WOODFORD, KENTUCKY, 1801

They come along the path out of the wood and rounding the tall tulip tree, all one hundred feet of sky-scratching smooth brown bark, the wide waxy green leaves growing in clusters. Past the coffee trees and thick leathery bean pods that dangle like bats from the branches. It’s dusk and the air is rich with river smell, and with pig meal, and the char of the canebrake burning. Some come on horseback, but most come carriaging, gathered on wagons. Two wheels, four wheels. The clop and crack of hooves on limestone like splinters in the evening air. There is the buzzing chirp of katydids as bony hooves slap rock. And behind the farmhouse, brook water passes through tufted grass into a blanket of watermeal buds. Some of the wagoners ring handbells as they ride by in procession. The clappers knelling doleful as the sun goes low. The drivers click at their teeth, side-mouth, waving at the small boy as they ride by the farm.

Orr yells, “I don’t know, Daddy. And there’s more wagons up the way.”

He pulls his hand from his pocket and opens his palm. His daddy’s voice is low. Orr sees him, barely, through a cloud of smoke by the crackling canebrake high on fire. His father cutting a girdle in a hickory’s bark by the riverside, says, “You steer clear. Just pick a pig. Go on now.”

A baby shrew he found in the grass hugs blindly there at the boy’s fingers, its whiskered and pointy snout sniffing at the air. A cashew, pink and soft. Orr nudges it some, and shakes his palm gently every time the shrew gets steady.

Another wagon rolls by.

The driver wears a hat whose brim hides his eyes. And the loping gait of the horses teases Orr with every rise and fall, just short of letting him see the driver’s face. It’s a long wagon with four wheels, plain, flat, and filled with children. He closes his fist over the shrew. A short boy waves at him, jumping and grabbing at a low branch passing overhead. One thing’s sure, jumping boys haven’t lost their mothers yet. That boy’s too happy, must be his mama’s back home alive. Another dizzy coming on; Orr is feeling poorly, maybe a fever.

“Orren Laudermilk, you get away from the road.”

He turns to see his father coming up from the riverbed, the canebrake behind him burning alive with red fire. His father coughs as he walks, waving the smoke from his face. Jumping from the fence, Orr wipes at his pant legs and opens his palm. The pink ball of shrew uncurls itself. It sniffs, raising its head, sizing him up maybe. He rolls the tail softly between his fingers.

“What you got there?” His daddy brushes his fist with the hat.

“Nothing.” He puts his hand in his pocket.

“You don’t look no better, all ghost white.” Orr’s daddy presses his forehead with the back of his hand. “Warm as toast. Can’t be pox. Can’t be.” His daddy feels the air for moisture with his fingers. “We need rain before our grass goes brown. And you can make yourself useful even when you’re sickly.” He points toward the hogs and pigs behind the fence, scattered about on their bellies and sides in the yard. Pink muddy mounds of belch and snore. “It’ll be fall before long, and your time to kill. We’ll do it together, I promise. But you need to pick the pig.”

Orr nods some, Yessir.

“Look at me.”

Orr looks.

“Your mother’d be in hearty agreement. No good reason to be afraid of killing.” His father motions toward the yard.

“Yessir.” He looks at the pigs, not sure what it will mean to pick a pig. Picking’s not the same thing as killing, he knows that much. He nods toward the wagon up the road, and says, “Where they off to?” A sour spark fills him up, thinking what other kinds of places in the world there are.

“Oh, I can guess right, I bet.” His father’s face is broken with lines like tree bark. “You done the luck jars yet?” He yawns. “Put them with the soap. I filled a bag with every last bar. With any luck we’ll sell all of it. Don’t you leave it till morning. I’m leaving early and you’re not well enough for travel.”

“I never get to go into town.”

“Plenty to do right here.”

A wagon passes with a thin man in the driver’s seat wearing bright red suspenders. The man nods.

Orr and his father keep their ground.

A young lady stands in the back of the wagon, her face shadowed by a bright yellow bonnet.

“Come on now,” his father shouts at the wagon. “You all scaring my hogs!”

She walks toward the edge of the wagon, looking almost like she’ll jump if she gets the chance. She says, “It’s gonna be a glory day, and you all should join us tomorrow. We can dance with Him in His presence.” She shakes herself like she’s been doused with cold water. “You know about Heaven and hellfire, boy?”

Orr looks up at his Daddy, closing shut his hand in his pocket.

“We’re not particular, and you don’t talk to my son,” his daddy says as the lady in the wagon rides off. A bell makes a high, clean racket in the evening. “Makes no odds,” he says, looking at Orr. “Put them luck jars in the wagon, could fetch as much as three dollars apiece. Should be a good morning with all these folks going up.”

Some men on horseback come galloping. Orr moves closer to the path. The horse legs work feverishly, tossing up dirt clods and lime shards. He’s not so scared and he blocks his face from the dust as steam rises from the nostrils of the horses, their wet mucus shining.

“Get over here,” his father says. “Before you get yourself walked on.”

He turns back and stands beside his father as the men ride by.

Trees vein the blue dusk, and a sudden flutter like sheets of rustling paper comes from the slow-burning cane. He looks back that way, at the cave in the hill by the bank rocks, and the bats come rushing out of it, spat from a sick mouth, almost eclipsing the orange leaves of fire. The dizzy in his head drives the wet chill on his skin.

“Fire’s about done,” his father says, walking back toward the canebrake. “And you all keep moving now,” he says louder.

Orr watches his father scoop up his hat from the river and toss water at the fire. He pulls his hand from his pocket, opens it, and he can barely see the shrew in the evening light. He pulls a sharpened piece of cane wood from another pocket. He stares until his eyes see better. Not so sure he can do it, kill a pig. He turns toward the river, and his father pulling down the cane char. The moon is out somewhere, making a cold glow over and through the woods. He looks up, can’t find it. He looks down where now he sees the shrew nuzzling. He once watched his father sever the head of a deer with a rusted saw. They never let him see his mother’s body. Already a year now without her. He pushes at the shrew with the cane blade and looks back at his father hacking at the grasses. He stabs lightly at the shrew’s belly, seeing how far he can push without breaking the soft pink skin.

“Get those jars in the wagon, Orr. I’ve got an early morning.”

He wipes away a cold sweat from his warm face. It makes a dark spot on his sleeve. He presses the blade against the shrew’s soft tail as it bustles on its back like an upturned bug. The shrew squeals. He turns away, his small body bucking with revulsion. Bitters from his stomach spit up into his throat. Sometimes he naps with the hogs. Pig bellies are round and tough like leather. He slaps at a fly on his neck, and again he pokes the tip of the blade into the soft belly of the shrew.

