Part 1 Chapter 1 of Better Angel by Richard Meeker. Kurt Gray was thirteen years old, but as he sat in the broad chair, pulled close to the square front window, he seemed still a little boy. Partly it was the light, partly it was the way in which one thin leg was tucked under him, and his chin dug into his fist. Folded together over his book, he seemed smaller than he was. It was early March. Patches of graying snow thatched the earth outside, and a gray sky, tarnished with gold from a sun gone down behind the grove of oak's opposite, gave to the light a pale, cold, honey-colored translucence that was thin and clear, and yet liquid and whiny. The room was in deep shadow, and the boy, his head bent almost to the pages of the book, strained his eyes over it with such a silent intentness that he seemed grown to the heavy chair into the dim, aqueous atmosphere of the room. The faint sounds of rattling dishes and his mother's step in the kitchen could not break through into his consciousness. Now Heracles, he read, though his warriors were ready and urging him to be off on the long-awaited quest for the fleece, refused to set sail until Hylis was found, for Hylis, famed among all the youths of the country for his beauty, was the hero's favorite. In spite of the impatient grumblings of the princes and of the warriors, Heracles sought his young friend. Through field and woodland he went calling aloud, Hylis, Hylis, but Hylis was nowhere to be found. Kurt! it was his mother. He started as she entered the room behind him, thrusting the book between his thigh and the oaken arm of the chair in vain attempt at concealment. Reading again, and in this light, don't you know you'll ruin your eyes? If you must read, do put on the light. I was just, he began, justifying himself, I was just, oh, it's all right. Run now and get me a pail of water like a good boy. Your dad will be home for supper before we know it. Hike!  Kurt Gray had reached the age of thirteen in a state of unusual seriousness, unusual loneliness, and unusual innocence. He had no brothers or sisters, and his parents were already in middle age. They worshipped him, yet he escaped somehow, being the proverbial spoiled child. A certain pliability which made him popular with the older people he was thrown with, a pliability which was partially a lack of self-assertiveness, and partially a shrinking from disagreement, was in reality his greatest fault. This pliability came from his father, a mild, good-humored man who had set out to be a lawyer, and who, because of the same gentleness which prevented his pushing and elbowing his way through the rough-and-tumble competition of the nineties, had ended by becoming a furniture dealer in Barton, Michigan, a town only a few miles from the farm on which he was born. Kurt liked his father, and Elmer Gray had for his son the sort of devotion that borders on the religious, since it contains an admixture of fear. Not that he was afraid of Kurt, it was not that. But there was, even when the boy was very young, an unaccountable feeling on the part of the father, that in this small body and brain, there was a latent superiority, a tenuous spirituality of some sort which he could never have analyzed or understood, but which, when the two were alone together, as they were so infrequently, made the man slightly reticent, slightly and inexplicably fearful, that he would not please the boy, and his son would be ashamed of him. It was a feeling Kurt certainly did not share, consciously at least, but it created between them a wall not to be penetrated. From his mother Kurt got, in multiplied measure, the love of beauty and the sensitiveness that set him apart from his companions, so apart that sometimes he wished himself violently otherwise. Mrs. Gray loved her son better than anything else in life. She had been married ten years when he was born. He came at a time when life in the little town was beginning to set her on edge. She had never fitted in very well. There was something of the aristocrat in her that made the women of the town regard her inviously as a snob, or defensively as a truly superior being.  She had been something of a beauty, slender with blue eyes, pale brown hair, soft and fine, and a clear, cool skin. She had never had much of an education, but her mind was alert and objective, the sort of mind that was quick to see the shallowness and dullness of the life about her, and although it had never known anything much brighter or deeper to be contemptuous of it, she had had her dreams. As a girl her passion for color and the feel of things, coupled with a modest talent, had led her to drawing. She had sketched, she had done a few promising watercolors, she had longed vaguely to improve herself, but not known how. The people in the town where she lived thought her talented and flighty, flighty particularly when she had proposed going off alone to Boston to study art. Her father was not rich, a harness maker with his own shop and three other daughters to support, so she had not gone. She had put away her dreams with her brushes. She had married Elmer Gray because she loved him. She had seen that he was good and kind. She was now seeing that he was ineffectual, and she was beginning to envision herself doomed to the drab life that her neighbors lived. She saw life stretching ahead of her, like a gray and barren prairie, with the rebelliousness that kept so vigorously in check made her unhappy and discontent. Her unquestioned leadership in the meager social life of Barton appeared to her a petty and unsatisfactory compromise. Then Kurt had come, and she knew that in him, if ever, her dreams must flower and bear fruit. So she had been glad that he was nice looking.   She had seen to it that he was well-mannered, clean, that he knew his letters and his Bible stories, and that he went to school as soon as he was old enough, and how proud she had been when he did the work of two grades in one year, and when he brought home his monthly report cards with the high grades that seemed to give him so little trouble. She was not unequivocally pleased with him, however. As he grew older, as he started going to school, she noticed in him more and more the pliability that she felt was her husband's greatest stumbling block. It frightened her. Was her dream the promise so richly to be frustrated by the softness that Kurt displayed? It frightened her because she did not know how to combat it. She had never known how, in Elmer's case. To him she had talked until she realized it did no good, urging him to be less lenient, to be more belligerent in his business dealings. She had weedled, she had scolded, she had even at times dared to be flamingly contemptuous, and had invariably regretted it when she saw how it hurt him. So, when Kurt would come home, as he too often did, white-faced and trembling, to stand silently by the big front window, looking off to the river and the ragged line of oaks over which the stacks of the paper mills rose, when she would put her arms around his narrow shoulders, when she would kiss his cheek and he would shake her off, a shame that she should see his racking bitterness, when at last, hesitantly, perhaps in a flood of tears, he would admit that the boys at school had teased him about his fair skin. Where'd you buy your paint, sissy, sissy, sissy? When, with body shaking and hands clenched, eyes strangely darkened his white face he would sob, why, mom, why, why, why, why can't they leave me alone? When she would see him starting nervously to school a full half-hour early to avoid the boys congregating around the door, she was worried and frightened. She and Elmer talked it over together. They tried in every way they knew to interest him in things other boys of his age liked. They bought him a cowboy suit, a football, baseball mitts, boxing gloves. He was always grateful, but never enthusiastic. He would start bravely out with his new possession, becoming, for a splendid moment, the hero of the neighborhood boys, because his football, or his catcher's mitt, would be the best that Elmer Gray could buy. He would play for a while, a little clumsily always, it seemed to his mother, a little afraid that some awkwardness of his would bring down upon him the terrible barbaric scorn of his playmates. And soon he would be out of the game, his ball flying goldenly up and down the playground, and he, more than likely, headed for the big chair in the front window with a storybook. It always ended so. The closet of his bedroom became a storehouse of little you sporting things which would lie there until his parents sadly agreed that Kurt doesn't seem much to care for it, and the ball or the gloves or the racket would be given away. Kurt's father never attempted to talk to the boy about it. He gave ball bats and skates unquestioningly, eagerly even, as gifts which at Kurt's age would have delighted him beyond measure, and he was puzzled and hurt when they had to be given to other boys. Why should his son be different? Why he was like a girl? But his contempt, if it ever deserved so strong a name, never found expression. When his wife would appeal to him to talk to Kurt, he would always put her off. Oh, I can't talk to him, Abby. You can do it better.  And Abby Gray knew that he was right, but she knew too that he was like Elmer in the very particular that most endangered the fulfillment of her dream. In the boy it was taking a different form, that was all. So she had talked. Why didn't you stand up to him? She asked one winter day when he had come home pale and silent, trying vainly to hide the fact that he had been running. Kurt was silent for a time, ashamed, but at last came the familiar details. Why didn't you stand up to him? She asked.   If you'd show him, just once that you weren't afraid of him, he'd leave you alone. And to herself, she thought, what little animals boys can be. I—I—you mean I ought to have fought him? Kurt's tone was incredulous. Yes, Kurt, even that if you have to, to stand up for your rights. And he had walked away, pressed his nose against the pain of the window, and stood until the steam of his breath against the cold pallor of the winter afternoon made a halo around his brown head. And she sighed, knowing she had not succeeded. She tried that particular method of procedure, times innumerable, realizing painfully on each occasion its inadequacy, its utter uselessness. Her urging had no effect. Then, gradually, almost without her realizing it, a new note was heard in these little conferences. A note that was to become more and more insistent, until it dominated her son in a way which was quite beyond her comprehension, and which, could she have foreseen it, she would have feared as much and shunned as fiercely as the existing softness she sought to destroy. It was the anarchic note of pride in difference. Perhaps she felt in her quickly sympathetic way that, it being impossible to change him, to make him more like his fellows, a thing she desired only for his own happiness, only to the extent that life might be for him less painful, she might at least instill in him a sense of superiority to his persecutors. Most of all, she wanted to comfort him, for she knew that he suffered, suffered bravely, for his silence in her presence at these crucial times was the silence of shame that she, his mother, should see his weakness. How many times his concealment was successful, she could not know. Why do you mind so, Kurt? she asked him one day. Those boys are—and she shrugged her slim shoulders in a way Kurt adored. What do they amount to, anyway? You can do lots of things they can't. You're smarter. You're—how should she say it? You're different. Be different. Be a leader. If they see that you don't care, they'll quit bothering you. Laugh at them. I'd fix them.  