The man handed John Lee a copy of that day’s Jerusalem Post. The lead story above the fold was the stabbing death of a West German woman, a tourist, just inside the Damascus Gate, the entrance to the Arab Quarter of the Old City.

"Thanks for the warning," John Lee said, after briefly scanning the article. "Judging from the paper, it came out of nowhere. Almost at random."

From behind the counter, the clerk surveyed him with sad eyes. "No, not at random," he said. "I wouldn't call it random. It was deliberate. They target European and American tourists. They want to discourage you from visiting."

"I would imagine that it's effective."

"Yes. It has hurt tourism. But as nasty as these incidents are, the bombs are worse. They kill many, many people. Indiscriminately."

John Lee returned the newspaper to him without comment. Then he handed him his room key, for safekeeping, and an airmail letter he had written to Maureen on the flight, filled with some of the things he had wanted to say to her but hadn't. "Could you please mail this for me?" he asked.

"Certainly," the clerk said. "You could perhaps visit Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum, today. Or go shopping downtown. You could wait until later in the week to visit the Old City. Things should be calmer then."

John Lee thanked him again. He didn't tell the clerk that he planned to ignore his well-intentioned warning and visit the Old City that day, anyway, despite the stabbing. Changing his itinerary went against John Lee's nature. He had planned three days in Jerusalem, and he didn't want to waste any of his limited time.

There was another reason to stick to his schedule. John Lee had been taught that only God decided when, where and how He would call his children home. Even though along the way John Lee had lost his faith in the omnipotent Southern Baptist God of his childhood, he hadn't completely abandoned that deterministic worldview. Now he would call it fate, but he still respected the notion that some things were out of human control.

He wouldn't run scared. The odds were more likely that he would be nailed crossing the street by one of the city's reckless drivers than be harmed by a terrorist. In any event, he rationalized to himself, he would simply substitute one fear for another. When he was planning his trip, he feared that Jerusalem might have been transformed by tourism into a bland Holyland theme park. He could see now that the intifada, the Palestinian uprising against Israeli rule on the West Bank, was for real and he would have to look out for his own safety.

A month earlier the travel agent in Tallahassee had tried to talk him into an elaborate "Pilgrim's Package," but John Lee finally persuaded her that all he needed were hotel reservations in Jerusalem and Tiberias and a car rental. He was too independent for a tour; he didn't want to be tied to an itinerary not of his own choosing. He asked her to find moderately priced hotels near the center of town. (John Senior would have approved of his traveling on the economy plan.)

His father had dominated his thoughts the night before, when John Lee had arrived. On the long silent cab ride from Lod airport he wondered why, when his father was still alive, John Senior had never said anything about John Lee visiting Jerusalem and the Galilee, presumably because he feared his son's rejection of the idea.

It was true, in the narrowest sense, that John Lee did not have to make the trip. He could have told Harry Newberry, his family's long-time attorney and executor of his father's will, that he couldn't accept the terms of the bequest, in which case the money would have gone to charity, to Baptist missionary work in the Middle East. That was what Maureen had suggested. She hadn't said much about his trip. She had never been overly jealous of his time, and he would not be gone for long, certainly no longer than on one of the band's occasional forays into Georgia when John Lee was feeling more ambitious.

When he asked her if she wanted to come along to Israel, she had shrugged. "This is your thing," she said. "I would be in the way."

"No, you wouldn't."

"I would," she said. "Or I'd feel that I was, or I'd feel really weird. This whole trip, the idea itself, is more than a little strange, but I guess you know that already. It's Meredith strange." That was Maureen's label for any behavior by John Lee's family that she considered weird, such as John Lee calling his parents by their first names.

"You obviously feel you have to go," she said.

"I do," he said. "I don't see I have a choice."

"That's in your head," she said. "We always have a choice. You don't have to do what you don't want to."

He just shook his head. "It's the least that I can do."

Maureen didn't understand that by making it one of his last requests John Senior had made it impossible for John Lee to decline. There wasn't a real choice involved: John Lee felt honor-bound to accept.

"Don't worry," she said with a mischievous grin when it became clear that he was going. "I'll be here when you get back. Unless I get a better offer."

Harry Newberry had given him his father's Bible, the leather cover creased and worn, after they read the will together. A month before he died, John Senior had insisted Newberry take the Bible for safekeeping. When John Lee was a boy, John Senior had read the Bible to him almost every night at bedtime. John Lee would pull the covers of his comforter to his chin and listen to the rumble of his father's voice, secretly repelled by much of what he heard, the angry Jehovah of the Old Testament, the God who turned Lot's wife into salt, tormented Job with afflictions, who seemed to throw temper tantrums whenever the Israelites disobeyed Him. John Lee didn't tell John Senior that, of course, but instead asked him to read passages from the Gospel according to John, or from the mystical poetry of the Psalms. He found that more to his liking. He did not doubt that his father had guessed the reasons for his request, for John Senior was a gentle man himself.

The night before, as the cab hurtled through the darkness and he caught glimpses of Jerusalem's lights on the highlands above, John Lee wondered when it was his father had inserted the language about the trip into his will; after Emma's death, probably, which meant it would have been in the past three years. John Senior's motives seemed transparent: the hope that John Lee's pilgrimage would somehow revive his faith, that physical proximity to the holy sites would miraculously rekindle the belief that John Lee had lost in college. But John Lee knew that wasn't going to happen. He would never again believe in miracle stories, or any of the rest of the fairy tales, for that matter. So he had decided that he would visit the historical sites and play tourist for ten days. That would discharge his obligation.

