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working. Working like a demon, I’d guess from the look of his hands. They were all red, and there were blisters on two of his fingers.”
    â€œHe did all that for Con?”
    â€œI don’t think so,” she said. Her eyes never left mine.
    â€œClaire! Jamie!” Mom called. “Come for ice cream!”
    Claire didn’t even look toward the kitchen. “Of all the kids in MYF, you’re the one he met first, and you’re the one he likes the best. He did it for you, Jamie. He did it for you.”
    Then she went into the kitchen, leaving me to stand by the woodpile, feeling stunned. If Claire had stayed a little longer and I’d had a chance to get over my surprise, I might have told her my own intuition: Reverend Jacobs had been as surprised as we were.
    He hadn’t expected it to work.

III
    The Accident. My Mother’s Story. The Terrible Sermon. Goodbye.
    On a warm and cloudless midweek day in October of 1965, Patricia Jacobs popped Tag-Along-Morrie into the front seat of the Plymouth Belvedere that had been a wedding present from her parents and set out for the Red & White Market in Gates Falls—“She gone groceryin,” the Yankees at that time would have said.
    Three miles away, a farmer named George Barton—a lifelong bachelor known in town as Lonesome George—pulled out of his driveway with a potato digger attached to the back of his Ford F-100 pickup. His plan was to drive it a mile or so down Route 9 to his south field. The best speed he could manage with the digger attached was ten miles an hour, so he kept to the soft shoulder, thereby allowing any southbound traffic to pass safely. Lonesome George was considerate of others. He was a fine farmer. He was a good neighbor, a member of the school board, and a deacon of our church. He was also, as he would tell people almost proudly, “a pepileptic.” Although, he was quick to add, Dr. Renault had prescribed some pills that controlled the seizures “just about perfect.” Maybe so, but he had one behind the wheel of his truck that day.
    â€œProbably shouldn’t have been driving at all, except maybe in the fields,” Dr. Renault said later, “but how can you ask a man in George’s line of work to give up his license? It’s not as if he has a wife or any grown kids he can put behind the wheel. Take away his driving ticket, you might as well ask him to put his farm up for sale to the highest bidder.”
    Not long after Patsy and Morrie set out for the Red & White, Mrs. Adele Parker came down Sirois Hill, a tight and treacherous curve where there had been many wrecks over the years. She was creeping along, and so had time to stop—barely—before striking the woman staggering and weaving up the middle of the highway. The woman had a dripping bundle clasped to her breast with one arm. One arm was all Patsy Jacobs could use, because the other had been torn off at the elbow. Blood was pouring down her face. A piece of her scalp hung beside her shoulder, bloody locks of hair blowing in the mild autumn breeze. Her right eye was on her cheek. All her beauty had been torn away in an instant. It’s fragile, beauty.
    â€œHelp my baby!” Patsy cried when Mrs. Parker stopped her old Studebaker and got out. Beyond the bloody woman with the dripping bundle, Mrs. Parker could see the Belvedere, on its roof and burning. The stove-in front end of Lonesome George’s truck was pushed against it. George himself was slumped over the wheel. Behind his truck, the overturned potato digger was blocking Route 9.
    â€œHelp my baby!” Patsy held the bundle out, and when Adele Parker saw what it was—not a baby but a little boy with his face torn off—she covered her eyes and began to scream. When she looked again, Patsy had gone to her knees, as if to pray.
    Another pickup truck came around Sirois Hill and almost slammed into the back of Mrs. Parker’s Studebaker.