Page 114 - What They Did to the Kid

102 Jack Fritscher

“Why? Will God chase us down like the ‘Hound of Heaven’?”
I felt jealous. In a world where special friendships were forbid-
den, Dempsey had seemed like a best friend to me. “He would have
written.”
“He didn’t though, did he,” Mike said flatly.
Loss in the movies has violins. I had the hiccup duet from Rip
and Kenny playing bongo rhythms on the picnic table. My Uncle
Les counseled me that in his own seminary he had watched good
friends drop out who had more vocation than he did. Dempsey
dropping out was a shock. Every time a close friend quit, I made an
examination of con science to see if my vocation remained sound.
Any boy’s quitting called into question my intellectual reasons for
staying in the same way that priests feared other priests quitting the
priesthood for good reasons other than alcohol or purity.
“Get changed, Ry,” Mike said. “Let’s swim.”
Later, wet and cool in the shade, helping Rip and Kenny with
the beer, I weighed the difference Dempsey’s leaving might make on
my life at Misery. Dempsey and Mike and Lock were best friends.
Whenever Dempsey repeated that he was president of the Friends of
the Friendless Friends, we always responded, “Who are the Friends
of the Friendless Friends?” And he’d say, “I’ll never tell.” Our good
times smoothed the rough spots. Any other boy in our senior-college
class could have left without rocking my boat, but with Dempsey
gone I’d know the difference. I was sure word from him would come,
a letter from him, to my home probably today, telling me he was
leaving the seminary and why. I hoped the letter would come, even
though my hope was both a tiny sin of vanity and a venial sin of
disobedience, because Dempsey had crossed over and we were for-
bidden to communicate with boys who left Misery. Not-knowing
was proof I was left out of inner circles of fraternity.
“Later I want to talk to you,” Mike said as we came up dripping
to the table.
“Is this irony? You big deal want to tell something to somebody...
like...famous for not knowing everything?” I waved my hand around
my ears. “Damn the mosquitoes,” I said.
“You’ll get used to them.” Kenny handed me a beer.
“Not in the daytime,” I said. “Never.”

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