Grace

I sit in a well-worn wooden pew in Grace Episcopal Church in Camden, South Carolina. It is a seventy-degree morning in December. I am not cold and do not wish to be. I have on cowboy-ish boots, a pair of Dickies, and a gray sweater that Arty bought for herself and then gifted to me. She and her mother sit to my left. They are wiggle-waving their fingers and whispering to the folks they know, which is mostly everybody. I am both overdressed and underdressed and certainly under-equipped for the socialization required of a town this size.

The room buzzes with light and sound and the belief that there is a castle somewhere in the sky. The shiny scalps of old men sparkle in the soft light bouncing around the nave. My stomach rumbles with the remnants of exactly four beers and a full Benadryl the night prior—not enough of either to find God, or even a headache, but enough to remember in the gut. Behind me, a baby, closer to God than anybody, wails in disbelief that they are to reside here for the next hour. To my right, a marble plaque reads: