Practical Demonkeeping

seminary. She was working on the local diocese to recommend me while I was still in the womb. When World War I broke out, she begged the bishop to get me into seminary early. Everybody knew it was just a matter of time before America entered the war. My mother wanted me in seminary before the Army could draft me. Boys from secular colleges were already in Europe, driving ambulances, and some of them had been killed. My mother wasn’t going to lose her chance to have a son become a priest to something as insignificant as a world war. You see, my little brother was a bit slow—mentally, I mean. I was my mother’s only chance.”
    “So you went to seminary,” Brine interjected. He was becoming impatient with the progress of the story.
    “I went in at sixteen, which made me at least four years younger than the other boys. My mother packed me some sandwiches, and I packed myself into a threadbare black suit that was three sizes too small for me and I was on the train to
Illinois
.
    “You have to understand, I didn’t want any part of this stuff with the demon; I really wanted to be a priest. Of all the people I had known as a child, the priest seemed like the only one who had any control over things. The crops could fail, banks could close, people could get sick and die, but the priest and the church were always there, calm and steadfast. And all that mysticism was pretty nifty, too.”
    “What about women?” Brine asked. He had resolved himself to hearing an epic, and it seemed as if Travis needed to tell it. Brine found he liked the strange young man, in spite of himself.
    “You don’t miss what you’ve never known. I mean I had these urges, but they were sinful, right? I just had to say, ‘Get thee behind me Satan’, and get on with it.”
    “That’s the most incredible thing you’ve told me so far,” Brine said. “When I was sixteen, sex seemed like the only reason to go on living.”
    “That’s what they thought at seminary, too. Because I was younger than the others, the perfect of discipline, Father Jasper, took me on as his special project. To keep me from impure thoughts, he made me work constantly. In the evenings, when the others were given time for prayer and meditation, I was sent to the chapel to polish the silver. While the others ate, I worked in the kitchen, serving and washing dishes. For two years the only rest I had from dawn until midnight was during classes and mass. When I fell behind in my studies, Father Jasper rode me even harder.
    “The Vatican had given the seminary a set of silver candlesticks for the altar. Supposedly they had been commissioned by one of the early popes and were over six hundred years old. The candlesticks were the most prized possession of the seminary and it was my job to polish them. Father Jasper stood over me, evening after evening, chiding me and berating me for being impure in thought. I polished the silver until my hands were black from the compound, and still Father Jasper found fault with me. If I had impure thoughts it was because he kept reminding me to have them.
    “I had no friends in seminary. Father Jasper had put his mark on me, and the other students shunned me for fear of invoking the prefect of discipline’s wrath. I wrote home when I had a chance, but for some reason my letters were never answered. I began to suspect that Father Jasper was keeping my letters from getting to me.
    “One evening, while I was polishing the silver on the altar, Father Jasper came to the chapel and started to lecture me on my evil nature.
    “‘You are impure in thought and deed, yet you do not confess,’ he said. ‘You are evil, Travis, and it is my duty to drive that evil out!’
    “I couldn’t take it any longer. ‘Where are my letters?’ I blurted out. ‘You are keeping me from my family.’
    “Father Jasper was furious. ‘Yes, I keep your letters. You are spawned from a womb of evil. How else could you have come here so young. I waited for eight years to come to Saint Anthony’s—waited in the cold of the world while others were taken into the warm bosom of Christ.’
    “At last I knew why I had been singled out for punishment. It had nothing to do with my spiritual impurity. It was jealousy. I said, ‘And you, Father Jasper, have you confessed your jealousy and your pride? Have you confessed your cruelty?’
    “‘Cruel, am I?’ he said. He laughed at me, and for the first time I was really afraid of him. ‘There is no cruelty in