whispering hope, oh how welcome thy voice,

Making my heart in its sorrow rejoice…

After the song, Wayne steps forward to read the scripture lesson, which was to have been on the theme of “The present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory to come,” from Romans. But with the arrival of the visitors, he switched — with the help of his wife Ludie Belle, who is a faster reader — to the theme of togetherness. “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them,” he reads, and turns the page. “And then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord!” is the next passage, announcing the Rapture and taken from First Thessalonians, but he just has them caught up together in the clouds without yet meeting the Lord when more pops are heard out at the edge somewhere, and Gideon Diggs interrupts to say, “I don’t think them was firecrackers.” In the brief silence — even the birds have stopped their evensong — they listen to hear if there are more, and there are — not many — and then they stop. They seemed not far away, but sounds travel easily at this time of evening. “Where you suppose…?” Ben asks, cocking his ear, and Glenda Oakes, her one eye staring off into the distance, says, “In the garden.” “The garden?” She shrugs, draws her children closer and other children who have joined her own. “Go see, Wayne,” Ludie Belle says, and Wayne, who has armed himself for guard duty later tonight, sets off toward Mrs. Edwards’ garden, the other men following cautiously behind and, when no more shots are heard, the women follow too.

It is quiet down in the garden and there is no sign of intruders other than a few late-to-bed birds raiding the berry patch. Up in the trees, darkening now against a darkening sky, others are back at their lusty night-warble. The evening air is full of the rich midsummer fragrance of ripening fruits and vegetables. Such an abundance all about! They should get down here more often. And will have to, too, now that Sister Debra has been taken away. The only thing out of the ordinary is that the tool shed door is open. Inside they find Hazel Dunlevy and Welford Oakes with bullet holes in their foreheads. Neither are wearing much. In fact, they are not wearing anything at all. They seem quite peaceful. More souls to pray for, and some drop to their knees and commence to do so. Everyone knows who has done this. “We’ll have to call the sheriff,” someone says. People notice that their Nazarene friends have left. “Look at their hands,” Corinne Appleby says. “Like Jesus’ nail-wounds on the cross,” Wayne Shawcross observes. Corinne shakes her head. “Looks to me like he shot away their life lines.”

After the longest day: the shortest night. But one so steeped in legend, ritual, and superstition — or decayed religion, as superstition is sometimes called by those who do not see all religions as such — that it sometimes seems the longest one. A night of love oracles, fire festivals, fertility rites, and magical cures. Of witchcraft and drunken excess. Of dreaming awake. It marks the birth of the god of darkness, whose power now will wax as the sun god’s wanes, and thus marks the birth of madness and death. The sort of thoughts the amateur folklorist Sally Elliott might be entertaining as she removes her clothes at the shore of the moonlit lake, the deepening sky still faintly aglow — her body, too, for anyone there to see. Even in a rational age, should such a thing improbably exist, these sorts of notions would die hard, nurtured as they are by the common imagination and its craving for solace and meaning in the face of the faceless abyss. Tonight, for example, Angela Bonali has tied nine flowers with pieces of grass (only scattered clumps of it to be found in their muddy unkempt yard, but fortunately long as weeds), and after asking the cement Virgin in the yard for her blessing on them, has placed them under her pillow, hoping to dream later of her future husband — namely, Tommy Cavanaugh, whose picture she has taken from her diary and also put under the pillow just to be sure — because she read about this in a magazine for young mothers loaned to her by Stacy last week before Angela got fired at the bank. The magazine, the unreflecting carrier of these ancient fancies, also had astrology charts and hers told her to expect a change of fortune on the very day (or nearly) that the bank let her go. She is waiting at home tonight for Tommy’s call, which she has thought about so much it’s almost as though it has already happened. He wants to take her to the Blue Moon Motel and dance with her in front of all her friends, even with his face all bandaged up, so she has bathed and shampooed and done up her hair in a different way based on a picture she saw downtown this afternoon in Linda Catter’s beauty shop window (it was wrong to have a double banana split and a whole pizza both on the same day, but she had a desperate craving for them so powerful that it has not abated even with the satisfying of it, and in her condition what can you do?) and tweezed her eyebrows and shaved her armpits and other parts seen only when everything is seen (she has created a kind of fern-leaf pattern down there) and applied blush and mascara and lip gloss and eyeliner and perfumed her bra and panties and put on her most summery and revealing dress and practiced what she will say when he apologizes and begs her to return to him.