He had to laugh then. Oh, mom was all he said. But she thought she saw in his eyes a look that she had not seen before. And the look gave her courage. She hoped she had found the means of combating what she feared. There was no instantaneous change, she soon found.  The stark and secret suffering of children, stark because the fund of experience and knowledge to combat it, to buoy them up and finally to console them is so scant, and secret because shame has poisoned them too soon. The unintention cruelty of adult laughter, with which parents so often intensify the child's suffering, Kurt did not have to endure. Though he still suffered passionately, this new idea, the idea of pride and difference, seemed to offer him some consolation, however slight, and his mother played upon it at every opportunity. There was in his life one other overpowering fear, the fear of the dark. It was quite as terrible as the other, but since it came less frequently, and since, when he was very young, he had learned that his father was scornfully intolerant of it. He managed to keep it almost entirely to himself. The fear took a peculiar form. It was not a fear of the unseen, of ghosts, of possible hidden presences in the dark. It was fear of blindness. When he was perhaps eight years old, he had read a story in a collection of mystery tales his father had got from the library that grooved itself into his mind. It was the story of a surgeon who revenged himself on an enemy by pretending to blind him during an operation, and for a day and a night, by keeping his victim's chamber in utter darkness, had kept up the deceit with diabolical cleverness. The agony of the victim, the horror of the deed, the atmosphere of terror that sheaved it, had insinuated themselves into Kurt's brain more thoroughly than he knew. His bedroom was ordinarily fairly light at night. The Grey's house, a large-frame affair which they had proudly built in the late 90s when Elmer first came to Barton, stood next but one to the corner, and Kurt's room, which projected out over the circular front porch, had two large windows facing on the street, so the arc light from the corner came flickering, pale violet through the curtains, patterning the wall at the foot of his bed with luminous traceries. In the winter, when the snow covered the ground in the projecting rim of the porch roof, his room was flooded with a dim, purpled grayness. As the buds on the soft maple in the corner began to swell and burst in the spring, and as the thick leaves came forth, the room grew darker. But even in mid-July, the leafy twinklings, though less diffused, still made a welcome light before his eyes, and so long as there was the slightest gleam of light for his eyes to fasten on, he was not afraid. But nights would come, now and then, when the light on the corner would be out. It was a nightly courtesy of Kurt's, as soon as supper was over, to run to the front porch and bring in the evening paper for his father. If he saw that night had fallen and the light was out, his whole evening would be clouded by nervous dread. His parents would read the papers, his father would drowse in his chair, his mother would take up a basket of mending, while he, trying to absorb himself in a book, would punctuate his reading with restless trips to the front window to see whether the light might have come on. He would try, on such occasions, to postpone bedtime by a game of checkers with his father, or by coaxing his mother to read a story. When the time inevitably came, he would linger over his good-nights and at last crawl reluctantly into bed, while darkness rolled in upon him in terrifying waves. Wide-eyed he would stare at the opaqueness that should be the window, and not until he could detect some faint glow of star, or some doubtful suggestion of darkness not quite complete, would he dare to shut his eyes. Even then he would open them again and again to make sure that the teasing half-dark was still visible, until the intervals became longer and at last he would fall asleep. His greatest fear was that sometime he would awaken and find only impenetrable blackness. When he was nine years old, soon after the closing of school in June, he was invited with his parents to spend a weekend at a cottage which some friends had bought at a nearby lake. It was on the first night of his visit that the thing he had always dreaded and yet expected happened. The grown-ups occupied the two bedrooms upstairs, and Kurt, to his delight, was settled in the living-room on the sofa. Although the night was quite warm, there had been a fire in the grate, and as the shuffling feet upstairs were silenced, and as the yellow oblong of light where the wooden stairs went slanting through the ceiling, flashed once or twice and disappeared, it was very pleasant to lie there, on his side, watching the fire-ribbons dance and waver and send long shadows, seeking, finding, receding, across the painted floor and up the red-log walls. There were such things to be seen in a fire, glowing cones of orange-red with licking tongues of lavender and brass running greedily about them. He fell asleep while the fire danced in the shadows chased across the bed. He awoke, suddenly, dayzedly, into such a blackness as he had never imagined. It seemed to have density and weight to be pressing in upon him. He sat up, stifling a frightened cry. Rigid he remained there, held in the vice of his fright, staring into it and confronted by nothing, not a gleam, not a spark.  The window, where was the window? He leaned over, peering, his arm stretching towards it, his fingers clutching, his whole body yearning towards the light that was not there. He could not see the window, though he felt the pain beneath his fingers. Outside there was the faint, hushing murmur of pine branches and the soft slap of water against the wooden rowboat drawn up to the shore. But no light. Nervously he threw back the covers and felt his way around the foot of the couch. He pressed his face once more against the cold pain, but he could see nothing. Was he really blind? Was all light swallowed up forever? He felt along the wall, slowly, slowly, until quite by chance his groping fingers came upon the button of the electric light. He turned it with happy expectancy. There was the familiar click, but the room remained as dark as before. He moaned a little then. Was he really blind? Was light there, yellow in that small bulb somewhere in the midst of this void, and he unable to see it? The idea sent him, frozen with fear, stumbling back to his bed. It seemed a long way. It was as if some sinister thing had pushed the walls of the room away to an infinite distance and had poured into the space all the darkness of the world. How long he sat there, shivering and afraid, he did not know. But finally, hours and hours later it seemed, the window square began to gleam faintly, almost imperceptibly. It became more and more clearly visible, and soon he could see the sweeping branch of the dark cypress outside. He was not blind. Something must have happened to the lights. He was cold and tired. When he next awoke, his mother was pinching his ear, and sunshine was warm upon his face. Later in the same summer he spent a month at a popular resort on Lake Michigan with his mother and an aunt from Chicago who had taken a cottage there for the season. His worry about sleeping in a strange place, where the frightening experience of June might be repeated, was soon dissipated, for his room at the beach was as light as the one at home. The days he reveled in, the dunes rose steeply at the back of the cottage with their endless waves of white sand. The paths twisted and climbed through the stunted, sprawling pines, half buried in sand, pines that could be climbed, and that gave view far out over the glittering blue lake, and that, if you sort of squinted your eyes, became very like the crow's nest of a sailing ship, such as the one Jim Hawkins had sailed on. He could imagine his tormentors in gay pirate costumes, but none so gay as his, toppling one after the other into the sea after some particularly deadly encounter with his trusty blade.  He had acquired at the beach several brown, middy blouses such as city children were wearing, and they became him exceedingly. He liked them, as he instinctively liked nice things, but when, on the return to Barton, his mother demanded that they be warned to school, he protested stormily. Ah, nobody wears them, girls wear white ones, but none of the boys wear them, they'll laugh at me, I won't do it. Oh yes you will, dear, they're very nice, you know you like them yourself, why, I couldn't get you to wear anything else at the Haven, and what else matters, be different, be a leader, if you wear them the other boys will all want them. See if they don't, start a style. Kurt knew they wouldn't, but he could do nothing but yield foreboding in his heart to this absurd adult logic, and the result was quite as he expected, but Mrs. Gray this time would not give in, and the middies were worn and the shame endured. It was the same again and again. His mother constantly combated Kurt's fear of doing anything that would bring down upon him the ridicule of the school boys with her newly acquired and somewhat roughly formulated philosophy of individuality. Why do you want to be like the other boys, Kurt? She would ask. Everybody who amounts to anything is different. What about all these generals and great men you read about in school? Were they just like everyone else?  So why should you want to be like them? Would you like to be like Red O'Dell? Red O'Dell, a beastly little bully some two years Kurt Sr. had, she knew, taken a particularly inquisitorial delight in leading and directing his persecution. Kurt wished she wouldn't harp on it so, but he answered as she expected him to. Red had said things and done things that he would tell no one, things which, aside from the shame they inflicted, he felt to be nasty and repulsive. Those men were they different like me when they were little too? The question surprised her. She was ignorant of Shelly's painful years of public school life and of other parallels which a wider knowledge might have rallied to support her thesis, but she fabricated cheerfully. Why yes, I suppose they were. If they hadn't been, how could they be so fine after they grew up? If a man didn't have something fine and great in him when he was small, could he have it when he got big, Kurt? Don't you think you'd have liked David when he was a boy or or King Arthur or Lincoln better than Red O'Dell?  You will make a big man too someday. Kurt was quite sure he would have liked anyone better than Red, but he wasn't so certain that he would have liked Lincoln or King Arthur or David so very much. There was only one boy anyway that he really liked, the boy who lived next door. He was a few months older than Kurt and one grade farther advanced in school, a slow, thoughtful boy with a passion for making things and a tolerant disposition. He alone never laughed at Kurt.  