“Father Jason, is my niece here?” Sister Mildred’s hands were folded in front of her waist, over her nightgown. She didn’t look angry, but it was clear that her question was more of a rhetorical question, because she was already confident of the answer.

Jason’s mind raced, trying to think of some way out, an excuse, some sort of a dodge, like having Maureen go out the window, but realized that he was busted, and had no choice but to face the consequences.

“Maureen, your aunt is here for you.” Jason held the door for the young lady to leave.

“If it’s all right, I’ll just join the two a ya.” Sister Mildred forced her way through the door and took a seat at the table. “So what’s with all the moanin’ I was hearin’?”

Jason and Maureen, who was gnawing her lower lip, looked at each other.

“I was beaten pretty badly last night, so Maureen was kind enough to give me a massage.” Jason hoped that sounded better to the sister than it did to his ears. He gestured to his shoulder blade by throwing a hand over his back. “Right up here on the upper back.”

“It was my idea,” Maureen explained, trying to take some of the heat off of Jason.

“I’m sure i’twas.” Sister Maureen replied without any emotion on her face. Then she looked down at the Jason’s glass on the table. “Is that hooch?”

Jason and Maureen both looked at each other again, as if to ask, “What do we do?”

“Um, yes, I told Maureen that if she wanted to drink, I had liquor.” Jason nervously wrung his hands. “I hadn’t intended for her to come up here late at night—I just didn’t want her to have to go to the Rowdy Murphys to get a drink.”

Sister Mildred crossed her arms over her chest. “Ta be honest, I’m not happy yer here, dearie, but it’s a sight better than runnin’ ‘round with the Rowdy Murphys.”

“Or the Flannigan Boys,” Jason said pointedly, while shooting Maureen a look.

“Think I could get a drink a that giggle water?” Sister Mildred asked.

It took a moment for Jason to register her request. “Sure.”

Jason went to the bottle of Jameson’s in the cabinet and poured the sister a finger of whisky in the bottom of a glass, which he handed to her as he sat down.

The moment his butt hit the chair, the sister downed her drink in a single gulp.

“Got a ‘nother?” the nun asked.

“Yeah, sure.” Jason figured he might as well leave the Jameson’s bottle out. So he got up, removed the bottle from the cabinet, and set it in front of the nun.

Maureen sat on the bed quietly watching, with her breasts beneath her thin nightgown resembling statues under sheets.

“Go ‘head, dearie, ya might as well.” The sister leaned over and poured her niece some whisky. “A least ya had the sense not ta hang out with a bunch a mugs.”

The sister also poured Jason a drink, which he sipped.

“Truth is, I gave the late father plenty a back rubs,” the nun confessed. “He told me, there’s a sayin’ in boxin’: if ya lose, ya get hurt; if ya win, ya get hurt. The blessed father suffered a great deal ta support the men at the shelter.”

Jason thought that saying was true—he’d won the boxing match last night, but he’d paid the price for that victory. “It’s Sunday tomorrow. Are we going to get someone to do mass?”

“Do mass?” Maureen asked, looking at him with her green eyes. She looked puzzled. “You’re a priest. Why don’t you do mass?”

“Good question,” Jason thought. “How do I explain that one, other than to tell her I’m a fraud, posing as a priest?”

“When Father Jason joined us, we had an understandin’ that he would run the shelter, and work with the men, but the church, ‘n’ masses, ‘n’ baptisms ’n’ the lot’d be handled by ‘nother priest.” The nun sniffed her whisky, enjoying the aroma, before taking a slug. Now she spoke to Jason. “Too short a notice, and the mayor’s Brunos locked the church up. Let me show you my father’s favorite technique.”

The nun rose to her feet and picked up the shillelagh from where it stood propped against the wall. “Stand there,” the nun said, pointing to a spot on the floor. The sister got into her stance, with her shoulders square to Jason, her right foot forward, and the shillelagh held parallel to the ground at chin height, held by both hands palm down.

Without warning, the nun suddenly flung the shillelagh forward, sending it flying through the air, hurtling toward Jason’s face. Because Jason’s hands were too late to block the thrown cane, the shaft struck him in the chin, making his eyes water. The shillelagh fell to the floor with a clatter. In the same instant, the sister was practically on top of Jason, throwing a furious volley of punches into his face and gut, but thankfully, she pulled them so he wasn’t actually hit.