In another part of town, Franny Baxter is in like manner preparing for her marriage on the morrow. Her prospective sister-in-law has fashioned a wedding gown for her out of her own old wedding dress plus a couple of yards of white satin, taffeta, and chiffon to accommodate Franny’s more ample figure, and she is helping Franny now, after giving her a bath, with the applying of perfume and makeup (first time ever!). The groom will arrive home shortly before dawn, probably too drunk to stand and stinking of whorehouses and vomited rye whiskey and pizza. Tess will drag him under a cold shower and then present him with his bride, spread out on their marital bed like a lush prairie flower in full bloom, in her wedding dress but nothing else, hoping stupid Stevie has enough jism left after his night of debauchery to do the trick. In case he gets confused or falls asleep, Tess has a steel ruler close to hand to whack his backside and urge him on. Angie Bonali will fall asleep on top of her bed in her party dress, but not Franny Baxter.

Out on the Bonali front porch, Angela’s father, headachy after the late afternoon beers, is talking into the gathering night with Sal and Gabriela Ferrero, mostly about their early married years, and about their working days down in the mine, how tough and dirty it was, Gabriela remembering when Sal would come home with his shoes full of coaldust and looking like a colored man, but how heroic and full of camaraderie those days were, too, and how they are missed now. They have also been talking about Dave Osborne, who hanged himself today, and their pal Big Pete Chigi, who died of black lung, and poor dear Etta, the town’s dead hovering over them as if peering down on them from the chalky face of the moon, and Vince has been reminded of his old high school, mine, and union buddy, Angelo Moroni, how he used to wear his hat tipped down over his nose when he played pinochle, cracking wry one-liners, maybe it’s the tipped lopsided shape of the moon that has brought him to mind, poor old Ange, killed in the mine that awful night like so many good men. And now the foreclosure on this house, the only one he’s ever owned, the one Etta loved so much, he’s getting near to tears again. “Next stop, Sal: a charity old folks’ home. Good night, sweetheart. That’s all she wrote.”

This old family friendship is being perpetuated into the next generation tonight by the two friends’ sons: Vince’s boy Charlie and young Nazario, known to his pals as Moron, who are, along with a half dozen or so other members of Charlie’s newly formed Knights of Columbus Volunteer Defense Force, on a reconnaissance mission at old man Suggs’ strip mine, where the Christian Patriots (fascists!) are holding their bi-weekly pep session, parade drill, and target practice under the instruction of Suggs’ black-bearded mine manager, who sleeps, it is rumored, under a Nazi flag. The Dagotown Devil Dogs, as they also call themselves, have climbed one of the ugly mounds thrown up by the strip mine and are watching the Patriots through a pair of binoculars they pass around. Charlie points his finger at them and makes soft thuckety-pop noises, which Moron and his buddies assume must be the sound of a revolver with a silencer on it. With hushed pow! and pock! sounds they follow Charlie’s lead and knock off a few Christian Patriots with their pointing fingers. When the sheriff comes banging out of the mine office and jumps into his squad car, the Dogs fade coolly into the night.

