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After more years than cares to believe, he gets his first chance to go before the Parole Board.

"Well, now, good afternoon," says the fat banker heartily.

"So how'd it go?" Lumir of the acrid feet asks that night.

In the earliest days of Iowa, back in the 1830s, most of the taverns doubled as stagecoach stops. In case you don't think that traveling by stage, or stopping at such taverns, was dangerous, consider this tip from a brochure handed out to stagecoach passengers:

Don't point out where murders have been committed, especially if there are any women passengers.

"Merle's Rack 'n' Snack" probably wasn't as dangerous as one of those early stage stops but with half a dozen Harleys out front and the old-fashioned kind of country music blasting from the windows, I assumed that Merle's probably had its share of nightly violence—you know, the standard romp 'n' stomp that make bikers such delightful companions.

Which made the presence of the shiny new Lincoln in the parking lot all the more curious. A white Lincoln. Just like the pair the good Reverend Roberts had been sporting in his church driveway that day, and that the very pretty and very deeply disturbed Mindy had been washing and waxing that afternoon.

I went inside and soon enough learned what the "Rack 'n' Snack" stood for.

"Rack," which I should have figured out for myself, referred to three bumper-pool tables near the back. While "snack" referred to two (count 'em, two!) small and rather battered microwaves behind the bar. According to the handwritten menu leaning up against several boxes of shotgun shells, and two feet over from car air-fresheners with nude women on them—you know, the sort you hang down from your rearview mirror and which your teenagers would be proud to see you buy . . . according to the menu you could choose between a

BEER 'N' BRAT

BEER 'N' BURGER

BEER 'N' BUFFALO

I hadn't ever had a buffalo burger and somehow I wasn't inclined to try one here.

As I walked over to the bar, the twenty-or-so customers, mostly drunken men, got their first good look at me and I got my first good look at them. It was pretty obvious that they wouldn't be inviting me to their birthday parties and I wouldn't be inviting them to mine. The air was ripe with cigarette smoke and beer, just as the john would be ripe with piss and puke. Maybe they had one of those naked-lady deodorizing dealies hanging from the ceiling in there.

In the jukebox darkness, I nodded to the bartender, a guy with a rather theatrical eyepatch and a kind of swarthy, feral face. He wore a T-shirt with a Confederate flag on it and a sneer that was all the more impressive for the white regularity of his store-boughts. He looked pretty much like his friends, whom I saw in the lurid light of the jukebox, all long dirty hair and shirts with the sleeves torn off and even a few headbands and peace signs on the backs of leather vests. I've always found it odd that the lower-class men of my generation ended up appropriating all the things they once so despised about all the hippies. But these weren't hippie faces, all spoiled middle-class piety and sanctimony over the so-called decadent establishment—no, these were sad hard-scrabble faces, faces you got growing up as one of a dozen kids who had to scratch for love and food and self-esteem the way you see chickens scratching for sustenance in barnyards. All those years of deprivation had made them dangerous, and you never knew when their sorrow was just going to overwhelm them and they'd take it out on you.

"Beer, please," I said.

"We got lotsa beer, pal. What kind?"

"Budweiser," I said. "Pal."

While he opened one of the cooling drawers below the counter, I looked around, but there was no sign of Reverend Roberts.

He set my beer down, no glass. I had my dollar bill waiting on the sticky counter.

"The white Lincoln," I said.

"What white Lincoln?"

"The one in your parking lot."

We had to shout above Tanya Tucker.

"What about it?"

"Thought maybe I knew who owned it."

"Who?"

"Reverend Roberts."

He shook his head, grinned. "That guy would never come in here. Too good for this kind of place. But his old lady—" He grinned with those perfect teeth again. "Booth way in back, by that exit sign over there. She's back there. That's where she always sits."

I walked back, all eyes on me, looked into the booth where a plump woman in a very tight red sweater designed to display her wares prominently sat sipping a drink. She had the sort of cute cheerleader face that not even years and weight could quite decimate, especially given the erotic quality of her full mouth. Her blonde hair was worn short, which was a mistake, and her eyes bore too much eyeliner.

"Mrs. Roberts?"

"Yes."

"I wondered if I could talk to you."

"Are you trying to pick me up?"

I smiled. "That would be my pleasure, but actually I want to talk business."

She visibly winced. "That means my husband, the reverend."

I nodded.

"Are you police?"

"No, but I'm an investigator."

She smiled. She had a killer smile. "Why not? Maybe it could be fun."

I sat down. "Like a fresh drink?"

"No, thanks. I went through two different detox programs in the last year, so I'm sticking to my own little kind of drinky-poos." She hoisted her glass. "Wine coolers."

