“Glory Hallelujah!” Pastor Zeke boomed, and the congregation all shouted it back at him. Dwayne wished he had someplace to sit down where people wouldn’t be staring at him. “Lord bless you, son, are you ready to accept the Lord Jesus Christ into your heart as your personal savior?”

Alton said something that not even Dwayne could hear, but it must have been the right answer, because Pastor Zeke crossed the boy’s arms over his chest, put the handkerchief over his face and dunked him backward into the water, quick as you please, held him there for a second, then brought him up sputtering and blinking.

“Brothers and sisters, welcome Brother Alton into the body of Christ and this congregation!” Pastor Zeke said, and the folks in the auditorium sitting on velvet cushions on wooden pews all clapped and said “Praise Jesus!” Little Alton was allowed to escape wet and dripping off to the side, where Zeke’s wife Sister Amalie was waiting with a towel.

No telling if Alton had peed in the water. No telling.

Missy Collier went right in like she was at the neighborhood swimming pool. Her robe ballooned up around her and made her look like the five-hundred-pound lady at the carnival, but she tugged it right down and said, “Yes Pastor,” when he asked her about making Jesus her personal savior. And there she went, under the water, all that careful hair curling and makeup gone for nothing. She came up sputtering, too, mascara streaming down her cheeks, hair stringy over her face. Dwayne barely even noticed that he could see the outline of her lacy bra through the wet robe, because she was squishing off to the side where Amalie was waiting with a fresh towel, and now it was his turn. Everybody was watching him, and Pastor Zeke was waving his hand.

Zeke was working hard at it, all right. There was sweat dripping down his face, and his skin was blushing red at his collar and up over his face. Working on a heart attack, Dwayne thought. Lord, maybe he’ll have one before I have to do this.

He’d been saved some sixteen times in the last twelve years, and every time he’d taken off the robe in the waiting room. Never gotten close enough to see the murky water in the baptismal tank, the dark shadows in the corners, Pastor Zeke’s waiting open hands.

Dwayne froze on the first step down into the cold water. I’ll drown, he thought. I’ll drown and float. I’ll drown and float.

No, no, this was holy. Nobody drowned at the baptism, that was plain stupid.

Everybody was staring. At the organ, Ginger Lee Olmstead was doing a key change into “Shall We Gather At The River,” and Dwayne knew he had to either strip off his robe and run, or take those last two steps down into the water.