If it is a night of sudden death and dark omens, it is also a night of erotic festivity. The ecumenical stag party up at the Eagles is now in full swing and has been joined by another dozen or so revelers, few being of a mood on such a sweet summery night to say no to free whiskey and good-humored horseplay. Carlo Juliano has provided an old blue movie about a guy in an antique Model A Ford picking up two girls hitchhiking, but the film has come apart just as the girls were taking their pants down, so they are entertaining themselves by telling about the first time they got laid. High school virgins, Waterton whores, babysitters, stepsisters, friends’ mothers. Georgie Lucci makes up a story that he swears is true about a nymphomaniac nun who took him under her habit when he was eleven years old to show him what she called the pearly gates and insisted on his reciting the Pater noster when she took a grip on him and transported him into Heaven. Just when memories and imaginations are drying up, laconic Cokie Duncan, who has said very little all night while nevertheless holding his own with the bottle, surprises them with a story about taking a sweet young thing out into the fields and just as he’s humping her having her mother show up. “Haw!” snorts Stevie Lawson, slapping his knee. “What’d she say?” “Nuthin. She just went on eatin’ grass.” Which sets everyone off in drunken mooing. They’re having a grand time.

Soon they’ll be moving on to the Blue Moon Motel, where Duke L’Heureux and his partner Patti Jo Rendine, backed up on guitar by the local favorite Will Henry, are at this moment introducing, to enthusiastic cheers in a packed house, a new number written by Duke just this afternoon called “She’ll Let Me Know When It’s Time to Go.” All Duke’s and Patti Jo’s songs have gone down well tonight—“There’s Always a Bus Going Somewhere,” “A Toybox of Tears,” “Trailer Camp Blues,” “The Potholes Down Memory Lane”—and the record company people have taut knowing smiles on their faces, but the hit of the night is “The Night My Daddy Loved Me Too Much,” which may or may not ever get sold over the counter. No one has ever heard a song like that before — not in a public place. They don’t know if they like it, but they keep asking for it over and over again, as if they can’t believe their ears.

A quieter sort of celebration of the solstice is taking place in the Presbyterian church basement, where Prissy Tindle, after a quick visit home to freshen up and pick up costumes and props and her portable record player and the little rabbit-ear TV from the studio (Ralph was more petulant than ever, she had to push him aside to get into her closet), is mentally choreographing her advertised midsummer night special: The Dance of the Wedding of Heaven and Earth, hoping, after chasing Wesley all over town today, she has strength enough left to perform it. It was originally meant to be performed in the wild by moonlight, but it’s now restricted to their hideout down here in the church basement by candlelight. It’s an all-night dance (though on such a night as this that’s not so long), and while Wesley and Jesus converse quietly but grumpily about the circumstances in which they find themselves, Prissy blocks out the main elements in roughly fifteen-minute segments and considers ways to enhance the performance space, which is mostly a cluttered concrete floor with bare walls, no mats and no mirrors, about which lack Jesus has already complained, whining wearily. It has been a long day for the poor man and his eyes are crossing, so she shortcuts her way to the finale (a majestic moment) so as to get started as quickly as possible, assuming her knack for improvisation will carry her through the unscored middle bits or maybe they’ll just skip them. She is, of course, Earth, and he is Sky or Heaven, which means she will be obliged to dance the climactic scene on her back, so she sets out some dusty sofa cushions for the purpose. But first comes the Setting Sun and Rising Moon Dance, and, using the “Grand Canyon Suite” for dramatic effect and then “Claire de Lune” as a soothing closing movement (she has a yin/yang thing in mind here), she pours into it all the terrors and joys of the day, for the sun and moon also chase themselves about in a fiery manner, never quite finding each other. It is one of her best dances ever, but she succeeds only in dancing her audience and dance partner to sleep just at the most poignant moment, when his own participation is called for. Well, in a way, it’s a relief. She rolls him over on his side to diminish the snoring, and regretting only that she forgot to bring a couple of jars of pickles and peanut butter to get her through the night, curls up beside him, dancing the Dance of the Exhausted Disciple.

