I encountered my first tent preacher as I walked along a sidewalk in Deming, New Mexico. He stepped out in front of me and levelled his index finger at a spot somewhere between my eyebrows. “You - you have the Mark of Cain on you - the mark of Restlessness and Desire - and this will not cease until you come and accept the Lord Jesus as your own!”

Having said this, he held me in his gaze for a few seconds, and then, dropping his arm to his side, stepped off around me and down the sidewalk without a backward glance.

I saw him again later that day, while driving along the boundary road of Deming, on the edge of a sprawl of concrete adobe housing developments. He was bent over in the heat, pounding an old car axle into the hard earth, staking a faded and patched circus tent. Between the tent and the roadway was a hand-lettered sign wirde to a post. The sign read, “REVIVAL TO-NITE!”