"Mrs. Goode! You're still here? Church is over! The congregation's gone home. Why, the custodian is ready to lock up! Come on. I'll help you across the street."
"What's that you say?"
"I said, 'I'll wheel you across the street.'"
"I thought you said you'd help me jump the branch. Oh? It's you, Dr. Shirey! Why, thank you. Yes, I must get back to the nursing home. You're so kind to bother with an old lady like me. My, my, I was lost in a reverie that took me back, way, way back, Dr. Shirey."
"How far was that, Mrs. Goode?"
"Just a minute. Let me get my hearing aid adjusted. This thing's a nuisance. Pastor, I don't think you could understand how far it was. Things were different then. It was over half a century ago, when I lived back along the Ouachita hills, in a plain, bare, dogtrot house, where bread was white and the goose was fat and a man's mule was part of his family. We still thought God had made us all—man, goose, and mule—out of the same gully dirt. Ah, I was a child! If things went bad, all I had to do was crawl under my grandma's bed! Or run to Papa. Or to Mama."
"The grownups—what'd they do when things were bad?"
"Well, come to think of it, they just did the best they could and let the Good Lord take care of the rest. My father did. No matter what came, Papa would just holler out 'Great Jehoshaphat and gully dirt!' and keep going."
As Dr. Shirey rolled my chair around and started me up the center aisle, the fringe of my shawl brushed against the chancel rail. I was ashamed that an hour before I had wanted to kick at it.