My sisters Miriam and Katie, my brothers Les and Rick, remained staring numbly at the TV screen though an advertisement had come on. They were quieter than I had ever seen them. Les said he knew Hadrian Johnson—sort of. Katie said she knew his sister Louise. Miriam, who never dared smoke at home, fumbled for cigarettes in a pocket, lit one with trembling hands and our staring blinking benumbed mother paid not the slightest heed.

How much they all knew, or had guessed, I did not know.

I did not understand how this terrible news could be related to my brothers. There was something I was forgetting—the baseball bat? In my confusion it seemed to me that Hadrian Johnson must have been beaten by the same persons who’d fought with my brothers— sons of bitches at the Falls.

Niagara Falls was seven miles away. This beating had been here in South Niagara, on Delahunt Road.

There were long-standing rivalries between the high school sports teams. Sometimes these spilled over into acts of vandalism, threats, fights. Beatings.

That must have been it, I thought. Guys from Niagara Falls, invading South Niagara. Often there were attacks of graffiti on the South Niagara high school walls, obscene words and drawings after a weekend.

From what my brothers had told me it sounded as if they’d been at the Falls and had been fighting there. Was it possible, I’d heard wrong?

I won’t tell Dad. I won’t tell anyone. I promise!

In the aftermath of the TV news our mother stood slowly, pushing herself up from the couch. With the stiff dignity of one in great pain who is resolved not to show it she made her way out of the room. We saw her lips moving wordlessly as if she were praying or arguing with someone. Her eyes had become glazed, as if she were staring at something pressing too close to her face, she could not get into focus.

She would hide away in the house, in this benumbed state. She would hide like a wounded creature. As after what she called the trouble with the Deaver girl for weeks she’d been reluctant to leave the house knowing that she had to encounter friends, acquaintances, neighbors eager to commiserate with her about the terrible injustice to which the Kerrigan boys had been subjected . . .

For it was not always clear, our mother knew: the distinction between commiseration and gloating.

Eventually, the Deaver girl was forgotten. Or people ceased speaking of her to Lula Kerrigan.

From that time onward, we noticed that Mom was becoming more religious. If that’s what it was—“religious.”