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PART TWO OF A THREE PART STORY

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By nine-thirty Sunday morning, Second Baptist had more cars in its parking lot than it had members who could remember the last time Brother Bob had preached from Revelation without frightening himself. The church bulletin still listed the sermon as Walking With God in an Age of Distraction, because Mrs. Dewberry had already run three hundred copies through the mimeograph machine and was not about to waste paper merely because the Holy Spirit had changed direction after supper. But sometime before Sunday school, Brother Bob had taken a black felt-tip pen and drawn a line through the printed title on the copy taped beside the sanctuary doors. Beneath it, in block letters large enough to be read from the nursery, he had written SIN WITH BUCKET SEATS.

That title produced precisely the reaction he intended, although perhaps not for the reason he intended it. Members who ordinarily drifted into the sanctuary during the second verse of the opening hymn arrived early and claimed pews near the center aisle. Several Methodusts appeared, explaining that their own minister was out of town, although nobody had heard them express concern about substitute preaching before. Sister Thelma sat in the rear beneath the balcony, officially representing Our Lady of Immeasurable Concern in the spirit of Christian fellowship, but carrying a notebook. Rex Hall and Evelyn took their usual place halfway down the right side, with Angus Hopper and Hairless B29 directly behind them. Chad arrived alone, having left the Piggly Wiggly under the supervision of an assistant manager whose primary qualification was that she had never been caught stealing anything that could not be returned. Maybelle Watkins sat close to the front in a lavender hat, a strand of pearls, and the alert posture of a woman who expected the morning to require either moral courage or smelling salts.

The Chrysler remained parked in front of the Cattle Baron Hotel. Several members had driven past it on their way to church, including three who had gone two blocks out of their way and later described this as avoiding road construction that did not exist. The car sat exactly where it had been the previous evening, black paint shining beneath a hard West Texas sky, chrome letters stretched across the trunk, beige leather visible through the glass, and no owner anywhere in sight. Nothing about it suggested movement. Yet by the time the organist began the prelude, the 300F had already entered the sanctuary ahead of everyone else.

Brother Bob came through the side door wearing his best dark suit and carrying a Bible, six pages of typed notes, and the solemn expression of a man who had personally discovered that sin now came with power steering. He seated himself behind the pulpit during the announcements, bowed his head during the invocation, and sang all four verses of “Standing on the Promises” without once looking at the hymnal. Only after the choir had returned to its seats and the sanctuary settled did he rise, square the pages before him, and gaze across the congregation in a silence long enough for three people to reconsider unconfessed matters.

“My friends,” he began, “Satan has always understood presentation.”

The sentence came quietly, which made it more effective. Brother Bob knew the value of beginning a sermon as though nothing unusual had happened and allowing the congregation to discover the cliff only after the bus had passed the last turnoff. He reminded them that temptation rarely announced itself in work clothes. It did not limp into town with a missing hubcap and steam pouring from the radiator. It did not ask to borrow ten dollars until payday. Temptation arrived polished. It arrived attractive. It possessed good posture, deep paint, bright chrome, and the sort of upholstery that made people forget what they had been taught about coveting. “The serpent,” Brother Bob said, one hand resting upon the open Bible, “did not approach Eve with a bowl of boiled cabbage. He offered her something she thought she wanted.”

“Amen,” called a man near the back.

“And this week,” Brother Bob continued, lifting his eyes toward the sanctuary doors, “something Fort Stockton thinks it wants has parked itself in front of the Cattle Baron Hotel.”

A murmur passed through the room. Hairless leaned toward Angus and whispered that the serpent had at least owned the apple, whereas nobody could establish legal possession of the Chrysler. Angus told him to hush before Brother Bob found a place for hearsay in Leviticus.

Brother Bob began with the color. He quoted from John about men loving darkness rather than light, then allowed his gaze to move slowly across the congregation until every person who had admired the black paint felt personally identified. “That automobile is black,” he said. “Not blue-black. Not charcoal. Not midnight gray. Black. The kind of black that does not merely sit in the light but argues with it. You look into that paint and do not see the car. You see yourself looking at the car, and that is how vanity enters the heart. First you admire the shine. Then you imagine your reflection behind the wheel. Then you start calculating what you could sell without your wife noticing.”

Several married men straightened in their pews.

Rex whispered that the black finish had likely been restored and was not original evidence of spiritual intent. Evelyn touched his sleeve without looking at him, which was the marital equivalent of posting bail.

“The Scripture says we walk by faith and not by sight,” Brother Bob continued. “Yet what has this town done all week? It has walked by the Cattle Baron and stared. Some of you have driven past so many times that your automobiles now turn the corner automatically.”

