He wiped his face on his shirtsleeve. “When you were laid up, body fighting infection, I spent a lot of time with Mister Bones. He’s a good man. Maybe the best of men. He told me a story. We were talking about him being White and me being Black, and he said that when Jesus was carrying his cross up that hill, he stumbled ’cause they’d beat him so bad. When he did, the soldiers grabbed a man out of the crowd and said, ‘Carry that.’ So this man named Simon shouldered that crossbar and, although the Book don’t say it, Bones think he lifted Jesus. And the two of them walked up that hill. One man
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