“And you’re not gonna believe this, but there’s a CNN van out front. I need you to get rid of ’em, Asher. I can’t have them interviewing my customers. Enough people are mad at me for having you working here, anyway.” Kathi saw the concern on his face and put her hand up before he could say anything. “If people don’t like it that you’re working here then I don’t want their business nohow. But I can’t have the news people harassing my customers.”

Asher went outside and asked the news crew to leave. Later, online, he saw that they had set up a film crew at the Cumberland Valley Church of Life. People he had known his whole life were on there saying how they had no choice but to get rid of him, that they didn’t believe “that way,” that Asher had turned into a troublemaker instead of a pastor. They interviewed a man from a protest group who said that Asher now represented the “silenced progressives of rural America.”

Fox News and two newspaper reporters came to his trailer but he dodged all of them.

One of the journalists seemed taken aback that he wouldn’t want to capitalize on the fame. “Your video has now been viewed by almost four million people, Mr. Sharp.” The man had a five-o’clock shadow and was so disheveled in his suede blazer and Kings of Leon tee shirt that Asher didn’t understand how anyone would take him seriously. The reporter pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose roughly and blinked hard. “Don’t you want to take advantage of that?”

“It’s not my video,” Asher said. And that was all.

That weekend, during one of their supervised visits, Justin told Asher he had set up a Twitter account for him because of all the attention the video was getting.

“You shouldn’t even be online!” Asher’s stomach rolled at the thoughts of what all Justin had seen written about him. “I mean it.”

“Please don’t raise your voice to the child, sir,” the supervisor said, barely looking up from the video game on her phone’s screen.

“It’s a tribute page,” Justin said. “Your handle is ‘at folk hero preacher.’ ”

“What’s a handle mean?”

“People talk about how the video helped them, mostly.” Justin produced a smartphone from his pocket that Asher had never seen before. “Mom got it for me. I had to promise to only be on it if there was an emergency, unless I’m with her.”

“You know I think you’re too young for that.”

Both of Justin’s thumbs were typing in a blur on the phone, then he held out the screen so Asher could see the top message on the account: @folkheropreacher if only ppl would listen to your message and change their hearts. tired of the hatred. #equality #lovewins.