Page 173 - What They Did to the Kid

What They Did to the Kid 161

By May first, May Day, the Feast of Saint Joseph the Worker, in
the month dedicated to the Mother of God, we were very near final
exams for our last semester in college. Because Saint Joseph, the hus-
band of Mary, was a carpenter, Rome honored him on May Day as a
retort to the Communists’ celebration of May first as International
Workers Day. French priests honored Saint Joseph as a patron saint
of worker-priests.
Lock and I hardly bothered that our exams would determine
which of us graduated at the top of the class. Our college gradua-
tion’s real import meant we had eight years down and only four years
till our day of Ordination to the priest hood. The last third of the
way to the priesthood was all that was left. Making it to Ordination
was our work. My goal was to become a worker-priest living in a bare
room, praying, helping the poor and the sick and the dying reach
peace in this world and heaven in the next.
I stood on the edge of Misery’s pond, Lake Gunn, where my
crowd hung out, listening to Lock and Mike, not watching them.
The Ohio twilight lingered longer in the spring evening. On the
smooth mirror of water, Misery’s tower and its lights rocked upside
down on the surface, disturbed only by night creatures. The full
moon hung low enough to touch twice: once wet, once dry. It
washed down the beautiful slate roofs of Misery far up on the hill.
Bats, whipping through the air, swooped close to the water’s surface,
visible for an instant, then lost in the darkness rising from the pine
woods around the small lake.
“Forgive me, Ryan, for telling what happened,” Mike said. “Lock
and you.”
I laughed. “Something happened? Nothing ever happens.” Oh,
God! I suddenly realized this was one of those awful spontaneous
Confessions. “What hap pened?”
His eyes glistened. “You and Lock,” he said, “will understand.
You said something’s got to happen to you this year, Ry. Well, some-
thing happened to me.”
“Dryden!” Lock said.
Mike nodded. “Today for my regular conference—every Thurs-
day I see him—I told him: ‘It’s the end of the year almost. I want

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