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frame and coveredwith the thick wool army blankets and roll he had slept on for nearly forty years. In the corner of the room, a potbelly stove sat on a stone-and-concrete platform. Where the room wasn’t illuminated by the stove, it was lit by kerosene army lamps that hung from the rafters.
    There were no windows, though they would have been unusable, as Lawrence had stacked firewood across the outside wall of his home.
    David sat down on one of the chairs near the round table. “I brought the money for the pocket watch.” He laid a wad of bills on the table.
    â€œThank you.”
    â€œWho was that woman I passed on the way around?”
    â€œBig woman? Tha’s Miss Thurston. The preacher’s wife.”
    â€œWhat did she want?”
    â€œSame thing she always wants.”
    â€œWhich is?”
    â€œWantin’ to get me out to the colored church.” Lawrence shook his head in wonder. “Woman gets talkin’ and soon ain’t talkin’ to me no more, but like she preachin’ to a congregation. Gets herself all riled up about sinners and heathens and their sorry souls. I think it must make her feel good. Like she talked some sense into me.”
    â€œDid she?”
    Lawrence frowned. “Don’t rightly know what to reckon of it all. S’pose there is a heaven, I wanna know what kinda heaven it be. Is it a heaven for white folks? Or is it a different heaven for colored folk and white folk? What you make of it?”
    David shrugged. “I am not an expert. I have only been to church on a few occasions. It seems to me that people who spend their lives dreaming about the gold-paved streets and heavenly mansions of the next life are no different than those who waste their time dreaming about it in this life. Only with a poorer sense of timing.”
    Lawrence responded in low, rumbling laughter reserved for when he found something particularly amusing. He clenched down on his pipe. “Never thought of it that way,” he replied.
    â€œThe way I see it, it’s not about what you are going to get, it’s about what you become. Divinity is doing what is right because your heart says it’s right. And if that puts you on the wrong side of the pearly gates, seems you would be better off on the outside.”
    Lawrence took in a long draw on his pipe. “You could’ve been a philos’pher.”
    Just then, in the dancing radiance of the candles, David noticed something he had never seen before, despite his many visits. Across the room, amidst the squalor of metal springs, and the shells and corpses of clocks, was what appeared to be a shrouded sculpture slightly protruding from beneath a cloth sheet.
    â€œWhat is that in the corner? Under the cloth?”
    Lawrence lowered his pipe. “Tha’s my angel. Jus’ this mornin’ had some help and we brought her up from the cellar.”
    â€œAngel?” David walked over to the piece.
    â€œReal Italian marble,” Lawrence said.
    David pulled a floor clock back from the sculpture and lifted the drape, exposing a stone sculpture of a dove-winged angel. Its seraphic face turned upward and its arms were outstretched, raised as a child waiting to be lifted. David ran his fingers over its smooth surface.
    â€œThis is a very expensive piece. Probably worth a hundred dollars or more. Is it new?”
    â€œHad it for nearly six years, jus’ never take her out of the cellar.”
    David admired the sculpture. “How did you come by this?”
    â€œRight after I left the cavalry, I did some work for a minister. Fixed his church’s steeple clock. Took me ‘bout the whole summer. Problem is, before I got done, the church treasurer run off with all their buildin’ money. So the minister asks me if I won’ take this angel for payment.”
    David stepped away from the statue, rubbing his hand along its surface once more.
    â€œWhy didn’t you sell