From the radio I'm saying, The abuse was never-ending.
"When you were a kid, I mean," Adam says.
Outside, the sun was catching up, making shapes out of the total darkness.
On the radio, I'm saying, The complete way our minds were controlled we never had a chance. None of us in the outside world would ever want sex. We'd never betray the church. We'd spend our entire lives at work.
"And if you never have sex," Adam's saying, "you never gain a sense of power. You never gain a voice or an identity of your own. Sex is the act that separates us from our parents. Children from adults. It's by having sex that adolescents first rebel."
And if you never have sex, Adam tells me, you never grow beyond everything else your parents taught you. If you never break the rule against sex, you won't break any other rule.
On the radio, I say, It's hard for someone in the outside world to imagine how completely trained we were.
"The Vietnam War didn't cause the mess of the 1960s," Adam says. "Drugs didn't cause it. Well, only one drug did. It was the birth control pill. For the first time in history, everybody could have all the sex they wanted. Everybody could have that kind of power."
Throughout history the most powerful rulers have been sex maniacs. And he asks, does their sex appetite come from having power, or does their will for power come from their sex appetite? "And if you don't crave sex," he says, "will you crave power?" No, he says.
"And instead of electing decent, boring, sexually repressed officials," he says, "maybe we should find the horniest candidates and maybe they can get some good work done."
A sign goes by saying, Tender Branson Sensitive Materials Sanitary Landfill, 10 miles.
Adam says, "Do you see what I'm getting at?"
Home is just ten minutes away.
Adam says, "You must remember what happened."
Nothing happened.
On the radio, I say, It's impossible to describe how terrible the abuse was.
More and more along the sides of the road are bits of smut magazines blown off uncovered trucks. Fading full-frontal nude shots of beautiful women wrap themselves around each tree trunk. Rain- soaked men with long purple erections hang limp in the branches. The black boxes of video movies lie in the gravel along the road. A punctured woman made of pink vinyl lies in the weeds with the wind waving her hair and hands after us as we drive past.
"Sex is not a fearsome and terrible thing," Adam says.
On the radio I say, It's best if I just put the past behind me and move on with my life.
Up ahead, there's a point where the trees lining the road stop, and there's nothing beyond them. The sun is up and overtaking us, and ahead in the distance is nothing but a wasteland.
A sign goes by saying, Welcome to the Tender Branson Sensitive Materials Sanitary Landfill.
And we're home.
Beyond the sign, the valley stretches out to the horizon, bare, littered, and gray except for the bright yellow of a few bulldozers parked and silent because it's Sunday.
There's not a tree.
There's not a bird.
The only landmark is at the center of the valley, a towering concrete pylon, just a square gray column of concrete rises from the spot where the Creedish meeting house stood with everyone dead inside. Ten years ago. Spreading out on the ground all around us are pictures of men with women, women with women, men with men, men and women with animals and appliances.
Adam doesn't say a word.
From the radio I say, My life is full of joy and love now.
From the radio I say, I look forward to marrying the woman chosen for me as part of the Genesis Campaign.
From the radio I say, With the help of my followers I will stem the sex craving that has taken control of the world.
The road is long and rutted from the rim of the valley toward the concrete pylon at the center. Along both sides as we drive, dildos and magazines and latex vaginas and French ticklers cling together in smoldering heaps, and the smoke from those heaps drifts in a choking haze of dirty white across the road.
Up ahead, the pylon is larger and larger, sometimes lost behind the smoke of burning pornography, only to reappear, looming.
From the radio I say, My whole life is for sale at a bookstore near you.
From the radio I say, With God's help, I will turn the world away from ever wanting sex.
Adam turns off the radio.
Adam says, "I left the valley the night I found out what the elders did to you, to tenders and biddies."
The smoke settles over the road. It comes into the car and our lungs, acrid and burning our eyes.
With tears running down each cheek I say, They didn't do anything.
Adam coughs, "Admit it."
The pylon reappears, closer.
There's nothing to admit.
The smoke obscures everything.
Then Adam says it. Adam says, "They made you watch."
I can't see anything, but I just keep driving.
"The night my wife had our first child," Adam says with the smoke leaving his tears traced down his face in black, "the elders took all the tenders and biddies in the district and made them watch. My wife screamed just the way they told her. She screamed, and the elders preached and wailed how the wages of sex was death. She screamed, and they made childbirth as painful as they could. She screamed, and the baby died. Our child. She screamed and then she died."
The first two victims of the Deliverance.
It was that night Adam walked out of the Creedish church district and made his phone call.
"The elders made you watch every time anyone in the church district had a child," Adam says.
We're only going twenty or thirty miles an hour, but somewhere lost in the smoke just ahead is the giant concrete pylon of the church memorial.
I can't say anything, but I just keep breathing.
"So of course you'd never want sex. You'd never want sex because every time our mother had another child," Adam says, "they made you sit there and watch. Because sex to you is just pain and sin and your mother stretched out there screaming."
And then he's said it.
The smoke is so thick I can't even see Adam.
He says, "By now, sex must look like nothing but torture to you."
He just spits it out that way.
Truth, The Fragrance.
And at that instant the smoke clears.
And we crash head-on into the concrete wall.
In the beginning there's nothing but dust. A fine white talcum powder hangs in the car, mixed with smoke.
The dust and smoke swirl in the air.
The only sound is the car engine dripping something, oil, antifreeze, gasoline.
Until Adam starts screaming.
The dust is from the air bags protecting us at our moment of impact. The air bags are collapsed slack and empty back onto the dashboard now, and as the dust settles, Adam is screaming and clutching his face. The blood coming from between his fingers is black against the talcum white coat.
In one hand, Adam holds the statuette smeared with blood, more of a devil now than ever.
With his other hand, Adam grabs at the ground beside him and drags an open magazine across his mutilated face. The magazine shows a man and woman copulating, and from under it Adam says, "When you find a rock. Bring it down on my face when I tell you."
I can't.
"I won't let you kill me," Adam says.
I don't trust him.
"You'll be giving me a better life. It's in your power," Adam says from under the magazine. "If you want to save my life, do this for me first."
Adam says, "If you don't, the minute you go for help, I'll crawl away and hide, and I'll die out here."
I weigh the rock in my hand.
I ask, will he tell me when to stop?
"I'll tell you when I've had enough."
Does he promise?
"I promise."
I lift the rock so its shadow falls across the people having sex on Adam's face.
And I bring it down.
The rock sinks in so far.