I don't want anybody to get the wrong idea about this. I am not a religious nut, nor am I such a skeptic I'd tread on your beliefs, at least not on purpose. This is about a woman who believed something remarkable, not about me or what I believe. Her story is her story, and other than that, leave alone.

        "Do not stop — hitchhikers may be escaped convicts or mental patients"
        — Highway sign on Route 40 outside Oklahoma City

        But I did. It was April and I'd just been noticing for the first time, though I'd ushered in thirty-some versions of the same season in various parts of the United States, that you could tell when spring had truly "sprung" by watching the trees. When there's no sap in the trees they sway like spindly metal girders, of a piece from roots to ends, and they look fragile. Once the sap rises, they undulate — sinuous, the wood fibers pliable, and they look tough.
        I was driving west again. I'd done it several times — whenever my life led me down a road that trapped me back east (I'm from one of those states that isn't quite eastern, nor quite Midwestern, nor quite northern) I headed for the range again. When your social claustrophobia becomes unbearable, there's nothing like wide open spaces to settle you down, help you get back your grip on your mind, if not your life. My uncle Ted owns the only mortuary and funeral home in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. That may not sound like much, but when he opened it it was the only one within eighty miles. For all I know, it still is. He has some kid with a flashy degree in marketing and business who handles the place now, he doesn't even go there anymore, far as I know.
        He lives miles away from the actual town, has twenty head of cattle and about forty acres. It's bleak and at the same time breathtakingly beautiful. Steer dot it at broken intervals, cowcatcher gratings that invariably shake the chassis of whatever pathetic excuse for a car I'm driving at the time to its molecular structure.
        But enough about Ted — he's a Baxter Black sort of guy, he knows everything and does everything right, and when he doesn't, he doesn't tell anybody. He doesn't have to, of course. There are no witnesses.
        This is about Jennifer Quinlivan.
        I hit a truck stop just outside Okie City about two o'clock on a Tuesday afternoon. It was Easter week, spring break for many of the primary schools across the map. Every truck stop and fast-food restaurant along the interstate was thronged with both idle local teens and families in various sizes, configurations and phases of disarray. I'd emptied my bladder in a Formica and porcelain hole at the legendary Truckstops Of America Plaza. If you've made this trip yourself, you know it — it can be seen almost from Okie City to Tulsa, a huge agglomeration of diesel and petrol fumes, three-egg omelets, polyester, belt buckles, cowboy boots, turquoises and Indian silver and Black Hills Gold... well... by now you have the picture even if you haven't made the trip. It's Mecca and oasis at once to travelers both familiar and unfamiliar with the journey, suffice to say. It's that or grass, and there ain't much of that yet in April.
        Jennifer Quinlivan was standing outside the restroom clutching a handful of bright green leaflets. They were sloppily folded in thirds, which told me she was probably shilling some grassroots political or religious organization. It was only sixty outside, but she was wearing cheap discount store Birk-alikes, khaki shorts that looked like they'd once fit her, and a ragged navy blue sweater with a V-neck to nowhere.
        It wasn't the clothes that stopped me, though — nor was it the day-glo green leaflets — it was the long, lush fall of hair primly swept back and the shining, clear evergreen shade of her eyes. She'd have had a rough time in this stop after dark, when the truckers might mistake her for a honey of some variety or other. She couldn't have been a whore, though — a whore would have been wearing better clothes, and wouldn't have wanted to jeopardize potential income by hawking some fanatical obsession or other from her slightly dirty hands.
        "Have you heard The News?" she asked. Her voice was cultured, eastern, and amazingly rich to issue from a face that looked speed-haggard; lips that had seen plenty too much sun and wind.
        "I've heard lots of news over the years. What's yours?" I asked.
        I wasn't in a hurry, after all. Every time I make this trek westward I throw the Canon and my whole photography kit in the back of whatever car — this time a fairly good secondhand Nissan Sentra with a slight hitch in the automatic transmission I've never managed to get fixed to my satisfaction — and make a sine wave above and below Route 40 documenting my shame again as I trudge ever back to the source to lick my wounds, prepare another attack an uncaring society. Ted didn't expect me until Saturday, I had at most another thousand miles' driving.
        "I'm fulfilling a Christian prophecy. Read this."
        I hated the feeling I was selling my soul — not to the devil, because he'd have dispatched it efficiently and with little fuss, but to something else. Something stranger and yet more compelling. Something with a potential back door, at least.
