Not long after I was born, our pastor pulled my father aside following a night service and asked for a word in private. My father obliged and followed him through the stragglers in the vestibule and down the stairs, into the basement of the church and through its rear exit, into the fellowship hall and through its back doors onto its patio. My dad, somewhere between confused and concerned, asked if he should turn a light on, but the preacher said no, just before briefly illuminating the scene to light a cigarette.

My father was shocked, and later found that he was the only one who knew the man had ever smoked. When he told me this story, I suggested it may have been a sign of trust. He said it was a sign of a nervous breakdown; something had him distraught and it was probably a temporary vice. He said he'd never told anyone but me and, for whatever reason, swore me to secrecy.

The preacher, after a drag or two, likewise asked my father to keep their conversation strictly between them; to leave it there, in fact, on that pitch black patio. He agreed.

Over the course of his first cigarette, the pastor managed to arrive at the subject; the lake on the back half of his property. A moment of small talk about the lake followed, during which he lit his second smoke with the burning filter of the first.

My dad said that whatever was said during that second cigarette - some anecdote about a lake, or something - he was struggling to pay attention to anything but the glowing cherry, too dim to light even the nose on the pastor's face. He thought that without that cherry to focus on, he might simply fall over.

A third cigarette could be heard sliding from its pack, just as the pastor came to the point and my father remembered that there was something serious being discussed which he was supposed to be paying attention to.

That serious something was the lake on the pastor's property, and the pastor asked my dad, quite seriously, whether he thought it was practically feasible to expand the lake to double its size.

He lit the third cigarette with the second, then resumed smoking the latter.

My dad hesitated before answering, he said, sensing that there was a whole lot more going on here than how much water was pooled in this man of God's back forty. He told the pastor that he'd never worked on anything like that before, but remembered some community project in his childhood, to broaden a small pond in his hometown's lone park. It was still a small pond.

The pastor absorbed this in silence. Only the third cherry remained now, and my dad watched it float for a moment before a soft snap sent it sailing, over the rail and gone.

Before my dad knew the conversation was over, our pastor had somehow found his hand in the dark and was shaking it, thanking him, and suggesting that they find that light switch for the way back in.

By the time I was ten, at least six people knew about the pastor's bad habit; five of us were children, and we had no idea that my father knew. When I told him this after he recounted his strange experience, he laughed himself to tears.

I didn't tell him what I never told the other four kids; I knew where the preacher kept his smokes.

Secrets like that can be difficult for a child to keep; the people you know are the world you know, and even a minor personal shame exerts a powerful and distorting influence. An unremarkable corner among many in a drawer among many in a bar, of all things, in a basement library.