The Homecoming of Samuel Lake. Jenny Wingfield

was a good sing-along song. Ordinarily, Samuel would have nixed that one, but not today. Today he said, “Well, let’s hear it.”

      Nobody ever had to ask Swan twice to sing. She had a great big voice for such a small girl, and she wasn’t afraid to turn it loose. She set in to singing, verse after verse, and the other kids joined in. Noble made sound effects. They were clapping their hands, and stomping their feet, and getting louder and louder, and Willadee and Samuel never even told them to pipe down. They didn’t let up until they pulled into the yard of the Bethel Baptist Church. (The Moses family had always been Baptists, those who went to church. When Willadee had married Samuel, she became the first Methodist Moses ever.) As the car rolled to a stop, Noble bellowed the last note of the song in the most rutting-buck tone he could muster.

      Bernice made up her mind then and there, whenever the sweet day came that she finally got Samuel, Willadee would get the kids.

      She flung open the car door and stumbled out, and wouldn’t you know, the first thing she did was step into a hole. The dainty little heel of her dainty little shoe broke clean off with a snap you could have heard all the way to El Dorado.

      “Are you all right?” Willadee asked, when she could see clear as day that Bernice was in pain. Breaking a heel on a pair of shoes that make your feet look simply precious is a painful experience for any woman.

      Bernice pulled herself up straight and hobbled toward the front door of the church. With every step, she kept reminding herself that, when you’re on a mission, you don’t let little things distract you. She had come here this morning to get saved, and she’d be damned if she was going to let anything or anybody ruin it for her.

      When they got inside the church, the congregation was singing the first hymn. Lifting their hearts in song, Samuel thought—and that thought was followed by a rush of emotion. A yearning for a congregation of his own. Most men in Samuel’s shoes might have asked themselves whether they had done something to displease the Lord, but Samuel didn’t think like that. The God he knew was giving and kind, so he was convinced that this experience was going to turn out to be a blessing, maybe the greatest blessing of his life. That didn’t keep him from hurting, though.

      Bernice hobbled down the aisle, slipped into the first vacant pew, and stepped on over to make room for the rest of them. The kids filed in after her, then Willadee, then Samuel. Swan started singing lustily before she came to a full stop. People turned their heads to look at her, the way they always did when she opened her mouth and that big voice came out. Swan didn’t notice. Anytime she was singing, she was in a world of her own. She would pour herself into the music, and it would pour out of her, tumbling like a waterfall, and there was nothing else she’d ever known that compared to the feelings that took her over.

      Samuel and Willadee nudged each other and smiled. The boys were wincing at their sister’s volume. Bernice stood erect, gazing straight ahead. Involuntarily, Samuel cut his eyes to see what she was looking at. It couldn’t be the scrawny, red-faced song director, because he was a constant blur of motion—strutting around, waving his arms in time to the music. Whatever Bernice was looking at was stationary. But knowing Bernice, she might not consciously be focusing on anything at all. She had a curious way of living inside her own head. You never knew what was going on in there.