I didn’t know if my question was about the Terrible Sermon or not, I only knew I had to ask it. “Was what Mr. Easterbrook said true? Was she drinking?”

The moving light beneath the car went still. Then he rolled himself out so he could look up at me. I was afraid he’d be mad, but he wasn’t mad. Just unhappy. “People have been whispering about it, and I suppose it’ll get around a lot faster now that that nummie Easterbrook went and said it right out loud, but you listen to me, Jamie: it doesn’t matter. George Barton had an epileptic seizure and he was on the wrong side of the road and she come around a blind turn and pop goes the weasel. It doesn’t matter if she was sober or head down and tail over the dashboard. Mario Andretti couldn’t have avoided that crash. Reverend was right about one thing: people always want a reason for the bad things in life. Sometimes there ain’t one.”

He raised the hand not holding the caged light and pointed a grease-smeared finger at me. “All the rest was just the bullshit of a grief-struck man, and don’t you forget it.”

 • • •

The Wednesday before Thanksgiving was a half day in our school district, but I had promised Mrs. Moran that I’d stay to wash the blackboards and neaten up our little library of tattered books. When I told Mom, she waved her hand in a distracted way and told me to just be home for supper. She was already putting a turkey in the oven, but I knew it couldn’t be ours; it was way too small for seven.

As it turned out, Kathy Palmer (a teacher’s pet wannabe if there ever was one) also stayed to help out, and the work was done in half an hour. I thought of going to Al’s or Billy’s house to play guns or something, but I knew they’d want to talk about the Terrible Sermon and how Mrs. Jacobs had gotten herself and Morrie killed because she was shitfaced drunk—a rumor that had indeed gained the credence of absolute fact—and I didn’t want any part of that, so I went home. It was an unseasonably warm day, our windows were open, and I could hear my sister and my mother arguing.

“Why can’t I come?” Claire asked. “I want him to know at least some people in this stupid town are still on his side!”

“Because your father and I think all you children should stay away from him,” my mother said. They were in the kitchen, and by now I was lingering outside the window.

“I’m not a child, anymore, Mother, I’m seventeen!”

“Sorry, but at seventeen you’re still a child, and a young girl visiting him wouldn’t look right. You’ll just have to take my word for that.”

“But it’s okay for you? You know Me-Maw’ll see you, and it’ll be all over the party line in twenty minutes! If you’re going, let me go with you!”

“I said no, and that’s final.”

“He gave Con back his voice!” Claire stormed. “How can you be so mean?”

There was a long pause and then my mother said, “That’s why I’m going to see him. Not to take him a meal for tomorrow but to let him know we’re grateful in spite of those terrible things he said.”

“You know why he said them! He just lost his wife and son and he was all messed up! Half crazy!”

“I do know that.” Mom was speaking more quietly now, and I had to strain to hear because Claire was crying. “But it doesn’t change how shocked people were. He went too far. Much too far. He’s leaving next week, and that’s for the best. When you know you’re going to be fired, it’s best to quit first. It allows you to keep a little self-respect.”

“Fired by the deacons, I suppose,” Claire almost sneered. “Which means Dad.”

“Your father has no choice. When you’re no longer a child, you may realize that, and have a little sympathy. This is tearing Dick apart.”

“Go on, then,” Claire said. “See if a few slices of turkey breast and some sweet potatoes make up for the way he’s getting treated. I bet he won’t even eat it.”

“Claire . . . Claire-Bear—”

“Don’t call me that!” she yelled, and I heard her pounding for the stairs. She’d sulk and cry in her bedroom for awhile, I supposed, and then get over it, the way she did a couple of years ago when Mom told her fifteen was absolutely too young to go to the drive-in with Donnie Cantwell.

I decided to hustle my butt into the backyard before Mom left with her special-made dinner. I sat in the tire swing, not exactly hiding but not exactly in full view, either. Ten minutes later, I heard the front door shut. I went to the corner of the house and saw Mom walking down the road with a foil-covered tray in her hands. The foil twinkled in the sun. I went in the house and up the stairs. I knocked on my sister’s door, which was graced by a large Bob Dylan poster.

“Claire?”

“Go away!” she shouted. “I don’t want to talk to you!” The record player went on: the Yardbirds, and at top volume.

Mom came back about an hour later—a pretty long visit just to drop off a gift of food—and although Terry and I were in the living room by then, watching TV and jostling each other for the best place on our old couch (in the middle, where the springs didn’t poke your bum), she barely seemed to notice us. Con was upstairs playing the guitar he’d gotten for his birthday. And singing.

 • • •

David Thomas of Gates Falls Congo was back for a return engagement on the Sunday after Thanksgiving. The church was once more full, maybe because people wanted to see if Reverend Jacobs would show up and try to say some more awful things. He didn’t. If he had, I’m sure he would have been shut up before he got a running start, maybe even carried out bodily. Yankees take their religion seriously.

The next day, Monday, I ran the quarter mile from school instead of walking. I had an idea, and I wanted to be home before the schoolbus arrived. When it came, I grabbed Con and pulled him into the backyard.

“Who put a bug up your butt?” he asked.

“You need to come down to the parsonage with me,” I said. “Reverend Jacobs is going away pretty soon, maybe even tomorrow, and we should see him before he goes. We should tell him we still like him.”

Con drew away from me, brushing his hand down the front of his Ivy League shirt, as if he was afraid I’d left cooties on it. “Are you crazy? I’m not doing that. He said there’s no God.”

“He also electrified your throat and saved your voice.”

Con shrugged uneasily. “It would have come back, anyway. Dr. Renault said so.”

“He said it would come back in a week or two. That was in February. You still didn’t have it back in April. Two months later.”

“So what? It took a little longer, that’s all.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “What are you, chicken?”

“Say that again and I’ll knock you down.”

“Why won’t you at least say thanks?”

He stared at me, mouth tight and cheeks red. “We’re not supposed to see him, Mom and Dad said so. He’s crazy, and probably a drunk like his wife.”

I couldn’t speak. My eyes shimmered with tears. They weren’t of sorrow; those were tears of rage.

“Besides,” Con said, “I have to fill the woodbox before Dad gets home or I’ll get in dutch. So just shut up about it, Jamie.”

He left me standing there. My brother, who became one of the world’s most preeminent astronomers—in 2011 he discovered the fourth so-called “Goldilocks planet,” where there might be life—left me standing there. And never mentioned Charles Jacobs again.

 • • •

The next day, Tuesday, I ran up Route 9 again as soon as school let out. But I didn’t go home.

There was a new car in the parsonage driveway. Well, not really new; it was a ’58 Ford Fairlane with rust on the rocker panels and a crack in the passenger side window. The trunk was up, and when I peeped in, I saw two suitcases and a bulky electronic gadget Reverend Jacobs had demonstrated at MYF one Thursday night: an oscilloscope. Jacobs himself was in his shed workshop. I could hear stuff rattling around.