Page 185 - What They Did to the Kid

What They Did to the Kid 173

Phlewww! Hank blew raspberries at my idea. “Ship a priest! Rya-
nus!” Tank of the Imperial Roman Empire was holding court. If any
boy was going to tout gossip, it was going to be him. “Misery gives
you the dirty end of the stick. You eat it or else.”
Was that the definition of a vocation? Eat it or else?
“Chris was crazy to come back to teach,” Hank said. “Really off
his nut. He knew what Misery was like.”
“Isn’t that why he came back?” a sophomore boy asked. “If the
alumni don’t cause change, who will? He’s sacrificing himself.”
“He’s a regular martyr-saint,” Mike said. “He missed the triple
crown: virgin-martyr-saint.”
“Most of us will get ordained,” the sophomore said. “We’ll leave
Misery behind and forget it.”
Hank spun the sophomore’s idea. “Our seminary years will be
the best years of our lives.”
“Because,” Mike said, “we’ve such poor memories.”
“After I’m ordained,” Ski said, “I’m blowing the whistle.”
Everybody laughed, ha ha.
“Like hell,” Hank swore. “Your bishop will crap daily so you’ll
always know where your next meal’s coming from. You’ll never tell
anybody anything about the inside dope of seminaries.”
“What priest would?” Lock said. “Seminaries make us weak,
dependent on the institutional Church for bed, board, and shelter.
We obey, because where would we go? We’re unemployable. How
would we live?”
The foyer lights flashed.
“Worker-priests know,” I said.
“Mark me.” Hank the Tank’s eyebrows that had begun to meet
in the middle glowered ominously. “Something’s going on,” he said.
“The old guard is afraid of Chris’ intellectu al revolution. They don’t
know how to handle this new, serious, Christian ity. I know what
this is.”
“What is this?” Mike Hager said.
“This is all nerves about Vatican II.”
Like Meredith’s nerves during World War II.
Christopher Dryden was a no-show in the second act. At the

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