The sister moved well, but she was overweight and didn’t train, so she stood huffing for a moment, trying to regain her breath before she sat back down.

Jason knelt down to pick up his shillelagh and placed it leaning against the wall. He rubbed his chin as he rose. “Those punches look really good, Sister. I’m glad you pulled them, or I’d be on the floor.”

The nun poured herself a drink, and then poured a little more for Jason. “Like I said, I was a tomboy. I could drink, and cuss, and fight, and whale with the shillelagh better than any a them boys. Lot a the lads wanted ta give me sass, so I slugged ‘em. We went toe to toe, and I socked many a lad in the kisser, right on the button. Pow!”

Sister Mildred was easily consumed with her stories, and did a little re-enactment of her fights, rising up out of her seat a bit to illustrate. “In time, I realized I was different. The dresses ‘n’ frills ‘n’ flowers just wasn’t fer me, and I was gonna have ta slug my way through life. I became a nun, but the Fightin’ Father Milligan was ‘xactly the kind a priest for me, not like one a them soft-talkin’ priests. So here I am.”

“I’m glad you’re here,” Jason told her. “We’ll do mass next week.”

* * *

“Part of becoming financially independent is getting your spending under control,” Gramps explained. “The easiest way to have more money is simply to spend less of the money you already have, but the other side of the equation is to earn more.”

“And how do I do that?” Jason asked. They took a brisk walk though Nampa’s green belt, a walkway that ran along a canal winding through trees in residential areas. Ducks drifted with the current of the canal, while birds landed in the bare trees.

“A side hustle.” Gramps windmilled his arms to warm up. “Find something that interests you, where you can make a part-time income. If you’re lucky, it takes off, and you find yourself making a full-time income at something you love doing.”

“I’ve got an idea what I can do.” Jason nodded as a couple on bicycles passed them. “I’ve been practicing magic with my mentor, Steve, but I’ve been trying to work up the nerve to actually go out and perform.”

“That’s good.” Gramps nodded at a woman pushing a well-bundled baby in a little covered wagon. “But I was also thinking of teaching. You said you like teaching, at least in the abstract, and I think you’ve got a gift for teaching—it’s just that you’re in the wrong place, where what you do is unappreciated. As long as you’re a teacher in a public school, you’re going to be underpaid and dismissed.”

“A student once asked me if I liked teaching. I said, ‘I love teaching; it’s just that I hate students.’ I was joking, sort of. I wasn’t talking about all students, just that handful who make life miserable.” Jason looked both ways for traffic as the two of them prepared to cross the street. “So what, teach college?”

“No. I’d thought of you going into administration, but the POT score is horrible, and the same is true of a doctorate to become a college professor, although that might have been a good place to start your career. Who in the hell was advising you? Where in the fuck was the counselor at your school?” Gramps worked to relax himself, and stretched his neck, then jogged across the road.

The two resumed their brisk walk. “Yeah, I’ve wondered that myself. I basically just stumbled into teaching, and no one ever explained any career options to me.” Jason pulled his ski cap down over his ears.

“When I was a kid, I wanted to be a Secret Service agent, but my dad was a cop, said it wasn’t a good job because I’d be gone all the time, and a lot of Secret Service agents’ marriages broke up. So I dropped the idea. I wonder where I’d be now if I’d become a Secret Service agent. But my dad assumed that I would get married—that’s what everybody does.”

“Doesn’t everybody get married?” Jason wondered.

Gramps looked up to watch a flight of geese overhead. “As Gene Simmons said, ‘Dumb men will always get married. So will smart women.’ That’s most men’s strategy for money and women, get a good job and get married, which is what all the Whitlock men have done. That’s the surest way to fail with money and women.”

“Help me out—what did you say POT was, and I know it’s not drugs.” Jason racked his brain to remember.

“Pay Over Training.” Gramps replied. “Consider how much you have to pay to get to where you can work, and then how much money you’ll make once you start working.”

“You got that right. I not only had to pay for five years’ of tuition, plus books, but I have to pay for my teaching license, and have to get thirty credits every five years to have it renewed, which is expensive and a pain in the ass.” Jason saw the Wal-Mart up ahead, visible through the trees and houses. “Let’s stop at MacDonald’s.”

