Page 76

By Jack Joseph Smith

orchards. Yes I'm useing language like that now. I learned how when there was no other way of describing some of the crap I have seen. Of course, sometimes I don't talk at all. I just pick up a good rock and heave it through a window, where I see an escape route near. I've been counting them, and I'm almost up to two hundred. I love it when they go through clean so you can hardly hear the even glass drop. And Christ almighty, can I run now. I whistle through those backyards going over fences and hedges. Whe in the night and I see a turning light, I spin to the ground and burry myself beneath the leaves. The dummys could walk over me, and they wouldn't see me. I was talking to Daniel about Whiskey Hollow the other day. It's far away. Probably a couple of mountains beyond Kennedy forest. But if those realestate bastards keep on building houses, we might have to find a new retreat. I've been over there a couple of times with some poor kid I met at Saint Bernards. He and his folks and two brothers live in a shack above the hallow. I really like him and his place could be kind of our home base. It's awfully far away for him to be going to Saint Bernards. He said his mom read about Papa Joe in the newspapers. Papa Joe is the man the Magician talked about so long ago. He was the last magician I ever saw up until now. My fathers business orientation ending around the time I started going to Saint Bernards, so we don't have to entertain those people as much. Yeah, but there's the Country Club. That's okey though, because I get to run around alot. Papa Joe's real name is Father Joseph L. Lawnegan. He told the Bishop to go to Hell, because the Bishop said that nobody could go to school outside of their own parish. In other words he was trying to tell Papa Joe, that anyone that didn't live in Mount Lebanon couldn't go to Saint Bernards. You see, Papa Joe has this football team that hasen't lost a game in the last ten years. The kids

Original Scan

Page 76

AI Interpretation

GPT

The vandal life expands into rock-throwing, window-breaking, fence-running escape, dreams of Whiskey Hollow as a new hideout, and stories about Papa Joe, the rebel priest behind Saint Bernard's football power and parish defiance.

The page widens the boy's map beyond Kennedy forest, linking his private rebellion to poorer terrain, new companions, and a priest whose authority comes from open conflict rather than obedience. Papa Joe feels like another version of the strong man foretold earlier, now arriving through local legend, sports, and institutional refusal.

Claude

The narrator owns his coarsening voice - 'Yes I'm useing language like that now ... when there was no other way of describing some of the crap I have seen' - and tallies his window-breaking 'almost up to two hundred', loving the clean ones where 'you can hardly hear the even glass drop' before melting into the leaves so 'The dummys could walk over me'. The map widens to 'Whiskey Hollow' beyond Kennedy forest and the 'poor kid' from a shack whose place could be 'our home base'. Papa Joe enters as legend - 'Father Joseph L. Lawnegan', who 'told the Bishop to go to Hell' over the rule that 'anyone that didn't live in Mount Lebanon couldn't go to Saint Bernards' - tying the boy's private rebellion to an institutional one.