He remembered the story of a blacksmith from Elbert County who vowed he couldn’t go to church in wintertime, that every time he looked at the hot-red belly of a church stove, it made him think of work that needed doing and his mind would wander to it, and that wandering naturally caused Jesus to fly out of his thinking, no matter how hard he fought against it. Said church in wintertime was just a waste to him.

Around the church was a cemetery, with tombstones sticking out of the ground like stone stumps. Some of the stones had a crumbling look to them, and Noah knew they marked the burial of people so long dead, only the faint chiseling of their names gave any proof they had ever lived.

He approached the church slowly, curiously. It had been a long time since he had been inside one. He had no argument with churches, but he had never felt at ease in them, and he guessed it was a sense that had been bred into him by his parents. About the only time he had ever felt in accord with a church had been on the day of his baptism, and that had been short-lived. No one in the congregation had said anything to him, and the preacher who had patted him with water had not invited him to come back. It had taken years for him to realize that being baptized with classmates from school was not much different from being handed a Christmas treat by a dressed-up Santa Claus in the school auditorium. Maybe even less, in the long run. With Santa Claus, he at least had something to hold on to for a while—a comb, a piece of candy, some raisins on the stem.

Yet, there was one thing he could never forget about his baptism. He had felt something when the preacher put his damp hand on his head. Something.

No one was at the church and there was no sign of traffic coming or going on the road, and he took the steps to the door and tried it. It was not locked and he pushed it open and stepped inside and closed the door behind him. He stood for a moment, listening. The inside of the church was as quiet as his breathing, the air clean and oddly cool, though the day had been hot and sweat-sticky. He walked hesitantly into the sanctuary and stood, looking.

There was a center aisle covered in red carpet, with pews on both sides. At the front of the sanctuary, the pulpit was set on a riser in the exact center of the aisle, and against the wall behind the pulpit was a cross that he judged to be made of sweet gum. It was hand-hewed, not cut from a sawmill, and the ax that trimmed it had left it with a rough look. It dominated the wall and the sanctuary, calling eyes to stare at it, and Noah believed that the man who had cut the wood and had notched it and bolted it together wanted the presence of it to shout out that Jesus was stronger than wood or steel. Large nails—larger than any he had ever seen—had been driven into the wood in the places where the hands and feet of the crucified Christ would have been, and the sap of the wood had made stains around the nails, or if not sap, then drops of oil had been put there to look like stains and to tell tales of the blood of Jesus. The cross had the hard look of power, and Noah believed it was made that way on purpose—the cross empty of Jesus, yet holding his pain.