Page 45 - What They Did to the Kid

What They Did to the Kid 33

“If it plays in Peoria,” I said. “That’s what they say: it will play
anywhere.”
“So Peoria is the ultimate audience,” he said, studying my eyes,
considering my challenge.
“Go figure,” I said, “what that makes me...to you.” Ka-boom. I
was learning fast that the freshness of freshmen was survival.
“What did you say your name was, Peoria?”
“Ry.” I bit my lip. “Ryan,” I said. I had decided “Ry” and all the
things he’d done before were going to be put away like the things of
a child. Exactly as Saint Paul said. Now that I was older in a new life,
away at school, I wasn’t any longer little “Ry” O’Hara.
But lying half awake in the cold November morning, remember-
ing, knowing the electric matins bell was about to wrangle the sleep-
ing dorm, knowing another day out of days was to begin because
time had me cloistered where priests wanted me, because the timeless
Priest Jesus seemed never so far away, I never felt more like poor little
lost “Ry.”
My classmates’ November talk of the coming Christmas vaca-
tion—everyone counting the days backwards in white chalk on
the blackboard—stirred in me the old worldly troubles of the early
autumn, of my first night sleeping in a room of ninety freshman
boys.
“Only ten percent of new boys make it through the twelve years
to Ordination to the priesthood,” Father Gunn had told us our first
night after lights-out.
Blankets rustled. Someone farted. Boys laughed into pillows. I
pulled the blanket and sheet up close to my chin. The dormito ry had
been dark except for the exit lights burning over the door. The set-
tling sounds began to quiet and from under them, up and over, rose
the whooshing sound a black voile cassock makes around walking
ankles. Father Gunn, the disciplinar ian, a Marine Corps chap-
lain during the War, was pacing the long center aisle. He paused
under the bright pool of exit light, his solider’s face prologue to
his speech.
Early that first day my family had met him, Father Gunn, who
introduced himself as the priest who always introduced himself, told
us all manner of things—of how he was hard to trip up on names

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