I followed 117 southeast toward Rockmuse, which was a good sixty-plus miles, figuring if I got my door repaired in a decent amount of time I could get through all my deliveries, including the water to Dan, and back to Price before dark. The sun-brightened miles slipped by as the towering granite mesa loomed larger on the horizon and the girl and the dog dozed off and on lulled by the low, steady hum of the engine and high whine of the tires.
For the first time since leaving the Stop ‘n’ Gone I felt as I usually did heading out on 117, like I was going home, or as close to a home as I had ever known. Maybe home was too strong a word. Once I was on 117 the asphalt wound out ahead of me and I always felt a little better. The desert was a familiar unknown and I was properly respectful, filled with purpose and just damn glad to see what I had been seeing for twenty years, and seeing it new every day, always the same but different.
The sun glared up off a patch of ice as I came over a small rise and when it cleared I saw the cross bobbing along the shoulder maybe a mile ahead. With all the excitement of the morning I’d forgotten about John and the life-size crucifixion cross he hauled up and down 117 from late spring to winter. Given that winter came on so quickly and early it made sense the weather caught him out on the road.
John, or Preach, as everyone else called him, was a dependable mystery. No one knew his last name or exactly when he had arrived, though sometime after the coal mine had closed almost twenty years earlier. His church, if you wanted to call it that, was the First Church of the Desert Cross, denomination unknown and unimportant. Located in what was once a True Value Hardware store in downtown Rockmuse, it consisted of a handful of deck chairs on a scarred wooden plank floor and not much else. When John was in town he preached up a storm to the congregation of empty deck chairs. He slept on a surplus army cot behind a makeshift pulpit, which was really only a couple of plastic milk crates that had been duct-taped together.
Infrequently one or a few people would show up, I assumed on purpose, which wasn’t how I’d met him. I had been unaware that the hardware store had closed, and I was in search of a half-inch socket drive to repair my truck. Once inside the door I was too embarrassed to leave, so I sat through most of an entire fire-and-brimstone sermon. When he finished, well over two hours later, my heathen ass had gone to sleep. Even though I was the only one there, he stood at the door as if there were a long line behind me and shook my hand and thanked me for coming.
It wasn’t until some time later, out on 117, that I explained why I had been at his church. He took the news with measured joy, noting that in God’s plan there were no accidents. “Jesus sent you to his house,” he said. “The socket drive was just the burning bush.”
Over the years I’d often pull over and converse with John, if I had time and he was on schedule and we were both so inclined. He managed to travel about ten miles a day. In the evening he would camp at one of his unofficial Stations of the Cross campsites along 117. He had attached a bracket and a rubber tire from a wheelbarrow to the road-end and strapped a pack with some camping supplies to the cross. Other than that, his was a pure stocker of a cross, right down to the hand-hewn hardwood and dimensions, and damn heavy.
I passed John and pulled over a couple hundred feet in front of him. It was still cold out, though there was very little snow along the shoulder. He didn’t drink coffee, or anything but water, which I usually carried. I set the brakes and requested everyone stay put. The baby was asleep. It seemed best to keep them both where it was warm and where the girl and the dog would be safe from traffic, if there was any. Though it was only John, I figured keeping the girl’s presence a secret was probably a smart move. My roadside visits with John never lasted very long.
I hopped out and waited for him with a thermos of water. He’d been at it for a while, probably since before dawn, and his tattered old down parka hung over the tip of the cross like a khaki surrender flag. I could see the sheen of sweat on his face as he approached.
John lowered the cross from his back, stretched his fingertips to prod the sky, and took the thermos from me and gulped down the water, careful as always not to waste even a drop into his white beard. He handed me the thermos. “Praise the Lord.”
“Got caught with your skivvies down out here, didn’t you?”
“Depends,” he said.
“On what?” I asked, both curious and a little afraid to hear his answer.
“On what you mean by ‘out here.’ The Lord has a plan,” he said, “and when you give yourself to it, you’re always ready. To my way of thinking, there is no ‘out here’ only here. God’s plan unfolds everywhere.”
“Is that so?” I said, pointing above us to the mirror embedded in my trailer. “Tell me that was God’s plan. And I thought I was ready.”
John was quick on the uptake and guessed what was lodged in the side of my trailer and exactly how it got there. He nodded solemnly keeping his eyes on the damaged trailer. “The Lord was watching out for you, Ben. His plan shall be revealed.”
“This little break of good weather will change, John.” I almost always called him by his first name, though many in the desert either didn’t know it or didn’t care. To them his name was Wacko or Wingnut or, at best, Preach. “Don’t you think God’s plan might be for you to use the brains he gave you to get the hell off this road and come in from the cold?”
John seldom smiled, and when he did his long white beard seemed to dance. “Maybe,” he said. “But God gave me this road and the glory of the day. Seems a little ungrateful to leave it because of bad weather.” He stared up at the blue sky and bent his tall body over and touched his toes. “That felt good,” he said. “I got a new pouch of tobacco.”
This was my cue. “I’ve got some fire.”
Both of us had quit smoking years before but somehow we had set upon a ritual of pretending to have a smoke during our roadside meetings. John pulled imaginary papers and pouch from the lapel of his denim work shirt and went about rolling a cigarette, never taking a shortcut, every motion and detail exact.
John put the cigarette between his lips and leaned forward. I struck a Diamond match against my beard, which was as nonexistent as the match itself. Part of God’s plan was for me to not have much of a beard, owing maybe to my mixed heritage. The match head popped to life and we could smell the acrid sulfur in the air between us. John inhaled and let the smoke ease out into the desert breeze.
John handed me the cigarette. “I know it’s a sin, but I do enjoy a good smoke. The Lord has forgiven me so much.” He winked at me. “I like to think he’ll forgive me for allowing this poison into his temple.”
John had his back to approaching traffic and didn’t see the Utah Highway Patrol cruiser crest the hill behind him. “We’ve got company.”