“Or MacDo, as they call it in the Philippines.” Gramps wore the same dreamy expression he always did whenever he spoke of the Philippines. “I was thinking you could run day-long seminars, teaching Spanish for businesses, hospitals, law enforcement. You could probably earn more in a single day than you do in a week, easily.”

It was a strange concept to Jason, getting paid good money to teach. “The other day I mentioned Harry Wong, who runs teacher training seminars, plus he has a book out. That guy has got to be making thousands a day for a seminar. But I was thinking, why aren’t there any Chinese teachers?”

“The Chinese are too smart,” Gramps replied. “That’s why Harry Wong isn’t a teacher; he’s a consultant, doing seminars for teachers. The Chinese always go where the money is.”

Jason recalled June, a beautiful girlfriend of his, and it had been too long since he’d had any woman, let alone someone as gorgeous as June in his life. “My Chinese girlfriend had a sister—really smart, math major, great person—who got a job teaching at Sanger, of all places. She lasted for two weeks, and then quit teaching for good.”

“I told you the Chinese were smart.”

* * *

Jason, Maureen, and Sister Mildred served the men beef stew and rolls for dinner. The gas burners heated the basement, but Jason reflected how the burners were more expensive, and it would be nice to have the electricity back on again. Earlier in the day, Jason worked on his shillelagh techniques, including the cane throw the sister showed him last night. He also worked on a secret way out of his room on the upper floor of the rectory, in which he would move from under a cabinet down into the garage. He sawed the floor for most of the afternoon. The next step was a false wall in the garage, which would give him a cubby where he could store weapons or hide out if he needed to.

While cooking at the makeshift stove outside, Jason managed to sneak a little red wine into the stew, together with a dash of cayenne, so it wasn’t as bland.

“This stew is the bee’s knees!” Harvey exclaimed to Maureen as she passed. “You must have put a little extra love into it this time.”

Maureen nodded her red head in Jason’s direction. “Actually, it was Father Jason who made the stew.”

“Ohhh.” Harvey gave Jason a knowing look, then dipped his head and spoke confidentially. “Or maybe I taste a little tiger milk.”

Wine was a common ingredient in beef stew, but it looked bad when served at a men’s shelter, especially when the gorilla mayor had unilaterally imposed a liquor ban. Jason was spared having to come up with an answer when a pack of goons appeared at the basement door, wearing RAPE badges on their suits. All of them were broad-shouldered, carried night sticks in their hands, and wore looks like they were eager to crack skulls. Jason regretted that he didn’t have the shillelagh with him, and didn’t yet have the skills with the Irish stick needed to take on a half dozen big men with Billy clubs.

The men of the shelter glanced up nervously from their dinner.

The hulking men fanned out, making a point of gesturing and prodding with their billies as a show of force. The closer the goons got, the smell of their aftershave was overpowering, as though a full bottle of toilet water had just broken on the concrete floor. Perhaps because Jason scared off the two goons the last time, they had decided to return in force. The apparent leader, whose face had a bluish tint due to his fresh-shaved beard, approached Jason, making a point of shoving his chest out to intimidate the priest, who was the smaller of the two. “So you luck out against Maxie Rosenbloom, and now you think you’re hard?”

Another thug peered into the pot, then took a drink right out of the pitcher of punch.

“Hey!” Jason shouted in protest. “You’re complaining about our sanitation, then you drink right out of the pitcher.”

“I thought we shut you down,” the big man in front of him growled.

“It’s not illegal to eat dinner,” Jason countered.

“The mayor decides what’s legal and what’s not.” The man stood on Jason’s toes. “We got reports you’ve been giving the men liquor, which is illegal.”

“If I were giving the men liquor, what kind of priest would I be?” In his mind, Jason answered his own question: “A fake priest, that’s what I’d be.” He knew his sap was in his right jacket pocket but didn’t reach for it. There were six of them, all of them strong men armed with nightsticks, and Jason would most likely get beaten down. Even if he did somehow miraculously prevail, the RAPE goons would be back in even bigger numbers, and more heavily armed. He’d either be arrested or “accidentally” shot.

A man raced down the stairs, which Jason could hear even if the towering man in front of him blocked his view. “Geno!” the man shouted. “It’s Sal. He’s dead!”