I stood by his new-old car, thinking of the Belvedere, which was now a burned-out wreck, and I almost turned tail and beat feet for home. I wonder how much of my life would have been different if I’d done that. I wonder if I’d be writing this now. There’s no way of telling, is there? Saint Paul was all too right about that dark glass. We look through it all our days and see nothing but our own reflections.

Instead of running, I gathered my courage and went to the shed. He was putting electronic equipment into a wooden orange crate, using large sheets of crumpled-up brown paper for padding, and didn’t see me at first. He was dressed in jeans and a plain white shirt. The notched collar was gone. Children aren’t very observant about the changes in adults, as a rule, but even at nine I could see he’d lost weight. He was standing in a shaft of sunlight, and when he heard me come in, he looked up. There were new lines on his face, but when he saw me and smiled, the lines disappeared. That smile was so sad it put an arrow in my heart.

I didn’t think, just ran to him. He opened his arms and lifted me up so he could kiss me on the cheek. “Jamie!” he cried. “Thou art Alpha and Omega!”

“Huh?”

“Revelation, chapter one, verse eight. ‘I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.’ You were the first kid I met when I came to Harlow, and you’re the last. I’m so very, very glad you came.”

I started to cry. I didn’t want to but couldn’t help it. “I’m sorry, Reverend Jacobs. I’m sorry for everything. You were right in church, it’s not fair.”

He kissed my other cheek and set me down. “I don’t think I said that in so many words, but you certainly caught the gist of it. Not that you should take anything I said seriously; I was off my head. Your mother knew that. She told me so when she brought me that fine Thanksgiving feast. And she wished me all the best.”

Hearing that made me feel a little better.

“She gave me some good advice, too—that I should go far from Harlow, Maine, and start over. She said I might find my faith again in some new place. I strongly doubt that, but she was right about leaving.”

“I’ll never see you again.”

“Never say that, Jamie. Paths cross all the time in this world of ours, sometimes in the strangest places.” He took his handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped the tears from my face. “In any case, I’ll remember you. And I hope you’ll think of me from time to time.”

“I will.” Then, remembering: “You betchum bobcats.”

He went back to his worktable, now sadly bare, and finished packing up the last items—a couple of big square batteries he called “dry cells.” He closed the lid of the crate and began tying it shut with two stout pieces of rope.

“Connie wanted to come with me to say thank you, but he’s got . . . um . . . I think it’s soccer practice today. Or something.”

“That’s okay. I doubt if I really did anything.”

I was shocked. “You brought his voice back, for criminey sakes! You brought it back with your gadget!”

“Oh yes. My gadget.” He knotted the second rope, and yanked it tight. His sleeves were rolled up, and I could see he had awesome muscles. I had never noticed them before. “The Electrical Nerve Stimulator.”

“You ought to sell it, Reverend Jacobs! You could make a mint!”

He leaned an elbow on the crate, propped his chin on one hand, and gazed at me. “Do you think so?”

“Yes!”

“I doubt it very much. And I doubt if my ENS unit had anything to do with your brother’s recovery. You see, I built it that very day.” He laughed. “And powered it with a very small Japanese-made motor filched from Morrie’s Roscoe Robot toy.”

“Really?”

“Really. The concept is valid, I feel sure of that, but such prototypes—built on the fly, without any experiments to verify the steps in between—very rarely work. Yet I believed I had a chance, because I never doubted Dr. Renault’s original diagnosis. It was a stretched nerve, no more than that.”

“But—”

He hoisted the crate. The muscles in his arms bulged, veins standing out on them. “Come on, kiddo. Walk with me.”

I followed him out to the car. He set the crate down beside the back fender, inspected the trunk, and said he’d have to move the suitcases to the backseat. “Can you take the small one, Jamie? It’s not heavy. When you’re traveling far, it’s best to travel light.”

“Where are you going?”

“No idea, but I think I’ll know it when I get there. If this thing doesn’t break down, that is. It burns enough oil to drain Texas.”

We moved the suitcases to the back of the Ford. Reverend Jacobs hoisted the big crate into the trunk with a grunt of effort. He slammed it closed, then leaned against it, studying me.

“You have a wonderful family, Jamie, and wonderful parents who actually pay attention. If I asked them to describe you kids, I bet they’d say that Claire is the motherly one, Andy’s the bossy one—”

“Boy, you’re right about that.”

He grinned. “There’s one in every family, boyo. They’d say Terry is the mechanical one and you’re the dreamer. What would they say about Con?”

“The studying one. Or maybe the folk-singing one since he got his guitar.”

“Perhaps, but I bet those wouldn’t be the first things to pop into their minds. Ever notice Con’s fingernails?”

I laughed. “He bites em like mad! Once my dad offered him a buck if he stopped for a week, but he couldn’t!”

“Con is the nervy one, Jamie—that’s what your folks would say if they were to be completely honest. The one who’s apt to turn up with ulcers by the time he’s forty. When he got hit in the neck with that ski pole and lost his voice, he started to worry that it would never come back. And when it didn’t, he told himself it never would.”

“Dr. Renault said—”

“Renault’s a fine doctor. Conscientious. He turned up here Johnny-on-the-spot when Morrie had the measles and again when Patsy had . . . well, a female problem. Took care of both like a pro. But he doesn’t have that air of confidence the best GPs have. That way of saying ‘Bosh, this is nothing, you’ll be fine in no time.’”

“He did say that!”

“Yes, but Conrad wasn’t convinced because Renault isn’t convincing. He’s able to treat the body, but the mind? Not so much. And the mind is where half the healing takes place. Maybe more. Con thought, ‘He’s lying now so I can get used to having no voice. Later on he’ll tell me the truth.’ That’s just the way your brother’s built, Jamie. He lives on his nerve endings, and when people do that, their minds can turn against them.”

“He wouldn’t come with me today,” I said. “I lied about that.”

“Did you?” Jacobs didn’t look very surprised.

“Yeah. I asked him, but he was scared.”

“Never be angry with him for that,” Jacobs said. “Frightened people live in their own special hell. You could say they make it themselves—like Con manufactured his muteness—but they can’t help it. It’s the way they’re built. They deserve sympathy and compassion.”

He turned to the parsonage, which already looked abandoned, and sighed. Then he turned back to me.

“Perhaps the ENS did something—I have every reason to believe the theory behind it is valid—but I really doubt it. Jamie, I believe I tricked your brother. Or, if you don’t mind the pun, I conned him. It’s a skill they try to teach in divinity school, although they call it kindling faith. I was always good at it, which has caused me to feel both shame and delight. I told your brother to expect a miracle, then I turned on the current and activated my glorified joy buzzer. As soon as I saw him twitching his mouth and blinking his eyes, I knew it was going to work.”

“That’s awesome!” I said.

“Yes indeed. Also rather vile.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind. The important thing is you must never tell him. He probably wouldn’t lose his voice again, but he might.” He glanced at his watch. “You know what? I think that’s all the powwow I have time for, if I’m going to make Portsmouth by tonight. And you better get home. Where your visit to me this afternoon will be another secret we’ll keep between us, right?”