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of Creed crossing the threshold of a church was about as likely as Ma Kutter rising and taking her leave.
    It took a long time to reach the camp, and even though they'd started in the early afternoon, the moon was rising above The Deacon's tents by the time they came into sight.   Torches had been lined up to create a luminous trail into the camp, and Bender steered the wagon down the center aisle.   There was something unnerving about that last, short part of the ride; it felt holy, like a ritual passage or crossing over, but that wasn’t it.   Curious faces watched him every slow foot of the way.   He tried to dismiss the mild discomfort, putting it down to the scrutiny of strangers and the business they were about, but that wasn’t it either.   Bender pulled the cart up just to the right of the door to the main tent.   The others filed past him and into the shadowed interior, finding seats where they could, making quiet, whispered introductions to the Deacon's flock.
    Four strapping men stepped from the tent to stand behind the wagon.   Bender introduced himself, but they didn't speak.   He held out his hand in greeting.   One of the men held his out as well, and they shook.   It was a reluctant gesture at best.   Bender wanted to ask questions.   He wanted to know his part in the ceremony, to find out what was expected, but when the second man held out the mutilated, gnarled thing that had been his hand, and the third turned to show his profile, which lacked one ear and included a pronounced cleft in his left cheek the questions slipped from John’s mind.   The effect was like witnessing the two sides of a coin.   One was a face Bender could recognize, and the other?   He didn't look at the fourth pall bearer.   He helped them slide the coffin to the rear of the car, and walked in quietly behind them as they bore it in silence to the rear of the tent, and The Deacon's altar.
    He refused to look left or right, fearful of what other deformities might mar The Deacon’s flock.   Bender was a simple man who cherished his simple life.   This place was far from simple.   There was something about it that caused his flesh to creep and finally he was beginning to understand what that ‘something’ was: it was unnatural.   Everything about the procession through the tent city, the morbid fascination of the onlookers and the ruination of The Deacon’s people was wrong.   Ungodly.
    John Bender took a seat in the rear of the tent and contemplated the repercussions of taking his cart, and his horses, and riding back to town alone.

Chapter Eight
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    The Deacon stood alone behind a grubby screen at the rear of the tent.   The dust of the road clung to the fine gauze and shielded him effectively from those congregated.   He was an intensely private man, at ease only in his own company.   Among others his life became part of the carnival so he cherished these moments of solitude.   Life out on that stage was almost surreal, trapped in the lights, everyone so desperately wanting to share his gift .   There was an intense greed and selfishness about it all, but as far as they were concerned, he was doing the Lord’s work and they people looked to him to do what they could not – to save them.
    The Deacon smiled and closed his eyes to savor the nearness of his flock and the love he felt out there, stronger even than the grief.   He allowed no one near him prior to services.   Not that any of his people would have dared, but it wasn’t only his own out there today.   The tent was swollen with the mourners of Rookwood, so to prevent the curious from disturbing him, he had stationed Sanchez and the boy just beyond the screen.
    The urge to pull the pouch from beneath his dark cloak and hold it was powerful.   It sensed what was to come.   Where he felt love, it felt the breath and tasted the blood that suffused