So faith came back, but a strange one, with a God his father wouldn't have recognized. Virgil thought about Him almost every night, about his sense of humor, and the apparent fact that He'd made rules that even He couldn't bend…
Then at one o'clock in the morning, having thought of God, Virgil drifted off to sleep, and dreamt of men sitting in motel rooms, in the dark, secretly smoking Marlboros, watching their cats ghosting illegally around their rooms.
3
Tuesday Morning THE OLD TOWN of Bluestem, named for a prairie grass, lay almost a mile north of I-90. Over the years, the space between the old town had filled up with the standard franchise places-McDonald's, Subway, Country Kitchen, Pizza Hut, Taco John's; a Holiday Inn, a Comfort Inn, a Motel 6; four or five gas stations with convenience stores, the Ford dealership and two used-car lots. There were also a half-dozen farm and truck service shops, with worn tires stacked outside and muddy-yellow driveway puddles from the overnight rain.
The old town was prettier. The residential areas were dominated by early-twentieth-century homes, each one different than the next, and big, with porches and yards with swings. The shopping district, on Main Street, was four blocks long, yellow-brick two-and three-story buildings, including a prewar movie theater that still showed movies, and all the businesses left over after you took out a Wal-Mart: law firms, insurance agencies, too many gift shops and antique stores, a couple of small clothing stores, four restaurants, a drugstore.
The courthouse was built two blocks back from Main, and was still used as a courthouse. In most small towns, the old courthouses had been retired, to be replaced by anonymous county government buildings and law-enforcement centers built outside town.