Her name was Krystyna Olczak.

Everybody in Browerville knew Eddie Olczak. Everybody in Browerville liked him. He was about the eighth or ninth kid of Hedwig and Casimir Olczak, Polish immigrants from out east of town. Eighth or ninth they said because Hedy and Cass had fourteen, and when there are that many in one family the order can get a little jumbled. Eddie lived half a block off Main Street, on the east side of the alley behind the Lee State Bank and the Quality Inn Cafe, in the oldest house in town. He had fixed it up real nice when he married that cute little Krystyna Pribil whose folks farmed just off the Clarissa Highway out north of town. Richard and Mary Pribil had seven kids of their own, but everybody remembered Krystyna best because she had been the Todd County Dairy Princess the summer before she married Eddie…

The children around town knew Eddie because he was the janitor at St. Joseph Catholic Church and had been for twelve years. He took care of the parochial school as well, so his tall, thin figure was a familiar sight moving around the parish property: pushing dust mops, hauling milk bottles, ringing the church bells at all hours of the day and night. He had nieces and nephews all over the place, and occasionally on a Saturday or Sunday he'd prevail upon one of them to ring the Angelus for him at noon or six p.m.

In truth, weekends meant little to Eddie; he had no such thing as a day off. He worked seven days a week, for there was never a morning without Mass; and when there was Mass, Eddie was there to ring the bells, most often attending the service himself. He lived a scant block and half from church, so when the Angelus needed ringing, he ran to church and rang it.

The bells of St. Joseph's pretty much regulated the activities of the entire town, for nearly everybody in Brow-erville was Catholic. Folks who passed through town often said how amazing it was that a little burg like that, with only eight hundred people, boasted not just one Catholic church, but two! There was St. Peter's, of course, at the south end of town, but St. Joe's had been there first and was Polish, whereas St. Pete's was an offshoot started by a bunch of disgruntled Germans who'd argued about parish debts and objected to the use of the Polish language in liturgy, then marched off to the other end of town with an attitude of: To hell with all you Polacks, we'll build our own!

And they did.

But St. Peter's lacked the commanding presence of St. Joseph's with its grandiose neo-baroque structure, onion-shaped minarets, Corinthian columns and five splendid altars. Neither had it the surrounding grounds with the impressive statuary and grotto that tourists came to see. Nor the real pipe organ whose full diapason trembled the rafters on Christmas Eve. Nor the clock tower, visible up and down the length of Main Street. Nor the cupola with three bells that regimented everyone's days.

And nobody was more regimented than Eddie.

At 7:30 each weekday morning he rang what was simply referred to as the first bell: six monotone clangs to give everyone a half-hour warning that church would soon start. At 8:00 a.m. he rang all three bells in unison to start Mass. At precisely noon he was there to toll the Angelus-twelve peals on a single bell that stopped all of downtown for lunch and reminded the very pious to pause and recite the Angelus prayer. During summer vacation every kid in town knew that when he heard the noon Angelus ring he had five minutes to get home to dinner or he'd be in big trouble! And at the end of each workday, though Eddie himself was usually home by five-thirty, he ran back to church at six p.m. to ring the evening Angelus that sat the entire town down to supper. On Sunday mornings when both high and low Mass were celebrated, he rang one additional time; two if there were evening vespers. And on Saturday evenings, for the rosary and benediction, he was there, too, before the service.

Bells were required at special times of the year as well: During Lent whenever the Stations of the Cross were prayed, plus at all requiem Masses and funerals. It was also Polish-Catholic tradition that whenever somebody died, the death toll announced it to the entire town, ringing once for each year the person had lived.

Given all this ringing, and the requirement that sometimes a minute of silence had to pass between each pull on the rope, Eddie had grown not only regimented, but patient as well.

Working around the children had taught him an even deeper form of patience. They spilled milk in the lunchroom, dropped chalky erasers on the floor, licked the frost off the windowpanes in the winter, clomped in with mud on their shoes in the spring, and stuck their forbidden bubble gum beneath their desks. Worst of all, right after summer vacation when all the floors were gleaming with a fresh coat of varnish, they worked their feet like windshield wipers underneath their desks and scratched it all up again.

But Eddie didn't care. He loved the children. And this year he had both of his own children in Sister Regina's room-Anne in the fourth grade and Lucy in the third. He had seen them outside at morning recess a little while ago, playing drop-the-hanky on the rolling green playground that climbed to the west behind the convent. Sister Regina had been out there with them, playing too, her black veils luffing in the autumn breeze.

They were back inside now, the drift of their childish voices no longer floating across the pleasant morning as Eddie did autumn clean-up around the grounds. He listened to the whirr of the feed mill from across town. It ran all day long at this time of year, grinding the grain the farmers hauled in as they harvested. Eddie liked the smell of it, dusty and oaty; reminded him of the granary on the farm when he was a boy.

The town was busy. There were other sounds as well: From Wenzel's lumberyard, a half block away, came the intermittent bzzzz of an electric saw slicing through a piece of lumber; and occasionally the rumble of the big, silver milk trucks returning to the milk plant with full loads, their horns bleating for admittance. Now and then the southwest wind would carry the metalic pang-pang of hammers from the two blacksmiths' shops-Sam Berczyk's on Main Street, and Frank Plotniks's right across the street from Eddie's own house.

