Boston Noir [редактор Деннис Лихэйн]

FEMME SOLE
BY DANA CAMERON

North End

A moment of your time, Anna Hoyt.”

Anna slowed and cursed to herself. She’d seen Adam Seaver as she crossed Prince Street, and for a terrible moment thought he was following her. She’d hoped to lose him amid the peddlers and shoppers at the busy market near Dock Square, but she couldn’t ignore him after he called out. His brogue was no more than a low growl, but conversations around him tended to fade and die. He never raised his voice, but he never had a problem making himself heard, even over the loudest of Boston ’s boisterous hawkers.

In fact, with anxious glances, the crowd melted back in retreat from around her. No one wanted to be between Seaver and whatever he was after.

Cowards, she thought. But her own mouth was dry as he approached.

She turned, swallowed, met his eyes, then lowered hers, hoping it looked like modesty or respect and not revulsion. His face was weathered and, in places, blurred with scars, marks of fights from which he’d walked away the winner; there was a nick above his ear where he’d had his head shaved. Seaver smiled; she could see two rows of sharp, ugly teeth like a mouthful of broken glass or like one of the bluefish the men sometimes caught in the harbor. Bluefish were so vicious they had to be clubbed when they were brought into the boat or they’d shear your finger off.

He didn’t touch her, but she flinched when he gestured to a quiet space behind the stalls. It was blustery autumn, salt air and a hint of snow to come, but a sour milk smell nearly gagged her. Dried leaves skittered over discarded rotten vegetables, or was it that even the boldest rats fled when Seaver approached?

“How are you, Mr. Seaver?” she asked. She tried to imagine that she was safely behind her bar. She felt she could manage anything with the bar between her and the rest of the world.

“Fair enough. Yourself?”

“Fine.” She wished he’d get on with it. “Thanks.” His excessive manners worried her. He’d never spoken to her before, other than to order his rum and thank her.

When he didn’t speak, Anna felt the sweat prickle along the hairline at the back of her neck. The wind blew a little colder, and the crowd and imagined safety of the market seemed remote. The upright brick structure of the Town House was impossibly far away, and the ships anchored groaning at the wharves could have been at sea.

He waited, searched her face, then looked down. “What very pretty shoes.”

“Thank you. They’re from Turner’s.” She shifted uncomfortably. She didn’t believe he was interested in her shoes, but neither did she imagine he was trying to spare her feelings by not staring at the bruises that ran up the side of her head. These were almost hidden with an artfully draped shawl, but her lip was still visibly puffy. It was too easy to trace the line from that to the black and blue marks. One mark led to the next like a constellation.

One thing always led to another.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Seaver?” she said at last. Not knowing was too much.

“I may be in a way to do something for you.”

Anna couldn’t help it: she sighed. She heard the offer five times a night.

“Nothing like that,” he said, showing that rank of teeth. “It’s your husband.”

“What about him?” Gambling debts, whores, petty theft? Another harebrained investment gone west? Her mind raced over the many ways Thomas could have offended Mr. Seaver.

“I saw him at Clark ’s law office this morning. I had business with Clark…on behalf of my employer…”

Anna barely stifled a shudder. Best to know nothing of Seaver or his employer’s business, which had brought a fortune so quickly that it could only have come from some brutal trade in West Indian contraband. Thick Thomas Hoyt was well beneath the notice of Seaver’s boss, praise God.

“…and your husband was still talking to Clark.”

“Yes?” Anna refused to reveal surprise at Thomas visiting a lawyer. He had no use or regard for the law.

“He was asking how he could sell your establishment.”

“He can’t. It’s mine,” she said before thinking.

Seaver showed no surprise at her vehemence. “Much as I thought, and exactly what Clark told him. Apparently, Hook Miller wants the place.”

“So he said last night. I thanked him, but I’m not selling. He was more than understanding.”

Seaver tilted his head. “Because he thinks the way to acquire your tavern is through your husband.”

The words went through Anna like a knife, and she understood. Her hand rose to her cheek. The beating had come only hours after Miller’s offer and her refusal. Thomas had been blind drunk, and she could barely make out what had driven him this time.

“If I sell it, how will we live? The man’s an idiot.” She was shocked to realize that she’d actually said this, that she was having a conversation, this conversation, with Seaver.

“Perhaps Thomas thinks he can weasel a big enough price from Miller.”

“The place is mine. No one can take it, not even my husband. My father said so. He showed me the papers.” Feme sole merchant were what the lawyers called her, with their fancy Latin. The documents allowed her to conduct business almost as if she was a man. At first, it was only with her father’s consent, but as she prospered-and he sickened-it was accepted that she was responsible, allowed to trade on her own. Very nearly independent, almost as good as a man, in the year of Our Lord 1745. And, though she could never say so aloud, better than most.

“I think Clark will be bound by the document,” Seaver said. “At least until someone more persuasive than Thomas comes along.”

The list of people more persuasive and smarter than her husband was lengthy.

“It’s only a piece of paper.” Seaver shrugged. “A fragile thing.”

Anna nodded, trying not to shift from one foot to another. Eventually, Hook Miller would find a way. As long as she’d known him, he always had.

Anna swallowed. “Why are you telling me this?”

He shrugged. “I like to drink at your place.”

She almost believed him. “And?”

She knew what was coming, was nearly willing to pay the price that Seaver would ask. Whatever would save her property and livelihood, the modicum of security and independence she’d struggled to achieve. What were her alternatives? Sew until she was blind, or follow behind some rich bitch and carry her purse, run her errands? Turn a sailor’s whore?

“And?” she repeated.

“And.” He leered. “I want to see what you will do.”

The bad times were hard for everyone, but it was the good times that brought real trouble, she thought. A pretty young lass with no family and a thriving business on the waterfront. She might as well have hung out a sign.

Anna hurried back to the Queen’s Arms, shopping forgotten. No one had ever paid the property any attention when her father ran the place. It was only after she’d taken over the tavern, within sight of the wharves that cut into Boston Harbor, that business grew and drew attention.

The Queen was a neighborhood place on Fleet Street. “The burying ground up behind you, and the deep, dark sea ahead,” her father used to say, but in between was a place for a man to drink his beer after work-or before, as may be the case-the occasional whiskey, if he was feeling full and fat. Or three or five, if he was broke and buggered.

She stumbled over the cobbles in the street, but recovered and hurried along, needing to reassure herself the place was still there, that it hadn’t vanished, hadn’t been whisked away by magic from the crowd of buildings that lined the narrow streets above the harbor. Or been burned to the ground, more likely. She never doubted that her husband, stupid as he was, would find a way to rob her for Miller, if that’s what Thomas imagined he wanted.

Had Thomas Hoyt been content with hot meals twice a day, too much to drink and ten minutes sweating over his wife on Saturday night, church and repentance Sunday morning, Anna could have managed him well enough. She wanted a more ambitious man, but Thomas had come with his mother’s shop next door. When that allowed Anna to expand her tavern, she thought it a fair enough trade.

Until she discovered Thomas was ambitious, in his own way. While she poured ale, rum, and whiskey, he sat in the corner. Ready to change the barrels or quell the occasional rowdiness, he more often read his paper and smoked, playing the host. His eyes followed his pretty wife’s movements and those of all the men around her.

There were two men he had watched with peculiar interest, and Anna now understood why. One was Hook, named Robert Miller by his mother, a ruffian with a finger in every pie and a hand in every pocket. Hook’s gang were first to take advantage of all the trade on the waterfront, from loading and unloading ships to smuggling. But he did more for the local men than he took from them and was a kind of hero for it. Of course Hook appealed to Thomas: he was everything Thomas imagined he himself could be.

The other man he watched was Seaver, but even Thomas was smart enough to be circumspect when he did it. When one of Miller’s men drunkenly pulled Seaver from his chair one night, claiming his looks were souring the beer, Seaver left without a word. But he came back the next night, and Miller’s man never did. That man now drank at another house, where no one knew him. Three fingers from his right hand were broken and his nose bitten off.

The other men left Seaver alone after that. Anna smiled as she served his rum, but it stopped at her eyes. He was content to sit quietly, alone with who knew what thoughts.

Thomas was scrubbing the bar when she arrived. He looked up, smiled as though he remembered nothing of what had happened the night before. Maybe he didn’t.

“There’s my girl. Shopping done?”

“I forgot something.”

“Well, find it and I’ll walk you to the dressmaker’s myself. It’s getting dark.”

He said it as though the dark brought devils instead of the tradesmen who came regularly to her place. Who worshipped her. She had married him a year before, after her father died, for protection. She ran her tongue along the inside of her cheek, felt the swelling there, felt a tooth wiggle, her lip tear a fraction.

“I won’t have you be less than the best-dressed lady in the North End,” he said expansively, as if he emptied his pockets onto the counter himself. Anna and Mr. Long, the tailor, had a deal: Anna borrowed the latest gowns; wearing them, she showed them to perfection, the ideal advertisement with her golden hair and slim waist. The men at her place either sent their wives to the dressmaker’s so they’d look more like Anna, or spent more money at Anna’s just to look at her, a fine, soft, pretty thing amid so much coarseness.

She pretended to locate some trifle under the bar, and Thomas wiped his hands on the seat of his britches. She forced a smile; her mouth still hurt. Better to have him think she was stupid or in love. Even better, afraid.

“The best news, Anna,” he said, taking her arm as they went back onto the street. “Rob Miller has added another twenty pounds to his asking price. We were right to wait.”

It was still less than half the value of the place. Under no circumstances would she consider selling to Hook Miller and give Thomas the money to invest and lose.

She nodded, as if her refusal to sell had been a joint decision.

“I think we’ll wait until Friday, see if we can’t drive the price a little higher,” he said, patting her hand. His palm was heavy and rough. She saw the faint abrasions along the knuckles, remembered them intimately.

She nodded again, kept her eyes on her feet, shoes peeping out from under her skirt, as she moved briskly to keep up with Thomas. He raced across the cobbles, she a half-pace behind.

Friday, then. Three days. Between Miller’s desire for her tavern and Thomas’s wish to impress him, she was trapped.

Friday night came despite Anna’s prayers for fire, a hurricane, a French invasion. But the place was as it always was: a wide, long room, stools and tables, two good chairs by a large, welcoming fire. The old windows were in good repair, the leads tight, and decent curtains kept out the drafts. The warm smells of good Barbadian rum and local ale kept the world at bay.

When Miller came into the tavern, Thomas got up immediately, offered him the best upholstered seat, nearest the fire. Miller dismissed him outright, said his business was with Anna. Anna tried with all her might to divert his attention back to Thomas, but Miller could not have made more of a show of favoring her in front of the entire room, who watched from behind raised mugs. Thomas glowered, his gaze never leaving Anna.

“Why won’t you sell the place, Anna?” Miller’s words and tone were filled with hurt; she was doing him unfairly.

Anna’s eyes flicked around the room; the men sitting there drinking were curious. Why would Anna cross Miller? No profit in that, they all knew.

“And if I did, what would I live on then?” she asked gaily, as if Miller had been revisiting a long-standing joke.

“Go to the country, for all of me,” he said, draining his glass. It might as well have been Go to the Devil.

As if she had a farm to retire to, a home somewhere other than over the barroom. “I promised my father I would not,” she said, trying to maintain the tone of a joke, but the strain was audible in her voice, her desperation a tremor in her answer.

“Well, come find me-” he set his empty glass down. “When you’re ready to be reasonable.” He tipped his hat to her, ignored Thomas, and left.

After that, the other regulars filed out, one by one. None wanted to see what they all knew would come next. Anna tried to entice them to stay, even offering a round on the house on the flimsy excuse of someone’s good haul of fish. But it couldn’t last forever, and eventually even the boy who helped serve was sent home. Only Seaver was left.

It was late, past the time when Thomas generally retired. It was obvious he wasn’t going to bed.

Seaver stood up. Anna looked at him with a wild hope. Perhaps he would come to her aid, somehow defuse the situation. He put a coin down on the counter and leaned toward her.

She glanced hastily at Thomas, who was scowling as he jabbed the fire with a poker. Anna’s face was a mask of desperation. She leaned closer, and Seaver surreptitiously ran a finger along the back of her hand.

“Better if you don’t argue with him,” he breathed, his lips barely moving. “Don’t fight back too much.”

She watched his back as he left. The room was empty, quiet, save for the crackle of the fire, the beating of Anna’s heart in her chest.

Thomas straightened, and turned. “I thought we had an agreement.”

Anna looked around; there was no one to help her. The door…

“I thought, any man comes in here looking for a piece, you send him up to that fancy cathouse on Salem Street. And yet I see you, a damned slut, making cow eyes at every man in here, right in front of me.”

She ran, but just as her fingers touched the latch, she felt the poker slam across her shoulders. She cried out, fell against the door. The next blows landed on her back, but Thomas, tired of imprecision and mindful of leaving visible marks that would make the punters uneasy, dropped the poker and relied on the toe of his boot.

When his rage diminished, Thomas stormed out. Anna remained on the floor, too afraid and too hurt to get up. She measured the grain of the wood planks while she thought. Thomas would go to Miller, reassure him the sale was imminent. Soon she would have no choice.

