What happened next (and last) was that Father Bielinski kicked the soda crate out from under his own feet. He dangled, he strangled, and there he hung on that bright, bright morning when I showed up to call him for breakfast.

It's funny how you notice things. Through the shock and horror of it, I couldn't help registering that the garage light was still on, that it had burned through the night. This was one of the things that drove my father crazy-leaving a light on unnecessarily. It's a good thing he wasn't around to see this....

I heard myself giggling, or making a giggling sound that had nothing at all to do with humor. Maybe it was the first step toward madness. The second step arrived in the form of my mother, bustling into the garage with a cheerful morning greeting that died in her throat at the sight of the dangling priest.

"Sweet Jesus," she breathed. "Sweet Jesus..."

We stood beside each other, staring at Father Bielinski. A horrible, horrible odor filled my nostrils, and then I saw that the priest had s.h.i.t himself in the final moments of his life. It ran down his leg and onto the floor in a steady drip, much like the drip of fake blood that had gotten him into so much trouble.

But the blood that flowed from his thorn wounds was real. He had done it. This time, Father Joseph Bielinski had actually done it.

He had created a Bleeding Jesus that shed genuine blood. And my mother and I were the only people in the world who knew about it.

I don't know how long the two of us stood there staring at the dangling priest. I had stopped making that giggling sound, and could hear my mother's heavy breathing. She stepped right up to the corpse, and saw something jutting from the waist of the loincloth. It was a note.

She read it, crossed herself, and handed it to me. The handwriting was small and neat.

"Mary, Sammy, thank you for caring. Yours in Christ, Father Joseph Bielinski."

She took back the letter and stuck it in the pocket of her ap.r.o.n. Then she looked up at Father Bielinski again, shook her head, and looked at me. She didn't have to say it. Her eyes were more accusing than words ever could have been. Forget the fact that the man himself had absolved me of responsibility for all that had happened-my mother's eyes said otherwise. This was all my fault. I was a bad boy.

"Mommy. I'm sorry."

She nodded, looked back at the priest, and put her hands on her beefy hips, the way she always did when facing a challenge.

"You're going to have to help me take care of this, Samuel."

Take care of it? Take care of what? what? The man was dead, wasn't he? The man was dead, wasn't he?

"What are we going to do?"

"He can't be found like this."

"He can't?"

"Absolutely not."

My mother went to my father's tool cabinet and found a pair of gardening shears. She set the soda crate up on its edge, stepped up on it with startling agility, and cut the rope. Father Bielinski fell like a puppet whose strings have been cut, but his arms were still spread wide, held in place by the broomstick as he landed in a puddle of his own s.h.i.t. My mother remained perched on the soda crate for a moment like a giant dove before stepping nimbly to the floor.

"All right, Samuel. We've got to work fast now."

She gently removed the crown of thorns from Father Bielinski's head and set it aside. She pulled the broomstick out from across his shoulders, allowing his bony arms to fall to his sides. Then she stretched him out on the cement floor, very gently, as if he were still alive.

The rope was still around his neck. I couldn't stand the sight of it.

"Aren't you going to take the rope off, Mom?"

"No, that stays."

Her instructions to me were clear and precise, as if she'd had weeks to prepare them. I was to fill the bucket under the laundry room sink with warm soapy water and bring it to her, along with the "rag bag" where we kept tattered old clothes and torn towels. I did as I was told, and then she gave me a five-dollar bill and sent me to the Grand Union supermarket to buy a box of plastic trash bags.

"Make sure they're the heavy-duty kind, Samuel."

"Okay."

"And don't tell anybody what's happened here."

It all became horribly real to me on the walk to the supermarket, out there in the normal world. It was a dazzling day, a beach day, a picnic day, and we had a dead priest in our garage.

Luckily I didn't see anybody we knew at Grand Union. I found a box of ten heavy-duty plastic bags and took them to the ten items-or-less lane, where a gum-chewing checkout girl smiled at me.

"Second box for half price," she said.

"Huh?"

"These are on special. If you buy another box it's only half price."

How good it was, how sweet it was to hear the voice of somebody outside the lunatic world I inhabited! I wanted to stay there at the cash register and listen to this girl talk to the customers all day long, but I couldn't. I was in the middle of a mission from h.e.l.l.

"I think these'll be enough," I managed to say.

She shrugged, rang it up, handed me the receipt and my change. "Okay, sweetie, have a nice day."

A nice day.

When I got back to the garage the first thing that hit me was the reek of Pine-Sol cleanser. My mother was mopping the floor. She turned to look at me.

"It took you long enough," she said.

The dead priest was now fully clothed, shoes and all. He was lying on the cot. Except for the rope around his neck, he could have resembled a man who'd fallen asleep while reading a book.

My mother had stripped him, washed him, and dressed him. I'm sure she'd worked without worry that someone might come along, because my father was far, far away and we never had visitors. My mother did a lot for needy people, but she did it on their turf. Charity may begin in the home, but as far as my mother was concerned, it was always an away game.

