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times had moved on, and they would have to leave their homes.

CHAPTER 3
    "B Y all that's holy, Turner, you couldn't wait before you decided to embarrass me in front of a new congregation?"

    "I didn't mean to embarrass you."
    "First you harass Mrs. Cobb, walking past her house without a shirt and throwing stones at her fence. And now you brawl in the street with Deacon Hurd's son. With the deacon's son! But perhaps you're right. I cannot possibly imagine how that would embarrass me, the new minister. 'Look,' people will say—are already saying—'he can't handle his own son. How can he possibly handle a church?'And that's not all they'll be saying. They'll be saying—"
    A single high metal ring on the phone broke off what people would say about the new minister. Glaring, Reverend Buckminster went to answer it, and Turner wondered if he was free to go upstairs. His damp clothes were pretty much clamped against his skin, and as they dried, the starch was tightening. Soon, he figured, he wouldn't be able to breathe.
    He supposed he'd better wait for his father. Heaven only knew what new sin committed by the minister's son was being announced over the phone. It was probably Mrs. Cobb doing the announcing.

    Turner looked up and down the shelves of his father's study—the first room in the house that had been readied. Sunlight glinted on the gilt spines of the books. It smelled impressive, all that leather. Still, he wondered if there was a single book on those shelves that any human being really liked to read. " The Heresies of the Modern World and the Infallibility of Orthodoxy " he said into the still air." An Alphabetical Compedium of All Sects. A View of All Religions. Occasional Sermons of the Reverend Emmons. " He decided he could probably come up with better titles: Huckleberry Finn and the Merry Apostles, maybe. The Piratical Adventures of Peter on the Sea of Galilee. Occasional Sermons on How God Intended Baseball Be Played.
    He felt his father come back into the room. The door shut. Tightly.
    "You were naked in Mrs. Cobb's kitchen," Turner's father said, slowly and quietly.
    "Not naked."
    His father waited.
    "I was in my underwear."
    "You were in your underwear in Mrs. Cobb's kitchen. Let us praise God that decency reigns."
    The rest of the conversation went about as badly as it could go, particularly at the end, when Turner had to promise he would ask Mrs. Cobb's pardon the next day, and would, to improve his own soul and to bring light to her dark loneliness, resolve not only to read to her for the summer but to play the organ for her at least three times a week as well, taking care all the while to remain fully dressed. And while it was to be recognized that he was still a young boy, yet he would resolve to conquer his debased self so that he would not be an embarrassment to his father but would instead shine brightly as an example of Christian charity to all—much like Willis Hurd.

    Turner left his father's study, climbed the stairs to his room, and put on another perfectly white and starched shirt. He was desperate to find a place where he could breathe.
    Whatever that place was, it wasn't his room, which was long and narrow and slanted downhill. Someone had put up the wallpaper during the Civil War, Turner figured—for a girl, he was sure—and it had clung to the walls for longer than it should have. By the one window, all of its yellow blooms had faded to a general gray, and Turner had started to peel it away. He took a long strip off now, wondering if it would be a sin to open his window and lean out. It probably was in Phippsburg, Maine, and someone would call the new minister and tell him that his son was hanging out the upper story and being a bad example for younger children, who would unwittingly follow his lead and fall to untimely deaths without any of their last words being said, never mind heard. His father would be embarrassed again. Turner thought about getting to work on conquering his debased