eyes and silently asked. Again, her hands tingled and grew hot. She felt warmth welling up inside, and she understood the Lord was filling her with his Spirit. When the congregation said the Lord’s Prayer, Ada couldn’t repeat the words, she was so stunned. She sat through the sermon unable to hear, the warmth in her fingers slowly disappearing.
A few days later, Ada and her mother stood at the sink, her mother washing dishes, Ada drying. Ada asked, “How did Uncle Mark make my warts go away?”
“He’s a powwow doctor,” her mother said. “The Lord gave him the gift to make people and animals better.” She picked up another plate. “He can remove warts, stop blood, take out fire from burns. I’ve seen him stanch blood coming from a cut on your grandfather’s leg. And he’s even healed a cow that ran through a fence and cut herself.”
Her mother rinsed the last cup and handed it to Ada. “Once when we were fishing, he removed a hook caught right here, between my thumb and finger. After he said the chant, the bleeding stopped and the pain went away.”
Ada held the cup. She didn’t know how to tell her about the sparrow or what she had felt in church.
“What’s the matter, Ada?”
“I want to powwow like Uncle Mark.” She spoke about the sparrow, her prayer, and the warm tingling in her hands. Her mother understood.
After church the next Sunday, Uncle Mark, Aunt Rebecca, and their two girls came to the Franklins’ for dinner. Uncle Mark walked in last, ducking his head in his shy way. He was a small man with glasses and a square forehead, and he quietly hugged his sister and tousled Ada’s hair.
Usually after the meal, Ada ran outside to play with her cousins. But she knew this visit was for her. Her father said it was his turn to dry, while Aunt Rebecca had the other children pulling out coloring books. Ada turned to find Uncle Mark with his cap on, holding the door for her.
“Why don’t you show me that new calf?” he asked, and together they walked out.
He strolled beside her with his hands behind his back. “Have you named this calf yet?”
She shook her head. She had never been alone with Uncle Mark, never talked with this quiet man who smelled of hay and always seemed to squint, the wrinkles circling his eyes.
They reached the barn. “Your mother says you want to powwow?”
Ada nodded.
He paused, for the first time his eyes resting on hers. “I learned it from my grandmother, your great-grandmother Ida. When I was about your age, she took the fire out of a burn right here”—he pointed to a long scar on the back of his hand. “I was putting splits into the wood stove and got too close to the firebox. Mama grabbed me and Grandma whispered over my wound. The pain disappeared just like that.
“A little later, I asked my mama how Grandma did that, and she told me. When I said I wanted to be a powwow doctor, too, Mama said, ‘You have to believe. You have to have faith.’ I spent the rest of that year learning.”
In the barn, they found the calf asleep. Ada reached into the pen, and the small creature wobbled to its feet. She rubbed its curly forehead while Uncle Mark let the calf suck his fingers. “We could name this one Molly. What do you think of that?”
“That sounds good.” She glanced at her uncle and kept petting the calf.
“Hello, Molly dolly.” Uncle Mark watched Ada, waited for her to face him. “You have to believe, Ada. Do you have faith?”
“I do,” she said with a determined nod, and this made him smile, which made her smile.
Ada told him about the sparrow, about her prayer and the warm tingles, and about how the same feeling had spread through her in church.
Uncle Mark nodded once and looked at his hands. He knew those tingles, too. “It’s like the Lord is in you right then, working through you. And you have to remember that, Ada. Nothing happens without Him. You understand?”
Ada said yes.
Uncle Mark pulled his hand from the calf’s mouth. “Now why’d I let this thing get my hand all slobbered up?” He laughed and tried to wipe it on some straw before he pulled out his handkerchief and wiped off the stickiness. Ada’s cheeks hurt from grinning.
For the rest of the summer, Ada and Doctor hiked the two miles to Uncle Mark and Aunt Rebecca’s farm every Sunday afternoon. There, she sat in their kitchen, and Uncle Mark taught her all the cures he knew. She would walk back through the fields reciting that day’s chants, memorizing the words that called on the Holy Spirit to work through her.
But now, all of that was gone. In the kitchen, Uncle Mark finished wrapping her mother’s hands.
Thank you, God, for helping Mama and Uncle Mark and for bringing Papa home safely. Ada prayed for Nathan, too, on his long journey across the ocean.
But she wondered whether these words really mattered.
Outside, the embers glowed.
She had entered the fire, and now she didn’t know who had come back out.
II
One for sorrow
—From the nursery rhyme “Counting Crows”
5
Will waited by the gas pumps and checked his new uniform. He liked how he looked: the gray khakis with a red leather belt, the striped shirt with an Esso patch on one shoulder and a green keystone on the other that read “Pennsylvania Turnpike.” He liked how he was part of something larger now, something that whirred and hummed and moved.
Above the pocket, “Burk” was bordered in red. He smoothed this with his fingers, and then he bent to look at his reflection on the gas pump glass, brushing his cowlick under his cap. When he stood, he found Buddy Dickson watching him.
“Burk, if you’re done primping, I got a job for you.” Dickson, the manager, was pudgy and a good foot shorter. He thrust a broom and shovel into Will’s hands. Then he turned and walked away. Will glanced at the men working the pumps at another island before hurrying to catch up.
Dickson hummed a hymn, one Will recognized but couldn’t place until Buddy hit the chorus and sang, “When the saints, oh when the saints, oh when the saints come marching in.”
Will wondered if they were hoofing it to a damn revival, but he didn’t speak as Dickson marched on, lurching forward.
Fifteen steps from the pumps, Buddy Dickson paused. He faced Will, his dark eyes intense. “Will Burk, are you saved?”
Jesus, Will thought. He had to look down to hold in his surprise, hold in the Hell no that he wanted to blurt out. Instead, he remained quiet. He’d had fourteen years of silence, living with his terse father before he died, so he was well practiced.
“Do you know Jesus as your personal savior?” Dickson tilted his head to peer at him.
Will looked out over the valley. For months he had waited
