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Ralph pushed on the middle bar of his<br />
glasses.<br />
He looked at the back door for the<br />
bishop. Out of his peripheral vision<br />
he checked both side doors for the<br />
troops that would march him from the<br />
altar to the city jail.<br />
“If we do nothing. If we shake hands<br />
after Mass and agree that all is well,<br />
we mean that all is well with us, all<br />
is well in our home and on our block<br />
and that is all that matters.<br />
“And then we are the problem.”<br />
He paused again. …<br />
“When I lived in that nice neighborhood<br />
with the soft breeze and the<br />
distant call of the train engine, I was<br />
certain I was in a good spot.<br />
Without ever really sitting down to<br />
think about it, I was absolutely sure,<br />
before my feet hit the floor each<br />
morning, that things were in place:<br />
everything in alphabetical order,<br />
counted and blessed.<br />
“And I was wrong.<br />
“And now, what this country needs<br />
more than cheap gas or friendly<br />
hometown banking is a Democracy<br />
movement.<br />
We need someone, some skinny,<br />
tired, brave soul, some old<br />
man on his way home from Safeway<br />
some afternoon willing to sit in Teeen-a-man<br />
Square and say enough is<br />
enough.<br />
“One person could do something.<br />
“For lack of one courageous man on<br />
the Warren Commission generations<br />
have lived entire lives in a fantasy<br />
world of Ferris Wheels and mirrors.<br />
“Kennedy was going to bring us out<br />
of Vietnam.<br />
“Eisenhower before him had warned<br />
of the influence of the military-industrial<br />
complex, those people who<br />
make money from weaponry. And<br />
then those forces took Kennedy<br />
out as he was making some sort of<br />
peace with the Soviet Union as well.<br />
And so tens of thousands of young<br />
Americans were slaughtered in<br />
Vietnam; thousands of American<br />
families with a forever thorn in their<br />
side.<br />
“And Nixon and Ford, Carter, Reagan,<br />
Bush, Clinton, Bush were able<br />
to continue to make money from<br />
war, from death, from a slug of metal<br />
formed in a young Iowan’s hands<br />
in some small town bullet factory<br />
heating the cool morning air making<br />
its way into the bone and viscera<br />
and brain matter and memories of a<br />
young man on “the other side.” …<br />
… “Lyndon Johnson did it, didn’t<br />
he.<br />
He wanted to be president so<br />
bad he could taste it. And then<br />
he saw he was shut out of the Kennedy<br />
administration and before him<br />
he saw four more years of John, and<br />
eight each of Robert and Ted. He<br />
had to shit now or forever hold it.”<br />
The priest smiled with his slightly<br />
buck teeth and wavy hair that made<br />
him look for a moment like Bobby<br />
Kennedy.<br />
“We all know that, but nobody has<br />
ever actually uttered those words in<br />
America. Not the librarian in Moon<br />
Rock Lake or the produce manager<br />
at Super Mart or the superintendent<br />
of the Moon Rock Lake public<br />
schools.<br />
“Responsible people … we assume.”<br />
He squeezed the wood, smiled<br />
and looked up at the ceiling<br />
fans twirling as he recalled the news<br />
that had shattered the quiet so many<br />
years ago.<br />
“And so I bring up Kennedy,” he said<br />
matter-of-factly, as a shoe salesman<br />
saying that brown was the going color<br />
this year.<br />
“Well, no, he was not Christ and he<br />
was not resurrected. And he certainly<br />
was not a saint. He was a sinner,<br />
through and through, just like me and<br />
just like you.<br />
“He was a Catholic, yes. But no big<br />
deal. Again, anybody can become a<br />
Catholic.<br />
“I bring it up because it is what is on<br />
my mind.<br />
“Many of you do not remember John<br />
Kennedy, many of us remember<br />
nothing but.<br />
“Where do these thoughts of John<br />
Kennedy, his brother Robert and Martin<br />
Luther King Jr. come from? All<br />
mortal men. But in my mind heroes,<br />
just as Jesus is a hero of mine.<br />
“And to be a hero of mine you have<br />
to do one thing.”<br />
Ralph put up his crooked right pointer<br />
finger, the finger that had been<br />
stomped on.<br />
He held it over his head and out toward<br />
the congregation.<br />
“You have to go and get yourself<br />
killed.”<br />
He held the finger in the air until<br />
it became the focus of the room.<br />
Couples with their arms interlocked<br />
on the pew behind the heads of their<br />
children stared at the finger.<br />
Ralph meant to be pointing straight<br />
up, toward the ceiling in exclamation,<br />
when actually his broken finger was<br />
more of a comma.<br />
“You can’t score six touchdowns on<br />
one night and be my hero.”<br />
<strong>November</strong> <strong>2017</strong>/<strong>Penn</strong> <strong>Magazine</strong>/69
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