A number of people looked toward Chad, who looked toward Mayor Goodman. Mayor Goodman adjusted the red tie extending nearly a foot past his strained belt buckle and appeared offended on behalf of municipal traffic.

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Brother Bob then turned to the grille. He had drawn a rough version of it on a large sheet of poster board propped beside the pulpit, although his rendering looked less like the front of a Chrysler than a highway bridge designed by a nervous child. The vertical center and horizontal bar formed an unmistakable intersection. “Some have called this a cross-bar grille,” he said. “They see a cross and assume righteousness. But the devil knows symbols. He knows just enough Scripture to misquote it and just enough geometry to turn reverence sideways. That is not the Cross of Calvary. That is a cross lying down on the job.”

The phrase drew several firm amens, including one from Maybelle, who had not seen the grille closely enough to dispute it.

“It sits between four headlights,” Brother Bob said, pointing to circles he had drawn around the poster. “Not two. Four. Why four?”

Rex closed his eyes.

“I will tell you why. Because the natural eye sees what is before it, but temptation wants you looking everywhere at once. Two lights for the road. Two more searching for opportunities.”

Hairless nodded thoughtfully. “That almost makes sense.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Angus whispered. “That’s what makes it dangerous.”

Brother Bob’s case advanced to the front bumper, which he described as curved upward in a smile that no Christian should trust. He had spent part of Saturday examining photographs and had concluded that the bumper’s expression was not friendly but knowing. “That car is smiling at you,” he said, leaning forward over the pulpit. “Do you know why? Because it already knows where it can take you. It knows the road you will choose after dark, the turn you will make when nobody is watching, and what you are fixing to do when you get there.”

Maybelle Watkins seized her pearls with both hands. Mrs. Dewberry quietly opened Maybelle’s handbag and confirmed the smelling salts were near the top.

Brother Bob did not specify where the car might take anyone or what might occur upon arrival, which allowed each member of the congregation to supply a destination appropriate to his or her own private temptation to sin. For some it was the Lucky Lady Lounge. For others it was Odessa. One elderly deacon thought of a fishing cabin near Lake Leon and immediately felt guilty, although nothing morally questionable had happened there since 1947 and even then the evidence had been circumstantial.

The fins came next. Brother Bob had saved them until the congregation was properly warmed because the fins provided him with both spectacle and direction. He spread his arms to demonstrate their width and asked whether anyone truly believed an automobile required two blades rising above the rear fenders like weapons from the Book of Judges. “The Lord gave angels wings,” he said. “Those fins are not wings. Wings lift a soul toward Heaven. Those things point backward.”

He turned and stabbed one finger toward the rear wall.

“And what lies behind you?”

“The past,” someone answered, uncertainly.

“The past!” Brother Bob thundered. “The days you cannot recover. The promises you failed to keep. The innocence you traded for a late supper and an alibi. Those fins point directly at the life you will never get back once you travel the road of evil.”

The logic was fragile, but the delivery had structural integrity. Several people who had spent the week admiring the fins began to view them with new caution. Trixie, seated near the aisle in a green dress, still believed they looked suitable for divorce court but decided not to mention it.

Brother Bob paced to the edge of the platform and lowered his voice. “And those fins are sharp. Sharp enough to cut through judgment. Sharp enough to divide a family. Sharp enough to separate a man from his common sense before he has reached Balmorhea.”

Angus looked at Rex. “That car could reach Balmorhea before common sense got its shoes on.”

Rex nodded. “Now that part is mechanically plausible.”

The sermon moved rearward, both spiritually and anatomically. Brother Bob displayed another drawing, this one of the deck lid and its circular chrome spare-tire treatment. He acknowledged that Chrysler’s designers might use respectable expressions such as “continental styling” or “external spare motif,” but declared that worldly language often existed to conceal worldly truth. “The common name for that feature,” he said, pausing as though protecting the innocent, “is the toilet seat.”

Maybelle gasped. Someone in the choir coughed into a handkerchief.

Brother Bob gave the word time to damage the atmosphere. “I would not ordinarily introduce such an object into the Lord’s house,” he continued, “but the object has already introduced itself into the town. It sits there upon the trunk for all to see, polished in chrome, elevated into decoration, treated as though private business has become public ornament.”

Maybelle’s grip tightened upon her pearls.

“And I ask you,” Brother Bob said, his voice descending toward a confidential growl, “what else is associated with a toilet seat?”

The question entered the sanctuary and found nowhere respectable to land. Nobody answered. Several people looked at their shoes. Mayor Goodman studied a stained-glass window with sudden theological interest. Sister Thelma stopped writing and waited, perhaps hoping Brother Bob would clarify his own inquiry. He did not. He merely nodded, as though the congregation’s silence had proven his point beyond appeal.

