Grief Street

woman who works in school offices of every generation—went about fetching Father Declan. I heard her sensible widow shoes clump across the brown-and-white asphalt tile floor. I heard her pick up the old public address speaker horn and blow into it, after which she said (twice), “Father Declan, there’s Neil Hockaday on the telephone for you... Father Declan...”
    A minute passed, maybe two...
    During which time I saw myself as a boy on a hellish cold winter’s morning, trudging along Forty-third Street to Holy Cross School. There were pancakes in my pockets, and I was thinking a boy’s careless dark thoughts: this is as bad as the world ever gets... Someday, I’ll take my mum on a big yellow Cirker van, and we’ll leave for someplace warm-
    “Neil!”
    My name fell dully on my ears. As if I were buried in a hole in the ground, and someone was shouting at me from above.
    “Yes, Father.”
    “God bless you, son. I felt I had to tell you straight off.”
    “Thank you.” I felt sweet and sick in the throat, the same as I felt when Kowalski was regaling me with the bad news of the attack on Sister. “She died in a state of grace?”
    “We’ll trust in the mercy of heaven for that.” Poor Father Declan, I thought, not being able to know if Sister comprehended his blessing on her soul through the fog of her pain. “You don’t sound well, Neil.”
    “I'm not my best.”
    “Don’t be turning around to come back now, Neil. Stay there, talk to Father Gerald. It’s what you need.”
    “Yes, all right. I’ll be back tomorrow.”
    “Come see me then, Neil, here at the church. I’ll be working Wednesday as usual—the dead table.”

Thirty

    “ S till calling me that name?”
    I was standing in the clearing with the hermit. White smoke from his pipe curled around both our heads. Charlie was walking away from us with backward steps, waving good-bye. He turned and headed for the trees and his Jeep beyond, at the edge of the rutty mountain road.
    And after all these years, these were the words he chose: Still calling me that name? To Charlie, he had said nothing; only the offer of his rough, unpriestly hand, his nod of thanks.
    “What name—?”
    “You’re staying the night, boy.” Creepy Morrison was impatient. “We’ve so little time then to get to the truth you’ve come seeking. Pity to get bogged down in a lie right off. So don’t be pretending you forgot the name.”
    “I’m still calling you the name, Father.”
    “Say it out proper, boy.”
    “Creepy.”
    “All right then—good for you, you grown-up little shit-The hermit turned, motioning for me to follow him to the house. My shoes grew heavy with cold mountain dew as w6 walked through the mown grass. He spoke to me over his shoulder. “Now we understand each other, we’ll get down to business quick.”
    “I’m sorry about that name.”
    “Strange enough, it’s like a favorite tune from a long time ago, when I was young.”
    Creepy Morrison showed me to a small room off the kitchen side of one large central space. There was a cot in my room, and a straight-back chair with a basin for water, and a wooden crucifix draped in rosary beads hanging on the rough plaster wall.
    “Settle yourself in here,” he said. “I’ll make us coffee, unless you’ll be wanting tea.”
    “Coffee, that’s fine.”
    Settling myself took the form of placing my bag on the cot and opening it. Ruby had claimed I would need a sweater in the mountains, whereas I had said, What does a New Orleans girl know from mountains? But she was right, and there was my navy wool sweater in the bag. I pulled it on over my denim shirt and stepped out to the kitchen.
    Creepy Morrison was stoking up flames in a stone-manteled fireplace. His ruddy face glowed the same color as the flying sparks. There were two chairs at the fire: one with good leather pads that was clearly for himself, for there was a Holy Bible on the seat, and then a plain oak side chair for me. Two coffee mugs—and bowls with cream and sugar and biscuits—were on a small table between.
    I took my chair. Father Morrison said nothing until he was satisfied with his fire, after which it was the coffee brewing on the stove he had to fuss about. I took in the rest of the place. A rolltop desk spilling over with papers was at the window. A long table nearby held a radio, an antique cathedral model. The two other doors off the main room Were each open: one was a bedchamber like my own, the other a