Page 140 - What They Did to the Kid

128 Jack Fritscher

The follow ing Saturday afternoon a Roman holiday spirit swept
the softball fields as one or two boys, then whole teams of seminar-
ians, appeared in Bermudas cut with scissors from black khaki wash
pants.
Rector Karg made no comment. He paced the faculty walk-
ing path chain-smoking cigarettes and knuckling his black rosary
through his fingers. He was nervous, in a personal retreat, isolated
away in his dark front quarters, waiting for the latest alarming gossip
from the planners of the Vatican Council in Rome.
Sunday the temperature reached ninety-six. Monday was hotter.
By Tuesday, our black wool cassocks, wet from three suffocating
days in chapel and classrooms, began to break unnaturally in their
drape, about knee-high. Wednesday, shortly before noon, the fad
escalated to barely disguised sniggering when a seminari an crossing
his legs in Father Polistina’s philoso phy class hitched up his cassock
and revealed an expanse of bare leg.
Still the priests said nothing. Thursday and Friday the move-
ment spread, a week old. Boys began to take sides. In the overheated
chapel, audible gasps, pro and con, interrupt ed the Gregorian chant
as here and there, entering in proces sion, boy after boy genuflected,
one knee forward, up, revealing through the slit in the cassocks the
bare white flesh of hairy naked knees.
Saturday morning Gunn canceled our last study hall before
noon and scheduled an unexpected assembly in the auditorium. He
stood at attention in his dress blues.
“The ship’s hit the sand.” Mike sat next to Lock.
“As Cleopatra said to Antony,” Lock whispered, “I’m not prone
to argue.”
Gunn called for silence, and exploded. “Three weeks you’ve been
back here at Misericordia,” he said. “Three weeks and already you
stand in open rebellion. Another mutiny! I can somewhat under-
stand you breaking rules three months from now. But at the begin-
ning of the year, at least then, we expect you men to come back with
certain resolutions. If you degenerate this far in the first three weeks,
where will you be in three months?”
The hundred-forty seminarians of Misery’s college department
sat squirming in absolute silence.

©Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved
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