Page 251 - What They Did to the Kid

What They Did to the Kid 239

his arm until his hand, full of the pages of my translation, was near
the Virgin’s bank of candle flames. “Promise me,” he said.
I promised hoping my promise would save my work.
“Promise me again.” He moved the papers slowly into the can-
dles. A flame licked up to a page. “Promise me again.” The pages
browned and curled and flamed. He held fire in his hand. The pages
burned and burst and dropped off to ash. “Promise me you will
be good.” He dropped the burning ends of the pages to the floor.
“Promise me again.”
“I promise. Oh, I do promise.”
I was twenty-three years old.
In the escalating mystery of change, seventy-two hours later, on
June 3, the open-hearted Pope John XXIII suddenly died.
On the Vatican chess board, everyone moved.

August 29, 1963

Threats work. Karg scared me to death. My well-intentioned sum-
mer collapsed in a June panic. My secret reading of the Index of
Forbidden Books, the Church’s feckless guide to good reading, had
led me to Richard Wright’s autobiographical novels, Native Son and
Black Boy. My dad’s collection of James T. Farrell’s Studs Lonigan
trilogy led me to Chicago. Farrell was a Chicago writer, Irish and
Catholic. Jack Nicholson was starring in the movie of Studs Lonigan.
The Christian Family Movement in Chicago was promoting the
idea of worker-priests. “Observe! Judge! Act!” Chicago was the logical
escape, north 150 miles, from the provinciality of Peoria. I needed
a place to hide out, regroup, and plan my strategy to survive Karg.
By July, the humid heat of the South Side of Chicago spiked
my moral urgency to a crisis. I gasped for breath inside the once-
grand mansion of the parish house where I had told my parents I
was under Church orders to go to live for three months. I lied to
them. Of course. As usual. To protect myself. I ran away from them,
my own mom and dad, and my five-year-old sister, Margaret Mary,
even though I loved them so much that my love for them verged on
worldly attachment. Karg told me so. “You must leave father and
mother for Christ’s sake.”

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