I stood and held out my hand. “It’s been nice to see you again.” Another of those things you just say, a bit of grease to keep the wheels turning, but this lie was a lot bigger than telling him he looked great. “Take care of yourself. And be careful.”

He stood, but didn’t take my hand. “I’m disappointed in you. And, I confess, rather angry. You came a long way to scold a tired old man who once saved your life.”

“Charlie, what if this secret electricity of yours gets out of your control?”

“It won’t.”

“I’ll bet the people in charge at Chernobyl felt that way, too.”

“That’s beyond low. I allowed you into my home because I expected gratitude and understanding. I see I was wrong on both counts. Al will show you out. I need to lie down. I’m very tired.”

“Charlie, I do feel gratitude. I appreciate what you’ve done for me. But—”

“But.” His face was stony and gray. “Always a but.”

“Secret electricity aside, I can’t work for a man who’s taking revenge on broken people because he can’t take revenge on God for killing his wife and son.”

His face went from gray to white. “How dare you? How dare you?”

“You may be curing some of them,” I said, “but you’re pissing on all of them. I’ll leave now. I don’t need Mr. Stamper to show me out.”

I started back toward the front door. I was crossing the rotunda, my heels clacking on the marble, when he called after me, his voice amplified by all that open space.

“We’re not done, Jamie. I promise you that. Not even close to done.”

 • • •

I didn’t need Stamper to open the gate, either; it rolled back automatically as my car approached. At the foot of the access road I stopped, saw that I had bars on my cell, and called Bree. She answered on the first ring, and asked if I was all right before I could even open my mouth. I said I was, and then told her that Jacobs had offered me a job.

“Are you serious?”

“Yes. I told him no—”

“Well, damn, of course you did!”

“That’s not the important part, though. He says he’s done with the revival tours, and done healing. From the disgruntled demeanor of Mr. Al Stamper, formerly of the Vo-Lites and now Charlie’s personal assistant, I believe him.”

“So it’s over?”

“As the Lone Ranger used to say to his faithful Indian sidekick, ‘Tonto, our work here is done.’” As long as he doesn’t blow up the world with his secret electricity.

“Call me when you get back to Colorado.”

“I’ll do that, Swee’ Pea. How’s New York?”

“It’s great!” The enthusiasm I heard in her voice made me feel a lot older than fifty-three.

We talked about her new life in the big city for awhile, then I put my car in drive and turned onto the highway, heading back to the airport. A few miles down the road I looked into my rearview and saw an orange moonlet in the backseat.

I’d forgotten to give Charlie his pumpkin.

X

Wedding Bells. How to Boil a Frog. The Homecoming Party. “You Will Want to Read This.”

Although I talked to Bree many times over the next two years, I didn’t actually see her again until June 19th of 2011, when, in a church on Long Island, she became Brianna Donlin-Hughes. Many of the calls were about Charles Jacobs and his troubling cures—we found half a dozen more who were suffering probable aftereffects—but as time passed, our conversations focused more and more on her job and George Hughes, whom she had met at a party and with whom she was soon sharing accommodations. He was a high-powered corporate lawyer, he was African American, and he had just turned thirty. I was sure Bree’s mother was satisfied on all counts . . . or as satisfied as the single mother of an only child can be.

Meanwhile, Pastor Danny’s website had gone dark and Internet chatter about him had thinned to a trickle. There were speculations that he was either dead or in a private institution somewhere, probably under an assumed name and suffering from Alzheimer’s. By late 2010, I had gleaned only two pieces of hard intelligence, both interesting but neither illuminating. Al Stamper had released a gospel CD called Thank You Jesus (guest artists included Hugh Yates’s idol, Mavis Staples), and The Latches was once more available for lease to “qualified individuals or organizations.”

Charles Daniel Jacobs had dropped off the radar.

 • • •

Hugh Yates chartered a Gulfstream for the nuptials, and packed everyone from the Wolfjaw Ranch on board. Mookie McDonald represented the sixties admirably at the wedding, turning up in a paisley shirt with billowy sleeves, pipestem trousers, suede Beatle boots, and a psychedelic headscarf. The mother of the bride was just short of eye-popping in a vintage Ann Lowe dress she’d gotten on consignment, and as the vows were exchanged, she watered her corsage with copious tears. The groom could have stepped out of a Nora Roberts novel: tall, dark, and handsome. He and I had a friendly conversation at the reception, before the party began its inevitable journey from tipsy conversation to drunk-ass dancing. I had no sense that Bree had told him I was the jalopy with the rusty rocker panels on which she had learned, although I was sure that someday she would—in bed after particularly good sex, likely as not. That was fine with me, because I wouldn’t have to be there for the inevitable masculine eye-roll.

The Nederland group went back to Colorado via American Airlines, because Hugh’s gift to the newlyweds was use of the Gulfstream, which would fly them to their Hawaiian honeymoon retreat. When he announced this during the toasts, Bree squealed like a nine-year-old, jumped up, and hugged him. I’m sure Charles Jacobs was the furthest thing from her mind at that moment, which was just as it should have been. But he never left mine, not completely.

As the hour grew late, I saw Mookie whispering to the leader of the band, a very decent rock-and-blues combo with a strong lead singer and a good backlog of oldies at their command. The bandleader nodded and asked if I’d like to come up and play guitar with the band for a set or two. I was tempted, but my better angels won the day and I begged off. You may never be too old to rock and roll, but skills fade as the years stack up, and the chances of making a fool of oneself in public grow better.

I didn’t exactly consider myself retired, but I hadn’t played in front of a live audience in over a year, and had only sat in on three or four recording sessions, all cases of dire emergency. I did not acquit myself well in any of them. During the playback of one, I caught the drummer grimacing, as if he’d bitten into something sour. He saw me looking at him and said the bass had fallen out of tune. It hadn’t, and we both knew it. If it’s ridiculous for a man in his fifties to be playing bedroom games with a woman young enough to be his daughter, it’s just as ridiculous for him to be playing a Strat and high-stepping to “Dirty Water.” Still, I watched those guys kick out the jams with some longing and quite a lot of nostalgia.

Someone took my hand and I looked around to see Georgia Donlin. “How much do you miss it, Jamie?”

“Not as much as I respect it,” I said, “which is why I’m sitting here. Those guys are good.”

“And you’re not anymore?”

I found myself remembering the day I had walked into my brother Con’s bedroom and heard his acoustic Gibson whispering to me. Telling me I could play “Cherry, Cherry.”

“Jamie?” She snapped her fingers in front of my eyes. “Come back, Jamie.”

“I’m good enough to amuse myself,” I said, “but my days of getting up in front of a crowd with a guitar are over.”

Turned out I was wrong about that.

 • • •

In 2012, I turned fifty-six. Hugh and his longtime girlfriend took me out to dinner. On the way home I remembered a bit of old folklore—probably you’ve heard it—about how to boil a frog. You put it in cold water, then start turning up the heat. If you do it gradually, the frog is too stupid to jump out. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I decided it was an excellent metaphor for growing old.