Towards the end of my freshman year, my undergraduate experience settled down to something of a routine. Although I never played billiards, I was a ball bouncing off of four walls. Holly was on one side and Betsy, on the other; Lee, whom I never heard from again, was at one end and Joe, at the other. Lee's absence tormented me and Joe's presence interested me. I had no will, no purpose, no ambition. During the academic year, I devoted weekends to debauchery mostly with Betsy and vacations to debauchery mostly with Holly, except for healthy encounters with Joe whom I could never refuse. Lee haunted my insomnias. My coursework was continuing to improve with each semester. I did well in psychology, math and English because I liked the professors as I have explained. Otherwise, I made steady progress in getting the best results with the least effort, an efficiency that maintained my reputation. Although my notoriety never rivaled Betsy's, everybody knew who I was as surely as they recognized star athletes and student politicians; in fact, more admired me than admitted it. Every summer, I got a job, not because I valued the experience like my father, but rather because I wanted to earn some money. On a farm one year near Nevers and in a warehouse the next in Mapleton, I enraged my employers by finding clever ways to shirk work, such as rocking the farmer's niece in the hammock. I was lucky he caught me before I could lie down with her. The warehouse foreman was a gorilla, who gave me the jobs nobody else wanted, such as cleaning up an oil spill. I got even by spattering his white shirt as he leaned over me making sure I was doing it right. Since he wore a clean one every day, I could smell the laundering as I swung the mop, a little too energetically, around to the bucket. He grabbed my shoulder with his hand, squeezing it so tightly that I gasped from the pain and sunk on my knees. Picking the bucket up with the other hand, he started to pour it over me, but fear of consequences drove the anger from his bulging eyes. I decided that, after that summer, I would never do manual labor again. The third year, I drove a cab in Mapleton, an experience I did value because it exposed me to all kinds of people, including young women whom I tried to seduce. Some of them reminded of my social inferiority more gently than others. I only succeeded with one of them and we were on the back seat in a woods when the dispatcher demanded: "Where are you, Number 23?" I let him wait until I had finished with her and he threatened to fire me. 

Invitations to participate in Joe's activities, whether they occurred at ZFF, ZU or in Nevers, continued to take precedence over dates with Betsy or Holly. How refreshing they were! Now that I have crossed the watershed from spontaneous to vicarious enthusiasm, I dote on the memory. Joe had taken a giant stride every time I saw him again. I could gauge the increase in his prestige by the attention given his friend as well as that given him. The more attention he received, however, the less he seemed to notice it and his embarrassment discouraged flatterery. His election as president of the student body by more than 80% of the votes must have been a mere formality. Every issue required his opinion and every act, his consent. Nobody ignored anything he said or did. His mere presence raised enthusiasm. In an ever widening circle, congregations were competing to have him give the Sunday sermon or preach at a revival. The mayor of Mapleton appointed him to serve on a commission to investigate juvenile delinquincy. After initial skepticism, the other members, the youngest of whom was fifteen years older than he was, began to ask him for his opinion and listen when he expressed it. Nor was he afraid to interview the toughest youths he could find in slums or prisons and he emerged with every hair still in the same place. The committee on education in the legislature invited him to testify during his junior year and the one on church and state, during his senior year. On both occasions, he tactfully disapproved of appropriating any public money to private educational institutions or religious organizations. Such appropriations tended to compromize both parties, he argued. He headed delegations to state and national conventions, which he addressed and influenced by a diplomacy that astonished the other delegates and the press.

Radio and television hosts invited him more and more often to participate on panels and in forums. He particularly distinguished himself by his attitude towards the issues concerned with life and death, such as birth prevention, abortion, suicide, euthanasia and the death penalty. He argued that the gift of human life with which God had entrusted us implied the duty of conserving and preserving it. But where did human life begin? upon conception? when the embryo became a fetus? upon birth? Aside from demagoguery and fanaticism, there was sincere and profound disagreement about this. We must agree to disagree and never take or endanger the life of others on the excuse that they disagreed with us. Never should government intervene in an issue that depended on the individual 

conscience. Honest and serious convictions also divided us on whether suffering, shame or despair justified the termination of life. Yet people who didn't have these motives would hardly persuade those who did. Didn't the gift of life imply the recipient's right to terminate it? Church and state should leave such decisions to individual conscience. Dignified and responsibile people questioned our right to execute any criminal however odious his crimes and whatever the probability that he would repeat them. Should we expose innocent people to such certain danger? The cruelty of imprisoning a murderer or terrorist together with others as dangerous as himself and for most of the rest of his life had received little attention. Abuse of legal procedure to forestall the execution of such criminals not only undermined justice, but also tormented them with false hope. Executing a disproportionate number of criminals in a particular social category, such as the poor, didn't require abrogation of the death penalty, but rather social justice, reform of the judicial system and a guarantee of competent and committed legal council for all defendants. Would the Lord have created a majority of victims to appease the appetite of a criminal minority? Hadn't he instilled in us the instinct of survival? To be sure, the death sentence should sanction only multiple murder or mayhem by criminals incapable of rehabilitation and only after exacting proof. Execution should follow the sentence within a reasonable period of time, during which all appeals should be expedited.

