by Kevin Wilson
“Put some clothes on, honey,” she told him. “Father Naylon is visiting us.”
It was evening, close to his bedtime, so Edwin struggled to decide on his pajamas or something more formal. He decided to wear a rarely used pair of old-fashioned pajamas, which resembled a suit, and a pair of penny loafers. When he walked into the living room, Father Naylon was sitting on the sofa, his hair no longer pompadoured and pomaded, but hanging over his eyes. He was nervously flipping a cigarette with one hand. When he saw Edwin, the priest waved so imperceptibly that it looked as if his hand had merely twitched. He smiled at Edwin and invited him to sit down. Just before he walked over to Father Naylon, his mother returned to the living room with a cup of coffee and handed it to the priest. He thanked her and took a tentative sip.
“Father Naylon just told me some bad news, Edwin,” she said.
Father Naylon turned back to Edwin and said, “I learned this morning that my aunt died, Edwin.”
Edwin did not understand what was happening, why the priest was in his living room, why he was having a cup of coffee, why he was telling Edwin and his mother about his aunt.
“I’m sorry,” was all Edwin could think to say.
“She raised me,” Father Naylon said. “I haven’t seen her in a few years, but she was an important person to me.”
“We’re so sorry for your loss, Father,” Edwin’s mother said.
Edwin could smell that the coffee had been doctored with alcohol, and he watched as Father Naylon took a long, silent sip from the cup.
“The reason I’ve come here tonight is that I’ve requested to perform the service for my aunt. She lives in Adairville, Kentucky, just across the Tennessee border. The church there is tiny, only a few parishioners left, and they rely on a retired priest who works between two different churches in that area. I think it would be best for me to be there.”
Edwin’s mother agreed with him. “I know she would be so pleased to know that you were there,” she said.
Father Naylon winced and then smiled. “I need an altar boy for the service; the church there has no one, and I was hoping that Edwin might come along with me.”
Edwin was shocked to hear the request, the idea that he would travel to Kentucky just to serve Mass.
“Are you sure, Father?” his mother asked. “I wonder if Edwin is really the best person for that, considering his”—she paused before she found the right word—“episodes.”
Edwin felt his voice squeak into the room. “I’m better now,” he said. “I know to breathe now.” He wasn’t sure why he now wanted to be included in the funeral, other than the fact that Father Naylon had thought of him and he wanted to prove the priest right in his decision.
“I think Edwin is a fine altar boy, very mature for his age. I think it might be good for him, actually. And he’ll be paid. Twenty dollars.”
“When would this be?” his mother asked.
“We would leave tomorrow afternoon, spend the night, and then the funeral would be early the next morning. We’d be home that evening.”
“He would have to miss school,” his mother continued. “I don’t know if that would be an excused absence.”
“I’m sure it would be okay with the school. I can talk to the principal. We would stay at my aunt’s home; Edwin would have his own room, and I would take us out for dinner that night. I would like to get there the day before the funeral so that I can look over some of my aunt’s papers and begin to get her affairs in order.”
“What do you think, Edwin?” his mother asked him. Edwin looked down at his penny loafers. The only time he had served at a funeral, back when Father Lucius had been the priest at St. Rose of Lima, Edwin had been overcome with the desire to cry, even though he had never known the deceased. He had fought off the tears with great difficulty and made it through the service, its extra, complicated steps: incense, holy water, candles. He had been given ten dollars at the end of the service, but Jeremy had taken it from him before he’d even made it out of the church.
He would appreciate having twenty dollars to spend. He would get to miss a day of school. Most of all, Edwin felt the pleasing sensation of being chosen, that Father Naylon wanted him of all people to be present at the funeral.
“I want to do it,” Edwin said.
Father Naylon smiled, held out his hand for Edwin to shake, and then finished the cup of coffee. “I’ll pick up Edwin after school tomorrow and we’ll head to Kentucky. He can call you as often as you’d like while we’re there.”
“Thank you for coming over, Father, and for thinking of Edwin. He’ll be a good boy, I’m sure. And I’m sorry again for your loss.”
