We exited I-95 at Prudential Drive and crossed the St. John’s River into Jacksonville’s downtown business district, Sagan sitting up front with me while John-John stretched low in the backseat. Even if he had been driving the night Mary died, his crime hardly warranted an all points bulletin, but we were being careful. The Greyhound bus station was on Pearl Street, at the edge the downtown riverfront. There’s always something edgy about Greyhound stations and this one was no different.

Sagan came home just as I was leaving to pick up John-John and whisk him out of town. He had something important to talk with me about, he said. I told him he could either wait a few hours or ride along. He chose to ride.

Several old men, homeless I guessed, lounged in front of the bus station. As we approached a police cruiser stopped in front of them. With blue lights flashing, two officers stepped out. I checked John-John’s reaction in the rearview mirror. He was watching the officers but didn‘t seem worried. We had planned to just stop and drop him in front of the station without parking and I didn’t see any reason to reconsider. A northbound bus was leaving in about an hour. He would ride it to Atlanta and then hopscotch north from there, buying separate tickets at each stop.

The officers were talking to one of the homeless men, who seemed agitated as he repeatedly pointed down the street. I pulled up behind the cruiser, leaving my engine running, and popped the trunk with the inside switch. I started to open my door but John-John said stay put. He reached his right hand into the front seat, lifting his dark glasses with the other.

“I can take it from here padre,” he said. “In a week or so I’ll call you from a pay phone. Good luck Sunday. I’ll look forward to seeing you soon in the great white north.”

“Good luck to you,” I said. “We’ll be praying for you.”

He looked at the boy and smiled. “Stay out of trouble kid, and keep an eye on the padre for me. Guys like you and me,” he said, “know how to take care of ourselves. The padre, I worry about.”

He winked, we shared a laugh and he was gone, quickly grabbing his bags and walking briskly past the officers without a sideways glance.”

Back on I-95 and traveling south, Sagan asked me what was going on with Mr. Johnson -- why he was leaving so soon. He knew that his mother and Mr. McCarthy weren’t going north for at least another week.

“He’ll be kind of an advance man for us,” I said.

But Sagan knew the world of outsiders too well to swallow my fib. “He’s in trouble over that woman Mary dying, isn’t he?”

“Yes. In fact, when you next see him he won’t be known anymore as John Johnson. I’ll need you to keep that completely to yourself.”

“I ain’t no blabbermouth,” he said.

John-John’s current trouble stemmed from talking too much while drinking too much. He’d let slip to a friend at the bar, “confidentially,” his plan to skip bail. Fortunately, he said, he hadn’t mentioned Canada or his new identity. The word made its way to the police but because John-John had his own friends on the force, the information flowed back to him. While the police were asking the judge to revoke his bail, John-John was asking me to help him get out of town. The authorities weren’t aware he had learned their plans, but we thought it would be better if he didn’t leave from Daytona.

Sagan was sorting through my music CDs. “How about this one?” he said, holding up a Lou Rawls disk.

“That would be great I said, unaware the first cut was the bluesy ballad, Motherless Child.

“Sometimes I feel like a motherless child … a long ways from home.” We listened as Rawls sang the words several times, both of us conscious the lyrics had personal meaning for Sagan.

“Isn’t that what they call irony,” he said, “me choosing that one by chance. That’s called irony, right? We been studying stuff like that it English class. Irony, paradoxes, stuff like that.”

“I think that might be irony,” I said. “Coincidental irony.”

“I like learning that kind of stuff,” he said. “Helps give me perspective. Perspective, that’s another one of my new words.”

“You’ve come a long way son.”

He smiled at me and said thanks.

“So what is it you wanted to talk about Sagan?”

“Well,” he said spinning toward me in his seat. “It’s kind of like you just said, I mean about me coming a long way. You know, with me playing football and doing pretty good in class and everything, well, I know big things are happening right now for you, and for mom, but I don’t really want to leave here right now.”

I’d been too caught up in my own world. With Sagan finally on an even keel, I hadn’t wondered whether our plans fit his. I understood why they wouldn’t. “I see what you’re saying,” I said. “Have you told your mom?”

“Yea.”

“How’d she take it?”

“You know, mixed. She’s happy to see me getting somewhere, but she was thinking we’d be together now -- with her not such a mess anymore.”

“You’re not mad about her falling for Mr. McCarthy?”

“Nah, I’m happy to see her find a decent guy after all the bums and addicts like she says my old man was.”

His old man? Was it Jerry? Jerry never did answer when I asked. And Becky described the guy sort of like Sagan just did. Hard for me to imagine Jerry ever being like that. I let it all sit for a minute before asking Sagan where he thought he would live.

“My girlfriend Maria’s parents say I can live with them. They’re real nice people, smart too -- sort of like you and Carolyn, except for, you know, being European.”

“Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

“They’re pretty cool. I like that they’re different. It helps me get a little more …”

“Perspective?”

“Yea, perspective.”

“Perspective is good.”

“Not a thing wrong with perspective.”

“We sound like we’re doing a Seinfeld routine,” I said.

“Not that’s there’s anything wrong with that,” he said, and we both laughed. We rode along silently awhile. We had a way with each other that didn’t require speech. We were comfortable together, trusted, even liked each other. We’d been through a lot together and we hadn’t let each other down. I wanted him to know he wasn’t disappointing me now.

“I think it’s good that you stay here and finish up school. Maybe I could meet Maria’s parents before we leave here.”

