the Dead Custer and in and out of Whitey’s. He took the road we’d taken past old lady Bineshi’s, hoping he’d surprise the dogs and they’d fix their teeth in Father Travis’s robe, but they made it through. Cappy hopscotched downhill through the graveyard and then the two of them made a loop that took them through the playground—it was mesmerizing to watch. Cappy set the swings going and sprang through the monkey bars, lightly touching down. Father Travis landed like an ape with knuckles on the ground, but kept going. They sprinted uphill, two tiny ciphers who now enlarged as Cappy ran toward us ready to jump on the bike we held and speed off. We would have made it. He would have made it. He came so close. Father Travis put on a burst of speed that brought him within a handsbreadth of Cappy’s shirt collar. Cappy floated out from under that hand. But it came down and grabbed his back wheel.
Cappy jumped off the bike but Father Travis, purple in the face, wheezing, had him by the shoulders and bodily lifted him. Angus and I had dropped our bikes to plead his case. Although we couldn’t have known for sure what Cappy planned to confess, it was now obvious. He had confessed what we feared he would confess.
Father, this does not look good, said Angus.
Let him down, please, Father Travis. I tried to imagine my father’s voice in this situation. Cappy is a minor, I said. Perhaps that was absurd, but Father Travis had hold of Cappy’s shirt now and had raised his fist and his fist stopped in the air.
A minor, I said, who came to you for help, Father Travis.
A Worf-like roar seized Father Travis and he threw Cappy on the ground. His foot went back but Cappy rolled out of range. We picked up our bikes because Father Travis wasn’t moving now. He was standing there, breathing in deep gasps, head lowered, glaring from under his brow. We’d somehow gotten the upper moral ground in that moment and we knew it. We got on our bikes.
Good day, Father, said Angus.
Father Travis stared past us as we rode away.
Shit and hell, I said to Cappy later. What were you thinking?
Cappy shrugged.
You told him about the church basement, where you did it?
Everything, said Cappy.
Shit and hell.
Clemence frowned at my language.
Sorry, Auntie, I said. We had gone to Clemence and Edward’s in hopes they were eating, which they weren’t, but that didn’t matter because Clemence knew why we came around and she immediately warmed up her usual hamburger macaroni, poured her usual swamp tea, only mixed, for us specially, with a can of lemonade. She fed Mooshum because he ate whenever anybody else ate, but his tremor had become so pronounced that he couldn’t eat soup.
Why’d you tell him? I asked.
I dunno, said Cappy, maybe what he said about his woman. Or what he said to me about You be the one to notice her, remember?
He said notice her, not, you know. I was delicate around Cappy, even though Clemence wasn’t listening right then. Although Cappy had had sex, it was on a higher plane, so I didn’t use any sex words. He got upset when they were associated with anything that had happened between himself and Zelia.
You could have gone to your dad, gone to your older brother, talked with them, I said.
I’m glad I went to Father Travis though, said Cappy, grinning.
Cappy’s run was already becoming history and his reputation would soar. Father Travis was not damaged by it either, as we’d never had a priest in such fine athletic shape.
The size of his calf muscles! said Clemence.
The last priest could not have run ten yards, said Mooshum. I saw him laid out in our yard once, dead drunk. That old priest weighed more than you and your skinny friends all put together. He cackled. But this new one has his pride. It will take him many prayers to get over Cappy’s run.
God help the gophers this week, said Uncle Edward as he passed through the room.
Clemence brought a dish towel and tied it around Mooshum’s neck. Between bites, he said, I ever tell you boys about the time I outrun Liver-Eating Johnson? How that old rascal used to track down Indians and kill us and take and eat our livers? That was a white wiindigoo, but when I was young and fleet, I run him down and whittled him away bite by bite and