and everything about them, from their sloppy clothes to the aggressive way they fought to be the first to reach the restaurant door, announced that they were orphans. As they passed the picnic table their eyes burned into Cole, this creature they could have ripped to pieces out of envy: a boy with a father.
When they were on the road again, PW said, “You seemed to take to the woods, Cole. Did my heart good to see it. And if you don’t want to learn to hunt doesn’t mean I can’t teach you how to track. Nothing like getting close to an animal in its natural habitat. My daddy said he once got close enough to touch the tail of a fox. Sorry we didn’t see any bear. But black bear’s on the rise around here. We go back, chances are good we’ll see one sometime. And you can forget what them old boys said. Bear are all up and about this time of year. Except maybe the really lazy ones.”
Cole nodded. He definitely wanted to go back sometime, but he was thinking he didn’t want to go into the woods again unless he, too, had a gun. First he’d have to learn how to use one, of course. Tracy would be pleased, but he’d have to be careful not to let on what had brought about his decision. It struck Cole that he was looking forward to seeing Tracy when they got home, which meant that, though he might not have known it, he must have missed her.
He said, “Do you think they knew you had a gun?”
“Yeah, they probably figured. Like they figured it wasn’t something they had to worry about, neither.” He laughed, and again Cole wondered what it was about those men that kept tickling PW’s funny bone.
“Are you going to tell the police?”
“Tell who? Tell what? Did you see a crime being committed?”
“I meant, like, if there really was a meth lab or something.”
“You see a meth lab or something?”
“No, but you said—”
“Hold on, Cole. Whatever I said, here’s what I think. I think the best thing is for us to forget all about those dudes. Nothing happened, no one got hurt. And if there’s a lesson in all this, it’s that sometimes the right thing to do in a bad situation is to walk away from it. Not to worry about who’s a bully and who’s a coward, just beat a retreat. But the police. Well. I don’t like the police. Might as well say it: I don’t like the law. My daddy used to say, Too much law ruined this country. Jesus taught there are things that belong to Caesar and things that belong to God. But when you look at the big picture—the laws, the courts, the tax collectors, and all the rest—seems to me way too much is going to Caesar and not enough to the Lord. Sometimes I think if it was up to me, I’d rather let the bad guys go than condemn them to one of Caesar’s prisons—especially after what happened with the flu.”
Cole knew he was talking about the men’s maximum-security prison about fifty miles north of Salvation City where he sometimes preached, and where he had brought many inmates to Christ.
“Imagine being locked up with dead bodies and no way to escape. If everyone was too sick or scared to stay and do their job, they should have let the men out. At least give them a fighting chance! I was there when they finally unlocked those gates, and it was like going back in history. I felt like one of those GIs that liberated the concentration camps. Stacks of corpses and a handful of walking skeletons, alive but half out of their minds. Same thing happened all over. You tell me, where was Caesar then?”
Where was God? Cole was thinking—but his eyes were closing. He didn’t want to talk anymore. He hadn’t slept well either night in the tent, and he was exhausted. His muscles burned from trudging so many miles. His limbs felt rubbery. His head lolled. He wasn’t sure if he was dreaming or if he actually heard PW’s phone ring.
He woke to find the blond man driving the van and the other two making out in the back.
He woke to find the van surrounded. The man in the black baseball cap and the orphans were trying to tip it.
He woke when the van hit a familiar little dip in the road that