pagan baby

He named his Pagan Baby Kevin.
After all, wasn't that his own middle name, the one he preferred to his own - Francis Xavier? His mother, and of course the nuns, would never simply call him Francis (let alone Frank) but always strung the two words together like a verbal punishment. The sound was like nails on the blackboard to him. Francis Xavier. Who would name a boy that?
"Francis Xavier," the nun said, "You'll need to have at least one more dollar in your Mite Box or you can't adopt the Pagan Baby. It's just you and Costello left now. Do you want to be the only ones who haven't saved a little baby?"
Later that day, Francis Xavier Joyce stole a dollar out of his mother's purse when she was bent over the ironing board in the front hall. The cardboard Mite Box was folded together in the shape of a little church, and Francis Xavier slipped the wilted green bill through the church's roof.
Now he would have a Pagan Baby named Kevin, probably somewhere in Africa. But he also knew that he would go to hell if he died in his sleep that night.