At the same time John Lee suspected that his father found some humor in the idea of John Lee, the skeptic, the doubting Thomas, making the pilgrimage to Israel. John Senior had always looked for the odd and absurd, for the contradictions, in what he called the human comedy.

"His strange sense of humor?"

"His great sense of humor. It's your best quality, too. Your father has to get the credit."

He fought back a sudden wave of nausea as the cab reached the outskirts of the city; it was a sign of anxiety and nervousness he had experienced before. It was almost 10 PM when John Lee finally arrived at the quiet West Jerusalem side-street where his hotel was located. He paid the cab driver and checked in at the front desk, anxious to retreat to the privacy of his room. He followed the bell hop (by his looks a Palestinian, he guessed) to a cramped and shabby elevator, where they rode to the third floor. Once in his narrow room, John Lee lay down on the single bed and took a few deep breaths, fighting back the return of his anxiety. He tried clearing his mind and thinking of the other times he had been in strange and unfamiliar places and how he had lost his anxiety and enjoyed himself.

There was no television in the room, just a battered clock radio on the night table near a floor lamp. John Lee switched on the radio and heard a deep-voiced announcer speaking in Hebrew. He ducked into the undersized bathroom where he washed his hands and face with the hotel's thin bar of soap, drying himself with the faded, lightweight towel. A familiar song by an English band whose name he couldn't remember came on the radio; the chorus—something about "right here, right now, watching the world wake up from history"—seemed somehow fitting.

His nausea had subsided by then, replaced by the beginnings of a dull headache. The music on the radio made him wish he had brought his guitar, which was a fail-safe friend in anxious times. John Lee always found comfort in fingering chords or composing a melody. He could lose almost any anxiety in the familiarity of his musical security blanket. But he had decided to travel light, and so he had left his guitar and its bulky case in Tallahassee.

He tried reading his Fodor's travel guidebook, but the light from the floor lamp bothered his eyes. So John Lee took two aspirin and went to bed, hoping to sleep off the effects of the long flight from Miami. He heard the sounds of the elevator and of people moving up and down the corridor and then he fell asleep.

In the morning, after he had left the hotel, John Lee wandered around downtown for a few hours. His plan was to stop at locations he'd culled from the travel guides he'd read before the trip. He had carefully marked the spots on a Baedeker's map. Buddy, his latest drummer, had kidded John Lee about his preparation. "You're too damn serious about this," Buddy said. "It ain't like you're going to be tested on what you see when you get back."

"No, I'm not," John Lee conceded. "But I like to know where I am."

"Suit yourself," Buddy said. "Me, I like to be spontaneous. To go with the flow."

John Senior had taught his son the way to read a map when John Lee was twelve and they had gone camping together in northwest Texas, near the New Mexico border. John Senior had John Lee plot their route to the next campsite using a U.S. Geological Survey map and John Senior's German-made compass. John Senior had loved the certainty of maps.

"With a map and a compass you're never lost," he told John Lee.

"But you have to know where you are," John Lee objected. "You need a point of reference."

"Put me anywhere in the world with a half-decent map, and I'll find some landmarks and then I'll plot a way back home. There are always going to be landmarks, John."

With John Senior's battered compass in his front trouser pocket for luck, John Lee strolled through Independence Park, past the Town Hall, built after the Israelis' victory in the Six Day War, and then skirted the massive Russian Cathedral with its green cupolas. He took a slight detour into the Russian Quarter before turning back to the west. The downtown had a cosmopolitan, European feel to it, with its broad boulevards and limestone-faced buildings. Most of the young people he saw on the street were dressed casually in jeans and tee-shirts like their American counterparts, and John Lee noticed at several intersections, mini-billboards promoting Kevin Costner in the movie Robin Hood. That part of the street scene seemed familiar to him, but the ever-present uniformed Israeli soldiers, many of them just kids themselves, and the groups of black-clad Orthodox men striding along the sidewalks, did not.

John Lee walked back through the Merkaz Mis'hari section, using the domed tower of the YMCA building as a reference point, until he reached the Yemin Moshe Quarter, near the Montefiore Windmill. He had an appointment for lunch at a nearby restaurant, at noon, with Lucas Spring, a Baptist minister who had been a college friend of John Senior.

Spring had lived in Jerusalem for ten years. He made his living by guiding Baptist groups on tours of Israel and when John Lee found that John Senior had paper-clipped Spring's business card to the will, he figured that he was meant to call him. They'd agreed to meet for lunch on John Lee's first day in Jerusalem, the only time Spring was available.

John Lee found the Windmill Restaurant on a crooked side street within sight of the southwestern wall of the Old City and the Kidron Valley. He arrived a few minutes before noon and found the place nearly empty except for a few bored waiters and Spring, who was waiting for him in the bar at the front of the restaurant. Spring quickly explained that he'd only been there for five minutes, as if, absent his explanation, John Lee would assume he'd become a West Jerusalem barfly.

Spring was a large, fleshy man with silver hair and a deep voice, a voice John Lee could easily imagine soaring and falling in the roller-coaster cadences of a Sunday sermon. John Lee guessed that the man was in his late sixties; he remembered that Spring had been a contemporary of John Senior's at the seminary in Houston. Spring mopped a thin film of perspiration from his face with a white handkerchief. Even though it was a relatively cool day, the walk from his apartment to the restaurant had caused him to start sweating heavily.

Once they had been seated at a table, Spring began with another apology that he wouldn't be able to offer John Lee a personal tour of Jerusalem and the Galilee. "Like I told you on the phone, I'm retiring in a few weeks," he said. "To the other land of milk and honey, the United States of America. I stopped guiding tours last week because I need some time to pack up for the move. There are a million loose ends to tie up."

