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mess with a grin. “I’d shake hands with you, Father, but—” As if in mock surrender, he holds up his bloodied palms.
    August’s head swims. His eyes fix on the butcher’s rubber boots, two black tree trunks grown up from a bright red field.
    “Mucky business, eh?” says Thomas.
    The carcass swings gently, hung from its hind legs, sawn and spread open wide. August nods speechlessly.
    “To tell you the truth, Father, I love the butchering, but the slaughtering I could do without. I reckon the Indians knew what they were about with those buffalo jumps. No fuss, no muss, and nothing but meat for a mile.”
    “The Gadarene swine,” August murmurs.
    “How’s that, Father?” The butcher bends again to his task.
    “I see your knowledge of the Gospel could use some work.” August clears his throat, adopting a biblical tone. “The miracle of the Gadarene swine. Our Lord and Saviour cast the demons from two men who were possessed, sending them into a nearby herd of swine.” His eyes glaze over with glory. “The swine ran mad. They thundered off a cliff into the sea.”
    “Into the sea?”
    “That’s right, Thomas.”
    The butcher shakes his head. “Terrible waste of pork.”
    August’s expression sours.
    “And another thing, Father, why a whole herd of pigs for only two men? Why not two pigs, an eye for an eye?”
    August collects himself. “I suppose that would have something to do with the vast spiritual difference between we who are made in His image and the common beasts of the field.”
    Thomas lays his knife on a nearby table and turns, proffering an enormous heart. “Are you telling me that couldn’t hold a man’s demons?”
    August takes a stumbling step back. It’s vascular and crude, an oversized portion of meat. He presses a hand to his chest. Somehow he’s always imagined his own as an alpine pool, crystalline, rocky and cold.
    The butcher lowers the heart into a basin of clean water, massaging it, giving it a good rinse. “Hey, looks like we’rein the same business, eh, Father?” He laughs. “Washing out hearts.”
    “I hardly think so,” August says weakly, then thinks viciously,
philistine
, the word soothing him, lending him strength. He draws himself up. “I’ll be off now.”
    “Okay, Father.” Thomas pats the rump of his kill. “Mathilda’ll be sorry she missed your visit.”
    August flinches ever so slightly at the mention of her name.
    “Unless you’ve already seen her,” Thomas adds.
    “No. Why would you—why do you say that?”
    “Just seems she’s down at the church more often than not.” The butcher’s smile betrays a hint of chagrin. “Makes sense, I guess, her having lived half her life at the rectory. Keeps going back like a bear to its hole.”
    “Very colourfully put. I shouldn’t like to think you regretted your wife’s devotion to God and His Church, Thomas. Nor to her aging aunt, for that matter.”
    “Oh—no. No, Father, I didn’t mean—”
    August turns his back. “I trust I’ll see you on Sunday, Thomas.” He closes the door firmly and righteously on his way out.
HIS NAME
    Father Day
, Mathilda mouths, wide awake beside her husband’s snoring form. She’s spoken it only once during the course of the day, and once doesn’t seem nearly enough.
    “Excuse me, Father Day.” She said it softly, poking her head in through his office door. “My aunt says to tell you your lunch is getting cold.”
    “Yes, yes, all right.”
    She lingered for several seconds, but he refused to look up from his desk.
    “Father Day.” She whispers it aloud now, but it’s his Christian name she really craves, the one his mother must’ve uttered when she first held him in her arms. Mathilda holds her breath, resisting for as long as humanly possible before giving in.
    “August.”
It slips out as she’s forced to exhale. A ripe-eared field unfolds in her chest. The butcher saws on at her side.
IN PRINCIPIO ERAT VERBUM
(
in the beginning was the