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Mac never went to church. It was pretty obvious. Everybody in Mushrat Creek, everybody in Low and everybody in Brennan’s Hill who went to church got a good look every Sunday at Old Mac Gleason sitting on his veranda,
not
going to church.
    And people used to say that everybody up the River in Venosta and Farrellton and Kazabazua and everybody down the River in Alcove and Wakefield probably knew that Old Mac Gleason didn’t go to church.
    And Old Mac Gleason himself would often say, “I betcha there’s people as far south as Ottawa who know I never been to church in my life and that there’s people as far north as Maniwaki that know that I, Old Mac Gleason, have no intention of ever goin’ to church in the future either.
    â€œThere’s people who travel miles and miles to go to a church and here’s me, livin’ right across the road from one—and I never been inside it. Oh, I was inside it a couple a times to fix a door or a window for that Foolish Father Foley from Farrellton but I never prayed inside there and I never will!”
    This Sunday, Father Foley was at the top of his sermon about Hell.
    The altar boys had the doors propped wide open with the rocks, and Nerves was in his position in the aisle.
    Father Foley was at the part about how thick the walls of Hell were and what a foul-smelling prison it was and the lost demons and the smoke and the sulfur and the fire and the never-ending storms of brimstone and stink of the putrid corpses and vomit and boiling brains and the screaming of the tortured and cursing victims and the puddles of pus that you had to lie in if you were bad.
    Father Foley had a wild look in his eyes. He looked like he was scaring himself with his own sermon.
    I took a look back at Nerves.
    He was staring straight up at Father Foley with a look of hopeless terror in his eyes. Was there a Hell for dogs?
    It was near the end of his speech. Father Foley was sweating so much that when he threw his head to one side and then the other to say NO! NO! to the Devil, the drops of sweat flew from one side of the church to the other. The heads of the people turned this way, then that, to watch the sweat fly across.
    After Mass, Nerves and I crossed the road and strolled through the graveyard. The earliest dates on the gravestones were 1848 and 1850. According to Mrs. O’Driscoll, the first Irish settlers came here in 1847. “Some of them just made it in time,” she said, out of the corner of her mouth.
    Other gravestones were marked 1893 and the ages were all of babies and kids. There were whole groups of them, some all from one family.
    There must have been a fire or a disease.
    All the names were Irish.
    We went to the edge of the graveyard near the fence.
    Nerves and I stopped to look for a while at one interesting gravestone with flowers on it that were pretty fresh. Maybe put there just yesterday.
    The name on it was Ophelia Brown.
    Ophelia Brown
    Lord Have Mercy on Her
, the stone said.
    All around the grave were special plants and perfectly cut grass.
    But there was one thing wrong.
    The grave was on the other side of the page wire fence. As if the graveyard was too crowded for Ophelia Brown and they had to put it outside the fence. But the strange thing was, there was lots of room in that part of the graveyard for Ophelia Brown.
    In fact Ophelia Brown was outside the section of the graveyard with hardly any graves in it at all.
    I heard a cowbell ding from a field nearby and somewhere, far off, a dog barked.
    Nerves was looking like he was going to burst into tears and when he gave out a little whine I decided it was time to get out of there.
    We walked by Old Mac Gleason’s veranda to see if he’d invite us up for a chat and a drink of water.
    He did.
    He gave me the pail and the dipper and I pumped some ice-cold well-water for us from his well at the side of his house.
    â€œThat Foolish Father Foley was at it again this morning, was