Page 189 - What They Did to the Kid
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What They Did to the Kid                                  177

                  He turned the pool lights out.
                  “I’m the king of the river!”
                  He slammed his way out the door, and left us bobbing in the
               dark.

                                      May 31, 1961


                Three mornings after Mass, which I offered up so I’d score good
               grades, I carried my school books and suitcase to our rented car.
               Mike was to drive a Ford with three passengers to Chicago, drop us
               individu al ly on Randolph at the Greyhound Terminal and for trains
               at Union Station and LaSalle Street Station. I hung around Mike’s
               car under the mulberry trees, waiting for him to come unlock the
               trunk. He had packed everything he owned, finished with Misery
               and the priesthood, he said. Doc and Julia would have to eat it.
                  I brushed several fallen mulberries from the white car.
                  Hank the Tank stormed up. “Have you heard,” he said, “what
               they’re doing and what they’ve done?” He set his valise on the ground.
                  I tried to look shocked as he spouted old news that was new to
               him.
                  “They canned Dryden. Framed and trumped-up. God, they
               were always jealous. Half the seminary stopped confessing to the
               old priests. All the best seminarians went to Chris for counsel ing
               and Confession. Rector Karg knew that Chris found out more in
               two years what was going on around here than they knew in two
               genera tions.”
                  “Confession is information,” I said. “Even if you can’t break the
               seal of the Confessional, you can’t help acting on what you know,
               like if a priest’s mother confessed adultery to him, he’d look at her
               differently, even though he could never mention he knew.”
                  I tried not to picture the images Mike had conjured of Dryden
               kneeling before his Danish modern crucifix praying to a half-naked
               Jesus for dreams of release. Hey, Father, is that a serpent in your
               cassock or are you just glad to see me? Engorge ment, Christopher
               Dryden had said, was a richness, an overflow like grace, to be
               attended with no less joy than running naked through goldenrod or
               drinking cream and feeling full and good and human and like men.


                        ©Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved
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