The League of Berries and Laurels Ch. 3 Pt. 1 by Russell Block
You can read installments from The League of Berries and Laurels on the Song of the Broad-Axe Publications Substack, The Ha'Penny Papers.
Chapter 3
A Winter Sunday
Relates in circumspect the nature of the family business, describes Mass where those of Irish descent and the product of fellow nations that adhere to Rome’s guidance convene, and portrays the annual stringing of the lights.
Alderman need to show their faces on Sundays, lest constituents come to believe about them what they already know, but the same is not required of those that draw from the shadow of the well that calls itself authority, one of whom is Mr. Kerrigan. By the time the first phenomenon of experience are intuited, when all appears as open and full of potential as, truly, it is, the familiar mumbling, shuffling of papers, and the rude treatment of the receiver can be heard as it imbues the house. Quickly thereafter, the mysterious importunes are washed over by the dreaded, frenetic rousing of the house and its most vulnerable spiritual denizens. Ulie is called and called again, a call that is essentially no different from any articulation else, but this one presents as clamorous and demands heed be paid it.
Mass, and specifically the 10:30 service, which is the one the family attends, brings out a latent talent for collective bargaining that nevertheless proves futile. The position of the kids, however artfully expressed their arguments are, never sways the implacable parent, whose impassive resolve is a model of mothers before her. Their father, for his part, enforces the rule but does not heed it himself, opting instead to fill his Sunday mornings with coffee and politics, as is his every morning so filled. Ulie, who is discovered in the space an open cabinet door makes with the wall and promptly marched to the door, cannot blame him. Who would voluntarily don the most constrictive items of clothing there are to be found, cram into the car where elbows give way to fists, and then endure a performance so boring, so inconceivably tedious, that it could not possibly have been devised by man, and where elbows give way to fists.
