"To whom are you speaking?" Jeremy asked.

Cathy looked puzzled. "I have no idea."

SkyVue became visible when they were still four miles away. The marquee was brilliant white with splotches of red, and the visible sliver of the screen flashed with blues and greens. Searchlight beams swayed inside the viewing area, and diamond-bright strobes played about their bases. The yellow flame of the refinery burned above them all.

"I see flashbulbs," Jeremy said. "They must be standing on their cars and taking pictures of the Reverend.

Look at that! There are hundreds of them!"

"Enough to blind the b.a.s.t.a.r.d, I hope."

"That's an awfully fleshbound thing to say, Cath."

"I'm in flesh. I don't have a choice."

As they reached the theater entrance, a string of motorcycles and pickup trucks rumbled past, headingsouth. The riders and drivers were all large and hairy.

"If we missed Vale, I hope that he doesn't run into that bunch," Jeremy said. "They don't look like the sort to show him any mercy."

"And if we didn't miss him and he's here, the Willardites will show him plenty, I suppose," Cathy said, steering the Datsun into the drive.

Two men in dark brown three-piece suits blocked the drive beyond the ticket booth, and a woman with blond hair as stiff as a helmet leaned out of the booth and smiled a beauty-queen smile. Cathy stopped the car and rolled down her window.

"Two adults to hear Reverend Willard denounce Satan's broadcast?" the blonde said brightly. "You're in luck. The program is running just a teensy bit late, and the Reverend himself hasn't spoken yet. Forty dollars, please."

"Take American Express?" Cathy asked.

"Of course, sister."

Cathy handed over the card, and when the blonde handed it back, the brown-suited men stepped aside.

As the Datsun rolled past, Jeremy shuddered. "Ringo's eye tingles when I look at those guys," he said.

"Think they have something bad in their jackets?"

"No doubt. I've seen those suits on TV. They're ministers of the Corps of Little David."

The Datsun pa.s.sed through a gap in the tall wooden fence that hid the theater grounds from the road, and Cathy and Jeremy became engulfed by the rally. Cars and trucks crammed the lot, and people stood on the roofs snapping flash photographs. Others wandered among the vehicles, clapping and shouting.

Women spoke in tongues and men writhed on the asphalt. Children cried and dogs fornicated. On the movie screen, a woman who might have been the twin of the one in the ticket booth was singing "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands." Her voice spewed from a thousand speakers hanging from poles and car windows.

The Datsun crawled as Cathy looked for a place to park and tried to avoid running over several hundred people who seemed unaware that they were standing in a roadway. Meanwhile, Jeremy craned his neck to gaze at the screen. "I wonder if that's real-time," he said.

Cathy pointed at the snack bar/projection building, which sat in the center of the ten-acre lot. The woman whose face was on the screen stood on a platform on the building's roof, surrounded by floodlights, musicians, video cameras, and Corps ministers. A cameraman on the boom of a small crane hovered over her like a mechanized angel. A crowd thronged about the building, singing along with the woman.

"Say, I wonder if the snack bar's open," Jeremy said. "I could use a hot dog."

"Wonderful. We're trying to save Oliver Vale's life, and you want food. It was your idea that we had a responsibility to help the jerk in the first place."

Jeremy looked abashed. "Sorry. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is hungry." Cathy finally parked the Datsun at the back of the lot, beyond the last row of speaker poles, and she and Jeremy climbed onto the car's roof to scan the crowd. The people atop the snack bar were silhouetted against the movie screen that displayed their images.

"Vale isn't here yet," Cathy said.

"How do you know?"

"Because if he were, these fleshbound larvae wouldn't be singing or listening to anyone who was. They'd have what was left of Vale's body hanging from the crane, and they'd be fighting over the remaining pieces."

"But he was ahead of us, and we didn't pa.s.s him," Jeremy said. "Perhaps he just hasn't been recognized.

The w.i.l.l.yites wouldn't expect him to be in a car with two companions."

