In the end I was forced to pay a small fortune to hire a company to come all the way down from the state capitol with a special truck. They have a lot of safes up there; so these guys really knew what they were doing. They had to wait a whole day, though, for it to cool down enough to handle. And when they finally delivered it to my door the next morning, it was still warm as a recently used oven.

No one knew the combination except Reverend Bail. But no matter. The safe was so old, its tumblers so time-worn, I could feel them relax into sequence beneath my fingertips like a professional safecracker. I twisted the handle sharply to the left, and the loose bolt snapped back like a shot. The six-inch thick steel door rumbled open on fire-rusted hinges, and clanged back against the side of the safe like a cold flat bell.

Inside was another, smaller steel door, on which was imprinted the seal of the "Victor Safe Co., Cincinnati, O." -- an eagle rising out of a fiery crown above a broken key.

The eagle had a safe for a heart -- like this one, only brand-new -- and beneath it the legend: "in hoc signo vincimus 1867." Interestingly, my cabin was built in l867!

Anyway, everyone knew only too well how the First Church of the Gadarene had fallen on "dire financial straits" of late. So I didn't expect to find anything of value in it. No gold or silver, anyway. And even if I did, I had somehow managed to promise I would contribute it directly to the children's community play-park fund.

Inside the safe was as cool and damp as a springhouse. No moths or thieves in here. Just all the various sermons from the 60s, neatly stacked on little carpeted wooden shelves, looking as though they'd been typed that very morning, along with a publicity photo of Reverend Bail, standing tall and firm and unyielding in his pulpit above the legend: "He Lifted Me So That I Can Lift Others!"

Glancing through them out of curiosity, however, I felt far from uplifted. In fact, I found myself instantly transported back to the Days of Rage, running through smoke and fire.

Trembling uncontrollably, I was about to deposit them outside on the trash with the leftover lettuce and tomatoes. But then I realized how much more poignant it would be to pack them in the wooden footlocker, wait until after dark, and take them over and toss them into the basement for the bulldozers.

In the meantime I neatly arranged my own manuscripts on the little carpeted wooden shelves, shut the door, and bolted it. But only halfway, so I wouldn't have to go through the combination every time to open it. After all, it was fire I worried about. Not thieves in the night.