“What was it?” she hollered. Pastor Chambliss whipped his head around and looked toward the front yard.

“Nothing,” he hollered. “Go back inside.” He turned and looked down at Stump again.

“You sure?” she said.

“Yes,” he hollered. “It ain’t nothing. The rain barrel tipped over, that’s all. Go on back inside.” He squatted down like he was getting a good look at Stump, and then he reached behind the rain barrel with that wrinkly arm like he was offering Stump his hand so he could help him up. “What did you see, boy?” he said. He waited like he expected Stump to say something, and then he laughed. He turned and walked back to the front. I got a good look at that bad arm, and I saw that it didn’t even have any hair on it. I laid there in the woods behind those roots and stared at his arm until he’d gone around the corner of the house toward the porch steps and I couldn’t see him anymore.

That night, while me and Stump were getting ready for bed, I asked Mama what had happened to Pastor Chambliss’s hand that made it look like that. Stump and I were already in the bed, and she was folding some of our clothes and putting them in the dresser and she was hanging our dress shirts in the closet. With the closet door open I could see Stump’s quiet box sitting up on the top shelf. Mama’d made it for him when he was little because she said when the world got too loud Stump needed a quiet place where he could go off and be alone. She took one of Daddy’s shoe boxes and wrote, “Quiet box—do not open” on the side of it. I could read her handwriting from where I laid in the bed. She’d never let me see what was inside the quiet box, and I’d always been afraid to even ask Stump because I was afraid she’d find out that I’d been messing with it.

Mama had just picked up the shirt I’d worn to school that day when I asked her about Pastor Chambliss’s hand, and, instead of hanging it up, she just held it out in front of her and stared at it like she was looking to see how clean she’d been able to get it.

“What do you mean, ‘What happened to his hand?’” she asked. She finally put my shirt on a clothes hanger and hung it in the closet. Then she reached down into the laundry basket again.

“How’d it get that way?” I said. “Why’s it all pink?” She turned around and looked at me. I saw that she was holding the blue jeans that I’d gotten wet and muddy down at the creek.

“What’s got you thinking about that?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I was just wondering.” She turned back toward the dresser and folded my jeans and opened a drawer and put them inside. She sighed.

“Would you believe that once upon a time, back before the Holy Ghost got ahold of him, Pastor Chambliss was on fire for the world and the things of this world burned him up?”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“It means that he wasn’t living for the Lord,” she said. “He was on fire for the world. But now he’s on fire for the Lord Jesus, and nothing in this world can ever burn him again.” She kept on folding clothes without looking back at us. Down the hall in the living room I heard the sound of Daddy reclining in his chair. Then I heard the television set turn on.

“What’s the rest of him look like?” I asked. “Is it all burned up too?” Mama grabbed the rest of the clothes out of the laundry basket and stuffed them into one drawer without even folding them. She picked up the basket and turned around and stood by the door and looked at me and Stump where we were laying in the bed.

“Why would you ask me that?” she finally said.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I just wondered.”

“I’ve never thought about what the rest of him looks like,” she said. “And you shouldn’t be thinking about things like that either. Go to sleep.” She turned off our bedroom light and closed the door. I heard her walk down the hall to her and Daddy’s bedroom, and I heard the door close and the sound of her kicking her shoes off onto the floor. The bed springs creaked when she laid down.

I laid there in the dark with my eyes open and stared up at the ceiling. Then I rolled over on my side and looked across the bed at Stump.

“Stump,” I whispered. He opened his eyes slowly and looked at me. “What did you see when you were up on the rain barrel?” We stared at each other for a minute, and then he closed his eyes and turned over on his other side. I laid there and looked at the back of Stump’s head, and I pictured Pastor Chambliss coming around the corner of the house and asking him the same thing: “What did you see?”

I rolled onto my back and stared up at the ceiling again, and then I closed my eyes as tight as I could and tried to say my prayers, but no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t help wondering if that pink, burned-up hand had touched my mama.

BUT NOW PASTOR CHAMBLISS HELD HIS BIBLE IN THAT BURNED-UP hand inside the church, and I remembered what Mama’d said about him being on fire for the Holy Spirit, and I thought about him bursting into flames and giving off all kinds of heat, and how that air conditioner might just be pulling it out of the church and blowing it right onto me and Joe Bill.

The air conditioner and that piano were going too loud for me to hear what Pastor Chambliss was saying, but it looked like he must’ve been preaching into the microphone because he had his Bible in his hand and he raised it and pointed it at everybody. He walked back and forth, and for a few seconds I couldn’t see him, but then he came back to where I could watch him and when he did he had a woman on the stage with him; I knew it was Mama before I even saw her face. I raised myself up a little higher to get a better look, and when I did I saw Stump standing right there beside her. I felt something tugging on the back of my shirt, and I realized it was Joe Bill. He’d come around under the air conditioner and was standing beside me.

“I just saw Stump,” he said. He tugged on my shirt again, and I balanced myself on one of my tiptoes and kicked at his hand to get him to stop. “Hey,” he whispered up at me.

“I see him too,” I said.

“Why is he down front?”

“I don’t know,” I said. He let go of my blue jeans and ducked under to the other side of the air conditioner again.

I couldn’t see anything except the back of Stump’s head, but I could tell he was looking all around the church at all those people and I saw that now most of them had their eyes open and they were looking right back at him. Pastor Chambliss held his Bible with his bad hand, and he stepped around and got in between Mama and Stump and reached out his other hand and put it on top of Stump’s head. Mama reached across Pastor Chambliss and touched Stump on the shoulder and it looked like they were all praying, but after they stood like that for a second Stump started jerking around like he wanted to get away from them. Pastor Chambliss got up behind him and held his Bible and wrapped that ugly arm over Stump’s shoulder like he was giving him a bear hug. He reached out with his left arm to keep Mama away from Stump, and she took her hand off his shoulder and backed away until I couldn’t see her. I couldn’t stand seeing Pastor Chambliss wrap his arm around Stump, and I couldn’t help but be mad at Mama for letting him do it.

Pastor Chambliss just held Stump and held him and it looked like he was hugging him from behind and he wasn’t ever going to let him go, even though Stump was trying to get away because he hadn’t ever liked folks touching him and holding him like that. All the people in there held their hands up in the air, and then they started singing again after somebody got to banging away on the piano, but I couldn’t hardly hear nothing except that air conditioner right up against my head. My arms were getting so sore and tired that I was afraid I was going to fall. I couldn’t find Mama’s face, but I saw her hand reach out and take Stump’s, and he was fighting so hard with Pastor Chambliss that Mama could just barely hold on to it. Pastor Chambliss had both arms around Stump now, and he was holding on to him real tight with his Bible pressed right up against his chest, and they rocked back and forth like they couldn’t stand up, and all of a sudden they just fell over and I couldn’t see them at all no more because they were laying out on the floor.