“Why you dawdling? You need to get in bed.” His daddy comes up beside him again.

“I’m going, I’m going. There’s still light left.”

His father kicks a rock toward the path. “Dammit, Orr.” He points at the hill beyond the path, where a large black sow, the oldest, freely grazes on the hill. “Get her in the yard. Now.”

Orr rolls the cane back and forth between his fingers. Another wagon coming. “Why there so many wagons?”

His father bends and picks a stone from the grass. “Un-neighborlies telling us all what’s what. God don’t play particular and neither should we.” He throws the stone and hits the wagon broadside, the rider turns abruptly. “You’re breaking up stones from my path!”

His daddy says, “They used to come around some, and knocking on your door. But I haven’t seen them out this way since before your mother’s gone. Must be a camp meeting up north some.”

A lone rider approaches and slows, pulling up his reins, rubbing noises as they tighten around his gloves. He lets a rider go on beside him, and says, “You all should join us riverside tomorrow. A glory day and these years are glory years! We’re living in the Lord’s last century now!” He removes his hat and shows a smooth bald head. The man looks up. “These days are Last Days, and Heaven and Hell are hungry.”

Orr looks back at his father.

His father says, “Get moving out of my land.”

The rider smiles. “My scalp is clean like my conscience. And I’ll see you tomorrow yet. No staying away, I hear. You best bring your boy when the Lord comes calling.” He stands in his saddle and slaps at the neck of his horse, galloping off.

His daddy says, “Let’s just hope these folks got dollars in their pockets. Ladies do like soap, all kinds.”

“Where they all headed?”

His father studies him, and then says, “You see all around? Take a good look.”

Orr looks.

“All the God we need and church, too.” His father shows the wood, and the river. “All of this is mine. And yours. God’s, too, if there is one. And it don’t cost a penny from your pocket.”

Orr nods his head: makes sense.

“Your inheritance, boy. Good land to work, and the character of your mother. May not be much, but it’s yours.” His father looks around the farm. “This is everything.”

“Yessir.”

“You remember the Montgomerys who moved back east? We had business.”

“Yes sir.” The youngest Montgomery boy had shown Orr how to whittle.

“They was like these but different. Catholics. Same thing, but different. At least they had enough sense to keep to themselves and never come knocking.”

Orr’s bones ache, and he thinks of dead pigs, and horses gone, and of his sleeping and buried mother. All of them in one place. He’s warm and cold in all different parts of his body.

He says, “God’s here, too?”

“All we need of Him.”

Orr thinks on this. So He’s somewhere else, too, where we don’t need Him.

He looks at the pigs in the yard, his stomach weaseling up in his throat. Mamma’s in a place where we don’t need Him.

His daddy rubs his fingers together. “And I can’t figure why God’d want my corn to dry anyway.”

Orr opens his palm and watches the shrew crawl. His father snaps a broken branch from a hickory and walks off, saying, “Every few years they get together, particulars in bunches, swearing God is particular. All that sort of horse shit. Your mother, she wouldn’t hear none of it.”

The shrew’s fine, just fine. Get the jars on the wagon pull, and bed the sow.

A blond woman passes along in the back of a flat wagon. She stares about, looking lost, misplaced. Her face is long and blank. She reaches out a hand toward Orr. She’s reaching. He wants to take it, not sure why.

His father says, “Give me any tulip tree, a hundred feet high, and I’ll bow down like any one of them.” His father waves at the path. “Wave goodbye, Orr. They won’t be back for a long while.”

Orr waves. His father tosses a stone. The bats fly over, screeching, changing positions in the trees.

His father says, “Just like them, moving in bunches. What Kentucky needs is independent persons. You, me, and like your mother was.”

A wagon stops and the driver tips his hat to the boy. The driver says, “Get on now.” He smacks the resting horse’s back. “I said get on!” But the horse stands still with his eyes bewildered, and looking backward, spying on Orr and what lies in his palm.

A thin switch snaps backward, comes down with a cleaving thwack. The driver shouts, “Get on!” And the horse snarls and buckles from the switch, rearing slightly, then falls forward into a reluctant trot.

Orr buckles, too, and is sure he smells the burning stripe on the horse’s hide. His father’s voice comes from behind him.

As the smell of cane char wafts from the river.

The black sow watches from the hill.

She’s fat and she’s proud, lifting up her gray snout, her black belly swaying as she moves. She’s queenly there against the sky, the biggest of the lot. The oldest one of all. Her tail curls up in silhouette. A hot sick stirs in Orr’s stomach. He shivers, heaves, and vomits. Not much, but it empties him. He wipes his mouth and spits. He cries some, but makes sure his daddy can’t see. He dries his eyes, and opens up his palm. He presses the blade to his own soft neck, looking down there at the baby shrew. He presses hard, but does not break his own skin. It hurts. It’s not that he’s just afraid of killing, but also of what lies beyond the act, and he can’t seem to figure it. He pulls the blade away, and puts it back in his pocket. He sets the shrew down in the grass. He walks across the path toward the black sow grazing in the dark.

*   *   *

It’s early morning and a cold blue canopy stretches over the farm. The hogs are asleep in the yard. With a deep breath, Orr walks toward a large oak tree, dew dripping from the prickly browning tubers of a cancer root growing at the base. A dog barks, and Orr says, “Be quiet.” A good sleep, but he’s woken with a kindling in his chest, the kind of brittle breathing that comes with a slow-breaking fever. He snaps off a piece of the root and rubs it against his neck, at the same place he’d pressed with his blade last night. He walks toward the barn, itching at his heavy shirt and wiping sweat from his brow. “Wet morning,” he says to the dog. “Think she’ll rain?” He takes a piece of ham from his pocket, bites it, and throws the rest into the grass.

He hears the wooden clatter of a passing wagon but he refuses to look, afraid he might see the woman’s face again. He reaches up and pulls at the heavy barn doors.

It’s dark inside and the air is chilled and still. He walks along toward the back table, hay grass snapping underfoot. The black sow grunts and snorts, a few piglets asleep there at her teats. He looks away from her. A subtle light is bleeding through the clapboard slats, and the chickens are waking. Beside is the soap table. All empty now, every last bar for sale. The barrel beside it filled with ash for making lye. He takes hold of a long spade and pushes back open the doors. Morning coins of sun blink between the oak leaves and cast bright flashes as he walks toward the river. Horses are coming, but Orr won’t look to the road.

He stabs at the earth by the bank rocks, digging, sweat gathering over his eyes until he strikes a hard surface. He presses the spade against the side until he can wedge the point beneath it. He presses with his slight weight until the object comes loose, breaking through the soil like a small coffin. His daddy’s been gone for hours already. He never gets to leave the farm.