So much for the two detox programs.

"Did he get somebody pregnant again?"

"Your husband? Not that I know of."

"Good, because the last time he did, it was really a mess. The mother dragged her daughter—who was all of fifteen—into the church and made a scene during a Sunday service. It was something out of a bad movie. A very bad one."

"Didn't he get in trouble with the church members?"

"Oh, he did a Jimmy Swaggart. You know, one of those big, teary, dramatic spectacles on the altar. They loved it and they forgave him."

"Did you forgive him?"

She smiled. "Don't start looking at me like a victim. If I counted up all the men I've screwed on the side, I could probably fill a small stadium. I'm no prize, believe me." The smile again, only sadder. "Oh, back in high school I was a prize. I was a real doll. I really was. And these were the stuff of myth." She delicately indicated her breasts with a long, graceful hand. "The reverend could never keep his hands off them. After we were married, he used to feel me up even when I was asleep. He just couldn't get enough of them. But then we went through some very bad years—eight or nine of them, in fact. He got run out of two different churches—the other thing he couldn't keep his hands off was teenage girls—and we never had any money and my drinking started to be a real serious problem. I wanted him to get a real job. I mean, in his heart he's no reverend, not the way he violates the Ten Commandments, I mean nobody could be that much of a hypocrite. But he enjoys
pretending
he's a reverend. He likes all the corny stuff, the weddings and the christenings and the funerals. He gets so caught up in them, he always cries. It's pretty amazing, when you think about it. I mean, I've seen him bury people that he despised, but there they were, these huge silver tears, streaming down his cheeks. He really is amazing."

I hadn't known until about halfway through her little speech how drunk she was. It took an awful lot of wine coolers to reach her present state of intoxication. I assumed she must have had something a little stronger earlier in the evening.

"You ever think of leaving him?"

"You know something?"

"What?"

"You haven't told me your name."

"Jim Hokanson."

"Oh, the famous Jim Hokanson."

"Famous?"

"A lot of people in town are wondering who you really are."

"Just another pilgrim."

"You still want to know if I ever think of leaving him?"

"Yes."

"Well, actually, I have left him three times, but he always brought me back."

"He loves you, then."

"No, but he needs me for a front. I don't make scenes, I really play the part of the dutiful wife whenever I need to, and I don't cost him all that much money when you come right down to it. I've even made him money. Me and my cancer."

"You have cancer?"

"No. Or at least I hope I don't. But he tells people I do. It's one of the ways he raises money."

"He seems to be awfully successful. I saw his matching white Lincolns. One of which you're driving tonight, I believe."

"Yes, luckily I was able to get to it before Mindy was." A lurid smile this time. "I shouldn't be saying all this, but I'm a little drunky-poo, and right now I don't care."

I wasn't sure what she was talking about but before I could answer, the bartender had come over.

"There's a phone call for you, Mrs. Roberts."

"Tell him I'm not here."

"I already told him you were."

"I thought we had an understanding, you and me."

"Mrs. Roberts, I don't want to get in the middle of somebody's family argument. Now, why don't you come over and get the phone?"

He walked away.

"This place is really a pit, isn't it?"

"I guess I could agree with that notion," I said.

"This is the kind of place I used to drink in before we came into money."

"And when was that?"

She thought a moment. "Four years ago."

"Is that when his ministry really took off?"

"His ministry? Honey, his ministry has never taken off."

Then where did he suddenly get money, I wanted to ask.

But the bartender was shouting above the jukebox for her.

She put down her drink and walked over to the bar, still a good-looking woman as all the appreciative male eyes indicated.

She didn't do much talking, just held the phone to her ear for a minute or so and then handed the receiver back to the bartender.

Sliding into the booth again, she said, "I'm not supposed to talk to you. I'm supposed to get out of this dive and get home." She looked at her watch. "I really better go."

"I was hoping we could talk a little more."

"He knows you're here and he knows we're talking. And that's what he's so upset about."

"How'd he find out I was here?"

"Lou."

"The bartender."

"Uh-huh. Lou keeps the reverend clued in, and the reverend gives him money."

"You going to be all right to drive?"

"I'll be fine."

"You were going to tell me about your husband coming into money suddenly."

She stood up, grabbed her purse. "Call me some other time. We'll talk. Right now I just want to get home and get all his yelling and swearing over with, and just go to bed." The killer smile again, the one that broke all those hearts in those misty days of yesteryear, when we were young and optimistic and immortal. "Dream about me tonight, Mr. Hokanson, because I'm sure going to dream about you."

Then she was gone.