...

Yet, she dispatched him quickly. That is to say she looked at him for coming but noticed him not a wit. His plan, as it occurred to him slipping out the back door, was to stroll like the Holy Spirit into Norman Quill's exclusive bloom, stand aside the material cast of his intense fancy, four foot seven and topped with curls, and sing. His singing, he hoped, would be punctually improved by its dissimilitude to Norman Quill's loud and awful singing, and he hoped that a fair slice of her attention would reward his efforts. And of course he wished being the subject, or at least catalyst of worship by the giant masses might help his chances as well.

But as loud as he could sing, and he sang his loudest, she did not break the curious regime of rubbing her neck and laughing at nothing.

All he could do, which he did exceptionally well but nevertheless unwittingly, was to capture the attention of everybody else. Thomas Fidgen turned as if he'd found standing the dead of Bushkill's history, Gerald Hess surveyed the crowd to see if anybody else noticed, and Joey Mills, Ellis Moonley, Justice Tayler, Jamis Carson and Jib Roy met his attention. Here they were in Harley Jansen's corn field, and worshippers from distant counties had come to sing praises to their famous saint, and there He was, but a man of twenty-three, singing, and not all too well, next to Norman Quill.

They know there's nothing particularly fantastic or magical about singing to an empty house in Harley Jansen's corn field, and they wondered what people might make of their only saint now that he was standing there among them, visible, and with all the cracks and chips and variability of the living. The question quickly became how should good men -- humble, God-fearing hundred cents to the dollar men -- how should they ask their good pastor to quit the hymning and, with speed, return to his house? But with Claud Stephens' heart beating by its own current, the Laney twin's head right and his body recovered, and crazy Jay Wright slaking his loss in the sacrament, collected and quiet, and not a miracle requested in the county, the consensus among the Bushkill elders was to themselves leave immediately.

And once they did, and Minnow with them for hope of doughnuts, the core was lost and the crowd scuttled of its resolve, the mass ended and returned to light their houses.

Now the fields are clear, the rubble of rocks marks the old stone wall, pocks in the mud tell of a good gathering, and the boughs of the oaks shrug their bark. They remain singing, the two who remain, the good Pastor Tim and Norman Quill, singing with his eyes shut. They hoist the lines between them. And sing loud the old familiar songs.

And none of them exceptional, or too glorious.