"Where are you planning to settle?" John Lee asked.

"I'm not sure yet," Spring said, without glancing up from his menu. He had a pair of dark-rimmed half glasses perched on the bridge of his nose. "I'll stay with my sister in Raleigh for a time and then decide."

A waiter arrived at their table and Spring ordered a tabbouleh salad and couscous with chicken. John Lee asked for the only dish on the menu he recognized, hummus with lamb. Spring assured him that it was a specialty of the restaurant.

"You do look like your father," Spring said. "Especially around the eyes. I can see the resemblance." He paused. "I'm sorry for your loss. I never spent a great deal of time with him, but I respected and admired your father."

"Thank you," John Lee said, hoping that Spring wouldn't dwell on John Senior's death. He hoped to avoid any religious pep talk about how John Senior was better off now that he had joined the rest of the Saints.

"I never did get around to asking your father whether you're related to Don Meredith," Spring began, surprising John Lee with his change in topic. "Your family's been in Texas forever, hasn't it?"

"Dad was from Austin, and Don Meredith's from Mount Vernon, in Franklin County. We may be distant relations, but I couldn't claim him as kin."

Spring seemed disappointed in the answer. "I haven't been able to follow the Cowboys here," he said. "Let alone Baylor. The International Herald Tribune's football coverage is spotty. Fortunately the Super Bowl is shown on TV here, otherwise I'd miss that as well."

"We're about a third of the way through the season," said John Lee. "The Cowboys are off to a good start. You'll get all the football you could want when you get back home."

"I'm looking forward to that," Spring said. "That and Christmas. You'd have to live here to understand how little attention is paid to Christmas. Makes all of us expats homesick. At the same time, a part of me wishes I could stay. I will miss this city. And the sea of Galilee. That's an amazing place."

"It's on my list to visit."

"It's an amazing place," Spring said. "I also hope you get a chance to meet some Israelis your own age. I've liked the Israelis. For the most part, they're all right. And not at all like the Jews in the States. No persecution complex, no paranoia about anti-Semitism. They don't cast themselves as victims. They're tough as nails, and not afraid to let you know it."

John Lee didn't say what he was thinking: that the greater the distance, the greater the affinity. Most Baptists of his acquaintance loved the Jews of Israel much more than those of say, Jerusalem, Arkansas. John Lee had passed through that Jerusalem once, a small town in Conway County, north of Little Rock, and he imagined that few, if any, of Abraham's descendants had ever taken up residence there, or would ever want to.

"I tell you what I won't miss," Spring said, shifting his bulk in his chair. "Since the intifada began everyone seems to be waiting for something really bad to happen. It wasn't like that when I first came here. There was more of a live and let live attitude. That's gone."

"Has there been a lot of violence?" John Lee asked.

"Sporadic," he said. "Like the stabbing yesterday. The police and the army will be all over the Old City for the next week or so. Today at least the Old City should be safe. Another one of those paradoxes that makes this place run."

"What's the solution?" John Lee asked. "Make Jerusalem an international city?"

"Neither side would accept that," Spring said. "It's too logical, too American. I gave up trying to figure out a solution to this mess a while back. It's a waste of time even considering the political situation, so I don't."

Spring shrugged in resignation. "So there you have it." He took off his half-glasses and retrieved a case from his sports coat to put them in. He turned his attention back to John Lee. "So what brings you to Jerusalem?" he asked. "I've learned over the years that most everyone who comes here has a very personal reason."

"It's my father," John Lee found himself explaining. "It was in his will, a legacy of sorts. John Senior set aside some money for me to visit Jerusalem and the Galilee. The only stipulation was that I had to take the trip within a year of his passing."

"That's a marvelous idea," said Spring. "If Amy and I had been blessed with children, I'd have made sure we visited here with them."

John Lee remembered that Spring was a widower. He had learned from Harry Newberry that Spring moved to Israel shortly after his wife's death. "Maybe he thought he could leave his grief behind," Newberry said. "That never works, though, does it? I know at the time the move struck me as odd but your father seemed to understand it. Considering how he reacted to Emma's passing, it makes some sense."

Almost as if he had guessed what John Lee was thinking, Spring began explaining his reasons for coming to Jerusalem. "I'd always been intrigued when I had visited over the years," he said. "When Amy died I was at a loss as to what to do. Then I opened my Bible and came upon Psalm One hundred and twenty two. I felt like it was written for me, all those wonderful verses about going to the house of the Lord and standing within the gates of Jerusalem. I saw it as a sign. I'm confident it was. I put my affairs in order and bought a plane ticket here. That was almost ten years ago."

"It's a long way from Dallas."

"You know what T.S. Eliot said about pilgrimage sites?" Spring asked. He didn't wait for John Lee to answer. "They are places where prayer had been valid. That's true for here, you know. Prayer has been valid here for centuries. Dallas has a ways to go to catch up."

"My Dad was taken with this place, too. He had been here once, on a pilgrimage of sorts, and talked about the impression it made on him. He always wanted to come back. I guess he wanted me to have the same experience."

"So are you using up vacation time?" Spring asked.

"I'm self-employed, I guess you could say," John Lee said. "So I vacation whenever it doesn't interfere with touring. I've got my own band, country-rock. There are five of us and we play mainly around Tallahassee. We'll jump over to Pensacola or down to Tampa and Gainesville now and then, but our base is Tallahassee."

"What is your role in the band?" Spring asked. John Lee could see that he was an attentive listener.

