Page 53 - What They Did to the Kid

What They Did to the Kid 41

the Word. If I could hold my breath for twelve years, I could be
ordained a priest.

November 19, 1953

Porky Puhl swiped down the chalk rail one last time and gave the
wet rag a two-handed jump shot into the wastepaper basket. He
looked content with himself, even from the distance of my fifth-row
desk. We were alone in the classroom, recess time, except for Lock
Roehm studying Latin second conjugation moneo, I admonish, in
the back corner.
“Lock, lock, who’s got the lock, Lock?” Porky said.
Lock and I ignored him. We were studying conjugations of verbs
for Father Polistina’s daily Latin quiz next period.
Porky turned to his newly cleaned blackboard and began draw-
ing an arty frame, some thing that was occasionally acceptable, to
surround the Latin teacher’s chalk talk. On the far left panel he
sketched a turkey, this Wednesday class before Thanksgiving, and
in a cartoon balloon coming out of the turkey’s mouth, he printed:
“For Daily Latin Saying–Write Right Here!” In the upper corner
on the far right panel, where the day before he had written “24,” he
wrote in huge blocks, “23.”
Porky stood back. His fat face grinned like a full moon in a
German almanac. He lobbed the chalk accurately onto the rail and
said, “That’s the time.”
“What?” Lock Roehm asked, not looking up, his finger tracing
the page of Englman’s Latin Grammar.
“That’s the countdown. Only twenty-three days left till we go
home for Christ mas.”
“Amazing,” Lock said. He looked up. “You can count backwards.”
“That excites you, eh, Lochinvar?” Porky clapped his hands
together.
“Yes.” Lock pulled off his glasses. “As a matter of fact, it does
excite me.”
Back in September, our first day, Hank had swiped at Lock.
“Lochinvar’s not a saint’s name. You have to be baptized with a

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