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my
lungs
that wasn't feelin' too good."
    "Be serious! I mean, did y'all get saved?
I
did."
    "I guess so," Nathan answered.
    "Praise the Lord! You repented of your sins?"
    Nathan shrugged. "I reckon. What sins you got in mind?"
    "All of 'em! I repented for smoking. I ain't never gonna smoke again. I promised the Lord last night I wouldn't."
    "What else?" Nathan asked. He was trying not to laugh in Henry's face, but Henry didn't notice.
    "I promised God I wouldn't cuss no more, or tell lies, or steal nothin', or ... think about girls in a lustful way."
    "Sounds like you fixin' to be a real saint," Nathan said. "What you gonna do for fun from now on?"
    "Leave him alone," I said. "He's trying to be serious."
    "That's right," Henry agreed. "From now on, I gonna live my life for Jesus, do what he say, and try hard not to do what he don't like."
    "What made you decide all that?" I asked.
    "The Lord spoke to me after I come up out of the water, told me I needed to start livin' a holy life, 'cause I gonna be a preacher!"
    That got my attention. God had spoken to Henry, too?
    "Hey, what is it?" Henry asked me. "You look funny, Caleb."
    "Nothing," I lied. "I'm surprised you're gonna to be a preacher, that's all. You really hear God?"
    "Naw. Daddy told me that stuff only happen in Bible days. The Lord don't talk to people in this day and time."
    I wanted to tell him that his daddy was dead wrong. But then he'd go and snitch, and Brother Johnson would want to ask me a lot of questions and prove from the Bible how
I
was wrong ... Suddenly, it just didn't seem worth all the mess.
    "It warn't a voice I could hear," Henry said. "It was more like—like knowin' inside o' me."
    "That ain't no surprise," Nathan pointed out. "Your daddy a preacher, you gonna be a preacher."
    "That ain't it! You gonna be a bum just 'cause your daddy one?"
    Nathan went for Henry then, and I had to pull him off. Truth is, his daddy, Mr. Artie,
was
a bum, and Nathan was touchy about it.
    "We'll see just how long your 'decision' about holy livin' lasts," Nathan told Henry. "Won't we, big man? No more cigarettes, no more of my daddy's moonshine, no more cussin', no more—"
    "God'll help me! And he help you, too, when you really ready to repent.
You
ain't been saved."
    "Guess I jus' gotta take my chances, then. If gettin' saved make people act like
you,
I can do without it."
    "How 'bout you, Caleb?" Henry asked. "You really get saved yesterday?"
    At that moment I was so sick of Henry that I felt like punching him, too. "If I tell you, will you shut up about it?"
    "All right."
    "I don't know. I don't feel any different. Maybe I did and just don't realize it yet. And that's all I'm gonna say." If only Henry knew how much more I
could
say...
    The camp was nothing fancy, just wooden buildings with metal roofs. It reminded me of Fort Gordon up in Augusta, where we'd gone when Randall got inducted into the army. All around this camp, though, were two wire fences a few feet apart—an inner and an outer one—each topped with three strings of barbed wire. At the corners were guard towers, and in them were men holding rifles.
    A soldier appeared from the guardhouse at the gate. He had a rifle, too. "What do you boys want? This is no place for you to be hanging around."
    "We ain't doin' nothin'," Nathan said.
    "There's nothing to see here," the guard persisted. "You fellas better move along."
    He was annoying me. "No harm in us looking, is there?" I asked.
    "Get moving." It sounded like an order.
    "Let's go," Henry whispered. "We don't want to get in no trouble."
    "How we gonna get in trouble standin' in a public road?" Nathan shot back.
    I had an idea. "Come on. Follow me."
    "Bye," Nathan said cheerily to the guard. He ignored us.
    I led the way back a little farther along the road and cut into the woods.
    "What we doin'?" Henry asked.
    "Going back to the camp. No one can tell us we can't stand and look. We weren't doing anything wrong."
    "I ain't goin' back