The Cave That Held My Grandfather’s Faith

That is how I ended up on my knees in the dark with torn fingernails and a heart going like a shotgun, uncovering a box with my grandfather’s initials carved into the lid.

The latch had rusted nearly shut, but nine years of a man learning patience the hard way is good for something. I worked it loose with the edge of my belt buckle and lifted the lid, and inside, wrapped in oilcloth gone soft and dark with age, I found my great grandfather’s Bible, a small tin of old silver dollars, a folded document with a county seal on it, and a letter in my grandfather’s careful, slanted hand, addressed simply: To whichever Fickett comes home and needs it most.

I was still sitting there with that letter open on my knee, tears I was not ashamed of running down into my collar, when I heard footsteps outside the cave mouth.

My whole body went tight the way it does when you have spent nine years learning that footsteps behind you rarely mean good news. I turned, ready to explain myself to whatever landowner or deputy had come to run off a trespasser, and instead found a woman standing in the cave entrance with the morning light behind her, a woman I did not recognize but whose face carried the particular kindness of someone who has spent her whole life worrying over other people’s children.

“You’re Isom Fickett,” she said. It was not a question.

I did not ask how she knew. Small towns keep better records than any courthouse.