Godsend

“The Lord is my light and my salvation; Whom shall I fear?”

Ben hadn’t seen another car for miles. Not since that van turned onto a private dirt road…an hour ago? An hour and a half? He couldn’t remember. The van had insisted on tailing him instead of just passing. The sameness of his surroundings — vast tracts of farmland dedicated to the cultivation of corn or soybeans, depending on the season, no man-made structures apart from barns or silos or fences, and, above all, breathtakingly flat — scrambled his perception of time. It was as though he were driving along an agrarian Möbius strip with no beginning and no end. Only occasional landmarks disrupted the monotony, like the farm on which a lone black buffalo resided.

“The Lord is the strength of my life;

Of whom shall I be afraid?”

Ben loosened up after the van turned off the road. He’d been paranoid about being followed ever since he’d started the return trip. The van had nearly sent him into a tailspin. What if they knew? Knew who he was, where he was going, what he had in the back of his pickup?

Even inadvertent tailgaters like the van were a problem. He’d taken care to securely fasten the blue tarp over the pickup bed, but still, what if one of the cords came loose and the tarp flew into a field? The Prelate had stressed over and over how vital it was that no one saw what Ben was carrying in his truck. Ben had even filled up a half-dozen plastic gas cans and put them in the backseat so that he wouldn’t have to stop at a gas station on the way.