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%u00a9Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights ReservedHOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOK182 Jack Fritscher%u201cWe were classmates, Rector. For seven years, Rector. We knew each other quite well.%u201d %u201cThen you know this man has been afflicted?%u201d%u201cI heard he was not well.%u201d%u201cYou knew it was not physical?%u201d%u201cHe was physically sick quite a lot when he was here. I thought perhaps he was a little emotional.%u201d%u201cYou know what is wrong with him?%u201d %u201cNo, Rector. What is it?%u201d%u201cYou don%u2019t know?%u201d%u201cNo, Rector.%u201d%u201cI won%u2019t say.%u201d%u201cSay what, Rector?%u201d%u201cIf you are innocent, your innocence will protect you.%u201d Suddenly, something unspoken leapt up in the room.Rector Karg pulled himself up to his giant size. %u201cAre you like him, boy? Are you like him?%u201dDick Dempsey was nothing but innocence when he was at Misery and so nervous he wet the bed and was often in the infirmary, absent from class. I knew nothing unspoken about him. But everyone else knew. All of them, I bet, Lock included. Their goddam community. It was some strange Christian charity, all right, that kept them from telling me. Just because we had been friends. They told me only enough to make me feel a priestly responsibility to reach out to a friend in distress. How could I tell that to this assassin? How could I tell him an unmailed letter dated two months previously, written in hopes of the openness of Vatican II, had not been mailed because in the tension between the call of charity and the call to obedience to the holy rule, the rule had won out.%u201cAre you like him, boy? Are you?%u201d%u201cNo, Rector.%u201dI did not lie. I was not like Dick Dempsey. I was not like that at all. Sean O%u2019Malley, S. J., told me I was %u201cmaybe a wee bit soft from seminary living,%u201d but he thought I was %u201cnot like that at all, not at all, at all.%u201d O%u2019Malley had asked me, %u201cWhen you draw pictures of boys, are they erect or not?%u201dI was shocked. %u201cI don%u2019t draw pictures of boys.%u201dSuddenly Rector Karg slapped my records closed and terminated the interview. %u201cWe%u2019ll meet again tomorrow. You have placed me in a delicate situation of conscience. I must pray over this.%u201d He stood up to his full height in the big room of big furniture and big walls. %u201cTell me. How many