Bright's Passage: A Novel by Josh Ritter Page A

for?”
    “The time has come to name the child. He shall be named Jee-roosh.”
    “No, it ain’t!” Bright said. “Oh, no, it ain’t, angel.” He climbed into the saddle. “He’s my son and his name is going to be Henry, like me.” The angel said nothing, as the horse’s big jaws worked a cud. “And Henry’s a good name too, angel,” Bright continued. “You have a problem with a name like that?” Its ears twitched and it lifted its tail, allowing several large balls of dung to fall to the pavement.
    Bright sat up in the saddle. “That’s real polite,” he said. He gave the horse a sharp kick with his heels to get it moving.
    “Very well,” the horse said. It swished the argument away with its tail and began to clomp along in the direction that Margaret’s car had gone. They passed a group of men loitering around the coal-company office. “For now the Future King of Heaven’s name is Henry, but it will be Jee-roosh as the boy grows older, and men will speak the name with awe as the centuries unfold. Your own name will be recalled from time to time.”
    They went by the church and the spreading elms and through the smell of green onions and pecan pie, roasting chicken, and garden laughter, through the dark mahogany sound of someone playing hymns on a piano and the far-off thrumming of a train. The breeze had dropped as they walked up the street, but now it picked up again, the leaves above beginning to clap against one another as the air blew warmer. The goat, normally so quick to dart this way and that on her tether, now stayed close to the horse and lifted her white nose again to snuff at the black scrolls of smoke garlanding the air.
    “Smoke’s getting a lot stronger,” Bright said.
    “Yes.”
    “Fire’s gonna burn this place down.”
    “It would seem so.”
    The road passed the last of the big white homes and swished through a series of lazy bends as the smell of smoke grew first stronger, then weaker, and then stronger again in the uncertain breeze. Bright let the reins hang loosely in his hand, allowing the horse to slouch unhurriedly down the middle of the road until at last they pulled to a halt before a gigantic gate, its ornate wings swung wide. The road continued on, bisecting a rolling ocean of tight green grass, threading its way between several nickel-colored ponds and curling itself finally around a gushing fountain. Behind the fountain, like a series of new white molars, rose a huge and beautiful palace. Margaret’s auto was parked there at the foot of a set of creamy steps that led up to the gleaming golden front door.
    “The girl Margaret waits within. Go to her quickly.”
    “That place ain’t hers,” Bright said, shaking his head.
    “Think again, Henry Bright.”
    “Even if it was hers, if you think I’m impressed by a palace you can forget it,” Bright said. “I seen a hundred palaces in France, all of them just like this one here.” His eyes drifted across the expanse of green to the building a long moment.
    The wind buffeted again at their backs, as if to push him forward, but before he took a step the driver of Margaret’s car emerged from the palace, carrying the bags for a finely dressed couple and a young child. He ushered them into the auto, then arranged their luggage on the car’s roof before getting in behind the wheel and circling around the fountain and back down the road, toward the gate where Bright now stood. His path once more blocked by Bright and his animals, the driver slowed to a crawl and stopped until Bright pulled the livestock to the side of the road and let the car pass. As it did, Bright recognizedthe child within as one from the clutch that had surrounded Margaret earlier. She was a little girl with a wine-colored cap, and she now sat happily on the lap of a woman who was clearly her mother.
    “Well,” Bright said, turning to face the horse.
    “Go to Margaret, Henry Bright.”
    “She ain’t no mother of five children, you idiot! She