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swallowed and tried again.
    There was snickers in the church. The air was dead still, and I could hear the blood pounding in my ears. Sweat gathered on my forehead and dripped down on the pages of the Bible.
    Finally I found Matthew 17 and started reading, but I couldn’t recall what I’d planned to say about the text. What was the point I’d wanted to make about the Transfiguration? Peter said we should build three tabernacles on the mountaintop, but he’d been talking crazy with excitement. There didn’t seem to be much point in speaking about that.
    Because I couldn’t remember what it was I wanted to say, I kept reading. I read beyond the place where Matthew talked about the Transfiguration. I couldn’t think of anything to say.
    I seen Annie setting in the third row beside her mama. Annie looked at me and she looked at her lap. Why had I thought I’d impress her with my preaching? Why had I ever thought she caredanything about me? She looked so young she seemed just a child. She didn’t care what I said in the pulpit. I’d wanted to say something about going to the mountaintop, but what was it?
    â€œThis is what can happen when we go up on the mountaintop,” I said. “This is what happens when we get up close to the Lord.” But I couldn’t recall what else I was going to say. It had all seemed so clear when I’d planned the sermon. But I couldn’t remember what the connection was.
    â€œNow let me read to you what Mark says,” I said. I crumpled pages of the Bible trying to find the passage in the Second Gospel, but I finally located the right chapter. “Listen to this,” I said. But as I read the verses I heard my voice in the still air of the church, and it sounded more like a boy reciting in school than any preacher. I couldn’t think of what words to say next, so I just kept reading again. And when I got to the end of the chapter I said, “There is blessings for us on the mountaintop if we’ll just go there. We can see the shining face of Jesus, and we can see his raiment white as snow.” I could feel the voice coming to me a little bit. It was not the talk I’d planned, but at least I was talking.
    â€œWe can stand with our faces in the wind and feel the Spirit moving,” I said.
    Just then there was a whine in the back of the church. It was like the whine a wet log makes when it burns. The whine thickened to a blowing sound, and I knowed it was a poot, the loudest and longest fart you ever heard. It was like a trumpet and trombone together blowing a fanfare.
    I forgot what I was saying and couldn’t go on. My tongue was tied and flopped around helpless as a fish in mud. I tried to recall what I’d been saying, but nothing come out. I was froze, and then I seen Moody stand up and walk to the back window. He raised the back window with a groan and a bang and stuck his head outside. Laughter started at the back of the church and swept forward until it filled the whole sanctuary like a mighty song.

Two
    Ginny
    I HAD ALWAYS wanted there to be a preacher in the family. From the time I was a girl and started going to Holiness meetings I thought a preacher was the most wonderful man there was. What could compare with a man of God, a man of the Book, a man of the faith? If I had been a man I would have been a preacher myself.
    â€œAll preachers have an eye for the girls and a mouth full of easy words,” my sister, Florrie, said. She always did like to say the worst thing that come to mind. She would say the most irreverent things, but she married David that wanted to be a preacher, and I married Tom Powell that didn’t hardly like to talk at all. Who could have foretold the choices of the heart? But even then I wouldn’t let Florrie smart-mouth me.
    â€œNext you’ll tell me preachers love fried chicken,” I said to Florrie.
    â€œPreachers do like fried chicken,” Florrie said.
    But