Exhaustion has also at last dropped Debra Edwards into a heavy sleep in her hospital bed, that and strong medication. Worried about her unresponsive state of mind, Police Chief Dee Romano called the minister at Trinity Lutheran, which he understood from Officer Bo-sticker was the church being attended temporarily by the pastorless Presbyterians, and said he was sorry to bother him again, but would he be willing to come down to the station to provide some urgent spiritual counseling? Of course. Reverend Dreyer took one look at the woman there on the wretched jail-cell cot and said she was obviously suffering from dangerously deep depression and should be kept in hospital overnight, where she can be kept under medical observation. Her dreams there are of dreaming, with Glenda Oakes sitting at the edge of her dreams like a dark angel and commenting cruelly on them even as she dreams them, so she keeps trying to wake up to be free of the one-eyed harpie, but she cannot. Down the hospital corridor from her, Mr. John P. Suggs — who does not dream, as he says — is suffering his own kind of nightmare: he is trying to think. He has the sensation of being in a large empty house with hundreds of locked closet-sized rooms for which he has no key. Brute strength alone frees him from any one room, only to leave him in another exactly like the first. Bernice Filbert, sitting nearby in a lumpy hospital easy chair, dozing fitfully, can feel his struggle and it translates into her own fragmented dreams as its opposite: the desire to push herself down into sleep, free from the cares of the world; but those cares resist her and will not let her go.

Cokie Duncan has no such problems. He is out cold on the floor of the Eagles Social Club and he is not dreaming, his bombed brain cells are not up to it, but he is alone now under a scatter of playing cards randomly dealt upon him by his departing companions. They are now piling past the bouncer at the door of the Blue Moon Motel and entering the sound track of the final Duke L’Heureux and Patti Jo Rendine number, an upbeat Elvis-influenced rendition of one of the motel’s theme songs, “When My Blue Moon Turns to Gold Again,” the final number because the recording crew have quickly decided with the arrival of the whooping stag party that it is time to close up shop and get the hell out of here. Will Henry, too, is packing up his guitar and moving toward the door. The two singers are on a high, though — it has been the night of their lives — and when they get a clamorous request from the crowd pressing in around them on the dance floor for yet another refrain of “The Night My Daddy Loved Me Too Much,” they cannot resist. It is into this festive congestion that tomorrow’s groom-to-be Steve Lawson and his rampageous pals stagger, not meaning to throw elbows and knock drinks out of people’s hands but not meaning not to either, too drunk for decision-making of any kind. Their goal is the tableful of drinks ordered up for the singers in the middle of the room and not yet consumed, their own supply exhausted, and, when reached, these are snatched up and passed around with a lot of hollering and cussing and laughing and generally obnoxious behavior. The freelance civil servant, Giorgio Lucci, the leader of this wild pack, gives a wave to his boss the fire chief who is just leaving, lets out a resounding coma-ti-yi-yippee-yippee-yo in acknowledgement of the hayseed performers, tosses back a tall glass of beer in one long guzzle and finds himself face-to-face with the female half of the singing duo, no longer singing. He blinks in recognition, belches, grins his stand-up comedian’s grin. “‘Patti Jo.’ I’ll be damned! Patricia Josefina! I never forget a nose! You nearly fooled me with that hayseed act, Josie. Remember me? I once had my finger up your little patonza.” He grabs her in the crotch of her jeans, and sings: “So why not take all of me?” Doesn’t get past “all” before her musical partner and former bush league bullpen pitcher comes in with some high heat for his big K of the night. Which is the signal everyone has been waiting for.

