36

THE BOY NOTICED THAT something was going on and he tried to stay out of the valley. He did not go down to the covered house until late at night and he barely slept and was gone again before the morning gray, when he heard the yapping of the dogs like some canine alarm. He had found a place to hide himself on a bluff that rose above the twins’ house. A curtain of vines falling across the ridge and he sat behind the vines and he spied on the men going in and out of the house. He recognized Myer and he recognized Colburn as they several times stood next to the mailbox with other men and Colburn pointed and explained.

He was nearly asleep hidden on the bluff on the night when the church bus stopped on the road in front of the twins’ house. A great exhaust when the engine turned off and then the door folded open and a crowd of men and women and children moved in a broken line around the side of the house and across the yard and they stopped at the edge of the valley. Formed a halfcircle. A woman moved around with a box and each person took a candle from it. Then a man in a white robe faced the valley and raised his hands and raised his voice and as if Mother Nature was paying attention, the rain began to ease while he spoke and then it paused. The man in the robe then lit a candle at one end of the halfcircle and one by one they passed the flame until the candlelight glowed in a dim crescent. There was a quiet moment as the man in the robe moved his hand over the head of each of them and when he was finished they began to sing. Their voices reverent and angelic. A sweet prayer across the valley for the safety and the return of those who had been lost. They sang and the women held the hands of the children and the man in the white robe knelt at the edge of the kudzu, his hands pressed together and his head bowed and their voices joined in solemn song. Kind and aching.

The boy had been sitting with his legs crossed but when they began to sing he rose to his feet. Moved by their tenderness. Moved by their plea and by the candlelight and by the children participating in the sorrow. The boy stepped onto the edge of the bluff and when the man in the white robe rose from his knees and lifted his hands above his head the boy did the same thing. Raising his hands slowly toward the night sky and moving his fingers as if to grasp something just out of reach and then in his ancient voice he tried to hum along with the prayerful hymn and in this moment of joining in he looked over toward the house and he saw the flatbed truck and Colburn standing in the side yard. Solitary and shadowed. His arms folded and watching them. The boy lowered his arms and he began to wave them from side to side, as if his movement could shove Colburn toward the gathering. They sang and prayed and the candles burned but Colburn remained apart and when they were done they blew out their candles and set them on the ground and then they walked back toward the bus. Colburn still there but none of them speaking to him or looking at him but for one small girl who raised her hand and waved.

After the bus was gone, Colburn drove away. The boy came down from the bluff and tromped across the kudzu and into the backyard. He picked up a candle that had been stuck into the ground as a remaining beacon. He took a pack of matches from his pocket and he lit the wick and then he stood there with the solitary flame as if he himself could be the salvation to what had caused the agony.