Page 177 - Demo

%u00a9Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights ReservedHOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOKWhat They Did to the Kid 165me, smiled, said, %u201cMerry Christmas,%u201d and pushed my chest, shoving me backwards over a boy kneeling on all fours behind my knees, to make sure I was flung back, out, and over, falling on the concrete floor.I felt the lift-off from his hands raise me in slow-motion in wonder, in surprise, until I cracked down on the floor, trying to catch myself, the laughter around me already screaming funny, and broke my finger, felt the middle finger of my left hand snap back, crack through my hand, the beautiful hands of a priest, with the middle finger bent back over the ring finger and the little finger, swelling up fast.Lock, the wonderful, lifted me up, took me to Father Gunn, who explained he%u2019d try to find a priest to drive me to a doctor in the morning.%u201cIt was only a prank,%u201d Hank said.%u201cBoys will be boys,%u201d Gunn said.%u201cBut what about my broken finger?%u201dAt Christmas Midnight Mass in Peoria, I walked out on the altar, the less-than-perfect altar boy, to serve with Father Gerber, hands folded, with my middle finger, the dirty finger that had made all the seminarians laugh, sticking up stiff in a metal finger-splint cast. Nothing was ever more embarrassing. In the front row of St. Philomena%u2019s was a small mercy.Danny Boyle was too busy to laugh at my hand. He was holding a wiggling infant on his shoulder, trying to hand it off to his wife, Barbara, with her hands folded on top of another pregnancy under her cloth coat. A third child, a toddler, clung to Danny Boyle%u2019s leg.Charlie-Pop asked Father Gerber if my injured hand might disqualify me from Ordination. Father Gerber told him to have my Uncle Les telephone Rector Karg. Uncle Les told us all to relax. He was, he said, spending the holidays on vacation in Key West. My broken finger concerned him less than that for the second New Year%u2019s in a row he had not been able to go to Cuba since Castro turned Communist. What a shame, he said, because at first he had so approved of Castro%u2019s revolution against the Batista government he felt was irretrievably corrupt.%u201cBut what about my finger?%u201d %u201cWhat,%u201d he said, %u201cabout Cuba?%u201dMarch 17, 1963 Saint Patrick%u2019s DayThe Jesuit priest, our new spiritual director, sat wild and wiry and full of life behind his desk. He was what Jesuits are supposed to be: the Marines of the Catholic Church. The huge desk and windows dwarfed him. He