        There were dozens of verses and text boxes, some written by hand in a neat block lettering, some typed, some photocopied from a bible — perhaps a Gideon's? — and cut down to fit the eight and a half by eleven sheet. I started walking toward the parking lot, past the chrome and glass cases of keychains, tasers, hemorrhoid preparations, B.C. powdered aspirins... mugs that said "Over The Hill", "my other car is also a piece of shit" bumper stickers. I figured if she followed, she really believed whatever the tripe was.
        She followed me. The wind was playing hell out in the parking lot — a high-school girl trailing her family across the lot flew an auburn flag, bright in the aching sunshine, looked like she'd seceded and started her own country, perhaps the United States Of My Vibrant Young Hair. But, hey... didn't we all do something similar, at her age?
        Reading the flyer, I learned the woman's name was Jennifer Quinlivan. The name rang a bell, for some reason, but I couldn't place it. I glanced back at her and saw her hair was pulled back into a somewhat rakish yet thick braid, it battered her left shoulder as Loki — or perhaps Kali — played it with unrelenting, unsympathetic fingers, drumming her thin shoulder and the side of her head.
         "I believe I'm living the parallel of Mary Magdalene in the modern world..." she said. Though her voice was quiet, there was something bright in the tone that halted me, halfway to the car. Was there some overzealous nut going to beat her up for crossing the parking lot instead of huddling near the restrooms handing out her leaflets?
        "Are you traveling with somebody, or..." I ventured.
        "Oh, no — it's a pilgrimage of my own. I'm not even sure The Prophet knows I exist, for that matter. That's what I'm here for — I'm on my way west. I used to live in Fairfax, Virginia. Now, I live everywhere..."
        I remembered her now. It had been in all the eastern papers, a defense contractor who'd suffered something of a reversal of fortune at the end of the Cold War. He'd cheated on his wife, had a kid with another woman while still married to her, tried to disinherit her. She'd disappeared and there'd been quite an inquiry — it had been suspected, at first, that he'd actually murdered her and stashed her body to get her out of the way. They'd dug holes in a hundred acres of beautiful old Virginia forest, convinced they'd find her decomposed body in it. They'd found some Civil War soldiers' bodies deep in the woods, but no trace of Jennifer Quinlivan. Last I'd heard, the jury was still out on whether the soldiers were Union or Confederate.
        She'd surfaced a few weeks later, as grumbles had started about trying her husband for her murder without a body — like they'd done, and successfully, with Vince Doane in southern Ohio — to say she was alive, and she'd forgiven him but she didn't want to live that life anymore. Before there could be any question of her whereabouts she saw an attorney, filed for a divorce and disappeared again.
        And here she was, the former — and, apparently, still in name — Mrs. Quinlivan, who'd spread her caviar with silver spreaders for nearly eleven years, handing out day-glo religious leaflets in an Okie City truck stop.
        "So," I asked, "where is it you're going?"
        She studied the windshield, her gaze empty and, well, I don't know — sort of trancelike. Vacant. She looked like some of the people I remembered abusing Quaaludes in high school, before you couldn't get them anymore on the common market.
        "I don't know. I've been waiting here for three days — the last message I was able to receive told me to wait here, I'd get another message. I'm supposed to meet him on Easter, but that's Sunday and..."
        "Oh. Who is it, do you know? Where is he?"
        She shook her head vaguely, finally pinned me under those slightly manic eyes.
        "It wouldn't be a pilgrimage if I'd known all that at the beginning. Impatience is one of the seven demons He is casting out."
        This was going to be a nonlinear, non-sequitur conversation, I could see it as plainly as I could see the ravels in the sleeves of what was probably once a hundred-dollar sweater, hanging limp and somewhat grimy off her bony shoulders. Well, I'd both experienced and hosted enough of those in my time, it didn't bother me much. It seemed to disturb her a little, though, as if she hadn't talked about this much to anyone. Maybe she was afraid someone would force her back to reality. This was the only reality she had right now, and she didn't seem unhappy, nor did it seem especially dangerous. It wouldn't have been my place, even if I'd been responsible for her, to take that away from her.
        "What are they?" I asked, reaching into the console for my cigarettes. I offered her one, but expected her to refuse. She did.
        "I can only tell you the ones He's already cast out. There was greed — I've given up all but the bare minimum I need. That one was easy, though. Gluttony. Lust. Not that it was especially hard to give that one up, all things considered. Now, it's impatience. I'm frightened — I sort of determined, though He didn't tell me, the others would be gone before Easter Day, that we'd finally meet and fulfill a prophecy."
