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By Root 10424 0

contribute to the support of their pastor. If they did these things, and if they dedicated their lives to God’s Holy Mother, and to the good and great patron saint of their parish who had driven the snakes out of Ireland, converting it to the true faith so that it had become the Isle of Saints and Scholars, they would all be among the sheep and not the goats on that grand and final day of judgment, when the God of Love would become the God of Justice. Wishing that they would all go forth to lead holy and happy lives, he gave them one final word of warning. On this very night of their graduation, when they and their parents were so proud, so happy, so righteously gratified, there was many a work-worn father and many a gray-haired mother sitting by the lamplit parlor window, waiting and praying for the return of that prodigal son, that erring daughter, who would, alas... never return. He prayed Gawd forbid any graduates of St. Patrick’s to cause gray hairs to a father or a mother. Gawd wished that the fourth, above almost all other commandments, be kept . Honor thy father and thy mother; that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy Gawd giveth thee.

He blessed them, and the ceremonies were closed.

VII

The graduating class shuffled off the stage into the side room on the left. The boys gathered around wrinkled Sister Bertha; the girls giggled about smiling, youngish Sister Bernadette Marie.

Studs stood off by himself, wanting to join the guys and say goodbye to Battleaxe Bertha. He found himself suddenly sad because he wanted to stay in the eighth grade another year and have more fun. He told himself that Bertha was a pretty good sport, all things considered; and anyway, she hadn’t treated him so rotten like she had TB McCarthy, or Reardon, whose old man was only a working man and couldn’t afford to pay any tuition. Yes, she was a good sport at that. He wanted to go up to her and say goodbye, and say that he felt her to be a pretty good sport at that, but he couldn’t, because there was some goofy part of himself telling himself that he couldn’t. He couldn’t let himself get soft about anything, because, well, just because he wasn’t the kind of a bird that got soft. He never let anyone know how he felt. He told himself that anyway he’d join the guys and say goodbye to her. He made several starts to approach the guys, but didn’t go up. He stood watching, hoping that someone would recognize him and call him up. But he felt that he didn’t belong there. There was Frances, near Bernadette, and there was Lucy Scanlan; but they didn’t see him. His old not-belonging feeling had gotten hold of him. He eased out of the door. It was just as well, because he wanted to slip around to the can and have a smoke before he joined the folks out in front to be told he looked so swell and all that boushwah. Inside the damp boys’ lavatory on the Indiana Avenue side of the building, he leaned against a sink and puffed away, absorbed in the ascending strands of smoke. He wondered if it was really a sin to smoke, and told himself that was all bunk.

He puffed and looked about the dark and lonely place. He could hear himself breathing, and his heart beating away, and the queerness of the place seemed to put strange figures in him, and the strange figures just walked right out of his head and moved about the place, leering at him like red-dressed Satan. He felt like he used to feel when he was a young kid, and he would have nightmares, and strange boys, like demons, and as big as his father, would come and lean over his bed, and he would get up and run screaming into the dining room, where he would tear around and around the table until his old man came and shagged them away. Hell, he wasn’t afraid of spooks any more, and all this talk of spirits was a lot of hokum. It was just that he felt a little queer about something. He puffed nervously, and watched the way the rays of moonlight fell into the room and dropped over the damp floor like they were sick things.

Whenever Studs had queer thoughts he had a good trick of getting rid of them.