“I’ll go,” Tommy said. But he was not sure whether he could ever go back again after what he had done right behind the pulpit. But to please her, and to make her know that he was really sorry and that he would really try to go back to church, and to make certain in her mind that he genuinely wanted to have a place on the Right on Judgment Day, he helped her cook dinner and then washed the dishes afterwards.

II

THEY LIVED ON THE TOP FLOOR of a gray wooden house next to a funeral parlor. Thomas and Edward could look out of the kitchen window and down into the rear door of the funeral parlor, which was always open, and watch Billy Herbs, the mortician, working on the bodies. Sometimes the smell of the embalming fluid would float through the open door and up to them, leaning out the window. It was not a good smell. Sometimes Billy Herbs would come to the back door of the embalming room in his white coat and look up at them, and laugh, and wave for them to come down. They never went down. And after a few minutes of getting fresh air, Billy Herbs would look at them again and go back to his work.

Down the street, almost at the corner, was a police station. There were always two fat, white-faced, red-nosed, blue-suited policemen who never seemed to go anywhere sitting in the small room. These two men had never spoken to Thomas except on one occasion when he was doing some hard thinking about getting on the Right Side on Judgment Day.