“We never should’ve gone up there,” I said. I looked back at Joe Bill. He turned his face toward me, and he looked like he might start crying again too.

“I think they were trying to help him,” he said. “Mr. Thompson told us it was Stump’s special day. Maybe they were trying to heal him. Maybe they were laying their hands on him so he could talk.”

“He couldn’t breathe!” I screamed at him. “He was trying to get up and run because he couldn’t breathe, and they wouldn’t get off him! They might have been trying to kill him!”

“They weren’t,” Joe Bill said.

“How do you know?” I hollered. At that second I thought about telling Joe Bill about what else I’d seen: Pastor Chambliss with no shirt on, standing over the rain barrel and staring down at Stump. But then I thought about how Joe Bill hadn’t ever kept a secret in his whole life, and I was already worried about what he was going to tell people about what we’d just seen happen inside the church.

I got down on my knees again and dipped my hand into the water. The splinter had gotten a little softer once I’d gotten it wet, but it still hurt too bad for me to close my fingers and make a fist to hide it from Mama. I cleaned the blood off my hand and splashed more water on my face. Farther down the river, I heard Miss Lyle hollering for all the kids to quit playing and head up the path to the road, and I knew church had let out and it was time to go home. We sat there and listened to her calling for us.

“I reckon we should go,” Joe Bill said.

“You can’t say nothing, Joe Bill,” I said. “You can’t say nothing to nobody. I mean it.”

“I won’t,” he promised.

He turned and ran down the riverbank to where Miss Lyle and the rest of the kids were. I thought about running after him, but then I looked down at my hand and I felt it throb every time my heart beat. I figured I’d better just walk instead.

BY THE TIME I GOT BACK DOWN TO WHERE WE’D HAD SUNDAY school, Miss Lyle had taken the rest of the kids back up the path and across the road to the church parking lot. I walked up the path and stopped at the top and looked across the road. The parking lot was full of people. Heat waves came up off the asphalt and it looked like a mirage, like everybody over there was at the bottom of a swimming pool and I was standing on the edge looking down at them. I thought about what a mirage must look like in the desert after you’ve gotten yourself lost and you ain’t had nothing to drink and are just about ready to die. I reckon at that point your mind can trick you into seeing just about anything it wants you to see.

Some men stood with their hands in their pockets and talked to each other out by the road. A couple of them had that Brylcreem combed into their hair, and they smoked cigarettes and stood back and watched the rest of the people in the parking lot. I looked around, and it didn’t take me no time at all to find Mama and Stump because they had a whole crowd of people standing around them. They were all talking loud and laughing, and some of the women hugged Mama and a few people bent down and talked to Stump like they expected him to say something back to them. When he didn’t even look at them, they just smiled and stood back and stared down at him and talked to Mama some more without taking their eyes off him. Mama smiled like she loved hearing what they had to say. Stump looked toward me where I was standing across the road, and even though I knew he was probably looking out at the river behind me, I felt like he was staring me right in the eyes.

I looked up and down the road, and then I went ahead and crossed to the other side and walked into the parking lot. The heat waves shook in front of me like a flame coming up out of a cigarette lighter, and for a minute it looked like every one of them people in the parking lot was on fire. The men smoking out by the road saw me coming, and they finished their cigarettes and dropped them on the pavement and put them out with the toes of their boots. They stared at me when I walked past. I knew they were looking at the blood on my shirt, probably wondering what in the world had happened during Sunday school that could’ve gotten me so hurt. I acted like I didn’t see them, and I kept walking toward Mama. A few of the women standing with her saw me coming, and they tapped her on the shoulder and pointed at me. She turned around, and when she saw me she put her hands on her hips and waited until I got close enough for her not to have to raise her voice.

“What happened?” she asked, but before I could even answer, Pastor Chambliss walked over through the crowd and stopped right in front of us. He looked down at me, and then he reached out with those smooth, pink fingers and lifted up my hand to get a good look at it. He held it there like he wasn’t going to let it go.

“Well, look here,” he said. “The good Lord can heal with one hand and harm with the other.” He smiled. “That’s the power of an awesome God.”

One of those women standing by us said, “Amen.”

I tried to pull my hand away, but he held it tight and I couldn’t get it free. He looked over at Stump and reached out to touch him too, but Stump moved closer to Mama like he was trying to get away from him. Pastor Chambliss smiled.

“Y’all coming back for the evening service?” he asked Mama.

“I reckon we can,” she said.

“You should,” he said. He let go of my hand and nodded toward Stump. “And bring this one with you. The Lord ain’t finished with him yet.”

“NOW, TELL ME AGAIN,” MAMA SAID. SHE BACKED DADDY’S TRUCK out of the parking space and pulled out onto the road. The truck shook just a little bit when she put her foot on the gas pedal to get us going. Stump sat in between us and stared straight ahead like we weren’t even sitting there in the truck with him. I kept the hand with that splinter in it propped up on my knee so nothing would hit it. It had already started to turn red, but at least it wasn’t bleeding anymore.

“What do you want me to tell you?” I asked her. It was hot inside the truck, and Mama rolled her window down and the air came in and blew some crumpled-up papers around on the dashboard. I thought about rolling my window down too, but I didn’t want all that wind in my face.

“I want you to tell me again about how you got that big old splinter,” she said. “I want you to tell me one more time how you done it.”

I looked in the side mirror just before we went around the curve up toward the highway. I could see the church in the mirror behind us, and there was still a bunch of people standing around outside in the parking lot. I saw Mr. Gene Thompson talking to some folks out by the road, and I swear I saw him turn his head like he was watching us drive off toward the highway.

“Me and Joe Bill were skipping rocks after Sunday school,” I said. “Right after Mr. Thompson came and got Stump. I found an old board and was hitting rocks like baseballs. Joe Bill was pitching. I wasn’t holding it tight enough, and it slipped a little in my hand and that’s how I got it.”

Mama looked at my hand, and then she looked back at the road. I heard her sigh.

“That board must’ve been awfully dry and rotten for it to have given you that kind of splinter.”

“It was,” I said. She was quiet for a second and I tried to close my fingers again, but the blood had started to scab up and get real stiff and it was even harder to make a fist than it was before.

“Jess,” Mama said.

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Are you telling me the truth?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“If I call Joe Bill’s mama and ask her to talk to him about it, you think he’s going to tell her the same story about that bat?”

“It wasn’t a bat,” I said.

“You know what I mean,” Mama said. “Is Joe Bill going to remember it just like you told it to me?”