A rugged Irish immigrant and father of five children is remembered by his son for his mannerisms and sayings, one of which mainly sticks with him — "help me, Father Alphonsus."

He remembers how his father would say things as he brooded over his children while they bickered and fought. The son notes that the name of this priest was one of the few attachments his father had to his life in the old country. He recounts the story of Father Alphonsus, his father who desperately related to him on his deathbed: 

Alphonsus, the youngest of six children born weeks after his father's death, is groomed by his mother and siblings to become priests. After his education at the seminary and the death of Father O'Donnell—the town's priest— Alphonsus becomes the village's spiritual leader.

One early morning, "after years of stoic service"— where he attended cycles of masses, funerals, and weddings — Alphonsus is awoken to the sound of a knock at the church door— a man with a confession. At the confessional, the man asks for penance for his breach of the fifth Commandment, as he has killed a constable in the Black & Tans — a fierce division of the Royal Irish Constabulary with a known reputation for extrajudicial killings and brutality. The division would undoubtedly destroy their town, as was expected after such incidents.

The man asks for his penance, but Alphonsus refuses, tells him to come back the following day at the same time, and requests the location of the body. During that day, Alphonsus, after offering service, goes to his garden and watches, as he often does, the "movements of the drawn carts and of his parishioners." He is approached by Sean Flynn, a townsperson, who insists Alphonsus go fishing to clear his mind.

Dressed in his cassock and biretta, Alphonsus rows to the lough where the man said the body was located. After unsuccessfully scouring the shoreline and the edges of the woods for the body, he journeys into the woods, where he encounters the body of Thomas Shanahan, a Black and Tan officer who would frequent Alphonsus' masses.

He performs the last rites and searches for high ground to bury the body, the prospect of which he knows to be both illegal and sacrilegious, which stirs great trepidation within him. He smuggled a small trowel onto the boat so as not to rouse suspicion, so Alphonsus dug a shallow grave 2 feet deep.

Unable to complete the job, he resolves to drop the corpse into the ocean, but unequipped with the necessary implements, he dresses the corpse in his cassock, loads the cassock with heavy rocks, and ties the bottom of the cassock with a fishing line.

After he loads the body into the boat, Alphonsus sets off from the shore and drops the body into the ocean, the imbalance of which overturns the ship and sends Alphonsus into the sea. He swims to shore.

He fears that his biretta, bobbing on the waves of the ocean, and boat, known by those fisherman who know him, will be discovered. He returns to the woods to wear the clothes he had swapped with Thomas, and by dawn, he finds a ride towards Dublin. He escapes the country as Thomas Shanahan, a defector of the Black and Tans. Alphonsus would later immigrate to the United States, assume a new name, and have five children. In the present, while on a trip to Dublin for a football game, the son visits the town where his dad was once a priest and views the monument dedicated to his father: "Father Alphonsus Kelly, RIP. Drowned November 5, 1920.