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much in the gospel, but in the foreverness of the thing, the music, the brothers, the valley itself, and that was more forever than any man could take into his mind.
    What does he believe, he wonders now, humming and thinking the words of the song he made them sing three times until he got most of it down. He believes, at this minute, in this valley, this land he is walking on, in this water that flows nearby and through his life, the passing of afternoon into evening into night, this blackness of safety and solitude. He believes in the peace of it, the eternity.
Blessed Savior, that will guide us
’Til we reach that blissful shore
    But this here, the valley of sweet Virginia, this is the blissful shore. There is no more to reach for. But, humming, he knows. He knows what he believes. He believes in the strength of muscle, the pleasures of the body, the goodness of the heart. He believes in goodness, and this is a new thing, a gift to him from the river and the land and the blue light now almost black, the ink of the sky pocked with stars. This is what the valley and its waters whisper into his ear, in this evening into night. He believes at this moment, and he will always believe it, that people are good, and that he is good among them.
Where the angels wait to join us
In God’s grace forevermore.
    Now he knows the angels have joined us, have joined him, are in him. Such a surprise, after all. So many living things, snake and bird and fish and man, each working to create the whole, this brilliance of sound and silence, these voices of man and animal that flow into one voice, and that voice is the whole southern world, is this loss and this living. For what else has the land done but persist, and in the face of that, what else was there for him, for any of them, but to persist along with the soil that gave them bread and fed, as well, their hearts?
    Lying down on his quilt, he remembers it all, it enters into his body and he knows that he has become the thing he will be from now on to the end, unless something terrible, something unimaginable, happens, but believing that it will not. There is such deep silence. There is such a roar of noise inside that silence. There is just so much.
    He thinks, as he does every night before he sleeps, he wonders, what is the point, what is the reason for all his wandering, for his solitude in a peopled world, if he’s not, one day, to have children, a child of his own, a son, whom he might teach and train and raise up to be a scientist, or a butcher, or a baseball star? He misses, as he does every night before he sleeps, the soft and peaceful breathing of his imagined son sleeping clean beside him.
    He closes his eyes and he sees the dream that waits for him ahead, and he hears the brothers, finished with their laughing over his foolishness, realizing that they are in the act of converting a sinner into a believer, so they sing with conviction and grace and then wave him on, no more, they wave, no more, you’re on your own. That’s enough, they wave. If you don’t get it now, then we have failed and you cannot be saved.
As you roll across the trestle
Spanning Jordan’s swelling tide
You’ll behold a Union depot
Into which your train will glide
There you’ll meet the Superintendant
God the Father, God the Son
    He sleeps now, cradled in peace, his right hand cupping his ear, in sleep hearing but not hearing any more the final words the old men gave to him so graciously:
With that hearty, joyous plaudit:
“Weary Pilgrim
Welcome home.”

CHAPTER FOUR
    T HE ANNUAL OYSTER Supper at the Ebenezer Baptist Church, just outside of town on a low rise by the highway, was pretty much as good as it got. Every white person in town went, and some from as far away as Lexington. It started at three, with games and gossip until suppertime, and it went on until dark, with old Rooster Ruley playing the fiddle, and the ladies of the church cooking all day long.
    The oysters came from down on the