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%u00a9Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights ReservedHOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOK212 Jack FritscherLock, for all his Vatican diplomatic corps promise, was not much help. The intensity of Chicago had diverted me even farther from my classmates writing little blab-blab sermons to have on file once they were priests. They sat in circles in discussion groups gibbering endless spirals about %u201cthe social implications of religion.%u201d Jesus H. Christ. They ought to spend one hot, humid, muggy hour, sixteen flights of stairs up, on top of a public housing high-rise and listen to the roar, screams, and sirens of the world below.My German translation was out of the question, so I started reading again. On my own. Secret stuff. Little Modern Library books that felt good and handsome in the hand. Thomas Wolfe. John Dos Passos. James Joyce. John Steinbeck. Ah, the rhythms of the writing in The Grapes of Wrath. The stories of Ernest Hemingway. I might have to go across the river and into the trees. Like a convict, I watched the calendar: September to May, I had nowhere to go. The Church feasts pointed up the days, weeks, months, hours, minutes, seconds of the semester.My physical boldness I spent among the other seminarians on the playing fields. Softball in September and football in October and basketball all winter. A writer%u2019s garret in Chicago sounded as sweet as a mystic%u2019s cave, but I would never have anything as personal and romantic as that. My life was dedicated to the service of God through service to others. Around me, some boys achieved good grades and other boys were shipped. No matter what happened, I kept focus on studies, prayer, and my spiritual life. Objects on my desk in my private room moved about mysteriously when I was in class. Rector Karg was everywhere around me, like a monster you have to kill in a movie to save yourself. I prayed that God would give me the strength to embrace my vocation which is, oh my God, I know, so much more than fantasies of You whispering in my ear. I pray for some wonderful mentor of a priest to come along and take my hand and lead me through some spiritual boot camp of the soul that will strengthen me, that will make me grow up, that will deliver me from perpetual adolescence where all I have to do is be a good boy, a good seminarian, and a good priest. What, oh my God, does good really mean?Alfie Doney, the retarded man, was good, and I knew I was no better than him, trying to read Saul Alinsky%u2019s book on the sly.September 22, 1963%u201cAlberto, a brave boy, is dead, muerto.%u201d