He don't hurt you, does he? Why don't you pick on somebody your size? Knob Where he had acquired the nickname no one seemed to know, his real name was Arthur, Arthur Bronson, never wanted thanks. He simply and quietly, when it seemed necessary, assumed a sort of guardianship over Kurt, which Kurt appreciated, and his mother as well, for she soon noticed that when Knob was about, Kurt was seldom molested. Playmates of his own age, beside Knob, were very few. There were a number of younger children in the neighborhood, all of whom adored Kurt. He was always willing to play with them, since they never laughed at him. With them he was always happy, his imagination was keen. He had read all the books he could find to read, particularly if they had in them an element of the miraculous. His copy of Grimm's fairy tales was so worn that it became at last a thick, unsightly bundle of dog-eared pages. But Kurt didn't mind, for if the story was broken off by a missing page or torn cover, he knew how it ended anyway. His greatest delight, when he had a few of the younger children about him, was to enact a play, something he had read or something of his own invention. The plays were always romantic, as fairy tales were romantic, for Kurt loved to pretend being a prince, or, still better, a princess. For as prince or princess he could exercise, in an imaginative way, the suave and silken superiority that was so completely submerged in the everyday routine of life. The performances usually took place in the large upper floor of the barn behind the Bronson House. The barn was of the sort that preceded the garage in small towns throughout the Middle West, a fairly large rectangular building with a sliding door in front, which gave access to a room large enough to house a buggy and a small spring wagon. Behind this was the stable, an overhead in the loft, a storage place for hay and bedding for the horse. Mr. Bronson, who was foreman of Barton's small furniture factory, though not a well-to-do man, was led by his absorbing bent-for-things mechanical to purchase the first automobile that was owned in Barton. The buggy, the old horse, the feed, the harness, all that pertain to the outmoded locomotion of the Bronson family were sold. The stables were turned into a workshop, always redolent of fresh shavings and turpentine. For Bronson was eternally making something or helping his son to learn the tools, and the large loft was left empty, save for a few discarded pieces of furniture and boxes of cast-off clothes. There was a stained cobweb festooned window at the south end, and at the north, the front of the barn, a large square door, through which the hay was formerly hoisted. The place made, so Kurt thought, an ideal theatre, and no one seemed to mind. Knob took slight interest in it as a theatre, though as a fortress he had punctured the sides at intervals with a series of loopholes, and had converted the hay-shoot into a secret passage with a trap-door at the top, nonchalantly concealed by a much-fraid chenille rug. But, fortress or theatre, the two seldom conflicted, and if the circumstance ever arose that an invading army attacked Fort Bronson, as Knob modestly named it, they might remain in complete ignorance of the fact that they were interrupting a performance of that distinguished romantic actor, Kurt Gray, in the title role of Cinderella. For Kurt Gray, and his entire company, could be quickly, if not very quietly, spirited down the secret passage, known only to them and to the intrepid General Bronson, and out through Shay's backyard to the side-street. This arrangement pleased Kurt tremendously, for it permitted a shudderingly dramatic exit, even when the play was ruined, and it pleased the General because his reputation as a man of sturdy and unwomenish tastes, a perfect mile-standish of a man, remained uncontaminated. For the most part, however, Kurt's time, when he was not in school, was spent with a book, at the piano picking out tunes and pieces his teacher knew nothing about, or with make-believe games in which toy towns and cut-out dolls, always with voluminous wardrobes, and miniature theaters held prominent places. His parents read little, saved the daily papers, and the few magazines that were always on the living-room table. Their library was small and nondescript, a few padded volumes of Tennyson and Longfellow and Will Carlton, a set of Marie Carelli, and odds and ends from no one knew where. They were glad to see that Kurt enjoyed books, and books they bought. But their buying was indiscriminate, Boy's books galore there were, for Mr. Gray favored these especially as being in some measure a substitute for the boy life his son evaded so carefully. Fairy stories wish Kurt like best, and such fantasies as the Oz books, which found their way at Christmastime to the village drugstore. Kurt read them all, and read them again, it could not be persuaded to part with them. Baseball bats and boxing gloves he saw pass into the possession of other boys with complete indifference, but his books he treasured with a zeal that was almost miserly. He had all the Alger books that were procurable, and liked them, but his favorites among the cheaply printed, gloomily bound boys' books in his strange library were those in which the element of the unusual entered most strongly. Trips to the moon, balloon flights over uncharted seas, explorations up unknown rivers, searches for hidden treasure and lost glories, these and the fairy tales which he never forsook held the greatest fascination for him. Occasionally, when the members of the theatrical troupe of Fort Bronson were kept indoors by unsympathetic mothers, or scattered a field with shocking indifference to the demands of their art, when books pawled a bit, and when playing the piano had become, by necessity, a boring matter of scales and finger exercises, Kurt took refuge in his father's store. Often after school he would hurry home to leave his books and from there hastened down the wide maple-shaded street past squat wooden houses and low narrow porches and spacious green yards to Main Street, which was even wider and was bordered on either side for two blocks by two and three-story buildings of brick and cement blocks with here and there a low frame building of an earlier date. Kurt's father owned the store next to the central corner. It was a red brick and two stories high. Through the display windows at the front with their slick gold letters, elmer gray furniture, the store which was rather narrow could be seen stretching back for a considerable distance. The entered store was in the center and from it a linoleum-covered aisle led back to a small lattice office between a heterogeneous assortment of golden oak furniture, squatty buffets with shining narrow mirrors, round dining tables with heavy pedestals, mission library tables, uncomfortable fat-looking chairs covered with stiff brown leather, and a glittering display of brass beds at the very end. At one side a narrow stairway led up to the second floor, skirting a high wall. Its brown oatmeal paper was nearly concealed beneath framed pictures, brown prints of the Angelus Hope, Sir Gala had in the age of innocence, with here and there a hard flash of color in a varnished sunset, an ink-frozen waterfall, or a dish of waxy and unpalatable-looking fruit. Upstairs there was a long room overlooking the street where rugs and linoleum were displayed. Some rugs were on the floor in a thick telescopic pile with edges of blue and red and green and brown, others, the nicer ones, hung from great sticks that could be swung fan-like to display their colors and texture. Most of the chairs were upstairs too, and many wooden beds. In one of the dim corners at the back, where the light came uncertainly in, through cracked and faded green window shades tacked over the two dust-covered windows, were piled the mattresses. It was here Kurt loved to go. Few customers came in, and upstairs he was nearly always alone. Splendid games of house and theater could be played. The swinging rugs made scenery enough, and a disused portiere made a very satisfactory costume. Then, after a play, or a romping pantomime on the cushiony pile of rugs, it was pleasantest of all to climb to the top of the pile of mattresses, to creep far back into the corner, and to pretend of hiding in an inaccessible cave, or just to lie still and not pretend at all. Sometimes the basement would attract him. Here, in front of two small dirty windows, which pierced through to the sidewalk above, was the long bench where Jeff, the man who helped his father in the store, did his picture framing, made price tags and signs. The little pots of colored ink, the brushes, the small drawers full of slender silver nails, the tools, the miter box, the rack of picture frame molding, bending in its rack at either end, with its own golden weight, furnished him with many hours of amusement. His life became more and more a life lived alone, a life which was turned in upon itself for sustenance and solace. Mrs. Gray was regretful, but she could see no remedy, and so it went on. His schoolwork, except arithmetic, which he despised, was easy for him.  He liked the schoolroom because there he was free from the fear of taunts. He could expand, for there his superiority was unquestioned. He never seemed to spend much time on his lessons, yet his recitations were always satisfactory. His teachers liked him because he caused him so little trouble, and because there was in his attitude a hint of respect, natural and unconscious on his part, and gratifying to them. He ordinarily liked his teachers. He had no reason to dislike them. The difficulty of the playground was by no means solved. It seemed less grave to his parents, not because it was in reality so, but because as he grew older, Kurt became more proficient in concealing from them the ignominious position he occupied in the eyes of the boys. He would not fight them. The only alternative was to be as stoical as he could, always for him a difficult task, and to hide as well as he was able, the bitterness and shame he felt. His mother's counsel he had adopted as fully as he knew how. There was no use in bothering her now. She had done, he felt, all she could do. There was always the danger that she might go to the teacher, to the superintendent, or to some neighbor for satisfaction of some sort, and that would be intolerable. No, it was better to endure the taunts, though every one of them made him cringe and make believe it didn't matter. He hated Red Odell with a cold malignancy that would have amazed any of those who knew him as a quiet, studious, and well-mannered boy. When a scourge of Diphtheria killed Red during the winter of Kurt's last year in grammar school, he was glad. He knew it was wrong. His mother would have said so. Norton, his Sunday school teacher, would have said so, but would have talked about forgiving one's enemies. But he couldn't help it. He was glad, but no one knew. His life, the life that really mattered in his growth and development, became a secret one. And although at times he uncomfortably felt that this secrecy was untruthful and wicked, it was inevitable. End of Part 1, Chapter 1. Part 1, Chapter 2 of Better Angel by Richard Meeker. