Grand Change by William Andrews Page B

field with a horse and stumper and I hauled mud in the cold of winter and spread it on the land with a shovel. I work in the fields from sun up to sun down. I took my rest on the Sabbath, and took my family to church. I earned what I got by the sweat of my brow and I did my best to teach my children what was right, and to have respect for their fellow man.
    â€˜Now my time grows short. That’s how life is and I will soon meet my maker; I will meet him prepared. But it wasn’t the things I mentioned that prepared me. It wasn’t the way I worked, or what I taught, or how honest I was. For with all the right things I did, there was still sin.
    â€˜But not long ago, I discovered that Jesus died for sinners, me included, and I sought forgiveness from God through him. For it was his death on the cross that saves, not anything I could do.
    â€˜That’s the secret to life: being ready to meet your maker. This land, my family, and the health to enjoy both are marvellous gifts; they’re from the hand of God. But the greatest gift of all is eternal life in heaven, for nothing else lasts.’”
    There was no way they could get the road open for the motor hearse; they had to use the sleigh hearse hauled by a jet-black horse, with its long windows and curtains and its coach-like seat on the front, where the undertaker and his assistant sat.
    At the grave, the icy wind blew; its mourn seemed in tune with the chill of death. The ground drift of powdery snow swept over the green blanket on the mound of clay, blowing in our faces and flapping our coat tails as we sang “Abide With Me” through chattering teeth. The wind blew the clay as it fell from the minister’s hand, scattering it across the coffin at “ashes to ashes and dust to dust.” A body was commended to the earth and a soul was commended to God.
    The Boss took it harder than he let on. He and Old Tom had been through a lot together. They had stuck by each other through a lot of cold, hard times, the kind of times that knit men’s souls together. You couldn’t call The Boss religious. He had his own reverential fear of God; he’d listen to the hellfire preaching on the radio on Sunday mornings, badger me to go to church, but he was no churchgoer himself. But when Old Tom changed to religion, and neighbourly attitudes changed, too, there was no difference as far as The Old Man was concerned. They had their arguments about the Bible and whatnot, but The Boss respected Old Tom’s beliefs; and I guess if he could tell it, since Old Tom took up religion, he’d been getting soft toward it himself.
    On the way home from the funeral, when we turned from the trail angling down across John Cobly’s field and headed for the bridge at the creek, one heavy tear streaked down The Old Man’s face and froze at his jaw. And there was a reverential sadness in his voice that spoke of memories, nostalgia and loss when he said, “God never made a better man than Tom Dougal.”
    The hockey team won the cup that year for the first and last time: the third major happening that winter. Formed within the district and surrounding areas, their individual skills nurtured on frozen ponds, the team always gave a solid effort. But they’d had nothing of the spectacular to give them the edge until Charlie Wallace began to mature, and that winter he peaked.
    Due to the inevitable two-week flu, being caught up in my guitar and practising now and then with Wally Mason, I missed most of the games up to the cup-winner. If King hadn’t thrown a shoe, and The Boss hadn’t sent me down to the Wallaces’ to get him shod, I probably would have missed it, too.
    I knew I was going at a good time when, after skirting the spring hole in Dan Coulter’s field and topping the sharp rise at the end of the gap through his woods, I could see the grey-blue smoke rising from the mill toward an overcast sky.
    If Alf had been working