by R. H. Nicholson
Father Francis Paganini was dead. He had collapsed in the rectory kitchen while drinking a glass of water as he cooled down from playing basketball with the fifth-grade boys at St. Joseph of Arimathea School. A youthful, vigorous man of deep faith, whose unbound energy was contagious among his parishioners, Father Frank’s sudden death from an undetected heart abnormality sent a tsunami of grief throughout the parish, and three days later families found themselves dressing for his funeral. Perhaps no one was more deeply and directly affected than David McNichol, chief altar boy and Father’s unofficial personal assistant, whose last-second three-point shot had ended Father Frank’s final playground game and, in turn, killed the Franciscan. David’s parents were, naturally, quite concerned about how their oldest child would deal with this tragedy. He had been Father’s first choice for serving at funeral masses, a position that had allowed David to miss spelling tests and math quizzes, geography bees, and reading time with impunity. Many times, Mrs. Barnes’s voice had interrupted the class over the school intercom and intoned, “Excuse me, Sister. Could you send David McNichol and Andrew Miller to meet Father at the church, please?”
David’s dutiful parents watched over him, checked on him frequently, and, of course, discussed with him the nature of this life and its impermanence, the promise of heaven, and the surety of God. But David did not respond well to their overtures. Or at least he did not respond as they had expected. He did not cry upon learning the news when his father called him and his sisters into the living room for that conversation. He did not grow angry with the Almighty for striking down such a good man. He did not join in when others launched into favorite Father Frank stories. He did not stay home from school the next day, though given that option. In fact, David gave every appearance of being completely unaffected by Father’s death; it seemed not to affect his life at all. He still disliked reading circles. He enjoyed lunch with his friends in the gymnasium which doubled as a cafeteria. He played basketball with gusto at recess. Hee rode his bike to Green Hills Park after school for meetups with his best friend Drew.
On the morning of the funeral, David’s mother presented him and his sisters with bowls of cold cereal, glasses of juice, and ten minutes of cartoon time, then chased them upstairs to dress. Their funeral clothes hung on the bathroom door, black dresses, tights, and patent leather shoes for Becca and Maggie, and a black suit, white button-down shirt, and a clip-on tie for David. They were scrubbed and brushed, combed and straightened, loaded into the family minivan, and whisked off to the church, their father demanding that they arrive in time to “get our pew” before interlopers appropriated it, as often happened at Christmas and Easter.
David and his sisters filed into the church behind their mother and before their father. David was oblivious as always to the structure’s opulence: the soaring stone columns, the vaulted ceiling, and the artistic rose window, which depicted Joseph of Arimathea claiming the crucified body of Christ. A dominant crucifix hovered above the linen-strewn altar; the polished gold tabernacle and stage lights glinting off the corners reflected light all around. The stations, expertly painted scenes from Christ’s agony, lined the walls like museum pieces.
As expected, the church was filled to capacity. Even the “lukewarms,” as the McNichol’s officious grandmother termed those who only attended Mass on occasion, were in attendance. Mrs. Studer powered the organ as the ushers enforced their seating code, scooting people to the center of the pews and reserving specific spots for Father’s immediate family, parish council members, and parish employees. The McNichol family settled for seats much farther back than they believed they deserved, but at least they had seats on the left side, which always ensured them communion from a priest and not a lay person.
Then a priest no one in the parish knew processed to the base of the altar, and, in a splendid robe and with dramatic flair, signaled for everyone to rise. Strains of “On Eagle’s Wings” and the smoke of incense incorporated the air. A deacon hoisting a crucifix led six Knights of Columbus members in elaborate tuxedos with white sashes, each man adorned with a white plumed chapeau and black, red-lined cape. They carried Father’s plain wooden casket, draped in a white pall. A long line of adult servers in white robes processed down the aisle, followed by the bishop himself, wearing a magnificent robe embroidered in gold and a pointed hat and carrying a large crook. Behind him processed twenty or more priests who had traveled from all around the diocese to pay tribute to their fallen comrade and to honor the Church’s code of corporal mercy to bury the dead.
David stood in bewilderment, stepping out of the pew and into the aisle ever-so-slightly to see the spectacle passing before him like a solemn parade. For the next hour and a half, the congregation watched and prayed and sang and knelt, listened and cried as they commended over to God this man He had leant to his church for only fifteen years, a man who should have tended to his flock for another twenty, then risen through the hierarchy to assume a prestigious post in the mother church Christ left in the hands of his beloved Peter more than two thousand years ago.
Then, amidst the choir’s voices singing “Here I am Lord,” Father Frank’s signature song, the massive procession retraced its steps and the congregation followed, weeping or silent, staring at Father’s broken-hearted parents, frail and astounded that they should outlive their child.
