“The Lord is blessing us. I prayed all night, Alvin, and look what God has done.”

“Well, you should’ve prayed harder, then, and got it healed up tight. I need this boy for chores.”

“Don’t you get blasphemous with me, Alvin Miller.”

“It just gripes me hollow, the way God always sneaks in to take the credit. Maybe Alvin’s just a good healer, you ever think of that?”

“Look, your nastiness is waking the boy.”

“See if he wants a drink of water.”

“He’s getting one whether he wants it or not.”

Alvin wanted it badly. His body was dry, not just his mouth; it needed to make back what it lost in blood. So he swallowed as much as he could, from a tin cup held to his mouth. A lot of it spilled around his face and neck but he didn’t hardly notice that. It was the water that trickled into his belly that mattered. He lay back and tried to find out from the inside how his wound was doing. But it was too hard to get back there, too hard to concentrate. He dropped off before he was halfway there.

He woke again, and thought it must be night again, or maybe the curtains were drawn. He couldn’t find out cause it was too hard to open his eyes, and the pain was back, fierce again, and something maybe even worse: the wound was a-tickling till he could hardly keep himself from reaching down to scratch. After a while, though, he was able to find the wound and once again help the layers to grow. By the time he slept, there was a thin, complete layer of skin over the whole wound. Underneath, the body was still working to renew the ravaged muscles and knit the broken bones. But there’d be no more loss of blood, no more open wound to get infected.

“Look at this, Taleswapper. You ever seen the like of this?”

“Skin like a newborn baby.”

“Maybe I’m crazy, but except for the splint I can’t see no reason to leave this leg bound up no more.”

“Not a sign of a wound. No, you’re right, there’s no need for a bandage now.”

“Maybe my wife is right, Taleswapper. Maybe God just rared back and passed a miracle on my boy.”

“Can’t prove anything. When the boy wakes up, maybe he’ll know something about it.”

“Not a chance of that. He hasn’t even opened his eyes this whole time.”

“One thing’s certain, Mr. Miller. The boy isn’t about to die. That’s more than I could have guessed yesterday.”

“I was set to build him a box to hold him underground, that I was. I didn’t see no chance him living. Will you look at how healthy he is? I want to know what’s protecting him, or who.”