Page 81 - What They Did to the Kid

What They Did to the Kid 69

“That I didn’t read,” I said. Could printed words about bad
women cause impure thoughts like dirty pictures?
“Glass rods like chemistry class?” Dempsey asked.
“That’s nothing.” Porky retrieved the notebook.
“The sins committed in a country’s name,” I said.
“You bet your sweet life,” Porky agreed. “My brother was in the
War and he says the Nazis nailed American soldiers to trees right
through the groin.”
“Stop,” I said.
“Then tied wire around their waists to jeeps and drove away.”
“God!” Dempsey breathed.
“Do you guys know any more about this stuff?” Porky was
breathing through his mouth.
“It sounds like the sufferings of the saints in The Roman Mar-
tyrology,” I said. Every noon, as we sat looking down at our meal, a
priest read aloud how the early Christian martyrs were tortured and
killed. Saint Agatha had her breasts torn off one day, and by the next
lunch, forty Roman soldiers who had converted to Christianity were
left exposed to die naked on a frozen lake. “All of them perished,” the
Martyrology said, “except for one soldier who renounced Christianity
and then died anyway in a bath of tepid water.”
Suddenly, the room shook.
I jumped, almost knocked from the trunk rack. A loud crash-
ing came from the storage room directly above us: metal, and bits
of metal, falling on the concrete floor above and rolling in every
direction.
Dempsey and I ran from the locker room.
Porky sat staring at us.
We ran up the stairs. The door was locked. “What do they do in
here?” I said. We pounded on the door, then listened.
“Locked doorssss,” Dempsey said in his hissed Rector Karg imita-
tion, “are not permitted at Missssericordia.”
“Where’s Porky?” I whispered.
“Still downstairs catching his breath,” Dempsey said.
I pounded again. No answer.
Another smaller piece of metal fell, rolled, was snatched up into
silence. Someone inside giggled and someone else told him to shut

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