Across from the deacons and trustees of the church sat the women, the deaconesses, the elderly sisters, the mothers of the church. Sober and potent they sat there, fans in their hands, their bodies keeping time with the music in a joyful way. There sat his grandmother in a blue dress, and next to her sat Horace, a boy of no more than five, sitting erect in his brown suit, suppressing a yawn.

He remembered his grandmother’s hands to be small and firm, also callused from hard work, but still soft in a womanly way. Tender. People called her Retha. Aretha Davis Cross. A mother of the church. His mother. Hers were the hands that were his beginnings: In the beginning were hands, and hands were the beginning; all things that were made were made by hands, and without hands was not anything made that was made. In her hands was life; and the life was in her hands. Her hands reached through the darkness. Her hands lifted and supported. Undid and did up. Comforted. Scolded. Fed. Clothed. Bathed. Her hands did the teaching, the sending, the receiving, the mending, the straightening, the strengthening. Her hands spoke and listened, smiled and encouraged. She died when he was ten.

She’s dead, said Horace. Most of these people are. I . . .

We all are, boy, said the demon.

But how can these people be here? I mean . . . are they ghosts?

Are you really as dumb as you look? asked the demon. You know, for all your damned learning you don’t know a mother-fucking thing, do you? Ghosts? Yeah, you might call them ghosts. Ghosts of the past. The presence of the present. The very stuff of which the future is made. This is the effluvium of souls that surround men daily. All you have to do is take the scales off your eyes and look and see. You are seeing. I have removed the scales from your eyes.

Why?

“Why? Why?” mocked the spirit. Look, damn it, and see “Why.”

Lord if you lead me

I will not stray

The congregation sat in their finery, their pastel pinks and greens and reds and blues absorbing and reflecting the early-morning light against the pristine white walls of the sanctuary. Expressions on their faces ran the gamut of all the feelings Horace had felt while sitting in those pews: boredom; anticipation of meals to come, the sermon, a ball game, seeing a friend after a long spell; tiredness; worry; restfulness; contentment. They were fat and thin, light and dark, tall and short, farmers, schoolteachers, plumbers, bus drivers, butchers, carpenters, salesmen, mechanics, barbers, nurses, mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, cousins, lovers, friends. Here was community, not a word but a being. Horace felt it as though for the first time. Here, amid these singing, fanning, breathing beings were his folk, his kin. Did he know them? Had they known him? It was from them he was running. Why?