She eventually forced herself up, pulling herself onto a stool. No bones broken, this time.

In her quest to find security, independence, she’d first tried the law, and when that wasn’t enough, she’d put her faith in her husband’s strength. Now…she wasn’t sure what would work, but knew she would be damned if she gave in. Not after all she’d done to make the place her own. Her father had taught her the value of a business, repeated it over and over, as she held his hand while he died. He said there were only two books she needed to mind, her Bible and her ledger, but now the latter had her in deep trouble. She moved stiffly to the bar, poured herself a large rum, drank it down neat, exchanging the burn of the liquor for the searing pain in her back.

Thomas didn’t return in the morning, but Anna hadn’t expected him to. He often stayed away after a beating, a chance for her to think over her sins, he’d told her once before. But never for more than a day or two.

She moved stiffly that day, easier the next, but late the third evening, when Anna was about to bar the door for the night, a man’s hand shoved it open. Maybe Thomas had had a change of heart, had come home-

It was Hook Miller.

She didn’t offer a drink. He didn’t ask for one.

“Why not sell to me, Anna Hoyt?” he asked, warming his hands at the fire. “I want this place, so you might as well save yourself the trouble.”

“I told you: my father said I should never sell. Property-it’s the only sure thing in this world.”

Miller didn’t seem bothered, only a bit impatient. “There’s nothing sure, Anna. Wood burns, casks break, and customers leave. And I’ve had the lawyer Clark make your rights over to Thomas. Take my money, leave here.”

She said nothing. Felt the paper she kept in her shoe, the copy of the document that gave her the Queen’s Arms, the property, the right to do business. Now they were, he was telling her, worthless. After all her work, all she’d done…

Suddenly, Anna had a dreadful thought. “Where’s Thomas? Have you seen him?”

“Indeed, I have just left him.” Miller stood straight, smiled crookedly. He continued, mock-serious: “He’s…down by my wharf. He couldn’t persuade you to sell, but he’s still looking after your interests.”

The blood froze inside her. Thomas was dead, she knew it.

Miller tilted his head and waited. When she couldn’t bring herself to respond, he left, closing the door behind him.

The paralyzing cold spread over her, and, for a blessed moment, Anna felt nothing. Then the shivering started, brought her back to the tavern. Anna’s first thought was that her knees would give way before she reached the chair by the fire. She clutched the back of it, her nails digging into the upholstery. When she felt one of them snap, she turned, took three steps, then vomited into the slops pot on the bar.

Better, Anna thought, wiping her mouth. I must be better than this.

Still trembling, but at least able to think, she climbed the stairs to her rooms. She saw Thomas’s good shirt hanging from a peg, and buried her face in it, breathing deeply. She took it down, rubbing the thick linen between her fingers, and considered the length of the sleeves. She stared at the peg, high on the wall, and reluctantly made her decision.

Everything was different in her new shoes. Since she was used to her thin slippers, the cobbles felt oddly distant beneath the thick soles, and it took her awhile to master the clunkiness of the heels. She relied on a population used to drunken sailors to ignore her, relied on the long cloak to conceal most of her blunders. Thomas’s clothes would have been impossible, but she still had a chest full of her father’s things, and his boots were a better fit. Best not to think about the rest of her garb. She needed to confirm what Miller had hinted, and she couldn’t be seen doing it. Anna was too familiar a figure to those whose lives were spent on the wharves, and most of them would be friendly faces. But not if she were caught. If they caught her, so scandalously dressed in britches, well…losing the tavern would be the least of it.

Somehow, her need to know for sure was stronger than fear, than embarrassment, and the bell in the Old North Church chimed as she found her way to Miller’s wharf. The reek of tar and wood fires made her eyes water, and a stiff breeze combined drying fish with the smells of spices in nearby warehouses, making her almost gag.

The moon broke through the clouds. She walked out to the harbor, feeling more and more exposed by the moment…

Nothing on Miller’s wharf that shouldn’t be there. She stopped, struck by a realization. Hook would never lay the murder at his own doorstep.

The urge to move a short way down to the pier and wharf that belonged to Clark, Miller’s detested rival in business, was nearly physical.

At first, Anna saw nothing but the boards of the pier itself. She climbed down the ladder to the water’s edge, hooked one of the dinghies by its rope, and pulled it close. She boarded, cast off, and rowed, following the length of the pier. Though she preferred to be secret, there was no need to muffle the oarlocks; the waterfront’s activity died down at night, but it was never completely silent along the water. Sweat trickled down her back even as thin ice crackled on the floor of the boat beneath her feet.

The half hour rang out, echoed by church bells across Boston and Charlestown, and Anna shivered in spite of her warm exercise.

Three-quarters of the way down the pier, Anna saw a glimpse of white on the water. She uncovered her lantern and held it up.

Among the pilings, beneath the pier, all manner of lost and discarded things floated, bobbing idly on top of the waves: broken crate wood, a dead seagull, an unmoored float. There was something else.

A body.

Even without seeing his face, she knew it was Thomas, his fair hair floating like kelp, the shirt she herself had patched billowing around him like sea foam. A wave broke against the piling of the pier and one of his hands was thrust momentarily to the surface, puffy and raw: the fish and harbor creatures had already been to feast.

Anna stared awhile, and then maneuvered the boat around. She rowed quietly back to the ladder, tied up the dinghy, and headed home.

She brought the bottle of rum to her room, drank until the cold was chased away and she could feel her fingers again. Then she drank a good deal more. She changed back into her own clothing and, keeping her father’s advice in mind, opened her Bible. In an old habit, she let it fall open where it would, closing her eyes and placing a finger on the text. The candle burned low while she read, waiting for someone to come and tell her Thomas Hoyt was dead.

Hook Miller came to the burial on Copp’s Hill. As he made his way up to where Anna stood, the crowd of neighbors-there were nearly fifty of them, for nothing beat a good funeral-doffed their hats out of respect to his standing. Miller’s clothes were showy but ill-suited to him, Anna knew, and he pretended concern that was as foreign to him as a clean handkerchief. He even waited decently before he approached her, and those nearby heard a generous offer of aid to the widow, so that she could retreat to a quieter life elsewhere.

The offering price was still an affront. When she shook her head, he nodded sadly, said he’d be back when she was more composed. She knew it wasn’t solicitousness but the eyes of the neighborhood that made him so nice. The next time Miller approached her, it would be in private. There would be no refusing that offer.

When Seaver came in for his drink later, she avoided his glance. She’d already made up her mind.

The next morning, she sent a note to Hook Miller. No reason to be seen going to him, when there was nothing more natural than for him to come to the tavern. And if his visit stood out among others, why, she was a propertied widow now, who had to keep an eye to the future.

He didn’t bother knocking, came in as if he already owned the place, and barred the door behind him. She was standing behind a chair, waiting, a bottle of wine on the table, squat-bodied and long-necked, along with two of her best glasses, polished to gleaming. One was half-filled, half-drunk. The fire was low, and there were only two candles lit.

He bowed and sat without being asked. His breath was thick with harsh New England rum. “Well?”

“I can’t sell the place. I’d be left with nothing.”

Miller was silent at first, but his eyes narrowed. “And?”

Anna straightened. “Marry me. That way…the place will be yours, and I’ll be…looked after.”

“You didn’t sign it over to Thomas.”

“Thomas Hoyt was as thick as two short planks. I couldn’t trust him to find his arse with both hands.”

Thomas’s absence now was not discussed.

Miller pondered. “If I do, you’ll sign the Queen’s Arms over to me.”

“The day we wed.” Her father had given her the hope and the means, but then slowly, painfully, she’d discovered she couldn’t keep the place alone. She swallowed. “I can’t do this by myself.”

“And what benefit to me to marry you?”

Her hours of thought had prepared the answer. “You’ll get a property you’ve always wanted, and with it, an eye and an ear to everything that happens all along the waterfront. More than that: respectability. This whole neighborhood is getting nothing but richer, and you’d be in the middle of it. What better way to advance than through deals with the merchant nobs themselves? To say nothing of window dressing for your other…affairs.”

Miller laughed, then stopped, considered what she was saying. “Sharp. And a clever wife to entertain my new friends? It makes sense.”

“Those merchants, they’re no more than a step above hustling themselves. We can be of use to each other,” she said carefully. She’d almost said need, but that would have been fatal. “Wine?”

He looked at her, looked at the bottle, the one empty glass. “Thanks.”

She poured, the ruby liquid turning blood-black in the green-tinged glasses, against the dark of the room.

He stared at the glass, his brow furrowing. “I’ve more of a mind for beer, if you don’t mind.”

She looked disappointed, but didn’t press him. “You’ll have to get a head for wine if you expect to move up in the world.” She rose and slid a pewter mug from a peg on the wall, then filled it from the large barrel behind her bar.

Miller smiled, thanked her. She raised her glass to him, sipped. He saluted and drank too.

It was then he noticed the large Bible on the table next to them. He reached over, flipped through carelessly.

“Too much theater for one about to be so soon remarried, don’t you think?” He flicked through the pages, as if looking for something he could make use of. “Devotion doesn’t play. Not around here, anyway.”

Anna suppressed her feelings at seeing him handle the book so roughly. She shut it firmly, moved it away. “My father said it was the only book besides my ledger to heed.”

Miller shrugged. Piety was unexpected, especially after her reaction-or lack thereof-to her husband’s murder, but who could pretend to understand a woman? Her reaction aroused him, however. Any resistance did. “Let me see what I’ll be getting myself into. Lift your skirts.”

Anna had known it would come to this; still, she hesitated. Only a moment. But before Hook had to say another word, she bunched up the silk, slippery in her sweaty palms, and raised her skirts to her thighs. Miller reached out, grabbed the ribbon of her garter, and pulled. It slithered out of its knot, draped itself over his fist. He leaned forward, slid a finger over the top of her stocking, then collapsed onto the table. His head hit hard, and he didn’t say another word.

Repulsed, Anna unhooked his finger from her stocking, let his hand fall heavily, smack against the chair leg. She straightened her stocking, retied her garter, then picked up the heavy Bible. She hesitated, gulping air, then, remembering her father’s words and the fourth chapter of Judges, nodded.

I must be better than this. I must manage.

She reached into the cracked binding of the Bible and withdrew a long steel needle. Its point picked up the light from the candle and glittered. Her breath held, she stood over the unconscious man, then, aiming carefully, she drove it deep into his ear.

Shortly, with a grunt, a shudder, a sigh, Miller stopped breathing.

She had been afraid she’d been too stingy, miscalculated the dose, unseen in the bottom of the pewter mug, not wanting to warn him with the smell of belladonna or have it spill as it waited on the peg. Her father had been frailer, older, and when she could stand his rasping, rattling breathing no longer, could wait no longer to begin her own plans for the Queen’s Arms, she had mixed a smaller amount into his beer. No matter: either the poison or the needle had done its work on Hook Miller.

Anna threw the rest of the beer onto the floor, followed it with the last of the wine from the bottle. No sense in taking chances. She had a long night ahead of her. She could barely move Hook on her own. Slender though she was, she was strong from hauling water and kegs and wood from the time she could walk, but he was nearly two hundred pounds of dead meat. She’d planned this, though, with as much meticulousness as she planned everything in her life. Everything that could be anticipated, that is. Thomas’s ill-conceived greediness she hadn’t counted on, nor Miller’s interest in her place. These were hard lessons and dearly bought.

She would be better. She would manage.

She went to the back, brought out the barrow used to move stock. With careful work, and a little luck, Anna tipped Miller from his chair into the barrow, and, struggling to keep her balance, wheeled him out of the public room into the back kitchen ell. She left him there, out of sight, and checked again that the back door was still barred. She twitched the curtain so that it hung completely over the small window.

Lighting a taper from the fireplace, she considered her plan. A change of clothes, from silk into something for scut work. She had hours of dirty business ahead of her, as bad and dirty as slaughtering season, but really, it was no different from butchering a hog.

A small price to pay for her freedom and the time to plan how better to keep it.

Holding the taper, she hurried up the narrow back stairs to the chamber over the public room. When she opened the door, her breath caught in her throat. There was a lit candle on the table across from her bed.

Adam Seaver was sitting in her best chair.

Anna felt her mouth parch. Although she’d half expected to be interrupted in her work, she hadn’t thought it would be in her own chamber. But Seaver had wanted to see what she’d do-he’d said so himself. She swallowed two or three times before she could ask.

“How?”

“You should nail up that kitchen window. It’s too easy to reach in and shove the bar from the door. Then up the stairs, just as you yourself came. But not before I watched you with Miller.” He pulled an unopened bottle from his pocket, cut the red wax from the stopper, opened it. “I’ll pour my own drinks, thanks. What is the verse? After she gave him drink, Jael went unto him with a peg of the tent and smote the nail into his temple?”

“Near enough.”

“A mistake teaching women to read. But then, if you couldn’t read, you couldn’t figure your books, and you wouldn’t have such a brisk business as you do.” He drank. “A double-edged sword. But as nice a bit of needlework as I’ve ever seen from a lady.”

Keep breathing, Anna. You’re not done yet. “What now?” She thought of the pistol in the trunk by the bed, the knife under her pillow. They might as well have been at the bottom of the harbor.

