Prologue: Sundays began with a procession of sounds. Scrolled Tribunes struck hollow wooden porches. Screen doors opened, rusty springs stretched with a metallic twang, a chromatic ascension that creaked to a pitch and coiled with a slam, one after the other. They punctuated the air. They shook the foundations of summer homes as old as one hundred years, a trellis on one, a garret on another, each blueprinted as differently as the families they sheltered: the Haans, the Spencers, the Lings, the Priggs, the residents of
Lake Bluff, village of, population 5,000 (read the sign!).

July.

They were all July. The people. They dressed as July: Mrs. Spencer with airy taffeta dress, Cathy in a strapless sun dress, and Mr. Hastings and Mr. Shutler with coatless Oxfords and loose khakis, cottons, yellows and light blues, whites and light greens, they wound their way to church, they walked in small groups, clustered in families, stubborn people, talking in hushed tones, and moving through a town they've lived in for as long as they
can remember.

Dresses swirled to a breeze that blew westerly from Lake Michigan. The leaves on the branches now turned and tremored, you can SEE the breeze, in fact, the tops of elms moving first, followed by the birch, the maples and the alders, all in a cascade of sound--there was a richness to it, a volume, the shadows moving across the lawns in heightened lavenders. Even in shadow, a luminescence, and in silence, a sound.

Listen.

Along the bluffs, freshwater waves lapped the shores with a constancy.

With each wave, sand rushed back and stones readjusted, clacking as shells in the millions. One wave overlapped another.

And smell.

The smell of Lake Bluff: a mix of newly cut blades of grass, gasoline,
and that fish smell, the smell of alewives.

Dogs pointed their noses upward to take in the sweet scent.

Hear them.

They spoke in single exclamations: Susie yelped from the Haan's lawn;
then Persey from the Spencer's; there's Phoenix, now Duke. Through the labyrinth of fences the sharp sounds started up excitedly and faded, they echoed far off and near, they hallowed the space with neighborly proximity and scale.

And with the barks, feel the rip-saw starts of lawn mowers, one after the other, the sputter of a Lawn Boy, the rumble of a John Deere, they shook the wooden floors and the furniture, the tea kettles and the gutters, this didn't let up until the end of the day, but that's OK, that's Lake Bluff.

But that's not all.

Hear the church bells. No Sunday was complete without the bells. They rang now, the Methodist and the Union. The hammers struck soft iron in successions that lingered, one overlapped the other, the overtones penetrated everything within miles: the fences, the houses, the people. And behind this all the endless sky. The sky was blue.

* * *

This was a Sunday in July, 1978. Handfuls of early risers bustled inside
the small church building, preparing for the three hundred or so who usually attend the ten o'clock service. Beatrice propped open the sanctuary doors with wooden wedges to let in the breeze. The choir warmed up with the hymn "Be Thou my Vision" in the choir room. Ushers divided stacks of programs.

And the in the corner office, the Reverend Timothy Randel hunched over the Chicago Tribune.

The minister was oblivious to the rays of sun now stretching across the room in oblong rectangles. The golden shafts casted everything in patches of light and shade: the modest oak desk, a small antiquated clock, a wooden cross, a lithograph of John Wesley. The minister's head hung despairingly as he re-read the headline of the newspapers regional section: Kevin Randel, 14, falls to his death.

Seeing his son's name in the print makes the loss more real. Only two
days ago, Kevin and his father were cleaning the leaf-encrusted gutters along the parish rooftop. Kevin was wearing heavy mountain boots, burn-out boots as they are referred to, and lost his footing. One minute Kevin was standing on the roof maybe ten feet away from his father, the next minute he was scraping along the black-crystalline shingles to flip over the edge and vanish from
sight.

Now a photo of Kevin appeared in the newsprint. It was his Junior High
graduation picture. The kid appeared as any typical teenage boy: a grin
with a hint of braces, pimples, natty shoulder-length hair. He and his wife
Mary Lou had searched through dozens of photographs to find this one. Only
yesterday, while the man from funeral home waited in one room, reporters from
the newspaper in another, Mary Lou frantically poured through dozens of
spare graduation photos with tremulous hands. I could still see her,
shoeless, kneeling on the white carpet, head buried in her knees. Dozens of pictures of Kevin's graduation photos were fanned in front of her like a game of solitaire.

Unfortunately, the ideal photo was not to be found. They all showed
Kevin's face hooded by that long hair. The hair symbolized Kevin's sudden changes last summer. In no time he went from wearing his silver Apollo space uniform and pushing Tonka toys to wearing ragged denims and playing electric guitar. He suddenly took an interest in women and grew his hair out. Where did their child go? During his new changes, quarrels erupted unannounced.

