It's Hard To Be Holy

EP. 34: Chapter XII

Coarse, Offensive, and Xenophobic Language. Reader Discretion Advised.

Talent and desire alone cannot sustain dreams of greatness, or so Alfonso Ignatius (the second) came to learn. You need to train. You need someone to give you the tools of technique. But who in St. Gregory's could foster such an education in the young Carr?

Bud searched high. Bud searched low. Bud even searched somewhere in between for the oh-so-important pedagogue. No one was worthy of his want. No one was willing.

Craving ate at the boy, and Fate pulled him ever closer to the most obvious answer. There was only one source with the experience and imagination to be responsible for the education of potential greatness. One person that Bud had purposefully resisted, partly out of a respect for the man's recent loss, but mostly due to a learned wariness of testing his obsession so early in its infancy with such a turgid personality.

But what choice do you have? Go on. Make the pilgrimage!

'So! Ya boys wanna be singers, do ya?' huffed Colin, sprawled out across his couch, his bathrobe doing little in the way of keeping his modesty. Detoxification had thinned him, and so too had the inability to cook a decent meal. In the proceeding months after Mary Malone's passing, Colin survived, if that is the word for it, on a steady diet of his daughter's charred meals, cheap cigars, and soda bottles that he liked to polish off at a rate of a liter an hour. If Bud hadn't been so familiar with his grandfather's love of self, he might have assumed it was an intentional decision to waist away. 'Well?!'

Ed looked to his friend, very put out. 'You said there was gonna be coffee cake—OW!' He recoiled from Bud's well-placed elbow, and rubbed at his now tender ribs. Being Vera's brother had taught the middle Carr all about readily vulnerable body parts.

'Yes!' said Bud, gritting his teeth. 'Yes, we do!'

Colin raised his head, ash splattering down over his robe as he chewed on the stub of his cigar. He had always entertained the idea that one of his grandchildren would follow in his magnificent footsteps. Chase the always elusive grail of renown. He'd been insistent on the idea, but so bombastic in his efforts that every time he'd brought up the 'noble profession', his words, the children had fled him. It took a lot of courage for Bud to work up the nerve for this moment. A lot of stalled pride and poorly restrained stubbornness.

Either this, or back to broken bones.

It was not a pleasant choice.

'Ya think because ya sang some guinea song that ya found yer callin'?'

'What?!' Ed was lost, his mind still on the slice of coffee cake that Bud had sworn would be his reward for venturing into the surly lion's den.

'Yes!' said Bud again. Colin wanted him to beg, but there were lines he would never cross.

Great men do not beg!

'What d'ya even know about music?'

'I know some things, Pa—'

'I know nothin',' said Ed. 'Now, where the hell is the—'

'See, Bud?! At least he's honest!'

'I do know some—'

'Edward Towne! Tell me this: Who do you think invented music?'

'Who...what?'

'Who invented it?'

'Fuh...I dunno...the Greeks?'

'In fact it—what?! The...the Greeks? The fuckin' GREEKS?!' Starved or not, Colin Malone could move fast when the need suited him. Apparently, in that moment, it suited him very well. So insulted was the aged man that he sprang up from the couch and began to pace. 'No, no—NO! Jesus wept! That's the dumbest...I thought ya were the smart one, boy—'