wrong in Tim Trinity’s life that he was now snorting coke. He’d always been a drinker, sure, but for Southerners— and especially New Orleanians—alcohol is like mama’s milk.
In all their years together, Daniel had never seen his uncle do anything as flagrantly self-destructive as what he’d just witnessed.
Back in his hotel room, Daniel sat on the bed, propped up by huge pillows, his Bible open in his lap. An e-mail had come in from Nick. The e-mail read:
Daniel had struggled with the Book of Job in his youth and had never really come to terms with it. Reading it again didn’t help any. To Daniel, the God presented in Job was like a little boy pulling the wings off flies, just to watch them flail about. He seemed shallow, cruel, and ego-driven. He caused Job, his most righteous servant, to suffer excruciating pain and unfathomable loss, for no good reason. No, worse. For a juvenile, self-indulgent reason: because God had the cosmic equivalent of a bar bet going with Satan.
Daniel did not like this God very much.
The priests who took Daniel in at thirteen had tried to reframe the Book of Job for him. They said that the story does not tell us
The priests were big on God’s Many Mysteries. It was their default response to the most troubling of Daniel’s many questions. But Daniel had not come to the Church to embrace mysteries. He’d come in search of a miracle.
He’d lived the first dozen years of his life believing that his uncle was a real apostle, working real miracles on God’s behalf. For a boy who’d killed his own mother while being born and caused his father’s suicide, this was no small thing. God had chosen Tim Trinity as His messenger on earth, and He’d chosen Daniel to be His messenger’s companion. That meant God did not despise Daniel. It meant Daniel was worthy of love, despite everything.
That was how his uncle had explained it, and it did make things better. It became the One True Thing that Daniel could hold on to and feel good about, despite the ugly way his life had begun. Trinity told the boy that God loved him, and Trinity always treated him with love, even when drinking. And he wasn’t a bad guardian either. He always made sure the boy did his schoolwork on the road, made sure he passed his exams when they returned to New Orleans.
It was a strange childhood, but not an unhappy one. There were other preachers’ kids to play with on the tent revival circuit, and Daniel learned many things on the road. Tim taught Daniel how to talk his way out of a jam and—
But as Daniel grew, so grew his doubts. By the time he reached age ten, willful blindness was required not to see the flimflam, the con artistry and sleight-of-hand at work behind the miraculous healings Trinity performed. Living in a perpetual state of denial was exhausting. After a few years, at the age of thirteen, he just couldn’t keep it up, couldn’t
He swallowed the pain, hiding it from his uncle, until they got back home to New Orleans. The first night home, as Tim slept, Daniel slipped silently out his bedroom window and shimmied down the drainpipe. He walked to the nearest Catholic church, knocked on the door, and declared himself an orphan, looking for a miracle.
The priests took him in. They called in a doctor, who looked the boy over and pronounced him physically fit, and over the next few days they administered a series of tests to assess his psychological condition—
After a few schoolyard punch-ups established Daniel’s position in the hierarchy of boys, he settled into life at the church’s boarding school reasonably well. But the priests were concerned about his ongoing “anger issues” and got him into boxing. They said it would help him “work it out of his system.”
Daniel’s laptop speakers pinged, bringing him back from his thoughts. He reached across the bed and drew the computer near. A chat window had opened on the screen—someone was trying to make contact.
The message said: Daniel Byrne?
He read the username in the chat window: PapaLegba. He didn’t know anyone who went by that handle, but he knew what it meant. Papa Legba was a prominent
Daniel typed: This is Daniel Byrne. Who am I speaking with?
After a few seconds, the person on the other end wrote: And you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.
Daniel typed: John 8:32. Who are you?
You seek the truth. Trinity is the path. We can help.
Daniel typed: The most helpful thing you can do is to stop hiding behind a screen name. Who are you?
Trinity is the path. Walk the path. We’re watching.
The chat window disappeared. PapaLegba had logged off.
Tim Trinity watched the white lines of the highway disappear under his car. He was still feeling jittery from the cocaine. He hated the stuff. Sure, it came on feeling good, silenced the voices and stilled the tongues, but it always left him edgy. Made him acutely aware of the existence of his skin.
A creepy feeling, and why anyone took this shit for fun, was beyond him.
Worse, it made him feel weak. It reminded him of so many of the people he used to see lined up at his soup kitchen, reminded him of lives broken by poverty and addiction.
Trinity had the cruise control set at sixty. It’s the little things that trip you up—a speeding ticket, for example—and he was too smart for that. He kept it below the limit and didn’t stop until he reached the airport six miles southwest of Columbia, South Carolina, where he rented a car. Trinity’s car was a crystal-red Cadillac Escalade SUV with gold-plated trim, massive rims, and a Georgia vanity plate that read: TRINITY. Switching to a rental was a no-brainer.
Now he left the airport in a nondescript sedan with South Carolina plates. He took Platt Springs Road to West Columbia, drove straight through downtown—Triangle City, the locals called it.
Jimmy Swaggart had once owned the world, thought Trinity, and then he started acting like a complete idiot, picking up streetwalkers near downtown New Orleans methadone clinics, taking them to the hooker motels out on
