"Not anymore?"
"I'd like to say we're still friends. But you'd have to ask them about that. See, Dr. Dupree, Jordan Tabernacle has had a contentious history for a relatively small congregation. Mostly it's because we started out as a mongrel church, a bunch of old-fashioned Dispensationalists who came together with some disillusioned New Kingdom hippies. What we had in common was a fierce belief in the imminence of the end times and a sincere desire for Christian fellowship. Not an easy alliance, as you might imagine. We've been through our share of controversies. Schisms. People veering off into little corners of Christianity, doctrinal disputes that, frankly, were almost incomprehensible to much of the congregation. But what happened with Simon and Diane was, they aligned themselves with a crowd of hard-core post-Tribulationists who wanted to claim Jordan Tabernacle for themselves. That made for some difficult politics, what the secular world might even call a power struggle."
"Which they lost?"
"Oh no. They were firmly in control. At least for a while. They radicalized Jordan Tabernacle in a way that made a whole lot of us uncomfortable. Dan Condon was one of them, and he's the one who got us involved with that network of loose cannons trying to bring about the Second Coming with a red cow. Which still strikes me as grotesquely presumptuous. As if the Lord of Hosts would wait on a cattle-breeding program before gathering up the faithful."
Pastor Kobel sipped his coffee.
I said, "I can't speak for their faith."
"You said on the phone Diane's been out of touch with her family."
"Yes."
"That may be her choice. I used to see her father on television. He looks like an intimidating man."
"I'm not here to kidnap her. I just want to make sure she's all right"
Another sip of coffee. Another thoughtful look.
"I'd like to tell you she's fine. And probably she is. But after the scandals, that whole group moved out to the boonies. And some of 'em still have open invitations to speak to federal investigators. So visiting is discouraged."
"But not impossible?"
"Not impossible if you're known to them. I'm not sure you qualify, Dr. Dupree. I could give you directions, but I doubt they'd let you in."
"Even if you vouched for me?"
Pastor Kobel blinked. He appeared to think about it.
Then he smiled. He took a scrap of paper from the desk behind him and wrote an address and a few lines of directions on it. "That's a good idea, Dr. Dupree. You tell 'em Pastor Bob sent you. But be careful all the same."
* * * * *
Pastor Bob Kobel had given me directions to Dan Condon's ranch, which turned out to be a clean two-story farmhouse in a scrubby valley many hours from town. Not much of a ranch, though, at least to my untutored eyes. There was a big barn, in poor repair compared to the house, and a few cattle grazing on weedy patches of grama grass.
As soon as I braked a big man in overalls bounded down the porch steps, about two hundred fifty pounds of him, with a full beard and an unhappy expression. I rolled down my window.
"Private property, chief," he said.
"I'm here to see Simon and Diane."
He stared and said nothing.
"They're not expecting me. But they know who I am."
"Did they invite you? Because we're not big on visitors out here."
"Pastor Bob Kobel said you wouldn't mind me coming by."
"He did, huh."
"He said to tell you I was essentially harmless."
"Pastor Bob, huh. You got any identification?"
I took out my ID card, which he closed in his hand and carried into the house.
I waited. I rolled down the windows and let a dry wind whisper through the car. The sun was low enough to cast sundial shadows from the pillars of the porch, and those shadows lengthened more than a little before the man came back and returned my card and said, "Simon and Diane will see you. And I'm sorry if I sounded a little short. My name's Sorley." I climbed out of the car and shook his hand. He had a fierce grip. "Aaron Sorley. Brother Aaron to most people."
He escorted me through the wheezing screen door into the farmhouse. Inside, the house was summer-hot but lively. A child in a cotton T-shirt ran past us at knee-level, laughing. We passed a kitchen in which two women were collaborating on what looked like a meal for many people—gallon pots on the stove, mounds of cabbage on the chopping board.
"Simon and Diane share the back bedroom, top of the stairs, last door down on your right—you can go on up."
But I didn't need a guide. Simon was waiting at the top of the stairs.
The former chenille-stem heir looked a little haggard.
Which was not surprising given that I hadn't seen him since the night of the Chinese attack on the polar artifacts twenty years ago. He could have been thinking the same about me. His smile was still remarkable, big and generous, a smile Hollywood might have exploited if Simon had loved Mammon more than God. He wouldn't settle for a handshake. He put his arms around me.
"Welcome!" he said. "Tyler! Tyler Dupree! I apologize if Brother Aaron was a little brusque just now. We don't get many visitors, but you'll find our hospitality is on the generous side, at least once you're in the door. We would've invited you before this if we'd known there was a shadow of a chance you could make the trip."
"Happy coincidence," I said. "I'm in Arizona because—"
"Oh, I know. We do hear the news now and then. You came along with the wrinkled man. You're his doctor."
He led me down the hall to a cream-painted door—their door, Simon's and Diane's—and opened it.
The room inside was furnished in a comfortable if slightly time-warped style, a big bed in one corner with a quilted comforter over a billowing mattress, a window curtain of yellow gingham, a cotton throw rug on a plain plank floor. And a chair by the window. And Diane sitting in the chair.
* * * * *
"It's good to see you," she said. "Thank you for making time for us. I hope we haven't taken you away from your work."
"No more than I wanted to be taken away from it. How are you?"
Simon walked across the room and stood beside her. He put his hand on her shoulder and left it there.
"We're both fine," she said. "Maybe not prosperous, but we get by. I guess that's as much as anyone can expect in these times. I'm sorry we haven't been in touch, Tyler. After the troubles at Jordan Tabernacle it's harder to trust the world outside the church. I suppose you heard about all that?"
"A royal mess," Simon put in. "Homeland Security took the computer and the photocopy machine out of the rectory, took them away and never gave them back. Of course we didn't have anything to do with any of that red heifer nonsense. All we did was pass on some brochures to the congregation. For them to decide, you know, if this was the kind of thing they wanted to get involved with. That's what got us interviewed by the federal government, if you can imagine such a thing. Apparently that's a crime in Preston Lomax's America."
"Nobody arrested, I hope."
"Nobody close to us," Simon said.
"But it made everyone nervous," Diane said.
"You start to think about things you took for granted. Phone calls. Letters." I said, "I suppose you have to be careful."
"Oh, yes," Diane said.
"Really careful," Simon said.
Diane wore a plain cotton shift tied at the waist and a checkered red-and-white head scarf that looked like a down-home hijab. No makeup, but she didn't need it. Putting Diane in dowdy clothing was as futile as hiding a searchlight under a straw hat.
I realized how hungry I'd been for the simple sight of her. How unreasonably hungry. I was ashamed of the pleasure I took in her presence. For two decades we had been little more than acquaintances. Two people who had once known each other. I wasn't entitled to this speeding pulse, the sense of weightless acceleration she provoked just by sitting in that wooden chair glancing at me and glancing away, blushing faintly when our eyes met.