It was neither new nor old, like his shoes.
It was clean, like the shoes, and it smelled like the man smelled: an odor of clean hard virile living leather.
He looked down at the boy.
“Where is the book?” he said.
The boy stood before him, still, his face calm and a little pale beneath the smooth parchment skin.
“You did not bring it,” McEachern said. “Go back and get it.”
His voice was not unkind.
It was not human, personal, at all.
It was just cold, implacable, like written or printed words.
The boy turned and went out.
When he reached the house Mrs. McEachern was in the hall.
“Joe,” she said.
He did not answer.
He didn’t even look at her, at her face, at the stiff movement of one half lifted hand in stiff caricature of the softest movement which human hand can make.
He walked stiffly past her, rigidfaced, his face rigid with pride perhaps and despair.
Or maybe it was vanity, the stupid vanity of a man.
He got the catechism from the table and returned to the stable.
McEachern was waiting, holding the strap.
“Put it down,” he said.
The boy laid the book on the floor.
“Not there,” McEachern said, without heat. “You would believe that a stable floor, the stamping place of beasts, is the proper place for the word of God.
But I’ll learn you that, too.”
He took up the book himself and laid it on a ledge.
“Take down your pants,” he said. “We’ll not soil them.”
Then the boy stood, his trousers collapsed about his feet, his legs revealed beneath his brief shirt.
He stood, slight and erect.
When the strap fell he did not flinch, no quiver passed over his face.
He was looking straight ahead, with a rapt, calm expression like a monk in a picture. McEachern began to strike methodically, with slow and deliberate force, still without heat or anger.
It would have been hard to say which face was the more rapt, more calm, more convinced.
He struck ten times, then he stopped.
“Take the book,” he said. “Leave your pants be.”
He handed the boy the catechism.
The boy took it.
He stood so, erect, his face and the pamphlet lifted, his attitude one of exaltation.
Save for surplice he might have been a Catholic choir boy, with for nave the looming and shadowy crib, the rough planked wall beyond which in the ammoniac and dryscented obscurity beasts stirred now and then with snorts and indolent thuds. McEachern lowered himself stiffly to the top of a feed box, spreadkneed, one hand on his knee and the silver watch in the other palm, his clean, bearded face as firm as carved stone, his eyes ruthless, cold, but not unkind.
They remained so for another hour.
Before it was up Mrs. McEachern came to the back door of the house.
But she did not speak.
She just stood there, looking at the stable, in the hat, with the umbrella and the fan.
Then she went back into the house.
Again on the exact second of the hour McEachern returned the watch to his pocket.
“Do you know it now?” he said.
The boy didn’t answer, rigid, erect, holding the open pamphlet before his face. McEachern took the book from between his hands.
Otherwise, the boy did not move at all.
“Repeat your catechism,” McEachern said.
The boy stared straight at the wall before him.
His face was now quite white despite the smooth rich pallor of his skin.
Carefully and deliberately McEachern laid the book upon the ledge and took up the strap.
He struck ten times.
When he finished, the boy stood for a moment longer motionless.