![]() He couldn't even think of taking a step toward her. He couldn't fall on his knees before her. Here I been a Christian who never hit or hurt a man or woman, and I knock my own wife, flesh of my flesh, right down on the floor. A strong man makes me feel weak, so I go home and shove around my wife, what a big man that makes me. Seeing her falling, even before she hit the floor, he felt such a shame go through him, even worse than when her father threw him in the snow. The only possible explanation was that Thrower himself was too weak. It could not be that Satan was stronger than the Lord. "Forgive thou my unbelief" He recited a litany of self-excoriation, he rehearsed all his failures of the day, until at last he was exhausted. Thrower knelt at the altar and cried out the name of the Lord. "I went into his room a man of God, and came out as a doubter." Certainties that had sustained him most of his life were suddenly split through by the questions of an ignorant boy. "How can he be on top of something that ain't got no top?" Even though Thrower had rejected the question as the result of ignorance and evil, the question had nevertheless pierced his heart and penetrated to the core of his belief. It was when he stood in Alvin's room, asking the boy to confess his faith, and the boy scoffed at the mysteries of God. Only then, with his eyes sore from crying, his voice feeble and hoarse, did he realize the moment when his faith was undermined. And in the church he could pray and try to understand why the Lord didn't help him. Thrower had firewood there, so he'd be warm. ![]() He had to get indoors, but he couldn't bear to knock on anybody's door. His shirt was already wet, and now it clung to him and froze him to the bone. No ma'am, it's like the devil himself, that's what it's like The spirit of evil When he said "yell," he knocked her back so far she stumbled down on the floor. When he said "love," he took her by the shoulders and gave her such a shake her hair broke right out of the bun she'd made of it, and fluttered around her head. When he said "preach," he shoved her harder, and she stumbled back. "Evil's in you so deep that I can't pray it out of you, and I can't preach it out of you, and I can't love it out of you, and I can't yell it out of you" When he said "pray," he shoved her a little, just to make his point. After years of being married, she still put her faith in witchery, just like her kin. That him having no hidden power, there wasn't a thing he could do to help anybody. Maybe she didn't mean to sound so contemptuous. ![]()
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