"That's right. Where were you born? Where'd you grow up?"

"It'll cost you dinner with me."

He was smiling at her, waiting for an answer. Something in his eyes chilled her.

She called, "Kim?" Kim looked up. "Let's get a picture of Mr.

Nichols to go with our story."

"Sure thing." Kim reached for her camera.

Nichols was on his feet. "Not today."

"C'mon," Nancy prodded, "it'll only take a second."

"The dinner invitation is still open. Call me at the ranch."

He turned and hurried through the store and out the door.

Kim stood with her camera, eyebrows high with surprise. "Wow."

"Like Superman and kryptonite," said Nancy.

"Was he . . . hitting on you?"

"Aw. . ." Nancy turned to her desk. "I could never prove it to anybody."

Kim stood there, waiting.

"Yes, he was," Nancy finally answered, and by now she was shuffling through papers and yellow post-it notes trying to find a phone number. Ah, there it was. Nevin Sorrel, Mrs. Macon's lanky, former hired hand, had said he had something very serious to tell her about Brandon Nichols. At the time he called, Nancy wasn't interested in gossipy stuff from a resentful semiliterate, but she was seeing things a little differently now.

AS FOR WHAT Morgan Elliott was thinking, I hadn't heard-that is, until she called and asked to see me, which was the last thing I expected. I'd mostly been friends with her late husband, Gabe, and apart from the ministerial meetings, hadn't seen much of Morgan after his death. Considering my reputation with the open-minded, liberal, and tolerant faction of the ministerial-and her apparent alignment with that camp-it seemed best to steer clear of her anyway.

Well, so much for that. What she wanted to see me about I had no idea, but I now had an official, three o'clock appointment with Pastor Elliott. I arrived promptly, parked in front of the Methodist church, and went through the big double doors. A lady in jeans was mopping the floor in the foyer and told me yes, the pastor was in her office, located at the front of the sanctuary, through a door just to the right of the chancel.

I'd forgotten how cla.s.sy this old church was, and enjoyed my short walk down the center aisle. This was a building in the old tradition, dark stone on the outside, fancy woodwork and plaster on the inside, with a high, vaulted ceiling and stained gla.s.s windows. The pews were stout and hand-carved, the deep red cushions a later improvement. The original floorboards under the carpet had been squeaking in the same places for decades, and overhead were the black iron chandeliers that came by ship and rail from England in 1924-Gabe told me all about it.

The door to the pastor's office was open and I could see Reverend Morgan Elliott seated at her desk in a dark suit, white blouse, and dark blue scarf. Her long, curly hair was pinned back today and she was working intently, her round gla.s.ses perched on the end of her nose. Feeling some anxiety, I knocked gently on the doorjamb. She looked up and smiled, and then she stood, extending her hand. "Hi. Please come in."

I shook her hand and took the chair facing her desk. I had no idea how I should conduct myself: As a friend? A neighbor? A fellow professional? Maybe a condemned heretic. I'd just have to wait and see.

"So how in the world are you?" she asked, setting aside her work and then resting her chin on her fingers.

"Doing all right." It was a comfortable, generic kind of answer. "How about yourself?"

She didn't answer quickly, and her answer wasn't comfortable for either of us. "I have some things I need to talk with you about."

Uh-oh. I once had a vice princ.i.p.al who said exactly those words in exactly that tone of voice. Not knowing whether to expect a chat or a lecture, I ventured, "This is kind of unusual, you and I having a meeting."

She shrugged one shoulder. "I'm taking a chance that I've read you correctly. If I had this meeting with anyone else, I'd get a party line, predictable answer or no answer at all. But you seem to be in a different place right now."

"A different place?"

She c.o.c.ked her head to one side and gave an apologetic smile. "You faced down Armond Harrison in front of the whole ministerial. You organized a picket protest outside the theater when they showed an X-rated movie. You led a March for Jesus down the highway through town. You were pastoring Antioch Pentecostal Mission long before Gabe and I got here, and we always knew what to expect from you."

I caught her point. "Things have changed a little."

"I'm guessing you're on the outside. Things have to look different from out there. Do they?"

I stared at her, off-balance.

"Do they?" she asked again.

I knew the answer, but I was dumbfounded to hear Morgan Elliott asking the question. "Yes. They do. Things look a lot different. Not always in focus, but definitely different."

