Again, St. Vincent was shocked. He felt his mother’s fear like a clap of thunder rolling across the bayous. He smelled it like the aftermath of a lightning strike, as if the atmosphere inside the hovel had suddenly filled up with ozone. The tip of his nose wrinkled; he felt like sneezing, as if to expel the fear he had absorbed.

“Desmortiers,” she said. “This is my son, Luther.”

“Preach, Ruth. Everyone calls me Preach.”

“You think I give a shit what others call you, Desmortiers?”

The creature turned his blindingly blue eyes on St. Vincent. “I know your father, boy.”

“No you don’t,” his mother said quickly. “You couldn’t possibly.”

“Why?” Preach said. “Because you don’t?”

His cackle sent shivers down St. Vincent’s spine. “Why do you do it, Ruth? Strive to save people’s souls through the spirit of Christ. When will you learn that there is no God.”

“No,” Ruth said with a sneer, “there is only you, Desmortiers.”

“Me?” That cackle again. “I do not exist, Ruth. That, too, you refuse to believe.”

The two of them eyed each other, mortal enemies on either side of a blasted battlefield.

“And yet,” Desmortiers went on, “you continue to come here, you continue to seek me out.”

“You need food. Even if you do not exist, that boy has to eat.”

“You know nothing about the boy,” Preach said. “In any event, my parishioners care for us.”

Ruth glanced around the hovel. “So I see.” She smiled. “The truth is, I feel compelled to do you favors every once in a while. Without you my tent would not be filled to the outer stakes, I would not have had to spread increasingly larger tents over the past five years. Your presence fuels my works like no one else.”

“It’s good to have an enemy, in other words.”

“Yes.”

“Because someone like me validates your existence.” A crack appeared in that awful face as the smile that terrified her appeared again. “And now you bring your son to me. Why? So I can tell him who his father is?”

“Don’t you dare!”

“You told me you didn’t know, Ruth. You’ve lied to me.”

“It isn’t the first time.”

“Knowing you as I do, I would hardly think so.” His head moved, as if with great difficulty. “Still, he has a right to know.”

“Luther’s all mine!”

“On every level, how you deceive yourself. The truth surrounds you. Just because you deny its existence does not change its legitimacy. Tell him, Ruth, or I will.”

St. Vincent became aware that he had come under the young boy’s scrutiny. He was more or less the same age as St. Vincent and in all ways unremarkable. And yet the look he gave St. Vincent was pregnant with meaning, as if he knew something about St. Vincent, something even Ruth didn’t know.