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into any blasphemy, because Jesus will be unhappy with that, now won’t he?” He tried to smile.
    Henry couldn’t think of anything to say. He didn’t want to blasphemy. It sounded like a very bad thing. Mr. Harris was a Sunday school teacher, a man who had to know everything about the Bible and God to get his job. No way around that.
    “He said what?” asked Uncle Jack.
    “That it was blasamy to ask questions about God,” said Henry.
    “Blasphemy,” said Uncle Jack. He sat on the back door steps, leaning back with his legs spread, cleaning a fingernail with the short blade from his four-blade Case. He had bags under his eyes and combed his hair straight back. “Blasphemy.” He was chewing a plug, tossing it around fast in his mouth.
    Henry sat beside him. It had rained and then cleared up, and now the late afternoon sky dropped down a soft orange light that seemed to color the air in some strange way, to give green bushes and shrubs a dusty orange glow not theirs.
    “Course that don’t surprise me,” said Uncle Jack. “Bill Harris. Blasphemy, hell.”
    Henry looked up at his uncle. “He sent Nicky Noland out because he said a bad word.”
    “What’d he say?”
    “Ass.”
    “Did he tell Harris to kiss his ass?”
    “No sir. Nicky said a lion could gulp down a man’s . . . a man’s . . .”
    “A man’s ass.” Uncle Jack laughed. “Well, he can, can’t he?”
    “Yessir, but if you say that in church then you might do blasamy and go to hell.”
    “Blasphemy. You got to learn to talk, boy. Tell you what: I’ll go with you and Aunt Dorie next Sunday and we’ll have a talk with Mr. Bill Ass Harris.”
    “No, Jack,” said Aunt Dorie. She’d come out quietly onto the porch and stood behind them. “Bill Harris does a lot for the church, and he’s in there on Sunday mornings with them boys when he could be at home sleeping like some people I won’t name.”
    Jack slowly stood. He folded in the blade against his overalls, turned. Henry stayed seated, looking up at him. “Well, Dorie,” said Uncle Jack, “Bill Harris is also a . . . a dull man. Them boys would get along just as fine by theirselves.”
    “I don’t think so. Boys need Sunday school.”
    “Like a . . . like a dog needs a spoon.”
    Aunt Dorie and Henry sat on the living room couch just before bedtime. Aunt Dorie told him that Mr. Harris and Preacher Gibson both had told Aunt Dorie that Henry was a very smart young man, and that the most important thing for him to know and understand was that Jesus died for him on the cross, for everybody, and that if Henry couldn’t understand something, that was okay. All he had to do was believe. She asked him if he believed in Jesus. He said yes. Did he believe in God and the Bible? Yes. She told him as long as he believed in those things, then he was a Christian and he would go to heaven. Once saved, always saved, she said. All he had to do was go down front at church and accept Jesus — when he felt Jesus calling. Because it had to be done publicly.
    Henry thought again about God resting on the seventh day. “But why would somebody who’s perfect need to rest? Can I ask that if I’m not in church?”
    “Yes, you can ask. For a little while sometimes God could be like a man and need some rest, but that don’t mean God wasn’t perfect. He could do whatever he wanted to. He just probably wanted to want to rest. He could be like a man and not like a man when he was inside Jesus because Jesus was God too. And Jesus was a man. God the Father is God, Jesus the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. Jesus is perfect even though he cursed the fig tree and even though he cursed the men in the temple who were changing money.”
    “Why was it okay for Jesus to cuss?”
    “Because he was Jesus, and the fig tree and the money changers were bad.”
    “Could I cuss a fig tree and money changers?”
    “Well, no, because you’re not Jesus, son.”
    Henry knew Aunt Dorie was right about the Bible.