“Or after—” “Oh no, I mean right after The Dream! And let me tell you. You want to hear something make your hair stand up on end? As soon, the very instant I took them vows, the very instant I took them vows and drunk that water diluted right from the River Jordan, you know what taken place? You know what?” I laughed and told him I would be afraid to guess. “Jan, she got pregnant with our firstborn is just exactly what!” “That’s so. I did. Right after.” “Right after,” he emphasized. “Incredible,” I marveled. “It’s hard to imagine an elixir of such potency. She became pregnant the moment after you drank the diluted water?” “Yes sir! The very instant.” “I’d have given something to witness that event.” “Oh, man, the Strength of the Lord is a Caution.” Joe shook his head respectfully. “Like Brother Walker tell us, ‘God is a Highballer in Heaven.’ A highballer, see, is a old loggin’ term for a guy who did about twice as much as others. ‘A Highballer in Heaven with a Lowballer in Hell!’ That’s the kind of talk Brother Walker uses, Leland; he doesn’t come on with a lot of this highhanded crap other preachers talk. He lays ’em right on the line!” “That’s so. Right on the line.” The pale daylight moon darts along through the trees, keeping them in sight. That drivel about men being affected by the full moon—wolfbane and so on—is nonsense, complete nonsense... Joe and his wife continued talking about their church all the way in to Wakonda. I had planned to beg off attending the services by developing a sudden headache, but Joe’s enthusiasm was such that I couldn’t disappoint him and was compelled to accompany him to the carnival grounds, where a huge two-masted maroon tent housed his version of God. We were early. The folding chairs placed in neat rows about the bright woodshaving-strewn interior of the tent were only partly filled with long-jowled fishermen or loggers, haunted by their own dreams of windy death. Joe and Jan insisted on taking their usual seats in the front row. “Where Brother Walker really gets his teeth into you, Leland; c’mon.” But I declined, saying I would feel conspicuous. “And, as I am a newcomer in the Lord’s tent, Joe, I think it might be best to try my first sample of this potent new faith from the back row, out of reach of the good brother’s molars, all right?” And from this vantage point I was able to slip up the aisle a few minutes after services jumped off, without disturbing the worship of the red-faced believers or the rock-and-roll catechism that Brother Walker’s blind wife was whanging out on her electric steel guitar. I got out of that tent just in time. Complete and utter nonsense. Those other times when the moon happened to be full, nothing but coincidences; coincidence and nothing more. I say just in time because when I got outside I found a weird and whirly feeling sifting down on me from the thumb-smudged sky, a giddy and giggly sensation foaming up out of the cracked earth. Then it finally dawned on me: Nitwit, you have a pot hangover is all. The “aftergrass,” Peters called it. Residual high that occasionally comes on about noon the day after blowing up too much of the Mexican laughing grass the night before. Nothing very dire. Compared to the living death of an alcohol hangover, this day-after high is a small price to pay for a night-before kick. There’s no sickness; no headache; none of the baked tongue or bowled eyeballs that alcohol leaves one with—only a minor euphoria, and a dreamy, air-walking, time-stretching state that is often very pleasant. But it can tend to make the world appear a little goofy, and if one is in a goofy situation anyway—like a rhythm-and-blues church—it can tend to make it a lot goofier. So I say just in time because when the high first started to come on—to the tune of “Onward Christian Soldiers” played dance-time on a steel guitar as Brother Walker screamed for converts to stand and seek their salvation—I didn’t relate it to being high the night before and, for a few maddening moments, teetered on the verge of trooping forth up that sawdust path to metaphysical glory. In the lot outside I scribbled a note to Joe and placed it beneath the wiper blade on the pick-up, asking that he forgive my early departure, saying I would have stayed but that “even from the back row I felt the power of Brother Walker’s bite; such holiness must be taken at first in small doses.” He sees the moon again, reflected in the pick-up window: You don’t scare me. Not a bit of it. In fact, I’m in better shape than during your quarter or half . . . (“Here’s as good a place to start as any.” Hank stopped the pick-up and pointed to a yard already choked............