His eyes narrowed. “Before we go any further, I need to warn you about something.”
I was listening.
“This church has been appointed by God as a light in this city.
It has his blessing and his mandate to spread the gospel and make disciples.” He indicated my valise. “If you try to cause this church any harm with this information, you’ll be opposing God, and that’s never advisable.”
I stopped. Twenty years ago, his warning would have scared me.
Today, I felt vindicated. “Reverend Newberry, when I attended this church, I always sensed that kind of attitude trickling down from the leadership. I never thought I’d hear anyone verbalize it.” He gave me a curious look. He was about to ask me, so I told him, “Yeah, my wife and I attended this church about twenty years ago.
I don’t expect you to remember me because you never knew me in the first place, and it’s obvious you don’t know me now, or you wouldn’t have said what you just said to me. But I thank you for your candor, and I’m sure I can count on your help.”
I leaned toward him, eye to eye. He was going to regret not sitting behind his desk. “I need to hear from anyone who has had direct dealings with Justin Cantwell, and if that includes Pastor Harris, I need to hear from him, not you on behalf of him. No more running interference, okay? No more putting me off. The devil’s at work in Antioch and we don’t have time for that.”
He returned my gaze for a moment, and then nodded as if in agreement. “Leave me your number.”
BRANDON NICHOLS chuckled and lovingly petted Matt Kiley on his bowed head. “Get up, Matt. No need to grovel.”
Matt Kiley was on his knees in the straw before the Messiah of Antioch, ready to plead, bargain, cajole, do anything to get his strength back. The moment the Boss touched him, he felt it coursing through him. His arms, his back, his legs were strong again, maybe even stronger. He leaped quickly to his feet, flexing and stretching.
“All there again?” the Boss asked, holding Matt at arm’s length and inspecting him.
Matt was about to answer, but his throat choked with emotion.
He nodded instead. They were standing in the barn at the Macon ranch. The Boss was supervising as two new followers unloaded a truckload of oats, stacking the sacks on a pallet.
The Boss nodded toward the feed sacks. “Let’s try those arms out.”
Matt put up his dukes and gave the sacks a few solid punches.
His legs felt like powerful springs under him. He danced, bobbed, weaved like a boxer. WHAM! WHAM! He pounded dents in the sacks. It felt great.
“Yeah!” he hollered, then threw his arms around the Boss. He’d never been a hugger before this.
The Boss was pleased. “All right, then. You have your strength.
But remember, Matt: Your strength comes from me. It’s mine, for my use. No more wasting it in foolish brawling!”
“Okay. You got it. Oh!” He remembered something, and reached into his pocket. “The other merchants asked me to give you these gift cards. You can use them to get discounts on lodging, meals, just about anything in town. Pass them out to the pilgrims.
It’s our way of saying thanks.”
“Tell them thanks for me.”
“My Lord!” called Michael the Prophet, hurrying into the barn.
“Armond Harrison is here!”
Nichols’s eyes brightened as he turned to see Armond Harrison and a lovely young lady walking in with Michael. “Hello and welcome!”
Harrison shook hands with Antioch’s Messiah, then introduced the young lady. “This is Gail, the one we talked about.” The Messiah was delighted. Gail was in awe. Harrison told her, “He’ll take good care of you, and trust me: You’ll be a different woman when you leave here.”
“Michael, take her to her room in the guest house. I’ll be along shortly.”
Michael gave a little bow and then led Gail along with a touch of his hand.
“Her husband’s gone,” Armond explained. “In the navy. She’s had some real problems with that.”
Nichols gave a wise and understanding nod. “She needs comfort. Fulfillment.” He smiled. “Don’t worry.”
Armond smiled. “I won’t.”
“Cindy, the young woman I spoke to you about, is a gentle sort and reasonably well-adjusted. But I’ve told her she could benefit from the communal environment you have with your group—and, of course, your wisdom regarding . . .”
“Of course.”
As they left the barn, chatting enthusiastically about their ministry relationship, Matt only sighed with envy. The Boss always got what he wanted.
DON ANDERSON was turning around repair jobs so quickly people were starting to comment on his speedy service. He was careful never to let visitors see him using his special gift, and often he’d tinker away with his tools just for show. But in the week that followed that special touch from Brandon Nichols, he had cleared almost every item to be repaired from the shelves of his workroom.
Now he was actually getting a little bored, and started tinkering just for the fun of it.
Some more repair jobs came in today. The Steens’ VCR wouldn’t rewind—until he touched it. He made out a bill for how much time it would have taken him to fix it.
It would have taken him three hours . . . well, more like four . . . to fix Lonny Thompson’s tape deck that wouldn’t go around. With one touch that took less than a second, he made it go around.
Lonny was still going to be billed for four hours.
An electric mixer came to life again, as did a wireless doorbell.
Don spent most of his man hours just writing up the bills.
Then there was the Boresons’ CD player—a nice one with a rotating deck that held five CDs at once. The rotating deck didn’t rotate. He hit the open button and it slid open. Hm. Kenny Bore-son left a heavy metal CD in this thing. No wonder the deck was malfunctioning.