Out at the lakes, far from the bench-clearing brawl erupting at the Blue Moon, Sally Elliott steps out of the cold lake waters as she stepped in, mooning the moon and musing about the whimsical customs of midsummer. A distant voice, floating with silvery clarity over the still waters, has just cried out: “Omigod! What are we doing?” “That was my mother’s voice,” she says, drying herself off with her shirt. “Let’s go.” Billy Don, still wearing his sunglasses, lingers in the water at waist level, wanting to stay cool as she has stayed cool and consequently self-conscious about his telltale arousal — which, for fear she will laugh at it, he is trying desperately but unsuccessfully to detumesce with prayer and the recitation of mathematical formulae and also with moral fortitude, the sort his baseball coach used to urge upon him, with equal lack of success, to discourage the sin of Onan. They have been playing a game of water tag that should have been more fun than it was, but Sally has done too much pool time and he has been unable to keep up with her, or else it was the beer (he’s not used to it), so he has rarely had his hands on her and then only fleetingly and not in the best places, which never seemed quite available. Like some kinds of knowledge he’s been offered in his life, but that he’s not been quite able to grasp, advanced calculus, for example. But just seeing her moonlit bottom bob up when she dove under water and feeling the swish of her as she passed suddenly between his legs have been enough to keep him in such an unholy fever it’s a wonder the water around him hasn’t started to boil. “Billy Don? Come on!” Still he hesitates. She seems to guess what’s troubling him and tosses him her shirt, the one that says give me a hug, turns her back and walks over to pull her jeans on. Using his boner as a shirt hanger is probably even more ridiculous than leaving it exposed and bobbing stupidly on its own, but that’s what he does, pretending to be drying himself off until he can reach his cast-off clothes. Still hasn’t been able to give her that hug. He doesn’t know why. Just too dumb, probably. This damp T-shirt between his legs, he’s pretty sure, is as close as he’s going to get.

His return from the dead is celebrated with libations spilled upon his countenance and welcoming bilingual oaths. Where is he? In hell, as the company suggests? Who is he, for that matter? He is staring up at a blinding light. Some say it’s what people who have near-death experiences see. Are his eyes open or closed? Open. He is staring up at one of the lamps that overhang the Blue Moon Motel parking lot. “Maybe Georgie’s got some words of wisdom for us from the other side,” someone says. It might be his cousin Carlo. There are snorts of thick, drunken laughter. Georgie is sick. His head aches, his jaw hurts. There’s a hollow place where a tooth used to be. The arm that fucking sorehead Lem Filbert wrecked is in pain; must have done something to it when he fell. “What happened to that long string of shit who hit me?” he asks, digging the words up from somewhere, not sure they come out as intended. He has a mouthful of stones. “The singer? Them people took off before you could see ’em go.” His comrades are sitting around on their butts, swigging from an array of bottles. “Where’d all that juice come from?” “Inside. We managed to grab some on the way out. Beats what we been drinking all to hell.” They tell him what happened. The historic brawl he missed. He sees now they’re wearing shiners, split lips, bloody ears. They’re all grinning shit-eating grins. “Wrecked the fuckin’ place,” young Nazario Moroni says. “The cops let us go. Just chased everyone out and shut it down.” They offer Georgie one of the bottles. He has to suck from it lying down, though. He can’t sit up yet. It might be whiskey, might not; it’s wet and stings the wounded places. There’s weed getting passed around as well, a wedding gift from Moroni. “We lost Guido Mello, though,” cousin Carlo says. “As they shoved him out the door, he took a slow-motion swing at Louie Testatonda. You almost can’t miss Louie, but he did. It was like il Nasone was desperate to get hisself locked up so as not to have to go home to his dimwit wife and mongol kid and whatever else is going down there. They probly took him in as a family favor.” “Guido had our only wheels left. How’re we getting to Waterton?” “Grunge here is driving us. Him and Naz have joined the party.” “The brawl finished off the others,” young Moroni says. So they’re down to Johnson and Juliano, Stevie Lawson, and the two young toughs. And the resurrected hero who invented this monumental festa, much praised by all. The Sick Six. “One of ’em has two cunts, Stevie, and one of ’em don’t have none at all,” Cheese Johnson is saying. “We ain’t tellin’ you which is which — you gotta guess.” Stevie says, “Huh.” He stands up for a moment and falls down. They laugh and offer him another drink. Stevie has already forgotten he’s getting married tomorrow. Or later today if it’s got as late as that. From here the stag party goes to Waterton to share Stevie’s wedding present with him. That’s the plan. But Cheese and young Nazario have cooked up something else they want to do first.

