From Two-Step Devil, which will be published next month by Grove Press.

The Prophet stood on his porch, taking in the landscape. The soft earth was shooting up green everywhere he looked. Purple blossoms furred the redbuds along his driveway; here and there beneath them were sprays of yellow forsythia. Soon the cherries would be out. At the far edge of his field a high-up breeze swayed the tips of the pines.

A fine afternoon! He would drive down to the junkyard to look for the saw blade he needed to finish his Ezekiel machine. The machine was a working model of the spinning wheels he’d been carrying around in his head as long as he could remember. In the Book of Ezekiel he’d read about the interlocking wheels with rims of eyeballs, and how the wheels followed after four creatures—man, lion, ox, and eagle. How it was the spirits of those creatures that made the wheels move.

He got in his van and drove out to the highway, crossing the border from Alabama into Georgia and taking Nickajack Road to the base of the mountain. It was warmer down here, the dogwoods with their little white plates already set out on branches. At the junkyard in Flintstone he pulled through the open gate and parked beside the abandoned office. He walked along the chain-link fence separating the junkyard from an access road.

A circular blade the size of a saucer you might set under a teacup. That’s what he was looking for. Teeth with a good thick kerf, nothing too rusted. He had eleven blades with spindles through their centers laid out and ready. When he found the twelfth—the smallest, which he thought of as his Benjamin blade—he’d attach a battery-powered motor to make it spin. The teeth on the smallest blade would intersect with those on the next, which were bigger in size. And that blade would spin the one beside it. And so on. Small as a mustard seed but able to move mighty equipment! He liked the idea of using thrown-away saw blades to make his machine.

Something fallen raised up higher than it was before.

He walked up and down along the fence, toeing up scrap metal here and there. He didn’t feel much like bending over. His left side was hurting him bad today.

The sun was just starting to lower over the mountain when he heard tires on gravel. Through an opening in the fence where two straps had rotted out, he saw a black Mercedes pull up to the abandoned gas station on the other side of the access road. It parked between the convenience store and a shed with the word feed spray-painted on its side. The passenger door opened and a thickset man with a short beard and mustache got out.

He wore a buttoned vest over a long-sleeved shirt, khaki shorts, and white athletic sneakers with tube socks to his knees.

The woman who got out of the driver’s side had short, spiky hair dyed the color of a Coca-Cola can. She opened the rear door. The Prophet saw long legs and bare feet. The girl who stepped out looked like a teenager. She was taller than both the woman and the man, thin, with messy dark hair falling around her face and shoulders, reaching almost to her elbows. She wore a long yellow sundress with spaghetti straps that fell down around her arms. She pushed them up, but they fell again.

Kingston, the woman said. Where’d you put them pills?

The man reached into his vest pocket and tossed something that rattled. The woman caught it, took the girl by the elbow, and walked her around behind the store.

The Prophet waited, and when they came back, he saw the girl had changed into a short dress that sparkled like flashbulbs when she moved. She wore high-heeled sandals with straps around the ankles and had her hair piled up on top of her head. The woman and the girl got into the back seat together; the man got behind the wheel.

When they pulled onto the access road, the Prophet caught a glimpse of the girl’s face in the rear window. She had her hands up like she was about to sneeze or push her hair behind her ears.

There were zip ties on her wrists.

The car headed out toward Chattanooga. No license plate.

The Prophet’s heart stuttered against his rib cage. He tried to take shallow breaths, but the coughing overtook him.

Only a glimpse. But he knew who the girl was: an angel of God. One of His Innocents. He knew what she needed was rescue from the man in the vest and the woman with the Coca-Cola hair.

He knew he was the one who was supposed to rescue her.

The Prophet drove to the junkyard in Flintstone every afternoon for the rest of the week. With each day the girl didn’t show up, he began to think maybe he wasn’t called to rescue her.

Well, that was okay. He was still a big-time prophet like Ezekiel and Daniel. The Big Fish was still coming.

On Tuesday, exactly a week since he’d seen the girl, he drove to the junkyard and parked beside the office. An overnight rain had left the day hot and muggy. Mosquitoes buzzed in his ears. Using a length of PVC pipe, he began to prod around in piles. He wandered away from the fence, moving things here and there, trying to trick himself into caring about the smallest blade—it was like a performance he put on for himself, or maybe for God—and when he heard the tires, in his hurry to get back to the fence, he tripped and fell over an upturned fender. He scrambled up and ran to the opening, ignoring the sting in his hands and knees.

It was there, the Mercedes—if he’d gone off any farther he might’ve missed it!

