PW liked to drive fast. Once they got to the highway they would zoom up to eighty or ninety and maintain that speed most of the way. He turned on the stereo and they listened to Veronica playing their new song, "So Angel." He kept the volume high, the way he did only when he was driving alone or when it was just the two of them. Cole thought Veronica was an awesome band and that "So Angel" was their best song yet.

The music was too loud for them to talk, but he and PW glanced at each other from time to time, grinning. Veronica was one of PW's favorite bands, too.

Already they were having fun.

Next on the mix was "O Lonesome O Lord," a bluegra.s.s song about a man who'd lost his wife to the flu. Sung by Earl E. Early, in that famous wailin'-failin' voice that gave everyone goose b.u.mps. "O Lonesome O Lord" was a super hit, but there were lots of people, like Tracy, who couldn't listen to it because it made them too sad.

"Man, this dude got a voice," said PW, raising his own voice above the music, and sounding-as Cole had rarely heard him-envious. It was the part about the man forcing himself to dance alone so he'll remember the steps and be able to dance with his wife when he gets to heaven.

Cole's eyes filled with tears. It wasn't because of the singer, though. It had nothing to do with the song. Today was his birthday. Happy birthday! But the truth was, as the day had approached, Cole hadn't expected it to be happy. The only thing he could remember about his last birthday-pa.s.sed in the hospital and totally ignored-was thinking that he would never be happy again.

One of the reasons people love to speed is for the illusion that they are escaping something, and though he wasn't behind the wheel, that is how Cole felt now: as if he'd left some trouble behind. There was a vibe coming off PW that suggested he was feeling something like this, too. He steered with his left hand-his left palm, mostly-his right hand tapping his thigh to the song. Cole always studied the way people drove, losing himself in the dream of how he'd one day handle a car. This was how it should be, he thought: fast, but smooth and laid back. His mother, as she'd liked to boast, had been an excellent driver. But for some reason, his athletically graceful father had been a klutz at the wheel, the cause of several minor accidents, each of which had made him a more nervous and therefore worse driver. He drove squeezing the wheel with both hands, shoulders hiked to his ears, checking around so constantly in every direction he made Cole think of a bobble-head.

Cole had to laugh. Bobble-head! Bobble-head! Just the word was hilarious. Just the word was hilarious.

The laugh came out a giggle, and he clapped a hand over his mouth in embarra.s.sment.

"You know, son," said PW, pitching his voice low like he was about to say something stern. "Most people cry cry when they hear this song." They both cracked up then, and as their laughter died down a new feeling swept over Cole, one that almost made his eyes well again. when they hear this song." They both cracked up then, and as their laughter died down a new feeling swept over Cole, one that almost made his eyes well again.

If only they could keep going. If only they could keep driving, just the two of them, it didn't really matter where. Out west. To California. Or down to Mexico. Or to New York City. Or all those places. Images fanned before him like a hand of cards: The two of them riding horses, riding choppers, riding big waves. The two of them piloting and co-piloting a small jet plane, eating steaks under a giant chandelier. There'd be daring adventures, heroics, and so forth wherever they roamed. It would get so that before they even arrived in a place, people would know their names. If only they could keep driving, just the two of them, it didn't really matter where. Out west. To California. Or down to Mexico. Or to New York City. Or all those places. Images fanned before him like a hand of cards: The two of them riding horses, riding choppers, riding big waves. The two of them piloting and co-piloting a small jet plane, eating steaks under a giant chandelier. There'd be daring adventures, heroics, and so forth wherever they roamed. It would get so that before they even arrived in a place, people would know their names.

It was crazy-where did he get get his crazy ideas-and it made him feel selfish and guilty. No place for Tracy in any of his grand plans. But it wasn't the first time Cole had felt the urge to run. Now that he was completely healthy again, he often felt restless, bored, as if he was stuck somewhere, waiting for something to happen or for some special knowledge to come to him. Bible study, lessons with Tracy, church, the games he played with the other children-it was not enough. He wanted more. And there were times when he felt as if there was a force holding him back. Some force was sitting on top of him, squelching and trapping him and preventing him from growing into who he was supposed to be. Like a colossal spider, it pressed its boulder of a body down while its legs caged him in. He would have to be Samson to break free. his crazy ideas-and it made him feel selfish and guilty. No place for Tracy in any of his grand plans. But it wasn't the first time Cole had felt the urge to run. Now that he was completely healthy again, he often felt restless, bored, as if he was stuck somewhere, waiting for something to happen or for some special knowledge to come to him. Bible study, lessons with Tracy, church, the games he played with the other children-it was not enough. He wanted more. And there were times when he felt as if there was a force holding him back. Some force was sitting on top of him, squelching and trapping him and preventing him from growing into who he was supposed to be. Like a colossal spider, it pressed its boulder of a body down while its legs caged him in. He would have to be Samson to break free.