Some might disdain his town because it was small and backward, clinging to a lot of old country customs, but Eddie knew every person in it, every sound lifting from it, and who made that sound. He was a contented man as he loaded a wheelbarrow with tools and pushed it over to the fishpond in Father Kuzdek's front yard to clean out the concrete basin that had grown green with algae over the summer. It was an immense yard, situated on the south of the church, with the rectory set well back from the street and fronted by a veritable parkland covering an entire half block. The statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary stood in a stone grotto near the street, a rose bed at her feet and a screen of lush green pines behind her. The long sidewalk to Father's house was flanked by great shade trees, intermittent flower beds and rock gardens, all of this surrounded by a fence substantial enough to stand till Judgment Day. The fence, of stone piers and black iron rails, set off the grounds beautifully, but it went clear around three sides of the church property and made for a lot of hand-clipping work when Eddie mowed the lawns. Sometimes though, the Knights of Columbus helped him mow and trim. They had done so last Saturday, the same loyal workhorses showing up as they always did.

Eddie was on his knees at the fishpond when he was surprised to see one of those workhorses, Conrad Kaluza, coming up Father's sidewalk. Con had hair as black as ink and whiskers to match, his cheeks dark even after a fresh shave. He owned a little music store on Main Street and always wore nice trousers and a white shirt open at the throat.

Eddie sat back on his heels, pulled off his dirty gloves and waited.

"Well, Con, what the heck are you doing up here at this time of day? Come to help me clean out this slimy fishpond?"

Con stepped off the sidewalk and crossed the grass. He looked pale and shaken.

"Hey, Con, you don't look so good. What's…"

Con squatted down on one heel in the shade beside the pond. Eddie noticed the muscles around his mouth quivering and his whiskers blacker than ever against his white face.

"What's the matter, Con?"

"Eddie, I'm afraid I got some bad news. There's, ah…" Con paused and cleared his throat. "There's been an accident."

Eddie tensed and looked southward, toward his house. His backside lifted off his heels. "Krystyna…"

" 'Fraid so," Con said.

"She okay, Con?"

Con cleared his throat again and dragged in a deep breath.

"I'm… I'm afraid not, Eddie."

"Well, what's…"

"A train hit her car at the crossing out by her folks' place."

"Jezus, Maria. " Eddie said in Polish-Yezhush, Maree-uh-and made the sign of the cross. It took a while before he could make himself ask, "How bad is it?"

When Con failed to reply Eddie shouted, "She's alive, isn't she, Con!" He gripped Con's arms, repeating, "Con, she's alive! She's just hurt, isn't she!"

Con's mouth worked and the rims of his eyelids got bright red. When he spoke his voice sounded wheezy and unnatural.

"This is the hardest thing I ever had to say to anybody."

"Oh God, Con, no."

"She's dead, Eddie. May her soul rest in peace."

Eddie's hands convulsed on Con's arms. "No…" His face contorted and he began rocking forward and backward in tiny pulsing beats. "She can't be. She's… she's…" Eddie looked north toward his in-laws. "She's out at her ma's house canning pickles. She said she was… she and her ma were… oh, Con, no, Jesus, no… not Krystyna!"

Eddie started weeping and Con caught him when he crumpled. Over at Wenzel's the saw started up. It sang a while and stopped, leaving only the sound of Eddie's sobbing.

"Not my Krystyna," he wailed. "Not my Krystyna…"

Con waited a while, then urged, "Come on, Eddie, let's go tell Father, and he'll say a prayer with you…"

Eddie let himself be hauled to his feet, but turned as if to head toward the school building on the far side of the church. "The girls…"

"Not now, Eddie. Plenty of time to tell them later. Let's go see Father first, okay?"

Father Kuzdek answered the door himself, a massive, balding Polish man with a neck and shoulders like a draft horse. He was in his early forties with glasses like President Truman's, their wire bows denting the sides of his round, pink face. He wore his black cassock most of the time and had it on today as he opened the door of his glassed-in porch and saw who was on his step.

"Con, Eddie… what's wrong?"

"There's been an accident, Father," Con told him.

"Come in."

While they moved inside Con explained, "It's Krystyna… she… her car… it was hit by the train."

Father went as still as if riddled by two hundred ten volts. Eddie had worked for the parish for twelve years. Father's concern for him went far beyond that of a priest for a pa-rishioner. "Kyrie eleison," he whispered in Latin. Lord have mercy. "Is she dead?"

Con could do no more than nod.

Father Kuzdek's breath left him like air escaping a ruptured tire. Rocking back on both heels he closed his eyes and lifted his face, as if begging divine sustenance. "Erue, Domine, animam ejus." Deliver her soul, O Lord, he prayed in an undertone, then caught Eddie around the shoulders with one beefy arm.

"Ah, Eddie, Eddie… what a tragedy. This is terrible. So young, your Krystyna, and such a good woman."

They took some time for their emotions to swell, then Father made a cross in the air over Eddie's head and murmured in Latin. He laid both of his huge hands right on Eddie's head and went on praying, ending in English, "The Lord bless you in this time of trial. May He guide you and keep you in this hour of travail." After making another cross in the air, Father dropped his hands to Eddie's shoulders and said, "I ask you to remember, my son, that it's not ours to question why and when the Lord chooses to take those we love. He has His reasons, Eddie."

Eddie, still weeping, bobbed his head, facing the floor.

Father dropped his hands and asked Con, "How long ago?"

"Less than an hour."

"Where?"

"The junction of County Road 89 and Highway 71 north of town."

"I'll get my things."

Father Kuzdek came back wearing his black biretta, carrying a small leather case containing his holy oils. They followed him to his garage, a small, separate building crowding close to the north side of his house and the rear of the church. He backed out his black Buick and Eddie got in the front, Con in the back.