The man was standing with his back to the junkyard. When he turned around, the Prophet saw he’d shaved off the beard but still had the mustache. He was wearing a dark suit—wool, maybe.

The woman stood beside the car, smoking a cigarette like before. Her spiky hair was hidden beneath a shiny black wig, but he could tell it was the same woman by her height and build.

All right, Lord, the Prophet whispered. All right.

He had a small mirror, the kind women used to powder their noses. He’d been careful to slide it into his pocket each day. He’d also painted the word resku on a cut piece of plywood and left it near the opening in the fence, inside an old car tire. He’d made sure the word fit in the open space where the fence posts were missing.

He peered at the car. Dimly, through the tinted back window, he saw a head with light, curly hair. His heart double-timed. A different girl? Or maybe a wig, like the Coca-Cola woman’s? She was still sucking her cigarette.

Her back was to him. Now was his chance.

He held the mirror so that it caught the lowering sun.

One, two, three flashes onto the backseat window.

The woman opened the door. Again the Prophet saw the long legs and sandals with hectic strings tied loose about the ankles. The same sparkly dress. It had to be her. The girl was facing his direction, rubbing her eyes, and then—glory—she yanked off the blond curls to reveal the temple-of-God hair piled on top of her head.

The Prophet flashed quickly on the ground in front of her feet.

One, two, three.

The girl looked toward the fence. For the first time the Prophet saw her face straight on: clear skin and bones high up in her cheeks, a small off-center nose, and wide-set eyes that drooped a little at their corners.

She stood there motionless, and when the woman flicked away her cigarette and took the girl by the elbow to walk her around back, she only bowed her head.

The man was punching on a cellular. Five minutes passed, ten.

The woman and the girl came back around the shed.

Now the girl was barefoot and walking on tiptoe, holding her strappy high heels in one hand. She had the blond wig back on, with a metal clip that sparkled like her dress.

She was looking in his direction.

He held up the sign: resku.

The girl threw her head back and laughed. The sound was deeper than he thought a girl could make, like a croupy cough, howhowhow. The woman pushed her toward the car while she kept making the sound, howhow-howhowhow; the man walked over and put his face up to hers and said something into her ear. She made the sound again.

The man took a step backward, lurched forward, and pushed his fist into her stomach. The girl fell to sitting on the ground, like someone had shoved a chair into her knees from behind. She rolled to her side and lay still.

Lot of low things the Prophet had seen but never a grown man punch a child. For a second he thought he would shout and climb over the fence. But he wasn’t strong enough to climb, and if he shouted they’d be onto him; they’d get in the car and drive away and stop bringing the girl here.

The woman was helping the girl up, folding her back into the car. The man got behind the wheel.

The Prophet flashed desperately at the backseat window.

One, two, three.

The girl’s hand lifted—with a finger she touched the window—and then her face was pressed to the glass.

Beneath the dark smears of her eyes her mouth was shaping words. He could hear the words inside his head, like listening to his own thoughts, and long after the car had backed up and spun its tires and turned onto the road toward Chattanooga, he could hear the words still repeating: Help me, help me.

A lit lump of charcoal sat on his head. The heat poured into his ears and spilled down his cheeks, a liquid fire finding its way into the crack between his lips and burning his tongue.

It wasn’t two separate callings the Lord had given him, one to wait for the Big Fish, and one to rescue the girl. They were the same calling, because the girl—he knew it, he knew it, how had he not realized?—the girl was the Big Fish he’d been waiting for.

How to get the line back out to her? How to get her to grab on so he could reel her in? That’s what he had to figure out.

Well, now he knew some things. He knew it was Tuesdays they drove through Flintstone. He knew they got her ready in the bathroom behind the gas station. He knew their routine, and if he could somehow get her away and take her up the back roads to his cabin, he’d take care of her for a while. He would show her his boards and explain what was coming at the End, so that even after he was gone, the meaning of the prophecies would be safe inside her head.

It was growing dark. He drove up the mountain, reminding himself not to speed.

Inside the cabin he filled his lamp and lit the wick. He couldn’t remember the last time his nerves had him strummed up like this. He’d never be able to sleep. He’d stay awake all night if he had to—he would get calm and think things through.

He lay on his mattress and pulled his blanket up to his chin. His T-shirt was soaked through with sweat, but he couldn’t tell if he was hot or cold.

The girl would take steps. She would grab the line and start walking toward him and he would reel her the rest of the way in.

The girl would see with the eyes of her heart. She would understand the urgency and take the visions, the important ones, to the president with the face he trusted.

A young girl come all that way to speak to him! He would get on the radio and television and punch up his internet system and send out a message: Wake up, America. Get out of bed and listen.