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desert, shining white like he had described, and the Bible lying open inside the doorway, and a pale figure of Christ on a burned cross, hanging above the altar.
    The church I had to somehow build.
    ----

9
    â€” M RS . C ORONADO?
    Holly Coronado stared down at her husband’s coffin, a couple of handfuls of dry sand and stones scattered across the pine lid.
    â€” There’s a fire blowing this way, Mrs. Coronado, and I been called away to help.
    When the stones had first fallen onto the boards, the sound of the larger pebbles had seemed hollow to her. They had made her think, for a flickering moment, that maybe the coffin was actually empty and all this some kind of elaborate historical reenactment they had forgotten to tell her about.
    â€”I’m supposed to stick around until after everyone’s gone.
    The coffin had not been her idea. Neither had the venue.
    â€”I’m supposed to fill in the grave, Mrs. Coronado. Only they need me back in town . . . because of the fire.
    She had gone along with everything only because she was numb from grief, or shock, or both, and knew that Jim would have loved the idea of being buried up here next to all the grim-faced pioneers and salty outlaws no one outside Redemption had ever heard of.
    â€”I’m going to have to come back and finish up later, okay?
    Jim had loved this town, all its history and legends. All the earnest foundations upon which it had been built.
    â€” Maybe you should come back with me, Mrs. Coronado. I can drop you back home, if you like.
    He had told her about the strange little town in the desert the very first time she met him at that freshman mixer at the University of Chicago Law School. She remembered the light that had come into his eyes when he talked about where he was from. She was from a nondescript suburb of St. Louis, so a town in the desert in the shadow of red mountains seemed romantic and exciting to her—and so had he.
    â€” Mrs. Coronado? You okay, Mrs. Coronado?
    She turned and studied the earnest, sinewy young man in dusty green overalls. He held a battered baseball cap in his hands and was wringing the life out of it in a mixture of awkwardness and respect, his short, honey-colored hair flopping forward over skin the same color.
    â€œWhat’s your name?” she asked him.
    â€œBilly. Billy Walker.”
    â€œDo you have a shovel, Billy?”
    A line creased his forehead below the mark his cap had made. “Excuse me?”
    â€œA shovel, do you have one?”
    He shook his head as it dawned on him where this was headed. “You don’t need to . . . I mean, I’ll come straight back and finish up here after.”
    â€œWhen? When will you come back?”
    He looked away down the valley to where a moving wall of smoke was creeping across a large chunk of the desert. “Soon as the fire’s under control, I guess.”
    â€œWhat if you’re dead?” The crease deepened in his forehead. “What if the whole town burns up and you along with it—who will come back and bury my husband then? You suppose I should just leave him here for the animals?”
    â€œNo, ma’am. Guess not.”
    â€œPeople make all sorts of plans, Billy Walker. All sorts of promises that don’t get kept. I planned on being married to the man in that box until we were old and gray. But I also promised I would get up out of bed this morning and comb my hair and fix my face and come up here to give my husband a decent burial. So that’s what I’m fixing to do. And a shovel would sure help me keep that particular promise.”
    Billy stared down at the twisted cap in his hands, opened his mouth to say something then closed it again, turned around, and loped away down the hill to where his truck was parked in the shade of the large cottonwood in the center of the graveyard. Tools bristled from a barrel in the back and a solid, ugly bulldog sat behind the wheel, ears pricked