Page 95 - What They Did to the Kid

What They Did to the Kid 83

young Catholic gentlemen can do.” He flourished the plate. “Who
is ‘Tank’?” 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.
“Stand at attention, Mr. Rimski,” Gunn ordered.
Hank’s chair squawked back across the terrazzo floor and he
stood.
“Who is ‘Porky’? We know, don’t we. Stand up, Mr. Puhl.”
Three 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.
“Hey, Tank,” I whispered. “You fub-duck.”
He looked his famous daggers at me.
Gunn studied the plate, then looked down upon the room, the
tables spread with the interrupted noon meal. “I need not say,” he
said, “how 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 vul-
garity, 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.” His strawberry hair flashed in the sunlight as he
rocked from one foot to the other.
“Gott in Himmel, God in heaven! The good sisters try,” he said.
“God knows they try with what time and money Rector Karg gives
them. Anyone taking grievance about their valiant efforts certainly
lacks the worldly detachment necessary for the priesthood. You
should know the real hardship of soldiers at war, of nuns at war.
Then you might appreciate what’s given to you.”
He began the Father-Treasurer’s story of the blind German
lady, but I hardly heard him, remembering Hank’s bravado the
night before. I started to laugh because Hank and his cronies stood
shamed by the fable of the little old lady’s quarter. I laughed harder
and harder, Gunn up in the lectern waving the plate, unable to see
me, because of the five disgraced boys standing all around me.
Lock poked me, worsening my laughing jag. “Nuns at war!”
When Gunn announced that the gang of five had to wash every

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