The Vanished Man

success; he had a personal stake in making sure Charles Grady died.
    Around midnight last Tuesday Jeddy Barnes, a local militiaman, had suddenly appeared at the door of the double-wide that served as Reverend Swensen’s home and church. Barnes had reportedly been hiding out in a camper deep in the woods around Canton Falls after the state police raids against Andrew Constable’s Patriot Assembly a few months ago.
    “Make me some coffee,” Barnes had commanded, looking over the terrified reverend with his fierce fanatic’s eyes.
    Amid the staccato tap of rain on the metal roof, Barnes, a tough, scary loner with a gray crew cut and gaunt face, had leaned forward and said, “I need you to do something for me, Ralph.”
    “What’s that?”
    Barnes had stretched his feet out and looked at the plywood altar Reverend Swensen had made himself,thick with sloppy varnish. “There’s a man out to get us. Persecuting us. He’s one of them.”
    Swensen knew that by “them” Barnes was referring to an ill-defined alliance of federal and state government, the media, non-Christians, members of any organized political party and intellectuals—for starters. (“Us” meant everybody who wasn’t in any of the above categories, provided they were white.) The reverend wasn’t quite as fanatical as Barnes and his tough militia buddies—who scared the soul out of him—but he certainly believed there was some truth to what they preached.
    “We need to stop him.”
    “Who is it?”
    “A prosecutor in New York City.”
    “Oh, the one going after Andrew?”
    “That’s him. Charles Grady.”
    “What’m I supposed to do?” Reverend Swensen had asked, envisioning a letter-writing campaign or a fiery sermon.
    “Kill him,” Barnes had said simply.
    “What?”
    “I want you to go to New York and kill him.”
    “Oh, Lord. Well, I can’t do that.” Trying to put on a firm front although his hands were shaking so bad he spilled his coffee on a hymnal. “For one thing, what good’ll it do? It won’t help Andrew any. Hell, they’ll know he was behind it and they’ll make it even harder—”
    “Constable’s not part of this. He’s out of the equation. There’re bigger issues here. We need to make a statement. You know, do what all those assholes in Washington’re always saying in their press conferences. ‘Send a message.’ ”
    “Well, just forget it, Jeddy. I can’t do it. It’s crazy.”
    “Oh, I think you can.”
    “But I’m a minister.”
    “You hunt every Sunday—that’s murder, if you want to look at it one way. And you were in Nam. You got scalps—if your stories’re true.”
    “That was thirty years ago.” Whispering desperately, avoiding both the man’s eyes and the admission that, no, the war stories weren’t true. “I’m not killing anybody.”
    “I’ll bet Clara Sampson’d like you to.” Stony silence for a moment. “Chickens’re coming back to roost, Ralph.”
    Lord, Lord, Lord . . .
    Last year Jeddy Barnes had stopped Wayne Sampson from going to the police after the dairy farmer had found the minister with Sampson’s thirteen-year-old daughter in the playground he’d built behind the church. It occurred to him now that Barnes had played mediator solely to get some leverage on him. “Please, look—”
    “Clara wrote a nice letter, which I happen to have. D’I mention I asked her to do that last year? Anyway, she went and described your private parts in more detail than I personally wanna read about but I’m sure a jury’d appreciate it.”
    “You can’t do this. No, no, no . . .”
    “Don’t wanna argue the matter with you, Ralph. Here’s the situation. If you don’t agree then come next month you’ll be doin’ the same thing to niggers in prison that you had Clara Sampson doin’ to you. Now, what’s it gonna be?”
    “Shit.”
    “I’ll take that as a yes. Now, lemme walk you through what we have planned.”
    And Barnes had given him a gun, the address of a hotel and the location of Grady’s office then shipped him off to New York City.
    When he’d first arrived, a few days ago, Reverend Swensen had spent several days doing recon work. He’d gone into the state government building late Thursday afternoon and, with his slightly baffled demeanor and wearing his minister’s garb, had wandered the halls unchallenged until he found a broom closet in a deserted corridor, where he hid until midnight. Then he’d broken into Grady’s secretary’s