Then the craziest notion came over Don, and he ran his finger in a circle around the face of the CD as if he could actually read the digital recording through his fingertip. It was just a silly whim, but still he wondered— Somewhere in his head he could hear some raging, wailing, wildfire guitar work, every blasting, distorted note like a toothache set to music. It was giving him a toothache.
He removed his finger. The sound stopped.
He looked at his fingertip. Nawww, he thought. Don, now you’re leaping a little too high.
Well . . . there were other CDs in the store. A little experiment would settle any doubts. He found one of Mozart and no sooner picked it up than he heard the opening strains of Symphony No.
40 in G Minor. He shifted his gentle hold on the CD so that his fingers rested in another spot. Symphony No. 39 in E-flat.
Man oh man, he thought, what else can I do?
WHEN JIM BAYLOR came home from work, the house was quiet. In this household, such quiet was seldom a normal or good thing, and it made him uncomfortable.
“Dee?”
No answer. His first thought was that she was up at the ranch again, lingering after the afternoon meeting, all gaga over Mr.
Messiah and forgetting her starving family at home. But this was Wednesday and Mr. Messiah wasn’t holding any meetings on Wednesdays.
He went into the kitchen, then the living room. “Dee?”
“What?” Her voice came from the bedroom, low and muffled, and she certainly wasn’t laughing.
He hurried down the hall and to the bedroom door.
She was curled up in a near fetal position on the bed, hugging a pillow to her head, her expression just this side of death.
“Dee? What’s wrong?”
She muttered into the pillow. He could hardly hear her. “What do you care?”
Jim hated it when something would happen to Dee that he just couldn’t understand and didn’t know how to fix. He suspected this might be one of those times. “What’s bothering you?”
“Nothing.”
He approached the bed
and sat on the edge.
She rolled over, turning her back to him. “Just leave me alone.
You always do anyway. You don’t care about me. Nobody does.”
“Sure I care about you. I love you. You’re my wife.”
“If I died you’d all be a lot happier.”
Jim tried to tell her that wasn’t true and Dee kept talking about how worthless she was and how no one loved her and how she wanted to die, and the conversation went around and around on the same merry-go-round for several minutes. Finally, Jim got impatient enough to ask, “What happened, did Brandon Nichols hurt your feelings?”
That raised her temperature a little. “What do you care?”
“You know what Jack McKinstry told me? He said Mary Donovan thinks she’s Mary—you know, the Virgin Mary.”
“Yeah, so what?”
“And I hear Adrian’s talking to an angel. Did you hear about that?”
She curled up tighter. “Will you just get out of here?”
“Dee, maybe you’re just bugged because they’ve got this stuff happening to them and none of it’s happening to you.”
She flipped over like a fish on a rock. “You don’t know anything, Jim Baylor! How could you? You don’t know the Lord, you don’t care, and you don’t know diddly squat about spiritual things or what God’s doing on the earth, so don’t try to tell me—”
He matched her volume, and by now it was getting high. “You don’t think I know anything? Hey, I’m not laying on the bed like some kind of beached whale—”
Her strength was returning. “What did you call me?”
“—wanting to die.”
More strength, more voice. “What did you call me?
”
“I’m not the one who spilled frozen French fries all over the table and cha-chaed for Jesus while my family went hungry!”
“That was the joy of the Lord!”
“We could squirt each other and then dance a bit! Maybe look at the clouds. It’ll be a blast!”
She nearly screamed, “That was the joy of the Lord!”
“What joy of the Lord? You’re lying here wanting to die! What kind of joy is that?”
“You wouldn’t understand!”
“I understand you lying on the bed feeling sorry for yourself!
What’s that, the pits of the Lord?”
She let out a war cry and threw the pillow at him.
“Yeah, that’s it, that’s it!” He backed out the door, angrily pointing his finger at her. “Go ahead and stew! We’ll see if Brandy boy comes to cheer you up again!”
“Aaaaaghhh!” She reached for the lamp to throw, but he slammed the bedroom door and stomped down the hall.
He got out of the house. He’d eat at Judy’s tonight. Maybe he’d get good and drunk too.
“I’LL BET you never imagined you were so enlightened.”
I’d no sooner come in the door than the phone rang. It was Brandon Nichols alias Herb Johnson alias Justin Cantwell. I halfexpected this call. “Hello, Justin.”
He betrayed no reaction to my use of his third name. “Did you talk with Pastor Dale?”
I sat on the couch, smiling at his question. “Pastor Dale was unavailable.”
“Oh really?”
“I talked to Miles Newberry.”
He laughed. “Ah, good old Miles. A man you can talk to for hours and never really meet.”
I had to laugh. “That was the feeling I got.” I quickly added, “But he says you were trouble, Justin.”
“I was. They all came within a fraction of an inch of being embarrassed. As the saying goes, I wish I’d had a camera. But did you notice, Travis? There’s something different about you. You’ve grown. The old game hasn’t changed, but you have.”
I suppressed a little chuckle. He was right. “I used to buy everything that guy said.”