“A bargain. You’re a widow with a tavern, I’m the agent of an important man. You also have a prime piece of real estate, and an eye on everything that happens along here. And, it seems, an eye to advancement. I think we can deal amiably enough, and to our mutual benefit.”

At that moment, Anna almost wished Seaver would just cut her throat. She’d never be free of this succession of men, never able to manage by herself. The rage welled up in her, as it had never done before, and she thought she would choke on it. Then she remembered the paper hidden in her shoe, the document that made the tavern and its business wholly her own, and how she’d fought for it. She’d be damned before she handed it over to another man.

But she saw Seaver watching her carefully and it came to her. Perhaps like Miller not immediately grasping that the obvious next move for him was civil life and nearly legitimate trade-with all its fat skimming-she was not ambitious enough. Instead of mere survival, relying on the tavern, she could parlay it into more. Working with Seaver, who, after all, was only the errand boy of one of the most powerful-and dangerous-men in New England, she might do more than survive. She saw the beginning of a much wider, much richer future.

The whole world open to her, if she kept sharp. If she could be better than she was.

She went over to the mantel, took down a new bottle, opened it, poured herself a drink. Raised the glass.

She would pour her own drinks, and Seaver would pour his own.

She would manage.

“To our mutual benefit,” she toasted.

THE DARK ISLAND
BY BRENDAN DUBOIS

Boston Harbor

She was waiting for me when I came back from the corner store and I stopped, giving her a quick scan. She had on a dark blue dress, black sensible shoes, and a small blue hat balanced on the back of thick brown hair. She held a small black leather purse in her hands, like she knew she was in a dangerous place and was frightened to lose it. On that last part, she was right, for it was evening and she was standing in Scollay Square, with its lights, horns, music, honky-tonks, burlesque houses, and hordes of people with sharp tastes who came here looking for trouble, and more often than not, found it.

I brushed past a group of drunk sailors in their dress blues as I got up to my corner, the sailors no doubt happy that with the war over, they didn’t have to worry about crazed kamikazes smashing into their gun turrets, burning to death out there in the Pacific. They were obviously headed to one of the nearby bars. There were other guys out there as well, though I could always identify the ones who were recently discharged vets: they moved quickly, their eyes flicking around, and whenever there was a loud horn or a backfire from a passing truck, they would freeze in place.

And then, of course, they would unfreeze. There were years of drinking and raising hell to catch up on.

I shifted my paper grocery sack from one hand to the other and approached the woman, touched the brim of my fedora with my free hand. “Are you waiting for me?” I asked.

Her face was pale and frightened, like a young mom seeing blood on her child for the very first time. “Are you Billy Sullivan?”

“Yep.”

“Yes, I’m here to see you.”

I shrugged. “Then follow me, miss.”

I moved past her and opened the wooden door that led to a small foyer, and then upstairs, the wooden steps creaking under our footfalls. At the top, a narrow hallway led off, three doors on each side, each door with a half-frame of frosted glass. Mine said, B. Sullivan, Investigations, and two of the windows down the hallway were blank. The other three announced a watchmaker, a piano teacher, and a press agent.

I unlocked the door, flicked on the light, and walked in. There was an old oak desk in the center with my chair, a Remington typewriter on a stand, and two solid filing cabinets with locks. In front of the desk were two wooden chairs, and I motioned my guest to the nearest one. A single window that hadn’t been washed since Hoover was president overlooked the square and its flickering neon lights.

“Be right back,” I said, ducking through a curtain off to the side. Beyond the curtain was a small room with a bed, radio, easy chair, table lamp, and icebox. A closed door led to a small bathroom that most days had plenty of hot water. I put a bottle of milk away, tossed the bread on a counter next to the toaster and hot plate, and returned to the office. I took off my coat and hat, and hung both on a coat rack.

The woman sat there, leaning forward a bit, like she didn’t want her back to be spoiled by whatever cooties resided in my office. She looked at me and tried to smile. “I thought all private detectives carried guns.”

I shook my head. “Like the movies? Roscoes, heaters, gats, all that nonsense? Nah, I saw enough guns the last couple of years. I don’t need one, not for what I do.”

At my desk, I uncapped my Parker pen and grabbed a legal pad. “You know my name, don’t you think you should return the favor?”

She nodded quickly. “Of course. The name is Mandy Williams…I’m from Seattle.”

I looked up. “You’re a long way from home.”

Tears formed in the corners of her eyes. “I know, I know…and it’s all going to sound silly, but I hope you can help me find something.”

“Something or someone?” I asked.

“Something,” she said. “Something that means the world to me.”

“Go on.”

“This is going to sound crazy, Mister Sullivan, so please…bear with me, all right?”

“Sure.”

She took a deep breath. “My fiancé, Roger Thompson, he was in the army and was stationed here, before he was shipped overseas.”

I made a few notes on the pad, kept my eye on her.

“We kept in touch, almost every day, writing letters back and forth, sending each other mementos. Photos, souvenirs, stuff like that…and he told me he kept everything I sent to him in a shoe box in his barracks. And I told him I did the same…kept everything that he sent to me.”

Now she opened her purse, took out a white tissue, which she dabbed at her eyes. “Silly, isn’t it…it’s been nearly a year…I know I’m not making sense, it’s just that Roger didn’t come back. He was killed a few months before the war was over.”

My hand tightened on the pen. “Sorry to hear that.”

“Oh, what can you do, you know? And ever since then, well, I’ve gone on, you know? Have even thought about dating again…and then…”

The tissue went back to work and I waited. So much of my professional life is waiting, waiting for a phone call, waiting for someone to show up, waiting for a bill to be paid.

She coughed and continued: “Then, last month, I got a letter from a buddy of his. Name of Greg Fleming. Said they were bunkmates here. And they shipped out together, first to France and then to the frontlines. And Greg told me that Roger said that before he left, he hid that shoe box in his barracks. He was afraid the box would get lost or spoiled if he brought it overseas with him.”

“I see,” I said, though I was practically lying. “And why do you need me? Why not go to the base and sweet talk the duty officer, and find the barracks your fiancé was staying at?”

“Because…because the place he was training at, it’s been closed since the war was over. And it’s not easy to get to.”

“Where is it?”

Another dab of the tissue. “It’s out on Boston Harbor. On one of the islands. Gallops Island. That’s where Roger was stationed.”

The place was familiar to me. “Yeah, I remember Gallops. It was used as a training facility. For cooks, radiomen, and medics. What did your man train for?”

“Radioman,” she said simply. “Later…later I found out that being a radioman was so very dangerous. You were out in the open, and German snipers liked to shoot at a radioman and the officer standing next to him…that’s, that’s what happened to Roger. There was some very fierce fighting and he was…he was…oh God, they blew his head off…”

And then she bowed and started weeping in her tissue, and I sat there, feeling like my limbs were made of cement, for I didn’t know what the hell to do. Finally I cleared my throat and said, “Sorry, miss…Look, can I get you something to drink?”

The tissue was up against her face and she shook her head. “No, no, I don’t drink.”

I pushed away from my desk. “I was thinking of something a bit less potent. I’ll be right back.”

About ten minutes later, I came back with two chipped white china mugs and passed one over to her. She took a sip and seemed surprised. “Tea?”

“Yeah,” I said, sitting back down. “A bit of a secret, so please don’t tell on me, okay? You know the reputation we guys like to maintain.”

She smiled, and I felt I had won a tiny victory. “How in the world did you ever start drinking tea?”

I shrugged. “Picked up the habit when I was stationed in England.”

“You were in the army?”

I nodded. “Yep.”

“What did you do?”

I took a sip from my own mug. “Military police. Spent a lot of time guarding fences and ammo dumps or directing traffic. Pretty boring. Never really heard a shot fired in anger, though a couple of times I did hear Kraut artillery as we were heading east when I got over to France.”

“So you know war, then.”

“I do.”

“And I’m sure you know loss as well.”

Again, the tightening of my hand. “Yeah, I know loss.”

And she must have sensed a change in my voice, for she stared harder at me and said, “Who was he?”

I couldn’t speak for a moment, and then I said, “My older brother. Paul.”

“What happened?”

I suppose I should have kept my mouth shut, but there was something about her teary eyes that just got to me. I cleared my throat. “He was 82nd Airborne. Wounded at the Battle of the Bulge. Mortar shrapnel. They were surrounded by the Krauts, and I guess it took a long time for him to die…”

“Then we both know, don’t we.”

“Yeah.” I looked down at the pad of paper. “So. What do you need me for?”

She twisted the crumpled bit of tissue in her hands. “I…I don’t know how to get to that island. I’ve sent letters to everyone I can think of, in the army and in Congress, and no one can help me out…and I found out that the island is now restricted. There’s some sort of new radar installation being built there…no one can land on the island.”

I knew where this was going but I wanted to hear it from her. “All right, but let me say again, Miss Williams, why do you need me?”

She waited, waited for what seemed to be a long time. She took a long sip from her tea. There were horns from outside, a siren, and I could hear music from the nearest burlesque hall. “Um…well, I’ve been here for a week…asking around…at the local police station…asking about a detective who might help me, one from around here, one who knows the harbor islands…”

“And my name came up? Really? From who?”

“A…a desk sergeant. Name of O’Connor.”

I grimaced. Fat bastard, never got over the fact that my dad beat up his dad ten or fifteen years ago at some Irish tavern in Southie; he always gave me crap, every time he saw me. “All right. What did he tell you?”

“That you used to work with your dad in the harbor, pulling in lobster pots, working after school and summers, and he said…well, he said…”

“Go on, Miss Williams. What did he say?”

“He said that if anyone could get me out to the islands and back, it’d be that thick-skulled mick Billy Sullivan.”

I tried not to smile. “Yeah, that sounds like the good sergeant.”

Her voice softened. “Please, Mister Sullivan. I…I don’t know what else to do. I can’t make it out there without your help, and getting those memories from my man…that would mean the world to me.”

“If the island is off-limits during the day, it means we’ll have to go out at night. Do you understand, Miss Williams?”

She seemed a bit surprised. “I…I thought I could draw you a map, a description, something like that.”

I shook my head. “Not going to work. I’m not going out to Gallops Island at night without you. If I find that box of mementos for you, I want you right there, to check it out.”

“But-”

“If that’s going to be a problem, Miss Williams, then I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

My potential client sounded meek. “I…I don’t like boats…but no, it won’t be a problem.”

“Good. My rate is fifty dollars a day, plus expenses…but this should be relatively easy. And that fifty dollars has to be paid in advance.”

She opened her purse, deftly pulled out three tens and a twenty, which I scooped up and put into my top desk drawer. I tore off a sheet of paper, wrote something down, and slid it over to her. “There. Address in South Boston. Little fishing and tackle shop, with a dock to the harbor. I’ll see you there tomorrow at 6 p.m. Weather permitting, it should be easy.”

My new client folded up the piece of paper and put it in her purse, and then stood up, held out a hand with manicured red nails. “Oh, I can’t thank you enough, Mister Sullivan. This means so much to me, and…”

I shook her hand and said, “It’s too early to thank me, Miss Williams. If we get there and get your shoe box, then you can thank me.”

She smiled and walked to the door, and I eyed her legs and the way she moved. “Tomorrow, then.”

“Tomorrow,” I said.

She stepped out of the office and shut the door behind her.

I counted about fifteen seconds, and then, no doubt to the surprise of my new client had she known, I immediately went to work.

I put on my hat and coat and went out, locking the door behind me. I took the steps two at a time, out to the chaos that was Scollay Square, and then I spotted her, heading up Tremont Street. I dodged more sailors and some loud, red-faced businessmen, the kind who had leather cases full of samples and liked to raise hell in big bad Boston before crawling back to their safe little homes in Maine or New Hampshire.

My client went around the corner, and I quickly lost her.

Damn.

I looked up and down the street, saw some traffic, more guys moving around, but not my client. A few feet away I stopped a man in a wheelchair, with a tartan blanket covering the stumps that used to be his legs. Tony Blawkowski, holding a cardboard sign: HELP AN INJURED VET. I went over and greeted him: “Ski.”

“Yeah?” He was staring out at the people going by, shaking a cardboard coffee cup filled with coins.

“You see a young gal come this way?”

“Good lookin’, small leather purse in her hands, hat on top of her pretty little head?”

“That’s the one.”

“Nope, didn’t see a damn thing.” He smiled, showing off yellow teeth.

I reached into my pocket, tossed a quarter in his cup.

“Well, that’s nice, refreshin’ my memory like that,” Ski said. “Thing is, she came right by here, wigglin’ that fine bottom of hers, gave me no money, the stuck-up broad, and then she got into a car and left.”

Somehow the noise of the horns and the music from the burlesque hall seemed to drill into my head. “You sure?”

“Damn straight. A nice Packard, clean and shiny. It was parked there for a while, then she got in and left.”

“You see who was in the Packard?”

“You got another quarter?”

I reached back into my pocket, and there was another clink as the coin fell into his cup. He laughed. “Nope. Didn’t see who was in there or who was driving. They jus’ left. That’s all.”

“All right, Ski. Tell you what, you see that Packard come back, you let me know, all right?”

“What’s in it for me?”

I smiled. “Keeping your secret, for one.”