One fight, six months prior, still haunted the Reverend. Kevin was practicing his guitar in the garage while Timothy had the three deacons over to raise money for missionary work in Kenya. Kevin was blaring his guitar and unraveled Tim's "studied" serenity. Words were
exchanged and both their tempers elevated until Kevin had said with an emotional pitch, "How come you help everyone in the community except me!" The voice echoed against the garage walls and fell to silence. His teenage presence was suddenly huge, a spirit matching Tim's own. Peering out from that hood of hair was no longer a boy, but the beginnings of a man.

Knock-knock.

June, the choir director, carefully opened the door a few inches.

"Two more minutes, Tim."

Reverend Randel turned his head to hide his despair. He cleared his throat and said, "Thanks, June...I'll be right along."

She looked solemnly at him and paused, searching for something encouraging to say, but lost her words. Tim remained hunched over the Tribune, his black robe puffed out like a tent, his complexion pale.

The robe had never fit his build adequately. His body was more equipped for jogging sweats than the cloth. Few members of the church knew he was a college quarterback at Tennessee State. He continually exorcised himself, as he joked about it, through jogging, volleyball, and tennis. Regardless of his athletic prowess, his head tended to stoop unnaturally forward--an anomaly not so much of age, or study, but from the habit of perpetually extending himself to others.

June finally said, "Can I be of any help?"

"No, no...I'm fine June, thanks," he said firmly.

The antiquated clock chimed. Ten sharp. He folded the Tribune
carefully, opened the desk drawer, and exchanged the newspaper with a neatly-typed draft of the sermon. As always, Beatrice Ashley, the church secretary, had proofread and re-typed his steady and almost microscopic handwriting, The title--an epigram taken straight from Wesley's
journal--"In order to have faith, you must practice faith."

A Methodist minister of fifteen years, Tim had never failed to
deliver a sermon. For him, composing new sermons each week was his most laborious task. Despite his agile, athletic musculature, his studied
intelligence was plodding and slow. His sermons often ended up to be a patchwork of endless quotations from a variety of ecclesiastical scholars which did not always come to a clear point--and rarely included personal anecdotes from his own life. More than once, his own wife had fallen asleep during his sermons, sending innocent members of the congregation into
soundless convulsions of stifled laughter, enough to shake the entire pew.

He aligned the pages by tapping them ritualistically twice on the desktop
and walks heavily to the door. Mary Lou urged him to cancel Sunday
morning's worship service, but he knew how important the service was to many
members of the congregation. The funeral would be held that evening. With
all the sudden preparations, the past two days seemed like a month.

Everything had been so unexpected. He almost felt the wind had been
knocked out of him. This was so unlike his own father dying the year before.
Had he urged his son to take off those boots, would he still be alive? Had
he been closer to Kevin, perhaps he could've grabbed him. Why did he let him
up on the roof in the first place?

He hesitated in front of a small wooden cross in his office. Below the
cross is the John Wesley lithograph. Wesley, the founder of the Methodist
church, was considered a mystic, a man who believed the Scriptures must be
illumined with the living spirit. Tim tried to model himself after the
seventeenth century founder, getting up at the crack of dawn, steeping
himself in prayer for hours, then going out to the help the people, making
the word flesh.

He bowed his head in prayer. "Oh, Lord, I feel as a failure." His eyes
squinted involuntarily; he could not recall having felt this much despair. The cross and lithograph and rays of sun distorted through his tears, salty beads meshed everything as if in a dream. "My own prodigal son will never return to me, never in this life, again." He could not think of anything else to say, then he thumbed away a tear and added habitually, "Help me be a strength to these people, the flock you have sent me to care for. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen."

He opened the door to enter the hallway leading to the sanctuary. His
stomach panged. His stomach always panged before public speaking, even after all these years, but this time, it felt so acute. He went to the bathroom to relieve himself. On the way, a scent of the rummage sale from last month lingered in the church basement. Oddly, his senses felt alert. He entered the Men's room and rested his cheek momentarily against the cool tiles in the bathroom. His mind re-played a scenario at the hospital. The doctor had just pronounced Kevin dead. He and my mom were waiting for the gurney to take Kevin's shirtless body out of intensive care. Mom lifted and cradled
Kevin so lovingly, his long hair feathered over his shoulders, like the Pieta statue I saw at the Vatican.

He rolled this picture over in his mind. The tile still felt good against his cheek. He thought to himself that Mary Lou was right: the loss of a son is not only spiritual and emotional, but physical.