“And you did what he told you to do.”
“Oh yes.”
“And you felt guilty whenever he said so.”
“Oh yeah.”
“And any misgivings were your fault, every time.”
“Yep.”
“And this time he tried to scare you . . . but you didn’t scare.
Why is that?”
“I’ve been trying to figure out why.”
“You weren’t born yesterday, that’s why. Time’s gone by, water’s flowed under the bridge. Their game only works on certain people and you don’t fit the profile anymore.”
“I think that’s a good thing.”
“Oh, it’s good, Travis.”
“Sometimes it can feel pretty miserable.”
“I’m not worried. Day by day I can see you coming around.
The more you try to find out about me, the more you discover about yourself. It’s just like I’ve always told you, we’re very much the same. Of course, you didn’t find out much, did you—about me, that is?”
“Miles gave me another name for you. That’s number three now.”
“But you don’t know if that’s the right one, either. How much time are you willing to waste tracking it down?”
“I don’t know. I think it would help greatly if you’d stop the charade and just tell me who you are.”
“Stop the charade?” He laughed a spiteful laugh. “And be the first man of God on the face of the earth to do so?”
“Hey, c’mon now, you know that’s not fair.”
“No malice intended, Travis. That’s just the way it is. Ministers are supposed to have their lives together and be an example.
They’re supposed to have all the answers. Well, they don’t, so they pretend because they have to.”
“Some of them get sick of pretending.”
“And I commend you.” His voice turned bitter. “But some of them love pretending. It gives them a rush to think of all the people they’re fooling.” Suddenly he mimicked the tone of a fiery, southern preacher. “You are a sinnuh, saved by grice! Come to Geee-sus and you shall be clean—then follow me, ’cause I make the rules!”
“Salvation by grace. Christianity by performance.”
“You have been there! Travis. Move on. Let it go. You’ve grown since the Cathedral. You can keep growing. I still have a place for you.”
“Hm. Get out of one charade so I can join the biggest charade of all? I’ll have to think about that one.”
“I’m not worried.”
“And I’m sure you have nothing more to say to me about yourself.”
“Not today.”
“Good-bye, then.”
NANCY BARRONS sat at her desk in the back of the Antioch Harvester and Office Supply, listening to hold music on her telephone. It was usually this way whenever she called the county Health Department.
Finally, “This is Pete Jameson.”
“Hi, Pete. This is Nancy Barrons.”
“Oh, hi, Nancy. What’s up?”
“I’ve got some questions about that water project up at the Macon ranch. You inspected that, didn’t you?”
“Uh, yeah. Let’s see, that was an upgrade, wasn’t it? A new storage tank and three pressure tanks.”
“What about the water source?”
“Uh, that was a private well.”
“And?”
“What do you mean, and?”
“I was talking to Mrs. Macon the other day and she told me they had to develop a spring two miles behind the house.”
“Not for me, they didn’t.”
“You didn’t require an alternative water source?”
He laughed at the silliness of it. “No. Cephus Macon upgraded that well for commercial use just before he died. I required a new well head and some weatherizing of the well house, but that was it.”
“You didn’t require them to develop that spring?”
“No. I didn’t require or inspect development of any spring.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
“Let’s have dinner sometime.”
“Check your calendar and call me.”
“You got it!”
Nancy hung up and turned to Kim. “I was right.”
Twenty-One
WHILE JUSTIN CANTWELL was working his magic at the Macon ranch, Brett Henchle was doing his best not to think about it. It was Deputy Rod Stanton’s shift, his turn to serve and protect the town, so tonight Brett sat at home with his wife, Lori, and their two boys, Dan and Howie, enjoying a rented movie on video. They were watching, of all things, a cop movie. The obligatory car chase was just starting.
“Okay, watch now,” said Brett, taking popcorn from the big bowl he was sharing with Lori. “They’re gonna turn into that alley and hit some garbage cans.”
The bad guys’ big Lincoln screeched and fish-tailed into a narrow alley, bashing aside some garbage cans, sending them flying.
“Now they’re gonna splash through some water.”
The bad guys’ car, followed by the cops’ car, hit a big puddle in the alley, sending up sheets of spray while the long telephoto shot made the cars appear right on top of each other.
“Dad,” Howie whined, “you’re ruining it.”
“Next they’re gonna crash through some construction barriers.”
“Dad!”
The bad guys were cornered. They screeched through a tight turn and into a construction site, splintering several construction barriers.
“There’s gotta be a flip coming up somewhere . . .” Brett mused.
The bad guys roared up a street, swerved to avoid an oncoming truck, hit the back end of a parked truck— And sailed into the air, twisting upside down. Their car came down in slow motion on top of some other cars, then flipped again, landing in the street.
“Cool!” said Dan.
“So much for those guys,” said Lori.
“They’ll live,” said Brett.
The bad guys climbed out of the inverted car and ran, shooting at the good guys.
“Have you seen this before?” Lori asked.
“Didn’t have to,” Brett replied. “It’s the same every—” He winced, grabbing his leg.