He shook his head. “Bastard. You do drive a hard bargain.”

“Only kind I got tonight.”

I started to walk away, then looked back. As a couple of out-of-towners dropped some coins in Ski’s cup, I thought about the sign. It was true, for Ski was an injured vet. He had been in the army, and one night, on leave here in town a couple of years ago, he got drunk out of his mind, passed out in front of a bar, and was run over by an MTA trolley, severing both legs.

Nice little story, especially the lesson it gave, for never accepting what you see on the surface.

About a half hour later, I was at the local district headquarters of the Boston Police Department, where I found Sergeant Francis Xavier O’Connor sitting behind a chest-high wooden desk, passing on whatever was considered justice in this part of town. There in the lobby area, the tile floor yellow and stained, two women in bright red lipstick, hands cuffed together, shared a cigarette on a wooden bench. O’Connor had a folded over copy of the Boston American in his hands, his face red and flush, and he glanced up at me as I approached the desk.

“Ah, Beantown’s biggest dick,” he said over half-glasses.

“Nice to see you too, sergeant. Thought you’d be spending some time up at your vacation spot on Conway Lake.”

“Bah, the hell with you,” O’Connor said. “What kind of trash are you lookin’ for tonight?”

I leaned up against the desk, my wrists on the wooden edge. “What I’m looking for is right in front of me.”

“Eh?”

“Quick question,” I said. “Got a visit tonight from a young lady, mid-twenties, said she was from Seattle, looking for some help. She told me she came here, talked to you, and somehow my name came up. Why’s that?”

He grinned, bounced the edge of the folded newspaper against his chin. “Ah, I remember that little flower. Came sauntering in, sob story in one hand, a Greyhound bus ticket in the other, and she told me what kind of man she was lookin’ for, and what the hell? I gave her your name and address. You should be grateful.”

“More curious than grateful. Come on, Francis, answer the question. Why me?”

He leaned over, close enough so I could smell old onions coming from his breath. “Figure it out. Young gal had some spending money, spent it for some info…a name. And you know what? Her story sounded screwy enough that it might fuck over whoever decided to take her on as a client, and your name was first, second, and third on my list. Any more questions, dick?”

I stepped away from the desk. “Yeah. Your dad’s nose still look like a lumpy potato after my dad finished him off?”

His face grew even more red. “Asshole, get out of my station.”

The next evening I went into the Shamrock Fish & Tackle, off L Street in South Boston, near where I grew up. It was crowded as I moved past the rows of fishing tackle, rods, other odds and ends. Out in the back, smoking a cigar and nursing a Narragansett beer, Roddy Taylor looked up as I approached him. He had on a sleeveless T-shirt that had probably been white at one time, and khaki pants. He was mostly bald but tufts of hair grew from his thick ears.

“Corporal Sullivan, what are you up to tonight?”

“Looking to borrow an outboard skiff, if that’s all right with you.”

“Hell, of course.”

“And stop calling me corporal.”

He laughed and leaned back, snagged a key off a nail on the wall. He tossed it to me and I caught it with my right hand. “Number five.”

“Okay, number five.”

“How’s your mom?” Roddy asked.

“Not good,” I said. “She…well, you know.”

He took a puff from his cigar. “Yeah. Still thinking your brother’s coming home. Am I right?”

I juggled the key in my hand. “I’ll bring it back sometime tonight.”

“Best to your mom.”

“You got it.”

Outside I went to the backseat of my old Ford and took out a canvas gym bag. From the dirt parking lot I headed over to a dock and moved down the line of skiffs and boats, found the one with a painted number five on the side, and undid the lock. I tossed my gym bag in the open skiff, near the small fuel tank and the drain plug at the stern. I stood up and stretched. Overhead lights had come on, illuminating the near empty parking lot, the dock, and the line of moored boats.

She was standing at the edge of the dock. She still had her leather purse but the skirt had been replaced by slacks and flat shoes.

“Miss Williams,” I said.

“Please,” she said, coming across the dock. “Please call me Mandy.”

“All right, Mandy it is.”

She peered down at the skiff. “It looks so small.”

“It’s big enough for where we’re going,” I said.

“Are you sure?”

“I grew up around here, Miss-”

“Mandy.”

“Mandy, I grew up around here.” I looked about the water, at the lights coming on at the shoreline of Boston Harbor and the islands scattered out there at the beginnings of the Atlantic Ocean. “I promise you, I’ll get you out and back again in no time.”

She seemed to think about that for a moment, and nodded. Then she moved closer and gingerly put one foot into the boat, as I held her hand. Her hand felt good. “Up forward,” I said. “Take the seat up forward.”

My client clambered in and I followed. I undid the stern line and gently pushed us off, then primed the engine by using a squeeze tube from the small fuel tank. A flick of the switch and a couple of tugs with the rope starter, and the small Mercury engine burbled into life. We made our way out of the docks and toward the waters of the harbor, motoring into the coming darkness, my right hand on the throttle of the engine.

After about five minutes she turned and said, “Where are the life jackets?”

“You figuring on falling in?”

She had a brittle laugh. “No, not at all. I’d just like to know, that’s all.”

I motioned with my free hand. “Up forward. And nothing to worry about, Mandy. I boated out here before I went to grade school and haven’t fallen in yet.”

She turned into herself, the purse on her lap, and I looked over at the still waters of the harbor. It was early evening, the water very flat, the smell of the salt air pretty good after spending hours and hours on Scollay Square. Off to the left, the north, were the lights of the airport, and out on the waters I could see the low shapes of the islands. Over to the right was the harbor itself, and the lights of the moored freighters.

One of the islands was now off to starboard and Mandy asked, “What island is that?”

“Thompson,” I said.

“I see buildings there. A fort?”

I laughed. “Hardly. That’s the home of the Boston Farm and Trades School.”

“The what school?”

“Farm and Trades. A fancy name for a school for boys who get into trouble. Like a reform school. One last chance before you get sent off to juvenile hall or an adult prison.”

She turned, and in the fading light I could make out her pretty smile. “Sounds like you know that place firsthand.”

“Could have, if I hadn’t been lucky.”

Soon we passed Thompson and up ahead was a low-slung island with no lights. The wind shifted, carrying with it a sour smell.

“What in God’s name is that?” Mandy asked.

“ Spectacle Island. That’s where the city dumps its trash. Lots of garbage up there, and probably the bodies of a few gangsters. Good place to lose something.”

“You know your islands.”

“Sure,” I said. “They all have a story. All have legends. Indians, privateers, ghosts, pirates, buried treasure…everything and anything.”

Now we passed a lighthouse, and I said, “ Long Island,” but Mandy didn’t seem to care. There was another, smaller island ahead. “That’s Gallops. You ready?” I asked.

“Yes,” she replied, her voice strained. “Quite ready.”

I ran the skiff aground on a bit of sandy beach and waded in the water, dragging a bowline up, tying it off some scrub brush. There was a dock just down the way, with a path leading up to the island, and by now it was pretty dark. From my gym bag I took out a flashlight and cupped the beam with my hand, making sure only a bit of light escaped.

“I want to make this quick, okay?”

She nodded.

“I asked around,” I said. “I know where the barracks are. Do you happen to know where his bunk was located?”

“Next to a window overlooking the east, in the far corner. He always complained that the morning sun would hit his eyes and wake him up before reveille.”

“All right,” I said. “Let’s go.”

From the path near the dock, it was pretty easy going, much to my surprise. The place was deserted and there were no lights, but my own flashlight did a good job of illuminating the way. We headed along a crushed stone path; halfway there, something small and furry burst out of the brush, scaring the crap out of me and making Mandy cry out. She grabbed my free hand and wouldn’t let it go-I didn’t complain. It felt good, and she kept her hand in mine all the way up to the barracks.

A lot of the windows were smashed, and the door leading inside was hanging free from its hinges. We moved up the wide steps and gingerly stepped in. I flashed the light around. The roof had leaked and there were puddles of water on the floor. We went to the left, where there was a great open room stretching out into the distance. I slashed the light around again. Rusting frames for bunks were piled high in the corner, and there was an odd, musty smell to the place. Lots of old memories came roaring back, being in a building like this, taking in those old scents, of the soap and gun oil…and the smell of the men, of course.

I squeezed Mandy’s hand and she squeezed back. Here we had all come, from all across the country, to train and to learn and to get ready to fight…and no matter what crap the RKO movies showed you, we were all scared shitless. It was a terrible time and place to come together, to know that so many of you would never return…torn up, blown up, shattered, burned, crushed, drowned. So many ways to die…and now to come back to what was called peace and prosperity and hustle and bustle and try to keep ahead. What a time.

“Let’s go,” I whispered, not sure why I was whispering. “I want to get out of here before someone spots our light.”

“Yes,” she whispered back, and it was like we were in church or something. I led my client down the way, our footsteps echoing off the wood, and I kept the light low, until we came to the far corner, the place where the windows looked out to the east, where a certain man rested in his bunk, the sun hitting his face every morning.

“Here,” she whispered. “Shine the light over here.”

She knelt down in the corner of the room, her fingers prying at a section of baseboard, and even though I half expected it, I was still surprised. The board came loose and Mandy cried out a bit; I lowered the flashlight and illuminated a small cavity.

“Hold on,” I said, “you don’t know what-”

But she didn’t listen to me. She reached her right arm down and rummaged around, murmuring, “Oh, Roger. Oh, my Roger.”

Then she pulled her hand back, holding a box for Bass shoes, the damp cardboard held together with gray tape. She clasped the box against her chest and leaned over, silently weeping, I thought, her body shaking and trembling.

I gave her a minute or two, and then touched her shoulder. “Mandy, come on, we have to get out of here. And now.”

And she got off her knees, wiped at her eyes, and with one hand held the cardboard box and her small leather purse against her chest.

Her other hand took mine, and wouldn’t let go until we got back to the boat.

In the boat I pushed off and fired up the engine, and we started away from Gallops Island. The wind had come up some, nothing too serious, but there was a chop to the water that hadn’t been there before. With the box in her lap, she turned and smiled, then leaned in toward me. I returned the favor and kissed her, and then kissed her again, and then our mouths opened and her hand squeezed my leg. “Oh, Billy…I didn’t think it would work…I really didn’t…Look, when we get back, we need to celebrate, okay?”

I liked her taste and her smell. “Sure. Celebrate. That sounds good.”

But I kept looking at the water and kicked up the throttle some more.

It didn’t seem to take too long, and as we motored back to the docks of the Shamrock Fish & Tackle, Mandy turned to me and started talking, about her life in Seattle, about her Roger, and about how she was ready to start a new life now that she had this box. I tried to ignore her chatter as we moved toward the dock, and when I looked up at the small parking lot, I noticed there was an extra vehicle there.

A Packard, parked underneath a street lamp.

As we drew close to the docks, doors to the Packard opened up and two men with hats and topcoats, their hands in their coats, stepped out.

Mandy was still chattering.

I worked the throttle, slipped the engine into neutral, and then reversed. The engine made a clunk-whine noise as I backed out of the narrow channel leading into the docks, and Mandy was jostled. “What the-”

“Hold on,” I snapped, backing away even further. I shifted into neutral again, then forward, and finally sped away. Turning back, I saw the two guys return to the Packard and head out onto L Street. I immediately grabbed my flashlight and switched the engine off. We began drifting in the darkness.

Mandy gaped and asked, “Billy…what the hell is going on?”

“You tell me,” I countered.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Mandy…what’s in the box?”

“I told you,” she said, her voice rising. “Souvenirs! Letters! Photos! Stuff that means so much to me…”

“And the guys in the Packard? Who are they? Friends of Roger who want to giggle over old photos of him in the army?”

“I don’t know what you mean about-”

I pointed the flashlight in her face, flicked it on, startling her. I reached forward, snatched the damp box from her hands, sat back down. The boat rocked, a bit of spray hitting my arm.

“Hey!” she cried out, but now the box was in my lap.

I lowered the flashlight, seeing her face pursed and tight. “Let’s go over a few things,” I said. “You come into my office with a great tale, a great sob story. And you tell me you get hooked up with me because you just happened to run into one of the sleaziest in-the-bag cops on the Boston force, a guy who can afford a pricey vacation home on a New Hampshire lake on a cop’s salary. And right after you leave my office, a sweet girl, far, far away from home, you climb into somebody’s Packard. And now there’s a Packard waiting for you at dockside. Hell of a coincidence, eh? Not to mention the closer we got to shore, the more you blathered at me, like you were trying to distract me.”

She kept quiet, her hands now about her purse, firmly in her lap.

“Anything to say?” My client kept quiet. I held up the box. “What’s in here, Mandy?”

Nothing.

“Mandy?”

I set the box back in my lap, tore away at the tape and damp cardboard, and the top lifted off easy enough. There was damp brown paper in the box, and the sound of smaller boxes moving against each other. I turned the big box over a bit, shone the light in. Little yellow cardboard boxes, about the size of small toothpaste containers, all bundled together. There were scores of them. I shuddered, took a deep breath. I knew what they were.

“Morphine,” I said, looking her hard in the eye. “Morphine syrettes. Your guy…if there was a guy there, he wasn’t training as a radioman. He was training as a medic. And he was stealing this morphine to sell later, once the war was over. Am I right? Who the hell are you, anyway?”

