I knew it was Jesus sure enough because he looked just like they always said he would: olive skin, soft brown eyes, light brown hair. But in my dream he was much older than what you might find in a picture Bible or in the paintings that might be hanging up in a church. In my dream he was much older than they let him live to be. I could see the years around his eyes and his beard had patches of gray and white in it, and when he walked toward me from the river he had a little hitch in his step like his hip or his leg was hurting him and giving him a little bit of trouble. I just stood there watching him, and when he got within earshot, he hollered out to me.

“Why’d you stop walking?” he asked.

“Because,” I told him. “I didn’t know you were back there.”

“Yes, you did,” he said. “You just forgot. But go on, I’m following you now.” I just stood there not knowing what to say, and Jesus waved his hand like he was shooing me away. “Go on,” he said. “It’s all right. I told you, I’m following you.”

I turned around and faced that hill again, and when I did I felt something heavy in my hands. I looked down and saw that I was holding a plate with a napkin over it that was wet with grease, and when I lifted that napkin I saw that it covered a heap of hot fried chicken. All of a sudden I felt somebody walk past me, and when I looked up I saw it was a woman in a long white robe just like the one I had on, and when I looked her in the face I felt like she was somebody I might’ve known once upon a time. She held a plate in her hands too, and beside her was a man with a guitar strapped over his shoulder and he held a tambourine in one hand and a jug of something in the other. When I looked around that bottomland, I saw it was plum full of people in robes carrying food and instruments up the grassy hillside in the growing dark, not a one of them saying a word, not a one of them making a noise. They looked just like ghosts or haints, and then it struck me that they might just be angels. Jesus walked right up beside me, and we stood there watching them walk past us and on ahead of us, and I could feel that fried chicken cooling under that napkin and that plate was growing cold against my fingers.

“Go on,” Jesus said again. “I’m right here behind you.”

I set off walking up the hill even though I knew I wouldn’t ever be able to catch up with all them folks, but I knew it didn’t matter because we were going to a Decoration Day and I knew they’d have the food set out and the hymns going and the sweet tea poured when I met them at the top of that hill. I looked up there where some of the people were already starting to crest the hill, and there was a woman facing me, and when I looked close I saw it was my great-aunt and she was looking down at me and smiling like she was waiting for me and might just be willing to wait there forever. She didn’t look like the tiny, shrunken thing I’d found by that cold fireplace. She looked straight and strong and shiny like a new silver dollar. I knew that I was going to wake up before I got to the top of that hill where she was waiting. Jesus must’ve known it too, for I felt his graying beard against my cheek and I could hear his breath in my ear where he walked right along beside me.

“Look at her, Addie,” he whispered. “That’s what immortality looks like.”

I HEARD THAT MAN AND WOMAN FROM DOWN THE MOUNTAIN DRIVING their wagon out there in the road early that next morning, and I stepped out the door and saw him leading a big brown mare up the hill by the reins. A cart was bumping along behind her, and the coffin he’d made was resting up on top. It wasn’t too much more than a rectangular box made from a few old boards, but I can tell you that I was glad to have it.

“Thank y’all for coming,” I said when they stopped in the road in front of the cabin.

“It ain’t nothing,” the man said.

“We’re glad we could help,” the woman said. He unloaded that box, and I helped him carry it inside where I’d laid my great-aunt out on the bed.

“I’ll leave this to y’all,” he said, and he walked past us back outside. The woman helped me lift my great-aunt into the box, and I straightened her dress and smoothed it out. She was so light it was like lifting a little child. I’d unplaited her hair the night before and combed it out the best I could, but it didn’t look like her. It was like we were loading up somebody I didn’t know to carry them up the hill to the graveyard, and I expected my great-aunt to walk in the door any minute.

“Addie,” she’d say, “what in the world?”

The woman and I stood there looking down at her where she laid in that box. It was quiet inside there, and I could hear the horse’s feet shuffling in the dirt road outside.

“We should leave it open until we get up there,” the woman said. “Odus will nail it shut then.” She went outside, and I could hear her out there in the road talking to the man. He opened the door and stepped inside.

I helped him carry the coffin out to the cart, and when the sun hit her face I saw for the first time just how bad she looked. Her skin was so white you could almost see through it. He fastened the coffin down on the back of that cart, and the three of us followed the road up the mountain to the graveyard. Once we got up there I helped him unload her, and the woman got the ropes they’d brought to lower her down into the hole I’d dug the day before. The man had brought along a hammer and a little sack of nails for closing down the lid.

He pulled the lid off the sled and he sat it over the top of the coffin, and then he got down on his knees and started hammering it shut. Every time that hammer hit, it echoed up through those oaks with a report that seemed like it would carry forever—a sound like a rifle blast ringing out over the mountains. When he finished, we lowered her down with the ropes, him on one side of the grave and me and his wife on the other. Once we finished, we just stood there looking down into that hole.

“Do you want to say something?” the woman asked me.

“I don’t figure there’s much to be said now,” I told her. Besides, I knew that what I’d wanted to say to my great-aunt I’d already said to myself, and if she was listening up there she’d have heard it just the same.

After finding her dead and alone, I told myself I wasn’t going to die in a drafty cabin with nobody to find me but the critters and maybe some snooping kids. I thought, Addie, it ain’t no way to live up on this mountain alone for the rest of your life; you need to get down to where folks are, and so I up and left, and I’ve lived just outside Marshall since ’20. I reckon that’s been along about sixty-odd years.

T

HIRTEEN

BUT I WASN’T GOING TO TELL THE SHERIFF ANY OF THAT story because it had no bearing on whatever truth he needed to find. The story he wanted was the story of Christopher inside that church, and that was a story I just couldn’t give him. But if he’d have taken the time, I could’ve told the sheriff about the very moment Christopher’s story started, and maybe from there he could have followed it to see how it changed Ben and Julie, how it changed their marriage, and how they ended up where they were.

On the night he was born I laid there in my bed and listened for that noise again, that same noise that sounded like a voice coming from somewhere inside the house. I held my breath and bent my ear, and just when I was ready to blame it on fancy I heard it just as plain as day.

“Who’s there?” I called out and waited. I heard that wind driving outside and the patter of that snow against the windows, and then a little voice was signaling me from the front door. I could barely hear it over the wind and the snow, but when I was sure I’d heard it I popped up out of the bed, and how dark that night was with me shuffling across the floor and turning on the switch on the lamp and the light filling up the bedroom and part of the hall.