Father Naylon smiled, but his face looked so tired, drained of emotion. When he left their house, Edwin watched through the windows and saw the red glow of Father Naylon’s cigarette as he sat in his car, still parked in the driveway. Edwin’s mother looked through the other window to watch the priest as well.
“I never knew anything about his family,” she remarked. “Raised by his aunt. I wonder what happened to his mother and father.”
“And his uncle,” Edwin said. Finally, the priest finished his cigarette and backed out of the driveway.
“Why are you wearing penny loafers?” his mother asked him, and Edwin simply shrugged. “You’re a strange boy, Edwin,” she said. “A beautiful boy, but strange, too.” Edwin’s mother noted this often about him, his uniqueness; he wondered if he could ever do anything to convince her that he was normal, or if he could ever do something that would make her believe that he was worse than strange, that there was something wrong with him. He kicked off the penny loafers and carried them into his room.
He decided against playing any more games of doomed soldier, not wanting to take off his pajamas, and instead climbed into bed and read the entry about the Alamo in the encyclopedia. He’d read the short passage more than a hundred times. He lingered on the drawing of the Mexican soldiers bursting into the room where Jim Bowie, relegated to his sickbed, began to fight them off. The encyclopedia commented, in language that Edwin had always found surprising for such a formal source of information, that Jim Bowie had killed several soldiers with his Bowie knife before his “brains were blown out.” In bed, the house still and silent, Edwin would sometimes awaken to the strong belief that someone was trying to enter his room and kill him in his exhausted state. Tonight, however, he slept soundly, imagining the car ride with Father Naylon, the funeral mass, the black vestments, the chance to help send someone’s spirit to heaven properly.
When Edwin stepped off the school bus, Father Naylon was waiting in the driveway, his car still running. As the bus had pulled up to his house, one of the kids asked if Father Naylon was his dad. Edwin couldn’t tell if he was joking or not and so he didn’t say a word. Edwin’s mother came to the front door with a small duffel bag, filled with dress clothes and pajamas, and walked over to Edwin.
“Are you ready for your adventure?” Father Naylon asked him. Edwin nodded, though adventure seemed the wrong word for a funeral mass in a different state. Edwin’s mother handed him the duffel bag and, without Father Naylon noticing, a twenty-dollar bill. “This is for emergencies,” she whispered to him. “Whatever you don’t use, bring back to me, please.” Edwin had never been put in charge of such currency and he felt the immediate fear of losing it, not a single cent returning to his mother. Once the charge ran through him, he allowed himself to dream about what he could buy with twenty dollars, not able to think of anything except dozens of candy bars. Father Naylon put his hand on Edwin’s shoulder and guided him to the passenger side. He took the duffel bag and placed it in the trunk. Just before he stepped into the car, Father Naylon was embraced by Edwin’s mother, who said, softly, that she was praying for him. The priest seemed to go rigid in her arms, his hands clenching and unclenching, and then Edwin’s mother released him and waved as the two of them backed out of the driveway and set off on a road trip that would end, Edwin reminded himself, with the emp
ty vessel of a body buried in the ground.
Father Naylon had two cassettes, Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska and Steve Earle’s Guitar Town. When one would end, he would simply put the other one into the tape deck and let it play until both sides were exhausted. The priest, when he needed a new cigarette, would gesture to the cigarette lighter in the car and Edwin would push the knob and wait for it to pop back out, ringed with fire. He liked the feeling of holding the lighter, his hands trembling slightly, to the unlit cigarette wedged in Father Naylon’s mouth. He liked the smell of tobacco and smoke, how it swirled around the ceiling of the car and settled in his hair. He liked the music, the rough voices of Earle and Springsteen singing about darkness that Edwin had suspected but never fully seen. An hour into the trip, Father Naylon had not said a word, his hands softly keeping time on the steering wheel, smoke pouring out of his mouth, his face a white sheet without emotion. Edwin wished he’d brought a single textbook from his book bag so as to have something to read. Instead, he watched the car speed over the interstate and took to adding up the numbers on the license plates of the cars they passed. Finally, unable to stand it any longer, Edwin said, “Your aunt raised you,” though he wasn’t sure if it was a question or a statement and his inflection was flat and trailed off at the end. Father Naylon didn’t answer for a few seconds, his eyes squinting against the oncoming sunlight.
