"He did?" Mrs. Jim Bob usually wasn't the terse type, but she was having a hard time grappling with the scene. "We're talking about Raz Buchanon, right?"

Wiping away the hint of a tear, Brother Verber sat down next to her on the sofa and put his hand over hers. "It was the most intense moment of my entire ministry, Sister Barbara. I was so moved by this unexpected triumph over Satan hisself that my throat seized up and I could barely speak. Sweat blinded me. My heart pounded like a big bass drum. The only reason I didn't crumple to the floor was the angels on either side of me like celestial bookends, holding me steady so I could save the soul of the wretched sinner. Praise the Lord!"

"Praise the Lord," she echoed weakly.

His hand, guided by an equally omnipotent force, abandoned her hands and began to squeeze her knee. Unlike Raz's purportedly bony shoulders, it was soft and supple. "So that's where I was last night," he concluded with a moist smile, a little confused about where he was in the narrative. He shifted so his thigh was against hers, and he could drink in her redolence that was as pure as spring water.

He was about to suggest they fall to their knees when she said, "Then Raz repented his wicked ways and promised to destroy his still and whatever whiskey he has?

Every story needs a happy ending. "Of course he did," Brother Verber said, emphasizing the words with a tighter grip on her knee. "Soon as he has a chance, he's going right up on Cotter's Ridge with an axe. He's gonna smash the still until it ain't nothing but a heap of rubble, and pray for the Almighty to guide his arm as he throws those jars of evil moonshine onto the rocks. The youth of Maggody can go back to their innocent ways, playing ball and doin' schoolwork and attending Sunday school."

Mrs. Jim Bob was doing her best to ignore his hand, which drifted from her knee and was massaging her thigh-and heading in a direction she found most unsettling. She'd been married nearly twenty years, and since the very night of the honeymoon, had resigned herself to her marital obligations (carried out once a month, in total darkness). But Jim Bob had grown perfunctory over the years, and disinclined to dally about his business. But, she thought, as an unfamiliar sensation began to seep into her body, her dedication to the preservation of Christian standards had not made her less of a woman.

Their thoughts were running in a somewhat similar direction. However, she yanked hers to a halt well short of anything less than respectable, hastily stood up, and said, "We'll have to go along with Raz when he destroys the still, Brother Verber. Without us to help him maintain his resolve, he might change his mind. It's our duty, and we have to see it through."

With a gurgle, Brother Verber clasped his hands together and lowered his head as if in prayer. Actually, he was praying, and as hard as he'd ever prayed since he'd mailed back his final exams to the seminary in Las Vegas, although he wasn't silently exalting in the glories of the Almighty. "Our duty," he repeated in a reverent tone, "and we have to see it through." Now all he had to do was figure out how in tarnation they were gonna do it.

"In Lebanon?" I said between Eilene's hiccupy sobs. "They're being held hostage in Lebanon, Kentucky-right?" I waited out another one. "But they haven't been hurt?"

"Not yet," she wailed, "but the policemen haven't seen them in over an hour, so they could be bleeding to death right this minute…"

I grimaced at Durmond, who was listening to the conversation from the other bed, then persevered. "But, Eilene, they've been held hostage for more than six hours by now. There's no reason to think this…person will do something violent after all that time. Do you know how it happened in the first place?"

"How could I? They're halfway across the country in some town nobody's heard of…I knew something terrible was gonna happen to them, Arly. It's all my fault for letting them go off like this. Wait, Earl wants to talk."

"Arly," Earl said, clearly having lost patience with his wife's failure to communicate, "the trooper what ran down the license plate and called us said Kevin and Dahlia went in some dumpy little café with a black guy. The waitress recognized him from something she'd seen on the news, called the cops, and then skedaddled out the backdoor with two of her regulars. When the police parked out front and yelled at the guy to come out, he came to the door with a gun and said he had hostages. It don't take a college degree to figure out who they are."

"What about the black guy with the gun?"

Earl snorted. "The police know all about him. He's got some fancy name, but they call him Marvel. Said he's been committing armed robberies all the way across Illinois and part of Kentucky. How he got hitched up with those fool kids is a mystery, and probably to them, too. Everything else is." He snorted again. "Hold on a minute. I cain't hardly hear myself think." He covered the receiver and began a muffled conversation with Eilene, who'd wailed steadily throughout this last exchange.

"Shiite rednecks? " Durmond asked, offering me the potato chip bag.

"Not exactly." I took a chip, frowned at it, and dropped it back in the bag. "You know, this has been a helluva week."

"And it's not over yet," Durmond said with a sad smile.

At five o'clock we drifted out of our rooms for the press conference. I was still concerned about Kevin and Dahlia, but there wasn't a blessed thing I could do beyond calling Earl and Eilene for updates. I admitted only to myself that I was as worried about the physical and emotional well-being of the hostage taker as I was about that of the hostages. He couldn't have known what he was getting himself into, but I figured he was regretting it by now. Red Chief was only a kid, after all.

Durmond joined me at the elevator. "You look nice," he murmured murmured, "and not at all like a bumpkin cop. You should wear your hair like that more often."

Okay, so I'd let my hair down, but only in the tangible sense. And run hot water in the shower in hopes the steam would undo the wrinkles in my unspectacular dress. And put on some makeup. None of it meant anything whatsoever. After all, I wasn't wandering down to Ruby Bee's Bar & Grill for a beer; I was attending a catered affair in midtown Manhattan. I wasn't a rube at heart. I was hip enough to don the appropriate camouflage for the big city.

"Well, yeah, maybe so," I responded cleverly.

Ruby Bee and Estelle came down the hall, both gussied to the hilt. Eyebrows may have risen, but they merely exchanged told-you-so looks. We discussed the situation in Lebanon, but without any keen insights, or even dull ones.

Before the elevator arrived, other doors opened and the crowd swelled. Frannie kept tugging at Catherine's sleeve and brushing at the faint creases. Her face pale, Catherine gazed at a reality of her own making. Gaylene Feather tottered along in spike heels and yet another leather skirt that barely covered the top of her thighs.

We jammed into the elevator and creaked down to the big event. The doors to the dining room were open. Geri stood just inside, her ubiquitous clipboard in hand, and a determinedly bright smile on her face. Her simple black dress and single strand of pearls gave her an elegance I couldn't have achieved with a fat checkbook and a week in Paris. It wasn't challenging to imagine her as the sentinel of a sorority house on the first day of rush. "Don't you all look charming!" she said to us. "Brenda and Jerome are already here, and now we're all accounted for. Let's come right in and have a drink, shall we?"