“Church,” Mart tells him, pulling his tobacco pouch out of a jacket pocket and finding an undersized rollie, “is for women. The spinsters, mostly; they do like to get themselves in a tizzy over whose turn it is to do the second reading, or the altar flowers. And the mammies bringing in the childer so they won’t grow up heathens, and the aul’ ones showing off that they’re not dead yet. If a young lad starts going to mass, it’s a bad sign. Something’s not sitting right, in his life or in his head.”
