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“Holy crap!” I said.

Win laughed louder as we pulled away. I shifted up a gear for good measure and looked back to check on Win’s position, only to find him slowing at the bottom of the driveway, where he stopped, quickly reached down to retrieve the fallen flashlight, and then clipped back into his pedal as the man drew closer.

“Win, come on!”

He began to pedal, leaving the campground behind as he pulled even with me.

“Least we’re not leaving empty-handed,” he said, waving the flashlight at me.

“Great. We can use it to light up the road while we ride in the dark looking for a place to sleep,” I muttered.

“We’ll find something,” he said.

“In another twelve miles.” I spat, pulling away a bit.

“In time I think you’ll come to recognize the hilarity of the situation,” Win said.

I didn’t respond, but I knew it was funny. And if I hadn’t been
tired and hungry and sore as hell, I would probably have been laughing with him. But we needed a place to sleep.

Five miles later Win spoke again. “Light’s fading.”

“Seven miles to go,” I said. “Keep pedaling.”

“Or we could scamp,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“Scamp. You know … sneak around, scam a free campsite …”

As pissed as I was at him, I didn’t want to ride any farther. “Ah,
scamping
.”

We stopped and looked around. A sign for an Assemblies of God church about twenty yards ahead was all we could see in either direction. There was a stand of thick pines, and we could hear water falling somewhere nearby.

“Scamping it is,” I said as we pushed our bikes off the road and headed into the trees.

A few minutes later we’d found our home for the night.

“Nice spot,” I said, tossing my helmet to the ground in a small clearing a hundred yards from the road. It was. A narrow stream ran nearby where we could filter water to cook the mac and cheese we’d stolen from Mom’s stash. Best of all, it was in the only place guaranteed not to see any action on a Saturday night: the grounds of an isolated country church. It felt good—vaguely dangerous—to be getting away with something.

“The lady would approve,” he said, adding, “And the price is right.”

“Where’s the aspirin?” I asked as I pulled the tent and ground sheet off my rear rack.

He shrugged, removing his shoes. “How should I know,
Eagle?” he asked, peeling off a pair of socks that I could smell from ten feet away. “You packed.”

I threw the tent onto the carpet of brown needles. “But you were supposed to pack the first-aid kit, dork,” I said. “Didn’t you get any aspirin?”

“Just Band-Aids … toenail clippers … the essentials,” he said.

“Toenail clippers? Since when are toenail clippers essential?”

“Since I get blisters on my toes if my nails get too long,” he said as if I were the one testing his patience. “I didn’t bring any aspirin, but I’d be happy to offer you a pedicure later. It’s quite soothing.”

I said nothing, merely tugged the tent out of the bag and unrolled it with a snap.

“So, no on the pedicure, then?”

As penance Win limped over to help me set up the tent without even being asked. We snapped the poles into place and threaded them through the guides attached to the fabric and had it up and open to the air in a matter of minutes. I was moving slowly, amazed by the soreness in my tailbone, and Win was already yawning.

We stripped the panniers off the bikes and stowed them inside the tent with our unrolled sleeping bags and pads. Win dug the stove and the food bag out. I snatched up the filter and went to fill our water bottles. It was quiet, save for the sputtering roar of the WhisperLite stove, the aluminum pot rattling away on the flame. I was pumping away at the filter, one tube floating in the halfhearted current of the stream for the intake, the other end running into my bottle. I could get used to this.

But then the unthinkable happened. A car turned off the main
road (we could hear it more than actually see it) and onto the gravel pathway leading up to the church. The driveway was closer to our spot—so close that I could see the driver was wearing a yellow tie and had too much hair spray in his hair. Through the open window the breeze flapped at the edge of his lapel, but his hair stayed stiff, looking like a bike helmet.

“Don’t move,” I heard Win whispered.

“It’s not a
T. rex
, dude,” I said, harkening back to a shared fifth-grade obsession with
Jurassic Park
. “Besides, the tree cover is pretty heavy. He won’t see us.”

“He probably works here. Just came to pick …”

Win stopped short as another car turned off the highway and sidled down the same gravel road. It pulled neatly in line with the first, and a woman emerged bearing a casserole dish covered in foil.

