The quiet entry hall behind the high choir of Saint Jude’s Cathedral was sheltered from the echoing clamor of the square outside by three-foot-thick walls of dressed granite. Dust motes drifted in the pale shafts of afternoon sunlight streaming through the stained-glass lancet windows. It cast fine, detailed sharp-angled patterns of ruby, ochre, and sapphire across the cold flat stone slabs. The window above the walnut wainscoting depicted the four seasons of common labor. The plowing of spring furrow, the reaping of summer rye, the pressing of autumn cider, and the hauling of winter timber on flatbed sledges.
Tomas Reed stood alone before the image of the winter wagon drivers, his heavy ash-wood pack frame resting upon an oak choir bench beside him. The strap harness, dark with the salt and oil of hundreds of miles on mountain passes, smelled faintly of seasoned beeswax and dry cowhide. He reached up with his right hand and unbuckled the calfskin brace on his left forearm. He allowed the cool air of the church to touch the scarred flesh. The deep, puckered jagged cut he had sustained nine years earlier—when an overloaded iron-ore crate broke its hoist rope in the Old Flint freight depot—stretched from below his elbow joint down across the outward wrist bone. The winter cold always tightened the scarred muscle tissue into rigid bands, restricting his grip to sixty-five percent of normal strength. But the calfskin brace kept the tendons lined up. It allowed his hand to function as a…