"Well, do you see the Barracuda anywhere?"

Jeremy squinted. "Can't tell. These eyes aren't working properly."

The woman on the snack-bar roof stopped singing, and the crowd cheered. Simultaneously, the crane boom sank to the ground and was encircled by brown suits.

"Thank you so much!" the woman's voice rang from the myriad speakers. "Thank you and G.o.d Bless!

It's now a little after midnight, and time to hear from the leader of our cause, the defender of our freedoms-"

The crowd erupted in a roar.

The boom rose, and a gray-pinstriped figure in the basket raised his fists. Every floodlight on the snack bar swiveled toward him.

The beefy, white-toothed, tanned, movie-star-father-figure face of the Reverend William Willard appeared on the screen. His expression was one of self-satisfied determination.

When the basket touched down on the roof, the Reverend stepped out as if he were the first man to set foot on another planet. He opened his fists to quiet the roar of his congregation.

"My dear friends!" he cried, his voice exploding from the speakers with the force of a bomb. "It is clear to me now that the Lord brought me to El Dorado, Kansas, tonight for a purpose. Friends, I have just been informed that the Antichrist's representative, the man who stole our G.o.d-given American freedom of ma.s.s-media expression-"

The crowd booed.

"-has been seen coming this way! Yes, friends, Oliver Vale-how my tongue burns to speak the name!-is being delivered into our very hands!"

The crowd cheered.

"I have sent ministers of my Corps of Little David into the countryside to watch for his approach. If the Lord wills it, they shall bring him here to us-although I have no doubt that the Lordwill bring him hereone way or another! And when that happens, friends..." Bill w.i.l.l.y's voice dropped, and the crowd hushed to hear him. "And when that happens, I ask for your Christian mercy. Vengeance belongs to the Lord, and I ask that you allow me to ensure that He gets it. Do not pummel this Vale creature into submission; do not rend his flesh; do not pull out his forked and flicking tongue."

"Amen!" someone screamed, and the crowd's voice broke free again.

Cathy and Jeremy climbed down from the roof of the Datsun and gave each other grim looks.

"Christian mercy, my fleshbound a.s.s," Cathy said. "He might as well have told them to shred him."

Jeremy took a deep breath. "Cath, we aren't going to be able to stop it. Not by ourselves."

"So you want to give up?" Cathy sounded almost relieved.

"No. We need help, and our cousins are right here."

Cathy was aghast. "The pro-flesh? This whole mess is their fault!"

"All the more reason why they should be able to help us find Vale. He's their boy, and I can't believe that they really want him to die."

"Why not!" Cathy snapped. "Others have already died. Maybe the pro-fleshwant a few martyrs."

"Maybe," Jeremy said. "I'll ask them." He began walking toward the distant movie screen.

Cathy hurried after him. "We don't even know what their fleshbound sh.e.l.ls look like! There are thousands of bodies here, and they could be in any two of them! And if theyaren't in the flesh anymore, we won't be able to commune with them, because weare."

Jeremy shrugged. "They're here somewhere, Cath. We'll just have to hope that our flesh hasn't dulled our sense of them so much that it doesn't intensify when we're close."

"We'll have to comb the entire place!"

"Vale's life, and perhaps the lives of others as well, are at stake," Jeremy said. "If you have a better idea-"

Cathy charged ahead of him. "All right, all right! Let's start at the snack bar!"

"Why?"

"Because I'm starved!"

They bought hot dogs and then searched for their fellow Seekers as the Reverend William Willard continued to exhort his flock.

Their cousins were nowhere to be found.

12.

OLIVER.

In the early morning hours of Friday, February 3, 1984, Mother died and left me alone in her house. In the early morning hours of Friday, February 3, 1989, I was driven from that house by Buddy Holly's video resurrection.

I cannot help believing that the second event depended upon the first. After all, Mother's death itself resulted from what had happened a quarter century before. The events of our lives affect each other not as a line of toppling dominoes, but as the links of a chain being used as a whip.

