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ld his mental fortifications, then threw his suitcase in his twin-engine and fired it up. He blew out his breath, resolving to put the two plainclothes snerds out of his mind, and eased the throttle forward, gaining speed down the pale green runway that had been mowed out of a hayfield. In seconds he would be climbing above the Clark Fork River on his way to East Oregon, where that evening he would address a rural audience that treated him like a rock star. Enough with the polyester jerk-offs and their threats.
Except his port engine began leaking oil across the wing, and the propeller locked in place and the plane spun sideways on the strip.
Now it was Monday morning, and he was still stuck in Missoula, having canceled out in East Oregon and Winnemucca, wondering if those cops would be back again, asking questions about a pair of dead kids he wished he had never seen.
An SUV came down the service road and turned onto his property, two people in it, a woman in the passenger seat and a tall man behind the steering wheel. No, “tall” wasn’t the word. “Huge” was more like it.
They parked on the edge of his lawn and got out of the vehicle, glancing at the dry grass and the dead flowers in his window boxes. The woman wore a black cowboy shirt that was unsnapped to expose her cleavage and the tattoos on the tops of her breasts. Just what he needed showing up at his house when cops were sniffing around him for a possible molestation beef. But it was not the woman who bothered the Reverend Sonny Click, it was the man. He wore a short-brim Stetson slanted on his head and mirror shades and spit-polished needle-nosed boots. His posture and the fluidity of his walk and the grin at the corner of his mouth reminded Click of John Wayne.
“My name is Troyce Nix, Reverend. Candace and me caught your revival on the res. Hope you don’t mind us dropping by,” he said. “You got you a fine place here.”
“It’s all right,” Sonny Click said, his voice hollow, the way it got when he felt the presence of danger. “Just passing by, are you?”
“Not really,” Troyce said.
Sonny waited for the tall man to explain the contradiction in what he had just said. But he didn’t. “What do you mean?” Click asked.
“Wonder if you can do us a favor.”
“I’m waiting on a mechanic. My plane engine froze up.” Click wondered why he was offering excuses to a person he didn’t know, a man who kept his eyes hidden behind mirrors. This was his property. Who was this guy, and who was the woman hanging her tattooed melons in his face? “So I’d better get back to my obligations.”
“The favor I need is an introduction,” Nix said. “I’m sure you don’t mind giving folks an introduction.”
Sonny Click cut his head, a gesture he had learned from watching both Ronald Reagan and Jerry Falwell, one that indicated humility and tolerance but benevolent contention at the same time. “I’d like to help out a fellow southerner, but I’m supposed to be on a mercy mission this afternoon.”
“You’re from Ohio, Reverend. You went to Bible college in Indiana. I like your accent, though. You want to drive with us up to Swan Lake? I think you should.”
Sonny tried to hold his eyes on Nix’s face, but his mouth was becoming dry, his throat constricted. He folded his arms on his chest, clearing his throat, pretending he had an allergy, knowing that his dignity was being pulled from him like a handkerchief from his pocket. Get the subject off me, he thought. “This got something to do with her?” he said, nodding toward the woman with the flowery jugs.
“Miss Candace is my lady. We both want to meet Jamie Sue Wellstone. I also want to introduce Wellstone Ministries to a couple of religious foundations I’m associated with in West Texas and New Mexico.”
“Then why don’t you call them up?” Click replied.
Troyce Nix reached out and rested his big hand on the top of Sonny Click’s left shoulder. He tightened his grip, the grin never leaving the corner of his mouth. “’Cause we like having a man of the cloth along,” he said.
When Click looked at the distorted reflection in Troyce Nix’s mirrored glasses, he saw the face of a frightened little man he hardly recognized.
CANDACE SWEENEY HAD never been inside a grand home, particularly one that looked out upon red barns with white trim and emerald-green pastures full of bison and longhorn cattle. The deep carpets and recessed floors in some of the rooms and the French doors with gold handles and the chandeliers hanging over the entrance area and in the dining room gave her a strange sense of discomfort and awkwardness, like she was someone else, not Candace Sweeney, somehow less than what she had been before she had entered the house. The feeling reminded her of a dream she used to have in adolescence. In the dream, she would see herself walking nude into a cathedral, her body lit by the sunlight that filtered through stained-glass windows, and she would be filled with shame. Now, in this grand house that cost millions to build, she unconsciously fastened the top button on her cowboy shirt, wondering why she and Troyce were there, why Troyce had turned the screws on Sonny Click to get an introduction to people who wouldn’t spit in Candace’s or Troyce’s mouth if they were dying of thirst.
The two brothers had come into the living room first, one horribly mutilated by fire, the other on aluminum braces, followed by Jamie Sue Wellstone. They sat and listened politely while Troyce talked about the religious foundations he was connected with, the number of churches the foundations subsidized in the Southwest, the number of congregants who wanted to support patriotic, family-oriented political candidates.
Why was he saying all this crap?
Sonny Click sat by the French doors on a straight-back antique chair, one that had a little velvet cushion tied on the seat, and didn’t say a word. Even weirder was the fact that the guy who had given Candace a bad time at the filling station was driving a lawn mower across the side yard, his face bruised up as if a horse had kicked it.
When Troyce finished his spiel, a Hispanic woman in a maid’s uniform served mint juleps off a silver tray. The man who walked on aluminum braces — Ridley was his name — said, “So you want to put us in touch with your friends? That’s why you got Click to bring y’all out here?”
“The Reverend Click was all for it,” Troyce said.
“And you did this out of the goodness of your heart?” the man with the burned face said. His name was Leslie, and his eyes had a way of lingering on Candace that made her skin crawl.
“I’m also a longtime fan of Miss Jamie Sue,” Troyce said.
“We’re flattered, Mr. Nix, but our friend Reverend Click over there looks seasick,” Leslie said. “You didn’t upset him in some way, did you? We’d be lost without his sonorous voice floating out to the multitudes.”
Troyce was standing by the mantel, a relaxed grin on his face, inured to mockery and to amateurs who might try to take him over the hurdles. Above him was a signed painting by Andy Warhol. “I used to know a carnival man turned preacher who said the key to his success was understanding the people of what he called Snake’s Navel, Arkansas. He said in Snake’s Navel, the biggest thing going on Saturday night was the Dairy Queen. He said you could get the people there to do damn near anything — pollute their own water, work at five-dollar-an-hour jobs, drive fifty miles to a health clinic — as long as you packaged it right. That meant you gave them a light show and faith healings and blow-down-the-walls gospel music with a whole row of American flags across the stage. He said what they liked best, though — what really got them to pissing all over themselves — was to be told it was other people going to hell and not them. He said people in Snake’s Navel wasn’t real fond of homosexuals and Arabs and Hollywood Jews, although he didn’t use them kinds of terms in his sermons.”
Leslie Wellstone was wearing a red smoking jacket and slacks and Roman sandals, one leg crossed on his knee, one hand clenched on his ankle. He took a sip from his julep. The coldness of the ice and bourbon and water turned his lips a darker purple. “You seem to be a man of great social insight. But why is it I don’t believe anything you’re telling us?” he said. “Why is it
