JoJo then called into the radio station, and when he was on the air, he asked, "How's everybody doing this morning?" The studio guest didn't answer. The host was quiet too. The line was open. "Anybody have a question or comment for Dr. Ketchum?" the host finally said. "No?" he added. "I do," said a familiar voice. "Hello, Doctor." "Yes," said Dr. Ketchum, "hello." "What would you like me to ask you?" "The usual questions." "Such as?" "If you had any experience with the subject—" "Well, as it happens, I do have some experience with you and with other women such as you. I am a lawyer." "How are we feeling today?" the host interrupted. "Do you have any thoughts about how we're doing today?" he asked the caller. "All I want to say is that if people had listened to you yesterday, yesterday would not have been as it was yesterday. Today may be better." "Well, I want to thank you for that point of view. We appreciate your call. Anything else?" "I don't think so." "Thank you very much for your call, sir." Mr. Ketchum hung up the phone. He told his wife, "They didn't get back to me." Jo Ketchum was now alone in the house and in the backyard. She didn't seem particularly bothered by this. She seemed serene. Her daughter, though, couldn't help noticing that Jo kept looking at the driveway. "Maybe I'll have a walk," she told her father, although she was only forty-seven years old. "Is that OK?" she said to her father's wife. "Is that all right?" "That would be lovely, dear," said her father's wife. "Don't go too far," her husband said. "Watch the cars. The sun's starting to get hot, and the heat from it can be deadly." Jo walked down the driveway and started to get into her car. The morning had grown overcast, and a heavy mist settled in over the road. With the fog and rain, the driveway was virtually invisible. Jo could not see her car, which was hidden behind several other cars. She stumbled and almost fell. Then she took one step closer to the car and almost fell again. Her whole body was shaking. Her legs felt weak. She felt nauseous. "Just go to the door, dear," her father's wife called from the door of the house. "I'm walking," Jo Ketchum said. "Just wait till you see me get in the car." ## The Mourners In a small, darkened, windowless room in a small, black parish house in a suburb of Atlanta, there was an unusual gathering. The Reverend Joseph Lacy, pastor of Pine View Presbyterian Church, was leading the congregation in prayer. "Our Father," he said, and "As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen." One by one the members of the church rose from their seats and walked to the front. Each of them brought a framed photograph. They had placed the pictures on easels that had been set up in front of the platform. The pastor approached these and saw, with dread and horror, that they were pictures of the dead. For most of the members of the congregation were the relatives and friends of the dead. They had found their way to Pine View after their loved ones had died and after they had been told that their dead loved ones had been cremated. They'd shown up at the church with pictures of the cremated remains, hoping that it was not too late. For some of the visitors had been waiting for months to come here and confront the pastor. "We are not here to criticize you," Mr. Brubaker, the bereaved father of the dead man lying in the third-floor morgue, told the pastor as he stood before his pictures. "I am not here to criticize you," said Ms. Johnson, whose husband was sitting in the medical examiner's office in an adjoining building. "Our son was brought into the hospital," she said, "dead. He died. We were told he was cremated. It was not until last night that I learned that my son is still here." "Why do you want him back?" Mr. Lacy asked. "What difference does it make whether he is here or not?" he added. "Why does it make any difference?" "I think that the person who sent him here had a different idea in mind than you and I do," the pastor said. "He was of another way of thinking, a new way. That is all I can say. He was my parishioner, and I have lived in the town here for a long time, and I don't think we want to go there." One by one, each bereaved mother or father told the pastor and each other that the dead had come back for a reason and that the reason was not good. "Our daughter is still here," they all said. "They killed her but they didn't cremate her." The Reverend Lacy and those who sat with him listened as the bereaved relatives of the dead were led to the blacked-out windowless room with the name of the church painted in big black letters on the white wall. They listened as the dead man's mother told of how she had taken him to be treated for an illness that had started with a bout of high fever. The mother's words were slow and heavy, like the clouds that hung over the town. They listened as the parents of the man in the autopsy room told how they had been told that he was dead. The man had been treated for a condition that had no cure. They listened as the relatives of the woman in the refrigerator explained how they had waited a whole month for her to come back from the dead. They listened as the friends of the man in the morgue said that he had been alive and then died. "The man in the refrigerated room, he was not dead," Mr. O'Connell said. "They did not do what they said they were going to do. They did not take him out." "I cannot believe that this is where we must start," said Mr. Able, another bereaved father. "The man in the morgue was also alive." "He was a man who thought that he was a pig," said another man. "He thought that he was in prison and had to get out." "I cannot believe that I am sitting here," said Mr. Able. "It all happened on a day that I have never thought of before, the day of the fire and all. The man who was put in the morgue would not have thought that he was alive. He would not have believed it." "Is this a dream?" the women all asked themselves. "Is this a bad dream that is taking place?" "This has to be a dream," said Ms. Johnson, "or maybe it was made up." "Please tell me it's not true," said the bereaved father of the woman in the refrigerator. "We buried her," he said, and paused. "Our hearts are with you, but we do not have much else." "There were three men there," said Ms. Johnson. "They stood by our bedsides as we slept and watched us." "They must have been with us then," said Mr. Jones. "They were at both of the homes. We found out later that they were everywhere. They left us our dignity. They left us our freedom. But when they gave us back our daughter, they put us in the same old grave, a few feet under the earth." "Why should we stay here?" Mr. O'Connell asked the pastor. "They have taken away our dignity. They have taken away our happiness. How many times do we want to be made to suffer? Where is the dignity and the grace? Where is the life?" he asked the room as he walked out of the windowless room with his fellow mourners. "Have we changed yet?" he asked. "What has been done to us?" he asked. "What have we done to ourselves?" he asked. They told him how they had been lied to and deceived. "We wanted to see him with his life," Mr. O'Connell said. "It was his life that killed him. That is our only point." "We have lost everything and gained nothing," said Ms. Johnson. "Our son never came back alive," said Mr. Able. "I would like you to tell me what my son would say to me now," Ms. Johnson told the pastor. "He would want me to get up and keep going. The only way to make it right is to take my son and bring him back." There were no photographs of the woman who had been placed in the refrigerator. There was no picture of the man whose body had been left in the morgue. The dead did not have photographs. Mr. Able asked for mercy,