If only they could keep going. It wasn't like he was asking them to run away from G.o.d. G.o.d would be with them if they wanted him there. He remembered how he had missed Chicago after he moved to Little Leap. But if they never turned back, he did not think he would miss Salvation City.

If there was anything he yearned to talk about with PW it was this. But he did not know how.

ON THE WAY, they stopped at the place where PW's great-grandparents were buried. Cole had been expecting a real cemetery, but this was just a cl.u.s.ter of a dozen or so weed-choked graves on a rise off one of the mountain roads.

It wasn't a real family plot, either. "Though everyone here was kin to some degree or other." PW had brought a trash bag for all the litter he knew they would find. Beer and soda cans, mostly; he gathered them up without a word. But Cole was surprised to see so much litter in that lonely spot. There weren't even any houses nearby. The closest thing to a house they'd seen had been miles back: a horseshoe of weather-beaten mobile homes sharing a clearing with several vehicles in various stages of being gutted. Rust city. A swaybacked horse tethered to a post, head hanging low to the ground, and some equally forlorn-looking dogs staring mutely at the van as it pa.s.sed, as if they didn't have the strength to bark.

Some of the gravestones were sticking out of the ground at such odd angles it was easy to believe someone had tried toppling them. PW's great-grandfather's slab had a long crack running down it, and Cole pictured a night of pounding rain and a zigzag of lightning striking.

Jasper Carson McBell was only forty-four when he died, but that was not unusual for a man who'd worked in the mines from the time he was a teen.

"That's what men did for a living here, generation after generation," PW said. "Only my daddy broke with tradition. He always loved where he was born, but he didn't want to end up in the mines. Besides, those jobs were melting away like snow-flakes in June and there wasn't much of anything to replace them. He roamed around a bit till he settled in Lexington. His main job was supervising deliveries for a big furniture outlet, but he had good carpentry skills, too, so he did some of that to earn extra. He liked doing that kind of work more anyway. But I know for a fact he never did feel at home in the city. He might even have gone back if it hadn't been so hard to find work. Also, Mama was no country girl, and it would've been hard for an outsider like her to fit in. But my daddy went back to the mountains every chance he got. And once we kids come along we went, too, and those were the times we were happiest as a family, especially in summer.

"I remember it'd be suppertime and we'd all be outside, either at my grandparents' or some other kinfolks'. Or it might be a church supper that night. And there'd be games, like sack races or darts, and there'd be singing and banjo playing, and the sun'd be going down behind the mountains, and of course there'd be good eatin'-though I remember one time there was this dish that gave me the heebie-jeebies: a whole hog's head on a platter of white bread slices.

"My granny was a great cook, though. She didn't need a pile of money to put cuisine on the table. All she needed was some fish from the creek or a chicken or a couple squirrels and what she gathered from the earth. She taught my mama to cook the food my daddy loved.

"Right before he pa.s.sed, he couldn't swallow, but he kept ordering Mama to cook his favorite dishes. She'd stand at the stove with tears dripping into the pot, and when she brought him the food all he could do was smell it and maybe hold a bite in his mouth before spitting it out.

"Mama couldn't stand it. She said it felt like she was torturing him. But I think it must've been a good thing. That smell and that little-bitty taste did the trick, so he could feel like he was back in the mountains that he loved again.

"Once you had a taste, you never forgot Granny's chicken and dumplings, and her biscuits and gravy were even better than that. Hey, we got any more of them sandwiches left? I'm making myself hungry, talking like this."

It was the most Cole had heard PW say about his family at any one time. In general, neither he nor Tracy talked much about the past. It made Cole wonder if maybe sometime during this trip PW would end up talking about Delphina. Cole couldn't ask about Delphina, because when he'd asked about her before, PW had said, "If I tell you the story now, do you promise never to bring it up again?"