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Better Angel by Richard Meeker. Part 1, Chapter 2. And so Kurt Gray reached the age of 13, one of the most difficult of his life, in a state of unusual loneliness, unusual seriousness, and unusual innocence. The seriousness and the loneliness were the natural results of his own peculiar temperament. The innocence was the natural result of the other two in combination. He had wondered about life as all boys do, but being cut off to such an extent from other boys by temperamental barriers not to be surmounted, his wonderings went for the most part unanswered. Babies. Where did they come from, anyway? They were deposited in houses in some supernatural way, to be sure. But the whole problem was tantalizing. Girls, what were they like? Boys. His own body was a queer thing. He had discovered when he was very young and very full of uncertainty that there was a strange intoxicating pleasure to be one from his body, alone. It was a simple animal joy, probably wrong, but unutterably enticing. It was so wonderful, so lullingly pleasant to lie in the warm bathwater, with the house sounds muffled and far away, and to yield to this newly discovered, this wantonly exotic ravishment of the senses. It was a warm, indolent delight that seemed to flood his body with a curious and subtle languor which increased and lulled and increased, singing in all his veins, until pleasure became almost pain unbearably sweet, and then, suddenly, it would end, leaving him incredibly tired and listless. He felt, though he had never been told, that what he did was wrong. It couldn't be right such perfection of pleasure, and he never let himself succumb too frequently. The reaction was too innervating, too frightening. He was somewhat reassured when he learned that other boys knew the same delight. There had been a boy, Barry Van Cleet, two years younger than himself, who sometimes came over to join the players in the Bronson Barn.  They had gone, one afternoon, on their bicycles, out the main road, leading through the town into the country. After some two miles of peddling, they turned off into an inviting by-road, sandy and deserted, hid their bikes behind a straggling rail fence where a great billowing elderberry bush quite concealed them, and walked down a narrow grass-choked lane to a cemetery on the riverbank, a cemetery long disused. Here and there, out of the tangle of glossy green myrtle and wild verbena, rose staggering white stones, weathered and stark, their inscriptions almost effaced. And beside one of them, Kurt added to a store of knowledge. It began by dares, both eager, both hesitant. It ended in both of them, trembling with excitement, slipping with furtive bravado out of their clothes. They stood there in the warm sunshine, like two green figurines come suddenly to life in a place of forgetfulness and silence. There was animal joy then, sheer pleasure in the joy of nakedness, of the touch of flesh, of sun and wind on uncovered bodies. The sudden clatter of a cultivator in a nearby field, and the shout of the farmer as he turned his horses at the end of the furrow, sent them scuttling back into their clothes, a little fearful, a little ashamed, and back to their bicycles. There had been other experiences, two or three. Barry had moved away to Chicago soon after this, but Kurt had seen enough to know that boy bodies were patterned like his own. Girls were more difficult. He had asked his parents one evening when they were looking at the paper after supper was over. The question had come, it seemed to them, apropos of nothing. I don't believe girls are any different from boys, he said seriously, only for their clothes. His father and mother had looked at one another and laughed. He had been ashamed, so ashamed, that he determined, never to ask again, anything. They were different then. Their laughter had given them away. He wondered about it, and tried to find out from the smaller boys he played with, those who had sisters. He even offered little Jane Damron, whom he liked, a dime if she would. But she had been unaccountably angry and had run home, leaving him in terror lest she might tell what he had done. Later he had been ashamed, for a similar thing had happened to him, and he had not liked it.  They had gone forth in a straggling, leaping band to the corner, and spent many frantic and noisy minutes in a vain endeavor to snare a bat that was swerving erratically about the streetlight, sliding swiftly into the dark, and then as swiftly dipping back into the central pool of light, but always just evading the net. They had grown tired at last, and while they were lying on the cool grass in the gloom cast by the maple tree on the corner, wondering voluably about bats and stars and dune bugs and moths, and the click and flicker of the carbon lamp, Beanie Gorton had appeared and begun organizing a game of hide and seek. Bounds were to be half the block, and Beanie magnanimously offered to be it. He was not much bigger than Kurt, and in the same grade at school, although he was two years older, he had narrow blue eyes, and his hair, which was light, was clipped close to his head. Large ears protruded from a rather small head, which melted into his blue jersey by way of a soft-looking chin indented by a deep dimple. He was to count to a thousand by tens. He planted himself against the tree trunk and began counting. There were scamperings and whispered warnings, and in a moment Beanie was alone in the shadow of the great tree. Kurt had run between his house and Bronson's, scuttled around the paling fence that separated the backyards from the gardens, run silently along the side of the barn, and seeing the door to Nob's workshop, invitingly a jar slipped inside, clinging to the door casing. He listened to the faint eight hundred, nine hundred, one thousand, coming from the corner, then the padding of rapid feet, a shriek, and Beanie's voice. One, two, three for Isbell. Another silence, a mysterious rustle of leaves, Isbell's shrill voice calling, Cucumber, Cucumber! Another tattoo of swift feet and a boy's cry of free. A moment later there was another, and then a third, Nob's. That meant that Beanie was far from goal. A scraping sound by the side of the barn sent Kurt shrinking into the darkness.  Kurt crouched, motionless, holding his breath, while the blood in his wrists thumped and pounded. The head turned, and a hand came thrusting through the door. When it was just about to touch him, Kurt exploded in a nervous giggle. Beanie sprang inside and seized him. Kurt! It's Kurt! He half shouted, and then, as Kurt struggled to free himself, loosened his hold and whispered, Sh! Let's have some fun. Wait here a while and fool him. Kurt was surprised. Hey! he said. Aren't you going to race me to goal? Beanie hesitated. No, let them come in free if they want. Let's stay here. The night was soft and warm. Beanie's hands were fumbling with Kurt's clothing. It was strange. He didn't like it, and he twisted himself away. Beanie's voice was weedling. Oh, come on! Let me feel. I won't hurt you any. No, I don't want to. Let me out. And he ducked for the open door. He found himself stopped by Beanie's left arm, braced against the sill, while the right went seeking, fumbling, in the darkness. Kurt wrenched himself free and started to cry out, Let me go, I tell you! But was interrupted by another voice at the door. It was knobs. Hey, what's biting you, Beanie? Everybody's running free. You'll have to be it again. And he let forth into the night, a long wailing, Alley, alley, out's in free! Guess I better go home, said Beanie, sullenly. And as he squeezed against Kurt, and going through the narrow door, he whispered, Don't tell your ma, Kurt. And then a horrible thing occurred. One Saturday afternoon, when the house was dim and quiet, and his mother had gone to town, he had taken advantage of her absence to look in the encyclopedia for things he was continually curious about. He had learned that such things could be found there. The difficulty was that he understood so little of it. It was like a tantalizing game. One word would lead to another, and that to a third, until he would have half a dozen of the heavy volumes piled on the floor around him. It was disturbing and not very satisfactory, wetting his curiosity rather than appeasing it. Then he had turned to the Bible, the large one on the shelf beneath the library table, and read, as he had surreptitiously done before, parts that suggested hidden knowledge. Leviticus, the story of Onan, the affairs of David, of Sodom, of Lot, the song of Solomon. And the rest was, as usual. He found himself drawn, willing, and yet reluctant, up the stairs to his mother's room, darkened against the afternoon sun. He slipped off his clothes nervously, and in the oval mirror of the dresser, admired the reflection of his slim white body against the dim wall. His mother's green beads lay on the dresser.  The feel of hands on flesh, naked bodies, boy bodies, white, palpitant, arched feet beating, arms breathing, flesh quivering, swimming, swimming, patterning white at dusk. Gone again, his own body fusing, melting, wavering, sinking. The joy, the joy, the warm luxuriousness, the pain, the writhing. And then it happened. What was it? What had he done to himself? His body, what did it mean? He was frozen with fear. What should he do? He dared tell no one. He, oh Jesus, he sank to the floor, like a stricken fawn and prayed hysterically, wildly, until realizing that he was naked and cold, he dressed and waited nervously for his mother's return. The fear held him, tightened on his throat like cold metal. But his mother, busy with supper preparations, noticed nothing strange. The next few days were frightful. The fear that haunted him now was of something unknown and untellable, that he was being punished he had no doubt. What he had done had brought upon him this thing, this disease. Yet how was he to know it was unjust? He hated himself, and vowed that never again should it occur. A week went by, and his mind was more at ease, though it was still, when he thought of it, a mad riot of imaginings and worryings and uncertainties. Perhaps it was still not too late. Perhaps the damage he had done himself was not irreparable. Perhaps whatever had happened would never happen again. How could it, if he behaved himself? And he knew that he would behave himself. The fear of the consequences, if he failed, was deterrent enough. And then one night the terror came back upon him, like the gin from the bottle, a thousand times magnified. He was, in his sleep, half conscious of being seized by an irresistible desire to indulge in the pleasure he had forbidden himself. He must not, must not. But it was as if he had no control over himself. The thing was happening, and he was without power to stop it. He was yielding, and he must not. The fatal sweetness swept over him, like incense-heavy air. Sweet, sweet, the delirium of it, the dulling richness of it, the swelling, pulsing joy of it. And then, in one spasmodic burning moment, it was over. He awoke with a stifled cry. For an instant he did not know what had happened. He sat upright in the dark, tense, rigid, terror screaming in his throat, which only his knuckles pressed into his mouth retained. It had happened again. It would happen again and again, until some terrible, unimaginable thing came to pass. And what, what should he, what could he do? The shame of it, the fear of it. He could not tell us parents, and yet, maybe a doctor. Maybe he could be cured. But even as the hope came to him, he knew it was vain. For he could never bring himself to tell the family doctor, or any doctor, in the town. He dared not. All night he sat upright in his bed, chin propped in hands, finger-ins pressing against his teeth, until the street light flickered out and the gray morning came thinly through the window. Despairing and afraid, he dropped to sleep. During the days that followed, he went through his routine of school and lessons and meals automatically, a dull worry constantly oppressing him. Quite by chance he discovered in the sample copy of a cheap magazine, which had been left at the door, an advertisement, which seemed to have bearing on his case. It frightened him, and yet at the same time consoled him, for it made certainty where there had been only doubt. It read, young men, are you losing your manly vigor? Through bad habits formed in youth, are you becoming old before your time? Why be a physical wreck, right now, before it is too late, to the crass medical bureau, box four in Cincinnati, Ohio, ask for booklet seven C, which will be sent you in a plain wrapper. When the little pamphlet came, he put it quickly into his pocket, and at the first opportunity went up to his own room and opened it.  