“Shut your mouth, Mary,” Mama said, “or I’ll stuff your lower lip up your nose and tack it there to keep it shut.”

Alvin sighed in relief. When Mama made impossible threats it meant she wasn’t all that angry anymore. Mary put her nose in the air and flounced down the hall, but Alvin didn’t even bother with it. He just grinned at Taleswapper, and Taleswapper grinned at him.

“Having trouble getting dressed for church, lad?” asked Taleswapper.

“I’d rather dress myself in lard and walk through a herd of hungry bears,” said Alvin Junior.

“More people live through church than survive encounters with bears.”

“Not by much, though.”

Soon enough he got dressed. But he was able to talk Taleswapper into taking the shortcut, which meant walking through the woods up over the hill behind the house, instead of going around by way of the road. Since it was right cold outside, and hadn’t rained in a while, and wasn’t about to snow yet, there’d be no mud and Mama’d probably not even guess. And what Mama didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.

“I noticed,” said Taleswapper as they climbed up the leaf-covered slope, “that your father didn’t go with your mother and Cally and the girls.”

“He doesn’t go to that church,” said Alvin. “He says Reverend Thrower is a jackass. Course, he don’t say that where Mama can hear.”

“I suppose not,” said Taleswapper.

They stood at the top of the hill, looking down across open meadowland toward the church. The church’s own hill hid the town of Vigor Church from view. The frost was just beginning to melt off the brown autumn grass, so that the church looked to be the whitest thing in a world of whiteness, and the sun flashed on it like it was another sun. Alvin could see wagons still pulling into place, and horses being tied to the posts on the meadow. If they hurried right now, they’d probably be in their places before Reverend Thrower started up the hymn.

But Taleswapper didn’t start down the hill. He just set himself on a stump and started to recite a poem. Alvin listened tight, because Taleswapper’s poems often had a real bite to them.

“I went to the Garden of Love, And saw what I never had seen: A chapel was built in the midst, Where I used to play on the green.

“And the gates of this chapel were shut, And ‘Thou shalt not’ writ over the door, So I turned to the Garden of Love, That so many sweet flowers bore,

“And I saw it was filled with graves, And tomb-stones where flowers should be. And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds, And binding with briars my joys and desires.