Finn had the facts memorized, as usual.

"He's forty-two, and within a month of John's age. He worked in a pulp mill in Florida. He was a brawler and a drunk. He was born again when he was twenty-two and he has never lost his faith. He says that he was converted by Matthew Meadows long ago.

There's no good reason to doubt him. At twenty-two he was sentenced to ten years in Raiford State Prison for manslaughter committed before he was saved. Actually, he turned himself in.

He did six of the ten years, came out on parole, worked for a few years and then began to preach. He worked out of a tent, moving along the Gulf Coast, saving souls. He arrived in the town where he now preaches about eight months ago. Their old preacher had died of a stroke. There was no strong affiliation. They call themselves the Central Church of the Living God. He isn't really interested in affiliating with us. He thinks he's doing just fine where he is. He seems to think we are too big and too rich and too important. The only reason he talked to us at all and let us tape is because your father was important in his life long ago."

"That's like Poppa too, John. Remember, all those people that were after him. But he wanted to be the head of his own church and build it himself."

"I remember, but I think we need this man," John Tinker said.

"And we need him right now. Agreed?"

"Certainly!" she said.

"He'll be coming for a visit in a couple of weeks. We'll send a jet for him and put him up in the Manse, and let him sit in on services in the Tabernacle. I want everyone on staff to be very, very nice to him. If we can persuade him to join with us, we're going to have some kind of a ball team here."

"I hate it when you use sports talk," she said.

Finn Efflander excused himself and left.

John Tinker Meadows turned a chair around and sat astride it, his arms folded, resting on the top of the back, chin on his forearm, staring at her.

"We don't have enough time for any kind of talk at all, sports talk or otherwise," he said.

"I know. I worry about you, Johnny."

"In what context, Mag?"

"When we do have a chance to talk, you get cross. Like now, you get that irritated look. Can't we talk like family anymore?"

"Maybe whenever we talk I can expect to be nagged."

"Isn't that what family members do to each other? Isn't it maybe what they are supposed to do?"

"Not exclusively."

"And if that is what you always expect from me, no wonder we never have any time to talk. If you expect to be nagged every time, I don't blame you for avoiding me."

"Okay, tell me why you worry about me."

"Your sermon today was very, very good. You seemed to pull everything together. You seemed to reach out to the people today, Johnny. You don't do that as often as you used to. You seem to be... spiritually distracted."

"I've got a great idea. Why don't you give all the sermons from now on, Mag?"

"Please. Please don't be ugly. I'm not your enemy. I want everything to be good for you. But you seem to be... going away from us lately, all of us. Like when you look out the back window of a car and there is somebody on the shoulder of the road, standing there, getting smaller and smaller and further away. You don't seem to have any fun anymore, any real joy or satisfaction. You don't realize how seldom you laugh."

"Maybe there's nothing funny going on lately."

"You push me away from you. You push away all the people who care the most for you. And there's another thing."

"I knew there would be. At least one. Or more."

"People are getting very wary of you. Nobody can guess how you are going to react to anything. I know you are really carrying the whole load of this place on your shoulders. We all know that. We all respect you for the job you're doing. Is there something wrong, something beyond all the weight of responsibility?"

"Maybe I'm just getting a little stale, Mag. Perhaps it has something to do with the old man. I don't know. Who is there to approve of the way I handle things? It made me feel good to please him, you know? Now he has no idea how well or badly I'm doing."

She looked down at her thumbnail, ugly, bitten down to the quick. Without looking up she said, "There's just the two of us, you know. I wonder about it a lot. What could have happened to us? Poppa wasn't demanding. He never leaned on us. You know that. Lately I've begun to realize that he was such a holy and dedicated man that he had absolute confidence in the three of us. He didn't really see us the way we are. Not ever." She looked up at him.

"And we weren't deserving? Is that what you're saying?"

"No, Johnny. I'm saying that the three of us, and maybe Momma too, we had to kind of... push ourselves upward to fill up the big image he had of us. To be better people than we ever were. And it was too much, maybe. It was too much for Paul, certainly. And maybe in ways we can't quite comprehend, it was too much for you and me too."

"And so you are saying that what is wrong with you and me, we have been role-playing to please Poppa, and now he's not there to be pleased anymore. What's there is a confused and troubled child. Mag, if we are not what we appear to be or what we think we are, what the hell are we? What are we supposed to do with our lives? Right now thousands and thousands of people depend on us for their faith and their happiness. Isn't that enough justification?"

"Have you thought about marriage?"

It startled him.

"I thought this was supposed to be a serious and friendly conversation. What in the world are you talking about? That's a ridiculous idea. I was married once. Remember?"

"And Chris was an absolutely fabulous woman. How could anyone forget her? Everybody loved her. You are forty-two years old, Johnny, and Chris has been buried up there on the hillside next to our mother for nine years now. Nine years!"

He stared at her.

"Got the bride picked out?"

"Tracy Bellwright."

He looked at her in total astonishment.

"You are really something else! Who the hell is she? Have I heard that name?"

"She's the oldest Angel I have, and she's getting selfconscious about being twenty-eight among all those young kids. She's assistant to Dorothy Getts, the dean of women."

"Tall pretty blonde woman? Long hair?"

"She's more than pretty. I think she's beautiful. She's intelligent, Johnny, and she has a sweet disposition, a lovely voice, and she's a very healthy person. And she adores you."

"She should save her adoration for the Lord."

"You know what I mean. Don't put me off that way. There could be a lovely wedding in the Tabernacle. You two would be a wonderful-looking couple. We'd get fantastic coverage from the media. And I think the members of the Church would really like to have it happen."

"Mag, I do not really think I want to get married."

"It could keep you out of trouble."

"What is that supposed to mean?"