He couldn't ask Tracy about Delphina, either, though he once overheard her tell Adele: "That girl come a hairpin close to a.s.sa.s.sinating Wyatt." Which turned out to mean she had waved a gun at him.

PW had kept the story short. They had met when he was in community college, studying business administration and working part-time in her father's stable. They had eloped right after his graduation. They had fought a lot. She had been untrue. But she was the one who walked out. PW had tried to stop her. This was where the gun came in. Wresting it away from her had somehow involved dislocating her shoulder and cracking a bone or two.

An accident, but she told the police-and later the world-a different story.

PW was so distraught over what he'd done he almost turned the gun on himself.

("Lord forgive me, Adele," Tracy said, "but if I'd been around then there wouldn't have been one bone in that girl's body left un uncracked.") Cole has heard it said that one of the worst things that can happen to a man is for him to love a woman more than he loves G.o.d. This, of all things, appeared to have happened to Pastor Wyatt.

"I'm not saying she was a bad person. She was in many ways the sweetest woman I've ever known. She was spoiled, was all. Her mama and daddy had spoiled her but good. They were kind of fancy, her folks-horse breeders-and they had just the one child. That child didn't get her way, she'd about lose her mind. She had a wicked temper, and enough tears in her to float Noah's ark. But the man is the head of the woman. Wife goes wrong, you look first to the husband. Where'd he he go wrong? go wrong?

"I was an arrogant man. Make that fool fool-arrogant fool. I thought I could handle everything myself. I was too blinded by my pride to pray-not that I was much into praying back then. And the longer I was with Delphina, the further I fell from the Lord."

Cole had expected the story to end with something bad happening to Delphina. He thought maybe she was dead, and that's why it was so hard for PW to talk about her. In fact, she had married again. But her second marriage hadn't lasted, either, and now she was with someone else, a horse breeder like her father. Flip Boody, a man known for his high-rolling style, whose private life sometimes made the news. It was old news but evergreen scandal that he'd abandoned his wife and that he and his girlfriend were living in sin. She was worse than dead, Delphina.

Though his every attempt to reach her over the years had been met with silence or rage, PW continued to feel responsible for Delphina. If she was lost, he was at least partly to blame. "Just 'cause now I got a marriage that's a success doesn't mean I'm absolved of that failure."

Delphina gone, PW had plunged headlong into darkness. He had started drinking in that way that has only one purpose and, unchecked, only one likely outcome.

Cole was fascinated by the idea of PW madly in love with an apocalyptic girl. He'd never seen Delphina, not even a picture of her, and no one had ever described her to him. But that she was apocalyptic he had no doubt.

Cole didn't know why all of a sudden he was thinking so much about Delphina. Maybe because Tracy wasn't there. Maybe because of Mason and Starlyn. Before the trip was over, Cole would find himself several times on the verge of spilling the beans about them. (Later, he'd be appalled to think how close he'd come to tattling.) PW referred to the days after Delphina left him as a time when he wandered in the desert wandered in the desert.

A desert that was, however, anything but dry.

"Many were the nights I could not find my way home."

Pa.s.sed out in the street, he got rolled more than once. All the while, he kept trying to get back with Delphina. He called it love, she called it stalking. "The law was with her." Served with a restraining order, PW chose to leave town.

"I had this idea about starting over in Louisville."

But in Louisville he only drank more.

One morning he woke up to find himself lying next to a Dumpster in the back lot of the Red Star Bar-B-Q.

"My wallet, my watch, my cell, my keys, my jacket, my belt, and my two shoes-they were all gone. I got up and was staggering around, hoping maybe at least my shoes were somewhere in the vicinity, when I noticed this skinny dude in a hoodie and diddy rags leaning against the Dumpster. He was smoking a cigarette and watching me.

"I was never a mean drunk. But the morning after? Dude, look out. So I cussed him in my best French, you know, and I asked him what he wanted. And he told me he knew where I could find what I was looking for. Is that right? I said, real sarcastic. But he just flicked his cigarette away and jerked his head, like, follow me. I thought maybe he really did know where some of my stuff was, so I went along, and I didn't know whether to laugh or punch his lights out when all he did was lead me over to the other side of that Dumpster. Then I saw there was this other dude lying on the ground, and the one thing I could say for sure about him was that he didn't have my stuff. He didn't have anything except for one piece of clothing, a pair of filthy old hospital p.j. bottoms about three sizes too big, and a smell on him so ripe I come this close to hurling.

