Page 76 - What They Did to the Kid

64 Jack Fritscher

where freezing freshmen with shovels were clearing the snow, we
chanted, “Fub duck! Fub duck!”
The taxi drove off and we looked up at the huge front door of
Misery. “Fub,” a boy said dragging his suitcase up the stairs. The
Christmas vacation of our senior year slammed closed. Within two
hours, Dick Dempsey and I witnessed a shocking scene between
three priests that happened so fast that we ran for cover without
losing a single detail.
“I’ve never seen anybody so mad,” Dick Dempsey told Mike
Hager. He pointed toward the main entrance to Misericordia Semi-
nary where Father Arnold Roth had made a scene. “Father Arnie
went storming down the main hall, red in the face, blown up to
twice his size, and stalked right out the front door, straight to his
car, dragging two grade-school boys he had brought as visitors to see
the seminary.”
The halls had echoed with the young priest’s shouts.
“Arnie struck a nerve,” I said to Mike Hager. “He stood up to
that cadre of old priests and their prehistoric rules.”
“They think this world is their cloister,” Dempsey joked. “They’re
so fub duck.”
Lock ran up the stairs towards us. “I was leaving Rector Karg’s
office,” he said. “Arnie Roth told off Father Gunn right in front of
Rector Karg. Arnie said it was too damn bad if the faculty couldn’t
arrange for the two kids, as special guests, to eat dinner here with us
in the refectory to see what seminary life is like.”
Father Arnold Roth, ordained from Misery only two years before,
was from Mike Hager’s Wisconsin diocese. He had driven Mike in
from vacation only hours before, along with two eighth-grade boys
interested in the priesthood.
“Here I miss the fireworks after traveling with him all day long.”
Mike said. “Those two kids are okay—one’s maybe too pious, you
know?”
“Rector Karg and the faculty insisted Arnie eat in their refec-
tory,” I said, “but they didn’t want those kids in there and Father
Gunn refused to let them eat with us.”
“We might clue them in too much and scare them off,” Dempsey

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