Altarboy novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Altarboy

Fintan wants him gone, the old priest greets him as his best server, and Kaz whispers the cue when Father starts the wrong Mass.

The hand dragged Kaz out of the booth by his hood and stood him up under the ceiling lamp.

The man holding him was enormous.

He had dark hair tied at the nape with a bootlace, a paint-flecked work jacket, and the angriest green-brown eyes Kaz had ever seen.

"Who are you?" the man said.

"Kaz."

"Kaz who?"

"Wojcik. Let go of my hood."

"How much did you hear?"

"All of it." Kaz did not see the point of lying. "You've got a tired voice. You should sleep more."

The man's grip tightened and then, strangely, let go.

He wiped his face with the back of one scarred hand.

"Kitchen," he said. "Now."

The rectory kitchen was a yellow room that smelled of burnt toast and radiator dust.

The man switched on the stove light, filled a kettle, and set it down on the burner hard enough to make the lid jump.

Kaz sat at the table with the cow tin in his lap and his one glove still on.

"I'm Fintan Moran," the man said without turning around. "I keep this building standing. You're trespassing in it."

"I used to serve here."

"When?"

"Ten to twelve."

"You're what, sixteen?"

"I turned eighteen yesterday."

Fintan turned around then.

He looked at Kaz for a long moment, at the split eyebrow, the buzzed sides, the thin hoodie.

"Eighteen," he said.

"Eighteen and a day. My father put my mattress on the lawn."

Something in the big man's face shifted, just slightly.

He did not say sorry.

He took two mugs out of the cupboard and put one in front of Kaz.

"Here's how it goes," Fintan said. "I'm thirty-one. I'm not your parent, and I'm not a priest. But I'll tell you what I tell everybody. If you say one word about what you heard in that box, I'll know it was you."

"And then what?"

"Then I'll be disappointed."

Kaz drank his tea. It was scalding and bitter and the best thing he had ever tasted.

"I won't say anything," he said. "But I want something."

Fintan's eyebrows went up.

"A bed," Kaz said. "Not a pew. And not a promise I'm making for free."

"You want to blackmail me."

"I want to trade. You can't do everything alone, and you just said so, out loud, to a wall."

"To a box."

"Same thing."

Fintan's jaw worked.

Before he could answer, the kitchen door opened.

A very small old man in a black cassock and plaid slippers stood in the doorway, blinking behind wire glasses.

He had a rosary wound around one hand, and the other hand was holding a banana.

"Fintan," he said. "Why is there a boy in my kitchen?"

Fintan was across the room in one stride.

"Father, it's three in the morning. Let me take you back up."

"Nonsense." The old man's eyes had landed on Kaz. They lit like two candles. "Kasimir Wojcik!"

Kaz stood up so fast his chair fell over.

"Father Cyril?"

"My best server! My best, best server!" The old man shuffled forward with the banana. "Ten years old and he knew the Latin response before I did. Where have you been? We've had no one since you left. The other boys don't come. The little girl from next door was frightened of the thurible."

"Father, I..."

"Look at you. You've grown a foot." Father Cyril patted Kaz's cheek. "Your mother. How is your mother?"

Kaz's throat closed up.

Behind the old man, Fintan went absolutely still.

"She's fine, Father," Kaz said quietly.

"Good, good. Tell her I asked."

"I will."

The old priest looked from Kaz to Fintan and back.

"He's staying," he announced.

"Father," Fintan said.

"The cot room behind the sacristy. It's warm. The widows left blankets." Father Cyril drew himself up to his full four foot eleven. "He'll serve the seven o'clock. Fintan, you'll see that he has an alb."

"Father, he isn't..."

"I am the pastor of this parish and I say so."

He said it gently, with a kind of dignity, and Kaz saw Fintan's whole body give way an inch.

"Yes, Father," Fintan said.

"Good." The old man peeled his banana. "I'm going to bed."

He went out, and they listened to the slippers shuffle away down the hall.

For a minute neither of them said anything.

"He doesn't know what year it is," Kaz said.

"No."

"He thinks I'm twelve."

"On bad nights."

Kaz picked up his chair and sat down on it.

"So that's the secret."

Fintan said nothing, which was an answer.

"Okay." Kaz wrapped both hands around the mug. "I'll serve the seven o'clock. And you're going to show me everything."

"You're not staying."

"Father Cyril says I am. You heard him. He's the boss of us both."

Fintan looked at him with a flat, dangerous patience.

"You think you've won something," he said.

"I think I've got a bed."

The green-brown eyes held his for one more second.

Then Fintan picked up the dishtowel and threw it at his face.

"Four hours," he said. "Sleep."

Kaz slept like a stone.

At 6:55 he stood behind the sacristy door in an alb two sizes too big, listening to forty old people settle into their pews.

At 7:00 the organ sounded, and Father Cyril walked out onto the altar and began the Mass.

The wrong Mass.

It was the funeral rite.

The pews murmured.

Father's hands trembled on the book.

At the back of the church, Fintan closed his eyes.

And Kaz, kneeling at the old man's elbow with a candle in his fist, leaned in and whispered the first words of the real Mass into his ear.

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