Page 38 - What They Did to the Kid

26 Jack Fritscher

had to be willingly sacrificed to keep the cannibal bird away from
the cave door.
The threat of that flapping violence mixed all my war-torn sym-
pathy for a fallen world into a small green-apple ache, straight from
the Garden of Eden, cramping my soul and my heart. An ache of
appeasement inside me burst in my chest like the hot red bloodspray
of a spear piercing my side, Jesus’ side, spreading through my body,
reaching up to my face, burning my eyes, and I knew I wanted to
offer myself up like Christ on the Cross. I could taste the holy life of
my heroic uncle anointing dying soldiers on the battlefield.
Cosmic desire had lodged in me, moved me to find how the
Word was made Flesh, how missionaries became martyrs, how vir-
gins became saints. My vocation was right and good and I would
embrace it willingly like a whole holiness I remembered from before I
was born, and being born, was in danger of losing. Through Ordina-
tion to the priesthood, I would humbly renounce the whole proud
and wicked world and save it by going my way.

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