At the time of the original charter, Elder Morgan had once told him, their ancestors had decided momentarily to call the new city Wopikisko. But hotter heads prevailed—the elder smiled indulgently—and Battle Creek it was. Even the strife-bearing name was born in strife, the elder’s words reminded him; the essential challenge of strife, the smile added, was the need to rise above it.
One of the minor disappointments—well, not so minor, either, because in a sense it crowned all the others—was the mounting evidence that the elder meant more or less what he seemed to mean. It had been hard in those first few months in the Army to forgive Elder Morgan for having forgiven him. The elder’s refusal to treat him like a betrayer had left David feeling betrayed himself.
Elder Morgan’s Christmas car
