A view of the nave
by Kevin Grauke
Jack and his little brother Henry hated church. They hated it because they hated dressing up. They hated it because all the grownups seemed so fake, like they were acting in a play about how to be on your best behavior. The worst was how everyone would chuckle quietly whenever the minister smiled and said something that was supposed to be funny. Nothing he ever said was funny. Nothing. But most of all, they hated it because it was so incredibly boring. For an hour each Sunday, there was absolutely nothing to do but sit on a wooden pew that made your butt hurt or stand and pretend to sing. The only good thing was that their parents, who loved to do the same things over and over again, liked to always sit in the first row of the left-side balcony. This meant that Jack and Henry got to stare down at the people below like they were ants in an ant farm.
Like the boys’ parents, the other regulars mostly liked to sit in the same spot every Sunday, too, like the redheaded family who sat in the very middle of the middle row, the man in the back whose tie always matched the color of his wife’s dress, and the big-nosed woman on the aisle who usually fell asleep. The boys loved it whenever she’d snore and wake herself up with a snort, but their favorite person, by far, was the old man in the second row who picked his nose and ate his boogers. They called him Booger Man, and they studied his every move.
Besides picking his nose and eating his boogers, Booger Man never missed a Sunday service, always got to his seat early, and always wore the same black suit with white socks. He had gray hair that he slicked straight back. He never sang, or even pretended to sing, and he never bowed his head or closed his eyes during prayers. He never spoke to anyone as he was coming in or as he was leaving, either, but he did always put money in the offering plate.
Jack and Henry couldn’t even whisper to each other during service because their mother sat between them, and their father swore he’d whip them if they ever made a peep. Booger Man was the only thing they ever talked about in the backseat on the drive home, mostly how many times a finger went into his nose and how many times that finger then went into his mouth. According to Jack, the record for a Sunday was five times in the mouth. According to Henry, the record was six. The record for just a finger in the nose was much higher. Above ten.
Jack and Henry occasionally asked each other deeply-considered questions: Does he only eat boogers at church, or does he eat boogers everywhere? Has he eaten boogers his whole life? Does he think nobody notices when he eats his boogers? Does he eat boogers because he doesn’t have enough food? Does he like the way boogers taste? Does he wish he could stop eating boogers? Is he addicted to eating boogers? Is he a boogerholic? They took these questions—as well as their suggested answers—very seriously, but inevitably they ended up aching with laughter, straining painfully against their seatbelts while their screaming, swearing father swatted blindly at them with his right hand and steered the car with his left.
Their mother tried talking to them, telling them that the poor man obviously had something wrong with him, so it was cruel and hateful to make fun of him. This usually worked. Their laughter gradually faded. They then would apologize and promise to do better next Sunday. They could never do better, though. They always did exactly the same. Watching Booger Man pick his nose and eat his boogers was all they had to look forward to on Sunday mornings, sitting in silence in stiff pants, itchy shirts, and tight shoes.
But then one Sunday, when the organist started playing her signal for everyone standing around chatting to hurry and take a seat, Booger Man’s usual place was still empty. Both Jack and Henry leaned forward to look at each other across their mother’s lap. Wide-eyed with surprise and confusion, they simultaneously mouthed Where is he? Their mother eased each of them back and also shushed them even though neither had made a sound. Separately but identically, they stood through the first hymns and sat through the first prayers in a state that can most accurately be described as something close to worry.
When the Reverend Doctor Coker finally stepped to the pulpit to give the sermon, he announced to the congregation the recent death of one of the church’s members, Thomas Gregory Mott, and he pointed to the empty place where Booger Man usually sat. He asked everyone to bow their heads to say a prayer for him. Afterwards, he said, “I know that Mr. Mott tended to keep to himself, but before we move on, would anyone like to stand and say a few kind words in his memory?”
Jack watched the people below fidgeting nervously, but no one stood. On the other side of his mother, he could hear his little brother Henry crying in the silence. Jack stood. He was surprised to notice his own tears, too.
“He was a good man,” Jack said, loudly enough for the people below to hear. His mother tried to pull him back down to the pew by his wrist, but he could hear Henry crying more heavily now, so he wrenched free of her. “Mr. Mott was our friend, and we’ll miss him. I’m sorry he died.”
When they got home, he got a whipping from his father for mocking the dead.
Kevin Grauke is the author of Shadows of Men (Queen's Ferry Press), winner of the Steven Turner Award from the Texas Institute of Letters. His fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared (or are forthcoming) in journals such as The Threepenny Review, Bayou, The Southern Review, Quarterly West, and Columbia Journal. He’s a Contributing Editor at Story, and he teaches at La Salle University in Philadelphia. Twitter: @kevingrauke