I should be dead.

The burnout went wrong. Graham had the bright idea of using some old gunpowder from the war to light the house up. Blew up in my goddamn face. Him and Kellogg ran scared and left me to burn to death. I would have strangled the two of them for botching it if they stayed.

I woke up in pieces. Head on one side of the room, arms on the other side, torso hanging from the ceiling by a damn meathook. And all of me was stitched up with copper wiring and tubes to some sort of contraption with sparks and air bladders.

He calls it the voltaic. Talked a lot with me that night. He told me what he was doing to heal my burns, what he was doing to fix other parts of me - told me I was two years away from drinking myself to death before he cleaned out my liver. Literally flushed it out with water. He explained to me how the wires worked, how I could open and close my hand from across the room.

And he gave me a choice. He could finish fixing me or he could kill me. Dead serious about it too, like he thought I might choose to die.

I didn’t fight in the war. Weaseled out of it by substitution jumping. Wasn’t going to get myself killed over some darkies. But I knew a guy who went to the front lines and lost half his face because he didn’t load his cannon properly. Could barely talk, couldn’t eat without drooling. Same thing happened to me, and I walked out of the darkie’s office the next morning better than I’d felt in years. He’s definitely dabbling in some sort of underground hokum; nothing about that felt Christian. But he’s not a fool. He knew there’s only one reason why someone would stumble around with gunpowder and flint next to another person’s house in the dead of night. And he fixed me up anyways. I know the devil can take the face of an angel, but that was human kindness, just like that Samaritan guy. I don’t know what else to call it. And I was going to lynch his ass because he a Negro who acts weird.

I need to think about this. Feels like I’ve been wrong about everything.

He said one other thing, Pastor. You told me in private that God miraculously healed your son. Freestone said that’s not how it happened.