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%u00a9Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights ReservedHOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOKWhat They Did to the Kid 99Far off, crowds applauded fireworks we could hear but not see.%u201cAnyway, Doc told me we could talk. So I sat there an hour, real nervous, drinking Cokes and smoking. At one o%u2019clock exactly, he hung a Closed sign on the fountain, and we had lunch out of a paper sack. A few customers came and went about their business with the pharmacist. Weird. Doc didn%u2019t say one goddam word. So I put my hand on his and told him, right at the table where there were a lot of people around and he couldn%u2019t make a scene. All he said was, %u2018Number one made a mistake. Now number two.%u2019 He pulled his hand from under mine and reached in his jacket and gave me a dollar. %u2018What%u2019s it for?%u2019 I said. %u2018It%u2019s all I%u2019ve got.%u2019 He was almost crying. %u2018It%u2019s the last thing I%u2019ll ever give you.%u2019%u201d%u201cJeez, Louise...%u201dBrilliant fireworks popped streaming across the town sky.I held my chair, pained, that for so long Mike had been wrestling alone, like Jacob with the angel. Wrestling somehow seemed the classic Roman sport of seminarians: wrestling with angels, devils, and sexual temptations. I knew that hearing Confessions would be like this. So I struck a more sincere pose, which felt terrible, really, and quite so false, that I added to seminarians%u2019 wrestling card: vanity. How would I ever pull off actually acting like a real priest, actually being a real priest, when I felt like an imposter distanced from my own self? %u201cBy the time I got home,%u201d Mike said, %u201cDoc had called, and Julia, my own mother, was in tears. %u2018Your father didn%u2019t let you down,%u2019 she said. %u2018There%u2019s some things you%u2019re old enough to know.%u2019%u201dFrom outside and across the pines came the shrill cry of loons dancing on the lake, calm as a perfect mirror for the man-made displays of color and light.%u201cYou know my sister Julie I used to tell you about? You didn%u2019t see her picture anyplace, did you? It went out with the broken plate. She married when I was in eighth grade. Doc and Julia didn%u2019t like that choice much and liked it even less when she divorced her husband for desertion a year later. She was eighteen.%u201dAll the pieces, things Mike had told me at odd times in long talks, began to fall into place. At Misericordia Seminary, where time was measured exactly into the defined periods of the liturgical year, we lost all sense of real time and urgency.How many boys were hiding family scandal at home?Mike, free of being a priest, felt freer to confess to me, because he said I had a true vocation.