He pulls the old luck jar from the ground and wipes away the soil from its bellied surface. The molded shape of a man’s bearded face stares back from the jar, his hard clay beard uncoiling, painted and covering one full side of the jar. A cork has been stuffed forcefully into the opening and seems almost fused to the jar. He studies it, turning the thing in his hands, and wiping the bearded face clean. He wonders how such a thing truly works. His father once told him they used to get made by witches. But not anymore. Anyone can make one, as long he believes, if he truly believes. Call it magic, luck, or religion, boy, it’s God in a bottle and it works. The air still tastes some of chalky cane char. The bare and burnt stalks naked beside him. He sees clearly through the canebrake now. No place for hiding anymore. Their luck has been good since Mamma died, when the raiders came sneaking from behind the canebrake. They put a knife through her belly, left her lying on the bed. His daddy found her. He told Orr not to come any closer. His daddy pulling the petticoat back in place … You have to feed your luck, Daddy always says, like anything else alive. So they bury a new luck jar and get rid of the old one every time after burning the canebrake.

He tosses the jar into the river and watches it bob and jerk with the current, disappearing downstream, wishing the water good luck as it goes. Time to make and bury a new one.

He walks back around the barn to the doors.

The barn interior is more visible now with light stealing in between wallboards. Smoky with sunlight and brown shadow, flecked with swimming dust and yellow grit. He walks to the soap table and, kneeling, reaches under. Only four empties left. He picks the smallest of the four, an oblong jar with a greenish stain on the surface of the carved bearded face, wipes it clean of hay dust, and takes the fire tongs from a hook on the wall and sets them on the table. He looks around at the floor of the barn until he spies a mushroom lump of cow dung. With his blade he slices and lifts a small piece. Then he presses and maneuvers the piece into the open mouth of the jar, ridding his blade of cow dung like butter from a knife. He looks back and forth, side to side, in the barn.

Feathers.

He reaches over the chicken fence, takes hold of a hen, and pulls a grab of feathers from her back while she squawks and kicks out her feet. He drops the hen and bunches the feathers, slipping them easily in the mouth of the jar. The jar is warm in his hands and a plume of stink wafts upward, the dung cooking some on the bottom surface. He wipes sweat from his brow, spits into the jar, and sets it beside the tongs on the table.

A long wooden shelf hangs above.

He pulls over a crate and climbs up onto the table. From here the ceiling joists are that much closer. Chickens hop on the hard, packed dirt showing through a thinning layer of hay grass. Need to lay more hay grass. The black sow is asleep, her broad back rising in breath. The sun bursts between the roof boards, and he covers his eyes.

He takes a wooden box and a shallow clay bowl from the shelf, and climbs down.

The bowl is filled with calcified nail shavings, glass-sharp hoof cuttings, the remnants of a dead horse’s tail. In the box are the remains of a King James Bible, a spilling bag of corks and bungs, and a pile of modest handmade crucifixes. The Montgomery boy showed him how to make them. He chooses one of the smaller ones, no taller than his thumb. A crude dying Christ hangs from the cross like a loose frayed ribbon. He opens the Bible at random, and points his finger on the page. He reads the verse out loud like his daddy taught him: “Be not righteous over much. Neither make thyself over wise. Why shouldest thou destroy thyself?”

He tears the page from the binding.

He spreads the page on the table and places the wooden Christ in its center. Chooses two large crescentlike hoof cuttings, and pulls a long black hair from the horse’s tail. He scatters the cuttings over the Christ, folds the paper over its contents. He carefully ties the bundle with the hair strand. He then works the small bundle into the open mouth and drops it into the jar’s clay belly. Chooses a leather cork, takes the fire tongs from the table, and leaves the barn.

Around back, he sets the jar on the ground and removes the top cover of a barrel. It’s half full, and a cloud stink of urine opens upward, hot and metallic. The lean smell of cow piss rides on the rich rot of aged, wet wood, filling his nostrils with a sting and making him nauseated. He spits. The barrel’s been full for weeks and the urine is dark, taking on the color of the wood like a whiskey. A crucifix floats there, sacralizing the urine aged and now turned to lant. He grabs the jar in the grip of the tongs, pressing the neck of the bottle up against the hinging pivot of the tongs, and he immerses it. The clay bearded face goes under. He pulls the jar from the barrel, made new, full and baptized in the sacred lant.

He stuffs the cork into the brimming mouth and it spits warm spume along the sides. He hammers the cork in with the butt of his fist, and then against the barrel. He wipes the sweat from his face and leans against the barn, feeling woozy. Walking back to the hole by the river, he allows himself some real satisfaction in his work, thinking of sitting down soon in the cool summer grass and the breeze drying his cold wet back, thinking of his mother, of the fine morning, and the good luck piss jars bring.

*   *   *

Orr takes a piece of hard bread and dips it in the ham grease his father left out for him. He stuffs his mouth, crumbs falling. It’s well past noon, closer to evening, and his father should’ve been home by now. From outside there comes a nervous barking. It’s the red dog on its belly. Beside the door, the fire in the pot stove shrivels inward, its blue leaves going cooler. Chewing on the bread, he goes outside and sees a wagon coming from the wood. He shushes the dog, kicks its haunches, and it runs. It’s a large covered carriage, white-tented, and the horses are slowly moving. He picks up a stone from the ground, cocks back his arm. The dog darts toward the path, barking, yipping.

The wheels of the wagon are large and white, spokes blue and red. The finest wagon he’s ever seen. He throws his body forward with the stone, but misses hitting the dog. He picks another from the grass. The wagon comes closer and the driver wears a hat tipped low, blocking his face. The horses have silver blinkers on their eyes, rebounding bursts of sunlight. Orr squints, walking closer to the dog. He throws the stone, and immediately wishes he hadn’t. The dog cries out and turns toward Orr, tongue hanging, before running back to the river.

“Why’d you hurt your dog?” the driver shouts.

The wagon has pulled off the stone path, and moves quietly now in the grass. Not yet looking at the man, he stares at the wagon, at this rude turn. The horses are close now, slowing the rumble of their breathing, fume and spit fogging from their dark nostrils. On the side of the tent in large red and blue letters: “Langley’s Daring Circus Show.”

“Seems like a fine dog,” the man says, a deep and croaking voice.

Orr looks up past the wagon wheels, past the horses’ shoulders, their silver blinkers, to the dark man sitting in the seat.

“You’re a negro,” he says.

“And you’re not blind at all.”

