They Met at Shiloh by Phillip Bryant

are softer,” Sammy said.
    “You gettin’ sun madness. Nothing different ‘bout these roads,” Theo said.
    “Parson, you think these roads are different, right?”
    Philip, jarred from his reverie, sputtered, “Huh? What roads?”
    “Sammy thinks the roads in Tennessee is different than the roads in Kentucky. Tell him he’s got sunstroke.” Theo stretched his legs and released a satisfied sigh.
    “Is that the only thing you two can argue about? I hadn’t noticed the difference. Maybe it’s softer. I don’t know, hadn’t given it no mind,” Philip replied, entwining his fingers into the straps of his knapsack.
    “You believe what you want to, but I notice the difference all the same. My feet don’t hurt as much as they did in Kentucky,” Sammy retorted.
    “Ground is softer in Tennessee. You better answer next sick call. You going to keel over with the stroke,” Theo said.
    Not to be outdone, Sammy shot back with “Hush up, you Dutch skulker.”
    “Backwoods hillbilly.”
    “Hessian papist.”
    “Protestant heathen.”
    “Papal emissary of Beelzebub!”
    That last one made Theo’s face turn red. He looked over to Philip. “What you got to say, Rev? You think that the Pope, the one descended from Saint Peter himself, the man who knew Christ, be of the devil as our bumpkin here says?” He sneered at Sammy.
    Philip hated it when Theo or anyone referred to him as The Reverend. Turning to look at Theo, he shook his head and said, “No comment.”
    Theo and Sammy’s argument turned to Luther’s Protestant revolution. He tuned them out. Reminded of his father’s chosen profession and the hard life that came with it, Philip tried to think about something else. He tried to resume his daydream of walking the other way from the town meeting that led to his volunteering. Now, all he could think about was his father. Charles had spent countless hours traveling from one church to the next, often dragging Philip and his younger brother along with him. Most of the church buildings were as old as the small communities that they served, with dark and cold wooden benches. Recollections of dank odors of mildew and rotting churches filled with the solemn parishioners reminded him why he had volunteered. The desire to escape his father and the expectation that he, too, would become a minister of God’s Word had brought him to the meeting that day in Waynesville, Ohio.
    As a good, proper young itinerant minister, Philip learned the art of impression. He kept an impression of himself before the prying eyes of busy-bodies and stern gazes of adults to be separate from the cavorting gangs of youths and children that swarmed the church grounds after each service. Never far from his father’s reach, Philip did not experience much of the farmer or merchant family childhood like his peers. Living out of a wagon coach for days at a time as they traveled along the banks of the Big and Little Miami Rivers, whose courses emptied into the greater Ohio River, they crossed in and out of the counties that made up his father’s circuit. Methodist societies and classes dotted crossroad villages and farming communities between the two Miami River valleys.
    At the age of twenty five, he consented to take on a few of the communities to shepherd the flock. He found the work agreeable at first and brought his own brand of the Good Book and teaching to his circuit. Young and often in over his head, he began to feel the itch to do something else after the novelty wore off. He was well regarded in each class and society, but he felt that but for the labors of his father he would be little revered. His father was the more eloquent teacher, but Philip could write. To compensate, he began writing out his sermons and committing them to memory. This worked well when he remembered his lines; often he would break his oratory in mid-thought, leaving his listeners acutely aware of his predicament. He would panic when that happened, nervously