The Altar and the Flag

Detroit, the slump. Walter Brandt fixes wireless sets for groceries — a preacher's son whose father has prayed for years to see him in a pulpit. When the booming station of a golden-voiced radio priest needs an engineer, Walter's ear gets him in.

He learns the craft from the inside: the organ eased up beneath the cadence, the warmth waiting in the room before the word arrives. He learns how a sentence that fell flat in rehearsal can land like Scripture once the right hand rides the board.

And week by week, sack of mail by sack of mail, he watches the sermons of bread for the forgotten man curdle — into grievance, into the naming of an enemy, into a flag set at the front and the cross moved aside.

Two doors from his father's chapel, an old friend still keeps a shop with windows.