Father Connolly was pleasantly weary from the cross country journey he was making from St. Mathew’s in New York to a new parish in Chicago. His rusting baby blue sedan faithful as Sunday morning mass.

As the sun began to fall into the horizon before him, he was growing hypnotized by the relentless flow of cornfields stretching out all around him. There was a rich organic smell to the Ohio air and he breathed it in deeply through the open vents.

Along some unmarked junction of rural road, the good father took a left when a right would have taken him farther north to the new interstate running straight toward the Illinois border. Still mesmerized by the maze of open fields, he had entered main street of Tucker, Ohio, without even noticing the " Welcome to... " sign coming in.

Tucker might have been awake at some time, but seemed to have fallen fatally asleep. From the look of the crumbling brick and the time-frozen design sense, it might have begun in the early sixties. That is, the sixties that were still more associated with the fifties, than the radicalizing late sixties and seventies. The time when family was portrayed on black and white television, smiling and happy. When they weren’t , then dad would always light up his big pipe and explain all the answers.

And buy a malt at the local malt shop.

A sudden unexpected memory, the smell of hair tonic and new combs, the mixing of the ingredients from an old-fashioned malt, a red stool to sit on, seized the good father, reminding him of times before he wore the collar, before life had become so certain, when dime-store magazine monsters might still lurk outside at night.

He sat in his car for a moment, not realizing that he had pulled in front of an old red and white candy-cane barber stripe. For a moment, felt that he could walk right in there. Not in the dust painted farce of today, but into that place were he had been so many times, were he had come the closest he ever would to lust, admiring the curls and curves of his childhood adolescent Aphrodite.

" Father "

The sound jolted him so completely out of his reverie he might have seen the outline of the pearly gates for a moment.

The face now peering into the car window seemed to have materialized out of thin air.

" Are you ok? "

It was then that he noticed what had brought the attention of the onlooker. The sedan was painfully wrenched with one tire on the curb, the others, willy nilly across the parking lines.

That he might have had a mild stroke was the first thing to cross the good father’s mind. From the expression on the face of the policeman looking in on him, it might have crossed his as well.

" I - ", he began, clearing the hot dry flem from his throat, " I guess that I am not as used to all the driving. As when I used to drive between parishes. But- It has been a long time."

This did not seem entirely satisfactory, he began to dig further, but the policeman interrupted.

" This is a small town father. There are no motels, only one diner, and if you knew what I did, you wouldn’t step foot in the place. Were are you going? "

" Illinois. "

" Ok . ", the cop put a beefy had on the door and leaned his head, gesturing a direction, " You want to go down Willow here until you come up on Hwy 35. From there, it is only ten miles to the interstate, there should be plenty of places for you there."

There was something wrong with this cop.

It was something that he felt in his bones. Not something physical, but something strange, like heat shimmering off the hot road.

" - from there you should be across the state line before ten tonight, pick you up a motel in Indianapolis..." , the cop continued, his voice seemed to fade in and out like a radio picking up a far away transmission. He was wanting the good father to get the hell out of town, and, pronto. The disorientation was complete, but there was something rock solid that was making its way to the front of the priest’s mind. Some memory of a time so long ago in when good and evil was more than common adultery and lies, more than stupid human cruelty.

" Yes sir, thank you. "

He backed the car up with a loud " Whump ", when the tire slipped back to the ground. Shook his head in embarrassment and waved copiously when he pulled along the road leading out of town.

He was overcome with excitement and anticipation. Not sure what course of action he was to take, or even, entirely what he was thinking, he continued slowly making his way out of town. It was two miles out when he saw the familiar spiked steeple, the sight of the stories fashioned in stained glass.

He pulled around to the back of the church, to the small entrance that he knew would be there. Walked across the fallen autumn leaves and knocked at the door.

There was something that the cop had said.

" Father, what ever you do. "

The door opened slowly.

" Don’t stop anywhere along the way until you hit the interstate. "

That part of the conversation was just now remembered as the door swung fully open on its awful rusty hinges.

" Whatever you do father, don’t stop until you get out of here."

Good and evil had come to the good father in more vividness than any of his boyhood dreams or nightmares. The battle was to be fought here and now. As the door was pulled shut, such a long dark battle was begun.