I watched a hot breeze come across the field and move through the high grass on its way to us. I looked over at Joe Bill as the breeze pushed his cowlick off his forehead. His hair was blond, but in the shade it looked almost as brown as mine because it was wet from him sweating so much. He looked over at me, and then he looked back toward the field.

“It’s right there,” he said, nodding toward the back of the church.

I looked across the field, but I didn’t know what I was supposed to be looking at because I hadn’t ever been behind the church before. Up front it had big windows that somebody had covered over from the inside with newspapers so long ago that they’d been turned yellow from the sun. There was only one window around the back of the church, and it had a rusted old air conditioner sitting up inside it.

“Right there,” Joe Bill said. He raised his hand and pointed his finger out across the field to where that air conditioner hung out of the window. There were some rotten-looking boards blocking in the sides of it, but it almost looked like it might be too heavy for them boards to hold it up in there. “You see it?” Joe Bill asked.

“I see it,” I told him. He looked over at me again, and then he took a step closer like somebody might’ve been watching us and he was afraid they’d hear what he was about to tell me next.

“There’s gaps in between them boards and the window frame,” he said. “If you get up close enough, you can see right in there.”

I looked at that air conditioner, and even though I couldn’t hear it from where we were standing, I could see it blowing hot air down into the grass right under the window. The church was painted white, but around the bottom it had turned orange from where dirt and mud had splashed up from the grass during rainstorms.

“I bet he’s still in there,” Joe Bill said.

“You think?”

“I bet he is,” he said. “It ain’t been long since Mr. Thompson came down and got him.” Joe Bill let go of the limb he’d been holding, and it whipped right past my ear and snapped back up into the tree.

“Hey!” I hollered out. “You just about took my dang ear off!”

“Shhhh!” he whispered. “Be quiet.” He closed his eyes and dropped his head and for a minute it looked like he was fixing to pray, but then he opened his eyes real slow like he’d just woke up from a nap. “Listen,” he said.

“To what?”

“You can’t hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“Listen,” he said again.

I dropped my head and closed my eyes just like I’d seen Joe Bill do, and for a minute I couldn’t hear nothing at all except for a few birds fussing in the trees above us and the sound of the breeze coming through the dry grass, and after a minute I couldn’t even hear that. But then, real slow, the singing of the crickets raised up out of the woods behind me and their chirping sounded like somebody was scratching a spoon across a clean dinner plate, and past that, across the railroad tracks on the other side of the woods, I could hear the river running slow toward Marshall, and it was so soft that I wondered if I was making it up or remembering the sound of it just because it was supposed to be there. Then I couldn’t hear nothing until I turned my ears to listen for what was in front of me out there in the field where the grasshoppers and the katydids hummed in the high grass. That was a noise I’d always heard without even knowing I could hear it, and when I heard it, I could finally hear what Joe Bill was talking about. At first I heard it like a heartbeat, and I felt it in my chest like a heartbeat too, like it was inside my body thumping up against my ribs because it wanted to get out. It made me think about the Madison High marching band at the football games and the marchers with the drums strapped to their chests and the feeling you get inside you when they march out onto the field at halftime with the batons and the horns and the drums and all that noise they make. And now I could hear other noises floating just above the sound of that heartbeat: the electric guitar came out over the field like a crackly old radio that wasn’t tuned in good, and the sound of somebody banging away on the piano followed behind it. All of a sudden I knew that what I was hearing was music, and when I opened my eyes I knew it was coming from inside the church. I looked over at Joe Bill.

“It’s music,” I said.

“I know,” Joe Bill said. “They must be singing in there.”

We stood in the shade and listened to what we could hear of the music coming across the field. Every now and then I could hear people’s voices, and it sounded like they were shouting.

“Are you going to take a look?” Joe Bill asked me.

“I ain’t decided yet,” I said, but deep down I wished I could tell him no because I was scared to death of going all the way across that field to spy on folks inside the church. Mama had told me and Stump it wasn’t right to spy on grown-ups, and one time she caught us hiding up in the barn listening to Daddy and Mr. Gant hang the burley. When she found us, she took us inside the house and whipped us good across the backs of our legs with one of Daddy’s old belts.

“I told y’all not to go spying on grown-ups,” she said. “Especially your daddy. You don’t need to know the kinds of things a man like him talks about.” But I already knew what kinds of things men like my daddy talked about. They talked about burley tobacco and farming and other men they knew who got new cars or new girlfriends or whose wives had got sick and died without nobody expecting it. I couldn’t figure out what was so special about that kind of talk that made it something me and Stump couldn’t hear. I wanted to tell her that all Daddy talked about was the kind of stuff folks talk about while they’re working or while they’re sitting around and visiting. Only thing she ever talked about was God and Jesus and Pastor Chambliss and what all they had going on down at the church. Sometimes I wanted to say, “If it’s so great down there, then why can’t you get Daddy to go with you?” and “If it’s so wonderful, then why can’t me and Stump go inside too?” I wanted to tell her that I got tired of hearing about that kind of stuff, but I didn’t say nothing about what I thought because I didn’t want her getting out that belt and whipping me again.

Joe Bill reached out and punched me in the shoulder. “Come on,” he said. “You ain’t being a sissy, are you?”

“You go on up there,” I told him. “You’re the one that wanted to come up here so bad, and I ain’t letting you get me in trouble. They’re going to be getting out here pretty soon, and my mom will have a fit if she catches me spying.”

“It ain’t even close to noon yet,” Joe Bill said. “On Sundays they don’t even let out until one. It’s going to be a while. Besides, it ain’t really spying anyway. I bet she would’ve let you go inside with Stump if you’d have asked. It ain’t wrong to look in there just because you didn’t ask.”

“They didn’t ask me either,” I said. “Mr. Thompson came down and got Stump, not me.” But even as I said that, I was glad Mr. Thompson hadn’t come down to the river looking for me. I didn’t want him holding my hand and leading me across the road to the church like he did with Stump. He was old and bald except where he had pale yellow hair sticking out from behind his ears. It was the color of dead grass, and his face and his arms and hands were covered in dark brown spots that looked like big freckles. His old yellow eyeballs were always wet, and they looked too big for his head, like they might just pop out on you any second. That morning, when Mr. Thompson reached for him, Stump put his hand behind his back and got up close to me. Even Miss Lyle made a face like she didn’t want Mr. Thompson touching Stump.

“Come on, Christopher,” Mr. Thompson said. “Don’t be afraid. I’ve come down here to tell you that today’s your special day. We want you to worship with us this morning.” His breath smelled like Stump’s and my clothes after we played outside during the wintertime.