"I play lead guitar and sing. All those years in the choir. I've put them to good use."

"You enjoy it," Spring said. "I can tell.

"It is what I want to do. For now."

"You're young," Spring said. "You should be doing what you want to."

"I can tell you that John Senior wasn't crazy about my singing. I'm afraid it was a bit of a disappointment."

Spring made no reply. That John Senior had been disappointed with John Lee's choice of careers went without saying. He had not considered it serious work. But John Lee didn't want his life to be shaped by expectations of others. Growing up, John Lee had hated being a preacher's kid, a PK, and the black-and-white expectations that came with that designation. Preacher's kids were supposed to be either holier-than-thou paragons, on the fast track to the seminary, or rebellious hell raisers. John Lee resolved to be neither, and to follow his own course.

The waiter returned to clear their table of the lunch dishes. Spring had a cup of black Turkish coffee and John Lee ordered a Coke. Spring talked about a fishing trip he hoped to take with his brother-in-law. They were planning to go miles off-shore for marlin.

When they had finished their drinks, Spring insisted on paying for lunch. They paused at the front door of the restaurant, Spring resting his hand lightly on John Lee's arm, keeping him there for a moment. Spring squinted in the light, wincing from its harshness after the dark of the restaurant. In the natural light, John Lee saw that Spring had the pallor of a sick man. He wondered whether Spring's departure had been prompted by poor health.

"We don't always get around to saying the things we need to say," Spring said. "After Amy was gone I thought of a million things I wanted to say to her that I never did." He looked at John Lee and smiled. "If your father was here today, I'm sure he'd tell you that you were never a disappointment to him. Some of your choices may have disappointed him, but not you."

"Thanks," said John Lee, embarrassed by Spring's comments. He promised to look up the older man if he ever found himself in Raleigh. They shook hands and Spring walked back towards downtown. John Lee briefly consulted his map and found an alleyway that brought him to Hativat Street. From there, with the masonry walls of the Old City and a huge construction site before him, he made his way east, following the tour buses and taxis heading that direction.

As he moved through the Jaffa Gate he felt the muscles in his shoulders tighten slightly. It was absurd, he knew, but he couldn't help himself. It seemed that there were Israeli soldiers with ugly-looking snub-nosed weapons everywhere. To his right, the dark walls of the ancient Citadel blocked his view as he moved into the open space of the plaza.

He bumped into an elderly woman, almost knocking her down. He began to apologize but stopped when she raised her hands in the air and fixed her pale blue eyes on him. She was an odd looking figure, with leathery skin, a shock of white hair tucked under a khaki bush hat, and one front tooth slightly askew. He guessed that she had to be at least seventy years old.

"Don't apologize," she said. "It's my fault. I didn't move fast enough. I can't get out of the way like I should."

John Lee guided the old woman out of the stream of foot traffic to a nearby alcove. She leaned on his arm, her fingers gripping the fabric of his shirt.

"I'm Australian," she told him. "An Aussie. But you can tell that, I'll bet. I'm a pilgrim from Geelong. That's southwest of Melbourne. Although I'll bet Geelong could be Woop Woop as far as you're concerned."

"I'll admit that I've never heard of Geelong before," John Lee told her. "Or Woop Woop." He introduced himself and the woman shook his hand.

"My name is Connie Wilcox," she said. "But you can call me Con. That's what everyone back home does. Where are you headed? You're a pilgrim, too, I take it."

"To the Western Wall, first," he told her. "Then some of the other sites, probably the Moslem ones in the Old City."

"That's a fine start," she said. "I'll tag along, if you don't mind." She lowered her voice and looked over her shoulder, ready to share a secret. "I didn't care for the schedule the church group was following, so I escaped. I'm glad God saw fit to send you along. I need some help getting around. The Wall is my first stop on the tour today. I remember it well from my last trip. Need help, though. My arthritis is kicking up."

"You weren't put off by the incident at the Damascus Gate yesterday?" John Lee asked. "From coming to the Old City?"

She fixed her gaze on him again, peering at him with a fierceness he found both disconcerting and strangely reassuring. "The stabbing? I wouldn't delay my pilgrimage two seconds because of that. I can't afford to wait. These people have been quarrelling with each other for thousands of years. The church group got scared and decided to go to Bethlehem today. I don't understand that at all. God takes care of his children. How old do you think I am?"

John Lee shook his head, declining to guess.

"I'm seventy-seven," she said. "With a full hip replacement and arthritis. That won't stop me. It won't slow me down either. Not when I travel with the Holy Spirit."

It was clear to him now that Connie Wilcox wasn't completely balanced; whether she was clinically disturbed was a question he couldn't begin to answer. He wished Emma was still alive, and present there with him, to help. John Lee had never been comfortable around the emotionally fragile; his mother always had an affinity for them--she knew how to treat the disturbed and the troubled with a gentle matter-of-factness, always steering them back closer to reality. Emma's heart attack on a balmy July afternoon had baffled John Senior. He was completely unprepared for losing her and consequently seemed lost himself without her. John Lee had not been as surprised. His mother's health had deteriorated in the last few years of her life, and she had been hospitalized once for an irregular heartbeat. John Senior had refused to acknowledge her illness, as if, by his denial, it wouldn't exist.

They turned southward. Connie Wilcox leaned on his arm, using it almost as a crutch, as they followed the Street of the Armenian Patriarchate, which would eventually take them to the outside of the Jewish Quarter and the Western Wall. The Australian woman loved to talk. She told John Lee rambling, disjointed stories of her three prior visits to Jerusalem, and of her life in Geelong, and he listened patiently.

