Page 260 - What They Did to the Kid

248 Jack Fritscher

was in the sky-blue water reflecting the last gold on the autumn
trees.
Hank the Tank rose up in the water, shirtless, strong, lit sud-
denly brilliant by a shaft of sun cutting through the clouds. He swam
against the current, making some headway, then stopped and floated
laughing downstream, catching a tree branch with his hands, proud
of his strength, pulling himself up into the tree, where he stood in
his wet underwear like 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’s 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’t 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’s main chapel,

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