The Expeditions Read Online Free PDF Page A

failings. He’d felt God’s grace as nearly palpable, a certain thickness in the meetinghouse air. Glorious, light-filled days. Reverend Stone hiked his trousers and sat on a mossy oak stump and withdrew the letter from his pocket, and with a shock recognized his son’s script.
    He unfolded the letter against his knee and read
Dearest Mother,
and was struck by the beauty of his son’s penmanship.
Dearest Mother,
he read again, then traced his fingers over the faint indentations where his son’s pen had pressed. The letter was puckered with moisture, and Reverend Stone held it to his nose but could not discern a scent.
    He rose and hurried southward along the creek, head bowed, his mind filled with toneless clamor. He passed the mill bridge and the Spillman stables, then slowed his pace as a memory surfaced: a bone china platter lying shattered against oiled oak floorboards. Smell of goldenrod and privy, drone of cicadas and a woman’s far-off call for her daughter. Heat. His thirteen-year-old son crouched at the edge of this very creek, attempting to conceal himself in the rushes. Inside the parsonage the boy’s mother lay beneath two woolen quilts, her forehead the gray-white of a boiled egg. Her cough echoed through the empty house. Reverend Stone stood on the creek bank, shouting, his cheeks gone crimson with anger. The boy stared out at his father then closed his eyes.
    He unfolded the letter and read it again, refolded it carefully and placed it in his breast pocket. He was stricken by an urge to see the boy, an ache that seemed equal parts love and remorse. He had not seen his son since Elisha had vanished one Sunday in July, nearly three years earlier; Reverend Stone had tracked the boy as far as Worcester before he’d lost the trail. Who was he now? Still a liar and petty thief, a Sabbath day runaway who’d emptied the meetinghouse’s collection basket? Or grown into a man, with whiskers on his chin and weariness for the world’s beauty? His father’s son, then. Of course he could be nothing else.
    A breeze rippled in from the south, bringing a scent of mud and high, chirping shouts. Downstream, three children squatted at the creek’s margin, two towheaded but one dark, like Elisha. Reverend Stone watched their frolic for a long time, then at last wandered back upstream, ascended the hillside and entered the meetinghouse.
    He called, “Edson?” Dust motes swirled before the sunlit windows. He climbed to the gallery and took a seat in the rearmost pew. An empty meetinghouse: the building felt holiest when it was free of bodies and voices, when it was filled only with sunlight and silence and the mossy smell of rain. It was near to prayer, this silence. Reverend Stone closed his eyes and said a prayer for guidance, then pushed every thought from his mind and sank into the silence.
             
    He woke with a start at a polite, feminine cough. Prudence Martin stood at the pew’s end, hands clasped before her. Reverend Stone stood, stifling a yawn.
    “Mrs. Martin. I hope you’re well on this admirable day.”
    She curtsied. “I’m awful sorry to trouble you, Reverend Stone. I asked after you at the parsonage and Corletta said you might be here.” She paused. “I hoped I could get your counsel. About my husband.”
    Prudence Martin was a nervous, mole-like woman, eyes narrowed in a squint and small hands worrying the fabric of her skirts. She had once contributed a significant sum to the congregation, and within days all of Newell knew the amount of her largesse. Her husband was a wheelwright who dozed, eyes half-open, through every service.
    “Matthew Martin.”
    Prudence Martin nodded.
    “Please, sit down.”
    She perched on the pew’s edge, her gaze darting to the minister’s tousled hair. Reverend Stone straightened, smoothing his shirtfront against his chest. She was not a pleasant woman, he decided. Soul the color of weak tea.
    “He hasn’t been to meeting for nigh upon seven weeks.