"You got any vacation time with the city?" Barbie asked as more cars piled up behind her and blared their horns. "Why don't you come to the NASCAR race with me tomorrow night? I would just love it and you could see all those handsome drivers. But you'd need to take the afternoon off because I like to get there early and hang around the pits and wait for the drivers to come out and climb into their cars. Sometimes they let you get your picture taken with them. Oh, if only you knew what that was like! Standing arm in arm with a handsome stock-car driver in his tight, colorful fireproof jumpsuit!"

"Now, I sure as heck never been to no NASCAR race and I never seen no Afric-American drivers, neither. So I wouldn't know. " Hooter paid no attention to the endless line of impatient motorists. "Maybe I take the whole day off! I ain't had no vacation since my sister got married and I was in the wedding. The mattress of honor. " Hooter beamed at the memory of being decked out in that long pink dress with see-through sleeves and beads and bows. "That was sure a time, let me tell you, girlfriend. "

"Yeah! How about visiting with your fucking girlfriend some other time, you queerbaits, and hurry up!" Bubba Loving was back in his truck with mud flaps.

"What on earth is queerbait?" Barbie asked as she jotted down her phone number on a Post-it. "Something you catch strange fish with? And why is that same vulgar man screaming about fishing?"

"Take one to know one!" Hooter yelled back at Bubba.

"Here, sweetie, " Barbie said to Hooter, "you ring me up in the next few hours. I'll be at the Baptist Campus Ministry, and you just call and let me know if you can come to the race so I don't give the ticket to some other lucky person. Please come! Oh dear, I just love having girlfriends to talk to!"

"I just might do it. In fact, I will, I will. Damn right I will. " Hooter was getting excited by the idea. "You count me in unless I can't get no one to cover my booth for me. How 'bout you pick me up right here at, well, let's see. What time?"

"Two o'clock sharp. "

"I'll slide on home and change and be waiting for you right here at my booth unless something come up. Then we have plenty of time to talk about your rotten sex life. "

"Wouldn't that be wonderful. " Barbie cheerfully waved good-bye as she drove on and forgot the seventy-five cent toll, setting off the alarms. "The rainbow is working! Magic, magic everywhere!"

"Sweet-talk your girlfriend another time when we aren't waiting until Heck freezes over to go through the tollbooth!" Lamonia yelled from her Dodge Dart.

Lamonia was understandably in a foul mood. First, she had gotten handcuffed because of her bad night vision, now she was stuck in traffic because two interracial lesbians were flirting at the tollbooth and a racist redneck was engaging in road rage. What had gone so wrong in the world? Dear Lord, have mercy, Lamonia thought. The entire planet was self-destructing and it was just a matter of time before Jesus would get fed up and come back, and Lamonia wasn't ready for the Rapture. No, sir. She told Jesus every Sunday to please hold on for a while, because Lamonia had so many friends and neighbors who were going to be left behind if He came in on a cloud and the Rapture lifted up all Believers.

"Give your life to Jesus, " Lamonia said to Hooter as she fed a dollar bill into a cotton-gloved hand.

"You tell it, girlfriend, " Hooter said, dropping three quarters into the bin and returning a quarter change.

"I'm not your girlfriend or anybody's girlfriend!" Lamonia wasn't the least bit subtle about it. "Ask forgiveness for your sins and pray to Jesus. Ask Him to take your life and do something with it, you hear me? Because He's coming soon, and you don't want to be sitting in that little booth of yours and giving in to perversions with strangers and suddenly find half the cars coming through don't have drivers 'cause they've been Raptured up into Heaven!"

"Tell it, " Hooter encouraged the pulpiteer. "You tell it, girl. "

Lamonia needed no encouragement. "Two men are working in a field, and suddenly one of them is gone. Two women are doing laundry in the Laundromat, and suddenly, one of them is gone. You'll be taking toll money, and suddenly half the drivers will be gone and you just better hope you aren't still sitting in your booth, because if you are, that means you've been left behind!"

"I ready for the Rapture, girl, " Hooter assured Lamo-nia as the two of them exchanged phone numbers. "Oh yes, I ready and looking forward to it. Always have been looking forward to it! Jesus be coming back. I always knew He would. " Hooter stared up at the ceiling of her booth. "You come on now, Jesus. You just come right on. I be waiting for you and won't even charge you no toll when you float down on your cloud!"

"No!" Lamonia protested. "Don't tell Him to come now! There's too much work to do, you silly woman! Look out there at all them sinners! Just miles and miles of them. Pray for them first, child!"

Hooter gazed out at miles of honking cars.

"Yeah, you right, girl. Most them folks out there ain't ready for Jesus. Look how upset and nasty they is. Hmmm hmmm. " Hooter shook her head sadly. "So we ask Jesus to hold off a little longer. Just give us a little time, Jesus, " she prayed loudly as Lamonia lurched out of the tollbooth and rear-ended another car. "Please, Lord in Heaven, just give me Saturday afternoon off, you got that? Just one little vacation, " Hooter prayed. "That all I ask, Jesus. "

Twenty-two

Dear Lord in Heaven, " Dr. Faux prayed as he and Fonny Boy drifted in the bateau. "We've been out here all night and half the morning, and I'm so cold and hungry I don't think I'll survive another hour. Please help us. "

Fonny Boy had given up on trying to get into the locked compartment and was blowing sour sounds on his harmonica and trying out various methods of hand effects and breathing techniques. He was on the verge of wishing that he and the dentist would be captured and returned to the storeroom, and regretted he had not bothered to carry sodas and food on board. But then, he had assumed they would reach the mainland long before supplies became an issue.

"Lord-a-mercy, I reckon the current's taking us clean back to the island, " he told Dr. Faux.

"I don't see land at all. Not anywhere, Fonny Boy. And if we were near the island, we would have been spotted by now and maybe blindfolded and forced to walk the plank. I think we might just have drifted into the sanctuary, and if so, no watermen will be in the area, and we will languish and die out here. "

"Nah, " Fonny Boy replied. "You can make out the current. " He pointed out gentle ripples of moving water. "But nigh as peace, they'll figure we made off in the bateau and if we don't make a hurry now, they'll be on us and we'll have to cite the Bible!"

"Unless they figure we're on the mainland, and you know they won't look for us there. You sure you can't remember the combination to that damn padlock? Maybe there's a flare gun in that compartment or even a mirror for sending signals. "

Fonny Boy had known the combination at one time, and he was terribly frustrated as he strained to recall it. He had tried every birthday in his family, Tangier's zip code, and several telephone numbers, all to no avail. He rapped the harmonica on the side of the bateau to knock out excess spit and tried a little straight harp, playing a melody in the key of C, and as usual, starting with hole 4.

"Think hard, Fonny Boy, " Dr. Faux tried to encourage him. "Usually people use tricks to remember things, so my guess is your dad used some sort of association to come up with a combination that he wouldn't forget. Are there any other numbers that might be important to your dad? What about your parents' anniversary?"