and tried to imagine what it might have been like if I’d been born to the quiet life in New Bremen.
Which turned out to be a thing I couldn’t do. Not because imagination failed me, but because I was afraid to dream in that way. In my whole life, I could recall no dream ever coming true.
I walked from the trestle along the riverbank, following a path the locals had worn, maybe kids coming down to enjoy all the adventure that a river offered. On the far side were fields of young corn, nearly knee-high and verdant green, and beyond them rose hills that carried the sky on their shoulders. On that lazy summer afternoon, alone with the river and the lovely valley it had carved, I felt a deep desire to belong there, to belong anywhere.
Without realizing it, I had walked all the way to the place just below the meadow where we’d landed the canoe the first night I’d heard the voice of an angel call to me from the revival tent. To my great surprise, Sister Eve was there, sitting cross-legged on the sandy spit where she’d talked us all into joining the crusade. She was alone, her head bowed, and it was clear to me that she was deep in prayer. I didn’t want to interrupt her reverie, so I turned and began up the riverbank as quietly as I could.
“Odie,” she called to me softly.
“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to intrude.”
“No intrusion. Join me.” She patted the sand at her side.
“This is where you come?” I said. “Every afternoon?”
“Wherever we take the crusade, I try to find somewhere set off a bit so I can be by myself. It’s not always a place as lovely as this.”
“So you can pray?”
“So I can refresh myself.” She spread her arms wide as if to embrace the river. “And so I can open my heart to the beauty of this whole divine creation. If that sounds like prayer to you, then call it prayer.”
It was painfully clear that she felt something I didn’t, something wondrous and fulfilling in that place where I possessed only a deep longing. She lifted her face to the sun, and her hair fell away from her cheek, exposing the long scar that ran there.
“This reminds me a little of the Niobrara,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“A river in Nebraska, where I grew up.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Anything.”
I knew it was rude, but curiosity was eating me alive. “That scar.”
Which didn’t seem to surprise her in the least, and I wondered if it was a question she got asked a lot.
“Remember I told you God gives us all cracks so that his light has a way to get inside us? This scar, Odie, that’s my crack. It was given to me the day of my baptism.”
“I thought you just got dunked in water for that.”
“In my case it was a horse trough.”
I figured this had to be a good story, and I wanted to hear it, but before I could ask, someone called from the riverbank above us, “Sister Eve. Come quick. It’s Emmy.”
* * *
THEY’D LAID HER on a cot in the women’s tent, and much of the crusade had gathered around her. Albert hovered over her, and Mose knelt at her side holding her little hand. Emmy’s eyes were closed, her face drained of color. I went down on my knees beside my brother.
“What happened?”
“Another of her fits.”
“What is it?” Sister Eve asked.
“We don’t know exactly,” I said. “She hit her head on a fence post a while back. She’s been like this ever since. She usually comes out of it.”
Her eyes fluttered open and she stared up at me, dazed.
“He’s okay,” she mumbled. “He’s okay.”
“Who, Emmy?”
She gripped my hand with a sudden, unexpected fierceness. “Don’t worry, Odie,” she said. “We beat the devil.”
Then she let go, closed her eyes, breathed deeply, and was asleep.
“Let’s get her to the hotel,” Sister Eve said.
Everyone cleared away. Mose carried Emmy out to the automobile that Sid usually drove, a shiny red DeSoto. He laid her on the backseat, and Sister Eve covered her with a blanket that had been folded there. I sat with her and cradled her head on my lap. Mose and Albert sat up front with Sister Eve, and she drove us to the Morrow House. Upstairs, Mose laid Emmy gently on the bed, then he and Albert headed back to the crusade village. Sister Eve sat with Emmy, holding her hand,