My client said, “What difference does it make? Look, I had a job to do, to get that stuff off that island, easiest way possible, no fuss, no muss, and we did it. Okay? Get me to shore, you’ll get…a finder’s fee, a percentage.”

I shook the box, heard the smaller boxes rattle. “Worth a lot of money, isn’t it?”

She smiled. “You have no idea.”

“But it was stolen. During wartime.”

“So what?” Her voice now revealed a sharpness I hadn’t heard before. “Guys went to war, some got killed, some figured out a way to score, to make some bucks…and the guys I’m with, they figured it was time to look out for themselves, to set something up for later. So there you go. Nice deal all around. Don’t you want part of it, Billy? Huh?”

I shook the box again, fought to keep my voice even. “Ever hear of Bastogne?”

“Maybe, who knows, who cares.”

“I know, and I care. That’s where my brother was, in December 1944. Belgian town, surrounded by the Krauts. He took a chunk of shrapnel to the stomach. He was dying. Maybe he could have lived if he wasn’t in so much pain…but the medics, they were low on morphine. They could only use morphine on guys they thought might live. So my brother…no morphine…he died in agony. Hours it took for him to die, because the medics were short on morphine.”

Mandy said, “A great story, Billy. A very touching story. Look, you want a tissue or something?”

And moving quickly, she opened up her purse and took out a small, nickel-plated semiautomatic pistol.

“Sorry, Billy, but this is how it’s going to be. You’re going to give me back my box, you’re going to take me back to the dock, and if you’re a good boy, I’ll make sure only a leg or an arm gets broken. How’s that for a deal?”

I thought for a moment, now staring at a face I didn’t recognize, and said, “I’ve heard better.”

And I tossed the box and the morphine syrettes into the dark waters.

She screamed and shouted something, and I was moving quick, which was good, because she got off a shot that pounded over my head as I ducked and grabbed something at the bottom of the boat, tugging it free, then dropped overboard. The shock of the cold water almost made me open my mouth, but I was more or less used to it. I came up coughing, splashing, and my flashlight was still on the boat, still lit up, which made it easy for me to see what happened next.

The skiff was rocking and filling with water as Mandy moved to the rear, trying to get the engine started, I think, but with her added weight at the stern, it quickly swamped and flipped over, dumping her in. She screamed. She screamed again. “Billy! Please! I can’t swim! Please!”

I raised my hand, holding the drain plug to the rear of the skiff, and let it go.

She floundered some more. Splashing. Yelling. Coughing. It would be easy enough to get over there, calm her down, put her in the approved life-saving mode, my arm about her, to pull her safely to shore. So easy to do, for I could have easily found her in the darkness by following the splashes and yells.

The yells. I had heard later, from someone in my brother’s platoon, how much he had yelled toward the end.

I moved some, was able to gauge where she was, out there in the darkness.

And then I turned and swam in the other direction.

THE REWARD

BY STEWART O’NAN

Brookline

Sometimes Boupha honestly found them. She thought it was a gift. Her father said she wasn’t so special-anybody could. He should know because it was his game; he’d been running it since he’d been driving a cab. After a while you developed an eye, like a hunter.

“American people don’t see anything,” he said. “People like us, we have to.”

He’d taught her well, as he never tired of reminding her. Late August, when the college kids moved in, she watched the park. Winter she cruised the potholed lots behind the apartments on Jersey. In spring the long flats of Beacon beyond Kenmore were littered with the dead-worth just as much, and less trouble, besides the smell. In her trunk she kept garbage bags and rubber gloves, an aerosol can of Oust.

Each season brought a new crop, that was the genius of it. Her father was the one who’d realized the possibilities. Now that he could no longer drive, Boupha used his badge, working twelve-hour shifts to pay his hospital bills. After all his talk about keeping her eyes open, he’d been going fifty on Storrow Drive in the rain when he rear-ended a stopped tow truck. His head bent the steering wheel. The wheel could be fixed but not her father. The doctors had saved his life so he could lie in a special bed and watch TV. “Boupha!” he called when he needed anything. “Boupha!” Their apartment wasn’t large enough to escape his voice. He’d had a sly sense of humor before the accident, a con man’s easy charm. Now her smallest mistake sent him into a rage. She hated leaving him alone because sometimes, for no reason, he screamed. The upstairs neighbors had complained.

On his best days, he obsessed over money and cigarettes. He didn’t care about food or temple anymore. His friend Pranh no longer visited.

“How much you make today?” he asked when she came home, already reaching for his Newports. Every dollar, every pack was an offering to him.

Like driving, so much of the game was being in the right place. That night she wasn’t even looking. She’d dropped a silent fare at Beth Israel and stopped at the Store 24 on Beacon when the shepherd limped out of an alley directly into her path, as if it didn’t see her.

Even with the shadows she could tell it was an older male, rheumy-eyed and white around the snout. Its haunches were matted black and it was hobbling so badly that she thought it had been hit. One of her father’s cardinal rules was that a hurt animal wasn’t worth the trouble. She’d once found a cat on Park Drive with its back legs smashed, writhing and spitting. It had no collar, so it was worthless, but Boupha couldn’t leave it in the street. As she tried to slide it to the curb on a pizza box, it snarled and clawed her arm, opening three beading lines she now wore as scars. “I tell you,” her father had said, “but you’re too smart, you don’t want to listen.”

Normally strays shied away, distrustful of people, but the shepherd just waddled along ahead of her. Its back was slick with blood; it shone under the streetlights. She was almost beside her car. Thinking of the cat lashing out, she stopped.

The dog stopped and looked back as if they were going for a walk and she needed to catch up. Its tag glinted.

She had treats in the glove compartment, a leash with a muzzle. She could quote her father back to him: older dogs were worth more. The owners had more invested in them.

But the blood. The blood was a problem.

The dog turned to watch her open the passenger door, cocking his head.

“Hey. I’ve got something for you. Here you go.”

She tossed him a treat. He waddled over and nosed it, keeping his eyes on her the whole time. Finally he took the biscuit, crunching it with his head lowered.

“Good boy, yes.”

The second one she dropped halfway between them. This time he didn’t hesitate.

“That’s a good dog,” she said, and squatted down to show she was no threat. With the leash behind her back, she set a treat on the sidewalk right in front of her.

As he came closer, he hunched lower and lower until he lay down and rolled on his side, panting, his tongue flopping out of his mouth.

“It’s all right, you’re okay,” she said, and hooked the leash to the ring on his collar.

She pushed the treat toward him and he rolled and took it and got to his feet, chomping. She waited till he was finished to pet him. His tag said his name was Edgar and he belonged to the Friedmans. The phone number was a Brookline exchange, a point in her favor.

He was still panting, so she took the bowl from the trunk and gave him some water. As he lapped, she inspected his haunch, pouring the rest of the bottle over it. She rinsed most of the blood off but there wasn’t enough light to see where it was coming from.

“I know it hurts, Edgar,” she said, drying him with an old towel, but he didn’t seem to mind. He stood still for her as if he was getting a bath. Maybe he was senile, or maybe he was just good-natured.

He looked good enough. She laid a trash bag and another towel across the backseat for him and drove straight home. It took only five minutes this time of night, but in the lot, when she opened the back door, his rear was matted again and the towel was bloody.

Later she realized this was where she should have cut him loose, but she’d already made her decision, and the possibility never crossed her mind. She thought she’d saved him. He had the tag, the tag had the number. That was the game. The only thing she was worried about was her father.

She couldn’t lie to him. The dog didn’t want to go in the cage, and there was blood on her shirt, blood on her arms. She gave him his cigarettes first.

“I don’t believe you,” he said. “What do I tell you, and you do this.”

“I’m going to call them,” she said, but when she did, there was no answer.

Edgar was bleeding in the cage, and she had to make dinner.

“Get it out of here,” her father said. “What are you waiting for?”

She called the Friedmans again while he was eating. She thought it was wrong. She should at least be getting a machine.

She coaxed Edgar out of the cage and lifted him into the bathtub the way she did her father, using the flexible hose to wash his haunch. As she scrubbed him, something sharp cut her palm.

She looked at the hole in her rubber glove as if it couldn’t have happened, but the blood was already welling up.

“Shit.”

“What is it?” her father called.

“Nothing.”

She held Edgar still and gingerly parted his fur. Poking from a lipped gash in his gray skin was the broken blade of a steak knife.

She needed the pliers to ease it out. He didn’t growl as she cleaned and dressed the wound. She used extra butterflies and checked on him every few minutes to make sure he wasn’t digging at it. He didn’t like the cage, so she’d put down a blanket in a corner and given him a few toys. He lay with a stuffed Tigger between his crossed paws, licking the head as if it were a pup.

“I don’t know why anyone would do that to you,” she said, stroking him. “You’re a good boy.”

“Call them again,” her father said.

She had the number right, they just weren’t home. She had their address. Tomorrow she’d swing by and see if they’d put up posters. She wondered how long it had been.

In the middle of the night she woke to her father calling for her and the dog barking. Edgar must have nosed the door open, because he was in the middle of her father’s room, his front legs braced, his fangs bared. It was like the two of them were arguing.

“Go!” Boupha shouted, clapping, and Edgar slunk away.

“Keep him away from me!” her father screamed, wild-eyed. “He tried to bite me!”

“I’ll close your door. That way you’ll be safe.”

“Don’t leave me alone!”

“I’m right here, Pa,” she said, patting his arm. “I’m not going anywhere.”

In the morning he was calmer, but he wanted the dog gone. Now, today.

Edgar’s bleeding had stopped, the blood crusted darkly around the butterflies. The way the game worked, the longer you held on to them, the greater your reward, but her father made that impossible. She called the Friedmans, and when no one answered, she clipped Edgar to his leash and took him to Brookline.

The address on his tag belonged to a leafy side street. It was the kind of neighborhood she could never afford, with neat lawns and hedges and gardens. As she slowed, searching for the number, Edgar sat up in the backseat as if he knew where they were going.

The Friedmans’ was a white frame house with baskets of geraniums hanging from the porch. Behind her, Edgar huffed and scratched at the window.

“Let me stop the car first.”

When she opened the door, he shot across the yard and up the steps, trailing his leash, a burst of energy that made her think he was feeling better. He waited, facing the doorknob, as if she had the key.

She took the leash in hand and rang the bell, then stepped back, standing straight, her chin held high. Americans liked you to look them in the eye so they knew you were telling the truth. In this case Boupha was, but out of habit she prepared the details of her story, like an actor about to take the stage. As proof, she would show the Friedmans the Band-Aid on her palm. She wouldn’t ask for a reward, would turn it down at first. Only when they insisted would she accept it, thanking them in turn for their generosity, and everyone would be happy.

After standing there a minute, Boupha pressed the doorbell again and heard it chime inside-bing-bong.

“They’re probably all out looking for you,” she said, scratching Edgar’s head.

She was about to knock when a voice called, “Can I help you?”

It came from the porch next door, from an older lady with puffy white hair and red lipstick. She wore a flowered apron over a powder-blue sweat suit. In one gloved hand, drawn like a weapon, she held a spade.

“I’m looking for the Friedmans,” Boupha said.

“I’m sorry, the Friedmans aren’t here. They’re both gone.”

“I think I found their dog.”

“Is that Edgar?” the woman said, craning as if she couldn’t see him. “I thought the police took him.”

Just the mention of them made Boupha want to excuse herself.

“Wait right there.” The woman tottered down the stairs and across the yard. “Oh God, it is Edgar.”

Boupha went right into her story. When she described finding the blade, the woman covered her mouth with both hands.

“Oh dear, you don’t know, do you? You didn’t hear what happened to them?”

“No.”

“I thought everyone knew. It was all over the TV. There were reporters tromping all over my yard. I refused to talk to them. I told them they could go dig up their dirt somewhere else. It was a tragedy, that’s all. God forgives everything, I have to believe that. The people I feel sorry for are the children.”

“What happened?”

She really didn’t want to talk about it. The woman would just give Boupha the basics-she could get them from the paper anyway.

Last Wednesday, in the middle of the night, Mr. Friedman, who was having serious health problems, took a kitchen knife and stabbed Mrs. Friedman-who was having even more serious health problems-many times. Then Mr. Friedman stabbed himself, once, in the neck (the woman gestured with the spade). He survived, she died, which the woman guessed was better than the other way around, but it was still horrible. They were both such nice people. Mrs. Friedman had been president of the Hadassah.

“I’m sorry,” Boupha said.

“It’s no mystery. He couldn’t take care of her anymore, that was all. He was afraid.”

“You said there are children.” She petted Edgar as if to show how good he was.

“They’re long gone. They wanted to get as far away as possible from this mess, and I don’t blame them. I don’t have the slightest idea how to get ahold of them. You might try the police. It’s a shame. He always had such a sweet disposition for a shepherd. I’d take him in a second if I wasn’t allergic.”

“Is there anyone around here who could?”

The woman shrugged and shook her head as if there was nothing anyone could do.