“Think she works here too?” I asked.

Three more cars caravanned into the lot. The third had a backseat full of kids, one of whom was staring out the window at our spot. He immediately began shouting and pointing in our direction.

“Damn,” Win muttered. “So much for the perfect campsite.” I nodded, moved toward the bikes, and shoved the bottles back into the cages bolted to the tubes.

“You stuff the sleeping bags,” I said to Win, “I’ll get the tent.”

“What are they doing here on a Friday night?” Win asked as he slipped into his shoes. “They must be some kind of super-Christians or something.” Two of the men were approaching our site through the woods now. Neither Win nor I come from
particularly religious families. My father describes us as CEOs (“Christmas and Easter only”), but he says grace when the thought strikes him and I am not totally averse to praying myself. Win’s father—who is actually a CEO—despises anything he doesn’t do himself, and openly decries religion as something for the weak.

“Does that mean they’re the nice kind, or the ones who’ll pelt us with Bibles as we clear out?” I whispered as the helmet-haired man and another in jeans and a T-shirt reading
GOD’S GYM
entered the clearing.

“Evening, boys,” the suited man said. “Nice night for a camp-out?”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “Look, we’re really sorry, we just thought it wouldn’t be a big deal, and we couldn’t find a campground, and … we’ll move. Just give us a few minutes.”

I began to pack up but was startled by his response. He laughed. “Move? Don’t do that. We’re glad to have you. Long as you clean up in the morning.”

I was stunned. “Really?”

“Why not? Don’t reckon anybody else is sleeping here tonight. Where you fellas heading?”

“Seattle, sir. We just left West Virginia this morning,” I offered.

“Well, we’re glad the Lord brought you our way,” he said. His companion nodded in a way that made me a little uncomfortable, as if the whole thing were some kind of stupid destiny.

“Listen, boys. We don’t usually have church on Saturday night—it being reserved for the sinning and all,” he said, laughing, “but we’re at the end of a revival. Got a potluck supper. Lot of good food. Pies.”

He let the lure of pies sink in. Shrewd.

“Would you like to join us?” he asked.

I responded out of habit. Out of politeness. Possibly out of something that didn’t want to go to this church with the nice people. “We couldn’t impose—”

But Win, who hadn’t said a word until now, piped in. “We’d love to.”

And strangely enough, he sounded like he meant it.

A couple of hours later my stomach was stretched tight. I’d eaten third helpings of almost everything—including that weird Jell-O salad with the marshmallows, four pieces of fried chicken, and half a key lime pie. Between mouthfuls we’d answered a lot of questions about why we’d decided to ride our bikes to the West Coast and whether or not we’d been baptized. It was the last question that had made me favor the dine-and-dash. But they were only asking out of curiosity, in the same sort of tone that you might ask someone if they’d ever had sushi or broken a bone.

So we ended up in the sanctuary. I was so tired that everything seemed louder—the music, the lively preacher who’d been dancing around the little stage area for nearly an hour, the three hundred or so people amening on cue from the packed pews and folding chairs that had been brought to fill in spaces around the aisles. I was on overload.

“Jacob’s name meant ‘deceiver’! And let me tell you people, he’d done some deceiving in his day,” hollered the preacher, wearing a bolo tie, from the altar. “He stole the birthright of his brother, ran away, got deceived himself. But did he learn?
No! He just went on out and fooled some more people.”

He paused and let the weight of Jacob’s sins sink in on us. “And do you know what he wanted then?”

“Tell us, Pastor!” shouted someone from the back.

“He wanted to go home! He wanted forgiveness. But did the Lord just let him waltz back and get it?”

“No, sir!” another voice shouted.

“No, sir, indeed!” the preacher shouted as he stalked back and forth on the carpeted platform. “Jacob had to wrestle with that angel, had to wrestle with his God,” he spat. “And he was changed!”

Win slouched next to me. I knew I would fall instantly asleep if the room would only quiet down for a second. But that had more to do with the miles we’d covered and my full belly. The story was actually pretty interesting.

