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barn door.
    Even after he switched the lights on it took a moment for his eyes to adjust from the wintry white light to the darkness of the barn. The calf was resting against its mother, both of them fold-legged atop the straw. Maybe I—, thought Harley, hoping that somehow overnight the image might have disappeared, but then, Nope, there it is .
    And indeed the face of Jesus was in clear view, all but the bottom fringe of beard, which was tucked into the straw. “ Jaypers! ” said Harley, unconsciously uttering the severest oath he had ever heard his father utter. He had harbored some hope that here on the morning after, the image might have been less distinct.
    Tina Turner got to her feet and lowed at him hungrily. “Yah, okay,” said Harley, shaking his head as he turned and climbed the haymow ladder. Unhooking the door that swung out over the barnyard, he pitched down a dozen bales, then dropped a single down the chute above Tina Turner’s manger.
    Most people these days used round bales, the ones that resembled giant cigar stubs or were wrapped in white plastic and looked like elephantine marshmallows. You spiked them with a tractor and they’d feed the cows for several days. But Harley stuck with the old-school bales, the ones that were a packet of hay contained by two loops of knotted twine. They were more work, but he still liked using his dad’s old John Deere baler. Billy would drive the tractor while Harley stacked bales on the wagon, the roar of the engine rising and falling to the rhythm of the plunger. Harley found this mechanical harmony soothing, and evocative of a timewhen everything made sense. Or was at least containable . Plus he figured lugging those bales every day was his equivalent of a gym membership.
    When Harley stepped off the bottom rung of the ladder, Tina Turner had her head through the slats of the pen, and was straining toward the hay bale. Harley flicked open his lock blade, snicked the twine, and using one foot, swept several flakes of hay within reach of her looping tongue. Her udder was rotund with colostrum, and Harley noted a fleck of foam at each corner of the calf’s mouth—a good sign; he’d been feeding. The calf was standing now too, facing Harley head-on, sturdy as you please, all the wobble gone out of its knees. Harley eased around one side of the pen, once again hoping the image of Christ would be indistinct, or that from another perspective it might appear to be a road-killed muskrat or some such—anything, really, as long as it was more benign than the Holy Savior of Man—but then the calf turned to suckle, and there it was, a hairy Rorschach open to only one interpretation: Jesus Christ.
    Back outside in the cold, Harley elbowed his way through the cluster of beefers now tearing at his pile of hay bales. One by one he lugged the bales to the bunk feeder that ran along one side of the barnyard, cut the twine, and kicked the flakes along the length of the feeder. When the last bale was split and distributed, he stood in the feeder and watched the cows eat. There was always a comfort in this moment. He found simple satisfaction in the sound of the cattle snuffling and grinding the hay in their molars, switching their tails in contentment. There was the feeling that he had done something tangible and good. Christmas? Maybe so, he thought, but it was hard to imagine any other gifts so thankfully received.
    OVER AT ST. Jude’s Meg rose to change into her dress and assist Father Carl.
    Christmas , she thought, looking at the abstract brass Jesus. Happy birthday.
    In his office, Father Carl pressed a button, and the tape-recorded bells rang out the joyous message.

CHAPTER 7
    I n the little hut—originally the pump house, in fact—at the base of the water tower, Carolyn Sawchuck was pedaling her bicycle and reading Soulful Declensions , a book of essays she had written and published at the peak of her academic career,