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the walls where the stations of the cross used to be. It’s disrespectful for them to play in church, a clucking parishioner said. Not if you think God has a sense of humor, Reverend Bauxite said, and loves his children. He said it so fast, so gentle, so firm. Still filled with what he had seen before the storm.
    He marveled at that now. The vision had to fade with time, he knew that. Knew, too, that when it did, the real work of his faith could begin, to believe when he could not see. But he had not counted on the war testing him so much. Making him ask the questions that he had seen kill the faith in others. The war could kill the faith in him, too, if he was not strong or careful enough. He could feel it fluttering within him sometimes, a bird in a cage of knives. Its own blood on its face and wings. Let me go. He shook his head. No.
    His hands over the fire were warm in the mist, and he squinted into the coals. Finished the prayer for Sunny Jim, but refused to pray for himself. Did not believe in doing himself any kindnesses.
    Down the bridge, under the bent green sign for Halifax, a man in a brown jacket fiddled with the latch on a wooden viola case. It was his cousin’s. Her talent had been obvious early. She watched a guitar player from her stroller, her fingers shadowing the shapes his made. A song within a week of getting her first instrument. By the age of eleven she played it for hours a day, with an emotional surety that most adults never feel. She could get it within minutes of starting to play, a direct line to somewhere else.
    The war came upon her without warning. The man found her apartment in Hagerstown unblemished, but her not in it. Her viola lying on the kitchen table, next to a cutting board, a half-peeled onion. The case on the floor beneath it. He took the viola, left the rest, and headed north, where she must have gone, he thought. There was nothing left in the south for her. The cities burned, the families scattered. Better to go where it was cooler now, even if the rain never seemed to stop.
    He kept the viola no more than a few feet from him. It was the thing he valued most in this world, as if he was tied to one end of its strings, his cousin to the other. He had this idea that he was going to find her and give it to her. Already worked out what he would say: You forgot something. Holding the case out. She would laugh, almost without a doubt. Know better than to ask where the rest of the family was. Push him like she did when they were kids, and their parents, their aunts and uncles, their blind grandfather, were all there. But he had not found her yet.
    He unlatched the case and took the viola out. The fog settled on the surface, made the wood sweat. He tightened the hair on the bow a little too much, drew it across the damp strings. The metal, the horsehair, did not like the weather and scratched in protest. But he had heard all the songs she had played in the house a hundred thousand times. Just before dinner, on weekend mornings. Some very late nights, when he came stumbling home trying not to be too drunk. The tunes were humming in his head now, and her with them. He could almost get them into his fingers. The sound he made was unclean, but the melodies were simple and clear enough. He kept the viola out for longer than he should have, but he could not help himself. Every note brought her back to him.
    *   *   *
    I MET THE MAN with the viola first, after he had left the Carthage, after Towanda. I was in my third house since Charleston by then, for we are always moving now. I saw him coming through the cloudy window of the kitchen, lit two candles, and put them on the sill so he would know someone was there, for all the houses around me were dark, everyone else gone. I fed him three eggs, boiled in water with a little salt. A little rice. Made him some tea, a few ancient bags that I strained the flavor from, sweetened with a spoon of honey. He leaned back in a rickety chair, took off