Much of it he could not understand, but it was easy enough to see that he had been guilty of an unpardonable sin towards his own body. The secret vice was responsible, he learned to his horror, for insanity, feeble-mindedness, loss of memory, and all sorts of diseases he had never heard of, but which, the booklet said, were wasting and devastating in their insidious and debilitating effects. He read the cheaply printed pages as a criminal might read his bill of charges, eagerly, fearfully, and when the last accusing sentence was done, he realized that his only hope on earth lay in rejuvo elixir. It could be procured at two dollars per bottle from the crass bureau, which was most highly recommended by the chemical health society, also of Cincinnati. He had it happened, four dollars saved from his weekly allowance of fifty cents, that he planned to put into the bank soon, but still he thought there were excuses he might make. He could plead the necessity of buying a birthday present for his mother, something, something. Part 1 Chapter 3 While he was waiting for the arrival of the medicine, making furtive trips to the post office twice each day to forestall the possibility of embarrassing questions at home, other things were happening which gave his thoughts a slightly different turn. His father came home one night from a meeting of the church board, of which he was chairman, and announced that they had voted to hold revival meetings. His mother sighed, for she knew it meant two weeks of unusual effort, with nightly pilgrimages to the church, prayer meetings in her front room, and the added responsibility that would be hers because of her prominence in the affairs of the church. Kurt was a little sorry too. Not that he minded the meetings, he was used to church going, it was something to be as little questioned as eating or going to school. As long as he could remember he had been to church two and often three times every Sunday. He had gone with his parents in the morning and sat quietly between them during the hymn and sermon, drowsing sometimes, sometimes amusing himself by fitting together in congruous titles in the hymn books to make ridiculous, half intelligible sentences. After church he had always stayed for Sunday school, being promoted from one class to another as he grew older, now with a woman for teacher, now with a man, sometimes in a class with girls and boys, sometimes with boys only. He had never liked Sunday school particularly, but some of the stories had been worth hearing, and the puzzles and riddles and jokes and the papers he brought home were fun. Occasionally too the classes were amusing. Very few studied their lessons, since there was no compulsion to do so. The result was often a rambling discussion which, beginning with Moses in the bullrushes or Elisha in the she-bears, was very likely to conclude with Ty Cobb or the reason for the greenness of leaves. The teacher he liked best was a young man called Sprig. Mr. Sprig had an amazing fund of inexact information on all sorts of subjects and a talent for digression. So while the lessons usually suffered, the forty minutes sped, and that to Kurt seemed more important. Revivals were different though. From former experience he knew there would be embarrassing moments, moments when he would feel the intense self-consciousness that was so painful to him. The medicine was slow in coming. For two weeks Kurt waited, almost ashamed at last, to inquire of the postmaster for the expected package. In the meantime the meetings had begun, and the thing had happened again, and the two events were not entirely unrelated. The meetings had started on Tuesday. Kurt had gone Tuesday night with his father and mother, curious, as everyone was indeed, to learn what the evangelist was like, and what the coming two weeks were likely to bring. The Methodist Church, to which the greys belonged, was some five blocks from their house, so they had started soon after seven in order to be on hand when the meeting began. The main auditorium, when the greys entered, was brightly lighted by three chandeliers whose glaring bulbs always hurt Kurt's eyes and made him sleepy. The heavy golden oak benches, many of them, were already occupied by the people they knew, talking and laughing in low voices over the backs of the pews with their neighbors. By the time the last bell rang its three clanging notes the church was fairly well filled, and when the door leading into the wing opened there was an expectant stillness. Four people appeared and took their places on the rostrum, a fourth chair being hurriedly lowered over the green curtain by the minister, Mr. Benson, who then stood behind the pulpit, looking a little worried at the responsibilities he was assuming. He was a tall, spare man with a face that was heavy and long, black hair then at the top, and enormous hands. In the deep hollow voice the Kurt always thought sounded exactly like the sounds he had laughed at when he was scrubbing out the cistern for his mother, the minister began. Brothers and sisters, as you know we are inaugurating tonight a two weeks evangelistic campaign. There are many things I might say to you as we inaugurate these meetings, but I prefer to let the good brother here, who is to be your spiritual guide for the next two weeks, say them. I know all pulling together great things will be accomplished for the Kingdom of Christ in Barton during the next two weeks. I am very glad to present to you your new guide and friend, Brother Jerome Chance, whose long career as a gospel worker after his miraculous conversion speaks for itself. I will let Brother Chance talk to you now and introduce his party. The Reverend Mr. Benson bowed awkwardly to a little round man behind him, and stepped down from the rostrum to the front pew, where he sat alone during the rest of the service, his great arm stretching along the back of the seat. Mr. Chance was on his feet immediately, his red face gleaming in the light, the thick lenses of his spectacles shining like the headlights of an automobile. Indeed, he rather suggested a steam engine of some sort. His arms, when he stood up, seemed ridiculously short and fat, and they moved with a piston-like regularity as he talked. Even his voice was steamy, as if it were being forced up out of his mouth by spasmodic explosions deep down in the round body. Welcome, folks! he began. I am glad to see so many of you out tonight. As your pastor has said, we are to work together for the next two weeks, and I want each and every one of you. Here he pointed a fat forefinger at four or five people in different parts of the church. I want each and every one of you to feel you are my friends, and that I am yours. We are going to do great things here, as Brother Benson has said, but we'll all have to help. And now I'll make you acquainted with my helpers, who will want to know you, too. This, and he pointed to the young woman, blonde, pretty in a conventional sort of way, is my wife, Mrs. Chance. She will take charge of the women's groups and play the organ, to say nothing of running me. He looked delighted when the anticipated stir of laughter came to him. Mary Chance rose and smiled, and seated herself again. And this, here he pointed to a sallow young man with oily black hair, and an obtrusively checked suit, is Mr. Brill, Mr. Dan Brill, who will direct the singing and work with the boys. He is a regular fellow, and you'll all like him. And now, as singing is an important part of any meeting at any church, make a joyful noise unto the Lord, as it says in the Bible. The more noise you make, the better the Lord will like it. Let's sing. Dan Brill took charge. He talked rapidly, like an actor, Kurt thought. He presented for the approval of the congregation his own pamphlet of songs, price only thirty-five cents, which he wished to use during the services. A number were sold at once, and the money collected by two small boys delighted at this unexpected opportunity of managing the long-handled collection boxes that looked like wooden corn-poppers. With Mrs. Chance at the organ, it stops wide open. They sang, an old one to begin with, with let a little sunshine in. Brill didn't like the way they did it. He made them sing it again, and yet again, shouting constantly between breaths, louder, get into it, sing, now all together, and whacking the book against his hand in time to the music, until finally everyone in the church was either singing or pretending to.  If you can't sing, make a noise. And Brill's finger pointed directly at them. They would grin sheepishly and start in. Let a little sunshine in. Shine in! Brill would echo in a booming voice. Let a little sunshine in. Open wide the portal. Open wide the door. Let a little sunshine in. Kurt was not too sure of his voice, but he sang, nevertheless. There was something senseless and jolly about the tune, like a merry-go-round. The church hymns in the thick green book, like Old Hundred, or how firm a foundation, were solemn. And when he had been to Detroit once, and heard them in a big church with a great organ booming, they had been thrilling. They made your spine tingle. But these were just a jolly racket. They sang several songs until Mr. Brill, with drops of perspiration rolling down his pale face, said, Well, that'll do for now, folks. You've done pretty well. I'll have you raising the roof off of this church every night. And sat down. Nothing exciting happened. The evangelist outlined his plan for a campaign, a plan which called for nightly meetings, daily cottage prayer meetings in various homes throughout the town, and a number of special sessions for various groups. He urged everyone to come to all meetings, to bring neighbors to pray for success, and, after another song, dismiss them. Kurt went then to the front of the church, and remained as close to the wall as he could, while his parents were being presented to the campaigners with the effusiveness their position, as church leaders demanded. Kurt didn't want to shake hands, but he couldn't escape.  