The Cave That Held My Grandfather’s Faith

“Fickett?” she said, thinking about it. “I think that’s the family that moved out past the county line, out toward the old grain elevator. I only know because my mama does the church bulletin and there was a change of address a while back.” She gave me a look, half curious, half careful, the look you give a stranger whose name you half recognize but cannot place a reason to trust.

Out past the county line was eleven miles. I had forty cents and a duffel bag and legs that had walked all day already.

That night, I sat down behind the little white chapel two streets over, the one with the gravel lot and the hand painted sign, because it was the only building in Harlow Springs that still felt like it might not turn me away if it noticed me there. I did not go in. I did not think I had any right to. I just sat with my back against the cool brick, pulled my knees up, and let the cold settle into me the way it settles into a man who has nowhere else the night can put him.

Somewhere around dawn, a thin gray dog wandered up out of the ditch grass and sat a few feet off, watching me the way you watch something you recognize without being able to say how. I did not have anything to give it. We just sat there together, two creatures with nowhere in particular to be, until the sun came up gray and then gold over the soybean fields.

That was when I remembered the hollow.