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%u00a9Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights ReservedHOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOKWhat They Did to the Kid 71was reading from the Martyrology about the Patron Saint of Dentists, Saint Apollonia, the Egyptian martyr. After the anti-Christians broke out her teeth with pliers, she was given the choice of renouncing Christ or being burned alive, so she leapt onto the fire herself. Saint or not, she was no miracle worker, because when I had prayed to her, spitting mud and blood out of my mouth, she had not saved my two front teeth.Gunn himself climbed up into the lectern. A shaft of noon sunlight blazed down on him from the high Gothic window. He and his strawberry toupee glowed in a dazzle of a thousand-watt divine wrath.He held a plate.%u201cYou%u2019ll never hear the end of this,%u201d Mike Hager whispered to me from the next table.%u201cSaint Apollonia,%u201d Lock whispered, %u201chad it easy.%u201d The priest elevated the gray plastic serving plate above his head as if he were elevating the Host saying Mass. %u201cThis,%u201d he said, %u201cis the height of vulgar ingratitude. The good nuns are shocked. They were in displaced people%u2019s camps. And you shock them! The Father-Treasurer is beside himself with anger. We brought those nuns here, rescued them from those camps. And yet you, you, you insult them!%u201d He read the inscription. %u201cThis seems to be the best that educated young Catholic gentlemen can do.%u201d He flourished the plate. %u201cWho is %u2018Tank%u2019?%u201d he shouted.He knew. Everyone knew. Everyone looked at Hank squirming next to me. He was a boy big in size trying to make himself very small. He raised his arm up, sheepish, not very far.%u201cStand at attention, Mr. Rimski,%u201d Gunn ordered.Hank%u2019s chair squawked back across the terrazzo floor and he stood.%u201cWho is %u2018Porky%u2019? We know, don%u2019t we. Stand up, Mr. Puhl.%u201dThree names later, five boys of our whole table of eight were standing in ignominy except for Lock and Dempsey and me. Every eye in the refectory turned toward us.%u201cHey, Tank,%u201d I whispered. %u201cYou fub-duck.%u201dHe looked his famous daggers at me.Gunn studied the plate, then looked down upon the room, the tables spread with the interrupted noon meal. %u201cI need not say,%u201d he said, %u201chow outraged Rector Karg has become at this terrible insult to the good sisters. It must be Providence that this note was found. Providence that the dishwashing machine did not scrub off the vulgarity, letting us discover at last the low ingratitude I always knew lurked among you. You come from nothing and we try to make you into something.%u201d His strawberry hair flashed in the sunlight as he rocked from one foot to the other.