“Makes perfect sense,” I said.

“What you said wasn’t the usual yada-yada, not the standard-issue speech on thinking about someone besides yourself. We all know that; but I felt like at last I was getting some real direction on how it could be done.”

We drove past the tall condos to a section of beach with a string of individual houses. Over the years, most the north beach houses, some dating back to the ’40s, had been torn down to make room for what realtors like to call “the best and highest use,” meaning the way a property can maximize its financial advantage. Most the remaining houses were not in the best condition, as if the owners had accepted the notion that someday soon they too would fall before a bulldozer.

“Well, here it is,” Jerry said.

“Here what is?”

“The house I wanted to show you. … Oh, didn’t John-John tell you. He said you needed a place to live temporarily, and I told him I had this house that’s empty.”

“He did say something. I didn’t know that’s what we were up to right now. He also mentioned you wanting to do some kind of … weekly Sunday morning gathering -- something like yesterday but without anyone having to die.”

“Not just me! Everyone was asking for it. You know, lots of these people like to get high by drinking -- and you name it -- but what you --”

“Some of them were drinking.’

“True. But they know where that takes them. This was different. Very different.”

I was still troubled by it, but not enough to draw a line in the sand, not enough to say, “OK, I’ll do it only if you shut down the bar on Sunday morning.” Jesus never set preconditions on his followers, except that they follow. Well, not preconditions about drinking wine anyway, which is what they had for alcohol and taking the edge off a hard life. He asked some of them to give away all their money. But even that, he didn’t ask of them all, not of Matthew and Matthew was one of the Twelve. His basic rule was, if it stands between you and knowing a new life in the Spirit, then get rid of it. That seemed like a good enough rule for me too.

“Yes, I‘d like to do it,” I said. “In John-John‘s words, I’m looking for a regular gig. I appreciate your help.”

“Don’t thank me Dietrich. I should thank you.”

“I just hope I can meet everyone’s expectations. Sometimes that mountain-top sensation is hard to maintain.”

“Should we go inside and look at the house?” he asked.

It was a big airy house. I counted four bedrooms and a little space off the living room that could serve as an office. Two and a half baths. An outside deck. The walls needed painting and the plaster needed patching. The floors were natural wood throughout, a little worn and dried out, but in good repair. We’d need some area rugs. Lots of big windows. Some of the screens were torn but Jerry said he’d fix those. I volunteered to patch and paint the walls. It was the least we could do. He had already brushed off my query about paying rent. “I don’t really need the money,” he said, “and to tell the truth it’s more trouble than it’s worth to have someone in it I don’t know, and I hate to leave it standing empty.”

I toured around some more, trying to store in memory a few things I thought Carolyn might ask about. My cell phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number but after years as a pastor I could never let a call go to voice mail. I answered, “Hi, this is Dietrich,” and walked through the open glass doors onto the deck. The caller identified himself as a detective with the police department. He had a few questions about the accident that ended Mary’s life. Yes, I said, glad to help any way I can. No, I told him, I didn’t see what happened. I was sleeping in the backseat. Yes, we had been at a bar before the accident. I explained how Mary became melancholy and wanted to visit her late husband’s grave.

He had obviously done some legwork. Someone at the bar saw us leave with John-John behind the wheel. He asked why Mary would end up behind the wheel and I repeated the story John-John told me -- that Mary felt he was driving “erratically.” That was my word, not John-John’s, but “erratically” had an official police report feel to it, as if the right language would help the detective decide our story made sense after all, case closed, help him picture how it all went down, Mary saying, “Mr. Johnson, you appear to be driving erratically, you’d better relinquish the wheel of this lethal death machine to me.” I asked the detective if there was a problem.

“Well,” he said, “I look at that windshield on the driver’s side and at the pictures of the victim and I wonder. There’s two distinct epicenters where the windshield is shattered, but I don’t really see two impact wounds on her. If she whip-lashed and hit the window twice it seems unlikely she’d hit exactly the same place on her face. Seems like her head would turn.”

“Maybe the first blow knocked her out, so she couldn’t try to turn away,” I suggested.

“Either way, it seems unlikely,” he said.

That was it for now he said. “Of course,“ I told him, if he had anything else I’d be glad to help.