So the next thing Georgie knows, they’re all out at the Brunist church camp under a vast moonlit sky, being sung to by mosquitoes. The camp has a perimeter fence strung with barbed wire, but Stevie helped clear the garden and move topsoil in for old man Suggs, so he knows a back way in, an old two-track route to the creek from an abandoned farm. He also knows they now have armed guards at the camp, having been one a time or two, so you can pick up an assful of buckshot. Moroni says he wishes he’d known about this route. He and Grunge and some of their pals have also been out here, it turns out, wrecking gardens, sabotaging lampposts, trying to set some chicken coops alight before getting chased off with rifle fire, but they had to cut their way in. Doesn’t seem like only anti-cult mischief. Carrying some deep grudge, more like, especially against the big stud Wanda Craven’s living with now. Georgie gets the idea it’s the way they’ve been able to recruit Grabowski’s car. The plan is to kidnap Wanda and take her somewhere and gangbang her. A warmup for the whorehouse. The last time Georgie and Cheese tried group-fucking Wanda Cravens, they got beat up and arrested and it cost him a few bills. He grins to remember it and he’s reminded how much his jaw hurts. Young Moroni tells them how to get to the trailer park without passing any of the cabins or other mobile homes by following the creek and coming in from the back side. Wanda and her guy live apart from the others because of their chicken coops. The moon’s not full but bright enough it should be simple to find their way. Of course, that also makes them easier targets. They should stay in under the trees. First, though, they’ll have to distract the big bastard, get him away from their trailer so they can grab Wanda. Cheese has brought along a big packet of stink bombs, firecrackers, and flares for the purpose, which he apparently stole from some place. Someone should take a different route, he says, and set all that stuff off and then tear ass, and the other four will snatch Wanda when everyone goes running toward the fireworks. Georgie volunteers for this diversional task or is volunteered, it’s all the same to him. Me ne sbatto il cazzo, he says. His aching head’s not working well, and it seems simpler and less dangerous, and it’s always fun to light fireworks. How will he know when to set the shit off? Cheese will hoot like an owl. He shows him what he means. Sounds more like a night train with a broken whistle, but it should be easy to tell from a real owl hoot in case there are any out here. Cheese gives him the armload of fireworks in a gunny sack and some matches. Moroni says not to worry, he’ll take care of the fat man if necessary. All in all, it seems like a good plan.

But they’ve just parted ways there in the woods and Georgie is alone in the dark when he sobers up enough to recognize how stupid it is. He and his pals are too drunk, the two boys are too sober. What did Moroni mean, “take care of”? Were they armed? There are strange sounds all around him. This is supposed to be fun. What happened to his happy stag party? He doesn’t feel like he’s in the real world anymore, but has got dropped into some nightmarish place where weird shit can happen. He tries not to panic, but he is panicking. He decides the only sane course of action is to beat it back to the car. First, though, he has to set off all these fireworks. Was that an owl hoot? Close enough. He has just lit a few fuses when the quiet night is torn open by a howling scream. It’s Cheese Johnson. He’s being attacked. “Fucking Christ, they’re killing me!” Georgie is on the run, fireworks popping behind him. He hears shots. The sky lights up with flares. The screaming gets worse. And the others start yowling. There are desperate cries for help. Must have been an ambush. Georgie runs away from the wild screaming (what the hell are they doing to them?), his head full of confusion, suddenly smacks up against the periphery fence. Didn’t see it coming. He is down again, his shirt torn by barbed wire. Probably he’s bleeding. His face hurts, his jaw hurts, his arm hurts, his gut hurts. There is a lot of noise in the camp now, shouts, Cheese and the others yowling, crackers popping, gunfire. The whole place is lighting up and coming alive. No place to turn. He is suddenly back in the exploded mine. Most terrifying moment of his life. His faceboss Vince Bonali told them to stay put while he went to phone topside, but some of them couldn’t wait. He couldn’t wait. He remembers the thick dust, the darkness, the fear of fire and of suffocation, Pooch Minicucci’s panic, screaming with terror like Cheese Johnson is now, and how it got to him and Wally Brevnik, sending them off on a mad suicidal run. He has always bragged about getting out before Bonali did, but he knows it was a big mistake and he and Wally could have ended up dead like Pooch and his buddy Lee Cravens, the last of their air sucked up by that mental case Giovanni Bruno, the only bastard who was trapped and got out. The one this camp is named for. That thought sends a shiver down his spine. Has he come full circle? Is he being punished now for his stupidity that night? He’s scrambling along the fence, snagging himself on it, trying to find the end of it, avoiding the moonlight when he can, feeling his own air getting sucked up. There are gunshots, more shouts: “It’s the murderer! He’s back!” He starts praying. First time since that night when he was lost in the black mine. C’mon, God, do me a fucking favor, for Chrissake! Some high-pitched voice way off somewhere is screaming about witches. What the hell is that about? “Over here! This way!” More shots. He seems to hear bullets ripping through the trees overhead. Something stinks. He has either shat his pants or kicked a skunk. He begins to cry, begs for pity. From God, the Devil, Lady Luck, whomever. The fence ends. He wipes his tears away. There’s an open field dangerously lit up under the moon. He decides to risk it, doubled over so if he gets shot he’ll get shot in the ass, not the head. Nothing happens. He reaches a copse, another creek, brambles, still running, a ditch, turns his ankle and goes down hard, more brambles, finally a paved county road. He recognizes it. Leads into town past shithead Lem’s garage. First he pauses to throw up and take a long sticky piss. He’s full of rage, pain, terror, nausea, self-pity. He realizes he’s been clutching the sackful of remaining fireworks to his chest the whole time like a lifejacket. He drops it, starts limping down the road back to town, then realizes he is turned around and going the wrong way, makes the correction, throws up again. Passes the dropped fireworks. Picks them up again. Long walk back on a swollen ankle. But still alive and out of there. So he should probably give thanks. But hey. God may have saved his ass, but why did He let him get in so much trouble in the first place?