"Then maybe we can compare notes. Things are starting to look different to me too, and I'm not sure what to do about it." She looked at the ceiling and squinted as if seeing something in the distance. "I have this picture in my mind. I'm eighteen, getting ready to leave home, and I'm standing out in the yard in front of my parents' house in San Jose. I've got clothes in a big duffel bag and a guitar in one of those cheap cardboard cases, and I'm leaving, heading out on my own. But I'm looking back toward the front door, and my folks and my brother and sister are standing there, calling to me, beckoning, telling me to come back inside. *You don't belong out there, come back inside, you need to stay here.'" She stopped abruptly and asked, "Does any of this sound familiar?"

Maybe. "Is there more?"

She looked away, replaying the scene in her mind. "Part of me wants to go back. I mean, it was home. It was secure. I liked living with my folks. It's not like I was rebellious."

"Uh-huh."

"But somehow, I . . ." Abruptly, she reached for a yellow legal pad on her desk. "Maybe we can talk about that later." She nervously consulted a list she'd scribbled on the yellow pad. "I've been wracking my brain all morning-well, for several days, actually- and I've narrowed down the topics to three: My church and I aren't getting along; Brandon Nichols isn't Jesus . . ." That was two. I sat there waiting. She sighed, looked at the wall, built up her nerve, and gave me the third: "Michael the Prophet is my son."

I didn't react. I couldn't. I had to hear her say that again. "Excuse me?"

She looked directly at me. She even leaned into it. "Michael the Prophet-you know, that crazy guy with the shawl and the staff and the cut-off jeans-"

"And the phony British accent."

"That's the one. Michael is my son. Michael Elliott."

Slowly, jarringly, the memory dawned. "I remember you and Gabe talking about Michael. But I never met him."

"He didn't come to Antioch with us. He'd left home by then, and had started his, his wanderings. We got lots of letters and calls, but he never came home again. He had to be . . . out there. He took in about a year of college, then traveled to India to discover himself and got dysentery. On the way back, he had himself baptized in the Jordan River. He's, well, he's searching."

"And now he's found Brandon Nichols."

She gave a slow, painful nod. "He thinks Brandon Nichols is Jesus. He told me that to my face."

I didn't mean to smile. "And you have a problem with that?"

She huffed in frustration. "Isn't that the limit? I guess I'm upset because he's my son."

Now that was fascinating. "Huh."

"I know what you're thinking."

I hesitated to say it.

"Go on."

"Well, we have heard it said that love means you don't question or challenge another person's beliefs. But now we have a case in which, because you truly love someone, you don't want them to be deceived."

"Exactly."

"So it matters to you what they believe."

"And therefore I'm upset that Brandon Nichols is deceiving my son."

"How intolerant of you."

She nodded. "How very intolerant." She rested back in her chair, strong emotions just under the surface. "But I know-I know-that Brandon Nichols isn't Jesus, and if he isn't Jesus, then someone else must be, and I'm very sorry we never told Michael. Pardon me for baring my soul, but I'm haunted by the thought that he believes in Brandon Nichols because there was nothing for him to believe in at home."

"For what it's worth," I said, "Brandon Nichols isn't Jesus, and someone else is."

She said with a flourish, "Thank you for saying so."

We were eye to eye across that desk. "So things are looking different now?"

She drew a deep breath and stared into the past. "I was comfortable. I had my ministry, my little bag of pet beliefs and nonbeliefs, my own congregation of followers. But now I can't sit still. I can't rest. I'm like my son." She met my eyes again. "I want to know something for sure. Very radical idea, I know. And they-some of the people in my congregation; the old guard, the pillars, the heavy givers-don't want me to look. They're afraid of my asking. They like the old Morgan, the cheerful little lady who smiled and made them feel good and never ventured further than these four walls." She added with a bitter note, "The one who preached so much but said so little. They like Brandon Nichols. They don't see anything wrong with him-just like Michael!" She halted. Her eyes glistened with tears.

"So you're standing out in the yard again, and Mom and Dad are calling to you to come back."

"And I can't!" she said angrily, her voice cracking. She reached for a facial tissue and removed her gla.s.ses to dab her eyes. "Excuse me."

I rested back in my chair, stunned that I would have something in common with Morgan Elliott, of all people. "So you're on the outside too."

That touched just the right nerve deep inside her. The tears overflowed, and she chuckled with embarra.s.sment. "I'm so sorry."

"It's okay."

She grabbed another tissue and blew her nose. "I'm forty-two, an ordained minister with a congregation-" She stopped, pulled in a deep breath, and spoke in a steadier voice. "And I don't know what I'm going to do with myself! I can't go back! I can't be what I was before, and the people are getting worried and I don't know what to tell them."

"And Brandon Nichols brought all this on?"

She shook her head. "I was working on it before this. He just pushed it ahead several s.p.a.ces, that's all."

"He pressed the issue."

