Fertility told Adam to look for a green late-model Chevy somewhere within two blocks of the truck stop outside Grand Island. She said the keys would be left in it, and the tank would be full of gas. After we left the Casa Castile, it took us about five minutes to find the car.

Looking at the dashboard statuette in front of him, Adam says, "What the hell is that supposed to be?"

It's supposed to be me.

"It doesn't look a thing like you."

It's supposed to look really pious.

"It looks like a devil," Adam says.

I drive.

Adam talks.

Adam says, the cultures that don't castrate you to make you a slave, they castrate your mind. They make sex so filthy and evil and dangerous that no matter how good you know it would feel to have sexual relations, you won't.

That's how most religions in the outside world do, Adam says. That's how the Creedish did it.

This isn't anything I want to hear, but when I go to turn on the radio, all the tuning buttons are preset to religious stations. Choir music. Gospel preachers telling me I'm bad and wrong. One station I come across is a familiar voice, the Tender Branson Radio Ministry. Here's one of a thousand canned radio shows I taped in a studio I don't remember where.

The abuse of the Creedish elders was unspeakable, I'm saying on the radio.

Adam says, "Do you remember what they did to you?"

From the radio I'm saying, The abuse was never-ending.

"When you were a kid, I mean," Adam says.

Outside, the sun was catching up, making shapes out of the total darkness.

On the radio, I'm saying, The complete way our minds were controlled we never had a chance. None of us in the outside world would ever want sex. We'd never betray the church. We'd spend our entire lives at work.

"And if you never have sex," Adam's saying, "you never gain a sense of power. You never gain a voice or an identity of your own. Sex is the act that separates us from our parents. Children from adults. It's by having sex that adolescents first rebel."

And if you never have sex, Adam tells me, you never grow beyond everything else your parents taught you. If you never break the rule against sex, you won't break any other rule.

On the radio, I say, It's hard for someone in the outside world to imagine how completely trained we were.

"The Vietnam War didn't cause the mess of the 1960s," Adam says. "Drugs didn't cause it. Well, only one drug did. It was the birth control pill. For the first time in history, everybody could have all the sex they wanted. Everybody could have that kind of power."

Throughout history the most powerful rulers have been sex maniacs. And he asks, does their sex appetite come from having power, or does their will for power come from their sex appetite? "And if you don't crave sex," he says, "will you crave power?" No, he says.

"And instead of electing decent, boring, sexually repressed officials," he says, "maybe we should find the horniest candidates and maybe they can get some good work done."

A sign goes by saying, Tender Branson Sensitive Materials Sanitary Landfill, 10 miles.

Adam says, "Do you see what I'm getting at?"

Home is just ten minutes away.

Adam says, "You must remember what happened."

Nothing happened.

On the radio, I say, It's impossible to describe how terrible the abuse was.

More and more along the sides of the road are bits of smut magazines blown off uncovered trucks. Fading full-frontal nude shots of beautiful women wrap themselves around each tree trunk. Rain- soaked men with long purple erections hang limp in the branches. The black boxes of video movies lie in the gravel along the road. A punctured woman made of pink vinyl lies in the weeds with the wind waving her hair and hands after us as we drive past.

"Sex is not a fearsome and terrible thing," Adam says.

On the radio I say, It's best if I just put the past behind me and move on with my life.

Up ahead, there's a point where the trees lining the road stop, and there's nothing beyond them. The sun is up and overtaking us, and ahead in the distance is nothing but a wasteland.

A sign goes by saying, Welcome to the Tender Branson Sensitive Materials Sanitary Landfill.

And we're home.

Beyond the sign, the valley stretches out to the horizon, bare, littered, and gray except for the bright yellow of a few bulldozers parked and silent because it's Sunday.

There's not a tree.

There's not a bird.

The only landmark is at the center of the valley, a towering concrete pylon, just a square gray column of concrete rises from the spot where the Creedish meeting house stood with everyone dead inside. Ten years ago. Spreading out on the ground all around us are pictures of men with women, women with women, men with men, men and women with animals and appliances.

Adam doesn't say a word.

From the radio I say, My life is full of joy and love now.

From the radio I say, I look forward to marrying the woman chosen for me as part of the Genesis Campaign.