“Ain’t never burgled a haunted house, Patti Jo. Sure y’wanta do this?”

“I’m sure.”

“Looks all boarded up.”

“Yeah, but, see? The padlock on the door’s been broke. I hear tell it gets used now for high school beer parties. If you stumble over any bodies, don’t worry, it’s just probably drunken kids passed out.”

“I stumble over any bodies, little darlin’, and I’ll see ye later back at the Moon.”

“It all looks so empty and busted up I can’t hardly recognize it. But I remember you turn left here into the dining room and then left again. The stairs are off the kitchen. Shine your light a sec, Duke. Here, this way.”

“What a hole. Worse’n the swamp I never growed up in. I cain’t smell no beer, but them kids has been relievin’ theirselves wheresom-ever it’s took their fancy.”

“It’s so sad. Marcella’s family had to get by on so little, but her mama always kept a neat house in a old-fashioned way. Now everything seems like either broke up or stole. C’mon. Marcella’s bedroom is up here at the back, looking out over the porch roof and backyard. Marcella kept a flower patch down there. She talked to the flowers like they were little people.”

“What are we aimin’ t’find?”

“I don’t know. But I’m thinking maybe that little gold cross she always wore on a chain around her neck, the one I saw in my — Oh…!”

“Whew! Nuthin in here, Patti Jo. Only scribblin’ on the walls and a ole rotten matteress which the kids probly been usin’ fer their party games.”

“Her room was always so pretty. I just loved coming here. It’s like something worse has happened to her than her dying. I feel like crying.”

“This room has had a lotta rough traffic. You ain’t gonna find any gold necklace here, angel.”

“No…but shine your light over there under the radiator. There’s something…”

“Lemme see…no, it ain’t nuthin but a cheap plastic hair clasp.”

“That’s it, Duke! We’ve found it! It was one of her favorite things. Mine too! It’s filthy now and all scratched up, but it used to be shiny, and if you got close you could see your face in it but warped in a funny kinda scary way. It was like another world and we made up stories about it. Right here in this room! Sitting here on the floor, next to her bed! I think she must of been wearing that barrette in the dream, too. And I think I even saw a face in it…but not mine. Let’s take it to her, Duke.”