Boupha knew what her father would do. He’d leave the dog sitting on the porch and drive away. Boupha thought she could have done that too, if the woman wasn’t standing there. Maybe later she could come back and tie him to a tree in the backyard-but how long would he be there, and who would find him? She might as well drive over to Brighton and drop him off at animal control.

She thanked the woman and-finally resorting to treats again-convinced Edgar to get back in the cab. In the rearview mirror, he watched his old home go, and she wondered if, that night, he’d tried to protect Mrs. Friedman, or whether it had already been too late and he was just lucky to escape. The way he acted on the porch, she wasn’t sure he understood what had happened. Had he expected them to be there waiting for him?

He was old, and hurt, and maybe he couldn’t imagine that great of a change.

When she let him out in their parking lot, she noticed bloody pawprints on the seat. He’d probably opened the cut running across the yard.

“I tell you!” her father shouted. “You get rid of him! Boupha!”

She closed the bathroom door to tend to Edgar, but the butterflies were fine. In the other room, her father raged.

“Stop!” she finally shouted. “I can hear you. Everyone can hear you. I’ll get rid of him when he’s better. Right now he’s sick.”

“That’s why you need to get rid of him! You’re not a doctor!”

She wasn’t, and she really needed to be. That night, as she was falling asleep, Edgar got up from his corner, padded to a spot in front of her closet, and squatted. The puddling noise woke her.

“No!” she yelled. “Bad!”

Fearing diarrhea, she turned on the light and saw he was unleashing a bloody stream. He looked over at her guiltily as it gushed out of him onto the carpet.

She jumped up in just her T-shirt and dragged him into the kitchen so he would go on the linoleum, because he wasn’t done, but that only made a bigger mess.

“What’s happening?” her father shouted.

“He’s sick.”

“I tell you that already.”

Someone upstairs stomped on the floor.

“Shut up!” Boupha yelled at the ceiling.

Bomp, bomp, bomp!

“Boupha! Listen to me! Get rid of it!”

In the whole city, the only animal hospital that was open was in Brookline. She laid down towels, knowing they wouldn’t do any good. He couldn’t stop. She couldn’t stop it. Her father was right, she wasn’t a doctor, and when she parked by the sliding doors and carried the dog inside, her sopping T-shirt sticking to her skin, there was nothing the doctor could do either.

She paid them to take care of him, a week’s worth of tips.

“What I tell you?” her father said. “You don’t listen. Stupid.”

The next morning she cleaned the carpet, going over the spot with Resolve and a scrub brush. She threw out the toys and blankets and folded the cage away. She took the car to the self-wash, using the rubber gloves and Oust one last time.

She worked. She drove. She bought her father cigarettes and listened to him cough. In the night he summoned her. “Boupha!” he called. “Boupha!” And sometimes, as she made her way through the darkened kitchen, she imagined the knives piled in the silverware drawer, and wondered how strong or how weak you would have to be to use them. Not very, she thought.

THE CROSS-EYED BEAR
BY JOHN DUFRESNE

Southie

Father Tom Mulcahy can’t seem to get warm. He’s wearing his bulky cardigan sweater over his flannel pajamas over his V-neck T-shirt. He’s got fleece-lined cordovan slippers on over his woolen socks and an afghan folded over his lap. The radiator is clanging and hissing in the corner, and he’s still shivering. He tugs his watch cap over his ears, wipes his runny nose with a tissue. He stares at the bed against the wall and longs for the sleep of the dead. The window rattles. The weather people expect eighteen to twenty inches from the storm. He sips his Irish whiskey, swallows the other half of the Ativan, opens Meister Eckhart, and reads how all of our suffering comes from love and affection. He slips the venomous letter into the book to mark his page. The red numerals on the alarm clock seem to float in their black box. He sees his galoshes tucked under the radiator, the shaft of the right one bent to the floor. He’s so tired he wonders if the droopy galosh might be a sign from God. Then he smiles and takes another sip of whiskey.

He lifts a corner of the curtain, peeks out on the driveway below, and sees fresh footprints leading to the elementary school. Probably Mr. O’Toole, the parish custodian, up early to clear the walk, an exercise in futility, it seems to Father Tom. The snow swirls, and the huge flakes look like black moths in the spotlight over the rectory porch. How new the world seems like this, all the clutter and debris mantled in white. He looks at the school and remembers the childhood exhilaration of snow days. Up early, radio on, listening to ’BZ, waiting for Carl De Suze to read the cancellation notices: “No school in Arlington, Belmont, and Beverly. No school, all schools, Boston…” In the years before his brother died, Tom would wake Gerard with the wicked good news, and the pair of them would pester their mom for cocoa and then snuggle under blankets on the couch and watch TV while she trudged off to work at Filene’s. They’d eat lunch watching Big Brother Bob Emery, and they’d toast President Eisenhower with their glasses of milk while Big Brother’s phonograph played “Hail to the Chief.” Maybe if Gerard had lived, if they’d taken him to the hospital before it was too late, maybe then their dad would not have lost heart and found the highway.

Father Tom woke up this morning-well, yesterday morning now-woke up at 5:45 to get ready to celebrate the 6:30 Mass. He opened his eyes and saw the intruder sitting in the rocking chair. Father Tom said, “Who are you?”

“I’m with the Globe.”

“Mrs. Walsh let you in?”

“I let myself in.”

“What’s going on?”

The man from the Globe tapped his cigarette ash into the cuff of his slacks.

“No smoking in the room, Mr…?”

“Hanratty.”

“I’m allergic.”

“Does the name Lionel Ferry mean anything to you?”

Father Tom found himself accused of sexual abuse by a man who claimed to have been molested and raped while he was an altar boy here at St. Cormac’s. Thirty-some years ago. A reticent boy whom Father Tom barely thinks about anymore, not really, now a troubled adult looking for publicity and an easy payday from the archdiocese, needing an excuse to explain his own shabby and contemptible life, no doubt. Out for a little revenge against the Church for some fancied transgression. Father Tom had no comment for this Mr. Hanratty. And he has no plans to read the morning papers. But he does know they’ll come for him, the press, the police, the cardinal’s emissaries. His life as he knew it is over. Already the monsignor has asked him not to say Mass this morning-no use giving the disaffected an easy target.

He never did a harmful thing to any child, but he will not be believed. He prays to Jesus, our crucified Lord, to St. Jude, and to the Blessed Virgin. Father Tom trusts that God would not give him a burden he could not bear. He puts out the reading lamp. He stuffs earplugs in his ears, shuts his eyes, and covers them with a sleep mask. He feels crushed with fatigue, but his humming brain won’t shut down. He keeps hearing that Paul Simon song about a dying constellation in a corner of the sky. The boy in the bubble and all that. “These are the days of…” And then unfamiliar faces shape themselves out of the caliginous murk in front of his closed eyes and morph into other faces, and soon he is drifting in space and shimmering like numerals on a digital clock, and then he’s asleep. In his dream he’s a boy again, and he’s sitting with Jesus on a desolate hill overlooking Jerusalem. It’s very late, and the air, every square inch of it, is purple. Jesus weeps. Tom knows what Jesus knows, that soon Jesus will be betrayed. Jesus wipes His eyes with the sleeve of His robe and says, “You always cheer me up, Thomas,” and He tickles Tom in the ribs. Tom laughs, tucks his elbows against his sides, and rolls away. “Do you like that, Thomas? Do you?” Tom likes it, but he tells Jesus to stop so he can breathe. “Stop, please, or I’ll wet my pants!” But Jesus won’t stop.

Father Tom wakes up when the book drops to the floor. He takes off the sleep mask, picks up the letter, unfolds it, and reads in the window light. I’ll slice off your junk and stuff it down your throat, you worthless piece of shit. I’ll drench you with gasoline and strike the match that sends you to hell.

While he’s waiting for the monsignor to finish up in the bathroom, Father Tom considers the painting he’s been staring at all his life. It hung in the front hall of the family’s first-floor apartment on L Street when he was a boy, and he was sure it must have been called Sadness or Gloom. His parents had no idea what it was called. The painting was a gift from an Irish cousin on his mother’s side was all they knew. One of the O’Sullivans from Kerry. Now it hangs on the wall above Father Tom’s prie-dieu. As a boy he saw this ragged, barefoot woman sitting on a rock in the middle of an ocean with her eyes blindfolded and her head bandaged and chained to a wooden frame that he assumed to be an instrument of torture, but turned out to be a lyre, of all things, and the rock was really the world itself, and the title was actually and inexplicably Hope. He’s been trying to understand the aspiration, the anticipation in this somber and forlorn study in hazy blues and pale greens all his life. Hope is blind? Does that even make sense? The lyre has only one string. So the music is broken. The dark sky is starless. All he’s ever felt looking at the picture is melancholy and desolation. Hopelessness. Is that it? If you are without desire, you are free?

He hears the bathroom door open and Monsignor McDermott descend the creaky staircase. The bathroom reeks of Listerine and bay rum aftershave. He folds the monsignor’s pearl-handled straight razor and puts it by the shaving brush and mug. He starts the shower and lets the room steam and warm while he shaves. He stares in the mirror and wonders what people see when they look at him. He cuts himself in the little crease beside his lip and applies a tear of toilet paper to the bubble of blood. He looks at his face and sees his father’s blue eyes and his mother’s weak chin. He removes the toilet paper and dabs the cut with a styptic pencil. Gerard was the handsome one.

Mrs. Walsh, bless her heart, has already brewed the coffee and filled his cup. “Will it be eggs and toast, Father?”

“Just coffee this morning, Mary.” He stirs his coffee, lays the spoon in the saucer. “The monsignor left for Mass already, I see.” For just a second there, Father Tom forgot that today is not like other days. “I never did what that man said, you know.”

“That’s between you and the Lord, Father. It’s no business of mine.” She walks to the sink and peers out the window. “Sixteen inches already, and no sign of a letup. There’ll be snow on the ground till Easter.”

“I can’t even remember the boy very clearly.”

“He was one of your favorites, Father. Altar boy, he was. Tim Griffin’s nephew. You called him ‘Train.’ He had the vocation, you used to say.”

“But didn’t become a priest.”

“Became a drunk and a burden to his dear mother, may her soul rest in peace.” Mrs. Walsh sets the dishcloth to dry on the radiator and straightens the braided rug by the stove, a rug she made herself thirty-some years ago from her husband’s and children’s discarded clothing. There’s Himself’s blue oxford shirt right there and little Mona’s corduroy jumper. When she sees the shirt, she sees her dear Aidan in it and his gray suit and red tie on their honeymoon on Nantasket Beach. “There have been other accusations, Father. Other men have come forward.”

“I did nothing except be kind to those boys, give them the love and attention they didn’t get at home. I never-”

The doorbell chimes. Mrs. Walsh says, “That’ll be Mr. Markey from the cardinal’s office. He’ll be wanting a word with you.” She walks to the front door and adds over her shoulder, “He’s a merciful Lord, Father.”

Mr. Markey unsnaps his earflaps and takes off his storm hat. He holds it by the visor and slaps it against his leg, then hangs it on a peg and toes off his shearling boots. He hands his gloves and scarf to Mrs. Walsh and hangs his wool car coat on the hall tree, claps his hands together, and rubs them. He takes Mrs. Walsh by the shoulders and plants a noisy kiss on her forehead. “And how’s my favorite colleen today?”

Mrs. Walsh blushes. “Enough of the blarney, Mr. Markey.”

Mr. Markey holds out his hand to Father Tom. “Francis X. Markey.” They shake hands. Mr. Markey points to the parlor. “Care to join me, Father?”

Father Tom sits on the edge of the sofa behind the coffee table, his hands folded on his knees. Mr. Markey drops into the upholstered armchair, leans his head back against the antimacassar, and runs his fingers through his hair. “I gave the monsignor five bucks and told him to get a forty-five-minute coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts. It’s the only thing open between here and the expressway.” He leans forward. “You know why I’m here.”

“I’ve been threatened, Mr. Markey.” Father Tom slides the vicious letter across the coffee table.

Mr. Markey leans forward and reads it, steeples his fingers, and brings his hands to his face. “It won’t be the last, I would guess. I should make one thing clear, Father. I don’t care what you did or didn’t do. I don’t particularly care what happens to you. I don’t care about you in any but the most Christianable way. I care about Holy Mother the Church.”

“I didn’t do what I’ve been accused of.”

“You’re up to your neck in shit, my friend.” Mr. Markey walks to the French doors and closes them, then turns back to Father Tom. “You attended O’Connell Seminary, am I right?”

“I did.”

“Yes, you did. You guys had a regular fuck show going over there, didn’t you?”

“I don’t have to listen to this.”

“Yes, you do. I’m the only guy who can keep you out of Concord.” Mr. Markey takes a handful of Skittles from the bowl on the coffee table and eats a few. “You do not want to go to prison.”

“I’m innocent. I won’t go to prison.”

Mr. Markey smiles and shakes his head. “They’ll put you in protective custody, of course. What you need to understand, however, is that the guards are scarier than the inmates when it comes to pedophiles. They’ll piss in your food, shit in your bunk, and they’ll sodomize you with a control baton if you complain. They’ll degrade you in every way they can. And then one day while you’re playing cribbage with another kiddie diddler, the guards will turn away when some trusty goes after you with a lead pipe.”