"This was the middle of winter. I was shivering to death myself with no jacket, and I didn't know how he could stand it half naked like that. I didn't see any bottles around, but I knew he was a drunk like me, or a meth head or some other kind of junkie. His eyes were open, but I might as well have been invisible. Lying next to him was this pile of bones he must've got from the Dumpster, and they were all picked clean. He was nothing but the sorriest sack of bones himself, and I didn't know why I was supposed to be looking at him.

"I wheeled on the first guy and started to cuss him again. And he points a finger at me and he goes, 'Tonight you lost your coat and your shoes. Tonight you lost some money and some of your other possessions.'

"I felt my scalp tighten up. I was thinking, How'd he know all that? Then he points at the dude on the ground and he goes, 'This man is your brother. Won't you help him? You lost your coat but you still have a shirt. Won't you give him that shirt of yours? Can't you see he needs it more than you do? You have a home to go to. But this man has no home. Take him with you, invite him into your house, and let him wash himself. Feed him a good meal, give him some clean clothes and a bed for the night. And if he needs to talk, listen to his story.'

"That's when I had to sit down. Next thing I know I'm crying. I'm hiding my face in my hands, bawling my eyes out, like I hadn't done since I was maybe five. I don't know how to describe what my soul was going through. All I can say is it was the worst feeling I ever had in my life, the fullest measure of misery and shame I believe it is possible for one human being to experience. It was like seeing myself clear for what I was: a sick, selfish, cowardly sinner, a man without hope, without peace of mind, without any joy in his twisted heart.

"It seemed like I cried for a couple days, and with every tear I was cleansing something foul and perverted out of me. And when I was able to pick my head up again, I saw that the stranger who'd spoken to me was gone. And I knew he was the Lord. The man on the ground was gone, too. And I knew he was one of the angels of the Lord. All that was still there was the pile of bones, and when I saw them I felt the hairs all over my body rise. I knew whose bones those were. And I looked up and saw that I was wrong, it wasn't morning at all. The sky was dark, even though it'd been light before. It was still the middle of the night.

"Many folks pray for a sign from the Lord. I hadn't done that but the Lord sent me one anyway. I knew that I had been called to be a fisher of men. After that it all came-I won't say easy, because the Lord's work is never easy-but it came natural. I was just obeying Isaiah: 'Raise your voice up like a trumpet! Tell the people they have sinned!' And I was following Paul, bringing the Good News straight to the people by teaching in public, testifying repentance toward G.o.d and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ."

Of course, he was not the only street preacher in Louisville.

"But it seemed like most of the time folks would just walk on by without paying those preachers any mind at all. With me it was different. People would slow down and stop. I started to draw crowds. I got them to listen."

At the same time, he started working as a volunteer at a rescue mission.

"And that's where I really preached my heart out. These were the poorest folks in town, the hungry and the homeless and the really hurting. Lots of them were addicted to one substance or another. Some had done time and didn't have much hope of ever finding any employment. Helping them with practical needs was the easy part. But I also had to make them believe that no matter how much trouble they had, they were not forsaken, that it's the lost sheep that are G.o.d's most beloved, and that they were the blessed of the blessed."

At the mission he got to know several pastors, one of whom invited him to preach at the Church of Hope and Joy, a nondenominational congregation of about sixty people. He accepted, and a year later the number of church members had nearly doubled. Hope and Joy moved to a bigger s.p.a.ce, Pastor Wyatt was given more worship services, and the congregation kept growing.

Among the parishioners was a very pretty young woman suffering from cancer, who always sat with her family down in front. By this time, Pastor Wyatt was well on his way to becoming a church leader and a popular Louisville figure. ("First time I ever saw WyWy was on the hospital TV," Tracy was fond of recalling.) Though pleased with his success-a kind of success that had never entered his mind before-Pastor Wyatt was not without doubts.

"I didn't know why, but I just wasn't as fulfilled as I'd been preaching in the open."

The unsettling feeling that he was being watched, that someone somewhere was mocking him, that some kind of trap was being laid for him-what could it mean?