Kurt came to them, dropping his cap as he came, and extended his hand, his eyes fixed on the foot-worn green carpet. Mr. Shant's clasp was firm, and so strong it made his fingers tingle. Mrs. Shant didn't offer her hand, and he silently thanked her for it. Her smile, he saw when he stole a look, was nice. Brille's fingers were damp and clammy. The next night much the same sort of thing occurred, except that there was a choir composed mostly of girls, with old and ne'est trench, who was always in the choir, and who always sang loudly and off-key, and two young fellows who came, Mrs. Gray whispered to her husband, because the girls were singing. They sang many songs, brightened the corner where you are. Will there be any stars in my crown? Throw out the lifeline, and a new one. What am I willing to pay? Mr. Brille had them sing this one many times, first all the women, then all the men, then both together. A song to think about, he called it. Then, after a very long prayer by Mr. Benson, a prayer in which no one it seemed was overlooked, Mr. Shant's talked. He didn't preach like Mr. Benson, he just talked. And Kurt thought it much more interesting. He told first about his being at one time a railroad engineer. He spoke with pride of the great locomotive, and of the responsibility his job involved. Then he told about losing his job, and being in Milwaukee alone without friends, about going into the city rescue mission, where he was given hot coffee, and where he found Christ. Everyone was interested. In spite of his almost ridiculous appearance, his build, his flailing arms, his flashing spectacles, and his shining head, there was something about the man that made the congregation listen. Kurt saw that even Mame Seligman, in the choir, had stopped giggling behind her song-book. He spoke of the great joy that had come to him then, and of the happiness that was surely in store for all those who would accept Christ for their Savior. Are you right with Jesus? he asked. Are you giving Jesus a square deal? He stopped then. There was another song, and the announcement that on the following Sunday, at three o'clock, there would be a special meeting for men and boys only. That night Kurt lay awake for much longer than was his custom. He was impressed by Mr. Chance, and puzzled, what did he mean exactly by finding Christ? Kurt had heard the expression so many times, in church and Epworth League meetings, that it had become a label to him of a sort, but of what sort, when he came to ask himself, he did not know. Indeed, he had never thought much about it. Never before had the question come to him so directly, and he wondered, if it should come to him and him alone, as demanding an answer, how could he reply? He had always taken it for granted, when the preacher spoke of finding Jesus, or being saved, of being a Christian, that he was on the right side. And the preacher had too, apparently, for he had never talked to him about it. But he wasn't sure. Still he thought, now that he had stopped the terrible sweet indulgence, he was perhaps as good as many of the older people, who professed to have been saved, and whom he had heard testifying and praying lengthily. And yet with him there had been no experience, such as Mr. Chance hinted at, and seemed to think so necessary. What was it like, anyway, this experience? A great happiness flooded over me, Mr. Chance had said. The gates of my soul were open to the sunshine of Jesus's grace and love. Nothing like that had ever happened to Kurt, and he fell asleep, wondering about it. Saturday they had supper earlier than on other evenings, for Mr. Gray had to relieve Jeff at the store, which was always kept open until nine o'clock on Saturdays. So Kurt had a chance to get to the post office once more before it closed to ask about his package. To his joy it had come. It was not large, disappointingly small, indeed, considering that it had cost him a full half of his savings. He put it under his coat, where he could press it close against his ribs, and hurried home and up to his room. The medicine, when he opened the carton, looked like slightly greenish water, and the directions were disappointing. No result was promised for two, or possibly three, months. But the patient was urged not to give up hope, but to take a spoonful each night before retiring and await results. There was no meeting at the church on Saturday night, and the Sunday morning service was just like that of any other Sunday morning, except that there were more people there, and the choir was larger. In the afternoon, after dinner, when his father suggested that the two of them go to the men's meeting, Kurt reluctantly agreed. He was half afraid of what he might hear there to confirm his fears about himself, and yet the possibility that he might acquire some new knowledge, knowledge of which he felt the need so urgently, drew him and he went. He had seen provocative cards about the town. Several had been left on the buffet tops in his father's store. Mr. Shant's beaming picture appeared prominently in one corner, and across the top, the caption, Five hotcakes for men only bring your own syrup. It didn't sound very religious to Kurt, but it worked, apparently, for when they came into the church it was already well filled with men and boys, boys of Kurt's age and older, some of whom he was sure had never been in the church before. He wondered if they too could be curious, just as he was. There was no one to play the organ, so Mr. Brill started off with, We're marching to Zion, and soon everyone was singing. They weren't all on the key, but they made a great deal of noise, and the leader seemed pleased. After the inevitable prayer by the pastor, Mr. Shant's came to the front of the rostrum and began talking. He spoke first of the evils of swearing, then about gambling, and then drinking. Nothing new, Kurt thought, but he waited patiently. What he had hoped for and dreaded came at last. And now, boys, a few words to you. Just because you are young doesn't mean you are without sin, no indeed.  Kurt sat very still, his hands gripping the seat at his side. He tried to look unconcerned, but he felt that he was pale. The old fear climbed up numbingly through his body like chilling poison. What the red-faced man on the platform had to say was exactly what the medical leaflet had told him. Only this, coming forth in the explosive and steamy utterance of a man, filling a whole room with its echoing, was doubly impressive. Mr. Shant's, too, gave some illustrations of horrible things that had happened to boys who had let this insidious vice get hold of them. Not only was it fatal to the body and mind, but it was a grievous sin, one that could be wiped out only by the sincerest repentance. He went on then to talk to the older men, considering the sins of adultery and fornication, things which Kurt did not understand very well, and indeed could not listen to very attentively, because of the thoughts that swirled and pounded in his head. He felt slightly sick, and when it was over they were free to go home, and he was glad. His father only said, pay attention to what he says, Kurt, playing with yourself as bad business.  Kurt almost choked then. Why couldn't his father have told him years ago if he knew, and saved him this misery he was enduring now, saved his life maybe? The fear of what he had done now took on a moral and religious significance that he had not previously considered, and it mingled in his mind with a bitterness towards his father that he could not subdue. The meetings went on, and every night Kurt was there, sitting between his father and mother, but always a little closer to Mrs. Gray. As they progressed, Mr. Chance's talks became more positive and more fervid. Sin, the world, the devices of the devil which lurked unsuspected all about, in dancing, card playing, in the theater, all these he denounced hotly, and with a sincerity no one could doubt. His appeals, too, became more frequent and more searching. He began to take note of those in the congregation who came regularly, but who, it was apparent from their manner, were not church members. There was always a little fringe of these outsiders, and the fringe grew nightly as word of the evangelist oratorical powers went abroad. They came in, usually, after the meeting had begun, sat in the back seats, and after the benediction hurried out before anyone had a chance to speak to them. Some of these people Kurt knew by sight. Old Dan Buck, a fat white-bearded farmer who did truck gardening on the edge of town. Bert Crandall, a puffy-faced young man whom Kurt disliked instinctively, and about whom he had heard older boys at school whisper mysterious things, and Mabel, Mabel whom he didn't know. She was a pretty woman with very white hair, who ran a little popcorn wagon on the main corner near his father's store. His mother, he knew, never spoke to her. And whenever she was mentioned, his father and mother would exchange wise glances and laugh a little disdainfully. Everyone knew, Mabel, she was a bad one. The others Kurt didn't know, but there they were night after night, and Mr. Chance more and more directed his steamy thunderings at this outer fringe. At last, one night, after an unusually impassioned picture of the dangers of a life of sin, and the contrasting joys and compensations of those who were saved, he invited all repentant ones to come forward and surrender themselves to Christ, while the choir sang, Just as I Am. It was a tense moment. The wavering, slow, sad tune seemed to palpapate in the walls of the church. To fill it like damp air, almost to drip from the rafters and window-peaks, Kurt felt something moving and stirring within him, as he never had before. Just as I Am, without one plea, save that thy blood was shed for me, and that thou bits me come to thee, O Lamb of God, I come, I come. Was this thing the experience he had been wondering about? There was no response from the fringe of sinners, and Mr. Chance talked again. There was almost a sob in his voice. Will all those who already know the joy of being safe in Jesus' arms stand? There was a creaking of seats. What should he do? His mother rose slowly, and then his father, and then, ashamed, he, too, quickly got to his feet.  What are you getting up for?  You've not repented. You're afraid. Mrs. Chance had come down into the congregation, and was talking in a low voice to some woman, a row or so, behind. He could hear only snatches of what she was saying, through the reiterated verse of the song.  In a moment later there was a loud sobbing, and the woman, a tall slender woman, who lived alone on the street and back of the grays, and who often did sewing for his mother, leaned heavily on the arm of Mrs. Chance, and started to the front of the church. Amen, amen, God be praised! Who else is brave enough to take this great step? Oh, brothers, oh, sisters, if you only knew the joy and peace it would bring you, the peace that passeth understanding. Won't you do it? Won't you do it now, tonight? Don't turn your back on Jesus. He's calling you, calling so tenderly.  Another verse of the song. Oh, Lamb of God, I come, I come. Two more stumbling penitents at the altar. Something was pulling at Kurt.  