My Secret History Read Free

of aunty, “anny.” He said, “yooman beings.” I was thrilled by this. He was like a man from a foreign land.
    He finished and the mass continued. The “Confee-teeyor” turned into a race between Chicky and me. Normally we tried to say it very fast, like the “Soo-ship-eeyat,” but when I saw Chicky bent over and hammering his chest at the “mayah koolpah” I decided to beat him and, swiveling and muttering, I finished first.
    “I beat you,” I said, just before the consecration. We were at the side table to the far right of the altar, picking up the cruets of wine and water.
    “You skipped the middle part,” he whispered.
    “Your ass I did,” I hissed at him.
    But he wasn’t listening. He whispered, “I’m going to prove he’s an alkie,” and tossed his head.
    I looked back at Father Furty, who was coming towards us with the chalice.
    Normally a priest held out the chalice to receive a little wine and water, and returned to the stand in front of the tabernacle to drink it. It was a simple operation. But today Chicky did something I had never seen before. When Father Furty extended the chalice for the wine, Chicky emptied the cruet into it—tipped it upside down until all the wine dribbled out.
    The chalice trembled, Father Furty seemed to object, but too late; he let out a noisy breath of resignation, considered the full chalice, then moved it sideways for me to add the water. But he lifted the chalice before I could pour more than a few drops in. He returned to the tabernacle, and we studied him.
    He straightened up, and then leaned forward and rested his elbows on the altar and glanced into the chalice, tipping it towards him like a big glass. He pushed out his lips, seeming to savor it in anticipation, and then he grasped the chalice more affectionately, shifted his weight onto his back leg, raised the cup, drank it all, and let out a little gasp of satisfaction.
    He staggered a bit after that, just catching the toe of his loafer on the altar carpet, and when he was supposed to sprinkle holy water, clanged the gold rod into the holy water bucket and tossed it at the casket. By then his prayers had become growly and incoherent. There were blobs and beads of holy water on the shiny wooden lid.
    Men gathered near the casket. There was a shout of pain from the congregation, and more sobbing. Then we stood at the foot of the altar and watched the casket rolled nicely on silent rubber tires towards the doorway, where summer was blazing, and there were trees and traffic.
    Back in the sacristy, Chicky doused the incense and took his cassock and surplice off quickly. He said he had to run an errand for his mother. He knew he had done something wrong, and yet his last glance at me said, “What did I tell you?”
    Father Furty seemed bewildered, as if he were having difficulty phrasing a question. Finally he said, “This cabinet is empty. That’s very strange.”
    It was the cabinet where the mass wine was kept; but Chickyhad hidden the only other bottle—before mass, when he was sneaking a drink.
    “There’s a bottle in here,” I said, reaching into the cassock closet, where Chicky had put the bottle he had been fooling with.
    “Ah, yes. I thought I was going mental for a minute there.”
    As he took it from me he saw the Mossberg.
    “The hell’s that?”
    “Mossberg. Bolt action. Repeater.”
    He hoisted the bottle to see how much wine was in it.
    “It’s mine,” I said. “It’s not loaded.”
    He smiled and poured the wine into a glass—the wine went in with a flapping sound, bloop-bloop-bloop, purply blue with the light passing through it as if it were stained glass. And with a similar sort of sound, Father Furty drank it, emptying the glass and gasping as he had on the altar.
    All this time he was smiling at my Mossberg but he said nothing more. I felt stronger—I was strengthened by his understanding; and from that moment, the period of time it took him to drink the wine, I trusted