From the radio I say, With the help of my followers I will stem the sex craving that has taken control of the world.

The road is long and rutted from the rim of the valley toward the concrete pylon at the center. Along both sides as we drive, dildos and magazines and latex vaginas and French ticklers cling together in smoldering heaps, and the smoke from those heaps drifts in a choking haze of dirty white across the road.

Up ahead, the pylon is larger and larger, sometimes lost behind the smoke of burning pornography, only to reappear, looming.

From the radio I say, My whole life is for sale at a bookstore near you.

From the radio I say, With God's help, I will turn the world away from ever wanting sex.

Adam turns off the radio.

Adam says, "I left the valley the night I found out what the elders did to you, to tenders and biddies."

The smoke settles over the road. It comes into the car and our lungs, acrid and burning our eyes.

With tears running down each cheek I say, They didn't do anything.

Adam coughs, "Admit it."

The pylon reappears, closer.

There's nothing to admit.

The smoke obscures everything.

Then Adam says it. Adam says, "They made you watch."

I can't see anything, but I just keep driving.

"The night my wife had our first child," Adam says with the smoke leaving his tears traced down his face in black, "the elders took all the tenders and biddies in the district and made them watch. My wife screamed just the way they told her. She screamed, and the elders preached and wailed how the wages of sex was death. She screamed, and they made childbirth as painful as they could. She screamed, and the baby died. Our child. She screamed and then she died."

The first two victims of the Deliverance.

It was that night Adam walked out of the Creedish church district and made his phone call.

"The elders made you watch every time anyone in the church district had a child," Adam says.

We're only going twenty or thirty miles an hour, but somewhere lost in the smoke just ahead is the giant concrete pylon of the church memorial.

I can't say anything, but I just keep breathing.

"So of course you'd never want sex. You'd never want sex because every time our mother had another child," Adam says, "they made you sit there and watch. Because sex to you is just pain and sin and your mother stretched out there screaming."

And then he's said it.

The smoke is so thick I can't even see Adam.

He says, "By now, sex must look like nothing but torture to you."

He just spits it out that way.

Truth, The Fragrance.

And at that instant the smoke clears.

And we crash head-on into the concrete wall.

In the beginning there's nothing but dust. A fine white talcum powder hangs in the car, mixed with smoke.

The dust and smoke swirl in the air.

The only sound is the car engine dripping something, oil, antifreeze, gasoline.

Until Adam starts screaming.

The dust is from the air bags protecting us at our moment of impact. The air bags are collapsed slack and empty back onto the dashboard now, and as the dust settles, Adam is screaming and clutching his face. The blood coming from between his fingers is black against the talcum white coat.

In one hand, Adam holds the statuette smeared with blood, more of a devil now than ever.

With his other hand, Adam grabs at the ground beside him and drags an open magazine across his mutilated face. The magazine shows a man and woman copulating, and from under it Adam says, "When you find a rock. Bring it down on my face when I tell you."

I can't.

"I won't let you kill me," Adam says.

I don't trust him.

"You'll be giving me a better life. It's in your power," Adam says from under the magazine. "If you want to save my life, do this for me first."

Adam says, "If you don't, the minute you go for help, I'll crawl away and hide, and I'll die out here."

I weigh the rock in my hand.

I ask, will he tell me when to stop?

"I'll tell you when I've had enough."

Does he promise?

"I promise."

I lift the rock so its shadow falls across the people having sex on Adam's face.

And I bring it down.

The rock sinks in so far.

"Again!" Adam says. "Harder."

And I bring the rock down.

And the rock sinks in farther.

"Again!"

And I bring it down.

"Again!"

And I bring the rock down.

Blood soaks up through the pages, up to turn the fucking couple red and then purple.

"Again!" Adam says, his words distorted, his mouth and nose not the same shape anymore.

And I bring the rock down on the couple's arms and their legs and their faces.

"Again."

And I bring the rock down until the rock is sticky red with blood, until the magazine is collapsed in the center. Until my hands are sticky red.

Then I stop.

I ask, Adam?

I go to lift the magazine, but it tears. It's so sodden.

Adam's hand holding the statuette goes slack and the bloody statuette rolls into the grave I dug to find something solid.

I ask, Adam?

The wind carries smoke over us both.

