Father C’s cassock had the familiar reek of Player cigs and sweat as Tommy inched forward, squeezing the perfect stone overhead like he was waiting for the whistle, ready for a throw-in. When it was done, the old Pad gurgled a bit, snatched at the chain of his pectoral cross—as if he could pull himself out of the fix with it—and face-planted with a clang off the cruddy wheelbarrow into a heap of leaves. 

 

Only on the swelteringest days that summer could cook would Father C make them hunt for rocks. A football boy’s-only expedition—Totus Tuus. Not just any rocks, lads, he’d spit in that sing-songy lisp. The mission was one more perfection for the drystack—fieldstone, greenish, mossy, and round-edged. One-at-a-time hoisted onto crook’d boys’ elbows and hauled past the rectory, across the pitch, to the far side of the prayer garden and Father C’s wall. Patrick got ring-cuffed in the mouth for scuffed shoes and lost a big boy tooth. Teague was pinched raspberry blue on his back-fatty arm for mouthin’. One time, Tommy was put hard out from a pointy elbow when he refused to go along. 

 

Most fled, but Tommy stayed. His own boys were baptized by Father C and had become damn good strikers. He was proud of that. For a lifetime Tommy watched the wall thicken, closing in on the garden. Each seam was chinked in with smaller stones closing air-tight any gaps—the kind that might let secrets out. 

 

Tommy was first pew, under the giant black and white of young Father C on the touchline, whistle in hand, for the funeral. He listened to the long cavalcade of testimony about Father C’s goodness and contribution making boys into young men. 

 

When it was his turn, he joined them. 

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