Plans

“Jack!” Aodh shrieks, racing miles at a time down the hill that stretches high above the river. His little feet blur below him when he looks down, suddenly remembering the nettles and sticky leaves that lurk under the brush. He grizzles and runs faster, determined to catch up and reach his missing shoes. 

“You’re so slow,” Jack cackles, already standing by the river’s edge when Aodh, panting, catches up to him. 

Aodh glares at him and angrily leaps up to grab the shoes Jack is holding above his head, his fingers just shy of Jack’s. He huffs, jumping again and failing to reach them. 

“That’s not fair!” he whines, puffing out breaths of effort before grumbling and giving up. “We have mass soon, Ma will be mad if I get my shoes dirty.”

“Well I’m holding them. If you put them on your feet they’ll probably get more dirty,” Jack retorts. 

Aodh frowns and slaps Jack in the belly, making him cough and laugh. He grumbles irritably as he takes back the shoes that Jack reluctantly lowers. Under the dark Irish sun the boys argue for a while longer before trekking up the hill again, passing their cottage homes, and turning up on the step of the church where their mothers greet them and wipe dirt from their faces and shirts. Aodh is five and Jack is six, born in the same month of May but one year apart. 

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Six years later, the two friends sit together on a pew, sharing fruit pastilles and trying to tear the paper tube as quietly as they can while they observe communion. Jack cheekily pockets all the purple pastilles while Aodh puzzles over why he can’t find a single one. 

“Aoife,” the priest says in his steel-wool gargle, wrinkly eyes moving over the pews until a girl stands to accept her bread and wine. 

“Stop eating, you’ll have to go up soon,” Jack whispers to Aodh. “It’s always Aoife then you.”

Aodh rolls his eyes and shoves another pastille into his mouth. “Shh, we’ll be smacked.”

Once Aoife returns to her seat, the priest consults the list beside him and his gaze returns to the gathering.

“Aodh,” he croaks.

Aodh coughs, his cheeks a little flushed as he looks at Jack then back to the priest, a stale pastilla still tucked in his cheek. He exhales and rises, beginning the long walk to the altar.

“The blood and body of Christ,” the preist says.

“Ar…Amern,” Aodh says around the sweet, looking sheepishly up while he settles to a kneel. 

The priest waits expectantly, a small crust held in his papery fingertips. The silence stretches for ages until Jack lets a snort slip and his mother swats him in the arm. 

“Your tongue,” the priest grumbles.

Flushed, Aodh sticks out his tongue, upon which there is already a round, lime green sweet. He offers the priest a half smile while the old man sighs, shaking his head. He practically shoves the crust into Aodh’s mouth then offers him the chalice with a deep, disapproving frown. Aodh swallows quickly and shuffles as quickly as he can back to his seat, where Jack is laughing against his shirt collar. 

“What’d I say?” he grins.

“Shut up,” Aodh groans.

After church that day the boys run down the hill past their homes, free of shoes and suspenders now. They race each other to the riverside and Jack wins like he always has. Under a cluster of poplar trees, the two of them collapse and pant. 

“I think I’ll have a fit if I go to another communion,” Aodh mutters. 

“You can’t shay that,” Jack says, stuffing his face with the candy he’d pocketed. “You’ll be shent to Hell.”

“I’ll be sent to Hell for anything. I’m already going to Hell for kissing Mia,” he groans, stretching out on the grass and looking out at the sheep munching in their fields. 

“Did you confess it?”

“Not yet. I will Wednesday.”

“Then there’s nothing to worry about. If you confess it before you die then you can’t go to Hell.” Jack shrugs

“But my Ma knows. And you’ll go to Hell if your Ma is angry with you,” Aodh responds.

“She probably won’t be angry when you die. She’ll probably be sad.”

“Oh, I guess you’re right.”

The boys move sit for a while on the river rocks, ankles underneath the cold water and their trousers tugged up to their knees. Still shaded by the poplar clusters, they cool themselves and gaze out at the crop fields, the sheep, the bumpy ridge of the dykes emerging on the horizon line, and the water they know is beyond. It’s hard to be proud to live on an island when the land feels small and the people feel exclusively Catholic. 

Jack knocks his knee against Aodh’s, looking up at him for a reaction with a teasing smile. Aodh rolls his eyes and knocks his knee right back.

“So why’d you kiss her?” Jack asks.