        "How are you getting your messages from... uh... Him?" I asked, finally relenting and allowing there was someone who was a "capital H" Him to her.
        "Email. The prophecy is alive, you see — it's in the spaces Between. In this version, God in the flesh will accept the Magdalene. They will travel the invisible distance helping people who are lost."
        "A human search-engine..." I muttered. Her brows drew together tightly over her perfect nose.
        "You're making fun of me. This isn't some child's game, this is serious! You think I'm crazy, don't you?"
        Her hand was on the door handle, she was ready to stalk across the parking lot, back into the truck stop to sit and wait for her next messenger. I hated the thought of her standing in there for three more days, waiting for an electronic mail message she couldn't possibly have retrieved, from some Shyster or Huckster who probably wasn't even where He said He was.
        "I don't think you're crazy, Jennifer. Look, I have a laptop computer and Internet service. If you'd like to go on west with me for a while, we can move along for the day, then when I stop for the night I can let you check your Email. I'm going to visit family, and if you don't know where you're going anyway it won't matter, will it?"
        She closed her eyes for a time, as if she were consulting with some higher power. I supposed it was a prayer of sorts.
        "He's been pulling me west. At first, I thought he might be leading me to Yellowstone, Yosemite, even Salt Lake City. I suppose you're right — a few hundred miles either way won't make a difference if I don't know. I accept, and thank you."
        That was all she said. I figured if we got to Santa Rosa, that would be good enough — I'd already driven a few hundred miles today, that would be an early stop for me, but Ted wasn't expecting me to be early. Often, he was disgruntled if I was early anyhow.
        Easter — I'd forgotten. Ted had been kind of anxious when I'd called him a month back to have me there that day. I remembered, even as a kid, Ma and Pa would fly me out for spring break. Ted colored Easter eggs like many people. But he didn't boil them first — he hated to eat eggs. He kept twenty chickens and a couple of roosters, sold the eggs to his neighbors. At Easter, we colored a dozen eggs and hid them, during daylight, around the house. At night, we'd sit on Ted's porch with a pair of night-vision goggles and watch for the coyotes to come and eat them. That's why we didn't boil them — the coyotes preferred them unmolested. The dye didn't seem to bother them, though. Ted said if it was food color, it wouldn't. And I should worry, coyotes would eat rotten garbage. A fresh egg with a little food color on it was gourmet pickings.
        Jennifer fell asleep twenty miles into the trip, after a few brief, absent-minded stabs at guessing the other demons her Prophet was casting out. We settled on worldliness, profligacy and covetousness, though I couldn't see where she'd have much of any of those left. It came out she'd been on the road, on her way west, since Christmas. She'd started out with a car, a wardrobe and a laptop computer, He'd hung her up for nearly a month in St. Louis freeing her from her venality, her lust, well, you get the picture. I wondered why He hadn't hung her up in Cincinnati, instead. That place would probably clear you of those sins all by itself.
        When I came out of the office of the Super 8 in Santa Rosa, I woke her up and handed her the case for the laptop, a key for her own room.
        "Here. I'm going on farther west in New Mexico. If you find out you need to go that way, let me know and we can go on together tomorrow."
        She shook her head, smiled and took the laptop from my hands.
        "I wonder if you're some kind of Samaritan?" she said quietly, then she hooked the strap from the laptop over her shoulder and trotted off into the room.
        At ten o'clock that night, after a rousing dinner at some tourist trap in Santa Rosa that had unsettled my already hincty digestion, I heard a rapping at my door. When I opened it, she was holding the laptop case and her key. Her sweater and shorts looked like they'd been freshly washed and dried. They were cleaner, but it was clear the dirt had been hiding a few signs of wear too.
        "Here. I have to move along tonight, He says I have lessons to learn before I reach that place. But thank you."
        I took the computer and the room key from her hands. She started away. I called out, on impulse and she turned back from the front fender of the Nissan.
        "Here, I'll feel better if you have these."
        I tossed her a pair of terry athletic socks. I'd been worried about how cold her feet must be since the first moment I'd seen her in the truck stop.
        "Thanks. I'll pray for you."
        And she was gone.
        There was no trace of her Email in my computer, I checked it from top to bottom. One of my failed careers had been in programming, I still knew a lot about it but the explosion had left me behind with my ass scorched, still staring into the future of the PC. I'm sure in that case, I wasn't the only one who hadn't been able to keep up.