“Exactly,” he said.

Maybelle located the smelling salts and kept them in her gloved hand.

The chrome lettering across the rear of the Chrysler occupied an entire page of Brother Bob’s notes. The letters were widely spaced, stylized, and elegant, each one shaped with the confident flourish of an era that believed even a manufacturer’s name ought to arrive dressed for dinner. Brother Bob had studied the script until it began to suggest not merely vanity but character. “Look at the way that name is written,” he said. “Not printed honestly. Not stamped plainly. It is stretched across the back in chrome, each letter leaning into the next as though sharing information decent people would rather not know.”

He paused and frowned toward the rear pews.

“The Chrysler name spelled out at the back of that car is the same penmanship as your lesbian aunt.”

The sanctuary became so silent that the rustle of Sister Thelma’s notebook page sounded like a flag being raised.

Brother Bob held his expression. “Do I need to even say any more?”

Nobody knew what had already been said. Nobody knew whose aunt was under discussion. Nobody knew what penmanship had to do with it. Yet the statement carried such complete confidence that several people instinctively pictured an unmarried relative in cat-eye glasses addressing Christmas cards with a fountain pen.

Hairless bent forward until his forehead nearly touched Angus’s shoulder. “My Aunt Velma wrote like that.”

“Was she a lesbian?”

“She lived with a woman named Doris for thirty-two years and owned a hardware store.”

Angus considered this. “Could’ve just been efficient.”

Brother Bob had already moved on.

He approached the engine as one might approach a pagan altar. The 413-cubic-inch V8, dual four-barrel carburetors, and long cross-ram intake manifolds presented an embarrassment of sermon material. He referred to the carburetors as “twin throats,” the intake system as “serpents feeding from opposite sides,” and the Golden Lion name as evidence that Chrysler had mixed the lion of Judah with something sold at a service station.

“They call it a Golden Lion,” Brother Bob said. “Scripture tells us that the devil prowls about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. Chrysler simply painted the lion gold and added an air cleaner.”

Rex whispered that no actual paint was involved, but even he admired the construction of the argument.

Brother Bob explained that the engine produced three hundred seventy-five horsepower, which he regarded as an amount no private citizen could require for any purpose compatible with prayer. “Three hundred seventy-five horses,” he said. “The Bible warns us not to put our trust in horses.”

“That is in Psalms,” Sister Thelma whispered, impressed despite herself.

“Then why,” Brother Bob continued, “would any Christian place trust in three hundred seventy-five of them gathered beneath one hood?”

He slapped the pulpit.

“They tell me Revelation speaks of Four Horsemen. Four were sufficient to end the world. This Chrysler has three hundred seventy-five.”

The congregation erupted. Men shouted amen. Women nodded. A deacon near the front stood briefly before remembering that standing required him to do something afterward.

Angus whispered, “The Four Horsemen weren’t horsepower.”

Hairless said, “Maybe that got changed in translation.”

Brother Bob raised both hands and quieted the room. He described the dual four-barrel carburetors, then asked why any righteous motor required eight barrels. “Noah took animals two by two,” he said. “This engine takes gasoline four by four.”

Even Rex could not find a response quickly enough.

The push-button transmission troubled Brother Bob because it removed the visible labor of shifting. A man merely pressed a button and power obeyed. “There is no honest lever,” he declared. “No column shifter to remind you that choices have weight. Just buttons. Reverse. Neutral. Drive. You sit there in a bucket seat, touch one finger to the dashboard, and four thousand pounds of black temptation begins moving.”

He turned toward the choir.

“Do you know who else offered effortless transportation?”

Nobody did.

“The devil,” Brother Bob said. “When he took Jesus to a high place.”

Sister Thelma tilted her head. “I believe they walked.”

Brother Bob continued without acknowledging the correction.

He objected to the speedometer because it reached one hundred fifty miles per hour, an accusation that carried special authority in a town where seventy-five already felt ambitious. He asked why a lawful automobile needed to advertise speeds beyond the ability of local officers to describe accurately in court. He suggested that the final numbers had been included not for driving but for boasting, and that boasting had brought down kings, empires, and at least one deacon’s fishing boat. Mayor Goodman shifted in his seat.

“Nothing good happens at one hundred fifty miles per hour,” Brother Bob said.

Rex leaned toward Angus. “At that speed, it happens briefly.”

The bucket seats formed the center of the sermon and, in Brother Bob’s mind, the moral architecture of the entire automobile. He closed his notes, placed both hands on the Bible, and announced that he had searched Scripture thoroughly. He had examined Genesis, Exodus, Kings, Chronicles, the prophets, the Gospels, the letters of Paul, and selected portions of Numbers where most men lost courage. He had found thrones, stools, benches, rocks, chariots, and people reclining at tables. He had found multitudes seated together upon hillsides and apostles crowded into boats. But nowhere in all sixty-six books had he discovered a righteous bucket seat.

