Page 47 - What They Did to the Kid

What They Did to the Kid 35

“When I was a chaplain in the Second World War, a lot of the
young Marines, they were out for the first time. Up at the front
and plenty scared. They came up to me and couldn’t say anything.
Maybe looked at me kind of funny and started to cry.
“Men, every body gets lonesome for the good things. Anybody
here thinks he’s not going to miss his ma’s cooking, and his own
room, and all his friends is wrong. If not tonight, you wait a few days.
I guarantee it. Because you miss your folks is no sign you haven’t got
a vocation. It’s only God testing your vocation to see how much of
a man you are and if you can take it. One way or another you’ve got
to pay for your vocation.
“Go ahead and cry. Get it over with and make a prayer out of
it. Don’t any of you think of leaving because you’re homesick. You
come down and talk to me and we’ll straighten it all out. I make
appoint ments with anybody. There isn’t anyone going to go home
the first two weeks because he’s a weak sister. Nossir. You’ve got to
take it.
“Hear me good one more time. I don’t say these things for money
or to fill up the time while I wait for some civilian boat. You’ve got to
be men, manly men, especially nights here in the dormitory. There’s
rules of the Grand Silence to keep for the Christ you’re to receive in
Holy Communion the next morning. Don’t be afraid to say extra
prayers at night.
“Many’s the night I’ve walked through the seniors’ dormitory
and seen hands, precisely where hands should be, out on top of the
blankets, the rosary wrapped tight around the fingers, and the man
there asleep on his rack.
“A priest should have a tender love for God’s mother because she
is the mother of priests and therefore your mother because you are
future priests.”
I thought of Annie Laurie halfway home in a motel, with Dad
and Thommy, and lost all track of what Father Gunn was saying.
I thought of our car and our house on a street of Chinese elms and
my old school, and Sister Mary Agnes, and my dog, Brownie, who
was almost ten years old, because my dad had given her to me before
I went to kindergarten.
I knew my family was gone. Tomorrow they’d be even farther

©Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved
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