“This someone Morrell sent you?” the priest growled.

My stomach felt queer at Morrell’s name; the night’s labors had kept me from thinking about him and now it came back to me in a rush, that he was missing, or missing anyway to me. “I’ve lost track of Morrell. Never mind that now: this young man has been hiding in an abandoned house out in the western suburbs. I found him moments before sheriff’s deputies

surrounded the place. He needs to be warm, he needs to eat and he needs to be in a place where the county cops and the city cops and John Ashcroft’s cops aren’t going to find him.”

“They have a good reason to look for him?” Father Lou pulled back the heavy door far enough that we could come in.

“Yeah, they don’t like his race, creed or place of national origin.” “That a fact. You got a name, kid?” His faded blue eyes looked directly at the boy, who didn’t withdraw, as I’d feared-I’d forgotten the priest had dealt with generations of frightened boys.

“Benjamin,” the youth whispered. “Benjamin Sadawi.”

“Mass in seven minutes,” Father Lou said. “Got to get to church. Ben, you go with Victoria to the kitchen, she’ll make you tea and eggs, fix you up with a bed. Unless it’s been so long since you’ve been here, my girl, you don’t remember where anything is.”

“I do not go to Christian church,” Benjamin said.

“Not asking you to. Got other rules you have to follow if you stay here: no drugs, no weapons, no cigarettes. Say your prayers however you want. Special intention for Morrell;’ he added to me. “For the kid, too. Jesus doesn’t care if he prays in Arabic.”

He stumped off down a dark corridor connecting the rectory to St. Remigio’s church. I took Benjamin down a different unlit hallway to the kitchen. Father Lou saves money in his financially strapped parish by not keeping lights in the halls. I had to switch on my headlamp again to guide us to the kitchen. The batteries were wearing out; the light was feeble, like my legs at this point.

In the kitchen, I found the matches to light a burner on the heavy old stove. I was surprised, in a way, that Father Lou even had spent the money on a gas stove instead of keeping a coal burner, or whatever had been in the rectory when the church was built in the 1880s.

In the refrigerator, I found the eggs that were the staple of the priest’s diet. He had margarine and a big block of cheese, as well. I scrambled them all together in a cast-iron skillet. Father Lou ate a lot of bacon, but I remembered not to offer that to a Muslim youth.

While the margarine was melting, I switched on a transistor radio perched on top of the refrigerator. It was the wrong time for news

highlights: I got ads and sports reports. The Bulls had lost again, along with the Blackhawks. It’s no easier to be a Chicago fan in the winter than in the summer.