The man climbs down from the seat and wipes his pant legs clean. He stands straight, stretches backward, and yawns. The biggest man Orr’s ever seen. The man arches his back as he yawns. His thick and shining chestnut arms are raised and rearing.

Orr steps back. “Not my dog.”

“Don’t matter.” The man’s hairline is far back on his head, and his hair is round and cut short. He wears a black silk neck cloth and a silver ring on his pinky finger.

Orr says, “What do you want?”

The man bows some. “Your folks around? Maybe some water for my team?”

Orr looks back at the canebrake, how he can see right through it, no cover. “My daddy’s right inside.”

The man turns for the house. “Maybe you could you make us acquainted.”

Orr picks up another stone, a larger one from the ground.

“I’m no dog, son. Put it down.”

“My daddy’s around. By the river.”

“I think maybe we did this wrong.” He loosens his neck cloth. “You know some negroes, don’t you?”

“My daddy says you all are good workers even when you got no choice.”

The man laughs. “True enough. You a hard worker?”

“I am.” He calls to the red dog coming back from the river. “Come here, dog.”

“Whose dog then?”

“Lots of dogs. Live all over, I guess. Some negroes live upriver in a small house. My daddy helped build it, and then he gave them a pig.” He looks up. “Your face looks like a black cherry.”

The man laughs. He looks at the back of his right hand and puts the hand behind his head. “Guess I do.”

“I mean the color of cherries.”

“I know what you mean.”

“I’ve seen some look more dark.”

“Well my daddy’s the color of blackberries. And I just had me a handful back there, so no harm.” He points back toward the wood, and then leans against the fence. “What’s your daddy look like?”

“How do you mean?”

The man waves away his question. “What’s your name?”

“Orr. Orren Laudermilk.”

“That’s a good name, Orr.” The man puts out his hand. “I’m Cotten.”

Orr throws the large stone toward the river. “My father looks like that.” He points to a shagbark hickory, bark layers draped like hairy shingles, and a white ring cut in the flesh. “Can’t get his face clean no matter what.”

Cotten laughs and wipes the back of his neck. “And where am I, exactly?”

Orr takes a half step forward. “Woodford. Where’d you come from?”

“Back east. Headed for Lexington.”

“You came too far west.” Orr pulls at the shirt sticking on his fevered skin. “We can take your horses to the river.”

“You’re a good neighbor.” Cotten begins unhitching the team. “You looking pale. You all right?”

“Just tired.”

“All right.”

Orr narrows his eyes, thinking on the man.

Cotten says, “I bet you’re wondering what I’m doing out here. Fine wagon, no white folk.”

“Ain’t my business.”

“That’s true.”

Orr touches a horse’s head. “You whip your horses?”

“I have never whipped a horse in my life.”

He looks at the man, his neck cloth hanging loose, and his smooth face. His eyes. Orr says, “I don’t hate dogs.”

“I know it,” Cotten says, unhitching the team. He rubs the horses’ heads.

“Soon as I threw it I wished I hadn’t.”

The big man looks at the dog. “Dogs don’t lie. It’s people you can’t tell mean you harm.” He pulls the team from the wagon, and they lead the horses to the river.

*   *   *

Back inside the house, Cotten points at the ham, and then to his own self. “I’m starving.”

Orr says, “That’s what it’s for,” and looks at the pot fire. He feels a surprising fearlessness with this stranger.

“Smells good. Ain’t had a real meal all day.” Cotten pulls a pink piece from the hock, chomps and swallows.

“You free?” Orr picks at the ham. “Out here alone, no white folk.”

“We all free.” Cotten wipes at his mouth with his sleeve. “Just most don’t know it.” Picks more at the ham.

Orr nods. “I guess.”

“And most of us ain’t free at all.”

Orr chews slowly. “What’s in Lexington?”

“Going to see a man named Clay. We write letters. I don’t suppose your daddy keeps any whiskey.”

“You particular about your whiskey?” He’s proud to use the new word he learned.

“Can’t say I ever been.”

He turns his back to Cotten and walks behind the pot fire. “My father’s not here. Not really.”

Cotten lets out a hoarse snicker. “I know that by now, boy. You afraid I’m gonna take you and eat you all up? Put you in the oven? Come on now.”

“My father keeps his whiskey on the window.”

Cotten stands and rubs his hands on his pants. “Whew, too long on that wagon.” He pushes aside the curtain and takes the bottle from behind. “All the way from South Carolina.”

“Is that your wagon?”

“Man I work for.” Cotten takes a pull from the bottle and his face contorts, his torso bends like from a blow to the ribs. “Lord!” He sets the bottle on the table. “Mister Bill Langley. I’m just renting.” He takes another pull.

“My daddy says Kentucky did God’s dirty work for him and made whiskey on the seventh day.”

The man throws back his head, mouth full of whiskey and silent with laughter so as not to lose a drop. He wipes at his silk cloth, checking for a spill.

Orr comes out from behind the pot fire. “He let me taste it once.” Just thinking about it makes his stomach wrinkle. “Most negroes around here ain’t like you.” Orr looks at the floor, and then back to Cotten. “You ever killed anything before?”

Cotten shakes his head. “What for?”

Orr shrugs his shoulders. “What’s a circus?”

Cotton considers the question. “A place for making people happy.”

There’s a sound of quick breathing at the doorway, the red dog, half inside. Orr pulls a piece of ham from the hock, and throws it to the floor.

Cotten goes on, “We got horse shows and tricks.” He takes another swig from the bottle.

Orr takes a piece of ham for himself. “You gonna work for a circus in Lexington?”

“No, sir.” The bottle dangles from his fingers. He looks upward; Orr follows his gaze to the rafters, but sees nothing. “Can you read some?”

Orr nods. “My daddy teaches me from the Bible.”

“That’s a good book.” Cotten clears his throat. “I guess you-all Christian, then?”

“My daddy says God ain’t particular, and no one gets to tell you what’s what.”

“I like your daddy.” Cotten takes another piece of ham. “I don’t subscribe to nothing neither. Where’d your daddy go to?”

“North.”

“What for?”

“Merchants. And for salt. He’s selling luck jars and soap. Should be good with all them wagons going up.”

“I seen all them. Got stuck in the middle of some taking up the road.” He waves away all of what bothers him. He puts the cork in the bottle and sets it behind the curtain on the ledge. “Your father heading for a camp meeting?”

“What exactly is a camp meeting?”

“Like a big church meeting.”

“You going to a camp meeting?”

“Never took.” Cotten coughs. “Where’s your ma at?”

Orr hesitates, not used to the question. “She’s dead.”

Cotten coughs again. “Well, I’m real sorry.”