"I've been yabbering a bit here," she said.

"Yabbering?"

"Talking. It's my enthusiasm. I love coming back here. It's like a second home for me, to walk where Jesus walked, to pray at all these holy places."

They had to move slowly; John Lee could hear Connie Wilcox breathing heavily, wheezing, whenever he hastened their pace. But she limped alongside him without complaint. He fought back his irritation at their slow progress.

After about ten more minutes, John Lee could see that she needed to rest. He persuaded her to stop briefly at a small cafe that had a few shabby tables and chairs outside. She carefully lowered herself onto the seat. They ordered Coca Colas and the owner, a small, elderly Arab with a slick mustache, brought them glass bottles beaded with condensation. Connie drank her soda quickly, sucking loudly on the straw. John Lee had to admire her toughness; she was probably a descendent of one the convicts the English had exiled to Australia to settle their distant imperial outpost.

"My father was a minister," he told her. "Southern Baptist. He's the only reason I'm here today."

"He would be very proud of you," she said, misunderstanding him. "To see you here, and to know that he raised you up in the way of the Lord."

"That isn't quite so. You're not following me. My father paid for this trip. He always wanted me to see Jerusalem. I would never have come if he hadn't left me the money."

"What's wrong with that?" she asked. "You make it sound like there's something wrong with that."

"No, there's nothing wrong," he said, realizing that he wouldn't be able to have a normal conversation with her. He regretted that he hadn’t rebuffed her at the Jaffa Gate. Even her voice had begun to irritate him. It was too loud and her accent sounded harsh and grating.

"You think I'm not all here, don't you?" she asked him, fixing her gaze on him. "You think I'm a bit daft, don't you?"

"Why do you think that?"

"I'm not," she said. "I'm not daft. Just a bit scattered. You'll find that happens when you get older. Wait and see, my boy." Satisfied that she had set the record straight, she returned to sipping her drink.

As soon as he had finished his Coke, she insisted that they press on to the Temple Mount. He checked his watch quickly; glad to be on the move again. John Lee was impatient to reach the Wall, and he didn't want to devote too much of his afternoon to getting there. He thought of Maureen for a moment, wishing that he had insisted that she join him on the trip. He could have persuaded her to come. The day would have been completely different. They wouldn't have been side-tracked by Connie Wilcox; Maureen would have politely discouraged her from the start.

John Lee negotiated their way along the street ringing the outside of the Armenian Quarter. The masonry wall to their right, separating them from the traffic of the new city, provided a sense of security and isolation. On the map, John Lee saw that they could skirt most of the Jewish Quarter by staying with their current route, arriving at the Wall without having to traverse too many side streets. He wasn't, to borrow one of his mother's sarcastic euphemisms, "wildly enthusiastic" about walking down any narrow streets burdened by his sense of responsibility for the Australian woman.

He wasn't disappointed by the scene when they did reach the Western Wall of King Herod's Temple Mount. John Lee had seen the postcards and photographs, but he was still impressed by the broad sweep of the square, the white and blue Star of David flags flapping in the breeze, the solidity and scale of the Wall with its huge, square-hewn limestone blocks and the glittering golden Dome above. The Wall itself seemed higher than the sixty feet the tourist guidebooks all estimated. Some of the ashlar blocks had to be at least thirty feet long themselves.

The open space directly in front of the Wall was crowded with clusters of people, some moving to and from the Wall, others davening -- swaying, bobbing and nodding in prayer. At one end the black-clad observant, a barrier separating men from women, had congregated. Many had their hands and faces pressed against the huge stones. Skinny Israeli soldiers in combat fatigues and berets, all carrying what looked to be Uzis, cycled through on constant patrol throughout the plaza.

John Lee found it amazing that thousands of pilgrims of all faiths would trek there, to the same geographic spot, as if those worn stones and ancient buildings at that specific latitude and longitude were somehow closer to heaven than wherever they lived. They came because they were looking for something: salvation, redemption, enlightenment. The Old City held out that promise. He had read in one of the tourist guides that Moslems believed that the center of the world could be found at the Dome of the Rock. It had to be a heresy, he thought, that God could be found in a more concentrated form in Jerusalem than in Tallahassee, Florida or Geelong, Australia.

He wondered whether that reflected the essential absurdity of tourism: traveling great distances to gawk at someone else's broken-down buildings and hear sad and fabulous tales of the past while, at the same time, the exact same journey was being made in the opposite direction, as foreigners, fellow tourists, visited your country's historical sites. Emma had maintained that yard sales worked in the same way: you sold your junk to your neighbors at your yard sale, and then bought their castoffs when they held theirs. Emma proclaimed that it was recycling at its best because the total amount of junk remained constant. John Lee missed her gentle outlook; she never let him take himself too seriously.

Connie interrupted his reverie with an abrupt tug on his right hand. She kept his hand firmly in her grip and began loudly praying. "Jesus, we are here," she said, "Jesus, we praise and glorify you." Then she began praying so quickly that the words ran together: "Jesus-we-praise-you-Son-of-God." A moment later John Lee found that he couldn't understand her because Connie Wilcox had begun speaking in tongues--words and sounds pouring out of her in an incomprehensible stream.

John Lee looked around him, embarrassed, and found that the other visitors to the Wall were ignoring Connie. He realized that her passion wasn't out of place. The Wall had witnessed every type of religious fervor imaginable; it was his own emotional distance that was strange, foreign.