“Yea, sure, that’d be cool.”

“Maybe we could give them some money for your expenses.”

“I still have my job even though with football I’m not working as much. I thought I could pay some. Anyway, they didn‘t say they wanted money. I guess they kind of like me. They say I make their daughter happy. She was in some trouble before she met me.”

“You mean like smoking pot, stuff like that?”

“And kinda depressed sometimes I guess.’

“Was she one of the girls there that night, when the police took you in?”

“Yea, she was. That’s when we kinda got started. So I guess something good came out of it, even though you lost your church and all that, for which I’m really, really sorry.”

“Actually, I look back on that incident as my beginning. I can’t prove this to you, but I think adversity can lead to more great things than when everything sails along smoothly. If it wasn’t for that night I’d still be standing in the pulpit dishing out pabulum.”

“What’s pabulum?”

“It’s kind of a thin cereal mix that’s mainly meant for babies. It’s like Paul wrote about -- a lot of church people being stuck on milk and not mature enough to eat meat.”

“Hey, that’s a metaphor!” he said.

“You really have come a long way, haven’t you son.”

“I’ve had some good teachers.”

“I’m so proud of you, I …” I had to stop. Tears were filling my eyes. He knew how I felt and was smiling. He felt good about himself, which more than anything was my goal all along.

“Maybe when you graduate high school next May, you can come and see us in Canada.”

“I will, I definitely will. Maybe I’ll move there then.”

“Let’s play that by ear; you might want to go on to college.

“But I’ll definitely come and visit.”

“It’ll be summer then,” I said, “a nice time to visit.”

“Have you ever lived in the north during winter pastor Dietrich? Canada sounds really cold.”

“No, I’ve been a Florida boy all my life.”

“I bet you’ll freeze your fanny off,” he said with a smile.

“Maybe,” I said, returning his grin, happy that he would talk to me like a friend. I realized that the boy I took under my wing was ready to fly on his own as a man.

Losing John-John made getting ready for Sunday’s final gathering more difficult. I especially wanted him to circulate word of the Ontario community. I felt those who’d been with us from the beginning should have first opportunity to join. But they would have to play by the same rules as anyone who might come to us through my stadium tour. Everyone would have to understand what we wanted from them, and some might think buying in to our vision would cost them too much control over their lives. But the way I saw it, we were asking little compared to the rewards they would harvest. And, if God had blessed them with financial resources, they would need to use them for the good of the community.

Jerry turned down my invitation to join us. He had too much invested in his business to just walk away. But I asked him to do John-John’s work and pass the word about our village in Canada. At the same time, I told him, he could assure everyone we were making arrangements to keep the Florida ministry going. He was happy to hear that, and guaranteed he would do whatever he could to help keep it alive. My father, who had never been happy with retirement, jumped at the chance to come over on Sundays and lead our ocean flock in worship.

By the time Saturday arrived and the production company’s big truck rolled into the public lot across from Jerry’s Ocean Deck, I no longer felt so unprepared to meet whatever challenge came next. Our community didn’t have to be built overnight. It couldn’t be built overnight, and we had a pretty good model that told us God wouldn’t expect that it could. Are we better than the Old Testament Judeans who returned from exile in Babylon? They came back in waves and trickles and took years to rebuild Jerusalem’s walls and temple. Beau had two large farms in the rich lands of Ontario’s Golden Triangle, but on site housing was limited. We couldn’t ask people to live in tents through a Canadian winter. Then there was the visa situation. McCarthy assured me we could get all we needed. He’d contracted with a law firm that guaranteed they could get us in under one visa category or another. We wouldn’t have to enter surreptitiously like Beau did in ‘69 or like John-John might be doing right now. But even under the best of circumstances, a slow flow would be better than a tidal wave.

With things developing slowly, my constant presence might not be so important. The early days of our community, whatever we might eventually call it, would look more like a construction site than anything else. God had told me I could lead both the village and the tour, that they would not be two missions, but would work together as one. As the path began to open before me I knew that God was right.

When you spend as much time in God’s presence as I had lately, it’s hard to be impressed by mere mortals. But let a long white limo pull up in front of your house and just about anyone is going to drop what they’re doing and pay attention. Unless it’s there to pick up your kid for the senior prom, you expect someone important to step out. Krissy Collins is a newswoman, not a movie star, but when she comes onto the scene, she arrives with the flair of a celebrity. She can’t help it, and even though she’d called from the airport and Carolyn and I were expecting her, in the back of our minds we were aware that here’s a woman millions across the nation watch every day.

We did our best to make it just another easy-going, beach-town Saturday night, the kind of evening she couldn’t buy in New York City. When we first met in New York, I had gone to her; but now she had come to me, wanting something from me. Seeing myself as out of the ordinary still felt foreign to me, but here was Ms. Collins arriving in a stretch limo and insisting that I am. She was one of the special ones and now I had her word that I was too. So charismatic that famous people fly from New York to see me and drive to my house in long white limousines. Talk is cheap but stretch limos aren’t. Still, in the end all I could do was bring on the best of what I’d been given -- and pray it was enough to get the job done.

Like I said, Krissy is no movie star. She is a nice looking woman, fit and always well dressed, but for natural beauty she didn’t rival Carolyn. I think Carolyn realized this when she met Ms. Collins that day, or maybe she just sensed that she was the owner of my heart. She never again acted as if my going on the road with the Collins caravan was a threat to us.