Salvation City - By Sigrid Nunez Page 0,67

I’d been preaching in the open.”

The unsettling feeling that he was being watched, that someone somewhere was mocking him, that some kind of trap was being laid for him—what could it mean?

“I started worrying I was basking too much in all the attention. It wasn’t that I was losing my faith, but there was a line there that I felt was getting blurry. Was I in it for God or for my own ego?”

Mysteriously enough, the more doubtful he became, the more effective was his evangelizing.

“If the purpose was to win souls for the Lord, there’s no denying that was being accomplished.”

So why did he have the nagging sense that the Lord wasn’t happy with him?

Meanwhile, Delphina had filed for divorce.

“Again, I was stupid. I thought I could handle my problems all by my lonesome. I should have sought advice from church elders, I should have been more open with my flock. I only saw the truth later on: I was too proud. I’d put out the welcome mat for the devil, and sure enough the old boy showed up.”

One night he found himself in his car, speeding toward Lexington.

“I guess maybe I was thinking now that I was some kind of big dude Delphina would have to change her mind about me, to heck with that old restraining order.”

In this case, being drunk turned out to be lucky. Well before he reached Delphina’s door, he jumped the car like a horse over a guardrail and plunged down an embankment. The car was wrecked but, as sometimes miraculously happens—and even though he wore no seat belt—PW walked away.

“Like they say, drunks don’t break, they bend. The real crazy thing was I didn’t feel grateful.”

He might not have been physically hurt, but the accident had jarred something loose in him; he fell into a gloom that would not lift.

“I was mad, too—hopping mad at the Lord. I felt like he’d set me up somehow.”

He spent a month in the university hospital psych rehab ward, where his side of shouting matches with God shook the padded walls of the Quiet Room.

When he was himself again, PW went back to preaching. The people kept coming; he’d lost none of his gift. But he longed for a change. He was his father’s son. He was tired of cities. It wasn’t of the big time that he dreamed. A simple life was what he believed God had always intended for him. He felt this even more strongly after his year’s mission service in Kenya.

And so, when the pastor of a small church in a small town in southern Indiana was called home, Pastor Wyatt did not have to think long before accepting the offer to replace him.

It would not do, however, to begin his new life alone. He was now legally single again, and as a friend and frequent dinner guest of Ronnie and Priscilla Wegner, he couldn’t help being aware that their lovely younger daughter had a crush on him.

There was something almost saintly about young Tracy Wegner.

“I looked into her eyes and saw the innocence of a child and the might of a lion.”

Tracy would have followed him anywhere, but how nice that it was only across the river, not too far from family and friends. The wedding was a low-key affair—the bride had not yet fully recovered from her illness—and three weeks later they moved into their new home.

Of course they both wanted children, but neither was in any big hurry. There was Tracy’s health to consider, and also they wanted time to get to know each other. The better they knew each other, the more they loved each other. Tracy’s cancer was cured. They were researching adoption programs when the flu broke out.

IT WAS THAT TIME OF YEAR when going between sun and shade can feel like a change of season. They kept peeling off their jackets and shrugging back into them. Their first hike, they were caught in a brief but heavy shower. When the sun reappeared it was brighter than it had been before, and the sky held not an arc but a kind of rainbow-colored cloud that was like stained glass. Within seconds it had vanished.

Already much of the woods was dense with green and there were clouds of insects so thick in places if you took a deep breath you’d start coughing.

Once when they were resting, lying in the sun by a creek they might have been swimming in if the water hadn’t been still winter-cold, Cole