[Twelve-year-old] Edgar had always noticed that “Onward Christian Soldiers” was one of the tunes the congregation sang the loudest. They sang “Love at Home” loudly, too. The only song they probably sang louder than “Onward Christian Soldiers” was “The Spirit of God Like a Fire Is Burning”. On thinking this, Edgar thought maybe God didn’t have a last name because a song called “The Spirit of God McCormick Like a Fire is Burning” would have sounded lousy. As the people around him powered into the refrain for the second time, Edgar got goosebumps on his spine. They lasted about five seconds. After his back felt completely normal again, he wondered why Christians would go to war if the Bible said Thou Shalt Not Kill. As far as he knew, unless you were playing with green plastic soldiers, the object of war was to kill. But, hey, he had seen some of his church friends get whacked by their parents not too long after they’d been sitting together as a perfect family bellowing “LOVE AT HOME...LOVE AT HOME” right there on the front row. So, after Edgar reflected Edgar-like, he decided the songs were meant to be sung and not lived. Or something like that.

   There were only a few other people in the compartment with him. From where he sat he could see only one, a man across from him of about fifty dressed casually in brown corduroy trousers and a black turtleneck sweater. Their glances met once and the man smiled at Edgar and partially nodded as if to say, “We know each other from somewhere, don’t we?” But they didn’t speak then and the man spent most of his time reading a paperback book in English of what appeared to be short stories called “Too Far to Go”. 
   Edgar would have liked to change his clothes, but he had nothing in his suitcase any different from the missionary outfit he had on. He looked down and noticed he still had his name tag on. Discreetly, he reached across his chest, unpinned it, and dropped it in the metal garbage container under the fold-out table next to the window. He thought of Elder Britton which made him think of his parents. Surely they would soon be informed about his disappearance. He would send them a telegram saying not to worry and that he was fine. He was twenty years old and though he loved all he had lived at home, he needed to peer into a few new windows of the world. He didn’t want to hurt anybody, but they had to understand: to be somebody you’ve got to at least try to do it your own way.
   The train pulled into the Gare de Lyon at nine o’clock. He took his suitcase off the rack above his seat and walked to the door. As he waited for the train to stop the man in the black turtleneck said in English, “Are you American?”
   “Yes. How did you know?”
   “It’s not too hard to tell. First time in Paris?”
   “More or less.”
   “Enjoy yourself. It’s my favourite city.”
   They got off and the man disappeared into the river of passengers lugging themselves and their belongings along the quai towards the exits that released them to the city. Edgar was glad that the man hadn’t asked any more questions. He didn’t know what he would have said. 

   ...Edgar walked around looking at the names of the paintings and the painters, and then the pictures themselves. Cézanne, Utrillo, Matisse, Renoir, Rousseau, Modigliani, and the big Monets downstairs. But it was the three Soutine paintings that he looked at the longest. Especially the slab of meat. This man (Edgar assumed Soutine was a man) had painted a hanging slab of meat with reds, blues, yellows, blacks, whites, and purples. Here, thought Edgar, was a new alphabet. A slab of meat in a museum in Paris. And next to the slab of meat, an old poor skinny woman in red. And next to her an ugly little baker with a wrinkled baker’s hat. But the baker wasn’t ugly and the woman wasn’t poor and old and the meat wasn’t just meat. As he stood there, Edgar felt like if there was such a thing as Christianity today, this was it. This painter Soutine was giving value and respect to all life. All life was divine. All life had value. There were no winners or losers. Or else the losers were the winners. The last really first. The old woman was the queen. The little baker the king. The meat divine.
   Edgar went outside. Soutine came with him. Together they went around La Place de la Concorde, up the Champs-Elysées, and down a side street where Edgar ate a cheese sandwich. Before he ate it, he looked at it: half a baguette, butter, Camembert cheese. It looked back at him: twenty-year-old, pimples gone, cute enough face, walnut eyes, behind those eyes neither a Mormon nor a hippie, neither a man nor a boy, neither a follower nor a leader, neither a saint nor a thief... just a twenty-year-old in Paris wondering what to do.