Mother would not have become pregnant if my father C. had not made love to her; my father C. would not have committed suicide if Buddy had not died; I would not have been born a b.a.s.t.a.r.d if my father C.

had lived to marry Mother; Mother's life would not have been so hard if I had not been a b.a.s.t.a.r.d; Mother would not have become obsessed with her "other world" if her life had not been so hard.

She would not have died as she did.

I knew that Mother thought of the "other world" as a place where one's spirit would live on, where Buddy Holly and Sam Cooke and John Lennon all sang without tiring. I knew that she believed her mission on the corporeal plane had ended when I became an adult, and that she was only marking time until she could rejoin her lover and her G.o.ds. I knew that the twenty-fifth anniversary of my conception, and of Buddy's and C.'s deaths, would be a critical day.

I did nothing.

On Thursday, February 2, 1984, a coworker took me to lunch and introduced me to a twenty-seven-year-old bank secretary named Julie Calloway, with whom I made a date for that evening.

I had ridden my motorcycle to town, so I would meet Julie at her apartment, and we would go out in her car. I called Mother to tell her that I wouldn't be home for supper. She said that was fine.

By the time Julie drove us back to her place that night, it was after twelve. We both had to go to work in the morning, so we agreed that I wouldn't come in... but as we kissed, we wound up in the same bucket seat. Julie murmured that she was on the pill and that she hadn't done it in a car in ages. Neither had I. It was like going back in time.

The car radio was tuned to KKAP, and as Julie and I struggled, we were bombarded with pop rock.

REO. Billy Joel. Van Halen. Huey Lewis. Then, as we were about to climax, the soundtrack changed.

"It's one A.M.," the disc jockey said. "Twenty-five years ago at about this moment-"

I fell into ice water.

"What is it?" Julie asked. "What's wrong?"

"I'm sorry," I said, opening the door and grabbing the Moonsuit from the back seat. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry." As I ran for Peggy Sue, I heard the opening riff of "I'm Gonna Love You Too." I ached to stay so that I could listen with Julie for the chirping cricket at the end.

I found Mother in the garage, sitting in the Dart with the engine and radio on. Buddy was singing "Heartbeat." The garage was full of fumes. Mother's skin was cold.

I dragged her into the yard, where I forced my breath into her lungs and pummeled her heart. I shouted for a neighbor to call an ambulance, but the nearest houses were dark, and no one shouted back.

I ran inside, leaving Mother on the dead gra.s.s, and found Volume VII of her diary lying open on the kitchen table. Beside it was a white sticker on which she had written, "January 19, 1981 to February 3, 1984. Conclusion."

The entry on the last page was brief: My son will do well without me. Buddy's spirit sings in his blood, and he is old enough now that he needs no other protector. I am free to do as I wish. C. is waiting.

Remember, world: Even Jesus had to die at least once, but rock and roll lives forever.

I pasted the sticker on the spine and telephoned for an ambulance.

By the time I returned from the hospital, the Dart was out of gas and its battery was dead. Eight days later, I sold it.

I sent a telegram to Grandmother, who in 1980 had written a letter saying that she was moving back to Des Moines and that she wanted nothing further to do with us. We'd had no contact with her since, and I wasn't even sure that she was still alive. In any case, she neither appeared at the memorial service nor sent flowers.

The service was held at the funeral home and had only myself, some KKAP employees, and three of Mother's seance companions in attendance. The organist refused to play any Buddy Holly songs, so the whole thing was a waste of time.

Afterward, I rode Peggy Sue to Clear Lake, where I scattered Mother's ashes in a field that a farmer told me was the one where the Bonanza had crashed. Even if it wasn't, it was close enough. I had done the best I could.

But only in that.

I could have helped her find a way to make her corporeal life worth living. Instead, I had abandoned her on the most crucial night of her adult life, and she had died.