After his first lackluster experience at Mulberry Baptist, he had gone straight out and bought himself a Bible. Sander quizzed the woman at New Life Bible Book Store regarding the four versions they offered until she was ready to give him one of each to see him gone. He settled on the King James Version, acknowledging the caveat that it was only King James’ version. The woman at the store didn’t put it like that. She said that Hebrew was a tough language to translate into English because many of the Old Testament words had multiple meanings. Some of the other Biblical versions left those words in Hebrew. Unless you wanted to translate them on your own, the KJV was your best bet.
     That night, Sander took a pencil and notepad to his room and started on page 1. He got all the way to page 9 before finding Genesis chapter 6, verse 4:

          There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in
          unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which
          were of old, men of renown.

He didn’t leap up to share this with anyone, suddenly feeling stupid, feeling that all his life people had known this was written here and, for whatever reason, they didn’t feel the need to tell him. He stared at the wall in his bedroom for the remainder of the night, not moving, not reading further, only vacillating between frustration, embarrassment and excitement. When the sun rose, he determined that he would need more notepads, and much more time to read. The time to talk to someone about what he discovered in these pages – and there were so many pages – would come when he had digested the work in full. He figured this would take six months, minimum. It wasn’t an easy read.
     When his mother asked about his experiences in the various churches, Sander freely gave his insight. Jo passed some of this along to Dalton and it pleased him. His son wasn’t impressed with what he saw. That much was obvious. His determination would wane, Dalton felt sure. Jo anticipated that day too, but appended a private hope to her anticipation that Sander would then come to her and ask for another way to know God. She hoped that would take at least another few weeks, because he might also ask her to help him reconcile why he could talk to his dead grandfather but could not hear God, as she did. Jo would need an answer for that and she had yet to find one.
     The guys had taken their first trip to the hill by the pond somewhere around his two weeks of trial Presbyterianism. Jo couldn’t remember. They were all running together. At any rate, Dalton handled it much the same as his own father had. Will confessed that he had no idea how to broach the subject of speaking with the dead, and Dalton hadn’t any brainstorms on it either. So, that day, he just told Sander they were going for a walk. He said he had something of a surprise to show the boy as they neared the pond, and then he wasted no time.
               They sat beneath the oak and Dalton said, ‘Daddy?’
               This took Sander off guard, but not as much as when Will replied, ‘Hey, boy.’ Then,
‘Hello, Sander.’
               Sander sprang to his feet. ‘Oh shit.’
               ‘It’s alright, son. Please,’ Dalton said. He patted the grass. ‘It’s only your grandfather.’
               ‘Only?’ said Will. He was chuckling, seeing Sander ready to take flight and remembering
the experience when he was a kid. ‘Boo,’ he said. The land rumbled.
               ‘Stop it, daddy,’ Dalton told him. ‘Hang on just a minute.’
               ‘It’s coming out of there,’ Sander said, pointing at the tree roots. ‘I can feel it.’
               ‘We buried him here. Remember? I told you that. We’re all buried here.’ Dalton searched
his son’s eyes.
               ‘Is he– Are they alive in there?’
               ‘No. They’re not.’
               Will piped up, ‘Don’t talk about me like I’m not here.’ His voice was sober and
commanding now. ‘Sander, sit down.’
               After a moment, Sander sat. He leaned his head toward the ground and shouted, ‘How
many of you are down there?’
               ‘Quit hollering at the grass. You’ll scare the cattle,’ said Will. ‘There’s four of us. We all hear you but you can only hear me. I’m the only one with anything useful to say, anyway and–’ He broke off, then continued, laughing, ‘My pop’s name is Jedediah. He says hello. Gramps is Bartholomew, says the fence looks shoddy on the northeast corner. And Augustus is your great-great-great grandfather. He wants me to tell you you’re a good looking kid, as big as him at nine years old.’ When Sander didn’t say anything, Will said, ‘Augustus was forty stone on his twelfth birthday. Looks like you’re gonna be a stout one.’
               Dalton watched his son closely. They shared a glance and he nodded to Sander.
               ‘I know it’s a lot to take in,’ said Dalton.
               ‘It ainta trick?’ his son asked.
               ‘It aint an it,’ Will said. ‘It’s me. You didn’t get this far in life without realizing that you’re a tad different than everybody else. This is just another one of those differences. Doesn’t make you weird, boy. Makes you special.’
               ‘Makes me nauseous,’ Sander said.
               ‘Yeah,’ said Dalton. ‘That goes away.’
               ‘Can you,’ Sander stuttered, ‘talk to others like us that aren’t buried here?’
               ‘We can. Don’t know many of them all that well. There’s three in south Texas with Augustus’s father, and one up in–’ He stopped himself. ‘And lots of us across the ocean that we don’t strictly get along with. We’ve been on our own for a while now, Sander. The clans split and sort of scattered to the wind. It was better that way, but we lost touch with one another and now they’re hard to find.’ Will spoke to Dalton. ‘Son, why don’t you let us get to know one another? He’s alright now.’
               Dalton hesitated, then asked his father, ‘Remember what we talked about?’
               Will sighed. ‘I got it.’
               Dalton turned to Sander, ‘You okay?’
               ‘I guess. Where you going?’
               ‘I’ll meet you back at the house. Don’t be late for dinner.’
               Sander watched his daddy walking away. A thought occurred to him and he shouted,
‘Does mamma know about this?’