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sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body.
    His mother had assigned 1 Corinthians 6:18-20 and 7:1-2 for him to read and explain during dinner. He continued reading.
What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.
    She had once told him that fornication meant sex between a man and woman who weren’t married. So the first part said man should not engage in fornication. But what about the second part?
    David sighed hard. He would be going back to school in a few weeks. He looked forward to it, even though he was larger than most everyone in his class and they called him Chubby Sikes.
Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman. Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband.
    He closed his Bible and carefully placed it on the ramshackle wooden dresser in front of a cracked mirror with black spots covering most of its surface.
    The second part must mean that if you are married, then sex is okay. He was fairly certain he understood the passages, and a sense of pride swept over him, feeling he would get them right at dinner.
    “David, come down here for dinner right now,” his mother yelled up the stairs.
    “Yes, Mother. I will wash my hands.”
    “You’d better.”
    David sat at the kitchen table waiting for his mother to take her seat and say the prayer. He often thought of his father at meal times, with his empty chair there. He recalled his father and mother arguing in their bedroom, and the sounds of slaps and crying. His father came home drunk many times. He’d go straight from the sawmill to Percy’s Place for a night of drinking beer with his friends. The troubles came when he finally stumbled home.
    His father had died when David was young, barely four years old. David wasn’t sure what happened; his mother would only say that God had taken his father. She didn’t talk about her husband much, except occasionally to say: “Thank God he left us something.”
    Clara Sikes was a slender, almost stick-like, woman in her early forties. She had a plain face that was drawn and tired, and she never wore makeup. Her clothes were simple, and she always wore an apron in the kitchen. She worked days as a custodian at the county courthouse, a job she took shortly after her husband died.
    When Clara finished the prayer, they ate the over-cooked liver, mashed potatoes, and green beans she had prepared. David liked the mashed potatoes, but not the green beans or the liver. Still, everything had to be eaten. Leaving food on your plate was not tolerated, no exceptions. Resistance to a clean plate would result in long sessions sitting wearily at the kitchen table.
    After their plates were clean, his mother asked, “So, David, can you tell me what you read tonight from the book of Corinthians?”
    “Yes, Mother.”
    “Then begin.”
    As always when he talked to his mother, David chose his words very carefully. “In the first part, the Bible said that you are not supposed to, for—ni—cate.”
    “That’s right. What else?”
    I got it right! “I think the next part,” he said in an upbeat tone, “meant that if you marry someone, it’s all right to have sex.”
    Suddenly David’s mother reached under the kitchen table and pulled out the thick brown leather belt she kept there. She quickly doubled it in half and brought it whistling down on David’s back.
    “Mama! What did I—”
    With a crazed look she lifted the belt high and brought it down again, harder, on the same spot.
    “I’m sorry, Mama, I’m sorry.” He sat cowering in his chair fighting back tears, his back on fire. “What did I say?”
    “It’s not all right for you to have sexual intercourse