The Visitation by Frank Peretti Page A

finally managed to catch John Billings at home. It turned out he had been gone most of the week installing a sprinkler system in Missoula, Montana.
    “Hey, what happened to my lawn?” he asked me the moment I walked over to talk with him.
    It seemed the Mower Man only mowed the lawn until he had his talk with me. Now John had a ring of mown grass around the outside of his yard and a wide border of shaggy lawn closest to his house.
    “I saw a guy mowing your grass on Thursday,” I said, eager to hear his reaction.
    John was a tough old bird in his fifties who took great pride in his yard. He was a bit miffed. “Who?”
    “Uh . . .” I almost answered, but then realized I didn’t have an answer I could actually use. “I don’t know. He didn’t tell me who he was. But he was driving your Snapper around the yard, cutting the grass. I thought he was working for you.”
    “He wasn’t working for me.” He looked around his yard in disgust. “I wouldn’t hire a guy who only does half a lawn. Did he think I was going to like this?” Then he jerked his head around to look at me as if something had finally sunk in. “He was driving my mower?”
    I could see the Snapper from where we were standing and I pointed it out. “That one right there.”
    “On Thursday.”
    “Yeah.”
    “Ever seen him before? What did he look like?”
    Well, who he looked like would have made a better question, but I proceeded to tell John what I saw, leaving out the details of the conversation we had. I was feeling an odd mix of triumph and mystification that I tried not to show: I knew that guy was some kind of phony . . . but if that was the case, who was he really?
    BY THE TIME Nevin Sorrel got back to the widow Macon’s ranch he was an hour late and carrying a whole new order of groceries, paid for out of his own pocket. Being late didn’t worry him too much. Mrs. Macon would scold him about it, but she would tolerate it. Losing four sacks of groceries while sleeping was another matter. Mrs. Macon was wealthy, quirky, and very particular about her cash flow.
    As he turned the golden brown pickup off the highway and through the ranch gate, he tried to concoct an explanation. A mechanical breakdown wouldn’t work. This was the late Cephus Macon’s truck, an immaculate Dodge with extended cab, custom running boards, and chrome-plated exhaust stacks, always kept in top condition by the widow out of respect for her husband’s memory. He could say he met an old friend, got to talking, and lost track of time, but that would sound irresponsible. A flat tire? No, that would mean exchanging one of the good tires for the spare, and that was too much trouble.
    He rehearsed some other excuses as he drove the mile-long driveway to the sprawling ranch house atop the rise, but none of them played out very well. By the time he eased the big rig into Mrs. Macon’s four-car garage, he settled for no explanation at all. He was late, he was sorry, that was it. He’d bring in the groceries, apologize, and duck if he had to.
    He grabbed two sacks from the back of the truck, knocked on the rear entry door, then cracked it open. “Mrs. Macon? I’m back.”
    Her voice came from the kitchen. “Where have you been?”
    He hurried through the laundry room and into the kitchen, a gorgeous, expansive facility with a virtual warehouse of cupboard and counter space and a vast wall of windows offering a panorama of the Macon ranch lands. The moment he saw the widow sitting at the enormous breakfast table, the first excuse he rejected didn’t seem so outlandish. “You’ll never guess what happened! The alternator belt broke and I had one awful time—”
    “You don’t have to explain,” she said gently. She was a small woman in her late sixties, with a trim figure and white hair tucked into a comb atop her head. She was sipping her afternoon drink of blended fruit juice—a blend that was supposed to include the strawberries she’d needed but he’d lost,