Chapter 10
SAINT MICHAEL’S Church stood two blocks south of Jack’s, looming between a desolate school playground and an abandoned chain drugstore with a rusty pickup truck jammed halfway through the front doors. Centuries ago our ancestors had piled massive stone blocks taller than the trees, mounted real stained glass in the windows, hung a real bell in the belfry, and nailed two-inch-thick oak planks to the floor. Folks back then knew how to build to outlast the end of the world. Their success gave me a grim smile for half a second.
The vast asphalt parking lot on the north side of the building sizzled in the sun and launched a faint oily smell onto the breeze. A shabby greenhouse of knotty lumber and sun-scorched plastic sheeting covered the south parking lot, one of the many built by
