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cannot come!” If it were left to your own mother to decide the question of your admission, you could not come in. She would not open heaven’s gate for your admission. She knows you would disturb the bliss of heaven. She knows you would mar its purity and be an element of discord in its sympathies and in its songs. The justice of God will not allow you to participate in the joys of the saints. His relations to the universe make it indispensable that He should protect his saints from such society as you. They have had their discipline of trial in such society long enough: the scenes of their eternal reward will bring everlasting relief from this torture of their holy sympathies. His sense of propriety forbids that He should give you a place among His pure and trustful children. It would be so unfitting—so unsuitable! It would throw such discord into the sweet songs and sympathies of the holy.

    â€”Reverend Charles G. Finney, President, Oberlin College,
visiting preacher, Church of Christ Returning, September 29, 1852

    Albert woke with his heart already pounding . He didn’t remember his dream, exactly. But it had been one of the bad ones. Some people tried to grab their dreams as they slipped under the surface of consciousness, but Albert pushed the spectres as far from his day-mind as he could. A smell remained, like gunpowder residue—acrid, but sweaty-dirty, like the breath of a man who has consumed sardines and creamed corn and beer—a familiar smell. He shook his head, blew out his lips so his breath sucked nothing of the terror back into him. The instant of waking was the only moment when one might consider Albert superstitious, when some remnant of his child-self lingered, before he stuffed it back down into The Hole, the solitary confinement of his unconscious.
    Awareness of his queasy stomach and sawdust mouth slid in on the sunlight nudging through the hole in the sheet pegged over the window, even as the flickering horrors of his dream dissipated. The pillow smelled of mildew. Something crusty had dried on the blanket. He blindly reached around on the floor next to the foldout bed and found a bottle, empty.
    Albert had been drunk last night. But not drunk enough. Yesterday was a shitty day. It had started off all right. Just another day with not much on his schedule except for chopping wood for the stove. He’d been using the ancient splitter near the main house when Dr. Hawthorne arrived around noon, his shiny target-red Volvo moving through the trees up the winding road to the compound. The kids appeared like tame squirrels from their various nooks and crannies, and flocked around his car. They looked like Third World beggars with their dirty hands out. Dr. Hawthorne, small and trim in his grey wool coat, stepped out of the car, his trousers tucked into rubber boots to protect them from the mud.
    â€œHey, now, you kids,” the doctor said, smiling a white smile under his thin, carefully trimmed moustache. “You’re not looking for candy, are you? You don’t want to rot your teeth, do you?”
    â€œI’m loosing a tooth,” said Frank. “See?” He waggled his tongue against the wobbling incisor.
    Brenda sucked on her fingers and looked up at the doctor with wide eyes. He bent down and lifted her chin with his long-fingered, girlish hands. “What’s this? What’s that around your mouth? Are you a dirty girl?”
    â€œNo,” said Brenda. She wriggled and turned.
    â€œImpetigo. Look at those oozy blisters.” He let go of her face and looked at the rest of the children. “You’ll probably all get it now.” He sighed and looked long-suffering. “Such a shame. Lucky I’ve got antibiotic cream. I’m not sure whether I should give you treats.”
    â€œYes, please,” the children said. “Please, please, please.”
    â€œOh, all right then.” Hawthorne opened the trunk of his car and pulled