But something stronger held him back, and the meeting closed. So it was each night during the week until the next to the last meeting, Sunday. Each night Kurt had been roused to a pitch of excitement that was unlike anything he knew. An intense desire mingled with an intense shame. The excitement of a book was different. The excitement of the terror he had put so resolutely behind him was different, yet less different, for there, too, was a mingling of shame in the sinning which made the indulgence sweeter. Two forces pulling, pulling in opposite directions, and the boy in the center bearing all the strain, and wondering dumbly which force would finally claim him. The talk had its usual effect. But in place of the customary song following it, Mr. Chance announced that Lottie Garber would sing a solo. Lottie was a high school senior with a round face, soft dark hair, and a very red mouth. She had a clear soprano voice, which his mother disliked because it tremoloed. But which Kurt loved to hear? She had been sitting in the back row of the choir beside Jerry Keller, her beau. They both wrote things to each other when no one was looking. Kurt had seen the hymn book Lottie used, and it was scribbled full of notes. Silly, he thought. Tonight she sang a song that had a melody very much like that of a waltz that had been singing through Kurt's head for days. The words were pretty, but Kurt wondered why Jerry was grinning so foolishly all the while Lottie was singing. I come to the garden alone, while the dew is still on the roses, and the voice I hear ringing in my ear, the Son of God discloses. Oh, he walks with me and he talks with me, and he tells me I am his own, and the joy we share as we tarry there none other has ever known. It was not until weeks later that Kurt discovered, quite by accident, the book she had sung it from. The words, the Son of God, had been marked out, and in Jerry's handwriting Jerry Keller inserted. No wonder he was grinning. Lottie was singing a love song for the mutual delight of the two of them. But when she sang it that night Kurt did not know, and it seemed to him sweet and appealing. She sang the last lingering note, and for a moment the church was silent. Then Mr. Chance began appealing for converts. He told how God had blessed his efforts in Barton, and how, at this climax of the campaign, he hoped for even greater results. The appeal went forth. Mrs. Chance and Brill were going through the back of the church, talking to individuals here and there in voices of droning persuasion. Some looked sullen, but most seemed simply ashamed and embarrassed. Kurt could sympathize, for he felt the same struggle going on in himself. The almost irresistible attraction of being for once in his life heroic in an important way, a way that mattered, and the shame that hung, why he could not say, like a weight upon him. Would there be an opportunity for him? He hoped, he feared, and he did not know which emotion was the stronger. And then it came. Are there none of you, church members, perhaps? He heard the explosive voice saying, who have fallen from the great ideal, who feel now a new birth of the spirit, and who want to make a fresh start, a fresh avowal of your faith in Christ as the great savior of men, brothers, sisters, who will be the first to come? Come on, folks. Are you all satisfied with yourselves? Is there nothing in your lives that you are ashamed of? That you want to be rid of, washed clean of? Oh, you young folks out there, you young men and young women, what about you?  Though your sins be a scarlet, yet they shall be washed wider than snow. God is love, folks. He will forgive you, however great or however small your transgression.  There is a fountain filled with blood, folks, drawn from Emmanuel's veins, and all who wash beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains. His voice rose like a chant, filling the room, as the two gleaming spots that were his eyeglasses swayed back and forth.  Don't do it for me, do it for Jesus. Learn the peace and joy that only this great step can bring into your hearts. You must be born again, he said. This is the time, folks, now, tonight. He stands knocking at the doors of your hearts, folks, take him in, for he may never pass your way again.  Come now, now, now. Come and shake hands with Jesus. The voice seemed to come straight to Kurt. He hardly dared lift up his head. Was Chance looking at him? The two gleaming lenses in the glare of the light seemed peering with a blind, yet penetrating insistence into his very heart. He felt his face and ears burning, but his hands were cold. He was shivering. Eyes, eyes everywhere seemed to be focused accusingly on him. Was his mother's arm urging him to go up there? Was she saying inside her, be brave, be different? What do you care what people think? If you are doing the thing that you think is right, let the rest of them think what they please. Was she saying that? Near him, a seat creaked, and without raising his eyes, he could see that Gertrude Bowles, the president of the Epworth League, had arisen. He could hear the rustle of her dress as she moved down the aisle and towards the rostrum. Someone else came from farther back. Amen, praise the Lord, said Mr. Chance, and he was echoed by two or three old men who sat near the front. Will no one else come? Is there no one else brave enough to take this stand for Jesus to-night? Almost against his will, and yet with a surge of feeling that swept like a thundering inundating wave, Kurt suddenly found himself on his feet, moving towards that impelling voice and standing, red-faced, almost defiant, before the curving oak rail of the rostrum. What happened after that, he hardly knew. There was a prayer for those precious young souls who have dedicated themselves to the service of the Master. Everyone saying, blessed be the tie that binds. There was a confused buzzing murmur of voices about him. There were faces swimming in hard, shattering light. There was Brill's hand clinging paledly to his. There was a sharp clap on his shoulder from Mr. Chance. There was his mother's arms around his shoulders. Blessed be the tie that binds. At last he was out in the night, under the cold, far stars, walking between his father and mother. They were proud of him, he knew, and he was glad now, with the great gladness of youth for what he had done, hard as it had been. During the few interminable minutes he had stood before the rostrum, he had prayed for forgiveness, prayed as passionately as on that afternoon of realization that he had done something to himself. And there was now a satisfaction, an implanted hope in his mind, that in the sight of God, he was less guilty, that his repentance would surely save him from the consequences of his sin. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Chapter 4 Kurt was in high school now. Being a freshman was not entirely pleasant, as it opened one more gate to his tormentors. They bothered him less and less, however, as time went on, and they found that their persecutions had so little effect. As far as the schoolwork itself went, there was very little difference. He had four teachers instead of one, which made things more interesting, and there was the added novelty of moving about from room to room, and not being kept the whole day in one square, chalk-dusty place. Barton High School was a small one. It had never had an enrollment proportionate to the size of the town. The factories were the cause of that. Their doors were always open for young muscles, strong bodies, nimble fingers, and the temptation of twelve dollars each week, and the attendant independence that such a salary and such a life seemed to involve was a strong one. As soon as they were sixteen, many of them bought overalls and drill aprons and dinner pails, and became slaves of the whistle as they had been slaves of the bell. Often, when Kurt had occasion to go on the far side of the river, where the paper mills and the shoe factory and the cabinet works were, he would see the older boys he had avoided in school, stripped to the waist, their bodies shining with sweat, moving through the weird scene of billowing steam and the acrid smell of disinfectant, pushing trucks of paper or snatching a breath of air at one of the open windows, it was a hot, unhealthy place, the paper mill, beaters were the worst, reeking with steam and bleach, but it was all abnormally humid and odorous. In the sorting rooms, where fingers flew through bags of refuse and rags, or through long grimy windows at the clicking stitching machines of the shoe factory, he would see girls who are not so much older than he, he would hurry past always, a little ashamed for them all, and for himself, somehow. So the school had never been large, nor had the teachers been particularly good. They were all quite young, most of them, recently graduated from one of the state normal schools or colleges. Some were a little rebellious at the fate that had planted them in so small a town, and so poorly equipped a school, others were homesick. All of them were conscientious enough, but very few fulfilled Kurt's ideal for a good teacher, that she be interesting. His criticism, if he found her just, went little farther. At high school too, the little click with which Kurt had been identified all through school solidified and took on something of a social significance. Kurt's room and school had contained, from the time Kurt had caught up with it, in the fourth grade, a group of what Mrs. Gray termed unusually nice children. They were the children of storekeepers, mill officials, and professional people, all of whom, coming to Barton at about the same time when its industries were opened, had settled there comfortably and had children. By a wholly unconscious process of selection, the group had reached high school with six boys and six girls, all of about the same age. The group formed always the nucleus of any activity of their class, and as time went on, they emerged from the first to the second year of high school. Their importance became proportionately greater. Kurt belonged by virtue of his father's position in the town, and by virtue of something in him that children were drawn to, even when they teased him. In the circle, he was popular enough, and partly because, within it, his fear of persecution was allayed. He was troubled hardly at all. There were frequent parties. The occasion would be a birthday or a holiday of some sort, and invitations would be sent out. Then, arriving one by one or in groups of two or three, they would come late in the afternoon. There would be a supper with plenty of jam and cake and ice cream. There would be an evening full of games, guessing games, or sometimes, depending on the hostess, romping games. And by ten o'clock all would start for home. They would all go together, the girls in front, screaming and giggling, the boys behind, trying to tread on their heels, singing popular songs and cracked, uncertain voices, running ahead to hide behind trees, where, by jumping out, they could elicit shrieks from the girls. One by one the girls would be deposited at their homes, and at the last one the boys would say good night. There would be shouted jests and taunts and chaffing as they went off singly or in pairs into the darkness, and the party would be over. There came to be a feeling of belonging. The little group was known to have the nicest parties. They were always at the head of things. They were, in the embryonic social life of the school, the elect. It was an unwritten law that if any one of them gave a party, the rest were automatically invited, and no one else was. That he belonged gave Kurt a deep satisfaction. It pleased something in him. It gave him a sense of superiority in one field, and a human one at that, which had been warped and thwarted in others. His home, with its books and music, increasingly his music, the school, the bunch, the church, these were his life. Home and school were the staples of it. The bunch and the church were its diversions. He believed in the church fervently, for it meant to him his hope of salvation. He had gone astray, and only through this new old relationship could he expect to retrieve himself. Then too he gave him some chance of exercising his talents. He joined the Epworth League. He could play better than any of the girls, so he was