John Lee had witnessed tongue speaking once before, in Texas, when he had attended a Pentecostal service in Dallas with his father. John Lee had just turned twenty, back from college over a Christmas holiday, and he had tried to provoke an argument with John Senior over whether tongue speaking, glossolalia, was a gift of the Holy Spirit or group-induced hysteria.

Later he was ashamed of his behavior, but at the time, John Lee was disappointed by John Senior's reaction. His father had been patient with him; he hadn't become emotional or defensive. He spoke calmly, although John Lee noticed that his face seemed more flushed than usual.

"I won't debate this with you," he said. "What you think or I think about their speaking in tongues doesn't matter. Or what you may have learned in an introductory psychology course. What matters is what happens in the hearts of the people in that church. How they live out the Gospel."

"The truth doesn't matter?" John Lee had asked sharply, stung by his father's rebuke.

"Whose truth?" John Senior responded. "You'll get the truth that you're looking for. If you want to shut yourself off from the Spirit, you will. These people haven't."

"Why are you always so sure?"

"I can only be sure for myself," he said, and then with great tenderness, "I would give anything for you, John, to be sure."

"I'm sorry I let you down," John Lee said. "But it isn't there."

John Lee found himself blinking back tears at the memory. He had never been able to give John Senior that gift of certainty, for John Lee had never been sure, no matter how much he wished, at times, that he could be.

Connie had stopped speaking in tongues. She had her arms lifted to the sky, and her eyes closed. She stood, motionless, for a minute or two and then she slowly opened her eyes and looked over at John Lee, clearly disappointed that he hadn't joined her.

"Maybe later," she said. “Maybe the Holy Spirit will touch you later."

"Maybe," he said. "I'm moving nearer to the Wall."

He noticed a few pigeons perched on clumps of caper bushes wedged between the large, pale stones, higher up on the Wall. In some spots, there were weeds growing as well. He found himself drawn even closer, prompted by the example of the other pilgrims. There was something elemental, yet magical, about the Wall in its simplicity. It was just there, he thought, acting as a mirror of the emotions of the people facing it, bouncing back whatever feelings were inside.

"I'm here," he said quietly to himself, in a validation of sorts that he had arrived. He reached out and touched the block in front of him. There were slips of paper -- hand-written prayers -- wedged in between the smooth stones. He liked the feel of the stone, still warm from the mid-day sun, on his finger tips. He thought of John Senior and Emma, and he struggled to hold back the emotion. "I'm here," he whispered, this time to his parents, even though he knew it was a foolish gesture; they couldn't hear him, no one could.

He felt a tugging at his elbow. It was Connie. She had been watching him, he realized, and he felt a flash of irritation. He just wanted to be left alone for a few minutes. Her constant monologue was distracting; she couldn't even remain quiet at the Wall. He had tired of her company. Their walk and visit to the Wall had taken too long, and he didn't really want to accompany her any further.

"I'm right here," she said. "Are you ready to shoot through to our next stop? I could use a hand to get to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. We can break our trek on the way for another cool drink if you like. Or we can push on now and steal a march on the tourists."

"The Church of the Sepulchre?" John Lee couldn't help but turn back and gaze up at the Temple Mount. Connie Wilcox saw where he had glanced.

"I don't think I have the energy for climbing up there and touring the place," she said. "To be truthful, I'm also not sure we're that welcome today."

He remained silent, again annoyed by her. They had been much closer to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre when they had first met near the Jaffa Gate. She should have told him, so that they could have visited the church, first, before making the longer walk to the Wall. He blamed himself, partially, for not studying the map earlier in the afternoon and proposing a different itinerary.

John Lee considered his options. He could return and visit the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, along with the rest of the Old City and Mount Scopus, tomorrow. If he wasn't going to press on by himself that afternoon to the Moslem sites, the Dome of the Rock and the El Aqsa Mosque, he could walk back to the hotel, have a few drinks at the bar, and then lie down in his room to rest. John Lee wished again that he had brought his guitar on his trip. He wondered whether the desk clerk, the helpful one from the morning, could direct him to a music store where he could find a guitar to rent for a few days. He would ask in the morning.

He thought about inventing an excuse and leaving Connie Wilcox to fend for herself. He didn't want to spend what was left of the afternoon with a strange Australian fundamentalist who was nearly twice his age. He hadn't asked to be trapped by her side, the victim of a chance encounter. He glanced at his watch, checking the time, and then flushed, embarrassed, when he realized Connie Wilcox had seen the gesture.

She looked at him, unperturbed, and then asked him directly whether it would be too much of a bother to stay with her, almost as if she had been reading his mind. "I imagine I can find someone else to help," she said, "if you can't."

"Of course I can," John Lee said quickly, responding to the plaintive tone in her voice. He thought again of John Senior and his hopes for this trip and knew then, with certainty, that he would stay with Connie Wilcox until she needed him no longer. There wasn't a real choice involved.

She brightened at her easy victory, a smile creasing her face.

"Let's pray," she said. "Join me this time, John Lee, won't you? There's something about praying together that's inspiring."

John Lee knew she wouldn't rest until he had relented and prayed with her; he resigned himself to going through the motions with her. Connie knelt on the stone of the plaza floor and he followed suit, wincing when a loose pebble pressed into his knee. She closed her eyes and spread her arms and began praying in a loud, hoarse voice.

John Lee closed his own eyes. He tried to tune out Connie Wilcox's voice, thankful when she began speaking in tongues because he found it less distracting than her intelligible prayers. He found himself relaxing, enjoying the warmth of the afternoon sun and the light breeze from the east. He thought about how he would convey the absurdity of the scene to Maureen, and realized he only had to describe it and she would crack up at the idea of John Lee as Jesus Freak, on his knees in the Old City of Jerusalem.