Father Tom puts his head in his hands. He takes a deep breath and sits back, stares at the ceiling. He hears Mrs. Walsh whispering-her prayers, no doubt-as she climbs the stairs. “Why has His Eminence sent you here, Mr. Markey?”

“I make problems go away.” He shows Father Tom his handful of Skittles, rubs his palms together, holds out two fists and says, “Which hand has the candy?”

“The left.”

Mr. Markey opens his empty left hand and then his empty right hand. He turns his palms to show he’s not hiding anything. “Do you remember a priest named Dan Caputo?”

“Died last year. Had a parish in JP and did all that social justice work. ‘Speak truth to power,’ and all that-he was an inspirational leader.”

“But he had a secret, as so many of us do. The cops found his battered corpse in an alley in Chinatown, his pants down to his ankles, a cock ring on his dick, and what would prove to be semen on his lips. When they checked his ID and found out who he was, they called the cardinal, who called me.”

“I didn’t hear about any of this.”

“Exactly. We got rid of the porn magazines and videos in his car. He died a hero.” Mr. Markey sits in the armchair and looks at Father Tom. “The Catholic Workers named their new place after him. The Father Dan Caputo House of Hospitality.” He laughs. “Nothing is ever what it seems to be, Father.” He reaches in his pocket. “Weather alert.” He takes out his BlackBerry. “This event has all the makings of a Storm of the Century.” He reads his text message. “Calling for three feet inside 128.” He puts the BlackBerry away. “Now this is what we’re going to do. First, I’m going to offer our Mr. Ferry a handsome settlement in exchange for a signed statement admitting that he has been lying about the molestations due to his profound depression and anxiety. He’ll agree to check himself into a mental health clinic; you’ll be reassigned to a desk job at the chancery for the time being, and in a while this aggravation will be forgotten.”

“It’s in the papers.”

“You’ll do a press conference at which you’ll graciously and humbly accept Mr. Ferry’s apology and forgive him.”

“And if he doesn’t agree to your conditions?”

“That would suggest that he is a man of principle. But a penniless alcoholic, we both know, cannot afford principles.”

“But if he surprises you, then we go to trial and I’m exonerated.”

“Neither necessary nor desirable.” Mr. Markey walks to the fireplace and leans against the mantle. “Let me ask your opinion, Father, about this epidemic of predatory priests. Not you, of course. The guilty ones like Geoghan and Shanley. That lot. And Father Gale over here at St. Monica’s. The priesthood turns out to be a good place to hide in plain sight. Am I right?”

“I wouldn’t call it-”

“Six hundred and fifteen million dollars the Church in the States paid out just last year. That makes two billion total. Fourteen thousand felonies by forty-five hundred pedophile priests. And it’s only the tip of the iceberg, believe me.” He squats and warms his hands over the fire. “I have a theory, for what it’s worth.” He moves his left hand into the flame and leaves it there. “A theory of arrested development.”

“You’ll burn yourself.”

“You go to the seminary out of high school, and it’s all paid for. You graduate and get your parish assignment-no chasing down leads, no job interviews.” He pulls his hand out of the flame and examines it. “Along with the assignment comes food, clothing, and shelter, a salary, a woman to cook, clean up after you, and do your laundry. You get a professional allowance, health insurance, and a pension. You snap on the Roman collar, and you have instant respect without having earned it.”

“That’s unfair.”

“The Church stifles your emotional growth. You’re a boy called Father. Not just you personally, Father. All of you.”

“Are you finished?”

“Then there’s the disagreeable issue of celibacy. Troublesome, am I right? Me, if I can’t release a few times a week, Jesus, I’m impossible to live with. Sure, you can masturbate and remain celibate and sane, but jacking off’s a sin, so what to do?”

“Pray.”

“You can pray away a boner?”

“One chooses to remain chaste, Mr. Markey. It’s a sacrifice, not a curse.”

Mr. Markey puts his hands behind his head and shrugs his shoulders. “But why little boys? That’s what I wonder, and then I think, yes, of course, arrested development. If you’re a boy yourself, you’re comfortable among other boys, and you also know an abused boy would never say anything about sucking your cock for fear the other kids would call him a fag. Shame keeps him quiet. Am I getting warm, Father?”

“You think you know me, but you don’t.”

“Thomas Aloysius Mulcahy, born February 15, 1948, at Mass General, second son to Brian, postal worker, and Kathleen, née O’Sullivan, Mulcahy. Attended St. Cormac’s Grammar School and South Boston High; B student, perfect attendance in eleventh grade. You had mumps, chicken pox, measles, and rubella. You wore corrective glasses and corrective shoes. Your beloved brother Gerard died of spinal meningitis in 1958, and your dad blamed himself, drank more heavily, and abandoned the family six months later. So there you were at ten, alone with a hysterical mother and bereft of affection.”

Father Tom closes his eyes and sees himself lying on the floor by his mother’s locked bedroom door, crying, not knowing if she was also dead. He feels Mr. Markey’s hand on his shoulder and opens his eyes, wipes them.

“So you understood just how vulnerable boys who’d lost their dads were. They needed the love and guidance of an older man, and you reached out to them.”

“You’re making compassion sound obscene.”

“You took them for ice cream, to Fenway, to the beach. Their mothers were so grateful. You were a savior. Lionel even thought you were using him to woo his mom. And, of course, with you being a priest, he was confused.”

“You spoke with him?”

“Last night. He’s still living in his mom’s place on I Street.” Mr. Markey stared out the window at the howling storm. “He said you took him to the movies.”

“I took many boys to many movies.”

“You bought popcorn, buttered popcorn. ‘Butted,’ he said. ‘Hut butted pupcon,’ and you held the box on your lap, and when he reached in for a handful, your fingers touched, and you let the touch linger. He said you licked the ‘buttah’ off his fingers-”

“He’s lying.”

“That could be. Or it could be false memories. That happens. But let me ask you this. Has any priest ever confessed abuse to you?”

“If any had, I wouldn’t tell you.”

“What would you do if Father X told you he boinked all the altos in the boys’ choir?”

“I’d grant him absolution if he were contrite and determined not to sin again.”

“That’s it?”

“If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him.”

“Forgive, and ye shall be forgiven.”

“I might also suggest counseling, therapy, prayer, and avoiding the near occasion to sin.”

Mr. Markey picks up a copy of The Pilot off the coffee table and reads. “Cardinal Law Appointed Archpriest at Vatican Basilica.” He shakes his head, rolls the paper and slaps it against his leg. “Our ex-cardinal here once accused a six-year-old boy of negligence and culpability in his own repeated rapes. Under oath!” He drops the paper onto the coffee table. “I can’t shake this paranoid fantasy I have of a fellowship of child-molesting priests all going to confession to one another, forgiving one another, and moving on as if nothing ever happened.”

“One would need sincere contrition.”

“They confess; they are contrite; they are forgiven.” Mr. Markey checks his watch. “I’m going to need to speak with the monsignor alone. Maybe you should visit the church and pray for strength and guidance. By the time we see you again, everything should be taken care of.” Mr. Markey puts his hand on the back of Father Tom’s neck and squeezes. He pulls Father Tom’s head toward his own until their foreheads touch. “Trust me.”

Father Tom feels a hot current of pain buzz through his skull like his head’s attached to a live electrical wire, but he’s rigid, shaken, and speechless, and he can’t pull away.

Father Tom lights a votive candle and prays for courage and understanding. He’s always savored his time alone in a dark church where he feels hidden away. As a boy he’d arrive at 5 or 6 every Saturday morning, sit beneath the stained-glass window of the Last Supper, and pray the rosary. He wanted God to know that he was no Sunday Catholic; he was a boy God could count on, a soldier of Christ. Father Tom genuflects, walks to the pew beneath the Last Supper, and sits. The world seems far away. He remembers asking God to make him either dead or invisible. Dead he’d be with Jesus and Gerard; invisible he’d be alone.

He looks up at the window. Jesus has a mole under His right eye. The beloved John has his head on his arm and his arm on the table. His eyes are shut, and he’s smiling like he’s tasted the honeyed love of his Lord. The apostle Thomas stands behind the others, and all you see is his single wide eye peering above the heads at Jesus, the way Gerard’s single eye peered above the hem of the blanket on the couch when he ran his foot along Tom’s leg. “Quit it, Gerard, or I’ll call Mom!”

When Gerard lay in his coma at the hospital, the nuns from St. Cormac’s took up residence in his room and kept a twenty-four-hour vigil. They fussed and prayed over him. Sister Brigid saw the Angel Gabriel at the foot of Gerard’s bed, weeping. Gerard was a saint, the nuns were certain. The ones He loves best, God takes first. When Gerard died in his mother’s arms, the nuns hung framed photos of Gerard in every classroom alongside the president and the Pope. Then the stories of Gerard’s sanctity started, how he had healed a starling’s broken wing with just a touch, how he could be both in church and in school simultaneously, how he could smell the presence of sin, how the statue of the Virgin Mary on the altar had wept at the moment of Gerard’s passing.

What Father Tom will admit to if they ask-because it’s pretty normal anyway-is that there are two selves in him. There’s the self you see, the Father Tom he wants to be, the he who is pastoral, devout, compassionate, prudent…and what else? Vulnerable? Yes. And washed in the blood of the Lamb. And this is the bona fide Father Tom Mulcahy. And then there is the sinner, the carnal scoundrel who is impulsive, selfish, devious, and insatiable, a wolf inside who knows the secret of Father Tom’s loneliness and hunger, and who would, if he could, twist Father Tom’s selfless love and earnest affection into something loathsome and viperous. Father Tom will admit, this is to say, that he is indeed human and flawed, no better than they. And he’ll explain to them his obsessive vigilance and tenacity in the battle with his pernicious other, and how he has always vanquished the interloping demon and has done so at a staggering price.

One day after sledding and making snow angels, he and Gerard built a snowman in the small backyard, and his brother took the carrot for the nose and stuck it down there and made it a weenie and told Tom to get down on his knees and eat it. He wouldn’t, so Gerard pushed his face into the snow and sat on his head until Tom couldn’t breathe, and he was terrified and his mother wasn’t here to save him.

He hears a noise, like someone dropped a hymnal, but when he looks around, he sees no one. He says, “Mr. O’Toole?” and hears his voice echo. He listens to the howling wind and to his beating heart. And then he hears his sobbing mother say, Why Gerard, dear God? They are in the hospital and Tom is in a corner, peering past the nuns at his mother, prostrate on his dead brother’s bed. Why the beautiful one? she says.

Father Tom prays for wisdom, guidance, and deliverance. He’ll do God’s will, and if God wants him to suffer unjustly, then so be it. But he’s done with waiting. He’ll speak with this Judas, this traducer, this Lionel Ferry, and give him a chance to confess his lies and to accept God’s grace into his heart.

When Father Tom enters the sacristy, he’s surprised by a man in a cumbersome green snow suit standing in a puddle of melting snow. “Mr. O’Toole?” Father Tom says. A black balaclava covers most of the man’s face. His mustache is white with ice, and his glasses are opaque with fog. This man, who is apparently not Davy O’Toole, who is, Father Tom realizes, several inches shorter than the custodian, has a snowball in his left hand, which he lobs to Father Tom. When Father Tom catches the ball against his chest, the man swings what must be a club and strikes him on the side of his face, and he drops to the floor. His skull is shattered, he’s certain, but it doesn’t hurt. He hears the squeak of footsteps, hears the church door open, squeal, and slam shut. After several minutes, he opens the one eye that will, touches his face, and feels the drilling pain. His left ear is ringing.

Father Tom holds a handful of numbing snow over his swollen eye, presses the buzzer, and waits. He kicks aside some drifted snow and forces the storm door open. He knocks on the inside front door twice and then shave-and-a-haircut. A voice says, “Come in if you’re beautiful.” Father Tom drops the snow from his eye, shakes off as much snow as he can from his coat and slacks, steps inside the unlit parlor, and lets his eye adjust. “Hello!” He can see his breath. He can make out a sofa and a sleeping bag spread on the floor. He hears, “Be right with you. Gotta drain the lizard.”

The parlor is spare, grim, disordered, and in need of a good airing out and thorough cleaning. The flock wallpaper is peeling and water-stained. Next to the sleeping bag is a white plastic lawn chair stacked with magazines. There’s a small TV on the floor and a bookcase crammed with videotapes in black boxes. He hears, “Make yourself at home.” He steps around pizza boxes-pepperoni and sausage, or are those mouse droppings?-and piles of funky clothing and sits in an old wooden kitchen chair with a slat missing from the backrest. He notices an unframed paint-by-number portrait of Pope John Paul II hung over the light switch by the closed door to what had been Lionel’s bedroom. He sees those eyes that follow you around the room.

Lionel enters cradling a bottle of vodka. He’s wearing a waist-length leather jacket with an extravagant fur collar, black patent leather shoes, and no shirt. His khaki chinos have been pissed in.

“Train?”

“Tommy Gun!”

“What’s happened to you?”

“That’s what we called you behind your back.”

“You don’t have to live like this.”

“Your eye?”

“I fell.”

Lionel flops onto the couch. “I’ve been expecting you.”

“You have?”

“For years.” He drinks.

“We need to talk.”