The dead priest seemed to be smiling. She'd washed away the bloodstains from his thorn wounds. She was washing the last of the s.h.i.t from the floor when I walked in. She leaned the mop against the garage wall. "Give me the bags."

I handed them over. She took one and filled it with the rags she'd used to clean up, as well as the soiled loincloth and the crown of thorns. The last thing to go in was the disposable mop head. She sealed the bag, then dropped it inside another bag, which she sealed even tighter.

"Now listen, Samuel. Go back to Grand Union and drop this in one of their big garbage Dumpsters. They're behind the store."

I took the bag from her and stared at her, slack-jawed.

"We can't have it near the house," she said impatiently. "It's evidence. evidence. Do you understand?" Do you understand?"

"Yes, Mom."

"Go. Don't take so long this time. And don't let anybody see you."

How was I supposed to keep anybody from seeing me? Was I expected to turn into the Holy Ghost?

I should have been scared, but I was too stunned to be anything but numb. I hurried to the supermarket. The plastic bag seemed to be gaining weight with every step I took. I went around back, where there was a row of giant Dumpsters. How the h.e.l.l did my mother know about these Dumpsters?

They reeked of rotted vegetables and rancid animal fats. I stood on tiptoe to lift a Dumpster lid and tossed the bag in. It made a hollow kettledrum sound as it hit bottom. The Dumpster must have been empty. More garbage would cover up the bag in the course of the day.

I felt a hand on my shoulder. A young Puerto Rican in dirty workman's overalls was scowling at me.

"Hey. Whatchoo doin', man? This ain't no dump!"

I was petrified. "I just..."

"Come on, man, say it!"

"Our garbage cans are full. My mother told me to bring it here."

He let go of my shoulder, shook a finger in my face. "I'll let it go this time, but don'tchoo dump here no more."

"Oh, I won't. I promise."

"And tell your mother what I said."

"I will...."

I walked away fast. Once I reached the sidewalk I broke into a run, which carried me all the way home. When I got to the garage the windows had been opened and a breeze blew through the place, weakening the Pine-Sol stench.

My mother was fussing around with the dead priest on the cot. She'd placed his hands over his lap and was now stepping back to view her scenario, c.o.c.king her head to a.s.sess it, like a woman arranging pillows on a couch.

Pleased with it, she turned and looked at me. "Did you do it?"

"Yes, Mom."

"Good boy. There's just one more thing."

She took the bare wooden broomstick the priest had used to crucify himself and began s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g the broom head bristles back onto it.

"Your father would notice if this was missing," she said. "You know your father."

She finished the task, stood the broom in its usual corner. "Okay, Samuel. Now we're ready."

"Ready for what?"

"I'll tell you all about it while we eat."

That's right. With the dead priest in the garage, we sat and had our bacon and eggs. Grease had congealed on the bacon and the scrambled eggs were crusty, but we ate them anyway, because it was a sin to waste food.

I was so stunned by all my mother had done while I was out disposing of evidence that I'd forgotten to tell her about the Puerto Rican who caught me using the supermarket Dumpster. Now it felt as if it were too late to tell her. Besides, what could we do about it? Go back and retrieve the bag? No way.

While we ate, my mother revealed her plan.

It was really quite simple.

"You didn't see anything, Samuel."

"I didn't?"

"I'm the one who found Father Bielinski hanging from the ceiling. I cut him down and tried to revive him, but it was too late. I put his body on the cot. It's as simple as that."

"What about all that other stuff?"

"There isn't any other stuff. By the time you showed up, I'd already cut him down."

My mother was many things, but until this moment she had never been a liar. This was terrifying to me, in a way more terrifying than the crucifix suicide itself.

What could I say? My mouth had gone dry. I had to swallow to speak. "Mom...that's not how it happened."

"As far as we're concerned, that's exactly how it happened."

"But the crown of thorns, and the other stuff-"

"Samuel! There isn't isn't any other stuff." She lifted the phone. "Remember what I said. It's important that we tell the same story, in case anyone asks you anything, including your father. any other stuff." She lifted the phone. "Remember what I said. It's important that we tell the same story, in case anyone asks you anything, including your father. Especially Especially your father." your father."

She waited for me to nod, then dialed 911.

The police showed up, a uniformed cop and a detective, and so did an ambulance. My mother stuck to the story she'd forged, and the cops had no reason to doubt her. They never asked me a single question.

The ambulance guys took the noose off Father Bielinski's neck. Then they put him in a body bag, zipped it shut, put it on a rolling stretcher, and took it away.

I was glad when he was out of our garage, but upset that his brown suitcase was still there. I wanted every trace of him to be gone.

The cops were wrapping things up. Almost casually, the detective asked my mother, "You cut him down, but why didn't you take the noose off his neck?"

"I didn't want to tamper with any evidence," my mother replied.

The detective seemed surprised. "Didn't you try to revive him?"

"Oh yes, but I knew he was dead."

"How'd you know that, ma'am?"