"Reverend Morgan! Reverend Morgan—" The voice is half-familiar. A boy from one of the newer families, perhaps. His cry cuts off with a squeak, followed by scuffles and grunts.

"It's Father Morgan, you donkey! Say it!"

Father Charles Morgan recognizes this other voice very well. "Patrick Black," he says, ladling in a good dose of the pulpit. "I know you aren't fighting again."

"Say it!"

He sighs at his wilting garden, shucks his gloves, and stands. Takes time to knock some of the dirt off of his knees. When he judges that he has given the older boy enough of an opportunity to release the younger, he turns. Takes in the sight of them, one tall and lean with a thicket of hair as black as his name; the other small, pudgy and pasty with fresh grime striping one cheek. They stand side-by-side, a foot apart, in a settling cloud of dust, staring at each other. "I hope that wasn't the sound of you beating on a smaller boy that I just heard."

"No, sir, Father Morgan, of course not," Patrick says. "Only he ain't calling you right."

"I answer to all kinds of names, Patrick. Will you introduce me to your friend?"

"There's a lady is sick!" The other boy blurts. "Dying!"

From the outside, the shanty is unremarkable. Scrap wood walls. Dirty, holed canvas for a roof. No different from the dozens of others around it, in this patch of dry earth and sorrow that he has lately learned to call a Hooverville.

Inside, though, all the furniture is made of books, and a young woman, hardly more than a girl, lies on a blood-spotted wool blanket, coughing out what's left of her short life. The books are unusual. The dying, less so.

A young man, gaunt and still, sits beside the girl, holding her limp hand. A thick tome with German lettering on its cracked spine lies open on the dirt floor. The man barely glances up as Father Charles lets the door-flap close behind him. Father Charles almost gags on the sour-sweet stench of illness. Little spears of light jab down from the holes in the roof, and through the spaces in the walls, providing the only illumination.

"You're the one?" the man asks. "The miracle worker?" He has the voice of an educated man. It is thick with scorn and irony.

"You are from New England, if I'm not mistaken," Father Charles says.

That earns him another glance. "What does it matter?"

"Everything matters to God," Father Charles says. It is the sort of thing he is expected to say.

A bark of laughter escapes the man's throat. He shakes his head. His eyes glisten.

"You're not a believer," Father Charles says. The man does not respond. "Why call for me, then?"

"Who else is there?" the man asks.

They sit for a time, listening to the girl's thin wheeze.

"Her name is Nova," the man says at last. "Nova Stella. Her father is—was an astronomer."

"And you?"

"I know what you think. Like the rest. You think I'm an informer. A spy for the bulls. Scab. Union-buster. I've heard it all. But if they only—" He turns his reddening face away. His voice grows husky, hot. "They don't know anything about me. You don't know anything about me."

"That is why I asked," Father Charles says.

The young man turns, a searching look in his eyes, worry-lines between them. "Is there—can you really save her? It isn't all just fairy tales, what those boys told me?"

"God willing," Father Charles says.

The man turns back to the woman, stares at her for several of her long, shallow breaths. "What do I have to do? Pay?"

"No," Father Charles says. "Just go. Leave her alone with me, and with God. When it is time to come back, I'll call you in. Or she will."

Father Charles watches the battle between suspicion and hope as it plays out across the young man's features. Finally, without another word, the young man leans down, smooths the sweat-stuck hair from the girl's brow, gives her a chaste kiss on the temple, and leaves.

Father Charles sits back on his heels and waits. He sits with the girl all night until, just before dawn, she dies.

He gives himself some time to swallow his anger and his doubt, then unfolds his stiff, sore body from the ground and goes out. The young man has been pacing by the door all night. Now, Father Charles watches him approach, and watches the light drain from his face a little bit more with each step, replaced first with despair and then with rage.

The man doesn't speak, and there's no warning of the blow before it strikes. Father Charles lands on his back in the dirt. He sees spots, tastes blood.

"Charlatan! Fake!" the young man screams. Then a lanky, black-thatched body slams into his, bearing him down in a flurry of jabs. Dust rises as the men struggle on the ground. Father Charles turns away.

"Harry?" A woman's voice. "What's going on?"

Out of the corner of an eye already swelling, he sees her, a blurry impossibility standing in the shanty doorway, shading her eyes against the sun.

"Get off, damn you!" Father Charles looks back to see the young man, Harry, shove Patrick aside. Harry gets to his feet. Dabs at his brow, smearing blood into his hair. "Nova?" he says. So quietly.

"Harry, you're hurt!"

He grabs her into a fierce embrace. "Ow," she says. "Too tight! Harry! Let go!"

He pushes back to look at her at arms length. "Nova," he says. "I thought—" He looks down at Charles, still lying in the dirt.

"Oh my God," he says. "Father, I—I am so sorry—" He reaches out a hand. Father Charles takes it, pulls himself up. Takes his glasses from Patrick, who has found them, broken, a few feet away.

"I am so sorry," Harry says again.

"Harry, what did you do?"

"Nothing," Father Charles says. "It was an accident. A misunderstanding. Wasn't it, son?"

Harry hesitates. "Yes, Father. I—I didn't—I misunderstood."

"As did I, Harry," Father Charles says. "I hope you can forgive me."

This same thought echoes in his mind. I hope you can forgive me.

A fervent wish.

There is, as always, no answer.