Aodh pauses. “Who? Mia?”

“Who else?” Jack mumbles. “Do you kiss other girls?”

“No, I don’t,” he murmurs. “I don’t know, she asked me to kiss her so I did.”

Jack sits up straighter. “What was it like?”

Aodh shrugs and stares off at an arbitrary place in the landscape. He presses his lips flat and scratches his shoulder. “Just…two mouths on each other. It wasn’t all that great.”

“You have to kiss a girl you like,” Jack says with a roll of his eyes. “You don’t like Mia, that’s why it wasn’t good.”

Aodh moves his legs in the water, looking down at the ripples it makes. “I don’t like any girl.”

“You can pretend I’m a girl,” Jack says quietly. Aodh looks at him, puzzled, stopping the movement of his legs. He says nothing and nor does Jack, just looking at each other. 

Until Jack tilts forward and gently brushes his closed lips against Aodh’s. Aodh sits entirely still, but he grips the grass underneath him while he watches Jack, a small ball of panic gurgling in his chest. Very slowly, he leans in too. 

Jack breaks away from him quickly, turning his head away. “It’ll be lunchtime soon. I’m gonna go home.”

“Yeah, alright,” Aodh coughs, scratching his jaw. 

Jack grabs his shoes and runs up the hill again, his dark hair bouncing as he sprints until he becomes smaller and smaller, then disappears into his family’s cottage. 

That Wednesday, Aodh enters the confessional like he does every week, but this time he doesn’t have to make up a confession. Thoughts of Mia are gone as he speaks, “Forgive me Father, for I have sinned.”

“Confess your sins to the Lord,” says the priest.

In the dark wooden box, Aodh feels small tears rising to his eyes. He wrings his hands and looks at his shoes. “I’ve kissed someone.” 

The priest is quiet for a while until he clears his throat. “That’s alright. That’s no major sin.”

“No,” he sniffles. “Um, I–I kissed a boy.”

The silence stretches longer this time as Aodh grips his shirt, bubbles of fear moving in his belly. His knees tremble as he waits. 

“This isn’t natural,” the priest says at last. “God created man and woman to be together. Your…actions are forbidden in His kingdom. Do not interfere with His plan.”

Aodh nods, though the priest can’t see him. He swallows thickly and wipes his eyes.

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The last time they meet by the river is in June. They’re twenty and twenty-one now, absorbed in the tedium that consumes a young man’s life at this stage. Jack has grown tall and stubbled while Aodh clings to peach fuzz and large jackets that hide his skinny arms. Jack puffs on a cigarette, standing on the bank, while Aodh approaches. 

“Hey,” he says, reaching into Jack’s pocket to grab the pack. He helps himself to a cigarette and nudges Jack for a light.

“Stay still,” he mutters, lighting the cigarette in Aodh’s mouth. 

Aodh sucks in the smoke and holds it for a while. “How’s Aisling?” he asks, the smoke escaping his lips as he talks. 

“Good. All excited over napkins and lightbulbs and stuff,” he sighs. “She wants to shell out two thousand for a band.”

Aodh laughs weakly. “Why not? You only get married once.”

“You sound like her,” Jack smiles. “And uh…Toronto, right?”

“Yeah,” Aodh says. “Got the visa now, so everything should be good to go come August. I’m just trying to figure out how to manage tuition payments.”

“You’ll be fine. I promise when I’m rich I’ll send you money,” Jack grins.

“Right, of course,” Aodh rolls his eyes. “I’ll be waiting until I’m just bones.”

The men are quiet now as the sheep bleat across the water. The poplar trees are smaller now and the river rocks much less heavy. They smell smoke instead of wet earth like they had as children. 

“Aodh,” Jack mumbles.

“Yeah?”

“If you were a woman I would have married you instead,” he confesses quietly. 

Aodh breathes out, eyes trained on the ground as his throat hardens. He nods silently and flicks his cigarette. Opening his mouth to speak, he gazes up at Jack, and the words die in his throat. 

Jack only steps forward and places a hand on the back of his neck, leaning down to kiss him with more confidence than even his fiancée had seen. Aodh’s eyes flutter closed and he relaxes in the arms of Jack, moving his lips in time. He exhales when Jack pulls back, blinking down at the ground. 

“Good luck in Toronto,” Jack murmurs. 

“Good luck with Ais,” Aodh whispers back, meeting his eyes for the last time.