Jenny Wingfield

The Homecoming of Samuel Lake


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      Jenny Wingfield

      The Homecoming of Samuel Lake

      For Taylor, Amy, and Lori—who never once said they wished I was normal.

      For Jim, Ruth, Clif, and Hal—who probably said it, but not where I could hear.

      And for Charlie and Leon—because.

      Contents

      Chapter 1

      John Moses couldn’t have chosen a worse day, or a…

      Chapter 2

      This is the way it happened.

      Chapter 3

      Kinfolk started pouring in early the next morning. Pulling up…

      Chapter 4

      The first hour was the worst. Willadee’s brothers kept the…

      Chapter 5

      Sometimes, when Geraldine Ballenger wasn’t trying to think, but was…

      Chapter 6

      Uncle Toy had not spoken to Swan once since the…

      Chapter 7

      The little lane wound and twisted and tapered down to…

      Chapter 8

      The bed Swan slept in was so high she always…

      Chapter 9

      Bernice could hardly stand the way she felt the next…

      Chapter 10

      The way you trained a horse was, you taught it…

      Chapter 11

      Swan and her brothers had given up playing War Spies…

      Chapter 12

      Ras Ballenger had better things to do with his day…

      Chapter 13

      Bernice was wise enough not go on too much about…

      Chapter 14

      Samuel was out on the Macedonia highway, heading for the…

      Chapter 15

      On the first Friday in July, Odell Pritchett called from…

      Chapter 16

      Blade had no idea how long it would take for…

      Chapter 17

      Sheriff Early Meeks was born prematurely, back at the turn…

      Chapter 18

      In Blade’s dreams, he was running along the edge of…

      Chapter 19

      Ras knew that pretty soon, unless he could figure some…

      Chapter 20

      At breakfast, Samuel asked the rest of the family whether…

      Chapter 21

      As soon as Blade realized what was up, he lit…

      Chapter 22

      Willadee knew that Samuel was going to get a cool…

      Chapter 23

      What Swan intended to do was rescue Blade Ballenger. It…

      Chapter 24

      Willadee saw them coming when they topped a rise far…

      Chapter 25

      Swan was dead asleep. The little scuffling sounds of someone…

      Chapter 26

      Toy woke up around four o’clock that afternoon, not because…

      Chapter 27

      Time rocked on.

      Chapter 28

      The first thing Toy did after he got to his…

      Chapter 29

      Ras Ballenger didn’t think much of people in general, and…

      Chapter 30

      Millard Hempstead and his buddy, Scotty Dumas (who lived in…

      Chapter 31

      The surgery was tricky and took hours. According to Doc…

      Chapter 32

      It wasn’t so much decided that Willadee would take over…

      Chapter 33

      They’d never had a fight before. They’d never even had…

      Chapter 34

      “How long are you intending for this revival to run?”…

      Chapter 35

      At dawn, when Willadee dragged herself up the stairs and…

      Chapter 36

      February rolled around, and God still hadn’t shown Samuel what…

      Chapter 37

      Willadee had started supper before she left to get Blade,…

      Chapter 38

      Swan was in a dark place. A deeply dark place,…

      Chapter 39

      Out in the yard, Samuel was still waving his arms…

      Chapter 40

      Calla grieved.

      Chapter 41

      Nobody believed Swan about the mice. They didn’t believe that…

      Behind the Scenes

      ‘They’re My Family After All’

      ‘Love or Loathe’

      What to Read Next

      Acknowledgments

      About the Type

      Copyright

      About the Publisher

      Chapter 1

      Columbia County, Arkansas, 1956

      John Moses couldn’t have chosen a worse day, or a worse way to die, if he’d planned it for a lifetime. Which was possible. He was contrary as a mule. It was the weekend of the Moses family reunion, and everything was perfect—or at least perfectly normal—until John went and ruined it.

      The reunion was always held the first Sunday in June. It had been that way forever. It was tradition. And John Moses had a thing about tradition. Every year or so, his daughter, Willadee (who lived way off down in Louisiana), would ask him to change the reunion date to the second Sunday in June, or the first Sunday in July, but John had a stock answer.

      “I’d rather burn in Hell.”

      Willadee would remind her father that he didn’t believe in Hell, and John would remind her that it was God he didn’t believe in, the vote was still out about Hell. Then he would throw in that the worst thing about it was, if there did happen to be a hell, Willadee’s husband, Samuel Lake, would land there right beside him, since he was a preacher, and everybody knew that preachers (especially Methodists, like Samuel) were the vilest bunch of bandits alive.

      Willadee never argued with her daddy, but the thing was, annual conference started the first Sunday in June. That was when all the Methodist ministers in Louisiana found out from their district superintendents how satisfied or dissatisfied their congregations had been that past year, and whether they were going to get to stay in one place or have to move.

      Usually, Samuel would have to move. He was the kind who ruffled a lot of feathers. Not on purpose, mind you. He just went along doing