Lionel pats the sofa cushion. “Come sit with me.”

“I’m fine here.”

“I won’t bite.” He smiles. “I insist.”

Father Tom moves to the sofa. “Did you write me a letter?”

“I never mailed it.” Lionel touches Father Tom’s arm. “I forgive you, Father. But I can’t forget. That’s the difference between me and God.”

“I think you may have misunderstood my actions, Train.”

“Of course you do. Otherwise, how could you live with yourself?”

“You don’t want to do this to me.”

“Do you remember my father’s funeral? You drove me home from the cemetery.”

“Kevin was a good man.”

“He was an asshole.” Lionel sniffles and sips the vodka. His eyes water, and he knows he could cry, but there’ll be time for that later. “You bought me an ice-cream cone, pistachio with jimmies, and drove slowly. You said, ‘I know for a young boy like you, Train, this is an awful loss.’ By then you were patting my leg. You left your hand on my thigh…”

Father Tom unbuttons his coat and takes off his cap, pats down his thin, flyaway hair. He feels his forehead. He remembers those mornings in church when Jesus would come to him with His heart burning like a furnace, and the heat would blanket Tom, and he would sweat and lift his eyes to heaven, and Jesus would thrust a golden dart through his heart.

“…and then your hand was in your pants, and your face was all squinched up, and all I could do was stare out the window and hope it would end, and the ice cream melted and ran down my arm until it was all gone.”

“That did not happen, and I don’t know why you want to think it did. I was offering you comfort and solace. I knew what it felt like to hunger for human touch. My father never held me, Train. Ever. My mother never did after Gerard died.”

“Should I play my little violin?”

“I took your father’s place.”

“I’d wake up and you’d be in my bed.”

“On your bed. Watching you sleep, like fathers have always watched their sons and imagined brilliant futures for them.”

“That’s fucked up.”

“You were an affectionate boy. You brought out the tenderness in people. In me. And yes, I felt needed; I felt connected to another person for the first time since Gerard died.”

“Did you wonder how I felt?”

“If it was a problem for you, you should have told me. I would have respected that. I had an understanding with myself. I thought I had your permission.”

“If nothing sexual ever happened, why do I remember that it did?”

“Could you be making it up, Train?”

And then there’s a knock, and Mr. Markey opens the door and steps into the room. He stamps his feet, tosses a fifth of brandy to Lionel and a newspaper to Father Tom. “You’re famous, Father.”

The man behind Mr. Markey takes off his glasses and his balaclava. He wipes his glasses with a hanky and puts them back on.

Mr. Markey says, “I believe you’ve already met my friend, Mr. Hanratty.”

“Twice,” Father Tom replies.

Mr. Markey says, “You’ll excuse us, gents,” and Lionel gets up and follows Mr. Hanratty down the hall to the kitchen.

“He’s a reporter,” Father Tom says.

Mr. Markey smiles. “Terrance doesn’t write for the Globe; he delivers it.”

Father Tom points to his face. “He did this to me.”

“He can be a little feisty. I try to keep him on a short leash.” Mr. Markey shrugs. “So tell me, Father, does our Lionel still make your heart beat faster?”

Father Tom stands and steps toward the door. “I’m not going to sit here and listen to this.”

Mr. Markey grabs Father Tom’s arm at the wrist and twists it until the palm is behind his back and the elbow is locked. “I’ve read somewhere that pain elevates our thoughts,” Mr. Markey says, and he tugs at the arm until Father Tom feels like it’ll snap at the wrist and shatter at the shoulder. “Of course, I’m not a theologian.”

Father Tom is bent at the waist and in tears. “Please, you’re hurting me.”

“Keeps our mind off amusements.”

“You’re insane.”

“Have you ever slept on a bed of crushed glass, Father?”

“Please, dear God!”

“Worn a crown of nettle?” Mr. Markey lifts the arm slowly. “These are not rhetorical questions, Father. Answer me.”

“No, I haven’t.”

Mr. Markey releases Father Tom and shoves him back onto the sofa. “What excruciating bliss when the pain ends. You feel grateful to me right now, don’t you?”

Father Tom can’t move his arm.

“Thank me.”

“Thank you?”

Mr. Markey leans over him. “Thank me!”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” Mr. Markey tousles Father Tom’s hair, pats his head. “Pain releases endorphins. You feel a little high. I believe you have practiced certain endorphin-releasing austerities yourself, have you not?”

“I’m not a masochist, if that’s what you mean.”

“The time you slammed your hand in the car door?”

“An accident.”

“That’s not what you told your therapist. Why on earth would you have wanted to punish yourself like that?” Mr. Markey walks to the window and admires the storm. “You don’t get to see but one or two nor’easters like this in a lifetime.”

Father Tom wonders if he could make it out the door before Mr. Markey catches him. And then what?

“I’m sure you struggled, Father, fought the good fight. You always wanted to do the right thing, but those little cock teasers wouldn’t let you. Always with their sweet little asses and their angelic smiles.” He leans forward and whispers: “You liked bending their heads back and kissing their exposed throats, didn’t you? Absolutely divine, isn’t it?”

“You filthy-”

“An ecstatic moment and yet so difficult to put into words.” Mr. Markey takes off his gloves and pulls up the sleeves of his car coat. “Nothing up my sleeve.” And then he reaches behind Father Tom’s ear and holds up a folded piece of loose-leaf paper. “What have we here?” He unfolds it. “My associate, Mr. Hanratty, discovered this in your dresser beneath your unmentionables while we were speaking earlier. It seems to be a list of boys’ names. Should I read them?”

“Boys from the parish, boys I’ve worked with.”

“But not all the boys you’ve worked with. What’s special about these boys?”

“Everyone has his favorites.”

Mr. Hanratty returns and hands a manila folder to Mr. Markey, who holds it up for Father Tom to see. “You can guess what this is, I’m sure.”

“Class photos,” Father Tom says.

“Of boys.”

“Perfectly innocent,” Father Tom says.

“They help you get off, I’ll bet.”

Father Tom feels the throbbing pain in his closed eye. “Look,” he says, “it was a constant battle. I was always thinking about this…this abomination and trying not to think about it. I had no time for friendship or music or dreams or joy or charity or anything else that makes life worth living. If I had relaxed for a moment, I knew I might lose control. But I did not!”

“You are a victim of yourself. Is that what you’re saying? You’re the victim?”

Father Tom notices that the Pope’s painted eyes seem to shimmer in their sockets and spin like pinwheels and Mr. Markey’s voice sounds tinny and far away, and then Lionel’s a boy again, and he and Lionel are kneeling by the kid’s bed saying their prayers, and then he tickles Lionel until he begs him to stop, and Father Tom stops and says, What a great relief when the pleasure ends. And he drapes his arm around Lionel’s shoulders and kisses his blond head, like a father saying goodnight to his beloved son, and then, he can’t help it, he tickles Lionel again until the boy yells, Help! And then Father Tom feels his head snap and realizes he’s been slapped.

“Thanks, you needed that,” Mr. Hanratty says.

“Why were you screaming for help, Father?” Mr. Markey puts the watch cap on Father Tom’s head. “Let’s go for a walk.”

Mr. Markey closes the door behind them. He stands on the porch with Father Tom while Mr. Hanratty shovels a path through the waist-high drift to the middle of the windswept street where the snow is only shin-and ankle-deep.

“Where’s Lionel?” Father Tom asks.

“Sleeping it off.”

Father Tom pulls the cap down over his ears. The ringing in the left is worse. “What’s the best I can hope for?”

“That we’ve been wrong all along, and there’s no afterlife.”

“That’s absurd.”

“That way you won’t know you’re dead. And in hell.”

“You have no right to judge me.”

“Who would want to live forever anyway? We’d be so bored we’d kill ourselves.”

Mr. Markey leads Father Tom to the street. Mr. Hanratty spears his shovel into the snow. All Father Tom can see out of his squinted eyes are the slanting sheets of blowing flakes, the snowy hummocks of buried cars, and the indistinct façades of houses. He hears what might be the distant drone of heavy machinery or the blood coursing through his head. Mr. Markey and Mr. Hanratty stand to either side of him and lock their arms in his. Heads bowed into the wind, they begin their trudge down I Street.

“Where are you taking me?”

Mr. Markey says, “We thought you might need help.”

“I have hope.” Hope is the last emotion to leave us, Father Tom thinks. He sees the lyre player on her rock and speculates that you don’t hope for something, do you? You just hope. To wait is to hope. Hope is a rebuke to the cold and starless sky. Iam, it says. I will be. Father Tom sees movement to his right and makes out a bundled and hooded figure sweeping snow from a porch.

Mr. Markey leans his face to Father Tom’s ear and says, “Not hope! Help!” The figure on the porch stops, regards the three lumbering gentlemen, turns, and goes into the house. And then Mr. Markey adds, “Sometimes a message must be sent,” but what Father Tom hears is “Sometimes a messy, musky scent,” and he wonders why this man is speaking in riddles. Mr. Markey tells Mr. Hanratty how we all have our burden to carry, and he points to Father Tom and says, “And this is the cross-eyed bear.” Why would they call him that? Father Tom wonders.

When they reach Gleason’s Market, Father Tom knows the rectory is around the block, and he’s relieved to see that they’re taking him back. They had him rattled earlier with that talk of no afterlife and all. But what else could they do, really? Soon he’ll be sipping Mrs. Walsh’s potato and barley soup after a hot bath, and then he’ll go to his room and read and look out on this magnificent storm. Maybe he’ll read right through his Graham Greene novels like he did the winter he was laid up with the broken leg. He sees a light on in the rectory kitchen, or at least he thinks he does. With all this bone-white snow in the air, it’s not like you can actually look at anything. You look through the white. It’s like peering at the world through linen. But then the light goes off, or was never on, and he thinks of the tricks your eyes can pull on you, like when you stare at the sky and the clouds seem to race up and away from you. No, the light is still on. He turns to Mr. Markey and says, “Everything’s all right then?”

“Copacetic, Father.” Mr. Markey looks at Father Tom’s florid and swollen face, at his tiny blue eye, fixed in baggy lids like a turquoise bead on a leather pouch. A ragged little thin-lipped cyclops.

They walk past the rectory and follow a path that Mr. O’Toole has evidently plowed between the garage and the school. Father Tom looks up at the fourth-grade classroom and sees his nine-year-old self in the window by the pencil sharpener, nose pressed against the glass, looking down at him. When he peers out the window, Tom sees a battered old drunk being helped home by two friends, and he would like to know whose grandfather this is, but Sister calls him back to his seat for the spelling bee. Father Tom thinks now that he remembers that stormy morning when this ungainly procession passed below the window as he watched, but the old man could not have been him. A person can’t be in two places at the same time. And then Monsignor McDermott is standing in the window. Father Tom would like to wave hello, but the men have his arms. The monsignor blows his nose and wipes it and then tucks his hanky up the sleeve of his cassock. Father Tom struggles to free the arm, and his escorts release him. He waves, but to an empty window. He considers screaming but doubts his voice would carry in the muffled stillness of the snow. And if it did? He lifts his arms, and the gentlemen lock theirs in his and walk.

“That’s better,” Mr. Markey says.

When they head up an alley and away from the rectory, Father Tom asks Mr. Markey, “Who do you think you are?”

“Nobody.”

“You’re somebody.”

“Am I?”

“And I think I know you.”

Father Tom is warm under this snowy blanket and would like to take off his jacket. He feels the icy snow whipping at his face and sees a pearl-handled straight razor lying on a bloom of crimson snow by his groin. He’s on his back. His legs are buried beneath the drift. How long has he lain here? He gurgles, coughs, tastes blood in his mouth. He’d been dreaming of falling through a starless purple sky away from the vision of Christ when he realized he was tumbling toward the infernal abyss, and he screamed himself awake, thank God. His left arm is bent at the elbow and points to heaven. He tells the arm to move, but nothing happens. He might as well be telling someone else’s arm to move. He remembers long ago lying helplessly in Lionel’s bed with the dozing boy and trying to will him to turn, to rest his head on his, Father Tom’s, chest and his slender arm on Father’s waist. And later when Lionel whimpered and opened his teary eyes, Father Tom held him and said, “You’ve had a bad dream, Train, that’s all. Don’t cry, baby, don’t cry. Don’t cry.”

But if he did not, in fact, scream himself awake moments ago, and if this is, indeed, hell, this frozen drift of blood and guilt, then Father Tom is happy to know that at least they don’t take your memories away, which makes sense, because without a past you don’t exist, and there can be no hell for you. He knows that his memories of love and affection will comfort and sustain him for eternity. And then he sees Mr. Markey and Mr. Hanratty standing over him. But when Mr. Hanratty pulls back his balaclava, Father Tom sees that it’s Gerard, and he’s with Jesus and not with Mr. Markey, and Jesus has His arm draped over Gerard’s shoulders. Jesus waves at Father Tom and says, “So long, small fry!” They shake their heads and turn away.

“Stop, please!” Father Tom says, or thinks he says. And then he watches them somehow as they walk back in the direction of St. Cormac’s, watches Jesus whisper into Gerard’s ear, and the two of them turn again to glance back at him, but all they see is a black smudge in a white world that looks otherwise unsullied.