Brian and Allen were brothers but they didn\u2019t look it. Only separated by a year, Brian was short and skinny and Allen was tall and fat. Like I had been at the time, Allen was intent on becoming a priest. They had a corner lot with a yard that wrapped around their house on three sides, like a cupped hand holding an egg which would have been the house, only the house was of red brick, one story with a basement. I played with Brian, throwing an undersized kiddie football. We played a simple game where each of us tried to make the other drop the pass by throwing as hard as we could at close range, maybe fifteen feet, each targeting the chest, daring the other to let the ball slip through hands into the body. I didn\u2019t have a good arm, but for a small kid Brian did. But I had beautiful soft hands, and caught pass after pass from Brian, frustrating him no matter how hard he threw, until he threw straight at my face in an effort to intimidate. My hands, however, proved impenetrable, perfect. Not a thing could get beyond them. I dreamed of being an NFL tight end, catching passes from Bart Starr, when I wasn\u2019t blessing my congregation, or presiding over the miracle of transubstantiation. I had the body for either, long arms to raise the Eucharist and a thick trunk for blocking linebackers. I threw a little off balance, maybe two feet to the left of my target, and Brian tipped the pass incomplete, then accused me of cheating. \u201cNo, no,\u201d I said, \u201cI won. I won.\u201d Allen popped his head out the screen door and invited us into the basement. \u201cIt\u2019s time for Mass,\u201d he said. I didn\u2019t know what he was talking about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the\nbasement, he\u2019d set up an altar, complete with a tablecloth that hung down over\neach end of the fold out table and a chalice he\u2019d decorated himself out of a\ngoblet. His mom had made him a vermillion vestment that he pulled over the top\nof his head, and with his long sleeved t-shirt, he did indeed look like a\npriest as he set about his interpretation of the sacred ritual. At the end of\nCommunion, he drew actual hosts out of the goblet and placed them on our tongues.\nWhere he got them I\u2019ve no idea: They tasted the same, looked the same, broke\nthe same. He must have asked our pastor or bought them from a catalogue or from\nthe Diocese. For the wine, he used grape juice, and he drank several times in\nbetween invocations, the way he\u2019d seen Father Ray do after the distribution of\nthe hosts. He said we could do this whenever we wanted, but I never returned to\nhis basement. I still consider it sacrilege.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There was a\nkid who lived a couple blocks away, more Brian\u2019s size, shorter, thinner. I\u2019d go\nover to Brian\u2019s house and his mom would tell me he was off playing with the new\nkid. She instructed me to go to the new kid\u2019s house. I finally went and found\nthem rolling marbles up a sharply pitched driveway up toward a crack that was\ntheir target. They were playing Old Fashions with irregular clay marbles,\nspotted and of various colors, first one into the hole got to keep the\nopponent\u2019s marble. But Tomas, the new kid, wouldn\u2019t let me play, said he didn\u2019t\nlike me. Walking home, I thought of Brian. Why didn\u2019t he stand up for me,\ninsist I played, at least give me a chance? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
One night\nover the Summer I heard that Brian and Tomas were heading off Okauchee Lake to\nfish. I said a prayer over and over. I closed my eyes and wished as hard as I\ncould for God to intervene. I thought of the water, of sharp winds, perhaps a\nstorm. When Brian came home, I heard Tomas had been underwater for twenty\nminutes and been shipped off to the Emergency Room. Days later we learned he\nhad died.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I didn\u2019t tell Brian about my prayer, but when I asked him to play catch in his yard, he refused, said he didn\u2019t want to play with me anymore. Years later, after we\u2019d both grown and started dating a pair of twin sisters, he explained to me he\u2019d been offended because I\u2019d started calling him Brian the Brain. Apparently he didn\u2019t think the transposition of letters had been clever at all. I remembered Tomas and my prayer. The stigma of God\u2019s intervention still played upon my conscience. Was I responsible? Had God granted me the accident and the opportunity to experience shame? I knew I hadn\u2019t caused Tomas\u2019 death but had willed it, willed it when my own insensitivity, not his intervention, cost a friendship. I resolved to have a place for selfishness, inside the box in the basement with the ghost that wanted to kill me, the ghost I\u2019d met when I was six, who chased me in and around a white maze in my dreams. Every six months or so when the box got too big from the ghost beating on it from the inside I\u2019d shrink it down once again inside my head to a pinhead size and hide it in the corner of the basement where the floor was broke out in the dirt among my fears. After thirty years we moved away and I forgot about it and the ghost escaped. But by then I was too big. The ghost couldn\u2019t smother me. I smothered the ghost, and the shame I consumed, digested and incubated into respect, forgiveness and remembrance. I remember Tomas now and wish him well where he may be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mark Putzi received an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin — Milwaukee in 1990. He has published fiction and poetry in numerous small press magazines including The Cape Rock, the Cream City Review, Queen Mob’s Teahouse, Meniscus and Griffel. He lives in Milwaukee and works as a retail pharmacist. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Brian and Allen were brothers but they didn\u2019t look it. Only separated by a year, Brian was short and skinny and Allen was tall and fat. Like I had been at the time, Allen was intent on becoming a priest. They had a corner lot with a yard that wrapped around their house on three … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa867U-wp","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2009"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2009\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2011,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2009\/revisions\/2011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}