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%u00a9Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights ReservedHOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOK166 Jack Fritscherwas Irish, of the redheaded and strong kind, a drinker and a smoker, sitting in a rolling blue cloud of smoke. A large ashtray, half-full of butts, lay under his tapping fingers. The toasted smell of his cigarettes saturated the room. He had lived in this suite at Misery only four months, and his bright, freckled, fearless personality lit up the room.%u201cRyan Steven O%u2019Hara. What%u2019s a Mick like you doing in a seminary full of Krauts?%u201d%u201cFather, we pay no attention to that. We%u2019re all American boys, Catholic boys.%u201d%u201cDo you smoke?%u201d he asked.%u201cNo, Father.%u201d%u201cGood. It%u2019s an indulgence and indulgences aren%u2019t good for the young. I smoke.%u201dI wanted to say, %u201cYou%u2019re not young. You%u2019re forty.%u201d But I didn%u2019t. I thought he might laugh, think it humorous, and be yet another priest who every time I tried to talk with him held me off with a joke. I didn%u2019t need another punster who saw two meanings to words but only one meaning to life. I hoped as mysteriously as this Irish priest, whose name was Sean O%u2019Malley, S. J., Society of Jesus, had come to Misery, just as mysteriously he could help us all.His predecessor, a pink ancient German priest predilected to saying hence, till all we could do when he preached was count the hences, had explained spiritual counseling to me definitively. When the German Jesuit was more than eighty, and I was only fourteen, he told me that I%u2019d see him for spiritual guidance once a year and when I had twelve marks for twelve visits, I would be ordained a priest, and he%u2019d be nearly a hundred years old. Then he talked about Maumee in Ohio and how he used to swim there, centuries ago, before the turnpike ruined everything.I didn%u2019t want to talk about Maumee then with that old German Jesuit and I didn%u2019t want to talk about superficialities with the new Irish one.%u201cWhat do you want to talk about?%u201d he asked.%u201cPeople and me. And God. I%u2019m almost twenty-four and I%u2019m in love.%u201d%u201cWith a girl?%u201d%u201cNo.%u201d%u201cWith someone here.%u201d %u201cOh no.%u201d I looked at him. %u201cOf course not.%u201d %u201cThank God and Saint Patrick. Go on.%u201d%u201cAll last fall semester I thought of coming to see you, but I was busy. Studies, and editing the Misery newspaper, and sports. After Christmas