Page 154 - What They Did to the Kid

142 Jack Fritscher

Mike attended Dryden’s Sunday soirees weekly, out of gratitude,
he said, for the excellent counsel ing help Dryden was giving him.
He almost apologized, Mike did, with every report he gave me. He
saw me react to Dryden’s immense populari ty by throwing myself
into making Father Häring’s long German episodic sentences trans-
late into short colloquial English. As I translated sheet after typed
sheet, the intent of the new theology became clearer to me. I saw my
chance, secretly, to be Karg’s worst nightmare. I dared loosen even
more the tone of some of the author’s opinions about sin. I became
the old Roman maxim: Translator, traditor, The translator is a traitor.
During those Sunday after noons, I played basket ball with
another, less compli cated, crowd of boys who cared nothing for
seminary suckups trying Dryden’s Mass vestments on for size. My
skin crawled, imagin ing them posing, sashaying, and gesturing
like some Vatican fashion show. I myself never entered Christo pher
Dryden’s suite—never, that is, until I found him more useful than
provocative, because he had the first and only televi sion set in all of
Misericor dia, and he used it like an apple in Eden.
“Jack Kennedy’s debating Nixon tonight,” Mike said. “Dryden
got permis sion for a few guys to watch the special up at his place.
Why don’t you come, Ryan?”
“There’s a movie tonight,” I said. “Moby Dick.”
“Which the freshmen think is a disease.”
“Bad sex puns. That’s the level of humor in this German
kindergarten.”
“You’re so uptight. Come on. Relax. Live a little.”
“Kennedy I would like to see,” I said.
“You can catch a gander at Chris’ rooms.” He knew curiosity had
me. “Only six weeks to the election.” We had all turned twenty-one,
old enough to vote for the first time. “Right after rosary.”
Father Christopher Dryden himself ushered me through his
door. “Welcome,” he said, “to my drawing room.”
I was not about to be strong-armed. I kind of laughed, “Uh!”
He was towheaded and lean, right for a tennis player. His priestly
hand, gaunt with gristle and cal loused, motioned me toward his
couch which was eight feet long. Those boys sitting there shifted on
the single long seat cushion, but the “settle” as he called it looked

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