The Tricky Part: One Boy's Fall from Trespass into Grace Read Online Free PDF Page A

along . . . can’t keep still. Time to move.”

5
    S ISTER’S SUGGESTION THAT I find a way to earn money gave particular motion to the motion of things.
    I got a job. And the most astonishing thing about becoming a
Denver Post
paperboy, besides ringing people’s doorbells and taking their cash, was that suddenly I was friends with George Doyle. Chubby, mean, paperboy. The neighborhood menace. Though he was Catholic and lived just around the corner, chances of us ever being chums were slim. He was public (McMean) and two years and most of puberty ahead of me. His idea of fun was dropping a lit M-80 firecracker into the corner mailbox.
Bang!
So I was astonished when, at our paperboy marketing powwows, he seemed to take a shine to me. He gave me advice and I gave him extra rubber bands. It was the bond of capitalism.
    He used to call me Marsh, short for Martian.
    “Marsh,” he bellowed one day, “
that’s
your mistake. Don’t ever collect from the Weinstocks on Friday night. Jewish people won’t touch money after sundown. It’s a Sabbath thing.
Tip death
. As for the Catholics, shoot for cocktail hour. Any day.”
    It was the Monday after Easter. A sunny day, the paper, slim. I flung the headlines onto the lawns of my patrons, happy to think how I’d become the final link between world events and the residents of Kearny Street. When I finished I zoomed over to George’s place, dropped my bike on their dried-up grass, ducked under their sickly weeping willow, and walked up to the porch. I felt queasy every time I came to fetch George but these nerves, I figured, were a small price to pay for the cachet of hanging out with a bona fide bully.
    I knocked on the screen door and immediately there were heavy steps. I prayed it wasn’t his dad. Tall and terrifying, he was chairman of the local NRA; had guns hanging all over the house like precious paintings. I’d gone hunting with him and George one Sunday in March. With Mr. Doyle’s coaching and a telescoped gun, I shot a gray jackrabbit right in the neck. Mr. Doyle congratulated me, one of the few times I’d heard him talk and the only time I’d seen his tight, crooked smile. He grinned as we walked through the tumbleweeds to examine the splattered body of the bunny. The rabbit’s eyes were open, frozen in a terrible question aimed at me. “Well done,” Mr. Doyle had said, nudging the belly of the rabbit with his boot. I felt sick. Worst of all, we just turned and walked away. Left it lying there, flies dancing around its bloody head. An act against all hunting rules. Now, whenever Mr. Doyle saw me he’d ask: “Wanna go hunting?”
    “Who’s there?” came a high-pitched voice.
    I was relieved it was Minnie, the live-in housekeeper.
    “It’s me, Marty.”
    “Oh. Oh . . . come in, hon.”
    She swung the door open, big smile on her face because, well, because it was me: the boy from Christ the King. She had a rag in one hand and a spray bottle of Parsons ammonia in the other. Minnie loved Parsons. Said it was the one true cleanser, like Catholic was the one true church.
    “George ain’t home yet,” she said. “He’s running late on his route . . . trouble at school. Again.” Tough as a tank, dressed like a Howard Johnson’s hostess; Minnie scooted to the fridge and took out a quart of milk. “That boy’ll be the death of me.” She slapped down a glass, then leaned against the turquoise-colored oven and clipped the Parsons to her belt, where it hung like a gun.
    “Did you have a good Easter?”
    “Yep.”
    “How’s school?”
    “OK.”
    “Who said Mass this morning?”
    “Father Elser.”
    “Oh, now . . . he’s a saint.”
    I nodded, thinking,
God, if she only knew what a surly saint
.
    Father Elser, our priest, was German by way of Ireland and all shriveled from years as some kind of prisoner of some kind of war somewhere. It was all sad and vague but one thing was clear: whatever happened to him, it was our fault. He was always angry about