A ridiculously long line of cars followed the hearse to Green Hills Cemetery, where the bodies of the strong and the weak, the old and some young, had been laid to rest since the late eighteenth century, when Irish and German immigrants settled here along the banks of the Ohio River and created new lives for themselves. The victims of a flu epidemic and childbirth gone wrong, of car accidents and hushed-up domestic violence, cancer and heart attacks, silent suicides, and stray bullets, all of the community’s forbearers rested in this hallowed ground. And so too Father Francis Paganini would be laid to rest after an elaborate burial ritual in what was known as the Priest Circle, a collection of graves surrounding a large stone crucifix on a knoll in the center of the graveyard.
When the McNichol family returned home later that afternoon, both physically and emotionally exhausted from their mourning, they drifted to various sectors of their home seeking refuge. His sisters played with their dolls, his mother took to her beads, and David’s father seemed unsure how to continue his day. Freshly liberated from his funeral attire, what he had called his “handsome clothes” when he was a small boy, David bounded down the stairs and proclaimed, “Goin’ to the park to meet Drew.”
“What?” his mother exclaimed.
“Let the boy go,” his father interrupted, and David bolted.
“Wear a jacket!” Mrs. McNichol shouted. “And be careful!” She turned to her husband, his tie loosened, his suit jacket removed, his sleeves rolled up as if he was preparing to change the oil in his car. “It seems so disrespectful. We literally just returned from the funeral.”
“Maybe he needs some space.” Mr. McNichol grabbed a soda from the refrigerator.
David pushed his bicycle out of the garage, hopped on, and sped down the street, his bangs flipped up by the breeze as he descended the hill, turned right at the corner, and peddled straight to Drew’s house. Soon the boys were tooling down Drew’s street, finally unencumbered of their suits and ties, the stuffy church, the weeping women, the solemn faces, the requisite handshakes, and the bracing incense.
“Roar,” David bellowed, his arms in the air, his bike wheeling freely down the middle of the avenue. “I thought that funeral stuff would never end.”
“Me too,” Drew hollered over at his friend. “It went on for-ever.”
The pair sped over to the playground, dumped their bikes on the moist, early spring ground, and dashed from the swings to the slides to the monkey bars, where they grunted and groaned then dropped to the soft ground and ran spontaneously under the wan afternoon sun, breathing deeply the cool air, building up a sweat in their black jackets. They moved on, pumping their BMXs through the streets of Green Hills until they found themselves at Collier’s Pond, where they toyed with the ducks, skipped rocks, and then rode on.
Soon, without realizing it, David and Drew pulled up to the tall, black iron gates of the south entrance to the cemetery. “Race ya to the other side,” Drew suggested, and they aimed their bikes like rockets toward the front gate on the north side.
“Stop!” David suddenly shouted, his left arm extended like a traffic cop’s, and Drew pulled up beside his best friend and they stared for a moment. Directly before them, the crucifix marking the Priest Circle rose up like a skyscraper. They ditched their bikes and walked toward it and to the foot of a fresh grave with a dozen or so floral arrangements piled up like a pyre, goopy mud pouring out of the crevices. They approached the grave with the same trepidation one enters a haunted house. Neither spoke for some time. A flock of birds in an artistic formation passed over them and the breeze seemed to pick up.
“He’s really under there?” Drew wondered aloud.
“It’s creepy,” David added, “that we bury people under the ground but expect them to go up to heaven. I don’t get it.”
“Then what happens, I wonder?” Drew tried to join David’s discourse.
“They rot like garbage, I suppose,” David murmured.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Drew argued. “It’s not like that in the movies.”
“Or religion class.” They stood together awkwardly.
“To think, we were just playing b-ball with him three days ago.”
“And he told that joke about how a long homily is only one step away from a hostage situation.”
“He was such a cool guy, for a priest.” Drew’s voice dropped off as the words caught in his throat.
David found a stick nearby and approached the grave, his hand wrapped around it. At the foot, where mud had gushed out like cake batter, he scrawled the letters B-Y-E. Drew then took the stick and added a period after it, repositioned the stick in his hand—now holding it like a spear—and stabbed it into the mound so that it stood like a small sapling. The sun had begun to slant toward evening now, the sky pixelating into an orange marmalade smear. The boys stood motionless for nearly a minute, silent and pensive.
“I gotta get home for supper,” Drew whispered casually.
“Me too,” David agreed. “See ya at school tomorrow,” he hollered as the two parted ways and rode off to rejoin the certainty of their lives.
A Rolling Ball of Cotton from the Tree Yonder
by David John Baer McNicholas
R. H. Nicholson is a professor emeritus of English, a writer, poet, playwright, and public speaker who spent forty years teaching in high school and college classrooms. His work has appeared in The Back Porch, New Poetry, Echo Ink, The Blue Lake Review, Wordmongers, Adelaide Literary Journal, and The Big Windows Review. As well, he contributed to the professional journal, The English Toolkit, and was a contributing author to the book, From Vision to Action. He won the 2015 Cincinnati Poetry Prize. He and his wife live in Greendale, Indiana, with their geriatric cat Fezziwig.
David John Baer McNicholas authored a novel, Lemons: In an Orchard. He operates the nascent imprint ghostofamerica ltd co and studies for his BFA in Creative Writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. His work can be found at poets.org and Panorama Travel Journal.
Ignatian Literary Magazine 