“If there’s so much power in being seventh son of a seventh son, then where’s your power, Alvin Miller? You’re a seventh son—that ain’t nothing, supposedly, but I don’t see you doodlebugging or—“

“You don’t know what I do—“

“I know what you don’t do. I know that you don’t believe—“

“I believe in every true thing—“

“I know that every other man is down at the commons building that fine church, except for you—“

“That preacher is a fool—“

“Don’t you ever think that maybe God is using your precious seventh son to try to wake you up and call you to repentance?”

“Oh, is that the kind of God you believe in? The kind what tries to kill little boys so their papas will go to meeting?”

“The Lord has saved your boy, as a sign to you of his loving and compassionate nature—“

“The love and compassion that let my Vigor die—“

“But someday his patience will run out—“

“And then he’ll murder another of my sons.”

She slapped his face. Alvin Junior saw it with his own eyes. And it wasn’t the offhand kind of cuffing she gave her sons when they lipped or loafed around. It was a slap that like to took his face off, and he fell over to sprawl on the floor.

“I’ll tell you this, Alvin Miller.” Her voice was so cold it burned. “If that church is finished, and there’s none of your handiwork in it, then you will cease to be my husband and I will cease to be your wife.”

If there were more words, Alvin Junior didn’t hear them. He was up in his bed a-trembling that such a terrible thought could be thought, not to mention being spoke out loud. He had been afraid so many times tonight, afraid of pain, afraid of dying when Anne whispered murder in his ear, and most of all afraid when the Shining Man came to him and named his sin. But this was something else. This was the end of the whole universe, the end of the one sure thing, to hear Mama talk about not being with Papa anymore. He lay there in his bed, all kinds of thoughts dancing in his head so fast he couldn’t lay hold of any one of them, and finally in a that confusion there wasn’t nothing for it but to sleep.

In the morning he thought maybe it was all a dream, it had to be a dream. But there were new stains on the floor at the foot of his bed, where the blood of the Shining Man had dripped, so that wasn’t a dream. And his parents’ quarrel, that wasn’t no dream neither. Papa stopped him after breakfast and told him, “You stay up here with me today, Al.”