The Artful Trade

The church was built by the Amish just after the Great War. They wanted refuge from progress and the contagion brought home by the returning soldiers. Progress and the virus both spread through the countryside that year and the Amish thought both a kind of sickness. But later in the 20s they abandoned Everton when the first railroad began to bring city people looking for cool in the summer and the mountain air in the fall. So the church changed hands again and again over the years. First Episcopalians, then Latter Day Saints and finally Catholic. The townspeople thought God didn’t much care. The gospel’s the same no matter who’s preaching it and sinners all kneel the same anyway. The church had a bell with a rope. For years the clergyman would ring once at noon, twice at dusk and three times at midnight to end one day and begin another. The priest in 1946 was an old man. He was pious and tender but drank too much. When he said mass each dawn his hands trembled until he drank...

That night, their first married, the boy held his wife’s hand. “I know it’s not what we hoped but it’ll be all right.” She began to weep and gripping his hand, stepped closer and whispered, “Good night husband." He leaned toward her, then took her in his arms and the distance between them disappeared. She kissed him the way a woman sometimes does, not with her lips or her arms but with something greater than herself, like something deep in her was trying to force its way to the surface for just a moment. The boy felt something in him warm and he remembered the cold of the field in France and heard himself praying once again for her and for time. He felt himself grow stronger and surer the way a man does when, in spite of all his failings and mistakes, a woman still somehow believes in him. And so somehow he comes to believe in himself. He stepped back. “It’ll be all right," he said again and she nodded. She started up the stairs and turned again to look at him and s...