The Reverend had died from colon cancer; the black charcoal swarmed, blocked, and killed him. The night before his funeral, Lola and I lay in bed and smoked a joint. Her ten-year-old, David, was asleep just down the hall.

"What kind of future do I have, John? I mean, I don't want to look back on my life and think I slept through it all."

"Well, you'll think that whether or not you do anything great. You'll think it whether you, I don't know, write the Great American novel or find a cure for AIDS, right? You're gonna think bad on it; you're gonna regret it all."

"So, what are ya sayin'? I should just not do anything and be a lump like you?"

"Well...yeah."

"Fuck you, John," she said, laughing. I took a long drag and did my Jack Nicholson impression.

"Hey." I said, raising my eyebrows.

"What?" she asked, laughing.

"What was it like to have a priest for a father?"

"He's not a priest, ya moron. He's a Reverend. A priest can't get married. Duh."

"Priest, Reverend, Monk... Answer the question. What was it like?"

She thought about it for a second. "He could just as easily have been a toll booth collector. Or President of the United States." She took a long drag and imitated Jack Nicholson too. "You know what I mean, Johnny-Boy?"

"Sure."

We didn't make love that night. We just talked about life and death and ate some pistachio nuts in bed. I asked her if she would miss her father. She said she never really talked to him much and never really liked him. Then, we cleaned up the nutshells and went to sleep.

The next morning we drove to the funeral. As we walked into the rectory, David rushed to meet his cousin at the other end of the hall. Lola ran after him and yelled at him in heavy whispers. I was left alone at the door and so I did my best to offer my condolences to Lola's mother. She thanked me with that rusty tone of hers and then asked me if I could take David and his cousin downstairs while she talked with Lola.

I did what I was told and the two boys followed me down to the basement, which was actually something of a rec room. Cigars, like piles of dog shit, lay in the yellowed ashtrays. This was where they hung out, I thought. Here, in this musky room in the rectory. There was a pinball machine in one corner, but, as David discovered, it was far from operational. There was a television set with a cable switch-box on the coffee table. David asked me if they could watch TV and I said yes. I sat with the boys and enjoyed a few cartoons. I smoked a few cigarettes and David made that face of his: P.U. I just laughed. When I first started living with Lola and him, it took a long time just to get him to look at me. A P.U. face was good enough for me.

Then, the boys began to fight with each other over control of the switch-box. I got in the middle of it:

"Boys, what do you think is going on upstairs?"

"A circus?" said the cousin. Little shit, I thought...

"No. A funeral. A wake."

"Why do they call it 'awake' if the person's dead?"

"David, just watch the TV."

Then, the cousin asked me for a cigarette.
"What's your name again?" I asked.

"Jeffrey. Gimmie a ciggy."

"How old are you, Jeffa-ma-rey?"

"Fourteen."

"Bullshit. How old are you? Are you David's age?"

"I'm twelve."

"David's ten. How old are you?"

"Just gimmie a cigarette."

"Tell me how old you are."

"Eleven."

I believed him.

"I'll give you a cigarette if you promise to sit here and keep quiet. Deal?" David took the cigarette and, with his P.U. face, passed it over to his cousin.

"How do I smoke?" Jeffrey asked.

"Oh, it's easy," I said. "Just suck in a little smoke and then pretend like your mother just walked in the room." He did like I told him. Then, he exhaled and blew a stream of smoke into the air.

"You okay, Jeffa-ma-rey?" I asked.

"Yeah, why?"

"Well, my first drag made me vomit for three hours straight."

"Well, I'm not you."

Little shit.

I left the boys watching a Chuck Norris movie and went upstairs. Something about Jefferey put me on edge. I found Lola in the room where her father lay. The coffin was half-closed. A wreath stood at the foot next to a blown-up photograph of Lola's father in his high school days. He was dressed in a football uniform and he was in the break-down position; he looked like he could take on the world. I thought it strange that they didn't have a picture of him as a clergyman. The dead man, painted over with globs of make-up, bore only a faint similarity to the young buck with eyes like a shark. He looked more like Jeffrey than the dead Reverend.
I held Lola's hand as she talked with her mother in soft mutterings concerning matters of estate. They cried here and there but kept talking through their tears. At first it surprised me, the crying. But you can't trust crocodiles.

