by the roots of scrub brush and mesquite and cactus that bloomed with bloodred flowers.

On the mountain behind his one-bedroom stucco house was a series of ancient telegraph poles whose wires hung on the ground like strands of black spaghetti. Behind the poles was the gaping opening of a rock-walled root cellar that had been shored up with wood posts and crossbeams that either had collapsed or that insects had reduced to the weightless density of cork.

One starlit night, Preacher had sat in the entrance and watched the desert take on the gray and blue and silver illumination that it seemed to draw down into itself from the sky, as though the sky and the earth worked together to both cool the desert and turn it into a pewter artwork. Then he had realized that a breeze was blowing into his face and flowing over his arms and shoulders and into the excavation at his back. The root cellar was not a root cellar after all. Nor was it a mine. It was a cave, deep and spiraling, one that had probably been formed by water millions of years ago, one that led to the other side of the mountain or a cavern far beneath it. Perhaps early settlers had framed up the walls and ceilings with timbered support, but Preacher was convinced no human hand had contributed to its creation.

He spent many evenings sitting on a metal chair in front of the cave, wondering if the wind echoing inside it spoke to him and if indeed the desert was not an ancient vineyard made sterile by man?s infidelity to Yahweh. Paradoxically, that thought comforted him. The sinfulness of the world somehow gave him a greater connection to it, made him more acceptable in his own eyes and simultaneously reduced the level of his own iniquity. Except Preacher had one problem he could not rid himself of: He had filled the ground with the bodies of Oriental women and watched while Hugo?s bulldozer had scalloped up the earth and pushed the backfill over them. He told himself he had been acting as an agent of God, purging the world of an abomination, perhaps even preempting the moral decay and diseases that had awaited them as prostitutes on the streets of a corrupt nation.

But Preacher was having little success with his rationalization for the mass execution of the helpless and terrified women who waited for him nightly in his sleep. When Bobby Lee Motree arrived at Preacher?s house in the desert, Jack was delighted by the distraction.

He set up two metal chairs in front of the cave and opened cold bottles of Coca-Cola for the two of them and watched while Bobby Lee drank his empty, his throat pumping, one eye fastened curiously on Preacher. Bobby Lee was wearing a muscle shirt and his top hat and his brown jeans that had yellow canvas squares stitched on the knees. He was full of confidence and cheer at being back in Preacher?s good graces; he unloaded his burden, telling Preacher how Liam got popped by the female deputy sheriff in the restaurant and how that rat bastard Artie Rooney had told Hugo to smoke everybody?the soldier and his girl, the Jewish guy and his wife and maybe even the Jewish guy?s kids, and finally, Preacher himself.

?If you cain?t trust Artie Rooney, who can you trust? The standards of our profession have seriously declined,? Preacher said.

?I was thinking the same thing,? Bobby Lee replied.

?That was a joke.?

?Yeah, I knew that. I can always tell when you?re joking.?

Preacher let the subject slide. ?Tell me again how this Holland fellow spotted Liam. I didn?t quite get all that.?

?I guess he recognized him, that?s all.?

?Even though Liam had shaved off his beard and was sitting in a crowded restaurant and the sheriff had never seen him and had no reason to be looking for Liam there??

?Search me. Weird stuff happens.?

?But the sheriff didn?t make you??

?I was in the can, taking a dump.?

?How?d you get out during all that shooting if you were in the can??

?It was a Chinese fire drill. I ran outside with the crowd.?

?And just strolled on off, a fellow with no car, a fellow everybody saw sitting with Liam just a few minutes earlier??

?Most of them were pouring the wee-wee out of their shoes. Why should they worry about me??

?Maybe you were just lucky.?

?I told you the way it was.?

?Young people believe they?re never going to die. So they?ve got confidence that old