Orr fans the pot fire. Puts his hand by the heat until he can’t take it no more. “Where you think a dead person goes to?”

Cotten shakes his head, and stands. “Can’t say.”

“That’s what my daddy says.” He barely touches the stove and pulls away his finger. “I saw my mother. On a wagon. Yesterday.”

“Well, you never do know.” Cotten sighs. “How far north your daddy go to?”

“Maybe two hours.” Orr looks back through the doorway. “You know about Heaven?”

Cotten looks at the bottle on the window, then back to the boy. “How old are you?”

“Twelve and a half.”

Cotten looks like he’s either itching for another pull of whiskey, or maybe wishing he hadn’t gotten started. Orr turns away from the doorway and looks back at Cotten, at his eyes paying close attention. Cotten says, “If people knew what free is, they’d live it. Not all slaves are slaves. And not all free are free.”

The sky in the doorway is darker. Orr feels the blade in his back pocket. “I can show you how to get to Lexington.”

Cotten tightens his neck cloth. “I’d appreciate it.”

“Only one road. And I bet we pass my daddy on the way.”

“Oh, I don’t know about you coming. People see you alone with a strange nigger, we’re bound to find trouble.”

Orr pours water on the pot fire until it dies to embers.

“You’re looking tired.” Cotten touches his forehead. “And you warm.”

“I’m fine.”

Cotton laughs. “Betting you don’t take no for an answer.”

Orr waits for him to leave so he can follow behind, but Cotten excuses himself, nods, and extends his arm through the doorway, after you.

They gather the horses and lead them to the wagon. Cotten hitches the team.

Orr climbs into the seat, and feels again for the blade in his pocket. He watches the hogs and pigs sleeping in the yard as the wagon rolls on through the grass. The black sow’s rump swings as she walks to the trough. Maybe that one. Seems right to pick out the oldest. Maybe not so afraid after all of the kill, of picking one, and having to kill.

*   *   *

An hour north along the river, Orr says he’ll walk on no matter how far, and Cotten should just go east because he’s bound to find his father on the road. But Cotten won’t hear it. So they ride on along the path, over the limestone worn smooth by the herds of long-gone buffalo. They climb the crest of a tall wooded knob as a dumb white moon watches over them. They ride roughly over the grassy rise, the river going dark alongside them, until a field opens out below them surrounded by a wood. Fire lights smearing yellow trails in the distance. They ride closer to a wash of noise.

They ride through the field, as the night gets less dark in the lamplight out by the tree line. They ride past large rocks along the hill, where curious locals watch and bear witness to what appears to be a vast gathering filling up the field. Wagons in the field, littering the hill and the woods. There are voices, a rising din of shouts from the crowd lit up by a bonfire. The wash of noise grows, as they get closer, soon filling up the evening like the sound of a rushing waterfall. They see hundreds of horses standing there by the trees. On a short wooden stage, a tall thin man stalks back and forth before the crowd, hands flailing. The sound of the crowd is even louder in the corner of the field, where they make a strange wheat waving in the night breeze. Pink hands waving, and white hands, and the negroes in the back make a dark place, their forearms moving along in waves. They all move in the shadowed field, a spreading swath of smoke movement in the lamplight, the candlelight, and the bonfire beside the forest. Whiteheads fly to the tallest trees now dark in silhouette. The Appalachians hold sway in the east.

“That’s my daddy’s wagon!”

Cotten pulls on the reins. “You sure?”

Orr jumps down from his seat. “That right there. And that’s our bag.” He jogs over to a wagon and grabs at a bag, pulls out a bar of soap, and shows it like a prize.

They tie the team to a stump.

Cotten says, “Better stay close,” as they venture into the crowd.

They walk by lean-tos and shelters made of bundled sticks, and by cloth tents pitched at woodside, by children sleeping in straw beds and infants feeding at breasts, napping in their woolen blankets. They walk in among the army of readying people, who press themselves ever closer.

Some sit still, consumed by a sober worship, but most move about, declaring aloud a commitment to the High Holy Spirit. They watch a youngster make exhortations from his father’s shoulders, filled with the Spirit of the Lord, never too young for salvation. A magic maker performing tricks, dancing on eggs unbroken and telling futures. The leather-dressed men with rifles on their backs speak to all who might listen. An older woman, about his daddy’s age, waves at Orr and Cotten, singing out “Glory, glory, Hallelujah! Glory, glory, Hallelujah! Sing with me, boy. I sing with God, and He says He likes my voice!” Orr can’t help but smile. And other women sing prayers and poems, and listeners are bewitched by these women—by women! She swears she speaks to God direct! Orr sees the white preacher on the clapboard stage—the young man insisting on a truth, a new truth that you know in your heart was placed there by Christ, and your sinful nature needs his election, swearing, “You will hear my voice, because this mouth is God’s mouth, and none other’s. Never will you need the mouth of another to claim your stake in the Lord! God’s eyes and ears hear you, see you, He knows you and your soiled soul.” And the listeners cannot keep still. This blood is boiling over as they quiver and fill up with the Spirit, and they rock against Orr and Cotten. Cotten takes hold of Orr’s hand.

“The Holy Fire is too hot for any standing still!” says the preacher onstage.

Orr watches the people shake and wave in the clearing. It frightens him.

There is a passing of the Spirit, unbounded by bodies. There is a heaving, a hurling from inside their souls in the torchlight. Retch any spirit that keeps you calm. Grab others by their collars, and fill yourself with overpour. Get drunk on the Spirit in this place, dance with the Spirit in this place, each one a name and a face before the one true God who grants salvation, the God who knows your every sin, your failings, and who forgives them, who grants mercy, and will be made glorified and will come down to this place soon enough—to this place—and set His feet on American soil. He will walk these hills, returning giant of Jesus Christ, oh Great Man of Original Liberty.

*   *   *

Orr and Cotten start away from the center of the crowd, toward the outer fringes of the great gathering, Cotten’s big hand on the boy’s slender shoulder. But the forest is no less spirited and filled with persons. The horses in half-light are tethered to the trees and their heads are lowered in shadow, drinking from water troughs and bowls. Orr and Cotten make for the back of the woods toward the river and away from the field. Still they are accosted, and handled, beseeched by other exhorters. “Won’t you please show your love for the Lord?” The black folk among them see Orr walking with his negro.

Cotten says, “Stay close.”

“Why they crying?”

“They don’t wanna be here no more.”

Orr sees mostly legs and bellies, so Cotten sets the small boy on his shoulders. “Look for your daddy, go on now!”

Orr taps Cotten’s head. “I don’t see him nowhere.”

“What? Too loud. Keep looking.”

