Page 191 - Demo

%u00a9Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights ReservedHOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOKWhat They Did to the Kid 179The Jesuit clucked and shook his red head. %u201cWhen Rector Karg calls you to his rooms tomorrow,%u201d he said, %u201cbe honest.%u201d%u201cYou like contests, don%u2019t you?%u201d I said.%u201cAre you one of the fighting Irish?%u201dRector Karg had focused my resolve. God had spoken to me, but a man had slapped me. I meditated all night: Ryan, old boy, you had enough emotional strength to survive ten years in Misery. Hold together and win. He%u2019s a stupid ass. Be careful: that stupid ass has the power, stupid ass or not, to ship you out and ruin your vocation for good. In the long run, Ryan old boy, that%u2019s what counts. It%u2019s not God who decides you have a vocation, it%u2019s Rector Karg. Dear God, o-boy, help me now. You%u2019ve got to, because if You don%u2019t, no one will. God helps him who helps himself, I repeated over and again. I vowed to forgive him.Finally Karg called me to his suite.He was prepared to torture me, and I was prepared to play martyr to ensure my vocation, like centuries of seminarians and priests before me.%u201cI don%u2019t like you,%u201d he said. He sat behind a carved mahogany desk. On it lay a prayer book, a letter opener, and a manila folder. Long ago when he first was made rector, he had inherited the room as his quarters. Nothing in it matched his personality. If anything, the room defied him completely. Misery%u2019s antique German wooden pieces, the brocade draperies, the ornamental carvings spoke of lush medieval days that had enjoyed the meadhall but had not yet learned of Port Royal and its doctrine of Jansenism that stripped art and images from the churches. The hot blast of his personal asceticism was too obedient, too institutionalized, too %u2019umble to assert itself to a point of exterior expression in his rooms, so he turned his insane discipline hard in on his own soul. He could not bring himself to empty his sumptuous suite that Rome had years before assigned him. He tolerated its luxury as another cross to bear. Deep back the small human part of him was strictly Inquisition.He opened the folder, obviously mine, and paged through it. He had spent the night scrupulously examining the little he knew of me officially: my Baptismal Certificate; my parents%u2019 marriage license, because no bastard could be ordained a priest; my grade sheets, all more than satisfactory, even if ten points less than at Ohio State; a few letters of official correspondence with my bishop concerning Ordination of each of my four minor orders as Lector, Porter, Acolyte, and Exorcist. I felt strength that before him I stood, an exorcist, ordained by the Church to cast out demons.It wasn%u2019t working.