“She was charged with raising me, I guess you could say,” Father Naylon replied. He stubbed out a half-finished cigarette in the car’s ashtray and then fished another out of the pack in his front pocket. He gestured to the lighter and Edwin dutifully pushed it in, as if this was merely another aspect of Mass that the altar boy must attend to. Edwin waited for elaboration but Father Naylon merely drove on in silence.
Edwin did not know what to do with this response. He had grown suspicious of language, the way it always seemed to close in on itself and never expanded the way he hoped it would. He wondered how adults communicated anything with each other, the guarded way that they voiced even the most benign statement. If the priest would not comment further, Edwin decided to offer up something of his own.
“My dad left us when I was three,” he said, staring ahead at the road, afraid of how the priest might take this information. His mother had the marriage annulled somehow, but she still did not like anyone knowing this business, especially a priest. “It’s just been me and my mom forever.”
The lighter popped out and Edwin lit the fresh cigarette, slowly touching the glowing red coil to the tip of the stick of tobacco, watching the way the brown shavings curled at the touch of the fire. Father Naylon looked over at Edwin and smiled, pressed his thumb against Edwin’s chin.
“My parents died when I was five years old. It was a car accident; I was the only one who lived. I was sent to live with my uncle, my dad’s brother, and his wife. He was the fire chief in Adairville, a very good man. My aunt, she was not happy to have a child in the house. She was not maternal, you could say, and I can’t blame her for that. It was an unfortunate situation. Then my uncle died in a fire when I was eight and then it was just my aunt and me until I turned eighteen. We did not get along. She was unkind to me in many ways that you shouldn’t have to hear about.”
Edwin had experienced, for as long as he could remember, a distant tenderness from adults when they learned of his fatherless circumstances. Edwin could not understand this reaction, having never known a life with his father and having no real desire to experience it. He merely accepted the slightly condescending way that people expected him to be damaged by the absence of someone who, though his mother would not speak often of it, was a terrible person. In Father Naylon’s case, he could not even comprehend the unhappiness that he had experienced, the true loss and pain that seemed to have surrounded his early life.
“On the other hand,” Father Naylon said, smiling for the first time all day, “she’s the reason I’m a priest. I’d wanted to be a firefighter, had been so obsessed with it, but after my uncle died, my aunt forbade me from pursuing it. I wanted so badly to fight fires and wear the equipment and drive the fire truck, even into my teens, but I respected her wishes and became a priest instead. Sometimes, I wish I could have done both.”
“You could become a firefighter now,” Edwin offered, realizing with a sickening thud that he was speaking to the fact of Father Naylon’s now-dead aunt.
Father Naylon laughed, and the cigarette fell from his mouth and landed in his lap. Calmly, without taking his eyes off the road, the priest reached between his legs and retrieved the cigarette, bringing it back to his lips. He turned up Bruce Springsteen and gunned the engine. Edwin was not sure why what he had said made Father Naylon so happy, but he felt the warm and welcome certainty that he was responsible for it and did not ask further questions.
Thirty minutes later, they stopped at a gas station to fill up, and the priest let Edwin pick out a snack. Edwin grabbed a can of NuGrape soda and found a pack of candy cigarettes in the same style as Father Naylon’s brand, though these said Pell Mell instead of Pall Mall. Back in the car, the priest switched cassettes and Edwin placed the thin, white stick of sugar, the tip haphazardly blotched with red dye, in his mouth. He smoked the candy cigarette, rolling his tongue around the stick until it became a sharpened spear. He took it into his hand and probed the meat of his palm, the tiny sensation of pain, until the tip broke in his hands and he ate all of the evidence.
