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Show 8 She said she didn't know, and burst into tears. Illinois I think, said his father, and reached a hand over to pat his wife's arm. Was that back east? Lorin asked. More or less, said his father. Stephen was laughing. Projammyter, he said. Lorin punched him furtively, and he said it again. Lorin sat back and closed his eyes. The old man, bent over the bishop's hand, which he still held in his knuckly old paw, looked up and chuckled at his great-grandson. I couldn't get inside the door fast enough, boy, specially when they told me I could take your great-grandma with me, never mind what they tell you. My dad now, he's the caution. The old gummer wouldn't believe Jesus Christ himself if he walked in and told him it was raining. But we're working on him. Young Cal there has his hands full with the old bugger, and sooner or later they're going to knock it into him. At the graveside Lorin stood far back in the crowd, so he couldn't see who was dedicating the grave. But he wormed his way past coat pockets and purses and crept into the front row in time to see the winch lowering the casket into the deep rectangle cut into the grass. A spiny root stuck through the dirt wall with crumbs of dirt caught in its fingers; the casket brushed against it on the way down. When Lorin saw it again the crumbs were gone. The bishop passed down a long line of men and women dressed in white clothes, shaking hands, pausing for introductions, listening to anecdotes about the old days back east. The room had filled with people drifting around in small knots, talking quietly, and he was led finally onto a small balcony where he stood with his hands on the marble railing and looked out onto the grainy outlines of Salt Lake and the Wasatch Mountains through the hard surfaces of winding gilt roads and pristine houses with immense colonnades, and crystal windows, and castles at the crest of transparent cliffs, and men and women and whole families wearing white drifting through the golden |
