Fintan Slattery raises his hand. I know who stood at the foot of the cross, sir. Of course Fintan knows who stood at the foot of the cross.Why wouldn’t he? He’s always running off to Mass with his mother, who is known for her holiness. She’s so holy her husband ran off to Canada to cut down trees, glad to be gone and never to be heard from again. She and Fintan say the rosary every night on their knees in the kitchen and read all kinds of religious magazines: The Little Messenger of the Sacred Heart,The Lantern,The Far East,  as well as every little book printed by the Catholic Truth Society.They go to Mass and Communion rain or shine and every Saturday they confess to the Jesuits who are known for their interest in intelligent sins not the usual sins you hear from people in lanes who are known for getting drunk and sometimes eating meat on Fridays before it goes bad and cursing on top of it. Fintan and his mother live on Catherine Street and Mrs. Slattery’s neighbors call her Mrs.  Offer-It-Up  because  no  matter  what  happens,  a  broken  leg,  a spilled cup of tea, a disappeared husband, she says,Well, now, I’ll offer that up and I’ll have no end of Indulgences to get me into heaven. Fin- tan is just as bad. If you push him in the schoolyard or call him names he’ll smile and tell you he’ll pray for you and he’ll offer it up for his soul and yours.The boys in Leamy’s don’t want Fintan praying for them and they threaten to give him a good fong in the arse if they catch him pray- ing for them. He says he wants to be a saint when he grows up, which is ridiculous because you can’t be a saint till you’re dead. He says our grandchildren  will  be  praying  to  his  picture.  One  big  boy  says,  My grandchildren will piss on your picture, and Fintan just smiles. His sis- ter ran away to England when she was seventeen and everyone knows he wears her blouse at home and curls his hair with hot iron tongs every Saturday  night  so  that  he’ll  look  gorgeous  at  Mass  on  Sunday.  If  he meets you going to Mass he’ll say, Isn’t my hair gorgeous, Frankie? He loves that word, gorgeous, and no other boy will ever use it. Of course he knows who stood at the foot of the cross. He proba- bly knows what they were wearing and what they had for breakfast and now he’s telling Dotty O’Neill it was the three Marys. Dotty says, Come up here, Fintan, and take your reward. He takes his time going to the platform and we can’t believe our eyes when he takes out a pocketknife to cut the apple peel into little bits so that he can eat them one by one and not be stuffing the whole thing 156