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%u00a9Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights ReservedHOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOK214 Jack Fritscherlike an acrobat on a branch, about to swing out on a trapeze, bowing to the shouts and applause of the boys who were some meter, I guessed, of the kind of applause Hank would win as a priest. Men would like him. Women would confess to him. His feet gripped the branch and he turned backwards to the crowd of boys and pulled his undershorts, white-cotton briefs bagging with muddy water, tight against his buttocks, standing in the tree like a photo-plate of a gladiator statue in our Latin books. He turned his face over his shoulder, looked at us all, laughed, and pulled his shorts down, dripping mud, mooning us with his bare butt, which was the most shocking thing I had ever seen at Misery.That was the last time I saw him. That evening at supper, when all the boys who had been at the river returned, Hank%u2019s chair at table was empty. Every boy thought another boy had stayed behind for one last water frolic with Hank in the muddy river. It was biblical, exactly the way Mary and Joseph lost the Boy Jesus in the temple when He was twelve. Mary thought Jesus was with Joseph on the walk back to Nazareth, and Joseph thought He was with Mary. I could imagine their hysteria, losing their Child, by the wildness that broke out in the dining hall of Misericordia. Boys disappeared, but no boy had ever gone missing.Outside the high red-brick walls, new sheets of rain lashed through the night against the windows of Misery lit bright by the light fixtures Tank had been sentenced to wash. Death never came to Misericordia except for old priests. Young boys never died. One time all five hundred of us had been sick with the flu, but no one had ever died. Boys don%u2019t die. But Hank the Tank died, swept away downstream, missing three days in a flood that lasted a week. My mind went blank.At the funeral for Hank, in Misericordia%u2019s main chapel, PeterPeterPeter returned to say the Mass for the Dead over the coffin of his brother. Their father, who had once been a boy at Misery, sobbed on the arm of their sobbing mother. The choir and the sinecure of Gregorian chanters made the hymn %u201cDies Irae, The Day of Wrath,%u201d into pure opera.Rector Karg preached that death was God%u2019s will. %u201cYou should all be happy that Hank is in heaven, having died in the state of grace, a good seminarian. He will never be a priest, but he is God%u2019s new saint.%u201dAll the boys were whimpering, but I cried out in real despair. He%u2019d fub duck, but somehow he%u2019d won. Saint Hank.Ka-boom.Even so, tonguing my new teeth, I loved the mud flowing through his death.