Page 181 - What They Did to the Kid

What They Did to the Kid 169

called “The Secret Life of Misericordia Seminary.” Yet, in reality,
the secrecy was so tightly managed that even Hank and his gang of
vigilante altar boys failed to notice how Mike and Lock appeared
and disap peared and appeared again.
“I can keep,” I said, “the seal of the Confessional.”
“We can’t tell you,” Mike said.
“If the Bishop knows you know,” Lock said, “you’ll get shipped.”
“So you don’t know anything, do you!” Mike laughed.
“I know nothing about what you’re talking about.”
“God made us,” Lock said, “and He matched us.”
They both laughed.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I said.
“We’re worse off than Dempsey ever was,” Lock said. “How did
we become the Friends of the Friendless Friends?”
“Fub,” I said. “The Fubs of the Fubless Fubs!”
Hank the Tank, yodeling Gregorian chant, ticked up from his
hymnal, eyes alert. “I sniff the blood of long knives,” he said.
“You sniff your own shorts,” I said.
Hank noticed that the Reverend Father Christo pher Dryden
was sick and confined to his ornate rooms. The following Sunday
afternoon Hank tried to sneak up to see him, but a do-not-disturb
sign hung sideways from his door knob, and an old retired priest sat
half-asleep on a chair by Dryden’s door.
“What happens to priests when they get old?” I asked.
“They die,” Lock said.
“I mean before that.”
“Not much.”
“That’s cynical.” Father Gunn preached that cynicism ruined
vocations.
“As you live, so shall you die.”
“I can live lonely, but I don’t want to....”
Led by Father Polistina, Misery’s priests showed up on the hour
for each and every class, keeping to the Latin grammar and the
Church history and the geometry theorems and the philosophy texts
exactly. Discipline ruled work and work was ruled by prayer. Our
school year ticked like the clock. Tick. Tick. The humming big hand
crossed the little hand. Tick. Tick. Tension mounted, yet nothing

©Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved
HOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOK