Harriet McCardle is watching all this from the large food tent at the top of the hill. It is all quite remarkable, just as this entire week has been, and she wishes she could remember more of it, her very salvation may depend on it, but memory is no longer her long suit as it was in her championship bridge-playing days. It is why she is taking these photographs with her little box camera that one of her husbands gave her as a birthday present long ago, something to help her bring it all back when she’s far away from here, provided she can remember to take the film in for development, which she often forgets until it’s too late, the pictures then becoming mere teasing glimpses of a lost piece of her life, a mystery to go along with all the other mysteries. All of which, this problem of memory, has caused her to wonder about sin and redemption and the efficacy of grace. When they talk about washing away one’s sins, she doesn’t think this is what is meant. The scene down below, while dramatic, is quite confusing and she will have to ask Reverend Hiram Clegg to explain it to her later. He is down there with Clara Collins and her husband Ben, whose name is not Collins, and some other fellows, including a short reddish-haired man who shakes his fist a lot and seems to be arguing with them all, or perhaps they are just praying together, which these people often do in a quite vigorous and sometimes alarming manner. The hillside is filling up and the flat land down below by the road as well. Some of the new people seem to be members of this faith and are coming on up the hill, including one fellow in a wheelchair. He and the woman pushing him are met halfway up by several women who all seem to know each other and some men who help with the chair. She takes a photo. One of the women, the biggest one, is said to read the future with playing cards, just as Harriet McCardle once created the future with them in a more practical way. She has forgotten vast portions of her life, but she can still remember finessing a particular queen (it was a spade, held by a retired medical doctor sitting to her right who specialized in the inner organs and wore a toupee the color of a golden retriever) in a tournament she and her husband won, and, oh, many other such card-by-card details as well, including a hand she once was dealt which was nothing but diamonds, though she may only have fantasized holding such a hand, and then the fantasy became like a memory, something that further erodes her understanding of sin and redemption; she is convinced many of her remembered sins were about as real as that automatic grand slam hand, for as a young woman, she had a very lively imagination. So maybe that’s what’s being forgiven: her sinful imagination. Mrs. Collins’ daughter Eileen, or Elaine, is also keen on whatever’s happening at the bottom of the hill, watching it from behind Harriet’s shoulder; whenever Harriet has tried to push her chair out of the way, she has moved with her as if afraid to face whatever’s going on, wringing her hands and shrinking into shadows. Poor child. Perhaps Mrs. Collins and her husband have been too hard on her, though it seems unlikely for she and her mother are as close as any mother and daughter she ever saw. The mine tragedy happened just under their feet, and the girl might be afraid the hill will blow up again or just fall in on itself. Well, if that does happen, it probably won’t happen today, more likely tomorrow, which is the anniversary of the End of the World, a concept that seems strangely paradoxical to Harriet, but one she will just have to accept, for religious faith is like that. Religion is something, thanks to her last two husbands, Harriet McCardle has come to quite late, at least in a serious way, and she is still, though years have probably passed, getting used to it. The sweet blond boy she first met in the vegetable garden seems quite agitated and his worried mother is trying to draw him back into the tent where she has been serving coffee and doughnuts. In his tunic, he looks just like an angel. She remembers to take his picture. The very nice Glover girl and the handsome man she sings with step out into the sunshine from the tent behind her to watch the proceedings below, the girl saying something about the ditch and how she can hear somebody down there talking to her. Harriet McCardle remembers the girl’s name because she once had a six-grade geography teacher with that name. Why she remembers the six-grade geography teacher’s name, however, she has no idea. The two of them perform religious songs for their group every evening at the Blue Moon Motel, using the bar area which has been closed down for their stay at Hiram Clegg’s insistence, demanding peace and quiet for his religious community, and also no scandalous artwork on the walls or anything objectionable on the room TVs — something he could do since they are renting the whole motel. It was he who organized the singing, proud, he said, to be turning “a den of sin” into “a house of worship.” He has been their Good Shepherd. And, oh, so successful. When he talks, you just have to believe him. Now, there are people who want him to run for political office and they have asked her for money for this and she will give it. Reverend Clegg has built their own little church into one of the largest in the city, the two busloads she traveled with being only a small portion of the congregation, and many of those he has converted have gone on to found churches of their own in other cities. Thanks to Hiram Clegg, she may not have to die. Being translated is a much nicer idea. Harriet McCardle is quite fond of Reverend Clegg and rather regrets she wasn’t around when his wife died. Betty Clegg is such an uncultured person and not right for him at all. Harriet and Reverend Clegg have exchanged some thoughtful glances on this bus trip. Well, at their age, one never knows what might happen. Harriet McCardle has already been widowed three times and her fourth husband is not well. She remembers her first husband best of all and each one after less distinctly, though it was her second husband who was the bridge player. He was the one named McCardle, after which she stopped changing her name, as it got too confusing. As she imagines it will be when she gets to Heaven and they all try to sort things out. She hopes she doesn’t get stuck with the first one. She and Mr. McCardle retired to Florida, mostly just to play bridge, and then he died and she married another man from the retirement home who was a good dancer but didn’t last long. Best of all, she remembers her high school days when she was the toast of the town. She was less religious then, the end seemed impossibly far off, and she was a bit wild, she’d be the first to admit it, and has done from time to time in church during confession time. They used to sing “Swing Low, Sweet Harriet” about her, which was embarrassing, given that just about everyone knew what it meant, but she has no regrets. She loved those times and would have them back in a minute.