Lola began to tell me about how her father had left her a cabin way out in Germantown, Pennsylvania. She asked me if I could go with her this Sunday and help her clean it out. She was going to put the cabin on the market, but she wanted to make it respectable-looking first. She told me she wouldn't bother me about it if it weren't for the fact that I had a pick-up truck.
Then, she turned her attention away from me and back to her father in his coffin. I studied the line of her jaw and the tone of her skin radiating.

"Lol..." I whispered.

"What?" she asked quietly.

"What's in the cabin makes it not respectable?"

"His smoking pipes and the pipe cleaners and I'll bet dollars to donuts that he never cleaned the dishes or anything. He was a slob, you know... Look: there's a pool table in there that he left for me. That's really why I need your pick-up."

"Oh, I love how you just snuck that in there. Where the hell are you gonna put a pool table?"

"Shush, don't swear in here. A little respect, huh?"

"But where ya gonna put it, Lol?"

"In the garage."

"The garage? The garage."

"Yeah."

"And who ya gonna get to clean out the garage?"

"David might do it. And you can help. We've been looking for something for you two to do together."

"Oh, you're a smart one, aren't ya?"

Lola's mother turned and gave us a dirty look. I smiled and saluted her.

"Aren't you supposed to be watching David?" Lola asked.

"Yeahyeah; I'm going back down."

I went back down and the boys were gone. They'd left the TV on and their jackets were sitting on the arms of the couch. I didn't want to alarm Lola so I walked back upstairs quietly, tip-toed past the room with the coffin, and went up to the second floor. They weren't there either. I went back downstairs and out the front door. The porch was a wrap-around. I followed it to the back of the rectory.
There was a high fence running around the backyard. Behind them were evergreens of all different sizes. I noticed a huge gap in the fence at the far end. I jumped off the porch and headed for the hole. I heard a train horn blaring.

When I got to it, I put my head through the hole and saw David standing on top of this hill. Jeffrey was in the brush somewhere yelling: You can do it, Davy! You can do it, man! Just a couple more seconds...a coupla more...couplamore...

The sound of the train was getting louder and louder. I stood there and watched. I knew the words I was supposed to say. I knew I was supposed to scream bloody murder. But instead of screaming, I found myself watching as the train got closer and closer...

"Jump!" cried Jeffrey.

And David jumped.

The train exploded by, ramming oxygen into my nostrils. The two boys brushed the dirt off of their dress shirts and began to head back toward the hole in the fence. I didn't want to get caught. I ran across the backyard, jumped back up on the porch, and walked around to the front. I lit a cigarette and waited for them, doing my best to stand aloof to their absence.

When they came around the corner, eyes wary of my presence, they said they wanted to see their grandfather, the dead priest. I told them to get their jackets from downstairs and meet me in the hall. They did what they were told.

I brought them in to see their grandfather. Jeffery went over to his mother who was sitting closer to the coffin. David went to Lola, who gave me a dirty look just like her mother had given me.

"I don't think this is appropriate for a ten year old to see."

"You're right, Lol. We should wait until he's eleven."

She bit her cheek and turned her attention back to the coffin. She put her arms on David's shoulders. He bounced the back of his head against her belly and studied his grandfather. Then, Lola looked down at David's feet.

"David," she whispered. "How'd you get your shoes so dirty?"

David looked up at me and Jeffrey looked at me from across the room.

"We were playing outside, Lol," I said. "It's a beautiful day out there."

"Yeah..." said Lola, scratching her nose.

David smiled up at me. Jeffery smirked at me. He was in control.

I looked again at the high school photograph of the dead priest, the grandfather, the father: there was a fierceness in his eyes like a wounded animal.