Page 192 - What They Did to the Kid

180 Jack Fritscher

driving home for good, but I had my vocation. If PeterPeterPeter
could be a priest, what was the nature of Christ’s call? My voca-
tion would not be lost because of outside forces that suckered those
nineteen shipped boys into whatever happened. Inside my soul I
was growing more secure. Christ, with time, was drawing me close,
fitting me with less pain into the molded vocation He desired.
Our two freshmen-college passengers climbed into the back seat,
slammed the doors, lit up their cigarettes, impatient to leave Misery.
Mike and I shook hands with Lock, who was flying out on a plane
to New York and then on to a summer internship as a page boy at
the Vatican in Rome.
“Don’t let it get you down,” Lock said to Mike. “You did right.
Never think you didn’t.”
I got into the car. The two freshmen were combing their hair
from the way they’d worn it all year to the way they wanted to wear
it for the summer.
“Good-bye, Lock,” I said. He was standing, framed by the per-
fect geometry of Misery’s tall red bell tower. I wanted to tell Lock
I loved him, the real way a priest loves a brother priest, the way my
Uncle Les loved his priest friends from the War. I had the feeling
he would go to Rome, be liked, study there, be ordained, join the
Vatican diplomatic corps, turn into Tom Tryon in The Cardinal,
meet Sophia Loren and President Kennedy, resist the Dolce Vita, and
never come back, maybe never even approve of a worker-priest from
miserable Misericordia.
Mike slid behind the wheel. He turned the key in the ignition,
looking straight ahead. “So long, suckers!” he said.
The two freshmen laughed like he was the funniest guy on earth.
“We’re dropping out too,” they said.
I stared straight ahead. I was the last and only vocation left in
the car. What difference did it all make? They had to do what was
right for them. God bless them. Their exit didn’t threaten my voca-
tion. Mike slowly drove us, his last time, down old Misery’s drive
out onto the two-lane stretch of highway. On the car radio, Andy
Williams was singing “Moon River” from Breakfast at Tiffany’s. It
was summer. We were free.
I quickly put my fear of Rector Karg out of my head, waving

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