They shoulder on toward the river, where the trees are darker and the chanting is lower behind them. Thinner trees shake in the wind and look alive. Orr swats at a low branch grabbing at him.

There is a loud cry, and Orr points that way. “Look!”

Waist deep in the river water and sloshing about is a wiry and bare-chested man with a wild white beard, his black hat sliding off the side of his head, almost falling; he’s constantly pulling and setting it straight. The man forces a struggling piglet partly under the water. He laughs and belches. I baptize you in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Roast! He wrestles with the piglet and pushes the head fully under. The man’s hat falls away and rushes downriver. Some of the watchers cheer, raised whiskey bottles in their hands. But most point, and cry out Blasphemer! as the man grapples with the kicking and pink suckling pig. It slides some from his hands, front hoofs clacking.

Cotten says, “Let’s get on now!”

Orr rests his chin on the man’s soft hair, feeling unsure and sick in his stomach.

Cotten shouts, “We shouldn’t have come so far!”

“What?”

“From the crowd. We’re too far from the crowd! No telling what kind of people! See your daddy anywhere?”

Orr watches the woods unfold in the torch glow, as listeners burst with exhortations right in front of his eyes, making speeches like they’d done so all their lives, garbling words he’s never heard before. Cotten carries him past a small campfire. Clay jugs pass among the fire watchers. An old man, his face red with cackling, hot breath, reaches up to Orr, offers the boy a drink. The old man says, Have a sip! Cotten just waves him aside. They move on further away from the crowd, to what looks like a white blur wavering back in the trees. It’s too high, almost floating, it’s a woman with bright flowing hair. Her golden hair of sunlight hangs long and ribboned with a white rope draped over her shoulders. She’s a ghost in a white gown looking like an angel. A crown of thistles rests upon her head. In one hand she holds what looks like a wand, a crooked stick like a witch’s wand. She holds it high. And the watchers yell out Harlot! whenever the stick falls to her side. The other arm is tied with rope to a tree, her wrist going red.

Closer now, Orr sees a small stage and chair legs wobbling from under her gown.

Her hem has all gone muddy, and the watchers yell Harlot! Witch! while she cries out for help. Adulterous whore!

The white woman goes blurry in the trees, and goes smaller as they move away.

They head toward the crowd in the field. Orr looks for his father and sees that, now, inside the crowd, there isn’t a crowd, but persons, faces, hands, and eyes. Each one a person, is a piece of the view from way back, high up on the knob. The poor folk and gentlemen, and the young ladies in silken wraps and gold finger rings muddy their finery as they move about and dance in the dirt. A snare drum pounds out a gallop. They raise their legs, dancing, walking and running in place, losing their bonnets and capes, fine hair loosening from pins and snapping back like whips, in enthusiasm for the Lord.

Orr doesn’t know what to make of it all, and suddenly shouts: “There!”

They push through the crowd toward the stage behind a long wooden table, where sit baskets of bread and tin cups for communion, and the Christ blood in a fat leaden tumbler. The preacher onstage finishes with a flourish. The crowd responds with shouts of approval, as a new preacher takes to the stage.

“Right there! It’s my daddy! Right there.” Orr points to a man in the crowd. The man is shouldering a sack and can’t seem to stop himself from laughing.

*   *   *

It is Gillon Dowse’s first time onstage, this preacher of proud Ulster blood. He looks to the crowd, and the spirit in this crowd is fierce. So many exhorters in the field compete for listeners, speakers standing precariously on chairs. But there is a roar in these woods, and it comes booming from the lion mouth of Christ—This be all the spectacle we need. A bright torch blooms behind him. With hair long like a woman’s, Dowse prays for the Holy Spirit, that this mouth speak only Truth, and that for Truth they will listen.

He spreads his arms out wide, black Bible in one hand, and the gesture fills him with boldness. “There is a heavenly scent in the air today. Who else among you can smell it? Can you smell the sweet Holy Spirit?” The listeners up front are swaying, their backs against the faithful sharing at the sacramental table. “This bounty is here and all for your taking, but only the pure in heart can sit. Dear God, I bless this table!”

Two tables, crossways, long wooden rough-cut slabs. The faithful take of the bread, and taste of the wine, their faces low and humbled under Heaven. The black folk take of less bread and of water, away at a farther table.

“Look this way!” he cries. “Because the Lord God knows your every secret and even now He knows your name.” He demands: “I said look this way! Because this will be like no sermon before, a true American Gospel!” He can make out their mouths moving, the mumblings of prayer inaudible in the ruckus and racket of chant.

Only one man shows visible interest, standing off at the far side of the stage. A sack over one shoulder, the man is smiling, and Dowse assumes the smile is for his sermon, a great enthusiasm for the Gospel. The crowd around this man gathers, moving about, but those seated pay little attention. “Do you not smell the good clean air?” Dowse cries out. “This land made new in His spirit? His blood? I say, look this way!”

The heads finally look up from the table.

The backs of the others press up against them on the benches, jostling the cups in their hands. They all look his way, and their mouths fall open from shock. They rise—and see Gillon Dowse, in imitation of Christ. His arms extend in a crucifix gesture, Bible limp in his grip. Ankles crossed, he balances on one foot and drops his head to his chest.

He raises his head: “Now, won’t you listen?”

There is a murmur of shocked hush at the tables. The smiling man with the sack, he whistles, he approves. “Take a look at him now,” shouts the man.

Then another voice from the crowd: “Heresy!”

“Profane!”

“He claims to be the Christ!”

Dowse undoes his posture. “I claim nothing of the sort! But a recognition of His mercy, of His sacrifice and glory. I die for Him each day. Every day! And you die this day, too, for our Lord!”

The movement by the stage begins to drag, and the crowd calms even while the outlying listeners become one vast dancing witness. Here in Dowse’s small assembly they start slowing, they set themselves apart. They still themselves and they listen. He hears the crying of a young boy, “Daddy! Daddy!”

He looks out among the crowd, at the man with the sack, and then to the other side of the stage where stands, not very far away, a very large nigger, held back by a crowd of what seem to be concerned white folk.

Whence comes the crying voice?

Dowse shouts, “For what reason do you throw yourselves? You dance in the woods like witches, when the Lord Himself walks these hills and you’re too busy to see Him!” Dowse raises his hands in the air, shaping the world in his hands. “And our Heavenly Father sees us!”

The lull is widening now, as more of them stop and listen to the man onstage.

Dowse turns, and takes the torch from behind him. He holds it aloft out front. He is a fire breather and his mouth speaks Truth: “Do you see this face? See it? This is my face. My mouth. My soul stands before the Lord, and for it He knows my name!” His hair is dark wine pouring from a skull. “And He knows this heart inside my chest no less than He knows yours.”

