After bursting through the church doors, Carl stomps down the steps and rushes over to the nearest gravestone. Whitening his knuckles around the top of the stone, he kicks the base repeatedly. Each strike raises dust from the weathered stone, and greys the leather across the front of his shoe.
“Aargghhh.”
“I wouldn’t let Father David catch you doing that.”
Carl’s foot hangs in the air, mid-kick. He turns to the voice and finds a man sat on one of the benches that line the church wall, smoking. It’s the same man who’d been mowing the grass when Carl arrived with his mother and brother a few moments earlier. Dressed in his Sunday best, Carl had shuffled past the man along with the rest of the congregation, as they filing inside. The man had nodded politely to each of them and, upon spotting Carl, he’d winked. Everyone else had ignored the man, acted as though he wasn’t even there, but Carl had been bought up better than that. He’d waved back awkwardly.
“I wasn’t kicking it. I… I was just cleaning my shoes.” Carl fixes his gaze on the shards of stonework gathered on the freshly trimmed grass at his feet. His shoulders slump. He turns back to the man. “I’m sorry mister. I didn’t mean to. You’re not going to tell of me are you?”
“Why would I do that?” The man shrugs. “That grave means nothing to me.”
Carl frowns. “But, don’t you work for Father David?”
“Father David? Ha ha. No. I’m here...” The man pauses, searching for the right words, then smirks before adding “…doing a spot of weeding. You could say I’m an old friend of the family.” He throws his head back and draws on his cigarette. Carl watches as smoke pushes out through the man's nostrils in two steady streams, obscuring his face in swirls of grey. “Between you and me,” the man continues, “I think Father David would prefer it if I was working some place else.”
There was something familiar about the man. He was as recognisable as someone who lived across the street, or who worked at one of the shops in town, or someone who Carl might have seen in the park. Carl inhales sharply, mimicking the man as he smokes. The taste of burnt toast hits his tongue.
The sound of scraping feet escapes the church walls and deep notes ring out from the organ. The man jabs a thumb over his shoulder, “You should be getting back in there. They’re about to start.”
Mom’s voice is a clenched whisper. “Don’t you dare show me up in here.”
“Mom said I have to stay out here until I’ve learnt how to behave.”
“Oh.” The man raises an eyebrow. “Did she?”
“I didn’t do anything!” Carl blurts out. “Danny said I hit him but I never did. I only pushed him a bit. And he started it. He wasn’t really crying, I could tell.”
“Danny’s your brother?”
“Yes. He’s four. He’s annoying. I was sitting by Mom first. He shoved in, not me.” Carl slaps the thigh of his trousers, brushing away gravestone dust.
“It sounds to me like Danny is the one who should be out here.”
“I don’t even like coming to stupid church anyway. Mom said it will do us all some good. But I hate it.”
The man glances up and down the churchyard, despite Carl not seeing anyone else in the grounds, and then leans forward. He lowers his voice. “I’ll let you into a little secret. I don’t like being here either.” He rolls his eyes. “All that begging. All that singing. Holy water. Pfft. What a joke.”
Carl finds himself grinning. “I only pretend to sing during the hymns. Father David sings loud enough for all of us”
“Ha Ha. That he does.” The man takes a final drag from his cigarette and tosses the stub to the ground. “What is it they say? ‘From the same mouth come blessing and cursing.’”
Carl frowns at the odd phrase but doesn’t want to embarress himself by asking the man what it means.
The man grinds the cigarette stub into the dirt with the heal of his boot and, without looking up, asks: “Do you love your brother?”
“Mom!! Carl is being mean again.”
Carl looks away from the man. “Yes. But sometimes I...” His voice tails off
“Sometimes what?” The man replies quickly.
“I don’t know. Sometimes I have these thoughts.”
“Oh. Thoughts, eh? You don’t have to worry about thoughts, Carl. We all have them. It’s natural.”
“Mom never listens to my side of things. She says I need to grow up. Danny is always getting me into trouble.”
“My brothers are the same. Whenever I do the slightest thing that they think is wrong, off they run to tell Father.” The man shakes his head. “Every time.” He picks at a fingernail and adds, “I bet your father takes Danny’s side too, doesn’t he?”
The shouting went on all night, longer than usual. Carl kept Danny busy upstairs playing with his cars. When the front door slammed shut, it locked in a silence that never left. Later, Carl heard his mom crying in the bathroom. When he got home from school the next day, his dad was in the bedroom stuffing clothes into a bag.
Carl catches a lump in his throat and swallows down hard against it. “My dad doesn’t live with me any more.”
“Ahhh. I see.” The man sniffs. “He probably left because he hates Danny as much as you do.”
Carl winces and his face reddens. He looks away from the man and doesn’t reply. He knows that if he tries to speak, after the mention of his father, he’ll not be able to stop himself from crying.
“It stings doesn’t it?” Carl can feel the man’s attention upon him. It was as if he was stood over him, staring down at him. Carl feels cold. But then singing rings out from the church and the feeling is gone.
The man scrapes a match against the church wall and lights another cigarette. The flame from the match dances deep within his jade-coloured eyes. “You should probably head back in. We wouldn’t want your mom getting worried now, would we?” He nods towards the church doors. “Maybe we can catch up again next week?”
“I’m not sure when I’ll be back. Me and your mother, we’ve got some things to work through first. Adult things. It’s complicated. I’m sorry, son.”
Carl nods slowly. “I guess.”
“Before you go, why don’t you give that stone another kick?” The man puffs out rings of smoke. “It’ll make you feel better. I won’t say anything.”
A surge of adrenaline hits Carl as he looks down at the frayed leather across the front of his shoes. Before he’s even thought about it, he’s given the gravestone another kick. It’s so fierce that a piece of the jagged stone splits the leather and pierces the skin of his toe.
“Attaboy!” The man grins, flashing tobacco-stained teeth.
As Carl heads back up the steps to church, his toes smarting, he glances over at the man. He’s holding his cigarette out in front of his face and appears to be examining it. When he catches Carl looking, he moistens his lips with a flick of his tongue and takes another drag.
“You know, it tastes more like singed hair than burnt toast to me.”
