“Pastor Atlas.”
“Your face looks better.”
“You came all the way here to tell me that?”
“I need to talk to you about Penelope Rideout.”
“That’s funny. As of Sunday, you’d never heard of her.”
“May I sit down?”
25
Atlas sat, crossed his legs, and set his hat over one knee. The hat was a white Parabuntal fedora, crisp and clean. He wore what looked like the same trim jeans, white shirt, and white athletic shoes he’d worn to preach on Sunday. Same shaggy blond hair, now dented and darkened above his ears by hat and heat. Same hopeful blue eyes.
He looked around the office, gazed out at Main Street, then turned his attention back to me.
“Penelope Rideout has been telling a story about herself and her sister, Daley, for almost fifteen years now. I was probably the first to hear it. In the story, Penelope, a trusting girl, falls for an itinerant evangelical preacher. Who befriends, drugs, and forces himself upon her, resulting in Daley. Is this approximately what she told you?”
“She said the preacher was you.”
Atlas stared at me for a long moment. The sunlight through the blinds hit the side of his face and brought a pale blue glow to one eye.
“Only part of her story is true. I was, in fact, an evangelical minister, traveling mostly by bus in the South, when I met Penelope Rideout. That was 1999. She was eight years old. After that, she came to hear me preach once, sometimes twice a year, until 2004. Then she didn’t come to any of my services again until late 2005. At which time she told me that she had had a daughter from our union nine months earlier. Allegedly this happened in my bus, involving the blood of Jesus laced with a date-rape drug, damning photographs, and a failed morning-after pill. I was thirty-five years old at that time. Married, a father of three. I had been preaching from my bus, and as a guest pastor, for seventeen very long years. And was on the verge of establishing my very own first church.”
A dark mood seemed to have come over him. He lifted the hat off his knee and leaned forward, out of the light.
“Go on,” I said.
“Mr. Ford, you couldn’t stop me now if you wanted. Penelope began accusing and harassing me not long after Daley was born. I don’t know if there’s a complete answer as to why. I saw that she was mentally ill. I read in the psychiatric literature that sibling rivalry can compound psychosis in the young, leading to more serious derangement. Later I learned that an additional sudden psychological trauma — such as the death of a parent, or both — will often incite a psychotic break. But as a man of God, not of medicine, I looked for answers in her soul. I saw a very bright, excitable, deeply unhappy girl. Filled with love. But with a blind, almost monstrous focus on herself. Creating a new self at the expense of her genuine self. And, of course, I looked into my own soul. Was I responsible? Had I somehow created this break with reality, or encouraged it to happen?”
The pastor regarded me. Challenging or observing? Waiting or preparing? He would have been impossible to read across a poker table.
“Did you?” I asked.
“After we first met, I saw Penelope Rideout once or twice a year, when I delivered a sermon at her church. And I also talked, prayed, discussed scripture, and sang with her and the rest of the Sunday-schoolers. I corresponded with many of the young people through brief notes, occasional postcards. I’ve always focused on the young. As the future of our planet, and the future of my ministry. When she first accused me of fathering Daley, I felt like I was being taken down by the devil’s own hound. A huge black thing, dragging me by the throat across cold ground toward the pit. Did I encourage Penelope’s break? No, Mr. Ford. I tormented myself for years with that question. And the answer is no. I do not see how that is possible.”
“Nothing she could have misinterpreted?”
“She misinterpreted everything.”
“No private tour of the Four Wheels for Jesus bus?”
Atlas sat back down, set the hat on his lap, and placed his hands over the ends of the chair arms.
“It’s very strange to feel filthy in my innocence. In denying my guilt. When you mention my bus in such a context, the bile rises in my throat and my stomach knots. When I hear the words Four Wheels for Jesus in this light, I feel that Jesus is being whipped and spit upon because of me. In some very strange way, Penelope has won. Like a suicide bomber. So, Mr. Ford — there were no private tours of my bus. I’ll tell you something that shouldn’t surprise you. In those early years, my wife and young children often toured with me. Driving those buses across the country, camping and setting up those tents and preaching and touching the poor and the humble, were among the happiest and most rewarding years of my life. Sleeping bags and microwave food. Hot dogs and burgers and donuts. We were poor as dirt, but we were carrying the Word. We lived the Word. Penelope Rideout’s lies — her vengeance — can’t take those years away from me.”
“Vengeance for what?” I asked.
“Refusing her attentions.”
“Have you threatened her?”
“My dear Lord, with what?”
“Why don’t you take a paternity test?”
“That was my wife’s first reaction, too, Mr. Ford. I’ve been demanding one for fourteen years now. Very privately, as you must understand. Penelope won’t allow it. She claims that it would shatter her sister. But she knows very well what it would prove. Or I should say, what it wouldn’t prove.”
“Why are you here?”
“I want you to find Daley. Bring me to her, or her to me — however you do this kind of thing. Then help me convince her to take a paternity test to prove medically that I’m not Daley’s father. This all has to happen in absolute privacy. I have a ministry, a reputation, and a family to protect. Absolutely no publicity of any kind. I will not enter the social arena of hate. A sealed secret. Daley, Penelope, and me. You will be the impartial enforcer and referee. You can oversee the test. If you would like, I will hire a nurse or doctor who can be trusted. You will make sure the blood is drawn properly and the test is done perfectly and without incident. It would take less than five minutes.”
I tried to think my way through his delicate proposition. It was perilous but possible. I thought it strange that he showed so little concern for a missing fourteen-year-old girl, beyond her ability to help him prove his case. “And?”
“And after that, maybe the three of us — Daley, you, and I — can convince Penelope to get the help she desperately needs. She has driven her own sister into the night. Look at the violence that has followed her. Think of what can happen to an undefended girl in an evil time. The police can’t find her. The agencies can’t find her. Even you are having your own troubles in that regard. Mr. Ford, you can see that Daley Rideout needs a capable guardian, and Penelope is not that.”
In Pastor Reggie Atlas, I was up against a real pro when it came to selling ideas you couldn’t prove. I considered his youthful-for-his-years face, his boyish hair, his eager blue eyes. Faithful eyes. Hopeful.
“I’ve been hired by Penelope to find Daley,” I said. “I can’t take money from two people for the same job.”
“Then terminate her contract and name your price,” said Atlas. “With a bigger budget you can hire some skilled confederates and find Daley faster. That would be a good thing for everyone. Daley would be protected, I would finally be exonerated, and Penelope could save her hard-earned dollars.”
“You are a convincing man, Pastor Atlas.”
“I’m a tired man, too, Mr. Ford.”
He stood somewhat stiffly, tapping his hat on his leg as he walked to the window. I wondered how many hours he’d spent performing. I wondered if preachers, like actors and undercover agents, occasionally got lost in their roles. He looked out at Fallbrook.