The crowd nods and murmurs.

The nigger is now holding back a boy, a small white boy, as the crowd wrestles with the nigger’s thick wrists.

Dowse looks away, says, “And He knows my dreams no less than He knows yours.”

A voice shouts back, “It’s true!”

He walks back and forth across the stage. “For whom did the good Christ die on his cross? Tell me, who?”

Another shouts, “For me!”

“Yes! And no less for me, my Christ!” Dowse looks up to the night sky. “He is mine, I am His, and the Lord God knows my name. Now who among you in this land is not the child of God? Who among you?”

They all wave their arms, and nod, Yes, yes, yes. The man with the sack is awkwardly clapping, his hands still gripping the cloth of the sack.

Again, he whistles.

The circle of listeners grows in circumference, slowing outward like grass in a wind.

The boy is now yelling, and Dowse understands this was the crying he’d heard before, and yet he can hardly make out what the boy is saying, “My father, my father”? The boy is pointing at the clapping man, who now sets his sack down. But not on the ground—on the stage, on Dowse’s stage. What presumption! Dowse ventures close, has half a mind to kick it off. But before he can, the man says boldly: “Why don’t you just go ahead and make it rain, preacher? Make it rain!”

Torch in hand, Dowse says to the stranger. “I’m not the Christ, good brother. Never said I was. And I suggest you test not God, lest He answer harshly.”

“No test for God, friend.” The man laughs again. “It’s a test for you. And I ain’t your brother.” He waves his hat at the gathering crowd. “Go on, we’re farmers here, and it’s a dry season so we could use a little miracle making. But we don’t know much theater. So come on, let’s see us some rain!”

A few laughs from the crowd, a few sniggers, and the faces look back and forth, wondering which of these two men will win.

Dowse places the torch on its stand. “Tell me, friend,” he says, pulling his fingers through his hair. “What brings you if not a soul in need of a cure?” He looks at the crowd: Let us hear the man answer me this one! He sees the nigger talking to the white folk around him—where is the boy?—and the nigger is now getting smaller as the crowd walks him away toward the tree line. The boy is now struggling to free himself from the arms of a large white man who looks like a farmer. The boy is clearly yelling, “My father! My father!”

The man says to Dowse, “I’m here because I’m a man of luck, and good luck, I guarantee it!”

Dowse shakes his head and taps his palm against his Bible, chuckling. “Brother, only God guarantees.”

“Then you must not be from around here, because out here we make our own luck. We got no choice!”

“I hear that,” laughs a man in the crowd. “And with any luck we’ll get rain.”

The man now reaches inside the sack onstage. “Well, I ain’t afraid of God, friend. He and I have no quibbling. Just with you and your clan here clamoring like roosters.” He raises his head. “I’m a man of my own standing, and I make my own luck. Who else?” He pulls a large clay jar from his sack, a carved bearded face covering one side, and he says, “This’ll keep you clean of his kind, or any other sour luck comes your way.” He holds the jar above his head. “Who say’ll give me three dollars for a good-luck jar?”

The crowd shouts back, some call him a heretic.

He shouts, “Good luck’s all around you. Can’t you smell it in the trees? And I’ve bottled all you need to take it home!”

A woman in a long coat shouts, “One dollar!” She shoves it at the man, taken in by his swagger, and tries to claim her purchase. The man holds the jar high, saying, “I make my own luck. Here’s proof, a money-back guarantee! Show us proof, Fire-top! We need wheat before there’s bread. Give us a miracle!”

“Here is a money changer dealing in the presence of God! And God alone makes miracles,” says Dowse. “We give God no orders! We’d be in need of a new tongue just to whisper aloud His name!” Dowse shows the face of his Bible, and stamps his foot on the stage. Pacing. He is becoming excited.

Their applause takes them away from the newcomer. Hear, hear!

The lulled crowd awakens, as Dowse can no longer help himself. “Because freedom from a British king is no longer enough! The time has come for his Heavenly Kingdom on Earth!”

The crowd waves their hands and they move about in the clearing, nodding in assent. Dowse watches them stamp their feet and run in place, some in circles like horses.

The boy fights the farmer’s hold.

“We do speak the same language, brother.” He points to the boy’s father, at the foot of the stage. “But what do you care for rain? I know what it is you seek,” he says, swirling and grasping the torch, leaving fire trails in the air. “Liberty in body and soul! Our fathers, and our grandfathers, our brothers and sons all died for us, for this nation. I swear it was God gave us victory!”

The crowd cheers. They raise their knees and run in place, spending the Spirit that fills them too full.

“It was Captain Christ who gave us revolution!”

A birdcall echoes and the crowd shouts, Amen! Amen! Amen!

“He offers salvation in this world, and a salvation from it!”

The man stays beside the stage, tickled and pleased, even admiring. He is immersed in the great show.

“A constitution,” Dowse shouts, “written by the heads of a Wild Beast! This is your land, yours! This place marked by His High Holy Spirit! Heal this place with me, and wait not for others. Heal thyself! Forsake the Pharisee help of doctors, and lawyers, of judges, and make of this land the Lord’s backyard. Forsake earthly princes and kings! For none of them know my name, and they know not your name! What lay in my heart is sin, God knows, but that He knows means He is within me. And I swear He knows my name!” He leans toward the salesman smiling by the stage. “You look at me good, now, brother.”

“Oh, I’m looking.” The man laughs.

“He knows your name, too, good stranger.”

The boy shouts, “Daddy!”

Dowse looks, and sees the nigger is back, and now expertly takes hold of the large farmer, squeezes him from behind as if hugging him. The farmer’s arms release the boy. The boy falls to the ground and stumbles, slipping in the mud. The farmer looks to be asleep in the dirt, and disappears as the crowd envelops him. The boy is pushing his way through the crowd. Pushing his way toward the stage. What tenacity, what strength, what faith, this child.

Dowse turns to the man, and says: “You are but a child in His eyes! And He knows every corner of your sinning soul, but that He knows is good news. Be sure.” He wags a flagging torch before the gathering, and a thunder crack breaks above the hills. A flash of lightning paints white light across the clearing—a brief and moon-white glimpse of a hundred faces, a shock-still dance in the glare. He extends an open hand to the laughing man. He laughs along with him, a joyous yawp.

The man yells up to the preacher, openly admiring his showmanship, and shouts, “You tricky son of a bitch!” The rain slaps down on both of their faces.

*   *   *

The sky has opened up like a cataract, a down-pouring of rain. The man stands at the front of the gathering, still some hundred feet away, shaking hands with the preacher.