at once elected organist. It was an office he enjoyed. He could discharge his duty, the simple one of playing three or four Sunday school songs during the course of the meeting, and reasonably expect to be exempted from participation in the rest of the service. Playing he didn't mind, ever. There was the organ. There were his fingers against the cold firm keys. There were his feet pressing the wheezing pedals, something outside and supporting. He was always afraid, however, of being called upon for prayer or for comment of some sort. That was different. Occasionally he was, and his embarrassment at such times was painful. He found himself, as he walked to the church through the late afternoons, always formulating a prayer or a testimony. He might be called upon, and he must not make himself conspicuous. He must not disgrace the faith he had publicly accepted. He could now go to all these meetings at the church, with the feeling that, whether he really belonged or not, in the eyes of the church he did. He had declared himself before a crowded church, so when questions came that a year ago he could answer only uncertainly, only with the guilty sense that he was cheating, he could now answer secure in the knowledge that no disbelieving eyes were watching him. Yet could he? Why was he, without exception, embarrassed so terribly at these times? It was he knew in his heart, without daring to let it come to the surface of his consciousness, because there was a doubt in him, a doubt of his experience. Could it be authentic, the great religious experience the preachers talked about so glibly, that exciting, ashamed, nervous feeling that had surged over him and carried him half against his will to the front of the church? There must be something more, must be, and he felt himself a hypocrite. All his life he had been pretending to things he was not, in order to simplify the task of living, pretending to be brave when he was afraid, pretending things his father and mother wanted for him, pretending to be sure when he was unsure, not that he reasoned very logically about it, feeling was too urgent in him. The whole situation into which he found himself drifting bothered him, but to accept the masquerade made things easier, unquestionably. And other people, too, he supposed, might behave similarly. The difficulty in this particular case was that he could not be sure whether it was a masquerade or not. When he looked at himself, he thought it was. When he looked at others in the church, in the Upworth League, he was not so sure. He was, he thought, as good, as sincere as they. He was not at all sure, either, whether it was really this newly accepted faith that helped him to conquer his evil habit. He liked to think so, but perhaps it was nothing more than fear, his overpowering fear of consequences. The frightening thing happened again and again. The medicine he had long since despaired of. Every night, he went to sleep with the fear upon him, and when the tantalizing dreams would come, he was sickeningly reassured of his own guilt. A dozen times he determined to see the doctor.  And then, in the summer, came relief. The grays and the bronsons had rented a cottage at the lake for the week of the Fourth of July. They had all been swimming, and on the return from the beach, in the heavy, flat-bottomed rowboat, while the older folks sought the cottage, he and Knob had gone into the boathouse to dress. It was a dark, cool place. The light came in only from below, through the shallow lake-water, under the edge of the building, between the piles, with a strange gold-green color that wavered and trembled on the rafters, with a liquid softness. They dressed slowly. Knob sat, dangling his toes in the water. Suddenly he said, in a choked, embarrassed way, that was not his at all, say, Kurt. This is a kind of funny, but, I mean, do you ever have funny dreams or anything at night?  Kurt knew. He said so, but little more. Knob, however, the ice-broken, made it a confessional. The two of them, side by side, solemnly sat, forgetting to finish the task of dressing. Kurt said nothing except to give a scent once in a while, when Knob went into sentence with, do you, too, or all boys do when they get to be as old as us, I guess. Knob's experience had been so much like Kurt's own that he could hardly keep from crying for sheer relief. Knob had been more fortunate, though. He had addressed his question to Dr. Brody, who wrote a health column in the Detroit paper, and had received a little book, which answered all his questions. It just happens when we get so old, and it won't hurt us any. Gee, wasn't I glad to get that book. You can have it if you want, when we get home. Please visit LibriVox.org. Better Angel by Richard Meeker. Part 2, Chapter 1. What does it feel like, Kurt, to graduate from college? The voice might be coming from anywhere. All he could see as he lay on his back, fingers interlocking under his head, was blue. No cloud, no bird, nothing but blue. He knew, of course, that it was Chloe. Although he could not see her, he was conscious of her, sitting in the grass somewhere near his head. If he bent his eyes far enough to the right, he could see the splots of yellow that was her jersey. Oh, I don't know. He pulled a long stem of grass, and chewed the crisp end lazily, enjoying its sweetness. I don't know. I don't know. Sort of silly, and sort of right. You're funny. You never know anything. But I got a Phi Beta Kappa key, he said, grinning, as he flopped suddenly onto one elbow and faced her. A smile rippled the corner of her lip that was towards him. Her hands were clasped about her knees. Her head, from some once lovely head, he always thought, was tilted back, and against the June sky she was like a cameo done in some strange and disturbing medium. The curved throat, the strong chin, the full expressive lips, the Roman nose, the low forehead, the sleek lacquer of black hair pulled smoothly over her head to a knot low in the neck. She was like the portrait on a Messina coin, or a bass relief from a Roman theater. He looked at her as impersonally as if she had been one. She turned towards him. Her eyes veiled against the sun. I wish I'd known you when you were a little boy. What were you like, I wonder? Oh, I don't know. Not much like I am now. You wouldn't have liked me. I was always moping around by myself. And then, when I was older, I know you wouldn't have liked me. I was an awful little prig. I was even fat. He laughed in remembrance, and she laughed too, looking at his slim length on the hilltop. I always wanted to believe in something. Then it was God. And now? Well, he hesitated. Now it's… Oh, why does this all seem so very hard to say? It's music. It's poetry. It's all this. His arms, flung out suddenly above his head, came down on the turf at either side of him. His right hand touched hers. He drew it quickly away and sat up. Maybe we ought to go home, he said. Where's Derry? Derry? Oh, he's off in the woods somewhere, picking things, I expect. She whistled, shrilly. And from across the shallow valley, thin and faint, came the answer. Why do you like my brother Derry so much? Kurt eyed her sharply. Why… why do you like him? Because he's my brother, he's not your brother. No, he's not my brother. He folded himself and stood on the brink of the hill, hands cupped over eyes. Looking towards the point the whistle seemed to have drifted from, he answered slowly. He's such a good egg, Chloe. He's not always pleasant, but there's something strong in him, something certain. I wish I were as certain. He sat down again beside her. And together they watched the hollow where the woods thinned into low shrubs, very green now, and lupin-spattered grass for Derry to appear. Uncertain. I've always been that, I think. Uncertain and alone. Have you been so lonely with us? Oh, not that, he said anxiously. Not that, please don't think so. It's been marvelous, you and Derry. When I think how you took me in that first year, that awful first year, and rescued me from the demon landlady of Dover Street, they both smiled. Well, you saved me, anyway, and now you've made me almost one of the family. That's what four years can do. I know most all your family secrets, and you still like us a little? He grinned for a reply. Aren't you ever sorry you played the good Samaritan? Sorry, Kurt Gray. You've been the Samaritan. Peacemaker, consoler, counselor, everything fine, and still you're lonely. You're just pretending not to understand, Chloe. Tell me you are. You must know what it is. It isn't physical loneliness, like being lost in a barren land. It's, it's worse. There are such walls between us, all sorts of walls that won't be broken down, and no matter how many friends we make, we're lonely just the same. Some of us are like that. It's a strange thing inside us, that sets us down in a lonely place, walls us up, and leaves us there. Both were silent. A meadowlark, skimming through the valley, darted up in an arc of unexpected song. And now it's leaving you all in more loneliness, I wonder sometimes. His voice stopped, and his forefinger twisted in a strand of meadowgrass. What have I done? Written a few sentimental tunes, two or three college songs, pretty bad ones too, a piano thing that old Scrawnfield liked, but what does that mean? And maybe, only maybe, one or two good songs. Songs that you think are great because I wrote them. Isn't that true? Oh, let's talk about something else. Let's not. I know that someday you'll do something big, and I'll be most awfully proud, and her hand stretched out to his. He did not see it, and it drew back and lay for a moment. Palm skyward against her eyes. I wish it weren't over, wish you weren't going away. Maybe I—maybe we'll be lonely too. There's Dary. A figure was emerging from among the trees opposite. They sat watching it, smiling at its antics, when they were discovered on the hilltop. The figure stooped, and with exaggerated nonchalance, pulled a great stalk of mullan. Waving it in one hand, Dary came tripping across the green of the hollow of burlesque pavlova, stumbling over imaginary rocks, and brushing himself free of imaginary burrs and thistles.  Dary at last came panting up the hill. He was shorter than Kurt, with stout wrists and ankles, and hair almost as dark as his sisters. That he was her brother was evident. The profile was the same, but about his face there was a looseness that hers lacked—a mobility that could be utilized in a hundred ways. It was the face of a comedian, changeable as a showery day. He went tripping clumsily around them in circles, tossing stalks of weed over their heads and singing in a raucous falsetto. Could call me early, mother, for I'm to be the queen of May. Kurt made a dive for the Terpsichorean ankle, and Dary came sprawling to the ground. Dary, for heaven's sake, snap out of it. Dary, you fool! Yes, children, what about it? Shall we up and away? And he started to his feet again, but Kurt, tugging at his shoe, pulled him back. They were all laughing. I expect, said Kurt, it's time we were going home.  Chloe laughed a little harshly. Dary smiled. Yes, he said. Trust mother to be worried. It's the best thing she does. It's too nice to leave, but I suppose we'd better. Chloe rose, sighing and stretching her arms above her head, a glow with the slanting sun. They all went, arm in arm, over the hill. Chloe in the middle. Dary trying to sing one of Kurt's college songs. Kurt crying, cut it! And Chloe, laughingly, being peacemaker.