        
        Bright and early Saturday morning, after a pleasant little detour through Taos and Santa Fe to take pictures of strange things I'd never be able to explain to anyone normal, I rolled up the long, rocky, unsentimental driveway to Ted's place. The house was sort of Zen — nothing much it didn't need to be to maximize the comfort and beauty of the high desert. It had skylights, and a swamp cooler, thick adobe walls left native, terra cotta tiles for a roof. By some trick of the eye, you couldn't see the house, though you were driving directly at it from the first foot you traveled down the driveway, until you were within shouting distance. But I'd sat with Ted on the porch, I knew you could see somebody coming from two miles up the old post road from Truth or Consequences.
        Ted was sitting on the porch. He waved as I got out of the car. He seldom spoke much, even to me, but then I never thought it meant he didn't care. Ted was sort of Zen himself. He wasn't anything he didn't need to be, either. I supposed that might have come from turning away from his family — my family, to which I had only the most tenuous connection these days myself — and burying other people's families for thirty years.
        We had breakfast, he'd waited because he'd had a feeling I'd get there early. I wondered sometimes what Ted did with his time. He had an office, and that had always been off-limits, though I'd figured maybe he kept some soft-porn in there, some movies, who knew? Maybe it was just his home office, where he took care of the paperwork for the mortuary. It didn't matter, and I never really cared.
        The day sifted past like the sand that blew across the yard in the indefatigable wind, minutes clicking inevitably into hours. I spent some time on line, but as Ted had told me, his phone service was sometimes erratic. At important times, noise would suddenly attack the line. Noise was the enemy of an Internet connection almost as surely as a totally dead line. One crackle and you were toast, locked up or logged off.
        Around sunset, eight and twelve by the Windows clock, Ted leaned in the door to the guest room.
        "Let's do the eggs."
        It was a strange little ritual, but it seemed to please Ted to have me there when it was done. I supposed he did it every year whether I was there or not. He'd said once people had such a bad attitude about coyotes in the West, but he'd never seen anything much out of them as long as he fed them a few eggs now and then. It was a sort of ritual offering, I presumed. They'd never attacked the chickens. Ted only colored the eggs at Easter, though. Don't ask me, okay? I'm the only one in my family who even knows Ted's phone number, now. My mother gave up on him fifteen years ago.
        As the sky went magenta and amber, like a huge batiked canvas tent over our heads, we scuffed around the cactuses and creosote bush and hid the eggs. As rituals go, mucking around in the desert during a beautiful sunset, hiding colored eggs around prickly pears, breathing the only clean air left in America is a pretty good one. And knowing I was committing a fairly selfless act didn't hurt it much.
        My life over the years had done to me, through trial and error, much what Jennifer Quinlivan's "Prophet" seemed to be doing for her. I'd lost most of the desire to make money, to be successful, merely by seeing what those things cost. And let's not talk about sex — by my age, if you're not married, you've come to some bargain with that devil. Which is to say that, at least for quite some time, I'd given up on that one.
        It was twenty past eleven, under three-quarters of a full moon, when we set up on the porch with a bottle of Mezcal and the night-vision goggles. This year, Ted had bought a second pair at the army surplus in Albuquerque. Now we could both watch for the coyotes.
        Strangely enough, though, before I saw any coyotes I saw a pickup truck approaching along the road. Ted must have seen it, too — though he didn't say anything. I'd never seen him angry, but then I'd never seen the Easter ritual interrupted, either. It wasn't my place to draw his attention to something that must have been obvious.
        The truck halted at the end of the driveway, and someone got out, waved at the truck, which made a three-point and started back toward T or C. A lone pedestrian approached the house at a steady, if deliberate, pace. I'm a little nearsighted, especially at night, and to wear the goggles I've always had to take off my glasses. Wearing contact lenses is more indignity than I've been willing to bear, I finally gave them up. But they would have been nice tonight, I'd have been able to see much sooner that the person walking so deliberately up the dusty drive was Jennifer Quinlivan.
        As it is, I didn't realize that until the first coyote had approached for an egg. She was wearing my socks under the fake-Birks, that's the clue that gave it away.
        "So," I said quietly. "You're her Prophet."
        Ted laughed.
        "Yup. I even used you. I knew you couldn't ever pass her up at Okie City."
        "You son of a bitch."
        "You think I just did this to get a woman. It's more than that."
        Her feet scuffed up the steps as Ted stood up.
        "I think I know that," I said, though I knew at once it was beside the point, and right.
        "We have a lot to talk about," Ted said.
        I couldn't tell if it was intended for me or for Jennifer. It didn't matter much, though.