Page 204 - What They Did to the Kid

192 Jack Fritscher

what of obedience? I could dedicate my body, but my mind kept on
thinking. Either total dedication or nothing.
Why couldn’t I be like the other boys who had become men cer-
tain of their path toward the priesthood? Why should I sweat mak-
ing real analysis of the priestly vocation they were moving toward
in obedient ritual? Hank’s only dilemma, perfect for an adolescent
gorilla, was asking either-or questions at table in the refectory like,
“Hey, Ry, would you rather slide naked down a fifty-foot razor blade
into a pool of iodine, or suck snot from a dead Protestant’s nose until
his head caved in?”

December 5, 1962

The night St. Nicholas appeared annually with Ruprecht, Hank
the Tank, in the merriment of the Free Period before Night Prayer,
walked up to me, smiled, said, “Merry Christmas,” and pushed my
chest, shoving me backwards over a boy kneeling on all fours behind
my knees, to make sure I was flung back, out, and over, falling on
the concrete floor.
I felt the lift-off from his hands raise me in slow-motion in won-
der, in surprise, until I cracked down on the floor, trying to catch
myself, the laughter around me already screaming funny, and broke
my finger, felt the middle finger of my left hand snap back, crack
through my hand, the beautiful hands of a priest, with the middle
finger bent back over the ring finger and the little finger, swelling
up fast.
Lock, the wonderful, lifted me up, took me to Father Gunn,
who explained he’d try to find a priest to drive me to a doctor in
the morning.
“It was only a prank,” Hank said.
“Boys will be boys,” Gunn said.
“But what about my broken finger?”
At Christmas Midnight Mass in Peoria, I walked out on the
altar, the less-than-perfect altar boy, to serve with Father Gerber,
hands folded, with my middle finger, the dirty finger that had made
all the seminarians laugh, sticking up stiff in a metal finger-splint

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