on Friday afternoons; stations of the cross were always too long unless Father Doneggan said them; and marching on Holy Thursday in church with a lily in your hand, and going to communion tired Sunday of every month at the eight o’clock mass with the boys’ sodality. It meant goofy young Danny O’Neill, the dippy punk who couldn’t be hurt or made cry, no matter howl he was socked, because his head was made of hard stuff like iron and ivory and marble. It meant Vinc Curley, who had water on the brain, and the doctors must have taken his brains out, drowned and dead like a dead fish, that time they were supposed to have taken a quart of water from his oversized bean. The kids in Vinc’s class said that Sister Cyrilla used to pound him on the bean with her clapper, and he’d sit there yelling he was going to tell his mother; and it was funny, and all the kids in the room laughed their guts out. They didn’t have ‘em as crazy as Vinc in Studs’ class; but there was TB McCarthy, who was always getting his ears beat off, and being made to kneel up in front of the room, or to go in Sister Bernadette’s room and sit with all the girls and let them laugh at him. And there was Reardon with horses’ hoofs for feet. One day in geography in the fifth grade, Cyrilla called on Reardon and asked him what the British Isles consisted of. Reardon didn’t know so Studs whispered to him to say iron, and Reardon said iron. Sister Cyrilla thought it was so funny she .marked him right for the day’s lesson. And St. Patrick’s meant Weary Reilley, and Studs hated Weary. He didn’t know whether or not he could lick Weary, and Weary was one tough customer, and the guys had been waiting for Studs and Weary to scrap ever since Weary had come to St. Patrick’s in the third grade. Studs was a little leery about mixing it with Reilley... no, he wasn’t... it was just... well, there was no use starting fights unless you had to... and he’d never backed out of a scrap with Weary Reilley or any other guy. And that time he had pasted Weary in the mush with an icy snowball, well, he hadn’t backed out of a fight when Weary started getting sore. He had just not meant to hit Weary with it, and in saying so he had only told the truth.
St. Patrick’s meant a lot of things. St. Patrick’s meant…..Lucy.
Lucy Scanlan would stand on the same stage with him in a few hours, and. she would receive her diploma. She would wear a white dress, just like his sister Frances, and Weary’s sister Fran, and she would receive her diploma. Everybody said that Fran Lonigan and Fran Reilley were the two prettiest girls in the class ell, if you asked him, the prettiest girl in the class was black-bobbed-haired Lucy.
He got soft, and felt like he was all mud and mush inside; held his hand over his heart, and told himself:
My Lucy!
He flicked some ashes in the sink, and said to himself: Lucy, I love you!
Once when he had been in the sixth grade, he had walked home with Lucy. Now, he puffed his cigarette, and the sneer went off his face. He thought of the March day when he had walked home with her. He had walked home with her. All along Indiana Avenue, he had been liking her, wanting to kiss her. Now, he remembered that day as clearly as if it had just happened. He remembered it better than the day when he was just a punk and he had bashed the living moses out of that smoke who pulled a razor on him over in Carter Playground, and a gang of guys had carried him around on their shoulders, telling him what a great guy he was, and how, when he grew up, he would become the white hope of the world, and lick Jack Johnson for the heavyweight championship. He remembered the day with Lucy, and his memory of it was like having an awful thirst for a cold drink of clear cold water or a chocolate soda on a hot day. It had been a windy day in March, without any sun. The air had seemed black, and the sky blacker, and all the sun that day had been in his thoughts of her. He had had all kinds of goofy, dizzy feelings that he liked. They had walked home from school along Indiana Avenue, he and Lucy. They hadn’t spoken