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%u00a9Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights ReservedHOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOK118 Jack Fritscherbooks and chapel pews, melting the gold chalices and the gold tabernacle, fireballs shooting up the bell tower, flames roaring out the top, setting the bells ringing madly, like the fall of Troy, fire itself the flaming Trojan Horse, burning down the school house, sacking the seminary, like all the war stories in our Latin and Greek lessons, and Gunn shipping us out.The wind funneled the main fire hot up through the frame of the couch that was blazing alone in the center of the garden while wider and wider a ring of fire spread out through the dry grass.%u201cPiss on it, goddammit.%u201d I really had never said anything like that before except once or twice to show off. Now the words seemed commanding. My heart pounded in my chest. We were choking on the smoke. But finally we beat the fire out. At the edge of the burned circle, grass smoked and died. The couch collapsed and crumbled all over itself on top of the scorched garden patch.Lock and I laid down inside the warm circle of ash-white black, exhausted.%u201cOh God,%u201d was all I said. %u201cOh God, Gunn would have killed us.%u201dMike was laughing, dancing, mimicking how I had kept screaming, %u201cGoddammit! Piss on it!%u201d%u201cThis sure ought to fix Hank%u2019s buns,%u201d Mike said.Lock, for the first time in his straight-A life, looked happily ridiculous, sitting with part of his burnt shirt in his blackened hand. Dust stuck all over him stripped to the waist. He looked like a wild blond Indian. I pulled off my sweatshirt to my T-shirt and tossed it to him.We threw more dirt on the couch, and on each other, in a sudden wild dirt fight of dust and ash, jumping, wrestling, tossing each other to the ground, constantly changing two against one, everyone for himself in a free-for-all, until Mike stopped, leaving Lock straddling my chest, all of us screaming like Indians with laughter, leaping up, heading back through the woods to the school, laughing, running, the three of us almost hysterical with excitement, singing, %u201cCheer, boys, cheer! Old Misery%u2019s burning down! Cheer, boys, cheer! It%u2019s burning to the ground. The faculty will be run out of town. There%u2019ll be a hot time in the old Mis tonight!%u201dHank the Tank was in a small basement room lifting a set of barbells and dumbbells Dryden had donated. We stopped at the door, still laughing, to make fun of Tank, who was working at making himself even bigger. Lock joked about how seminarians weren%u2019t sure about their body image. Dryden had talked Gunn into designating a special exercise room. Gunn at first protested such a gym would be temptation to a worldly