"I started worrying I was basking too much in all the attention. It wasn't that I was losing my faith, but there was a line there that I felt was getting blurry. Was I in it for G.o.d or for my own ego?"

Mysteriously enough, the more doubtful he became, the more effective was his evangelizing.

"If the purpose was to win souls for the Lord, there's no denying that was being accomplished."

So why did he have the nagging sense that the Lord wasn't happy with him?

Meanwhile, Delphina had filed for divorce.

"Again, I was stupid. I thought I could handle my problems all by my lonesome. I should have sought advice from church elders, I should have been more open with my flock. I only saw the truth later on: I was too proud. I'd put out the welcome mat for the devil, and sure enough the old boy showed up."

One night he found himself in his car, speeding toward Lexington.

"I guess maybe I was thinking now that I was some kind of big dude Delphina would have to change her mind about me, to heck with that old restraining order."

In this case, being drunk turned out to be lucky. Well before he reached Delphina's door, he jumped the car like a horse over a guardrail and plunged down an embankment. The car was wrecked but, as sometimes miraculously happens-and even though he wore no seat belt-PW walked away.

"Like they say, drunks don't break, they bend. The real crazy thing was I didn't feel grateful."

He might not have been physically hurt, but the accident had jarred something loose in him; he fell into a gloom that would not lift.

"I was mad, too-hopping mad at the Lord. I felt like he'd set me up somehow."

He spent a month in the university hospital psych rehab ward, where his side of shouting matches with G.o.d shook the padded walls of the Quiet Room.

When he was himself again, PW went back to preaching. The people kept coming; he'd lost none of his gift. But he longed for a change. He was his father's son. He was tired of cities. It wasn't of the big time that he dreamed. A simple life was what he believed G.o.d had always intended for him. He felt this even more strongly after his year's mission service in Kenya.

And so, when the pastor of a small church in a small town in southern Indiana was called home, Pastor Wyatt did not have to think long before accepting the offer to replace him.

It would not do, however, to begin his new life alone. He was now legally single again, and as a friend and frequent dinner guest of Ronnie and Priscilla Wegner, he couldn't help being aware that their lovely younger daughter had a crush on him.

There was something almost saintly about young Tracy Wegner.

"I looked into her eyes and saw the innocence of a child and the might of a lion."

Tracy would have followed him anywhere, but how nice that it was only across the river, not too far from family and friends. The wedding was a low-key affair-the bride had not yet fully recovered from her illness-and three weeks later they moved into their new home.

Of course they both wanted children, but neither was in any big hurry. There was Tracy's health to consider, and also they wanted time to get to know each other. The better they knew each other, the more they loved each other. Tracy's cancer was cured. They were researching adoption programs when the flu broke out.

IT WAS THAT TIME OF YEAR when going between sun and shade can feel like a change of season. They kept peeling off their jackets and shrugging back into them. Their first hike, they were caught in a brief but heavy shower. When the sun reappeared it was brighter than it had been before, and the sky held not an arc but a kind of rainbow-colored cloud that was like stained gla.s.s. Within seconds it had vanished.

Already much of the woods was dense with green and there were clouds of insects so thick in places if you took a deep breath you'd start coughing.

Once when they were resting, lying in the sun by a creek they might have been swimming in if the water hadn't been still winter-cold, Cole thought how upset his mother would have been that he wasn't wearing sunscreen. And what would she have said to PW driving without a seat belt?

It was the middle of the week, and they did not meet many other campers. These days people were wary about going too far into the woods at any time. The plague before before the flu had been a ravaged economy, enough already to swell the population of survivalists, and as the disease spread, many people had tried to escape infection by fleeing into the bush. Not all of them had returned. Now places like the Kentucky hills were said to be hiding large numbers of people who believed that either the end of the world or, at the very least, new and horrible disasters were on the way. They were said to be mostly men and to include many ex-cons, waiting it out in their bunkers and caves, loaded shotguns on their laps. the flu had been a ravaged economy, enough already to swell the population of survivalists, and as the disease spread, many people had tried to escape infection by fleeing into the bush. Not all of them had returned. Now places like the Kentucky hills were said to be hiding large numbers of people who believed that either the end of the world or, at the very least, new and horrible disasters were on the way. They were said to be mostly men and to include many ex-cons, waiting it out in their bunkers and caves, loaded shotguns on their laps.

