“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Candace Sweeney. When I was a roller-derby skater, I got called Candy. But my name is Candace. What’s yours?”

“Dave Robicheaux.”

“A cop, right?”

“There’re worse things.”

“See, I can always tell,” she said.

Jamie Sue Wellstone began to sing “Amazing Grace.” Her rendition of it was probably the most beautiful I had ever heard. I believe its author, John Newton, would have wept along with the congregants in that unlikely setting of a rain-darkened tent in western Montana, far from an eighteenth-century slave ship midstream in the Atlantic Passage. I believe even the wretched souls in Newton’s cargo hold would have forgiven Newton his sins against them if they had known how their suffering would translate into the song Jamie Sue was singing. Or at least that was the emotion that she seemed able to create in her listeners.

The crowd loved her. Their love was not necessarily spiritual, either. To deny her erotic appeal would be foolish. Her evening gown looked like pink sherbet running down her body. Her hands and pale arms seemed small in contrast to the big Martin guitar that hung from her neck; it somehow made her diminutive figure and the loveliness of her voice even more mysterious and admirable. In an act of collective faith, the congregants both elevated her and reclaimed her as one of their own. Her wealth was not only irrelevant; that she had turned her back on it to join with her own people in prayer made her even more deserving of their esteem. Her songs were of droughts, dust storms, mine blowouts, skies peppered with locusts, shut-down sawmills, and crowning forest fires whose heat could vacuum the oxygen from a person’s lungs. How could she know these things unless she or her family had lived through them?

When the congregants saw Jesus’ broken body on the cross, they saw their own suffering rather than his. When they said he died for them, they meant it literally. In choosing to die as he did, rejected and excoriated by the world, he deliberately left behind an emblematic story of their ordeal as well as his.

When the audience looked up at the sequins glittering on Jamie Sue’s pink gown, when they saw the beauty of her face in the stage lights and heard the quiver in her voice, they experienced a rush of gratitude and affirmation and love that was akin to the love they felt for the founder of their faith. Idolatry was the word for it. But to them it was little different from the canonization of saints.

Their tragedy lay in the fact that most of them were good people who possessed far greater virtue and courage than those who manipulated and controlled their lives.

At intermission, the ushers poked broomsticks up into the canvas to dump the pooled rainwater over the sides of the tent. The air was damp and cold, the Mission Mountains strung with clouds. In the distance I could see a waterfall frozen inside a long crevasse that disappeared into timber atop a dark cliff. The people around us were eating sandwiches they had brought from home, and drinking coffee from thermos jugs. I told Candace Sweeney I was surprised no basket had been passed.

“They don’t ask money from folks here. If you don’t like it here, go somewhere else,” said a man in strap overalls sitting behind us.

Candace turned in her chair. “Why don’t you learn some manners, you old fart?” she said.

But I wasn’t listening to the exchange between Candace and the belligerent farmer. Instead, a big Indian girl sitting next to him had captured my attention. She wore a purple-and-gold football jersey embossed with a silver grizzly bear. She realized I was staring at her.

“I was admiring your cross,” I said.

“This?” she said, clutching the small cross with her fingers. It was made of dark wood and hung from her neck on a leather cord.

“Yes, do you know where I could get one?”

“I don’t know which store they come from. I got mine at Campus Ministries.”

“Pardon?”

“At the Campus Ministries summer training session. Everybody in Sister Jamie’s campus outreach program gets one.”

“Did you know Seymour Bell?”

“Who?” she said.

I repeated the name, my eyes on hers.

“I don’t know who he is,” she said.

“His girlfriend was Cindy Kershaw.”

“Those kids who were killed? I read about them in the paper. But I didn’t know them.”

“I think Seymour wore a cross just like yours. I’m almost sure of it.”

I could see the confusion and nervousness in her face. “I don’t know what you’re saying. Sister Jamie gave me this cross. I think you can buy them at that religious store in Missoula.”

“Why are you bothering my granddaughter? Who the hell are you?” said the man in overalls.

“Nobody is talking to you,” Candace Sweeney said to him.

It was not the way I wanted to conduct an interview. “Thanks for the information,” I said to the Indian girl.

But it was about to get worse. Candace Sweeney’s friend, who had been showing a photograph to congregants on the opposite side of the tent, reoccupied his chair, then leaned forward so he could see past Candace and look at me. A lateral indentation, a concave wound of some kind, ran from below his right eye to the corner of his mouth, and the muscles didn’t work right when he tried to smile. He still seemed oblivious to the fact that his every movement was being watched by the man named Quince. “How you doing?” he asked.

“Pretty good,” I said.

“You a fan of Ms. Wellstone, too?”

“I’ve heard a couple of her songs. I always thought she was pretty good.”

I could see the edge of the photograph sticking out of his shirt pocket, and what appeared to be gauze and white tape at the top of his chest. He slipped a toothpick in his mouth and seemed to take my measure. His hands were broad, his fingers splayed on his knees, the backs of his forearms covered with fine, reddish-blond hair. Upon first glance, he seemed likable, his eyes crinkling at the corners, his trim physique and neat appearance suggestive of a confident man who had no agenda and didn’t need to prove himself to others. “You from down south?” he asked.

“How’d you know?”

“I’m from West Texas, myself. I’m looking for a guy. Haven’t had any luck, though.”

“Who’s the guy?”

He put his fingers on the edge of the photo in his pocket as though preparing to show it to me.

“You picked the right fellow, Troyce. Dave’s a cop,” Candace Sweeney said.

“You vacationing in Montana?” Troyce said, his eyes flat, the way people’s eyes go when they have no intention of allowing you inside their thoughts.

“Fishing, mostly,” I replied.

I waited for him to hand me the photo. But his fingers didn’t move from his shirt pocket. Instead, he straightened the flap on the pocket and buttoned it. “I’m helping settle an estate down in Texas. I’ve got some money for this guy, but I don’t think he’s here’bouts. The money comes from a church trust the guy’s family was involved with. That’s why I was hanging around here. Big waste of time. I think the guy got drunk and fell off a freight-car spine outside Billings. Candace, I think we need to get us a chicken-fried steak and some Indian bread up at the café. What did you say your name was again?”

“It’s Dave Robicheaux.”

“It’s good meeting you, Mr. Robicheaux.”

We shook hands. His handshake was neither firm nor soft but neutral, just like his expression and his eyes.

Candace Sweeney was staring over her friend’s shoulder at the aisle. “Troyce, there’s a guy burning holes in your back.”

“Unshaved dude, greasy black hair, blue shirt buttoned at the throat without a tie?” he said without turning around.

“You got it,” she said. “He walked past me a while ago. He’s got a serious gapo problem, like it’s ironed into his clothes.”

“What’s gapo?” Troyce said.

“Gorilla armpit odor,” she replied.