"There you are, John Lee," he heard a deep voice say and, startled, he opened his eyes. He found Lucas Spring looming over him, a pleased look on his face. Spring's shirt was soaked in perspiration and he was breathing heavily. His sports coat was loosely draped over one arm. John Lee scrambled to his feet, brushing the dust off his knees of his pants, embarrassed at the situation. Spring seemed excited about something.

"This is great," Spring said. "I didn't expect I'd be able to find you. I figured you might have reached the Wall by now, but it was a long shot. If you were up there, " he jabbed a finger at the Temple Mount, "I never would have found you."

"It took longer to get here than I had planned," John Lee said. "A few complications along the way."

"I only arrived here myself maybe five minutes ago," Spring said. "I got lucky and spotted you in the crowd. Your maroon baseball cap stood out a mile away. Florida State's colors, right?"

John Lee nodded. There was an awkward silence. He noticed that Connie Wilcox had stopped praying out loud; he was sure that she was listening intently to their conversation.

"You must be wondering why I'm here," Spring said.

"I am," John Lee confessed.

"It's simple, actually. After our lunch, I walked half of the way back to my apartment before I decided to come find you. I felt a need to be here. I grabbed a cab and doubled back to the Old City. Skipping an afternoon of packing won't matter much, one way or the other. I can finish off the Old City for you, give you the nickel tour. That's the hospitable thing to do."

Spring stopped, distracted by Connie Wilcox's sudden appearance beside them. She had moved to the right of John Lee, where the top of her head barely reached the level of his shoulder. She looked up, peering at them, her eyes moving from one man to the other, studying their faces. John Lee knew that she was expecting an introduction to Spring, but he waited for her to speak first.

"John Lee," she said. "Are you going to introduce me to your friend?"

"Lucas Spring," John Lee said. "This is Connie Wilcox. We met back at the Jaffa Gate."

"A pilgrim," she said, gripping Spring's free hand with both of hers. "A pilgrim who has been escorted on her pilgrimage this fine Tuesday by this wonderful young man. He's been a help and a comfort throughout the day. Praise the Lord."

Spring looked over at John Lee for guidance, but John Lee just shrugged in response.

"From what I know of John Lee," Spring said, "I'm not surprised."

"To tell the truth he reminds me of my own son," she said. "Both of them very tall. Except I lost Colin early. The Lord took him early."

"I'm sorry," Spring said. She bobbed her head in reply.

"How long have you known John Lee?" she asked Spring, who had gently disengaged his hand from hers.

"We just met today," said Spring. "But I was friendly with John Lee's father back in Texas. A wonderful man. We went to school together. In the old days."

"Hah," she said. "I know those old days, those good old days."

"Reverend Spring gives tours," John Lee explained. "He gives tours of the Holy Land."

"He gives tours, does he?" she asked, her tone playful. "I've just escaped from a tour. I didn't want to be stuck with that group. They didn't have the faith to risk a visit to the Old City. I do. Nevertheless, I shouldn't be completely on my own because I'm not as spry as I once was. That's why John Lee has been such a God send, although I'm not sure he sees it that way. It's not easy putting up with an ancient lady like myself."

"You've kept me on my toes," said John Lee. "It's been an adventure."

"I'm glad you turned up, Reverend Spring," said Connie, focusing her attention on him. "You can show us the fastest route to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. And fill us in on the marvelous history along the way."

Spring gracefully nodded to her. "I'd be honored," he said, offering Connie Wilcox his arm. She grasped it at the elbow and steadied herself. "So are we ready?" Spring asked.

"Ready," she said, looking over at John Lee, who responded with an amused shrug.

So off they went, back across the broad plaza to the arched gateway leading to the Old City. Connie badgered Lucas Spring with questions nearly every step of the way. A step behind the two, John Lee hid his smile; Connie seemed to have forgotten him for the moment and had transferred her attention almost completely to their new guide. Despite John Lee's earlier irritation with her, he had to admire her vitality and curiosity, the drive that would propel a 77-year old woman on foot along the cobblestones of the Via Dolorosa. He felt a sudden warmth towards her.

He was content to listen as Spring traced the troubled history of the Old City for them. Spring's presentation was polished; he was on familiar territory, having given the tour hundreds of times over the past decade. He quoted the relevant New Testament verses, pointed out the different architectural styles overlaid by centuries of conquest, and offered a few amusing anecdotes from tours he'd given before. Spring was enjoying himself.

They stopped twice on their way to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The first time was half-way there, at a bench near the street, where Connie Wilcox caught her breath. Then just before they crossed into the Christian Quarter, they paused at a small rug store so Connie could go to the bathroom.

"No camera?" Spring asked, as they waited for Connie. "You didn't bring a camera?"

"No camera," John Lee replied. "No slide show when I get back home."

By the time they reached the arched doors of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, John Lee was eager to finish the tour. His eyes were bothering him, stinging from the dryness of the air and the cumulative effects of an afternoon in the sun. John Lee found the church depressing, a gloomy place, ornately over-decorated, with clashing architectural styles. The church was crammed with noisy tour groups and too-anxious pilgrims. Lucas Spring gave them a rushed but comprehensive tour: they climbed the steep steps -- Connie counted 18 -- to Calvary, the "place of the skull;" then Spring guided them through the chapels, Coptic, Latin and Orthodox, and to the atrium, the Chapel of the Angel, and finally, to the tomb itself. They waited in line to enter the Sepulchre, a tiny chamber with stone ceilings so low that John Lee and Spring had to hunch over, and each had a few hurried moments to contemplate the marble slab and religious bas reliefs figures before moving on. John Lee felt short-changed.