What I’d managed to piece together was that it was about Jacob, who’d done a lot of bad stuff in his life, and then wanted to go back and make up for it. Then God sent an angel down to wrestle with him. Only Jacob was strong and wouldn’t let go. They fought all night; all the while Jacob said he wouldn’t let go until he’d received a blessing. So the angel did it, but not before he’d jacked Jacob’s hip all out of place and they’d trampled the entire field down to nothing.

An organ began to play. “Some of you are wrestling with the Lord
right now
,” the preacher intoned. “And this moment—this very minute—he wants to bless you. It’s time to get changed,” he concluded as an organ and a piano on either side of the church fired up. The congregation began a marathon version of “Just as I Am”—the only hymn I knew by heart from our biannual visits to church.

I stood, swaying on my feet, drunk with saturated fat and exhaustion. A legion of people poured forward to the altar, some fell to their knees and wept on the carpeted steps. Some started waving their hands in the air and babbling words that I’m pretty sure weren’t even an attempt at singing along.

“Dude. This is starting to freak me out a little,” I whispered, before I realized I was talking to a skinny woman wearing a straw hat.

Win was gone.

I caught sight of him as he walked calmly toward the preacher. Win stepped to his side as the pastor cast an arm around his shoulder. They whispered something to each other. And then they appeared to be praying. Both had bowed heads, closed eyes. The preacher’s lips moved furiously; Win nodded his head slightly at irregular intervals.

What was going on?

Then both heads rose, another short exchange, they shook hands, and Win headed back toward me. I stared at him as he wove his way through the mass of people waiting to weep at the altar or talk to the preacher. He returned my gaze as he came back to his spot at my side.

“What?” he asked, feigning innocence.

“What do you mean ‘what’?” I said, sounding more alarmed than I meant to. “What were you doing up there?”

He shrugged. Smiled. “Just talking.”

Monday after classes I headed to the campus fitness center. It sucked to do my workout inside after two months of glorious, daylong rides outdoors, but I still hadn’t fixed my chain and didn’t have the time it would take to get far enough out of Atlanta to actually enjoy any scenery. The alternative? My road bike remained in my room, hanging on the wall, while I endured a stationary bike and chem book for company. It also seemed like the best way to avoid being in my room, where Ward could find me.

I’d also been trying to conjure some bike trip magic, hoping Vanti might show up and see me looking simultaneously cool and academic. But it wasn’t working, and my legs were only cramping, not itching even a little.

Halfway through a programmed hill workout and the chapter
I’d been assigned, I heard a voice that I hadn’t been hoping to hear. “This seat taken?”

Abe Ward popped himself onto the stationary bike next to mine, ignoring the
OUT OF ORDER
sign and settling in. He wasn’t dressed in workout clothes, just another version of the same getup from the other day.

“Oh,” I said without breaking pace. “Hi.”

“Didn’t we have an appointment today, Chris?”

I closed my book and dropped it to the carpet beside my water bottle. “I sort of forgot,” I lied. “How’d you find me?”

He smiled. “I’m an investigator, Chris, remember? It’s my business to know people. To get inside their heads and figure out what they’re thinking … what motivates them … plus, your roommate said you’d be here.”

“Win’s dad never settled for less than the best,” I said, smiling in spite of everything. He wasn’t pedaling, but he looked like he fit on the bike all the same. Probably a decent hill climber.

“So,” he said, fiddling with the buttons on the console.

“I told you everything I knew the other day when you were here,” I said.

He nodded, pushed the pedals of the bike in half a rotation. “Thought you might have remembered something over the weekend.”

I reached up and punched a button, increasing the resistance on the machine. “Nope.”

He looked around the workout room. “So let’s just talk about Win, then,” he said. “Was there anything weird in his behavior during the trip? Or maybe before you left?”

“Win’s behavior was clinically weird, Agent Ward,” I said.

“Call me Abe,” he offered. “Go on.”

“I mean, Win was always weird. Always said the wrong thing even when he knew it was the wrong thing. Nearly got himself punched every day of high school.”

He smiled. “I think I’d like Win.”

“Maybe. He’s an acquired taste,” I said. “Honestly, if we hadn’t become friends so early, I’m not sure I would have been able to put up with him. He has a knack for pushing people’s buttons. Especially his parents’.”