It surprises him to find the sarcophagus slightly warm; he thought it would be cool. Out on the square the sun is broiling. There she sits, even though it’s shady in St. Paul’s. Nelson lies inside with his one arm, and he’d imagined a chilly 94place of preservation. Like a larder. Or at least a temperature like under the bleachers. It’s cold there; he knows. As a boy, he always went to the rink with his father and older brother. While they sat up in the bleachers, yelling slogans at the starting forwards, he found his way down beneath them. The players skated in wide, confident circles behind the blue line. They slammed into the boards so hard that the plexiglass shook, and he got a couple of coins from his father for candy during each intermission. Then he could stand in the line by the candy counter and figure out what he’d buy during the next intermission. He really liked the intermissions. The Zamboni would drive around and transform the scuffed rink into a shiny sheet of ice. Once the game started up again, he’d disappear beneath the bleachers. It was extra chilly down there, and he’d expected a similar temperature at Nelson’s tomb. Or at least a temperature where you might expect that his cadaver would be well preserved; that he wasn’t lying inside cooking. Once on TV he watched a 400-year-old corpse being lifted out of a sarcophagus. It had been subjected to temperature conditions so ideal, the body had simply dried out. Like one of the mice you find under the eaves, intact. The conservator took a knife and opened up the body. Then he began to fish out the corpse’s desiccated excrement. It looked like a beach pebble. A large beach pebble, or a hockey puck for that matter. At home his brother would dribble the puck out on the patio. On occasion he was allowed to borrow a stick and try to steal the puck. He struck his brother with the stick once, it might have been by accident. Then his brother threw himself on top of him, pinning him to the paving stones with a knee on each arm. He let the threat of a loogie dangle above him, till​ 95he tried to spit back up at his brother and the spit landed in his own face.