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again but wherever he went the nail would eventually find him, and he would have to flee. So it went for that man and all his descendants, and that is why the Roma always have to keep moving on, and that is also why Jesus was crucified using only three nails.”
    The people around them knew this story well, and they knew versions of it where the Rom was not such an unwilling victim of circumstance. Salvo could feel their eyes upon him, and he knew that they were not friendly eyes. This was surely not the village the great thief’s wife had saved from the snake.
    They made their way to the front of the crowd, where the priest was waiting, the cross lying on the ground at his feet. He shook Salvo’s father’s hand and spoke to him in a hushed tone that Salvo could not quite hear. And the priest gave Miksa the longest rope Salvo had ever seen.
    “You go wait over by that tree,” Miksa told his son, pointing to what was once a flourishing tree, standing dead at the edge of the clearing in front of the church. The boy reluctantly obeyed, making his way back through the crowd. Miksa didn’t want his son to wait with the Hungarian Christians. There were a lot of bad feelings going around, on account of the war and the revolution and Romania’s troops going in and out of the area, and he didn’t want the boy to become the object of anyone looking to vent a little frustration.
    When he saw Salvo reach the tree, Miksa went inside and climbed a narrow, twisting staircase to a catwalk that traversed the length of the church’s interior. It ran to the very back of the building, made a turn and spanned the width. In the middle of the rear catwalk, there was a window, very small, just large enough for a man to squeeze through. Looping the coiled rope over his shoulder so his hands would be free, Miksa pushed open the window and, headfirst but facing the church, climbed out. He stood on the narrow sill, up on the tips of his toes, and was only barely able to reach the lip of the roof. With all the strength in his bony fingers he pulled himself up, as if doing a chin-up, until his chest was touching the edge of the roof. Because it was so severely sloped, he was able to swing one foot, and then the other, over to the side and onto the roof. He walked along the ridge towards the front, where the steeple began. There he saw the crowd of people below, and beyond that he saw Salvo perched in the crook of the dead tree.
    It was at this point that the others had failed in their attempts. The steeple was nearly straight up, and there was nothing but smooth wood to hold onto. Miksa adjusted the rope slung over his shoulder and spit on his hands. His foot stepped into the air and outward towards the far edge of the steeple. As he reached the top arc of his stride, his foot landed on a nail, no more than three inches long and less than half an inch thick, nearly invisible to the eye, certainly invisible to the crowd below. Even those who had been up here before had missed the nail, but Miksa had known about it and the others that pierced the steeple, and was relieved when it held his weight.
    Miksa Ursari knew about the nails because he was the one who had put them there. In fact, he was the one who had helped the old priest remove the cross in the first place. The old priest had been something of a friend to Miksa, and when he asked him for his help Miksa had agreed without hesitating. They’d taken the cross down early one morning, in secret, and hid it in the forest to prevent it from being stolen. After the old priest died, Miksa wondered if he should go and tell someone where it was, but he hadn’t trusted any of the successive priests. They never lasted long enough anyway. Apparently it didn’t matter; the old priest had written down where it was, fearful that something might happen to Miksa or that in his old age he would forget where he had hidden it. The new priest found the paper and recovered the cross, but had no idea how the old