ON EASTER MORNING, THE CANTWELL’S 1959 Falcon raced down Main Street under the train bridge. They were late for Mass again. Dad zoomed to a stop on the school playground, which was already packed with parked cars. They got out and moved fast. A church song was humming through the stained glass windows, as their dress shoes quick-stepped across the pavement.
Patrick adjusted his clip-on tie and examined his conscience. He had disobeyed his Dad and gone on the train tracks, jumped in front of a train, lied, sneaked orange soda, and failed to sell enough raffle tickets. He looked at the old church air conditioner, rusting away on top of the garage, and the gold statue of Mary on the roof watching over the parish. The only raffle tickets he had sold were one to Dad and one to Granddad Cantwell. Eight more were still tucked in his wallet, unsold.
They all slinked in the back door, dipped their hands in the holy water, and made signs of the cross while the organ was laboring and the crowd was singing “Oh, Holy, Holy.” An usher who looked like Al Capone in a blue pinstriped suit with two-toned shoes gave Dad the nod and told him there was no room, except for scattered seats in the balcony and maybe three seats together way up front by the altar.
Dad leaned toward the usher and whispered. “Listen, I wonder if I could ask you a favor … Have you got any seats in back?”
The usher stepped back and blanched. “This isn’t the Muny Opera. The front seats go last.”
Dad looked at Patrick and John. “Boys, it looks like you’ll have to go up in the balcony. But be good … I don’t want to see you hanging over the railing. Sit in the back up there where it’s safe.”
The usher led Mom and Dad and Teddy up the center aisle. Dad walked quickly. He thought of the eyes on him, Catholic eyes that had gone to Catholic schools and Masses all their lives. He had only gone to public schools, but he had always attended Mass with his mother, and he wanted to raise a good Catholic family. He really did. But he always felt like an outsider at Mary Queen of Our Hearts. To him the Progressive Dinner, Dixieland Night, the Mission Carnival—all events Mom loved—were excruciating exercises in hand-shaking and self-promoting small talk. Why the hell should I get involved with these people? I don’t sell insurance,” he had protested before one Progressive Dinner. Dad had been the bottom bunk under five sailors on the Battleship Missouri, and, to him, the parish was just another battleship full of draftees and superiors, busy work and marching orders. It wasn’t a place to advance socially or be noticed. It was just a place to serve your time and hope for an honorable discharge.
But now, his boys had put him right square in the public eye. Because they couldn’t drag themselves out of bed or away from watching Johnny Quest, because they had eaten piles of pancakes in their underwear instead of getting dressed and brushing their teeth when their mom told them to, he had to tiptoe down the center aisle with everyone watching. Losing shoes, taking too long with the funny papers, or spending too much time in front of the mirror like Mom, his family was always making him late for Mass. He’d have preferred to stay home rather than provide a Cantwell parade for the whole parish’s entertainment.
The usher nodded toward the front pew. Everyone looked at Dad. He genuflected and kneeled to say a quick Our Father. Teddy sat in the pew beside him and looked around for Mom.
Mom was walking slowly up the center aisle. She took each step in time with the song, like a bride keeping the beat with the bridal march. “Oh, Holy, Holy,” she sang as parishioners turned in their pews the way customers used to swivel on stools at the Parkmoor. Her Bridge Club friends, knowing she was pregnant again, nodded and smiled. To Mom, it was an honor to be late, an honor to walk down the aisle to the best seat in the house.
Patrick and John clambered up the back steps to the balcony. If they had to be at church, they’d at least get to enjoy a scenic bluff without parental supervision. They pushed and maneuvered, and finally were able to squeeze between a couple of other worshipers for prime seats on the front row. They leaned over the railing and took in the view. Some people kneeled. Some older men and women half-kneeled, resting their bottoms on the pews. An ocean of Easter hats with yellow and pink flowers and white nets rolled gently like sea foam on wave crests as women shifted in their pews. Men’s bald spots reflected overhead lights. Bright sunlight streaked in through stained-glass windows and cast glittering jewel-colored speckles on marble saint statues and gold altar decorations.
Wearing a long, purple robe trimmed with white lace and a gold rope belt, Monsignor O’Day glided from one side of the altar to the other, reminding Patrick of some powerful alien from a recent episode of Lost in Space. Monsignor read the story of the empty tomb, then kissed the big red book and closed it. He leaned forward on the podium and looked out at his flock. Every pew was packed. The balcony was full. Twice-a-year Catholics leaned along the back walls. People coughed. This would be his biggest sermon of the year. He paused briefly, waiting for a sermon to occur.
