Best for: Residents of Festus, MO, or organizers of local "Homecoming" festivities.

Festus walks two miles down a gravel road to the old Kaine farm. The barn roof has caved in. The house is scorched, a black skeleton of its former self. A “For Sale” sign swings from the mailbox. He touches the mailbox. The name Kaine has been painted over.

Every homecoming is defined by the departure that preceded it. In the traditional telling (most famously transcribed in the 19th-century collection Tales of the Salt Marshes by an unknown monk of Lindisfarne), Festus is the eldest son of a shipwright named Marius.