"I'm sorry he cut his face," the accused mumbled to the judge.
"That's all?"
"Yes, sir."
It had already been arranged, Father Zoghby had told him when he'd come to the jail. He'd had a word with the judge. To spare his family any further shame and humiliation, the judge would drop all charges on condition that the accused join the U.S. Marine Corps for four years.
Later he'd tried to send his civvies home in the box they gave you at Parris Island, but it had come back marked REFUSED. So had die letters he'd written at first to his mother and Anne-Marie and Tommy. Then there had been a letter from Father Zoghby: His father could not find it in his heart to forgive him, and had started telling people he had no son named Kenneth. It would be better, Father Zoghby continued, if Kenneth stopped writing until things had a time to settle. He would pray that his father would in time forgive him, and he would keep him posted if anything happened he should know.
While McCoy was still running the water-cooled.30-caliber Browning in Dog Company, First Battalion, 4th Marines, Father Zoghby had written him one more letter His mother was dead; Anne-Marie had a vocation and was a novice at the Convent of the Sisters of the Holy Ghost; Tommy had gone to Bethlehem, where the steel mills had reopened and there was work; and his father had remarried.
"Anne- Marie left the convent at least two years ago, I'm sorry to say," the young priest said. "I'm sure your father would know where she is."
"I can't ask him," McCoy said.
The priest looked at him for a moment, and McCoy sensed that he was making up his mind. Then the priest stepped outside and closed the rectory door after him.
"Maybe I can help you," he said.
He led him past the church building, then down the cracked concrete walkway to the school buildings-the grammar school to the left and the larger, newer Saint Rose of Lima High School building to the right-and finally to the nun's residence.
He spoke first to Sister Gregory, who recognized McCoy as she looked down at him from the steps of the residence, but acted as if she had never seen him before in her life. She went back inside, and a minute later Sister Paul appeared at the door and walked down the steps to where McCoy and the young priest stood.
"How are you, Kenneth?" Sister Paul said.
"I'm all right, Sister," McCoy said. "How are you?"
"Have you made things right between you and God, Kenneth?"
"I don't know, Sister," McCoy said.
"You're not going to make trouble are you, Kenneth?" she asked.
"I just came home from China," McCoy said. "I want to see Anne-Marie."
"You were in China, were you?"
"Yes, Sister."
"Anne- Marie left the Sisters of the Holy Ghost," Sister Paul said, "and I'm sorry to tell you, she has also abandoned the Church."
"Do you know where she is?"
"Here in Norristown," Sister Paul said. "She's taken up with a Protestant."
"Excuse me?"
"She chose to marry a young man outside the Church. He's a Protestant whose name is Schulter. He has the Amoco station at Ninth and Walnut. They have two babies, a little girl and a little boy."
"Thank you. Sister Paul," McCoy said.
"I don't want you to do anything, Kenneth, that will cause your father more pain," she said. "I hope you've had time to grow up, to think things through."
Chapter Eight
(One)
The man who walked out to the pump island when McCoy drove in wore an Amoco uniform: a striped shirt and trousers with a matching billed cap. There was an Amoco insignia on the brow of the cap and a nameplate, "Dutch," was sewn to the shirt breast. The man was about thirty, McCoy judged, and already wearing a spare tire.
"Fill it with high-test, sir?" he asked.
McCoy nodded. After Dutch had opened the hood, McCoy got out of the car.
"You must have just had the oil changed," Dutch said, showing McCoy the dipstick. "Clean as a whistle and right to the top."
"Your name Schulter?" McCoy asked.
"That's right," Dutch said, warily curious.
"I'm Anne-Marie's brother," McCoy said.
Dutch hesitated a moment and then put out his hand. "Dutch Schulter," he said. "I heard-she told me-you was in the Marines."
"I am," McCoy said.
"You must be doing all right in the Marines," Dutch Schulter said, making a vague gesture first at the LaSalle. and then at McCoy himself.
"I do all right," McCoy said.
The gas pump made a chugging noise when the automatic filler nozzle was triggered. Dutch Schulter moved to the rear of the car, topped off the tank, then hung the hose up. McCoy looked at the pump. Eleven point seven gallons at 23.9 cents a gallon: $2.79. He took a wad of bills from his pocket and peeled off a ten-dollar bill.
Dutch Schulter handed the change to him, together with a Coca-Cola glass.
"They're free with a fill-up," he said.
"How do I get to see my sister?" McCoy said.
Schulter looked at him for a moment as if making up his mind, and then raised his voice: "Mickey!"
A kid in an Amoco uniform appeared at the door of the grease-rack bay.
"Hold the fort, Mickey," Dutch called. "I got to go home for a minute."
Home was a row house on North Elm, a little wooden porch in front of a fieldstone house that smelled of baby shit, sour milk, and cabbage.
Anne- Marie looked older than he expected. She was already getting fat and lumpy, and she had lost a couple of teeth. She cried when she saw him, and hugged him, and told him he had really growed up.
Dutch touched his shoulder, and when McCoy turned to look at him, handed him a bottle of beer.
"You're an uncle, Kenny," Anne-Marie said. "We got a boy and a girl, but I just got them to sleep, and you'll have to wait to see them. You can stay for supper?"
"I thought I'd take you and Dutch out for supper," McCoy said.
"You don't want to do that," she protested. "You won't believe what restaurants ask for food these days."
"Yeah, I do," McCoy said.
"What I should have done," Dutch said, "is had him follow me in the truck. You want to run me back by the station? Could you find your way back here again?"
"Why don't you take my car?" McCoy said. "I've got no place else to go."
"You got a car, Kenny?" Anne-Marie asked, surprised.
"He's got a goddamned LaSalle convertible, is what he's got," Dutch said.
She looked at him in surprise.
"You been doing all right for yourself, I guess," she said.
"I've been doing all right," McCoy said.
"I'll put it up on the rack, and grease it," Dutch said. "And then have the kid works for me, you saw him, Mickey, wash it."
"Thank you," McCoy said, and tossed him the keys.
Dutch Schulter returned a few minutes after six, as soon as the night man came on at the station. McCoy was glad to see him. Anne-Marie was getting on his nerves. She was a goddamned slob. He had to tell her to change the diaper on the older kid; he had shit running down his leg from under his diaper.
The sink was full of unwashed dishes. McCoy remembered that, come to think of it, his mother had been sort of a slob herself. Many of the times the old man had slapped her around, it had started with him bitching about something being dirty.
She told him she would really rather make his supper herself. When Dutch returned with his car, she said, he could take her down to the Acme and she would get steaks or something; but she didn't mean it, and McCoy didn't want to eat in her dirty kitchen, off her dirty plates.
She asked him if he had been to see "Daddy," and he told her no. And she told him she hadn't seen him either. He had been mad at her since she left the convent (and boy, could she tell him stories about what went on in that place!); and after she had married Dutch, outside the church and all, it had gotten worse.
Dutch was a good man, she said. She had met him when she was working in the Highway Diner on the Bethlehem Pike after she left the convent. He had been nice to her, and one thing had led to another, and they'd started going out. Then they got married and started their family.