Uncle Mark pulled his hand from the calf’s mouth. “Now why’d I let this thing get my hand all slobbered up?” He laughed and tried to wipe it on some straw before he pulled out his handkerchief and wiped off the stickiness. Ada’s cheeks hurt from grinning.
For the rest of the summer, Ada and Doctor hiked the two miles to Uncle Mark and Aunt Rebecca’s farm every Sunday afternoon. There, she sat in their kitchen, and Uncle Mark taught her all the cures he knew. She would walk back through the fields reciting that day’s chants, memorizing the words that called on the Holy Spirit to work through her.
But now, all of that was gone. In the kitchen, Uncle Mark finished wrapping her mother’s hands.
Thank you, God, for helping Mama and Uncle Mark and for bringing Papa home safely. Ada prayed for Nathan, too, on his long journey across the ocean.
But she wondered whether these words really mattered.
Outside, the embers glowed.
She had entered the fire, and now she didn’t know who had come back out.
II
One for sorrow
—From the nursery rhyme “Counting Crows”
5
Will waited by the gas pumps and checked his new uniform. He liked how he looked: the gray khakis with a red leather belt, the striped shirt with an Esso patch on one shoulder and a green keystone on the other that read “Pennsylvania Turnpike.” He liked how he was part of something larger now, something that whirred and hummed and moved.
Above the pocket, “Burk” was bordered in red. He smoothed this with his fingers, and then he bent to look at his reflection on the gas pump glass, brushing his cowlick under his cap. When he stood, he found Buddy Dickson watching him.
“Burk, if you’re done primping, I got a job for you.” Dickson, the manager, was pudgy and a good foot shorter. He thrust a broom and shovel into Will’s hands. Then he turned and walked away. Will glanced at the men working the pumps at another island before hurrying to catch up.
Dickson hummed a hymn, one Will recognized but couldn’t place until Buddy hit the chorus and sang, “When the saints, oh when the saints, oh when the saints come marching in.”
Will wondered if they were hoofing it to a damn revival, but he didn’t speak as Dickson marched on, lurching forward.
Fifteen steps from the pumps, Buddy Dickson paused. He faced Will, his dark eyes intense. “Will Burk, are you saved?”
Jesus, Will thought. He had to look down to hold in his surprise, hold in the Hell no that he wanted to blurt out. Instead, he remained quiet. He’d had fourteen years of silence, living with his terse father before he died, so he was well practiced.
“Do you know Jesus as your personal savior?” Dickson tilted his head to peer at him.
Will looked out over the valley. For months he had waited for this job, listening to Aunt Amanda say, “Any day now, any day.” He wanted to keep it. Yet what the hell should he say?
“That’s what I feared,” Dickson said. He started walking again, his short legs moving fast, his shoulders bobbing side to side. Will half jogged to keep up.
The day’s heat settled on them as they moved across the parking lot of the Blue Mountain Service Plaza. Will shifted the shovel in his hand to get a better grip. He and Buddy Dickson both lived on the other side of the mountain in Path Valley, but until this morning, Will had never really spoken to him. Back in high school, when Will rode the bus, a bunch of kids huddled on Dickson’s porch before getting on. They always grumbled about the old man coming out at 6:30 a.m. to make sure they weren’t smoking. They’d hold up those leaflets he handed them, about the end times coming soon. Then they’d drop them on the bus floor or sometimes light them with their matches and watch them burn. That all seemed like a long time ago. Woody had warned him, calling Dickson kooky. But this?
As they walked, Dickson popped his hands together—not a clap but louder, a pop caused by the fingers of one hand curved in an O. The sound echoed from the hillside, like a .22, a pop that never really boomed like a big gun but deadly all the same.
At the curb, Dickson looked up at the mountain behind Will. “I knew your mother, knew her before she married Sam, and I knew him, too. We went to school together, and I always thought she was a fine lady and a good Christian. She went to church faithfully even without your father.” He stared at Will. “She knew the way to heaven.”
Will wanted to spit but held it.
“But I’m worried you don’t, Will Burk. It has bothered me to no end that Sam let you wander into the dark depths of hell. So, I’ll ask you again—are you saved?”
Will kicked his toe on the pavement, the words about his mother sinking in.
Dickson waited a while before muttering, “I heard you had the Devil in you.” He took the shovel and leaned it against the trash can before stepping up on the curb. “I want you to sweep the lot. Start here.” He pointed to the exit ramp; he had to shout as a truck roared past. “And push it to the edge from twenty feet out.”
Will didn’t know how to respond to this demand. At his feet, cigarette butts and gum wrappers mixed with dried mud and gravel. All of it Dickson wanted him to push uphill.
“The trash goes in this can. Be sure to pick it out,” Dickson ordered. “The rest of it, the gravel and dirt, shovel it up on the bank, beyond the grass.”
Dickson checked, making sure Will understood. “And,” Dickson popped his hands, “I want you to go all the way to the other side, over there beyond the truck pumps and incinerator.”
The broad lot felt about the same size as the lower meadow back at Will’s home, at least an acre. The incinerator seemed like a quarter mile away.
Dickson paused while Will took in the task. “While you’re out here, I want you to think about that barn fire that happened yesterday. Hell is a thousand times worse than any fire here on earth.” He waited, but Will kept looking away. He didn’t know anything about any barn fire. “And I want you to think about your mother and the Lord. What would she want for you? And your father, too—who knows where he is now—but think about what he’d want for you. Consider all the good things God has done for you. He can save you, Will Burk, but you have to let him in.”
Dickson stepped down from the curb. “I expect you done with this by lunchtime, so get to it.” He marched back down the slope, his step, somehow, even lighter than before.
Will pushed the broom. “What the fuck do you know about my life, Dickson, you ol’ Dickhead? And to bring my dead mother and father into this. Shit.” With each stroke, the broom made a heavy swish and a swirling cloud. Dust coated the inside of his mouth, while the sun scorched his neck. Five minutes in, sweat stung his eyes and soaked his new shirt. He wished he was swimming at Lake Caledonia.
“So, this is how you pump gas?” Will spoke to the water hydrant. “I bet you could pump it good as ol’ Dickhead himself, don’t you think?” Will leaned on the broom handle, the whole plaza sitting before him. The Esso station and Howard Johnson’s Restaurant shared one long limestone building with a slate roof, all of it surrounded by several acres of parking lot. To his right, cars and trucks zipped along on the pike, heading to Philly or Pittsburgh or who knew where. Beyond the highway, farms filled the wide Cumberland Valley. To his left, the steep slope of Blue Mountain sagged over him, its long spine stretching to the east and west. High above in the cloudless sky, two ravens circled and chortled.
Sometimes he imagined seeing his mother—in the grocery store, out in the garden, or, this morning, in a car pulling out of the plaza. He had stared at her photo so much that her blue eyes and playful grin lived on the backside of his eyelids. “She died at your birth,” Aunt Amanda always said.