The Bible I Bought Twice

He took it with both hands. He was still dripping a little at the ends of his hair.

He opened the top and tipped it, and the black leather slid into his palm, and the gold letters caught the light from the tall clear windows.

For a second nobody in that room moved at all.

Micah ran his thumb across his name, the same way Pam had. His lips moved as he read it.

Then he looked up, not at me, but out over the pews, and his voice came out high and clear.

“It’s got my whole name on it,” he said. “Grandma didn’t forget. I thought she forgot.”

Somebody in the back said, “Oh, bless him.” Somebody else laughed, the soft kind of laugh that is mostly a catch in the throat.

Heidi took one step toward the aisle. Her mouth opened.

And I watched her look at the faces, at Harlan Odom and the Shaw sisters and Brother Wayne, and I watched her understand that every person in that church had just heard her son say it out loud.

She stopped. She closed her mouth. She stood with the white Bible in her hand and the blood going out of her face.

I did not say one word to her. I did not need to.

I put my hand on my grandson’s wet head, and he leaned into my side, the Bible hugged against his chest like a puppy.

“Thank you, Grandma,” he whispered. “It’s the prettiest one.”

“It’s got a lot of years in it, honey,” I said. “You fill them up.”

Sherry Colburn came around her daughter then. She had a kind, puzzled face.

She put the white leather Bible into Micah’s other hand and said, “And this one’s from Pa Lowell and me, sweet boy. Now you have two.”

“Thank you, Granny.” He held one in each arm like a boy with two loaves of bread.

Sherry looked at me. Then she looked at her daughter, and the puzzled look went hard and sharp. “Heidi,” she said quietly. “Why did he think his grandmother forgot?”

“Later, Mama,” Heidi said. She said it to the floor.

Brother Wayne had been standing there with his waders dripping on the carpet.

He is a gentle man, and he has been a pastor for thirty-eight years, and I believe he had worked out the whole thing before anybody said a word. He put his big hand on Micah’s shoulder.

“Son,” he said, “I have a favor to ask you.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Next Sunday, I read the opening scripture from the pulpit, and I would like you to read it instead. The first verse. I would like you to read it out of your grandmother’s Bible.”

Micah’s eyes went round. “Out loud? In front of everybody?”

“In front of everybody,” Brother Wayne said. And he looked up over the boy’s head, straight at the front pew, and held it there a moment.

“I think this church would like to hear it. I think we all would.”