Ed Leonard felt a slight, barely perceptible sense of satisfaction. He let it carry him out the door, then to dinner at the picnic tables in the middle of the common green, and through the nightly meeting, and then well into the next morning of work. What carried him through the rest of the day’s work was that the woman named Charlotte visited him three times in the field, and introduced him to two other women on the water crew. As they left, she told him that they had seen how hard he worked and had asked about him. That carried him through another day of work, and he knew he was working even harder because of what they’d said. He wondered if they were laughing at him for it, but he decided that motivation was a gift, even if it wasn’t intended that way.

32

Narrowing down the places where the Swift Sword of the Savior might have settled was a slow process for Leah. She kept making the circuit of small Arkansas Ozark towns. She went to Laundromats and coffee shops and hair stylists and post offices and churches to read the announcements and invitations on the bulletin boards, hoping for a meeting or a picnic or a potluck open to new members.

She didn’t expect the group to use their name. She expected instead that there would be hints. Maybe there would be a white cross in a red circle, maybe a blood drop in a diamond shape, or a Confederate flag. If there was text, it might overuse the word “Christian,” or it might use less ambiguous words like “Aryan” or “Nordic” or even just plain “white.” It was also possible the messages would not be overt, because the hosts would wait to deliver them orally at the event.

Every time Leah saw a pile of small pamphlets printed on newsprint, she took one. Even if all it contained were ads for post-hole diggers and weed whackers, there might be useful leads. Even the name and address of the printer could help.

She made use of every visit to a town to learn something. She didn’t just walk through a café; she sat down and ordered food and eavesdropped on the other customers while she waited for it, ate it, and paid for it.

Whenever she was on a long drive, she would listen to the podcasts of the man who sounded like Lee Wolf. She was alert for anything he said that might refer to a place. When she stopped in a hotel anywhere, she would listen. When no new podcast was available, she would search the Internet for information about people connected with Edison Leonard or Lonny Mann or Lee Wolf.