To Return Home

By the time Reverend Ames returned to home, the town was more rust than wood, more remembered outline than place. Weeds split the roads open. The chapel windows blinked dust instead of light. There was no one left. His childhood home had collapsed into a den, first claimed by animals, then abandoned again when the roots finished their work. The church endured. Warped, leaning, but upright. Inside, the pews were gray. A bird’s nest crowned the pulpit. Something had died beneath the floorboards long ago; the stench had thinned with time, leaving only a faint, sour memory, like the town itself. He slept on a cot in the back room. He’d slept there before. He lit no fire. Used no lights. Each morning, he rose before dawn and worked until darkness erased the edges of things. Quiet work. Careful work. He patched the roof, scrubbed mildew, hauled away glass. Near the tree line he dug with a shovel whose grip had long since worn smooth. Some nights the moon hung over the steeple while he still cut into the earth. He dug until his hands blistered, until his fingers went numb. Then he dug more. No one asked why. There was no one left to ask. No one left to tell. Inside the chapel, he polished the offering plate. He stitched his robe with fishing wire. Among nettles and milkweed he found lilies. He set them on the altar with aching hands and as he watered them he thought back on better times. He practiced his sermon in fragments. Sunday came along and Ames stood at the pulpit. He let the silence bloom like incense. Then he opened his eyes and smiled. The joy of return. Of belonging. “Good morning,” he said, “He is risen.” They sat upright and attentive in their Sunday clothes. The townsfolk he had exhumed, his new congregation. “I’d like to thank you all for coming,” he said steadily. His Bible fell open and its pages slipped free, drifting down like brittle leaves. He smiled at his mother in the front row, propped up with wires and dowels, she still had some scraps of skin on her too. He picked up the papers and he smiled at old friends, “It’s so good to be home.”