But PW scoffed at stories like this, calling them way exaggerated.

"I'll protect you, son," he said, grinning. And Cole wasn't afraid. In fact, it only excited him when they came across certain signs: a mattress airing in the fork of a tree, a broken rocking chair, trash well beyond the usual backpacker's litter, like an economy-sized box of laundry detergent. It was Cole who happened to spy, well camouflaged though it was, a fantasticallooking structure, like part of a wooden boat growing out of a hillside. He wanted to climb up and investigate, but PW held him back, and not till they'd left it far behind did he say anything to Cole about the eyes that had been watching them from the surrounding brush.

Now and then Cole startled at the sound of gunfire, but according to PW the shooting was always much farther away than Cole thought it was. "You'd know that if you'd been raised around guns like the rest of us." The memory flashed of Mason asking, "If Jesus'd had an AK-47, would he have mowed down the soldiers before they could crucify him?" and Clem responding no. "Without the Crucifixion, mankind couldn't be saved. And the whole reason G.o.d sent Jesus in the first place was to save us."

Cole had known this was the answer, too. But it had always troubled him that the Crucifixion hadn't been Jesus' idea, that it was his father's idea, though his father wasn't the one who had to go through it.

Cole was surprised that they weren't doing any Bible study on this trip. They had brought pocket Bibles with them, but they would never open them. Of course, they prayed first thing in the morning and before they ate and again before they went to sleep. But, except to comment each time they came upon another great view that a person had to be insane not to believe in the Creation, PW appeared to be giving religion a break.

And once they'd reached the camping site, PW appeared also to have lost interest in reminiscing. No more stories about his family. (And not a word about Delphina, ever.) Some of the trails they hiked were steep enough to make conversation impossible anyway, and PW set a fast pace, with Cole sometimes having to struggle to keep up. Cole was amazed at how fit PW was, especially since he almost never got any exercise. In spite of his size he moved with a lightness that made it easy for Cole to pretend they were two braves walking Indian file.

Even when they rested or sat by their fire at night, they tended not to say much. The silence didn't bother Cole. You missed a lot if you talked in the woods, he recalled his camp counselor saying. He liked not having to talk, not having to listen to anything but the birds and the tramp of boots, the snap of twigs underfoot (what was it about that sound that made it so satisfying?). Hearing a waterfall long-surprisingly long-before you saw it.

The tune to "O Lonesome O Lord" kept coming into his head, and once, at the exact moment this was happening, PW started whistling the very same bars. Ha! Two people didn't have to be talking to be on the same wavelength.

But it struck Cole that, away from home-or at least here in Kentucky-PW was a different person. Not just quiet but often so absorbed in his own thoughts he might have forgotten anyone else was there. The trip didn't seem to be so much about Cole's birthday anymore, which was fine with Cole. For one thing, it made him less worried that the dreaded subjects of s.e.x and adoption were going to be mentioned. And the thought that PW could relax and be himself around him made Cole glad-even proud.

He thought about how, on the road down, he'd started wishing the two of them could run away together. And there had been other days when he'd wished that everyone around them would go away so that he could have PW all to himself. When he was younger, he'd felt that way at different times about each of his parents: why couldn't the one disappear and leave him alone with the other? And there'd been times when he'd wished they would both disappear. But his wish to be an orphan had always meant fun and excitement, great adventures in which he was the star, the darling of fascinating and admiring people. Never once had he pictured himself miserable, cast blindly among the shrieking, reeking, starving, heartless kids of Here Be Hope.

It occurred to Cole that, because of where they were, PW might be thinking about a time when his own parents were still alive and he was still a boy. It was always hard for Cole to imagine any grown-up as a child, except maybe Tracy. Then another wish came to him, the wish to have known PW-or at least to have known what he was like-when he he was fourteen. was fourteen.

A reptile child, he'd called himself. Meaning what?

The nights were cold. After hiking all day they were both ready to bed down as soon as the first stars appeared. They lay side by side in their small dome tent. But long after PW had fallen asleep, Cole was still awake, his thoughts in tumultuous motion like the dance of the insects drawn to their campfire.

Alone, he could have-would have-rolled onto his stomach and ma.s.saged the tension away. But the fear that PW would wake and catch him in the act kept Cole lying as if at attention, rigid and filled with shame.