Outside cicadas buzzed. Shells from the insects were everywhere. The
buzzing added a symphonic overtone to the warm breeze. In the sanctuary, people fanned themselves with the church programs. The stained glass windows shined in on the congregation in reds and blues and golds and greens. The shapes had a way of working on the imagination. The organist began with the hymn, "Nearer, My God, to Thee." A fly buzzed near the pane of Jesus' face. The people all stood, perhaps three hundred, a variety of human tones blending thickly, hitting every note in the chromatic scale. Mrs. Crane sang in an excited, nicotine whisper, the Labitz family, all thirteen, competed with each other in five-part dissonance. Mr. Hastings, too proud to
sing, held his chin high while cradling the hymnal for Mrs. Hastings who sang enthusiastically a few notes behind everyone else. June, the choir director, the only trained musician, sang audibly an octave above the rest in a displaced, operatic tour de force. Everyone sang, but everyone felt hesitant about this whole service. They knew that Mary Lou and Timothy must have been exhausted from all the funeral preparations the last few days. It's so like Timothy to keep everything going on schedule. Most would be there for the funeral that evening.

Now the choir moved up the isle in twos. The billowing of the pipe
organ crescendoed as the robed procession neared the front of the church.

The procession was lead by two candle lighters, the McFarley brothers, thirteen and fourteen years old. The two long-haired teenagers ignited the candles under the cross at the head of the church. Between the candles were flowers in remembrance for Kevin, two dozen Lilies, arranged meticulously by Beatrice earlier that morning. After the candles were lit, the twenty or so members of the choir noisily took their places in front. The Reverend Randel, lastly, stood behind the pulpit.

AMEN.

Mrs. Prigg held the chord. She opened all the stops from the
pipe organ, allowing for a rarely heard orchestra of tones. The floor shook long after the congregation finished. June waved her hand frantically to cut Mrs. Prigg off, but she continued, determined. Her head was absorbed in the hymnal, her feet are splayed below the bench, toes dabbing at the petals on the floor. Finally she retracted her feet and pulled up all the stops with her forearms and elbows. The five-foot-high slats to the pipe-organ room behind the cross closed with rush of air. Somehow the organ never sounded better.

"You may be seated," said my father. The choir and congregation sat.
Except for the distant buzz of cicadas and the revving of lawn mower outside the stained-glass windows, the room was unusually still. The Reverend felt a heartfelt presence in this room--the people were not just politely poised as they usually were before one of his bone-dry sermons, but were earnestly there, all there. His wife stared up at him, her eyes reddened, yet without a hint of sleep in them. Tim licked his lips, his mouth cotton-dry. He reached behind the pulpit for a glass of water. Nothing.

I looked at the flowers on the alter for Kevin. I thought about my love
for Kevin and began to close my eyes. I remembered playing together during coffee hour, exploring spaces behind the pipe organ or up in the secret choir loft. At school, Kevin was an excellent guitarist--he played in a band called Sheridan Road. He was a popular guy, but full of trouble. He sometimes smoked marijuana at school. He was nick- named Jay-Jay for Jay or Joint. His Dad sometimes called him by his nick-name, not knowing the meaning.

"A-hem." Reverend Randel cleared his dry throat.

He put his hands on the pulpit, then positioned his feet as if he was on
the tennis court, one foot slightly ahead of the other.

"I'll never forget my first confessional."

The McFarley boy opened his eyes. Leaned forward.

"My family was in the Catholic church at the time, I was maybe sixteen, war was breaking out in Germany."

All the congregation was silent. A mower sputtered far away.

"There were a lot of things on my mind. I was afraid of the power Hitler was accruing, I was not doing my chores at home, and I got in a fight over a guy who was trying to steal my girl, Mary Lou."

Tim tried to moisten his lips again. He was not reading anything that
was on his sermon.

And so I asked the minister how many Hail Marys I should say.

Father McDooley paused. I could hear him breathing on the other side of the confessional, thinking, and then he said, "How about a few bloody Marys."

The congregation laughed. They laughed hard--not something stiff or
polite, but real laughter, coming up from the gut and curling their spines.

Timothy looked out, surprised. He didn't normally see the congregation
this animated. Usually he was so uptight about doing the duties he was taught at divinity school: to interpret the Scriptures. But today he started to allow his thoughts to unwind from his consciousness, raw.

"Here was the sermon I meant to read to you today. It has its merits, by golly, complete with quotes from competent scholars, but, well, it just doesn't feel right today. Let me, instead, tell you all a little story."

Some members of the choir lean forward.

"Speaking of Bloody Marys, while in the Navy, I was asked to tend bar on the battle ship. Yes, your minister once tended bar. It was a strange evening, the sky was overcast, and this ship was moving into safe territory, but the water was full of ice bergs.

"The captain called me up onto the bridge and asked me to do two things: first, he asked me not to whistle. If you whistle on the bridge, it brings in a storm you know."

Some thoughtful laughs. Waves of energy move between the congregation and him, but his throat is still parched.

"And the other: if I see a glacier, to report it immediately. Well, I
stood on that deck for what seemed hours. I peered into the fog. The ship plowed ahead at twenty knots. Occasionally a harbor seal would appear in the green sea and disappear. Bits of glacier calves were here and there, but seemed inconsequential. They'd scrape against the side of the ship like logs. Over time, however, I got tired, real tired. I wanted to lie down for a minute. The gravity of sleep started to overtook me.

