With a visible effort, Mr. Dandridge stilled his head, but his feet began twitching again.

“I’ll see if I can arrange for an ophthalmologist to meet us at the hospital, just in case.” Dad stepped aside and pulled out his iPhone.

“That would be Dr. Garza,” I said. “Unless Caerphilly has recently acquired a second ophthalmologist.”

“Doc, can we scrub him with the tomato juice now?” one of the medics asked.

“Please do,” Dad said.

“Tomato juice?” Chief Burke asked.

“We actually carry it in the ambulance just in case,” one of the EMTs said. “Can’t say I’ve ever seen it used before.”

“Do we have an ETA on that change of clothes for him?” one of the medics asked.

“I’ll go check,” Michael said. He ran off—away from the church, I noted with relief.

Two more firefighters stepped forward to help the medics by swabbing Mr. Dandridge’s hands and face with rags dripping with thick red liquid. Mr. Dandridge opened one eye slightly and then closed it again tightly. I wasn’t sure if he couldn’t see or didn’t like what he saw.

“Does that tomato juice wash out?” Mr. Dandridge asked.

“A darn sight better than the skunk odor,” a medic replied.

“May we ask Mr. Dandridge a few questions while the medics are working?” Chief Burke asked. Standing at his side was Jim Featherstone, Caerphilly’s new volunteer fire chief.

The medics nodded. With visible effort the chief came closer and squatted down at Mr. Dandridge’s side.

“Nelson, it’s Henry Burke,” he said. “I’m sorry to bother you, but we need to know a few things.”

Mr. Dandridge nodded slightly and assumed a stoic expression.

“Like why the devil did you call the fire department?” Chief Featherstone demanded.

“Because the county doesn’t have a skunk department,” Mr. Dandridge said. “Anyway, I didn’t ask for the fire department. I just called 911.”

“But you said the church was burning.”

“I never said the church was burning.” Mr. Dandridge tried to sit up and was prevented by the EMTs. “I said that I was in the church and that I’d been sprayed by skunks, and my eyes were burning. But perhaps I wasn’t speaking too clearly. Those miserable skunks were still trying to spray me.”

“Skunks?” Chief Burke asked. “Plural? How many? And where were they?”

“In the choir loft,” Mr. Dandridge said. “And I have no idea how many of them there were. I thought it was cats at first, and I went closer to see why someone had left a whole cage of cats in the church—”

“Cage?” Chief Burke and Chief Featherstone said in unison.

“Yes, cage. And I have no idea how many of them there were in the cage. A whole swarm of them.”