Misfit Read Free

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    “Monsignor.” She just knows it’s some kind of honorary thing that the bishop gives out. But even though the Mons is so nice and so holy, or maybe because he’s so nice and holy, Jael also finds him incredibly boring.
    “For Jesus had said to him,” the Mons reads from the Bible,
    “ ‘Come out of this man, you impure spirit!’ Then Jesus asked him, ‘What is your name?’ ” The Mons looks around the class with a slight smile on his face, as if to say, Oh boy, here comes my favorite part!
    Then he continues.
    “ ‘My name is Legion,’ he replied, ‘for we are many.’
    And he begged Jesus again and again not to send them out of the area.
    “A large herd of pigs was feeding on the nearby hil side.
    The demons begged Jesus, ‘Send us among the pigs; al ow us to go into them.’ He gave them permission, and the impure spirits came out and went into the pigs. The herd, about two thousand in number, rushed down the steep bank into the lake and were drowned.”
    Jael keeps her face neutral, but internal y she cringes.
    She’d rather listen to Ms. Spielman ramble on about the Pythagorean theorem or Miss Randolph drone on about the periodic table than sit through this Bible stuff. Geometry and chemistry are kind of boring, but the religious stuff gets way too personal, especial y passages like the one the Mons just read. She’s begged her dad a bunch of times to let her go to public school. Seattle Public isn’t that bad, and some of the magnet schools are real y great. But he says she needs to be in an environment like this.
    Like taking medicine to prevent seizures. He’s never said what he’s afraid would happen if she didn’t go to Catholic school.
    She’s never had the guts to ask.
    “Miss Thompson.” The Mons’s gentle voice breaks into her thoughts. “Why do you suppose that Jesus cast the demon into a herd of swine?”
    “Uh . . . because the Jews don’t eat pork anyway, so it wasn’t real y a waste for them?”
    “Is that a question or a statement, my child?”
    “It’s a statement,” she says.
    “Then believe in what you say,” he says. “Make it sound like a statement.”
    “Okay, Monsignor.”
    “And, as always, Miss Thompson, your answer is extremely insightful. The Jews do regard pigs as unclean animals. But when we discuss demons, the answers inevitably reach deeper than we first think.
    Consider this: We know by the name
    ‘Legion’ that there are many demons within this man.
    So the evil in a single human being fil s two thousand of the most unclean animal. What might this suggest?
    Mr. Buchanan?”
    “That a man is more evil than a pig?” asks Seamus Buchanan.
    Seamus looks like the ultimate red-headed Irish Catholic boy.
    He claims that he wants to be a priest someday. Jael can’t understand why someone would tel people that, even if it’s true.
    “Indeed,” says the Mons. “You are on the right track.

    Perhaps you are al too young to truly grasp this idea.
    During my time as a missionary in Peru, I often came face to face with the true darkness that lies within humanity. I had a smal parish in a tiny neighborhood in Iquitos cal ed Belen. An interesting place. Tropical storms caused the area to flood so frequently that the natives built their tiny houses on stilts. Half the year I had to use a rowboat to get to my home. But they were thankful for the flooding when it prevented the the Shining Path, a murderous band of the communist guerril as, from reaching their homes during a raid.”
    He looks at them with his gentle gray eyes and it’s the kind of sad wisdom that Jael has only seen before in movies.
    “Ladies and gentlemen, the Shining Path did terrible things to the people of Iquitos. Things no human should be capable of.”
    Jael tries to hold back. Her father has told her over and over again that she can’t draw attention to herself like this. But . . .
    “Monsignor, I don’t get it,” she blurts out. “Are you saying that the communist army was