The Mary Smokes Boys by Patrick Holland

Author:Patrick Holland [Holland, Patrick]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Hawthorne Books
Published: 2013-06-02T16:00:00+00:00

WORK AT THE freight yard meant driving through Haigslea, past Vanessa’s. Most nights nothing came of that, he would finish too late. Tonight he called her from a public phone box on the roadside and told her he might be around.

“Last train is late, boy,” said his father when he got back. “You go if you like.”

Grey was happy. He was bodily tired, fifty dollars up and free of obligation. He was not concerned about leaving his father now. The train to come was just a handful of cars.

HE STOPPED BY the Sundowner bottle shop on the way. He hid his truck on a dirt road behind Vanessa’s house.

“I didn’t expect you for another hour.”

“I got off early. Here.”

He handed her a bottle of ten-dollar sparkling white wine. She put the bottle in ice on the coffee table. She took two crystal glasses from a cabinet.

Vanessa’s house seemed very fancy to Grey. Leather lounge chairs, polished teak cabinets and carpeted floors.

“Come sit down,” she said.

She folded her legs beside her on the lounge, revealing much of her tanned thighs. She wore her white frilled cardigan, and a gold crucifix hung around her neck. Her church clothes. When she was home Vanessa was a regular at the Friday night service at the highway’s boxcar Presbyterian Church. There the travelling minister spoke his excited sermons after the manner he had seen on television to a gathering that was outnumbered three to one by the crowd across the asphalt at the hotel. Vanessa smelled of church. Grey had not been in years but he remembered the smell. He wondered was it beeswax candles, or the starched clothing of the elderly, or the varnish on the pews.

“Irene’s got one of these,” he said, touching the crucifix where it rested on Vanessa’s bare skin. “A nun gave it to her. Hers is Benedictine.”

Vanessa smiled doubtfully. She did not know what Benedictine meant. In that country, expressions of orthodox faith were almost non-existent. Those who did not remember Grey’s mother and the old Irish and Russians of the district thought Irene’s religiosity uniquely childish and fantastical.

“This?’ she caught his hand. “It protects me.”

“From what?”

“Those who would cause the innocent to sin.”

He smiled.

“You know, I admire you–going to church when your folks aren’t here to force you.”

“They have spies. If I hadn’t gone tonight they would have heard about it. Anyway, you don’t admire it. Everyone who says that says it condescendingly.”

“You’re wrong.”

She smiled provocatively. “How come you never go? You’re Catholic, aren’t you?”

“I have belief. My God is present late at night, in silence, in running water, with people in pain.”

Vanessa looked at him with bemusement.

“Churches these days are different. The one I go to in the city draws four or five hundred to every service, most of them under forty, and there’s even a stage for a band, and a café. It’s fun. You should come one day.”

Grey sighed.

“Don’t you sometimes think we’re meant to suffer–that we’ve brought it on ourselves? The sin is in us and it’s just a trick of time that means we must wait to commit it.

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