I thought the note was a little strange, since they had no idea when I would deliver the stove, though if I stopped to consider every strange thing that happened during an average day I wouldn’t ever get through my route on schedule. Cal heard right. That’s how I’d found them.

Cal had said, “You know the difference between you and the US Postal Service?” I waited for him to answer his own question. “You only deliver what people ask for.”

I guessed that was true enough, which was why most people on 117 chose to forgo addresses and mailboxes so almost all US mail on 117 was sent General Delivery, Rockmuse, Utah—which they usually ignored and refused to pick up, sometimes for years. They’d rather sacrifice and pay me to deliver even little stuff the US Postal Service would have delivered at little charge or for free. When I showed up they knew exactly what they were getting and nothing else. I didn’t entirely understand it, but I was thankful for the mystery.

But that damn new Chevy pickup of Dan’s set my teeth against each other. Whatever Dan’s ship, it had been a sight bigger than a model airplane. By the time I’d pulled onto 117 I realized I hadn’t seen his pickup out in front of his place where it was usually parked. In fact, I hadn’t seen it in a long while, nor the soon-to-be new Mrs. Dan Brew. Maybe that’s why Dan was in such a state, though whether it was the loss of the pickup or the loss of his bride, or both, was no concern of mine. Dan’s ship had gone out to sea again, maybe with his truck and probably his fiancée, and for all I knew his pants as well.

7

I followed 117 southeast toward Rockmuse, which was a good sixty-plus miles, figuring if I got my door repaired in a decent amount of time I could get through all my deliveries, including the water to Dan, and back to Price before dark. The sun-brightened miles slipped by as the towering granite mesa loomed larger on the horizon and the girl and the dog dozed off and on lulled by the low, steady hum of the engine and high whine of the tires.

For the first time since leaving the Stop ‘n’ Gone I felt as I usually did heading out on 117, like I was going home, or as close to a home as I had ever known. Maybe home was too strong a word. Once I was on 117 the asphalt wound out ahead of me and I always felt a little better. The desert was a familiar unknown and I was properly respectful, filled with purpose and just damn glad to see what I had been seeing for twenty years, and seeing it new every day, always the same but different.

The sun glared up off a patch of ice as I came over a small rise and when it cleared I saw the cross bobbing along the shoulder maybe a mile ahead. With all the excitement of the morning I’d forgotten about John and the life-size crucifixion cross he hauled up and down 117 from late spring to winter. Given that winter came on so quickly and early it made sense the weather caught him out on the road.

John, or Preach, as everyone else called him, was a dependable mystery. No one knew his last name or exactly when he had arrived, though sometime after the coal mine had closed almost twenty years earlier. His church, if you wanted to call it that, was the First Church of the Desert Cross, denomination unknown and unimportant. Located in what was once a True Value Hardware store in downtown Rockmuse, it consisted of a handful of deck chairs on a scarred wooden plank floor and not much else. When John was in town he preached up a storm to the congregation of empty deck chairs. He slept on a surplus army cot behind a makeshift pulpit, which was really only a couple of plastic milk crates that had been duct-taped together.

Infrequently one or a few people would show up, I assumed on purpose, which wasn’t how I’d met him. I had been unaware that the hardware store had closed, and I was in search of a half-inch socket drive to repair my truck. Once inside the door I was too embarrassed to leave, so I sat through most of an entire fire-and-brimstone sermon. When he finished, well over two hours later, my heathen ass had gone to sleep. Even though I was the only one there, he stood at the door as if there were a long line behind me and shook my hand and thanked me for coming.

It wasn’t until some time later, out on 117, that I explained why I had been at his church. He took the news with measured joy, noting that in God’s plan there were no accidents. “Jesus sent you to his house,” he said.