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%u00a9Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights ReservedHOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOK150 Jack Fritscherguard is afraid of Chris%u2019 intellectual revolution. They don%u2019t know how to handle this new, serious, Christianity. I know what this is.%u201d%u201cWhat is this?%u201d Mike Hager said.%u201cThis is all nerves about Vatican II.%u201dLike Meredith%u2019s nerves during World War II.Christopher Dryden was a no-show in the second act. At the grand piano, a high-school boy with four thumbs and nine fingers substituted for the missing priest.The next morning, the old priest sitting guard outside Dryden%u2019s suite was gone. The chair was empty. Hank dared knock and push on the door. He came running back to our classroom. %u201cIt%u2019s locked,%u201d he said. %u201cThere%u2019s no sound. It%u2019s like no one%u2019s there.%u201d%u201cThey%u2019ve martyred him,%u201d Ski said. %u201cBehind our backs, they%u2019ve martyred him sure.%u201dLock looked at me dramatically, as if to say, Oh God. Rector Karg had privately informed him and Mike that, last evening during the concert, about the time the dearly departing PeterPeterPeter was transfiguring his way through the %u201cAve Maria,%u201d Father Dryden had been cornered in his apartment, buckled into a straightjacket, and driven off to an institution. They were to tell no one, but they told me about his complete nervous breakdown. They put him in the booby hatch tied up next to Russell Rainforth.The next four days were final examinations. The tension caused by the mystery of the missing priest raised conjecture to a fever pitch. Ski made a candle-lit shrine out of a can of Dryden%u2019s tennis balls you%u2019d have thought were third-class relics. In a closed community where everyone knew everyone else%u2019s business, for once no one had anything right.%u201cThis is being handled very badly,%u201d Lock said.%u201cWhat exactly is a nervous breakdown?%u201d I asked, genuinely, because I had long feared I might have one.%u201cA nervous breakdown is what people say you have,%u201d Lock said, %u201cwhen you don%u2019t agree with them.%u201d%u201cAnd,%u201d Mike said, %u201cwhen they can%u2019t get rid of you any other way.%u201dMike%u2019s mother and father, Julia and Doc, always said his sister had a nervous breakdown.%u201cSometimes what you have,%u201d Lock said, %u201cis a nervous breakthrough.%u201d%u201cA nervous anything,%u201d I said, %u201ccan cost a priest his vocation.%u201d%u201cWrong,%u201d Lock said. %u201cA vocation is a personal calling from God. Lots of men have vocations to the priesthood, but not everyone answers, or is allowed to answer.%u201d