The November morning fog made halos around the streetlights of Norristown's residential streets as Ken McCoy walked along in the muffled darkness. The town was as quiet as it ever got, at 4:45 in the morning. The distant roar of the steel mill was a background noise to Ken, like the constant sound of the surf might have been to his grandfather back in Ireland.

Five blocks of rowhouses separated Ken's family's home from Saint Clare's Catholic Church. It was an easy walk for the wiry 14 year old, and one he made often. Father O'Mara appreciated having a regular altar boy for the 5:15 mass, and Ken didn't mind being well away from home before his father woke up. The elder McCoy came home drunk and woke up hung over, both conditions his children had learned to avoid if at all possible.

The motionless lump on the front steps of the Church was visible from a block away through the gloom. Ken quickened his pace, a sense of unease rising in his chest as he approached the Church.

The dark smudge spreading out under the man's motionless head across the marble step confirmed Ken's fears. He reached for the man's wrist anyway, to seek a pulse, and felt the stiffness that had already begun to settle in. Looking up and down the street, no one else was visible, so he walked around to the sacristy door and let himself in. Picking up the black telephone receiver, he pushed the button that would ring the bell in the rectory.

"Father O'Mara? It's Ken. We got a dead guy out on the front steps of the church, Father."

He went back out into the darkness to keep watch over the unknown corpse. Was it a mob hit? God knew the mob was thick as fleas here in the blue collar towns northwest of Philladelphia. Or maybe an argument between one-time friends turned violent. Something over a girl? Could be, Ken supposed. He'd seen it often enough in his young life already, where men came to blows or worse over women.

One thing Ken knew for sure, standing there in the pre-dawn blackness. He wanted to get the hell out of Norrisville. He could imagine himself, some day in the distant future, bleeding out his life on a cold step with nobody to mark his passing. No. Hell no! He would not die in this wretched burgh.

"Jesus, Mary and Joseph..." Father O'Mara breathed as he came up beside Ken. "It's Denny Ellis." Stooping to make the sign of the cross on the dead man's forehead, the tall gray haired priest murmured the words of Extreme Unction in Latin. "If you can get his ankles Kenneth, I'll lift his shoulders. We'll take him into the vestibule, and put him off behind the curtain in back of the baptismal font."

Together they lifted the lifeless man. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Ken recognized the name. Ellis. Daniel Ellis, the war hero.