Never one to over plan, Monsignor O’Day created sermons like dreams. They were honest, spontaneous compilations of recent images and life-long concerns stitched together by sudden transitions. No one knew what he might say, not even Monsignor O’Day. It was this style that gave his sermons a lively, Vaudeville quality. His Mass was always the most popular and was often quoted at Bridge Club. He cleared his throat, and decided to dive in.
“Easter is my favorite holiday. It’s more important even than the other big one … St. Patrick’s Day.”
Patrick’s mind wandered as he looked around the church. He spotted Jimmy Purvis. Jimmy sat in the aisle seat of a pew with his parents, and Patrick could see he was secretly unwrapping a purple foil chocolate egg. The egg jostled in his grip. It slipped into the aisle and rolled in loopy circles. Everyone saw it. Jimmy’s father, an abrasive chemical salesman, cracked him on the back of the neck. Then Al Capone rushed to avert a crisis, genuflected, grabbed the egg, and retreated to the back. Patrick looked around for something else to look at. Monsignor continued.
“The year was 1926. Pennant fever. A scout saw me playing in a sandlot and asked me, ‘How’d you like to play ball for the Redbirds?’”
Patrick looked around some more. The stained glass windows and the statues were old stuff to him. He needed something fresh, something new and interesting. Then he saw it—up above the altar by the fireproof ceiling tile. It was a marble figure of a gargoyle. Like a Wolfman with wings. He had never noticed it before. You had to be in the balcony to see it at eye level. It was solid, but in the jittery, stained-glass light, it seemed alive and ready to pounce.
He looked below it. There was a girl in a pink hat with black hair.
Ebby.
Ebby and her family were in mortal danger. They were seated almost directly beneath the grotesque creature. Any moment now, it might stretch out its wings, zing around the church a time or two, and then dive down to peck out Ebby’s eyeballs. Her older brother Raven, the one who had told her to jump in front of a train, didn’t even care. He was just sitting there with his black hair, ripping a page of the hymnal book into little pieces that fell on the floor. Patrick formulated a plan of action. He would protect Ebby and her family, and, while saving the day, he would make up for his poor sales of Cutlass Supreme tickets. Monsignor waved his hands in the air.
“And now, the nuns want to trade in their habits for bell bottoms. Recruitment! I see a pattern. First the young people start singing ‘Kumbaya’….”
Patrick leaned over the balcony, aimed his crossbow and fired an arrow attached to a rope. It shot over the crowd and stuck with a pfump in the fireproof ceiling tile above the gargoyle. John grabbed the loose end and knotted the rope securely around the legs of Mrs. Fernbacher’s pipe organ bench. A cake-loving woman, she provided a secure anchor. Patrick eased out over the railing, grabbed the rope, and began the dangling, hand-over-hand journey above the crowd toward the stone-faced gargoyle.
“Then they took away our Latin Mass, and made us speak English. I understand there’s even a plan to have everyone shake hands and say ‘peace’ to each other. Peace? I’m sure some men are hoping to sit next to a dizzy blonde….”
The gargoyle’s eyes snapped opened.
Blink.
They were dark and glassy. The creature took a breath. Its marble chest filled with air, and it’s cold, carved scales softened to scabby flesh. Hair grew. Feathers lengthened. It moved. It turned its head and looked directly at Patrick. It looked down at Ebby. None of the parishioners saw it, none were aware of the danger—except an infant with colic in pew sixteen. The baby boy screamed. His mother hefted him to her shoulder and clopped down the aisle toward the cry room. Monsignor continued.
“What happened to the Catholic tradition of working, struggling, striving to make our souls worthy to go to heaven?” Monsignor asked, his eyes scanning the room for reaction.
Swipe. Swipe. It clawed out for Patrick, but came up short. It scooted closer. Then its claws hit the rope. Kthonggggggg. The arrow loosened. Bits of fireproof ceiling tile tinkled on the altar like flecks of snow. The gargoyle looked down at Ebby and licked its lips, the rope slackened, and Patrick tumbled down toward a cluster of bald spots.
“Careful!” John hissed, grabbing the back of Patrick’s sports coat as he leaned a bit too far over the choir loft railing.
Monsignor O’Day looked up at the disturbance. “That’s right. Let’s be careful today as we go about our activities. Thank you for supporting the raffle. We came just short of our target. But we’ll start on the new air conditioner someday. God bless you all and Happy Easter. And remember this, as you sit down to your meals, remember to say Grace and say hi … to everyone.”
Mrs. Fernbacher leaned into the pipe organ and blew out some real heavy chords. Sinking back into the pew, Patrick and John watched her bare feet tapping across the base note pedals. Her black shoes sat waiting nearby.