The house was a huge two-story colonial in obvious disrepair. Weeds shattered the paved driveway and the gray paint was peeling from the house in angry blisters. One of the windows was boarded up with a thin sheet of wood. “This used to be the most beautiful house in the county,” Father Naylon said. “I imagine this house was too much for her to keep up with.” They got out of the car and gathered their things; Edwin hefted his duffel bag and gingerly carried the vestments for the funeral mass, while Father Naylon slung the garment bag over his shoulder and produced a plastic shopping bag, which held his toiletries. They walked around to the back of the house, the grass nearly up to Edwin’s knees, and entered through the unlocked door. Edwin had the temporary, disorienting fear that they would find Father Naylon’s aunt still in the house, her dead body still tucked into her bed, but he allowed the feeling to swirl around his body and then vaporize.
The house was dusty, in need of cleaning, but the furniture was sturdy and expensive-looking, and the floors were bright hardwood. It was cavernous, rooms expanding into other rooms, the entire upstairs still undiscovered. In the dining room, there was a table that seemed to be the length of a football field, and Edwin imagined a young Father Naylon and his aunt eating at opposite ends. “I’m hungry,” the priest said. “Are you hungry, Edwin?” Edwin nodded that he was, though he was interested in searching through the house, wondering if he would be allowed to do so. Its dimensions, if he could be left to his own devices, felt conducive to his war games of impending death. Nevertheless, he returned to the car, though this time Father Naylon kept the tape player off, and they drove back into town for something to eat.
The steak house was a world inhabited by retirees and single men. Edwin was the only child in the restaurant, perhaps the first to enter its doors since its opening. He realized that he had never eaten at a restaurant without his mother, and he usually just ate chicken tenders or grilled cheese, but Father Naylon kept encouraging him to order whatever he wanted. “We’ll need energy for tomorrow,” the priest told him. “We need to feast tonight.” They sat in the smoking section and Father Naylon ordered a whiskey on the rocks while Edwin asked for, and received, a Shirley Temple with extra cherries. As he scanned the menu, he knew he could not possibly eat an entire steak; he was still unsure of his knife skills at mealtime, so the sheer effort of cutting the steak seemed problematic. He did not want fish and all the chicken dishes seemed to be covered in wine or some kind of strange sauce. Edwin’s face wrinkled with worry as he turned the menu to the back page and was sickened to see no other options.
For the first time on the trip, Father Naylon seemed to understand that, though Edwin was an altar boy who had come to serve the funeral mass, he was also a child in his care. He finished his drink and then leaned across the table of their booth and scanned the menu with Edwin. “What are you going to get?” he asked, and Edwin shrugged.
“Maybe some soup,” Edwin offered.
Father Naylon smiled and said, “Do you like steak?” Edwin shook his head. “I wouldn’t think so,” the priest replied, and then asked, “Do you like hamburgers?” Edwin said yes and Father Naylon opened his arms as if to embrace the boy and the table and the booth and the entire restaurant. “Hamburger steak,” he finally said, rubbing his stomach. “You’ll love it.”
Right then, the waitress came to the table and Father Naylon took over the ordering. He would have a ribeye, medium rare, and Edwin would have a sixteen-ounce hamburger steak with French fries, creamed spinach, Texas toast, and a side of spaghetti and meatballs. Edwin could not eat this much food, but Father Naylon merely winked and continued to converse with the waitress. Five minutes later, the priest had a fresh whiskey, Edwin had six more cherries in his Shirley Temple, and there was a basket of bread so large that it seemed like a biblical miracle.
The food came like a tidal wave and Edwin struggled to keep track of it all. The hamburger steak was, he realized after the first bite, a perfect and grown-up way to eat a hamburger. He doused it with steak sauce and tore into the sides with abandon. With each bite, Father Naylon seemed to grow more and more happy, encouraging Edwin’s appetite. On his own plate, the priest had managed to eat the marbled fat from the ribeye, a surgical precision to his work with the knife and fork.