I closed my phone and drew a deep breath of salt air. Yes, I thought, the boys would love it here. It would be good for all of us. The sea breeze carried a freshness we could all use. The houses here were built farther back from the ocean, like everything should have been. A winding wooden walkover cut through an expanse of dunes and sea oats to the beach. The deck and walkover were like the house -- at the “needs work but not yet falling down” stage. Some might call it rustic. Carolyn, fresh from the yacht club and its crisp-edged sense of order, would probably cringe a little. But it was classic beachside Florida, tin roof and all, weathered and worn, but standing its ground against the ocean’s steady onslaught.

My cell rang again. “Popular guy,” I heard Jerry say behind me. With the ocean sounding in my ears, I hadn’t heard him walk onto the deck. It was Jess, the editor, on the phone. He had also heard about what he called “the mass baptism” by the Flagler beach approach. Why hadn’t I given him a heads up? “Great story potential -- great pictures,” he said. I reminded him an advance blurb about the memorial ran in his paper and assured him no one knew the rest of it would happen. I asked Jess if I could call him back later. Jerry had a business waiting for him.

“I’ll have to bring my wife over,” I told Jerry, “but I like it. I know the kids will like it. Right on the beach …”

“You can move in whenever you want,” he said.

“OK. Like I said, I’ll have to bring Carolyn over.”

You might think I’d be wondering why Jerry wanted to do so much for me, but as a pastor you get used to church members wanting to pitch in for free. I guess that’s what Jerry was -- a church member. Or should I say chief patron of our little beachfront revival. Jerry’s Ocean Deck Lounge and Sunday Morning Prayer Chapel. Amen. Featuring Pastor Dietrich Waymire. Come one, come all. Come just as you are. Shorts, swimsuits … relax and make yourself comfortable. “Looks like your glass is empty. You need another drink before the opening hymn?”

Jerry offered a history lesson on the trip back, pointing out the concrete sea wall where the Coronado Hotel once stood, “old-time wooden place,” he said. Two stories and no more than a dozen rooms. “Tore it down around 1968 or thereabouts,” he said. He talked about how the beach at low tide used to be “pretty near a mile wide.” That started to change when Corps of Engineers built the inlet jetties, he explained, and then, between the sea walls and destruction of the dunes from building too close … “one thing after another ate into it,” he said, with the hurricanes of 2004 taking “the last big gulp.”

He parked his jeep right back where we began in the public lot across from the bar. His dark shades didn’t stop me from seeing he had something more to get out.

“You know,” I said, “if you’re having second thoughts, we could afford to pay some kind of rent for the house. I‘m not sure what you--”

He waved me off with his hand. That wasn’t it. I never thought it was. I shut up and waited. Seconds passed. Finally, he spoke. “Did Becky ever tell you how Sagan got his name?”

“Something to do with Carl Sagan, the astronomer?”

“Back before she was pregnant … keep this under your hat; she wouldn’t want you to know this so don’t ever let on you know … she was working as a dancer. You know what I mean, an exotic dancer, and when she got pregnant, as soon as she started to show, she lost her job, which in a way was OK because she didn’t want her kid to grow up the son of a dancer anyway, but the thing is she had no real skills, just her good looks, and didn’t have the energy to start off into something new right then. I tried to help her some with a few bucks but I was just a bartender in those days. So she got a little depressed and was having trouble sleeping, and sat up late most nights watching television. No cable back then, at least she didn’t have it, but the public channel was running these reruns late at night before they signed off of that show Carl Sagan used to have.”

“Cosmos.”

“Right, and he’d always be so optimistic about all the possibilities, about what might be out there among the stars, some wonderful world with people just like us, or even better than us. It all sounded so hopeful and dreamy to her, and she started thinking about how she had to struggle and never believed in her own possibilities. She wanted it to be different for her son, so, since Carl is such an old-fashioned name, she called him Sagan, because she wanted him to have dreams, and hopes, and believe that anything is possible.”

“That’s a great story,” I said. “Does Sagan know that story?”

“I never asked him,” Jerry answered.

He continued to sit, the engine off but making no move to open his door. There was something more. He had stared out toward the water the whole time he told Becky’s Sagan tale, glancing my way only now and then with his eyes hidden behind the sun glasses.

“So what else do you want to tell me Jerry? Are you the boy’s father?”

He slowly reached up, removed the dark glasses and turned his face to me. “Sometimes,” he said, “it would be nice if I knew how to shed a tear.”