“Amen,” someone said.

“Why?” Brother Bob asked. “Because God intended people to sit together.”

He described the traditional bench seat as an instrument of family unity. A husband, wife, and child could occupy one surface without polished barriers, padded armrests, or individual territory. A young couple could begin the evening at opposite doors and, through the mysterious workings of curves and gravity, finish closer to the middle. Families shared space. Children fought, reconciled, and fell asleep on one another. A bench seat required accommodation, patience, and the occasional removal of somebody’s elbow.

“But bucket seats,” Brother Bob said, “divide.”

He stretched one arm toward the left side of the sanctuary and the other toward the right.

“One sinner over here. One sinner over there. Each person cradled separately, comfortable in private rebellion.”

The congregation listened.

“And between them?”

He waited.

“A console.”

Brother Bob spoke the word with such disgust that Maybelle brought the smelling salts closer to her nose.

“A polished barrier running from the front of the car to the back. A wall between souls. A place for controls, ashtrays, beverages, and bad decisions.”

The rear bucket seats received particular condemnation because nobody could explain why passengers in back required individual containment. Brother Bob considered them evidence of premeditation. Two front buckets might be vanity. Four meant organization.

“Even the disciples sat together,” he declared.

“There were twelve of them,” Hairless whispered.

“Probably rode in a wagon,” Angus said.

“Would’ve needed a Chrysler wagon.”

“They didn’t make a 300F wagon.”

“Then the sermon holds up.”

Brother Bob’s voice softened as he approached the danger that lay beneath all the chrome and horsepower. The Chrysler, he said, had not forced anyone to gather around it. It had not spoken, advertised, or even revealed its owner. It had simply appeared and waited. The people had done the rest. They had abandoned errands, extended lunch hours, circled blocks, stared through windows, and learned engine specifications they could recite more confidently than the Beatitudes.

“That car has said nothing,” Brother Bob told them. “And yet this town has listened all week.”

For the first time that morning, the congregation grew quiet for a reason unrelated to bewilderment. The observation carried enough truth to make several people uncomfortable. Brother Bob sensed it and pressed forward.

“Sin does not always chase you. Sometimes it parks where you can find it.”

He let the sentence rest. It was the finest line in the sermon and, had he stopped there, might have become the one everyone remembered.

But Brother Bob did not stop there.

He turned to popular culture.

“I have heard people compare this automobile to Christine,” he said, his expression darkening. “Let me be clear. I do not approve of motion pictures in which automobiles commit murder, nor do I approve of motion pictures asking the audience to sympathize with a Plymouth.”

Rex covered his mouth.

“Christine was red,” Brother Bob continued. “Red is at least honest about what it is. This Chrysler is black. It does not rage. It waits. It does not run people down in public. It invites them inside where the upholstery is soft.”

Sister Thelma wrote that sentence down.

Brother Bob lifted his Bible and delivered the warning that closed the message. He told them the Chrysler’s true danger was not that it looked evil. It did not. It looked magnificent. Evil presented plainly was easy to refuse. The hard temptation came polished, rare, powerful, and technically impressive. It offered leather, chrome, effortless speed, and a dashboard full of buttons. It promised not wickedness but arrival. Not ruin but escape. Not sin but an opportunity to see what the engine could do once the highway opened beyond the city limits.

“My friends,” Brother Bob said, his voice rising until it filled the sanctuary, “that automobile does not want your soul.”

He paused.

“It wants your weekends.”

For one suspended moment, nobody moved.

Then Brother Bob closed the Bible.

The organist, who had been waiting for a signal and had lost track of whether the congregation had been condemned for lust, engineering, or independent seating, began the opening chords of “Just As I Am.”

The invitation lasted six verses.

Nobody came forward, although several people silently promised never again to refer to a spare-tire cover without proper caution.

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When the benediction ended, the congregation poured through the sanctuary doors into the bright Sunday morning. Brother Bob remained at the front accepting handshakes, solemn expressions, and compliments on the message. Maybelle told him he had shown remarkable courage. Sister Eunice said the sermon had given everyone a great deal to think about. Sister Thelma shook his hand with both of hers and said she intended to verify several of the references.

Brother Bob thanked them all.

Then he stepped outside and discovered that the church parking lot was emptying in a single direction.

Not toward home.

Not toward lunch.

Toward the Cattle Baron Hotel.

Within five minutes, the road between Second Baptist and the black Chrysler looked like the evacuation of a very small, extremely curious city.

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