er, Joe decided. The creative writing program. That was the
thing to do. It would be carrying on something of his father in him,
and the inheritance would take care of his immediate money problems.
When he left Moody's, he was still sad, but at least he had a plan.

He stopped in Portland for the night, thinking that there was no
telling when he'd be back. He decided not to look up Ingrid; she was
off and into her new life. He got a room at the Holiday Inn and walked
around the West End, his old neighborhood.

Houses were being restored. Coffee shops had opened all over the place.
Popeye's, the bar with the tail of a light plane sticking out from its
roof, was just the same. As he walked up Gray Street, Joe saw the small
man who used to collect his returnable bottles. He was on his knees in
front of St. Dominic's, a large church that had been closed and put up
for sale by the Catholic bureaucracy. His shopping cart was beside him,
half full of cans and bottles. The day had turned sharply cold. Joe
felt a rush of complicated emotion. How could this man with nothing,
kneeling on the sidewalk before an empty church, be so complete? Or
so--realized. Joe wanted to salute him as he used to in the old days
after he handed over the bottles, but he did not disturb him. He went
instead to a coffee shop and tried to describe the scene.

Later, the sun was setting as he passed St. Dominic's. Joe stood for a
few minutes and watched a glowing veil withdraw inexorably up the red
brick tower of the church. It was as though the bottle saint had gone
and the service was over. Joe felt like crying, but he was too cold and
alone.

He ate dinner in Giobbi's, a local bar and restaurant with dark booths
along two walls. A messy meeting was in progress at tables that had
been pushed together in the center of the room. Joe held pizza in one
hand and wrote in his notebook with the other while men in late middle
age joked and argued. A man at one end of the tables clinked his glass.

"One thing we gotta take care of," he said. Clink, clink. "One piece of
business . . . " Clink. The group fell quiet. "Now." He cleared his
throat. "Now, you all know Agnes."

"Sure."

"She's been good to us all, right?"

"Yes, yes."

"Agnes."

"Now, some of you may not know the story about her . . . " There were
several questioning sounds and the group fell silent. "This is what
happened. About seventy years ago, there was a knock at the door of the
chu