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‘Multnomah County.’

Chambers grimaced. ‘Queer place. Liberals and queers. Just right for each other.’

‘Exactly,’ Griff said. ‘Don’t know why I ever moved there. Niggers and Kikes. Crawl right up your pants leg. Have to squash them or they’ll nip you in the jewels.’ He slapped his pants and shook one foot. Levine had coached Griff on this dialog.

‘You’re somewhat of a clown, aren’t you?’ Chambers asked. His eyes had wandered casually to the truck, then to the barn, and finally to the northern hills, and his lids drooped for a moment along with his shoulders. ‘Show-offs and clowns always bring trouble.’

‘I apologize. I sure could use some good old-fashioned preaching, whatever you can offer, sir,’ Griff said, hoping for the right amount of awkwardness, out-of-stepness. Chambers was the brightest and most experienced of a sorry lot. He had instincts born of fifty hard, ambitious years. Margaret Thatcher’s loo. Griff could hardly believe it. Right here in Snohomish County.

‘You been in prison until recently?’ Chambers asked.

‘Yes, sir, Monroe. I did not want to let on right away.’

‘Did they tell you about Tyee at Monroe?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Who told you?’

‘We’ll need to get better acquainted, sir, before I reveal that.’

‘Well, come closer, let me get a look at you.’

Griff took a few steps forward.

‘My God, boy, you have arms like pig thighs. Pumping iron?’

‘Yes, sir. Weights kept me sane.’

‘Some almighty tats. Come on up here. Where you from before Monroe?’

‘Boise.’

‘Why don’t you tell me some names.’

‘Jeff Downey, he used to be a friend. Haven’t seen him in ten years. Don’t know if he’s still alive.’

‘He isn’t,’ Chambers said, and sniffed. ‘Which is convenient.’

‘Mark Lindgren. His wife, Suzelle.’ Again he was working from Jacob Levine’s script.

‘You talk with Lindgren recently?’

‘Nosir, but he knows me.’

‘Mind if I do some checking up on you?’

‘Nosir. But right now I’m very thirsty.’

‘For word or deed?’

‘Beg pardon?’

‘Will my words quench your thirst, or are you here for deeds? Because I’m not much in the way of deeds these days. Kind of staying quiet out here, like those volcanoes you can see from the road.’

Griff nodded. ‘I understand, sir. Just wanted to make your acquaintance and get some preaching. Find a church where I can feel comfortable.’

‘Well, that’s all right. What’s your experience with weapons?’

‘Knives kept me alive once or twice. Know guns pretty well. Used to collect shotguns. The wife sold my whole gun rack on e-Bay. Ex-wife.’ He jammed a load of masculine resentment into that. ‘Nigh on fifty thousand dollars’ worth, some my granddaddy had back in North Carolina. Frenchmade, German, beautiful things. She just…sold them.’ He waved his hands helplessly, and tightened his throat muscles to make sure his face was red.

Chambers said, ‘We all lose earthly things. Time comes when we make others lose earthly things, that’s the balance.’ Chambers liked this display of anger, the red face. ‘I’ve got sun tea out there on the porch and ice in the kitchen. Want a glass?’

‘Nothing harder?’ Griff asked, twitching his right eye into a wink.

‘I do not allow alcohol. I do excuse that request, coming as it does from a Monroe man. Still, you could have been worse off. You could have done your time in Walla Walla.’

Griff grinned and shook out his hands. ‘Yessir.’

They sat on the steps of the porch and drank tall glasses of sun tea sweetened with honey. Chambers was surprisingly limber and got down on the front step with barely a wince. His legs were long and skinny within the faded dungarees. His bony ankles stuck up from oversize and well-worn brown leather Oxfords. The sun was high over the farm and the dusty trees cast real shadows. It was the sort of bright day rarely seen up in these foothills at any time of the year and there had been many more of them recently—a long dry spell. They chatted for a few minutes about global warming and what it might mean.

‘Fuck, we’ll all get suntans,’ Griff said. ‘Then we’ll be closer to the Mud People. Might even marry one of them.’

Chambers chortled deep in his beard. ‘I do wish you would clean up that prison language. I have kids here. They’re off celebrating Easter. Good Friday.’

‘That’s not till next week,’ Griff said.

‘We worship to God’s calendar,’ Chambers said. ‘All the world’s calendar brings is grief and worse luck.’ A little bit of old East Coast had crept into Chamber’s tone. ‘It cannot keep going on the way it is.’

Griff peered at the Patriarch, respectful, even worshipful, nodding his head. Taking it all in.

‘Prophecy’s a crock,’ Chambers said, his voice low and crackling. ‘Revelation is a Jewish fantasy. Israel has nothing to do with prophecy. It is a political entity. It brings disgrace down upon the white races. Jesus was not an observant Jew. His people came from the north, Northern Italy, maybe even Germany. None of the apostles were Jews except Judas. Defending the so-called homeland of the Jews has brought us to this. Brother against brother. 9-11, call the cops, and now 10-4. Roger and out.’

Chambers stared out across the scrubby grass of the big front yard, then fixed on the barn.

Eyes betray. Where they look is important.

‘It’s so bad, Jesus should have returned long ago,’ Griff said. ‘Don’t you think?’

Chambers squinted to the north and stuck out his arm, a lean finger pointing. ‘He isn’t coming. He’s disgusted, all these Mud People building places they call churches…He’s not going to help you until you help Him. You got to believe what is in your heart. What’s in your heart?’

‘I don’t know. Anger. I’m mad. I want things better. I want things to go down easy.’

‘Things are not in the habit of ever being easy, my man from Monroe. I know that in my heart, always have.’ Chambers thumped his chest with a knuckly fist. ‘Circumstance has a way of sneaking up on you, just when you’re ready to sink into old age and enjoy the grandchildren. You have to prepare.’ He pulled down an eyelid and cocked a clear gaze at Griff over a clever grin. ‘Every week or so I hunt deer and take treks around the homestead. I can still get off a straight shot. My eyes are still sharp.’ He leaned forward and swung his right arm out in a point. ‘You see that low ridge? Just in front of the triangular peak. There is a fire tower up on that ridge. See it?’

Griff tracked along the long arm. ‘Nosir.’

‘Used to be a tree up on that ridge,’ Chambers said. ‘A few days back, someone chopped it. Just took it right down.’