The Homecoming of Samuel Lake. Jenny Wingfield

he was miserable without her.

      With every hour that passed, Bernice felt an increasing sense of urgency. She wasn’t getting enough sleep, she wasn’t getting what she wanted, and she wasn’t getting any younger.

      It was late Friday night when Samuel’s car chugged into the yard, pulling a trailer that was piled so high with furniture and boxes it was a wonder it had made it under the railroad trestles along the way. Grandma Calla was waiting up for them. She came down off the porch, picked her way through the muddle of customers’ vehicles, and leaned in the car window, talking loud above the juke joint racket.

      “Just unload the kids, and go park the trailer in the barn,” she told Samuel. “It’s too late to move your stuff inside, and you wouldn’t want anybody pilfering through it.”

      Samuel did as she said.

      On Saturday, Calla’s toilet backed up, so Samuel had to spend the day digging up the septic tank field line. He had no trouble finding it, since the grass on top of those things always grows so much greener and brighter than the grass around it, but he had plenty of trouble chopping out the sweet gum roots that had grown through it and tangled around it. The job took all day. The car and the trailer stayed shut up in the barn, and nothing got unloaded, so there was none of the usual commotion that occurs when a family moves into a house. Which is why folks around the community were pretty much in the dark about the fact that Sam Lake and his family had moved back home to Arkansas.

      Bernice didn’t go down to breakfast on Sunday morning. She just stayed in bed thinking about how wrong this situation was. And that’s how it happened that she first got the Inspiration.

      Actually, it was Samuel who inspired her, although he didn’t know it. He and Willadee were in their room getting dressed for church, and their voices drifted through to her, clearer than clear. Bernice didn’t even have to press her ear to the wall to hear. It was as though This Moment Was Meant to Be.

      Willadee was asking Samuel if he was all right about this—about going to church this morning, knowing that people were going to be asking him why he wasn’t back home in Louisiana, preaching to his own congregation. (For sure it was going to be humiliating for him to admit that he didn’t have a congregation.) And Samuel was saying that he wasn’t about to let the Lord down by not showing up at His House on His Day.

      “I have to believe that there’s a reason for all this,” he said. “Maybe there’s something I’m supposed to do right here that I couldn’t do if I were anywhere else. Maybe there’s someone that I’m supposed to reach out to, or some problem I’m supposed to help with.”

      Bernice sat straight up in bed.

      In the next room, Willadee was agreeing with Samuel. It must be that God had something for him to do here, and the only way to bring it about was to uproot him from Louisiana loam and replant him in Arkansas clay, and probably the fields were right now ripe unto harvest.

      Bernice flung back her covers and leapt out of bed. The fields were ripe, all right. She being the fields. And she was so ready for harvest she couldn’t see straight.

      Before Bernice could hardly turn around, Samuel and Willadee were loading the kids into the car. Calla had long since opened the store, and Toy had headed down to the pond to do a little fishing as soon as he’d closed the bar—so neither one of them was around to gum up the works. Even so, Bernice barely had time to wash her face, and brush out her hair, and slip on the dress she’d worn to Papa John’s funeral. It was a pale gray number, with a slightly scooped neckline, just perfect for this occasion. Proper and tantalizing, all at the same time. She didn’t bother with makeup, because her skin didn’t need makeup, and besides, when you cry, makeup runs, which makes a woman look absolutely scary, and she intended to cry this morning.

      She came running out of the house at the very last moment, letting the screen door slam behind her. Samuel jerked his head around and looked back in her direction, and then he did a double take. It wasn’t every day you saw Bernice Moses run.

      “Something wrong, Bernice?”

      She waited until she was right up close to him before she answered, so that he’d be able to smell her perfume while he listened.

      “I was wondering if I could ride to church with y’all,” she said softly.

      If Sam was surprised, he didn’t show it. He smiled that big, wide, handsome smile of his and said, “Well, come on, then. There’s always room for one more in God’s house.”

      As if God had one little thing to do with this.

      Samuel took her arm, led her around the car to the passenger side, opened the door, leaned in ahead of her, and said, “Willadee, Bernice wants to ride to church with us.”

      Willadee gave her husband a knowing smile and slid over to make room. Bernice got into the car the way she’d seen movie stars do, gracefully lowering herself onto the seat, and managing to show just enough flesh to be tempting as she swung her legs in. She glanced demurely up at Samuel, to see whether he’d been tempted, but he was busy making sure none of the kids had their fingers in the way as he shut the car door.

      Bernice hadn’t counted on what the ride to church would actually be like. She’d imagined herself and Samuel in the front seat, with Willadee in between them feeling ugly and awkward. Samuel would sneak longing glances at her over Willadee’s head, and she would favor him with an occasional enigmatic smile. If Willadee caught on, she’d probably pout, which fit right into Bernice’s plan, since nothing makes a man want another woman as much as being reminded that the one he has is determined to hang on to him.

      As for the kids, they were more or less background color, part of the scenery that surrounded Samuel. She’d never thought much one way or the other about Samuel’s kids. She’d also never been shut up in a car with all three of them at once.

      Before long, she realized that there would be no longing looks from Samuel. He and Willadee were holding hands in Willadee’s lap, and Samuel pretty much had the air of a man whose longings had been recently satisfied.

      The kids were unobtrusive enough for about the first half mile, but then Noble took to leaning forward and sucking in deep breaths through his nose.

      “What are you doing back there, Noble?” Samuel finally asked.

      “Sitting here.” Which was true.

      “He’s drinking in her perfume,” Bienville said. You read enough books, you learn to spot these things.

      Noble turned as red as a beet and gave his brother a look that said he’d tend to him later. Bienville wasn’t worried. He’d been tended to before, and always lived over it.

      “Why do women wear perfume, Aunt Bernice?” Bienville asked.

      “To attract males,” Willadee drawled.

      “We just like to smell nice,” Bernice corrected.

      “Well, you sure do smell nice, Aunt Bernice.”

      “Thank you, Bienville.”

      “Do you attract many males?”

      Willadee felt the laughter coming and tried to stifle it, but it wouldn’t be stifled. Pretty soon it started gurgling in her throat. Bernice was sitting there with her mouth open and her brain working overtime, trying to come up with a good, workable answer. She couldn’t say “More than my share,” because there are times when the truth just gets in the way of a woman’s purposes. And she couldn’t say “Only my husband,” because that would make her sound dull, which was totally unacceptable. And she for sure couldn’t say “I’m trying to attract one right now.”

      Finally, she said, “Oh, I never pay any attention to things like that.”

      Samuel managed to keep a straight face, but only because preachers learn early on not to laugh when they shouldn’t. Another thing preachers learn early on is that the best way to pull a congregation together is to get everybody singing. So he