Everything else, even religion, falls into one or both of these two categories. —PLINY’S HISTORY It was the late fall of Jim’s junior year at the Academy, and for the first time in more than a century, false spring had come to God’s Kingdom. Two months ago, the elm trees around the perimeter of the village common had turned yellow, then dropped their leaves and gone dormant. Just yesterday Jim had noticed that the elms were putting out tiny golden leaves again. Last night he’d heard a flock of geese headed north, as if confused by the open cornfields and unseasonably warm weather. Yesterday was the fifth consecutive afternoon that the squat, old-fashioned Coca-Cola-bottle thermometer on the door of Quinn’s drugstore had hit eighty degrees, with Thanksgiving now just a day away. Driving up the one-lane track on Kingdom Mountain in the dawn mist, Jim noticed other signs of false spring. The popple trees growing up in brushy fields of long-abandoned farmsteads were pale yellow with new catkins.
