Decoration Day Read Online Free Page B

of Bethlehem. The people of this congregation might believe in celebrating the birth more than the death of Christ, which he could work with. The fears of having to dance holding a copperhead began to fade.
    They passed the pulpit and stared down a short stack of steps. A large, open vat sat beside them. David looked into it, expecting to see water, but instead saw deep blackness.
    “Is that the baptistery?” he asked.
    “No; it is the pit,” Marsh said as if that made sense.
    “Pit to what?” David asked.
    “To the unknowable,” Nahum said.
    David took those words and placed them into his memory. Tonight he would have to mull that over to figure out what it meant. The elders liked to be cryptic, and he was sure that this wouldn’t be explained. He was correct.
    “Let me show you into the parson’s apartment,” Marsh said. He pushed a recessed wooden panel. It swung open to reveal a cramped vault room.
    A wooden stove sat in the corner. A cot-like bed was on the opposite wall. Under a small, round window sat a table that probably doubled as a desk. A short bookshelf hid behind the door. A door near the bed had a   crescent moon cut out of it. He assumed this was the bathroom.
    “So I live in the church?”
    “Most holy men like to be cloistered near their workplaces,” Horace said.
    “A parsonage is just a larger version,” Dmitri said.
    “Is there electricity?”
    Marsh flipped a switch. A single bulb hanging from the middle of the sloped ceiling chased away only a small amount of the gloom. David noticed there wasn’t a refrigerator in the room—only a small pie safe.
    “How about food storage?” he asked.
    “We will get you an icebox,” Nahum said. “The last minister stole the one from here.”
    “Stole?”
    “He wasn’t well suited for us,” Ebenezer said. “I am sure you will do better. You already seem more enthusiastic than he was.”
    “We will leave you here,” Marsh said. “I think that you will want to familiarize yourself with the building and grounds. I will send a basket of food to you later. Tomorrow I will send the car to bring you to my house. We will discuss the preparations for Sunday.”
    Before David could say anything, the elders left him in his small cell. They never looked back as they left the church.  
    David walked back into the sanctuary. The vat called the pit worried him. He wondered if that was where the congregation kept their snakes. Enough light came into the church that he could see into the vat for a ways. Nothing slithered. He hoped that the altar boy wasn’t responsible for stocking the thing. David fished a penny out of his pocket and tossed it over the side of the pit. It never clattered on the bottom or if it did, the pit was so deep that it muffled the sound. David felt as if the walls of the building were closing in, and everything seemed very heavy.
    He decided to go back to his apartment and look over the books on the shelf. Maybe they would explain something about the town’s religious practices. He was still examining things when Thomas delivered a large meal about three in the afternoon and departed without a word.
    As night fell, David discovered the sermon diary of the last minister at the church. He sat in a straight chair at the desk and opened the book. A sermon outline would certainly aid him in ministering to the people of Innsboro. The first sermon in the book was dated one year ago on the upcoming Sunday. The header read Decoration Day , with a heavy pencil line under those words. The sermon outline followed that. The previous minister had chosen to preach about the exodus of the Israelites to the Promised Land. The former minister framed it as their homecoming.
    David liked the outline, so he wanted to see what further musings he might find for his own use. He flipped the page. It was blank. All the rest were the same. Apparently the former minister had taken his other sermon outlines with him like he supposedly had the