He stopped, held his stomach. The congregation didn't know where he was going with this. He didn't look well.

"I started to close my eyes and do you know what happened? A glacier the size of a battleship appeared from nowhere, scraped the port side like thunder. I yelled with all my might to the captain, 'Glacier, Port Side, Two O'clock.' But it was too late. Members of the officers club were thrown, glasses broke, the captain threw on the bow thrusters."

The eyes in the congregation were wide open. They tried to make
connections between this and his son--a roomful of Rorschach inkblot
interpretations.

"And do you know, I went to the captain, knees shaking, and tried to
apologize. Instead, the captain yelled at me to clean up the broken glass in the galley, secure the rest of the dishes, duck tape the cupboards, and report to him in an hour.

"I can't tell you how afraid I was of what this man might say. So when
the hour was up, the damages were assessed, I reported to him. I thought he was going to bar me from the Navy, or else toss me from the ship. Instead, he put a hand on my shoulder and said, 'Do you know, son, how blue a glacier appears during fowl weather?' We both stood there, atop of a 250-foot battleship, around at the side of a glacier of the same size, and squinted through the thick fog. Shining in the middle of all that miserable gray--a luminescence of blue...and he just said, "Son, in my eyes you can do no wrong."

Tim looked down at his wife; her brown eyes were as big as hed ever seen them.

Next to her was a space where Kevin usually sat.

Tim continued, "There were no hard feelings. Just two men, sitting in
the midst of a war we couldn't begin to piece together logically, and looking out in awe at that island of ice. It was true, after all, that on cloudy days, glaciers appear more blue."

The room is acutely alive for Tim. He felt out of himself somehow. The
scent of the lilies reaches his nostrils, the ceiling fans quietly hummed.
"This thing, He picked up the Bible, "I don't know. Its pretty dry to some of you I guess. The McFarley boy grins. But I stumbled across something interesting yesterday."

He got out from behind the pulpit. He never moved out from behind that pulpit, but somehow, he felt loose, almost giddy. He moved toward a McFarley boy and put the Bible in the kids lap.

"I came across this passage the other day and wondered why I hadn't seen it years ago. Go ahead, Cecil, open it at the marker and read from Mark 10, verse 17."

The kid swallowed, carefully turned the tissue-thin pages and pushed his head forward to find the passage as quickly as he was able. Mrs. Prigg, who was usually absorbed in the hymn book by now, craned her head over the pipe organ to see. The boy read:

"And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus said to him, Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone."

Stop, yelled the Reverend, who turned to his flock. "Did you hear that?
Even though Christ went on to urge the man to follow the ten commandments, I want to bring your attention to the subtext. Look at what was implied. Jesus himself turned the man to God as the one who was Good. Jesus was able to remove himself from the unattainable measure of what people expected of him. Me good? He said to the guy--look to God."

Tim felt a strange unity in this church, their faces appeared closer,
practically in his face. He went to the gnarly-haired McFarley brother for the Bible, and, as he moves back to the pulpit his knees buckled for a moment. The congregation gasped. June sharply cued Mrs. Prigg to start the organ immediately. People fumbled at the programs for the page number. The congregation began to sing. Reverend Randel regained his footing and nodded for us to file out. Mary Lou kept a watchful eye on him while he steadied himself with the pulpit, closing his eyes in a moment as if in prayer.

Then, while the choir filed out, the Reverend made his way to the exit of the sanctuary. Usually he shook every person's hand as they herded their way to coffee hour. But today, as the organist played "Be Thou Our Vision," Mr. Hastings, of all people, a man too proud to even sing, gave the Reverend a quick hug. Then Mrs. Hastings gave him a hug too. Then Mrs. Addler. The thirteen members of the Labatz family were speechless, but they each shook the Reverends hand firmly. One of the McFarly brothers, the one about Kevins age, tells the Reverend hes going to miss Kevin. The Reverend puts his large arms around the boy, buries his face in in his shoulder, and was unable to pull away. The boy teetered a moment, but supported the man, pushing up that forlorn stoop of his. They stayed like that a moment. Others placed their hands on the Reverends puffed-out black robe.

Outside, a breeze blew through the trees--weeping willows and
the maples, alders and elms. Row upon row of average suburban houses sat idly, soaking in the summer sun. Mowers continued to hum. Cicadas had burst in a frenzy of life and died down gracefully. The chords of the organ touched everything in that sleepy suburb, the shops along Central, the walls of Bill's Food Mart, the Old Post Shop, Howie's Pharmacy, the one-room library. And the sound of the organ trailed off above the currents of Lake Michigan, as if from a dream. Not far off, in fact, the church's steeple, just a wooden thing, was hardly noticeable above the trees.