Page 174 - What They Did to the Kid

162 Jack Fritscher

to really talk to you.’ He said, ‘We have been talking.’ I told him,
‘You’ve got to help me. No one else is here to help me.’”
Mike had the Catholic need to confess details I can recall more
vividly than a movie, but then the story was told and retold so many
times it became a famous scene, an inescapable, probably obligatory
scene in the history of Misery.

“Michael,” Father Dryden says, “we’ve worked all year, changing
your doubts into, well, an examination of what actually is a vocation
to the priesthood. The puzzle is solvable.”
“Solvable?” Mike asks. He lights a cigarette.
“I think you’re afraid of your feelings.”
“You’d be afraid of them too.”
“Michael. Michael. You’re so much unlike everyone else. And so
much like me.”
Mike sits silent before the ornate desk and the Italian ceramic in
the tasteful drawing room lit only by the small pools of light from
the mica shades on the copper lamps.
“What do you think has been my mission here at Misericordia
this year? I have caused this institution to vibrate. I have come back
to bring it freedom.” He leans intent over his desk. “Why do you
think I work an eighteen-hour day, by my own choosing and author-
ity as a priest, counseling enough of the student body to keep three
full-time counsel ors busy?”
Mike sits silent, biting his lip.
“Are you going to sit not saying anything?” Father Dryden leans
back and laughs. “You little fool. You poor little fool. You think
you’re going to come out of this with Ordination bells ringing. Well,
Michael Joseph Hager, I am going to be honest with you. I am going
to be so honest with you your head will reel.” He leans forward over
the ceramic. “But you’ve got to trust me.” He pauses. “Will you trust
me, Michael?”
Mike nods.
“You are afraid of your Self, Michael. Afraid of your body.”
Mike shakes his head.
“Of course. You’re thinking of all those things you told me. That

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