"Doesn't feel like the holiest place in the word, does it?" Connie said to him, sensing his discomfort, when they emerged from the church into the late afternoon sun. They began their walk out of the Christian Quarter, back towards Jerusalem's New City. "I felt that way, too, the first time I came here. You have to get past all that, love. Imagine what happened here. You're in the very spot."

"The Greek Orthodox believe that near the tomb -- where they built the Catholicon -- is the center of the world," Spring said.

"The Moslems think that it's over at the Dome of the Rock, don't they?" John Lee asked. "So maybe we're in the general vicinity of the center of the universe. That's going to disappoint a lot of Cowboy fans, 'cause they're convinced that it's on the 50-yard line of Texas Stadium."

Spring laughed out loud. Connie looked at them blankly, not following the joke. By then they had neared the walls of the Old City. She was quieter, worn out, John Lee decided, by her long afternoon. He regretted that he wouldn't be able to describe his surreal tour of the Old City of Jerusalem to John Senior. His father would have loved their absurd caravan. It would have struck him as having the makings of a modern Christian parable, an instructive story for a sermon: three strangers, all nursing emotional wounds, thrown together on an odd pilgrimage, ending perfectly (from a theological perspective) when their "walk with Jesus" culminated in the rediscovery of God's forgiveness and grace. Except it hadn't happened that way. Convenient, and fitting, endings occurred in sentimental Sunday homilies, John Lee knew, not in the gritty real world, where he had seen scant evidence of divine intervention, more of divine indifference.

They reached the New Gate and passed through to the crowded, modern street scene outside. Spring hailed one of the passing cabs, which lurched to a stop, barely avoiding a panel van and an ambulance in the flow of traffic. John Lee helped Connie into the back of the cab as Lucas Spring instructed the driver, already impatient to plunge back into the traffic, as to the location of her hotel. They said their good-byes to her, and John Lee accepted a kiss on the cheek, and then the cab took off. Connie Wilcox peered through the back window of the black Mercedes, waving frantically, as the vehicle pulled into heavy traffic and disappeared from view behind a blue-and-white tour group bus.

"You were kind to help her," Spring said to John Lee.

"Not that kind. If it hadn't been me, it would have been someone else. I'm sure you could see that Connie Wilcox doesn't take no for an answer. You could tell that even in the brief time you spent with us. She is a relentless one."

"Nonetheless, your father would have been proud of you," Spring said, and John Lee didn't resent the comment as much as he thought he would. "You know, as unbalanced as she may be, I will tell you that I have to envy your friend Connie."

"Envy her?"

"Yes," he said. "In a way, I envy her. She takes this place so literally. I envy her certainty, her ability to believe so fiercely, so fully. Did you see her face at the Tomb? How alive it became? She can't get enough of being here."

"The pilgrim from Geelong," said John Lee.

"From where?"

"Geelong. It's her town in Australia. I would bet that it's a one stop-light sort of place. About as far from here as you can get. In every sense."

Spring didn't respond at first. He seemed distracted, lost in his own thoughts.

"I've learned that it's harder here," Spring said. "That's the amazing part. I thought it'd be the other way around. That there would a physical validation of my faith here. But it works the other way. You can't rely on your imagination to fill in the biblical blanks, the way you do when you're sitting in your study in Houston or Dallas. When something is shabby, or sordid, you have to confront it."

"I could see some of that today," said John Lee.

"I hope you also sensed a little of the sublime, too."

"A glimmer or two. At the Wall."

"I'm glad I caught up to you. I would have felt guilty, I think, if I hadn't. Otherwise, you would have remembered me as the Philistine more interested in Cowboy scores than in holy places."

"Not me," said John Lee. "I've never liked that judgment thing. I’m a PK, remember."

"Do you want to share a cab back?" Spring asked. "I live in the general direction of your hotel."

"Thanks," John Lee said. "But I could use the walk."

"It's a good place to grieve," Spring said offhandedly, almost as if he were talking to himself. "I can speak from personal experience. Grief and sorrow. There's never been a shortage of that here. I think it's in the water supply. You can't get away from it. Thousands of years of it, as a matter of fact. So you picked a good place."

"I didn't pick it," said John Lee. "John Senior did."

"He picked well, then."

"I guess so."

"Jerusalem puts it all in perspective. That's another thing I'll miss, the perspective."

"I see," said John Lee, but he didn't.

The street lights had come on, greeting the dusk, and the beginning of the rush hour had added to the traffic along Hatzanhanim Street. John Lee was tired and wanted to get back to his hotel room and shave and take a hot shower. It would leave him feeling clean. After his shower, he'd have a few drinks and then write a letter to Maureen about his first day in Jerusalem.

In the morning, John Lee would return to the Old City. He would walk back by himself, clear of distractions, freed from Connie Wilcox's chatter and Lucas Spring's half-submerged sorrow. He could focus. Alone, he could more fully honor his father's unstated request and play hide-and-seek with the notion of a Holy Ghost who cared for him and every single soul on the face of the Earth, believers and unbelievers alike. John Lee would do his best. He would search inside the city's ancient walls and along its narrow streets, hoping that Lucas Spring and T.S. Eliot were right and that prayer was more valid there, trying to stay open to the presence of John Senior's God, to his saving grace, even when, in his heart, he knew he was on a fool's errand. But as his father's only son, it was the least that he could do.