I went in. An usher peeled a metal folding chair from a stack near the door and flipped it open for me. The congregation had risen to its feet to sing so I stood in the back row, wedged in among other late arrivals. The woman on my left offered to share her hymnal and I took my half, my gaze sliding over the page in haste. They were on verse four of a ditty that went on and on about blood and sin. I made some mouth noises which I hoped were being lost in the general din. Aside from the fact I don't believe in this stuff, I don't sing too good and I was worried I might be denounced on both counts.

Way up at the front, I thought I spotted Barbara Daggett's blonde head, but I didn't see anyone else I knew. We sat down with a rustle of clothing and the scrape of metal chair legs. While Pastor Bowen, in a matte black suit, talked about what wretches we were, I stared at the brown vinyl tile floor and studied the staunch row of stained glass windows which depicted forms of spiritual torment that made me squirm. Already, I could feel a burgeoning urge to repent.

I could see Daggett's casket up by the altar, looking somehow like one of those boxes magicians use when they cut folk in half. I checked my program. We'd whipped through the opening prayer and the invocation, and now that we'd dispensed with the first hymn, we were apparently settling in for an energetic discourse on the temptations of the flesh, which put me in mind of the numerous and varied occasions on which I'd succumbed. That was entertaining.

Pastor Bowen was in his sixties, balding, a small man with a tight round face, who looked like he would suffer from denture breath. He'd chosen as his subject matter a passage from Deuteronomy: "The Lord shall smite thee in the knees, and in the legs, with a sore botch that cannot be healed, from the sole of thy foot unto the top of thy head," and I heard more on that subject than I thought possible without falling asleep. I was curious what he could find to say about John Daggett, whose transgressions were many and whose repentances were few, but he managed to tie Daggett's passing into "He shall lend to thee, and thou shall not lend to him; he shall be the head, and thou shall be the tail," and sailed right into an all-encompassing prayer.