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%u00a9Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights ReservedHOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOK36 Jack FritscherLock had said, %u201cIt%u2019s a hero%u2019s name.%u201d I had liked him standing up immediately to Hank%u2019s bullying. %u201cMy middle name is Thomas for Saint Thomas Aquinas, the most brilliant theologian the Church has ever seen.%u201d%u201cAre you taking the train?%u201d Porky asked.%u201cPlane.%u201d Lock said it flat. %u201cAfter all, it is 1953.%u201d%u201cBet you won%u2019t get reservations what with Ohio State going to play Southern Cal.%u201d Porky challenged everything.%u201cThey%u2019re already confirmed by mail,%u201d Lock said.%u201cYou planned way ahead. Big, big man.%u201d%u201cI always know how I%u2019m going where I%u2019m going.%u201d%u201cDoesn%u2019t everybody.%u201d Porky pushed the prof%u2019s chair in under the desk. %u201cThe train%u2019s good enough for me.%u201d Then silently, dramatizing his nonchalance, he walked down the aisle toward Lock%u2019s rear seat.%u201cYou know,%u201d Porky said, %u201cthere%u2019s only seventy-four boys in our class now. Counting the three that left the first week, the one that didn%u2019t show at all the first day, and the six dummies who got shipped first quarter for grades%u2014that%u2019s ten already left from our class. Seventy-four out of eightyfour. After only one quarter. I figure after the first quarter of our junior year, we%u2019ll be in the hole.%u201d%u201cGee.%u201d Lock crossed his perfect blue eyes. %u201cOnly forty-seven more quarters till our Ordination.%u201dI looked at him. I had never thought of counting the time that way. I%u2019d never thought about dividing it up in sections or anything. It was always: %u201cWell, Ry, you%u2019re going away to study for the priesthood. How long will it take?%u201d I always said, %u201cTwelve years after grade school, sir.%u201d But in my mind it was all one vast blank time when I would study Latin and pray fervently and be sportsmanlike on the ball field. Lock Roehm had said forty-seven quarters and suddenly the twelve years unraveled into terrible, tangled possibilities.He could do that, unravel things, Lock could. Even in class he always stood head and shoulders above the rest. He had the best answers and wrote the best papers and all the priests showed him a kind of open, grown-up respect.Misericordia was a very German school and Lock Roehm looked very German. He had blond hair and white sharp teeth and fair white skin with a lot of moles and the kind of mythologically perfect Greek body Germans idealized. He was incisive the way he looked and the way he acted. He had %u201cCardinal Roehm%u201d written all over him, even standing in class, called out by Father Polistina to recite Sir Walter Scott: %u201cYoung Lochinvar is come