“Whoa! Tonight? I ain’t keen on dead a night graveyard romps, sweet cuz. Cain’t we save it fer daylight?”

“No, let’s do it and get it done. It’s what she wants, I know. Anyhow, the moon’s so bright tonight it’s almost like daytime. I’ve picked up some grass from that bad boy they call Moron. We can set on a tombstone and have us a party. C’mon, Duke. If you wanta have fun, come along with me…”

…

“It’s okay now, Duke. You’ve been a true pal. I’ll never forget it. Does your hand hurt?”

“Some. It’s swoll up a mite, but the weed’s helpin’. And this dead people party gits your mind off other things. Won’t throw another knuckleball for a while, though. Don’t know ifn I’ll be able to pluck a gittar right soon neither. Y’may hafta tape the pick to my finger splint.”

“I’ll do whatever you want me to, lover. I’m so grateful and proud. Nobody ever stood up for me like that before. You made me feel like a real person. And you did it with style. You really laid dumb Georgie out.”

“That pore mizzerbul joker was borned to be stood up’n knocked down. He ain’t even a number.”

“Those record company folks were helpful, too, shielding us and hustling us outa there when the place started popping. They were real nice.”

“Nice probly wasn’t on their minds. I think they was more like pertectin’ their proppity.”

“I guess that’s what we are now, all right. At least until they have a second listen and hear what noise I make and call singing. The Moon won’t likely want us back, though. They looked to be getting seriously trashed.”

“Sure, they’ll want us back. Trashin’ the Moon is like trashin’ trash: you probly cain’t tell the differnce. They ain’t never had such crowds, and ifn our songs take off, with that ‘Recorded Live at the Blue Moon Motel’ printed on all the labels, we’ll have put ’em on the map big time, and ole Will, too…hmm…damn if that don’t sound like a song title. ‘Trashin’ the Moon.’ Maybe I’ll git sumthin outa this crazy night after all.”

“I’m sorry I drug you into it, Duke. It is crazy. I know that. I’m crazy. But we made Marcella happy, so it was worth it.”

“Just on accounta you left a old plastic hair clasp over there on her grave?”

“No. That I honored her by completing the task she’d set me. It was like some of the stories we used to tell when looking into the barrette. You know, princess offered up as a bride, princes given weird tasks to win her hand and the kingdom, the need for a tittle of magic and a friendly helper to get the deed done — that sorta thing. We sometimes had cemeteries and unmarked graves in our stories, too. So I can see how she set all this up. It was her way of us playing together one last time…”

“Well, settin’ here in a paupers’ buryin’ ground under the hanged moon mongst the lonesome dead, jist the two of us, smokin’ reefers’n cuddlin’, is about as wild a party I been to since the wake fer Granpappy Rendine when his still blowed up, and I hate t’break it up, Patti Jo, but if the ole Blue Moon’s still standin’, we should oughta head back’n have us a beer outa the fridge’n move our cuddle twixt the sheets. I jist heerd a rooster soundin’ off over there.”

“Yeah, and we got a date in a few hours at a wedding, too. We’ll have to be up for that. I suppose all those rowdy boys’ll be there. One of them’s supposed to be the groom.”

“They’ll likely be too sick to stand, but ifn they start actin’ up, with my hand broke, you’ll hafta pertect me, lil darlin.”

“I will, lover. Anybody get close to you, they’ll find out what a angry Rendine gal can do to anyone messing with her favorite cousin. They just better hang on to their goolies.”

“Hmm. Must be even later’n I sposed. Lookie over there to the west. Looks like dawn a-breakin’.”

“I see it. The problem is the sun don’t come up in the west.”

“That’s right. If it’s doin’ that, them friends a ourn at the camp might be onta sumthin. Most probly it’s a fire. Big ’un, looks like.”

“We can drive past and see. Here. While you finish off the joint, I’ll just go say goodbye to Marcella…”

…

“Everthing cool?”

“Yup.”

“And now you’re free? She says you kin go?”

“I can go. But she’s not saying nothing. She’s the one who’s free. She’s gone.”