A huge shadow is spreading toward us from the base of the pylon. One minute it's just touching Adam. The next minute, the shadow has him covered.

Ladies and gentlemen, here on Flight 2039, our third engine has just flamed out.

We have just one engine left before we begin our terminal descent.

The cold shadow of the Creedish church monument falls over me all morning as I bury Adam Branson. Under the layers of obscenity, under the Hungry Butt Holes, under the Ravishing She- Males, I dig with my hands into the churchyard dirt. Bigger stones carved with willows and skulls are buried all around me. The epitaphs on them are about what you'd imagine.

Gone but Not Forgotten.

In Heaven with their mistakes may they dwell.

Beloved Father.

Cherished Mother.

Confused Family.

May whatever God they find grant them forgiveness and peace.

Ineffectual Caseworker.

Obnoxious Agent.

Misguided Brother.

Maybe it's the Botox botulinum toxin injected into me or the drug interactions or the lack of sleep or the long-term effects of Attention Withdrawal Syndrome, but I don't feel a thing. The insides of my mouth taste bitter. I press my lymph nodes in my neck, but I only feel contempt.

Maybe after everybody dying around me, I've just developed a skill for losing people. A natural talent. A blessing.

The same as Fertility's being barren is the perfect job skill for her being a surrogate mother, maybe I've developed a useful lack of feeling.

The same way you might look at your leg cut off at the knee and not feel anything at first, maybe this is just shock.

But I hope not.

I don't want it to wear off.

I pray not to feel anything ever again.

Because if it wears off, this is all going to hurt so much. This is going to hurt for the rest of my life.

You won't learn this in any charm school, but to keep dogs from digging up something you've buried, sprinkle the grave with ammonia. To keep away ants, sprinkle borax.

For roaches, use alum.

Peppermint oil will keep away rats.

To bleach away bloodstains from under your fingernails, sink your fingertips into half a lemon and wiggle them around. Rinse them under warm water.

The wreck of the car is burned down to just the seats smoldering. Just this ribbon of black smoke flutters out across the valley.

When I go to lift Adam's body, the gun falls out of his jacket pocket. The only sound comes from a few flies buzzing around the rock still clutched with a print of my hand in blood.

What's left of Adam's face is still wrapped in the sticky red magazine, and as I lower first his feet and then his shoulders into the hole I've dug, a yellow taxi is bumping and crawling toward me from the horizon.

The hole is only big enough for Adam to fit curled on his side, and kneeling on the brim, I start pushing in the dirt.

When the clean dirt runs out, I push in faded pornography, obscene books with their spines broken, Traci Lords and John Holmes, Kayla Kleevage and Dick Rambone, vibrators with dead batteries, dog-eared playing cards, expired condoms, brittle and fragile but never used.

I know the feeling.

Condoms ribbed for extra sensitivity.

The last thing I need is sensitivity.

Here are condoms lined with a topical anesthetic for prolonged action. What a paradox. You don't feel a thing, but you can fuck for hours.

This seems to really miss the point.

I want my whole life lined with a topical anesthetic.

The yellow taxi humps across the potholes, getting closer. One person is driving. One person is in the backseat.

Who this is, I don't know, but I can imagine.

I pick up the gun and try to wedge it into my jacket pocket. The barrel tears the pocket lining, and then the whole thing is hidden. If there are bullets inside, I don't know.

The taxi rushes to a stop about shouting distance away.

Fertility gets out and waves. She leans down by the driver's window and the breeze carries her words to me, "Wait, please. This is going to take a minute."

Then she comes over with her arms raised out at her sides for balance and her face looking down at every step across the sliding, glossy layers of used magazines. Orgy Boys. Cum Gravers.

"I thought you could use some company about now," she calls over to me.

I look around for a tissue or a crotchless underwear to wipe the blood off my hands.

Looking up, Fertility says, "Wow, the way the shadow of that Creedish death monument thing is falling across Adam's grave is so symbolic."

The three hours I've been burying Adam is the longest I've ever been out of a job. Now Fertility Hollis is here to tell me what to do. My new job is following her.

Fertility turns to gaze around the horizon and says, "This is so totally The Valley of the Shadow of Death here." She says, "You sure picked the right place to smash in your brother's skull. It's so totally Cain and Abel I can't stand it."