Part 3 (1/2)

She picked up her pen again. ”So, do you think this is going anywhere?”

The question made me laugh. ”In Antioch?”

She winced and snickered. ”Sorry.”

”Well, to be fair, I think the people who've had these experiences are hoping it'll lead to something, that somehow it'll change things.

You know this town. Somebody has to get restless eventually.”

”But you don't think it'll lead anywhere or develop into anything?” I felt cynical, which saddened me a little. ”I've seen it before.

It'll come, it'll go.”

She clicked her pen and put it away. ”Thanks for your time, Travis. You too, Brett.”

”Think you have a story?” I asked.

She stood and had to think a moment before answering. ”Well, it's interesting. Maybe that's reason enough to print it.”

”Anything interesting is news in this town.”

She laughed. ”That it is. See you.”

”Bye.”

Brett Henchle watched her go out the front door, and then told me quietly, ”You might be wrong, Travis.”

I looked at him, expecting a punch line to reveal he was kidding. There was no punch line, only his troubled eyes boring into me. ”What do you mean?”

”I'm not in pain. I'm not religious. I'm not restless. I like my job, I like living here. I didn't make up what I saw today.”

That stopped me cold. Brett Henchle saw something? ”You?”

”You want to hear about it?” he asked in a traffic ticket tone of voice. He was challenging my cynicism, I could tell.

I gathered my composure, pried my mind open again, and said, ”Yeah. Tell me about it.”

He glanced around the room, clearly on edge, and then spoke in a lowered voice. ”For a while I thought I was going crazy. I was coming back from Spokane on Highway 2, and there was this guy hitchhiking.”

Uh-oh.

”I was feeling pretty good, I wasn't in a hurry, so I figured, hey, I'll pick the guy up-if he doesn't mind riding in a squad car. He looked a little weird anyway, so better a cop gives him a ride than some innocent citizen-”

I interrupted. ”Hey Brett.”

”Hm?”

I held my hand up, just trying to keep the peace as I offered my question. ”Did this guy get in the car, ride with you a while, say *Jesus is coming soon,' and then disappear?”

I regretted the question the moment I asked it. He's never going to talk to me again, I thought. I've insulted him, I've- He froze, his face turned pale, and he stared at me as if I'd told him Martians had landed. ”How did you know?”

This just couldn't be happening. ”I . . . uh . . .”

”Did someone else run into this guy?”

Now we were in a face-off, staring at each other as if each was waiting for the other to crack into a smile, confess the whole thing was a gag, and break the tension. Was Brett trying to outlast me? If so, he was an incredible actor playing a role vastly different from his nature. I finally broke the freeze-up by asking, ”You've never heard that story before?”

”What story?”

No. Brett wasn't a Christian; he wasn't part of the culture. I could be reasonably sure he'd never heard that popular rumor that circulated around Christendom every few years.

”Well, we'll, uh, get to that. You say he looked a little weird. What did he look like?”

”Long blond hair, like a hippie, about five-seven, early twenties, wearing a white sweats.h.i.+rt and jeans. He looked a little ghostly- you know, pale and skinny like he was sick. Couldn't have weighed more than 120 pounds. He got into the car, the pa.s.senger seat right next to me, fastened his seat belt, and rode with me for a couple of miles.”

”Did he say anything besides . . .”

”He said he was coming to Antioch to visit some friends. He didn't say who. I talked a little bit about the town, the weather, you know, just making conversation, and then he said, right out of the blue, *Jesus is coming soon,' and then-” He took a moment to watch the memory play through his mind. ”Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw him make a quick movement. I turned and he disappeared. There wasn't any sound or anything. His seat belt was still buckled. He just wasn't there anymore. I slammed on the brakes and pulled over and checked every inch of that car. I looked up the highway, off the shoulder, drove back the way I came. The guy was gone.

”Then I talked to Nancy this afternoon-and listen, I haven't said a thing about this to anyone except you-and she starts telling me about people seeing angels and a crying crucifix and Jesus in the sky.” He looked at me intensely. ”Now that tells me I'm not crazy, but it also tells me there could be a blond, five-seven suspect in town that I need to question before he pulls this little stunt again.”

I couldn't believe I was even having this conversation. ”Have you talked to Sally Fordyce?”

”Is she the other person who offered this guy a ride?”

Oh brother. What could I say to that? ”No. Brett, the story about the hitchhiker, it's a rumor, a legend.”

”Was.”

I stared. It happened to him-not to a friend of a friend who told a lady who was aunt to the woman who was married to the man who used to work for the guy who last repeated the tale. It happened to Brett Henchle, the man sitting right across from me. ”From what I understand, the man Sally saw had a totally different description.”

That news did not cheer him. ”Oh great. So there might be two.” He thought aloud as if bouncing his theories off me. ”He said he was coming here to visit friends. What friends? Who else are they going to play tricks on?” He sniffed in frustration. ”You see the problem I'm up against? This whole thing is so religious, it's not going to look good for a cop to be poking around interfering.”

Finally I thought of something worthwhile to say. ”Brett, I understand the Antioch Ministerial is meeting tomorrow morning to talk about all this. Since it's a religious thing, if anyone is going to know the latest details, the ministers will. Maybe you ought to drop in and find out how extensive this stuff is and if anyone else has seen either one of these . . . whatever they are.”

”Are you going?”

G.o.d works in wondrous ways. ”Yeah, I'll be there.”

I called Kyle when I got home, told him I would go with him to the ministerial meeting, then braced myself. To his credit, he didn't gush all over me as I feared he would. After four months, he was starting to learn.

IMAGINE A TIRED OLD DOG, lying in the road, suddenly finding itself wrapped around the axle of a speeding truck. That's how I felt my first five minutes with Kyle Sherman. I was tired and feeling old, I hadn't shaved, the place was a mess, I was planning on a quiet session of journaling. And suddenly, there he was.

”Praise G.o.d, brother! I'm Kyle Sherman! Just came by to share the love of the Lord!”

His greeting had the same effect on me as that soup kettle they used to bang on to wake us up at summer camp. He was standing on my front porch in brown slacks, tan sport jacket, blue s.h.i.+rt, and Looney Tunes tie, and had a big, gold-edged Bible in his hand. His brown hair was slick with mousse, he was grinning like a Ches.h.i.+re cat, and he was in high gear.