Kiss of the Wolf by Jim Shepard Page A

was always right.
    One thing you had to say about Tommy: this was no lazy guy. This was a young man who could operate. You woke him 6:00 A . M . Christmas morning and put him down in East Dipstick with seven cents, and by noon the next day he had somebody by the balls.
    When he wanted to piss me off, he called me Uncle Bruno. He’d go, So you think I should go easier on ’im, Uncle Bruno? You think I should be more patient?
    I’d say, Hey, a cavone like you, you’re gonna do what you want, whatever I tell you.
    Lot of people are curious as to what happened to Tommy Monteleone. Let me tell you: a lot of people.
    The police, they’re like having Andy of Mayberry on the case. They come into the house: Did anybody threaten your son’s life recently? Okay, fine, and that’s the end of that. They look at this, they look at that, have a nice day, thank you very much.
    Old man Monteleone still in his bathrobe; he lost the remote, so he’s poking the channel buttons on the TV from his chair with the other end of a broomstick.
    One cop actually got interested in the show while the other one was talking to Lucia.
    I told Lucia I was gonna find out what happened. She said, “You been a good friend a his all along, Bruno.”
    That’s all true. Though as Tommy would say, So what?
    Friendship’s friendship and a wonderful thing. But this is money we’re talking about. This is me.

J OANIE
    The happiest I’ve ever been was in fourth or fifth grade. The sisters were always looking out for you, always believed in what you could do. I placed high on an achievement test and instead of moving me up a grade, which I didn’t want, they tutored me on my own when things were too easy. That was on their own time. They brought books in extra, and when I finished them, they’d just feed the shelves. I’d do my exercises and then go over and pick out something and sit quietly while everyone caught up. I read most of Dickens that way, and a lot about the Maryknoll missionaries.
    They also got me a little encyclopedia I could keep in my desk. I worked my way through it, A to Z .
    They thought I was artistic, so they let me design the bulletin boards. That was a big thing, because the bulletin boards went all the way around the room on top of the blackboards. I had to keep to the basic theme, but other than that I could do anything. In December, we had Advent; in May, something blue with the Blessed Mother in it. In June, the Sacred Heart. They were so nice to me, when I think about it. I’d go to a separate room during subjects I was way ahead in and sit there by myself, drawing pictures and cutting and pasting colored paper.
    I won seven straight spelling bees. I was the girls’ champion. It was always arranged boys against girls, and the girls would root hard for me. You could see even then that we figured we didn’t win many things, so it was good to win those.
    I still have the crucifix I got from the seventh one over my old bed at my mother’s house. The cross is that fake marble: white with blue swirled through it. The Jesus on it is gold.
    Because I was advanced, I was big in the festivals. I loved the Feast of the Blessed Virgin: we all dressed in our white dresses and got to carry flowers. Three or four of us had special parts to say for the congregation. Mine was always “Mary, intercede for us”—three years in a row, “Mary, intercede for us.”
    I think they connected schoolwork with spiritual grace. If you were advanced in one, you were advanced in the other.
    They used milk bottles in the catechism books to illustrate the various states of grace, like our souls were little refrigerators. Mortal sins looked like bottles of chocolate milk. Saints would have, like, cases of regular milk. I remember I imagined venial sins as pints.
    I imagined our souls like white bedsheets instead, with chocolate milk spilled on them. And I remembered my mother