Page 91

By Jack Joseph Smith

his side; he wasn't on ours. That's the way it stayed for the rest of the day. David was the first and last captain of kill the man. During the day kids would yell, hey we want David on our side, and he would cross over and run with that pack for awhile. For the rest of the winter he would have to run the ball alone, but by tomorrow it wouldn't make any difference. He would take the ball as we did and throw his soul to the wind in symbolic movements with his desire to live. Today, David was a leader of wolves. He did not go to them; they had come to him. And that is all anyone of us remembered as our thoughts narrowed down to earth darkness and the excitement of the killing game. Lent was such a single time, seperate from everything. It was the transformation time. A time when the swine didn't chew. Six o'clock Mass every morning and the high chant. Pretty girls in pink, I swooned at constantly. My heart reached across to them crossing the pews and drank their milk white faces into my soul singing softly beneath me. My voice was embarrassed in its twitch. Just a touch from you little girl, when we walk out of the purple veil. Nuns stiff and alter boys percise. How could they stay so long with their chins streight. Put an apple in my mouth while I pray the rosary. The repetition gives me a pain and it hurts my knees now. God, let's stand. She was so pretty. I took her walking behind Lincoln school and asked her to dance a dance for me. How should I dance, when I don't know how to dance those dances? Like a desert girl, I said softly. Would she ask me to show her? Of course not. Her sweetness was too clean. A non party girl with sweeping eyes. I love you now, sitting there with white lace lightly in your hair. I see you see me watching. Are you singing? You can not now. I am trembling through my fingers tapping on the wooden pew. The lower church is so strange. Everything is red here. We will watch each other in praise of the Lord, but never feel our toes beneath the fantasy grass

Original Scan

Page 91

AI Interpretation

GPT

After David's rescue and rise into a brief wolf-leader status, the narrative swings into Lent, six o'clock Mass, and a trembling fixation on a beautiful girl across the pews.

The transition from schoolyard pack violence to church desire is abrupt but exact, because both scenes are organized around bodies under pressure and watched movement. Lent feels less penitential than charged, with kneeling, chanting, and the lower church all intensifying erotic attention.

Claude

David becomes 'the first and last captain of kill the man', 'a leader of wolves' to whom the pack had come, and then the page turns to Lent, 'the transformation time', with six o'clock Mass, the high chant, and 'Pretty girls in pink'. Michael fixes on one girl, imagines asking her to dance 'Like a desert girl', and trembles in the lower church where 'Everything is red here'.

The page bridges pack violence and religious longing, showing both as ways of being swept up in a group ritual. In the Lent section the prose slips into present tense and direct address ('I love you now'), so prayer and infatuation run together. The 'embarrassed' voice and the red lower church give the boy's desire a guilty, heated edge.