mouth, and bowed his head. Under his breath, but loud enough to be heard, he asked God to forgive his weakness.
If it was part of God’s plan, then suffering was not an evil but a blessing. This was something PW often said when preaching about sickness and pain. Cole had also heard him say that he would not be suffering so severely now unless God was punishing him. “And it’s for me to search my heart for what I’ve done to displease him.” Cole thought he had a pretty good idea what that thing might be. But PW never wavered from his testimony that in everything regarding Cole he had done God’s will.
There was no mistaking the Lord’s voice, PW had told him. It was the morning after Addy’s visit and they were sitting in the den. PW had one hand on Cole’s shoulder and the other on the massive desk Bible. “When the Lord speaks to you, the words enter you in a special way. They become part of your flesh, and they never leave you.”
The Lord had spoken. He had spoken clearly. And his words were save the boy.
Three times in one night he had woken PW with the same message. “And he wasn’t taking no for an answer.”
But why, oh why, Cole had to ask himself, didn’t Jesus send a message to him and Addy, too? Wouldn’t that have helped them all?
PW picked up the bottle again. It was past sunset now, and the dark was like some night animal rubbing its furred flanks up against the porch screens.
PW drank and drank. It was as if they could not start talking again until every drop was gone. Each time he took the bottle away from his lips he let out a heavy sigh, aromatizing the air with bourbon like room spray.
Just as Cole was beginning to think he’d been forgotten, PW reached over and punched him playfully on the shoulder.
“So let me get this straight. You’re saying Mason somehow got himself to Louisville, sneaked into Starlyn’s house, bopped her over the head like a caveman, and dragged her off by the hair?”
Cole refused even to smile.
“Mighty strange he waited till she was gone, don’t you think? When just a couple days ago she was here? How’d you explain that?”
Cole said nothing. What was the point in explaining anything? Why couldn’t PW see the truth? What was wrong with Tracy, and Starlyn’s mother? What was wrong with them all? By the time they caught on (and Cole was beginning to fear this might never happen), Mason and Starlyn would be far away. In his mind, they were headed to Mexico and a life of drugs and sin.
PW spoke as if he’d been able to read Cole’s thoughts. “Okay, then. That’s the case, what we got to do is examine what happened and why it happened like it did. We got to ask ourselves just what is the Lord trying to make us see here. Now, it’s possible he is using those two. Maybe he thought it was a good thing for us to go through a false alarm, just to show us how unready we really are. You see, God—”
“This has nothing to do with God,” Cole said wearily.
“Shame on you, son. I know I’ve taught you better than that.”
Cole was ready to cry. “Aren’t you even worried about her?”
It was the laugh Cole swore he’d never forgive.
“Come on, now, Cole, you know your cousin can take care of herself.”
His cousin! It was the first time he’d ever heard Starlyn called that.
PW reached for the whiskey again, forgetting there was none left. “Tell you who I am worried about, though. I’m worried about Jeptha’s mama.” He was talking about Boots’s daughter-in-law, whose son had just been killed in Israel. “Losing your only son, that’s got to be the worst kind of hurt. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone so torn up as that poor lady. Far’s I know she’s always had a powerful faith. But the other day it was like you could see it evaporating off her, like a mist. She would not be comforted. I’d try to get her to pray with me and she’d just give me this smile, this cold, twisted kind of smile. Like I tried to cheat her and she just got wise. Shook me up.”
“She’s only sixteen,” Cole said, his heart breaking.
PW shrugged his big shoulders. “My granny had two babies already by that age. My mama had her