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house, he could think of nothing but the previous Sunday’s Mass. Father Felix had worn violet for Lent, his vestments a shade lighter but just as shiny as Aggie’s favourite robe. He had read from Galatians, “ ‘Cast out the slave-girl and her son, for the son of the slave-girl shall not be heir with the son of the free woman.’ “August felt the thoughts of the gathered faithful turn toward him. A few bold ones even turned their heads. Glancing up from the enormous lectionary, the old priest met August’s panicked gaze. He met and held it kindly with his own.
    When she wasn’t wearing it, Aggie’s robe hung from a tarnished hook on the inside of her closet door. August only meant to check the colour, to see if it was as close as he thought, but the robe felt so mysterious to the touch, slithery and strangely cool. He got gooseflesh slipping it on.
    Aggie always kept something to drink in the house, but it would be whiskey or beer, not wine. The closest thing August could find was strong tea gone cold in the pot. He poured it out into Aggie’s best cup—bone china with a little cottage painted on the side—then nibbled the corners off four saltines and arranged them on the matching saucer.
    He did his best with what little he knew. He began by running his fingers under the tap and flicking water at his flock. Next he genuflected, signed himself with the Cross and began mumbling, now and then bending to touch his lips to the tabletop, or opening and raising his arms. He held a saltine up to the light and said an Our Father before swallowing it, elevated the cup twice to be safe before sipping the bitter tea. Finally, he fed the animals, or pretended to, palming the crackers and slipping them surreptitiously into his mouth.
    He had to rush to get everything cleared away before Aggie returned with her shopping basket full.
    “What’s this?” She laughed at him. “It’s a little big on you, don’t you think?”
    Mortified, he cast his eyes down. The robe sagged from his thin shoulders in puckers and bags, entirely obscuring his form.
BEEF: REMOVING THE TONGUE AND BRAINS
    Thomas turns the steer’s head face down, runs his blade along the inside of the jaw, loosens the tongue’s tip and severs the thick cords at its base. Then takes up the cleaver. A single sharp blow and the tongue comes free from the bone, dragging its fat behind. He drops it into a basin of water and for a moment it seems to swim, a scarlet fish dyeing its surroundings to match.
    He got plenty of tongue as a boy. For the family of a slaughterhouse owner—albeit the smallest, most poorly run slaughterhouse on the yards—the Roses ate few prime cuts. Thomas Senior brought home discarded odds and ends, countless buckets of blood, meat too bruised to pass off on the buyers, often a knobby length of tongue. It was the only meat that made Thomas uneasy. He’d seen too many of them working hard in the mouths of terrified cows. His mother watched him choke it down, saying nothing until one of her husband’s nights away.
    Nights away
. The old man crashing in at the crack of dawn, stinking of rye and days-old panties, ground-out butts and dirty hair. Thomas always blessed her in hishead—whichever poor, pissed-up girl had taken the bastard on, she’d given his mother a break.
    It was on one of those nights that Sarah Rose decided to show her son a little trick. She laid the tongue her husband had left them in a bowl, pressed a small plate down on top of it, weighted it with a fat onion and let it stand.
    Thomas retrieves the dripping tongue and scrapes it from tip to base. He can almost see his mother’s face before him, the secret little smile she flashed when she lifted that plate. The tongue had reinvented itself—it mimicked perfectly the curve of the bowl. She upended the red dome into a boiling pot, lifted it out pink, carved it at the table like a roast.
    “Clever, hmm?” she said softly. “Now you eat up.”
    And Thomas did,