Albert Sykes

Albert Sykes is the minister of the Coal Creek Church of the Holy Ghost Sanctified, a pastor whose years of service have been shaped by illness and by a calling that followed a mining disaster. As black lung finally overtakes him, he tries to present his departure as temporary and prepare his congregation for a replacement. His ministry is marked by neighborly care, but the handoff he arranges brings a more troubling figure into the church.

Identity and Calling

Sykes’s vocation is connected to a mine cave-in that killed men around forty-two years before the events of his final illness. He regards the fact that he has lived so much longer than those miners as a form of good fortune, though he admits he is not looking forward to death. The disaster, which pointed him toward his calling, gives his reflections on mortality a personal history rather than the tone of easy certainty.

As minister, he preaches to the congregation about helping one’s neighbor. The sermon’s subject fits the practical responsibility he continues to show: even as his health deteriorates, he addresses his people and tries to make arrangements for the church’s future. His account of having had a better life than most men coexists with his reluctance to face its end.

Illness and Departure

Sykes has been fighting black lung for years. During a sermon, his coughing interrupts him, but he continues preaching before announcing that he is stepping down. He describes the departure as temporary, saying he will return when he feels better. The assurance is a reassurance to the congregation, not an accurate account of his condition: his doctor expects he has only weeks or months to live, and Sykes keeps the seriousness of that prognosis from the church.

He tries to lighten the announcement with a joke about the incoming preacher, but the congregation does not laugh. A few women near the door cry with his wife. Sykes recognizes that he should have let his wife stay home rather than face the announcement with him, a small expression of concern amid a moment in which he is trying to steady everyone else.

The Successor He Arranges

Sykes tells the congregation that his wife’s nephew, Preston Teagardin, will arrive with his wife in about two weeks. He says Teagardin wants to work with poor people and asks the church to welcome him despite his being an outsider. The arrangement comes through family: Teagardin’s mother volunteers him after learning that Sykes is sick, and Teagardin himself resents being sent to Coal Creek. Sykes’s effort to provide a temporary replacement therefore places the congregation’s future in the hands of someone whose commitment to the assignment is doubtful.

As part of the handoff, Sykes holds up an empty Five Brothers pack and says he will give it to Teagardin in case anyone needs it. The gesture is modest and practical, a remnant of the outgoing minister’s own work offered to the man who will take his place. Sykes does not explain the pack’s significance to the congregation in this moment; its presence makes the transition concrete without turning it into a grand farewell.

Service at the Funeral

Sykes’s illness does not end his service immediately. When Teagardin says he is uncomfortable preaching at a funeral following a suicide, Sykes is asked to speak instead. Two men carry him into the church on a wooden kitchen chair. Despite the oppressive heat and his frail condition, he rises to the occasion and addresses the service.

The scene returns Sykes to the pulpit after his attempt to step aside. His replacement declines a difficult pastoral duty, and the dying minister accepts it. That contrast, together with Sykes’s earlier sermon about helping one’s neighbor, defines his role in the church: not as a powerful or triumphant figure, but as a pastor who continues to answer a need even when his own strength is nearly spent. The book gives no confirmation of his eventual death, only the doctor’s expectation that it is near.