Read Online The Gathering by William X. Kienzle - Free Book Online
Authors: William X. Kienzle
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us: praying for ourselves and for each other.”
From upstairs, Mr. Smith’s voice cut through their thoughts. “Hey, it’s almost eleven o’clock! Aren’t you kids ever going to bed?”
“We’ll be up in a few minutes, Dad,” Mike called.
“Don’t forget the lights!”
“We won’t.”
SEVEN
T HE TOCCOS REACTED about as their son Manny expected.
He arrived home from his bout with Blade bloody but unbowed. Maria Tocco made a great fuss over his torn, dirtied, blood-spattered clothes. After she checked to make sure that the blood had not flowed from holes in her baby, her main concern was the condition of his hand, especially the thumb and index fingers. She was unfamiliar with the term canonical digits. All she knew—and that mostly from observation—was that those were the fingers the priest used to hold the communion wafer. Lacking one or more of those fingers … well, God knows; she assumed he would not be allowed to become a priest.
As a child in parochial school, she had listened wide-eyed, as the nuns related the martyrology. Now, she remembered all too vividly the tales of the tortures suffered by the early Jesuit priests and missionaries at the hands of their Native American captors.
Father Jean de Brebeuf—they cut out his heart and ate it while he watched. (A little hyperbole there, but what did the innocent pupils know?) Father Isaac Jogues—they chewed off his fingers and ate them. Brebeuf, of course, died. Jogues escaped and applied to Rome for—and received—permission to offer Mass sans fingers.
Maria took from these accounts two puzzles: How does one go about offering Mass without fingers? And why, though mutilated, would a living martyr need to apply for the Vatican’s permission to offer Mass?
After hearing this nausea-inducing tale, one of Maria’s classmates—the class comedian—had added his own contribution to the Litany of the Saints: “From the nuns who teach us precisely what the Indians did to the Jesuit missionaries, Good Lord deliver us.”
Manny had come through his violent altercation in one piece. The blood had to have come from the bully. And all fingers were present and accounted for.
His mother breathed a sigh of relief, then imposed penance: Manny must confess his misdeed to his father. And so, when ’Fredo arrived home from work he was met by a still-steaming wife and a browbeaten son.
Typically, Tocco wanted to know whether either Manny or his friend Michael had been injured. Then, having ascertained that neither Manny nor Mike had started the fight, the big question was had his son triumphed over the bully, or had he come out second best?
And, finally, the damage. A shirt beyond repair, pants torn but mendable. ’Fredo mentally shrugged; the clothes were Maria’s bailiwick. She would mend what was repairable; what was not would be replaced.
There followed a halfhearted lecture on the necessity of trying just about everything else before fighting might become inevitable.
’Fredo’s pride in his son was only thinly disguised. Manny had fought the good fight. There was laid up for him an extra dessert.
That was then. This was now.
Manny had gotten some drastic news from the horse’s mouth: Brother Vincent—or, as the boys invariably referred to him, Bro. V. Brother Vincent was principal of Holy Redeemer High, boys’ division.
The Brothers were—in the parlance of war—bugging out.
It was all but a done deal. The battle had been waged over several years. Essentially, the school office argued that the peculiarly segregated situation at Redeemer was no way to run a parochial educational facility. After all, why have a coed school when there’s complete separation of boys and girls? Either you have boys and girls sharing classes and rooms or you have a school for just boys and a school for just girls.
The Brothers, hitherto happy with the status quo, were now willing to fight to preserve their educational
From upstairs, Mr. Smith’s voice cut through their thoughts. “Hey, it’s almost eleven o’clock! Aren’t you kids ever going to bed?”
“We’ll be up in a few minutes, Dad,” Mike called.
“Don’t forget the lights!”
“We won’t.”
SEVEN
T HE TOCCOS REACTED about as their son Manny expected.
He arrived home from his bout with Blade bloody but unbowed. Maria Tocco made a great fuss over his torn, dirtied, blood-spattered clothes. After she checked to make sure that the blood had not flowed from holes in her baby, her main concern was the condition of his hand, especially the thumb and index fingers. She was unfamiliar with the term canonical digits. All she knew—and that mostly from observation—was that those were the fingers the priest used to hold the communion wafer. Lacking one or more of those fingers … well, God knows; she assumed he would not be allowed to become a priest.
As a child in parochial school, she had listened wide-eyed, as the nuns related the martyrology. Now, she remembered all too vividly the tales of the tortures suffered by the early Jesuit priests and missionaries at the hands of their Native American captors.
Father Jean de Brebeuf—they cut out his heart and ate it while he watched. (A little hyperbole there, but what did the innocent pupils know?) Father Isaac Jogues—they chewed off his fingers and ate them. Brebeuf, of course, died. Jogues escaped and applied to Rome for—and received—permission to offer Mass sans fingers.
Maria took from these accounts two puzzles: How does one go about offering Mass without fingers? And why, though mutilated, would a living martyr need to apply for the Vatican’s permission to offer Mass?
After hearing this nausea-inducing tale, one of Maria’s classmates—the class comedian—had added his own contribution to the Litany of the Saints: “From the nuns who teach us precisely what the Indians did to the Jesuit missionaries, Good Lord deliver us.”
Manny had come through his violent altercation in one piece. The blood had to have come from the bully. And all fingers were present and accounted for.
His mother breathed a sigh of relief, then imposed penance: Manny must confess his misdeed to his father. And so, when ’Fredo arrived home from work he was met by a still-steaming wife and a browbeaten son.
Typically, Tocco wanted to know whether either Manny or his friend Michael had been injured. Then, having ascertained that neither Manny nor Mike had started the fight, the big question was had his son triumphed over the bully, or had he come out second best?
And, finally, the damage. A shirt beyond repair, pants torn but mendable. ’Fredo mentally shrugged; the clothes were Maria’s bailiwick. She would mend what was repairable; what was not would be replaced.
There followed a halfhearted lecture on the necessity of trying just about everything else before fighting might become inevitable.
’Fredo’s pride in his son was only thinly disguised. Manny had fought the good fight. There was laid up for him an extra dessert.
That was then. This was now.
Manny had gotten some drastic news from the horse’s mouth: Brother Vincent—or, as the boys invariably referred to him, Bro. V. Brother Vincent was principal of Holy Redeemer High, boys’ division.
The Brothers were—in the parlance of war—bugging out.
It was all but a done deal. The battle had been waged over several years. Essentially, the school office argued that the peculiarly segregated situation at Redeemer was no way to run a parochial educational facility. After all, why have a coed school when there’s complete separation of boys and girls? Either you have boys and girls sharing classes and rooms or you have a school for just boys and a school for just girls.
The Brothers, hitherto happy with the status quo, were now willing to fight to preserve their educational
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