"Exactly."

"Well," I said with a hint of sarcasm, "I know your problem. You just need to have a Quiet Time every day; you know, read your Bible and pray."

"I do!"

I scowled. "That's funny. It always works for everyone else."

She caught my drift. "So they tell me. Except I'm taking the Bible too literally."

"I've been told I'm backslidden."

"I've been told I'm starting to sound like a fundamentalist."

"I need to come back to the Lord."

"I need to quit sweating the details and just love everyone."

I started laughing. She started laughing. It was like having an inside joke between us, and I could hardly believe it. In that little cubicle in that staid old church in the center of that troubled town, two people who hadn't laughed in quite a while found something they could chuckle about together.

"So what can we do about Brandon Nichols?" she asked.

By now I couldn't help thinking that G.o.d had something brewing. "I guess we'll know when the time comes."

She smiled. "G.o.d is here with us, isn't he? Even on the outside." We prayed, the Reverend Elliot and I. I think it worked. As I left the church, I asked the Lord just what he was doing, and as usual, he left me to figure it out.

At any rate, I was very glad she called. Glad I came. As she had said, G.o.d was with us, even on the outside.

I hadn't always felt that way. . . .

14.

THERE ARE SMELLS you never forget. Every once in a while I'll sniff just the right combination of beer and cigarette smoke and immediately recall my short and failing career as a bluegra.s.s musician. I was nineteen going on twenty, and still in a state of mind where what I wanted had to be what the Lord wanted. Consequently, it had to be G.o.d's will for me to be playing in dark taverns with black light posters on the walls and aging waitresses dressed in sequined, low-cut blouses. There had to be some kind of G.o.dly mission in playing my banjo until two in the morning while I absorbed cigarette smoke into my clothes.

Once an uncle asked me what I was doing, and I told him about my band. He asked me, "How many of them have you won to the Lord?"

I answered honestly, "As many as wanted to be," which was another way of saying, "None."

Our group, the Mountain Victrola, was about as stable as it was G.o.dly. The guitar player always had some weird chemical in his brain and a recent message from somewhere unseen. The ba.s.s player had a standing offer from another band that made better money, and he owned our PA system. The mandolin player owned the station wagon we used to haul ourselves around, but he was catching flak from his "old lady" and figured he'd have to quit. The dobro player was constantly depressed and kept talking about joining up with his brother in a fruit and produce business. We weren't very good and we weren't improving, and most of all, we were poor. Fifty bucks a night-for the whole band of five-was not what one would call a starlit stairway.

There's a psalm that tells us not to be like a wild donkey that needs to be bridled, and a proverb that says a wicked man will have his fill of his own ways. Mix those two ideas together and you have a good description of my spiritual state the last night I played with that band. We were taking a break, sitting in a booth in the Cedar Tavern in Seattle. It was after midnight, we still had two more forty-minute sets of music to play, and there were about five people there to listen to us. The place was dark and smoky. The jukebox was thumping. I could see my underwear glowing through my clothes under the black lights. My friends were smoking, griping about the money, and talking about what they could be doing instead of this. I was sipping from a c.o.ke and pondering the same question.

Folks have asked me how and when G.o.d called me into the ministry, and I've never had a definite answer. The way G.o.d designed me, I would have ended up in the ministry eventually. I could have wandered around for a few more years pursuing all sorts of dreams and ambitions-music, acting, banjo making, ditch digging-but one overriding fact determined my destiny: I loved the Lord deeply and wanted to serve him. Given that, my being in the ministry was a foregone conclusion and only a matter of time.

All I had to do was make up my mind, choose the right road, and stay on it. That night at the Cedar Tavern, I did.

West Bethel College seemed the natural choice. It was strictly a "Bible Inst.i.tute" when Dad went there, and there was only one, not an East in Wheaton, Illinois and a West near Portland, Oregon. It's where he met Mom, and I still have Dad's big exhaustive concordance with Mom's personal note in the front: "To Wayne Travis Jordan upon graduation, May 28, 1948, Bethel Bible Inst.i.tute." Three of my dad's brothers graduated from there, and a majority of my cousins. By the time my older brother, Steve, graduated from there in 1971, so many other Jordans had gone there over the years that the professors kept getting Steve's name mixed up with theirs.

In the fall of 1973, the profs had to learn the name of still another Jordan. I cut my hair, shaved my beard, bought a new Bible, and signed up. At twenty-one I was a little older than most of my cla.s.smates, but at least I'd worked some of the wild donkey out of my system. While my cla.s.smates were squirting shaving cream down each other's pants and putting detergent in the main entry fountain, I just wanted to study.