He got to the big semi-modern church and stopped. There was a lot of activity here, if you looked for it, although not in the church itself. The buildings behind the church seemed to house some kind of school. There were a couple of dozen children shivering on a playground, not quite motivated by the adult who was trying to spur them into action. Gregor smiled. He remembered that. Why was it so many adults were so convinced that fresh air was good for children, no matter what the temperature of the air.
He heard somebody cough low in the throat and looked up to see that tallest, thinnest man he had ever encountered standing just outside the church’s front doors. He was more than tall and thin, though, this man. He was straight out of central casting. He could have starred in a remake of Elmer Gantry tomorrow, and been more convincing than Burt Lancaster ever was.
The tall, thin man had his hands in the pockets of the pants to a very good, but not spectacular, wool suit. He held out his hand.
“It’s Gregor Demarkian,” he said. “I’ve seen you on television. I’m Nick Frapp.”
It wasn’t just the look. It was the voice. Okies had that kind of voice. Hillbillies had that kind of voice. Gregor reached out and took the man’s hand.
“How do you do,” he said.
“You ought to come inside,” Nick Frapp said. “It’s freezing out here, and there’s going to be another one of those reporters any minute.”
“Another one?”
“They hear about us and all they want to talk about is snakes,” Nick Frapp said.
Gregor followed him through the open door of the church. It was not particularly unusual for a church: it had a big wide open vestibule with racks for pamphlets and a big box with a sign that designated it a collection for the poor. Nick Frapp saw him look at the sign and shrugged.
“We get maybe a couple of dollars every week in that,” he said. “It’s not a bad idea. I don’t find it as useful as organizing something concrete, though.”
“Do you organize a lot that’s concrete?”
“Sure,” Nick said. “In a way, this whole place is an organization of something concrete. We’ve got half a dozen outreach programs running. We go up to the prison in Allentown. We have a halfway house for those of our people who get out on parole, or anybody else who wants to use it. We’ve got a mothers and children drive, which is important, because the social workers won’t go up into the hills anymore. And of course, we’ve got the school.”
They had been moving as they spoke, and now they were in a long hall lined with photographs of people who were posing too self-consciously to look natural. Gregor tried to catch the nature of those poses but couldn’t. Nick was up ahead, holding a door for him.
“Susie Cleland is around here somewhere, but I don’t know where she’s got to,” he said.
“Susie Cleland?”
“Our volunteer secretary for today,” Nick said. “We can’t really afford to hire too much in the way of full-time staff, and I’d rather spend money hiring teachers for the school than getting myself a fancy church secretary, so some of the women volunteer. They’re very good. Can I get you a cup of coffee? We’ve got coffee all over the place. Susie really likes to make coffee.”
“Thanks,” Gregor said. “I’d like that.”
He was standing in Nick Frapp’s office now, and the first thing that hit him was the books. There were literally hundreds of books. Every single available space on all four walls of the room was a bookshelf. Nick Frapp didn’t restrict himself to whatever the Christian presses were publishing, either. He had Aristotle and Kant. He even had Spinoza. Gregor looked from shelf to shelf. Thomas Aquinas. Hobbes and Lock. John Stuart Mill. Saint Irenaeus.
“I know somebody else who reads like this,” Gregor said. “I don’t suppose you sneak Judith Krantz novels on the side.”
“True crime.” Nick was coming back with coffee. He handed Gregor a cup and gestured across the room. “Cream and sugar and that over there,” he said.
“But you’ve obviously read these,” Gregor said. “Or somebody has. They’re not here for show. Where did you go to college?”
“Oral Roberts University.”
“Are they this good with the Western Canon? I didn’t think anybody was this good with the Western Canon anymore, except that place in Maryland, you know, that does the great books.”
“They’re all right,” Nick said. “I was reading this stuff before I went there, though. And I still read it. I’m looking for something I know I’ll find, eventually, except probably not until after I’m dead.”