Cotten lowers the boy to the ground. “I’ll go with you.”

The rain falls in wet slicing sheets, as the field goes muddy. The faithful are running in place in the rain. They dance, fueling themselves into a fervor. Cotten pulls back at the boy, his thick hand on Orr’s thin wrist. The crowd lose themselves ecstatically in the shower. Their wet hands open and waiting.

Cotten shouts, holding the boy’s wrist, “Don’t get lost!”

The boy pulls away. “Let me go!”

The man is laughing along with the preacher.

But Orr knows his father’s take on preachers, and still the man shakes hands with the preacher. Then comes a rush of onlookers in a wet wave of legs and bellies. Orr is caught between two strange women. His face is hot, the rain is cold, and he loses sight of his father.

“Ask and ye shall receive!” says the preacher.

The dancing is now at fever pitch, while some run in place and some in circles. The worshippers exhaust themselves, they empty themselves, and bells ring out in the rain.

Orr is pulled away. A woman on her knees pulls him closer.

Cotten’s thick hand comes grabbing, but the wet palm slides down along Orr’s arm, and the shaking crowd swallows Cotten whole. The woman on her knees is singing. Pale as death, she is old, and dank with rain. She sings a song Orr cannot understand. He sees through the wetness of her dress, and looks away. He’s losing his breath, and the cold slapping water on his warm skin makes him go blurry inside. He looks between the moving bodies and the ribbons of rain for his father, Where’s my daddy? The crowd pushes him closer to the stage. They push him as he shouts for his father. He falls and he rolls to the ground.

A strong thick hand reaches out for him.

Orr shouts out, “Let me go!”

Cotten lifts the boy. “You’ll see better from my shoulders.” But Orr wrestles against the big man as the white onlookers watch, Let me go.

“Let the boy go!”

Dowse looks for the boy.

Another voice, “Get your paws off that boy!”

Dowse sees the nigger make a path for the boy, and then squat low, his round head no longer heads high above the others, as he sidles off stealthily into the crowd. This pleases Dowse. God be with you, black. “See God’s children sacralize this land with their worship!” he shouts. “Today is a day for our Lord and God, so give yourself to Christ and die this day. Kill off your old ways and come back born in His Spirit!”

Orr slips through the wet limbs and falls to the floor. Picks himself up and moves toward the front of the stage, can’t see his daddy from here, and the fear is getting colder. He falls again just before the stage, face streaked with mud.

“And He comes with a great big stick! A brand-new Heaven and a brand-new Earth. Because the End is oh so near, I swear! And this time I know is the right time, the only time, for this generation will not pass before the Day of the Coming of the Lord! A revolution of God’s own making, and no longer do we live in a time for waiting. And these years made holy are almost over, the Christ is finally come. See Him come even now in the hills, strolling like the walking sun, the trees like grass below His feet. For His head stays dry in the heavens, and His feet are wet in the Earth. Because Death has no sway on the Coming of the Lord. And Death will have no more dominion! Where is thy sting? Where is thy victory, O Death? See our Christ, He is come!”

Dowse drops to his knees.

There is a flash of lightning in the rain—then wait—wait for the buckshot of thunder.

Orr steps to the riser, Help me up.

He waves to his father, whose mouth is agape as he looks at the crowd.

What is happening to this great crowd? Then peripherally, miraculously, most unexpectedly of all there manifests a young boy who, to the man, looks like his son. What on earth are you doing here, boy? Get you away from that stage!

The preacher, too, lifts his head. His eyes go wide, bearing witness to yet another miracle.

Orr turns away from his father, and looks to the crowd. Slow and strange, the world presses in on his skin. His forehead broils in the cold rain, wet and cold, never been hot and so cold. Torches spatter as an unlikely wave of flesh and human spirit falls away from the stage; there is a slow heave and falling of people. They turn sluggish, deathlike, and tired, a hundred souls or more. Muscles relaxing, and down they go like husks falling from spent spirits; they exhaust themselves in exercise and enthusiasm for the returning Lord. They fall. They all fall to the ground like one vast body of so many parts, and fall into what looks like a slumber. Mounds of mud and sleep; is this death? He’s frightened by the hundred fallen, the freshly threshed. They lie in the field like war dead.

“But why, son? Will you not fall?” the preacher says to the boy, at the far edge of the stage. “Spend yourself and be reborn, awake in the Lord!”

“You’re not my daddy,” says Orr.

“You looking for your daddy, son?” The preacher extends his hand, a fine fur on its back. “Come up here with me, and I will show you.”

Orr looks to his father, who is trudging in the mud for his son, pushing others aside, saying to him “Get you away from that stage!” Orr looks to the fallen covering the field, at the hundred bodies prostrate on wet grass and rock.

His father coming closer: “You let go my son!”

Orr takes the preacher’s hand. Lift me up.

Orr is lifted.

“You’re all burning hot, boy.” The preacher touches his forehead. “Now you look out there, and witness. These faithful will never have to go to the grave. Will never take a taste of death! Look at them asleep, and deep in dream. Heaven is the white sheet we sleep under. Where’s your mamma? Is your mamma here?”

The raining sky and surrounding hills make for a febrile vision. Orr is scared and he looks at his father, who now holds out a hand to his son: Come down from there. And Orr feels shamed by his fear—I don’t want it, and I don’t want my daddy to see—but, look, there, out in the field is a stirring. See it? A handful of persons by the stage, they open their eyes. They awaken! Watch them kneel, and watch them rise. And there—in the field, waking up, is a beautiful woman. Reborn and refreshed, she looks just like her.

Shout for her? Run to her?

But he’s too afraid of the dead, so he waves, the woman’s face alight with resurrection.

“Is that your mamma, son?” Dowse asks. “She is a vision of Heaven.”

His father says, “You come on down from that stage.”

“Is that your daddy, son?”

He says, “I think that’s my mamma,”

“Then go to your mamma, son. Go on.”

Rising from the dirt and tangle of sleeping wet limbs this beautiful woman stands up. Is it her? She stands and stretches toward the stage.

“Mamma, I’m here! I’m right here!”

Deep within his heart, the vessel of his soul, he thanks the preacher and wants to say a prayer, his first prayer. Where does it come from? Not sure how, but the wish passes through him, up out the throat, and to his lips, these lips, where I say a wish out loud. Oh, take away the quiet creeping fear. With every passing syllable, the fear is further abated: Dear Lord, let it be her. And with enough luck, this woman waking up from the outside place, where there is no need for God, O God, please let it be her. Think on the black sow, how you won’t have to kill her after all because Death, I swear, is beaten today. Death be now and forever undone. Amen.