Free Unto the Sons by Gay Talese

daydreaming under the pole. I heard someone snicker and glanced back toward the Mother Superior. But she had now taken her seat, and her eyes were rigidly focused straight ahead into space. Behind the nuns were dozens of parishioners who sat with their faces pinched in expressions of pique, or with their mouths open as they yawned—except for my parents, who sat with their heads slightly bowed, their eyes lowered as if in prayer.
    Aware that I had lost my audience as well as whatever might have passed for my aplomb, I turned to the five other candles—but not before noticing Mr. Fitzgerald at the vestry door, pointing frenetically at his wristwatch. Mass was now ten minutes late, thanks to my incompetence, and seeing Mr. Fitzgerald in such agitation caused me to panic; in haste, I began to swipe the fiery black pole back and forth through the air, perilously close to each of the five unlit candle wicks. Twice I clanged against the gold rings that encircled the wicks, and each time it appeared that a reeling candle-holder might topple. Had it not been for the intensified sighs of the alarmed audience that prompted me to regain my composure, I might well have desecrated the entire altar with the wayward oscillations of my pole.
    Finally, having grazed the sixth and final candle, I waited for my hands to stop shaking. Then I turned and climbed down the red carpeted steps, and, without looking up to see whether or not I had ignited the wicks, I headed toward the side door into the vestry. But as I disappearedthrough the doorway, my curiosity made me turn at the final moment to peer over my shoulder and sneak a peek at the upper ledge of the altar. The wicks of the candles were all miraculously aglow.
    As Father Blake feebly picked up his chalice and readjusted his tricornered black cap, I took my place in front of him and walked out to the altar—to begin the Mass that was now almost twenty minutes late.
    For most of the next hour I performed my functions by rote. I held the hem of Father Blake’s long vestments as he climbed the altar steps. I genuflected at the proper times. And I adroitly handled and poured from the cut-glass cruets the consecration water and the red wine that Mr. Fitzgerald had mercifully not consumed. I did not fail to ring the bell three times when the priest raised the host—nor did I forget my liturgical responses to the priest, even though, like most altar boys in the parish, I could translate hardly a word of the Latin I had been forced to memorize.
    But at the point of the Mass when I was to lift a heavy, cumbersome prayer book with its wooden stand and carry it from the right side of the altar to the left, I tripped on the hem of my cassock. I fell heavily across the book and its stand, and I heard the sharp sound of splintered wood—and heard as well the groans of the congregation as my chin hit the floor behind the black heels of Father Blake.
    Gallantly he did not turn around, possibly because of his partial deafness; and as I slowly rose to my feet hoisting the book on its fractured stand, and carefully placed it atop the altar—where it rested at a lopsided angle—the old priest closed his eyes and made the sign of the cross, while I slinked down the steps, prepared to occupy my rightful place in the purgatory of errant altar boys.
    How I continued to serve out the rest of the Mass on that most miserable Sunday of my young life I will never know. For years, the mere recollection of the morning could bring blood rushing to my face. But I remained on the altar to complete my chores, oblivious of the people, aloof from the spirit of the Mass, my body like a piece of flotsam pushed back and forth along the shore by the tide. When Mass finally ended, I felt relief but no escape from my humiliation.
    Ignoring the dour glances of Mr. Fitzgerald as he stood behind Father Blake removing the priestly gowns, I pulled off and hung up my short white surplice and my cassock, then quickly put on my