Though not very new or original, this wisdom took the public by surprize before it could divide it into enthusiastic partisans and bitter enemies. Joe knew how to reassure his critics that he was taking their opinion into account. He walked the high wire of modest authority with surprising ease, giving some the fear and others the hope that he would fall. Critics found him difficult to refute, less for lack of objections than the difficulty of establishing their good faith.

During his senior year, offers competed for a commitment by him despite his intention, which he stated and restated, of training for the ministry. Although famous divinity schools offered him fellowships, he applied only to the Ochino Institute, a Free Faith seminary that had always overcome a lack of necessities by the determination to do without them. The Zenia Free Faith Council had bought a resort hotel in the mountains that had gone out of business when the smell of its hot sulphur spring drove guests away. A 

modest down payment and a charitable loan from a nearby bank, anxious to recuperate its investment in the hotel, enabled the Council to buy the property and convert it to a seminary. After the devil's own stink, according to a beloved joke, no other challenge could daunt a minister from OI. Otherwise, the beauty of the setting and the faith of the locals, which consoled their poverty, compensated for the climate, the housing and the food. The first lesson every student learned was how to fix the toilet, the second, where to jump when the shower went hot or cold and the third, what to take along in case the weather changed. Cabbage and pork exersized the ingenuity of student cooks who, despite their self-confidence, rarely succeeded in raising much enthusiasm in the dining room. Three large wooden buildings, various smaller ones and a church stood on a plateau on a mountain slope, where they resembled a white tear in the evergreen carpet when seen from a distance. The paint was wearing off faster than OI could afford to redecorate and maintenance barely kept up with essential repair. The restoration of ornaments like the twin staircases that curved upwards on either side of the entrance had to wait. They creaked more loudly every time the students returned from a vacation. Replacing the hardwood boards would have cost a lot of money and the broken pieces in the ballroom parquet, even more. It would cost a lot less when Joe did it.

I can give you these details because he invited me to come with him when he drove up to OI for his interview, a mere formality in his case, but also an opportunity to anticipate. We went in October when the yellows and reds of the leaves were at their greatest expanse, intensity and variety. As usual, his enthusiasm kindled mine whether I shared his taste or not: I did for the continuously changing vision of color and relief; I didn't for the isolation and austerity of his monastery. We had an argument over this word, which meant an institution dedicated to the continuation of the faith to him and a source of literature, art and music to me. Otherwise, I didn't see much worth continuing. Seclusion spared monks and nuns the distractions of ordinary society, he replied, so they could concentrate on the faith. OI improved on monasteries by letting men and women influence each other, within the limits of decency. Decency, I replied, frustrated the nature of youth in evident contradiction of the creator. He told me that, while women lived in Southwest Hall and men in Southeast, appartments accommodated married couples on the upper floors of South and several cottages housed student families. He knew of many families that had evolved from an encounter at OI. 

"Will that happen to you?" I asked.

I wondered.

Even the students and faculty who hadn't met Joe felt as if they already knew him and, as usual, he made everybody feel at ease. A table different from his inivited me to sit with them that evening in the interest of "sharing our guests." We were having a lively conversation when I fell into another trap. The homely young woman beside me turned bright eyes and a subtle smile on me:

"You are going to apply to OI, aren't you?"

"Well, what are you going to do?"

"Law school!" she exclaimed with ironical horror and everybody laughed. 

"Look! You wouldn't even want me to tie your shoelaces."

She pushed her hair back with both hands, then her chair and got up.

"To change my shoes."

"He's lucky his hair isn't long enough to wash her feet," said a tall, gaunt professor of Old Testament studies with wild white hair that would have been. He had the smile of a patriarch on his face and a prophetic gleam in his eye.

"You want to learn how to get around the law," Betsy suspected.

"Why don't you bum your way around the world?"

"We could screw in all sorts of exciting places."

"Naw! I might get something."

"I thought you might apply to the school of education."

"I used to wonder where your mind was. Certainly not in your brain."

"I handle them with care. You may have noticed."

"That's what I've been trying to tell you."

"A meeting of the minds! How are they going to meet if yours is in law school?"

"I want to make money, lots of money."

"Ha! Ha! Ha!"

While I had to work harder in law school, my efficiency kept me in the middle of the pack. I made many acquaintances and few friends among my ambitious and competitive fellow students, whom I learned to reassure by calculated modesty. A small minority, the women craved equal consideration and treatment with the men, whom they either challenged or cajoled. Neither tendency tempted me, so I went fishing for undergraduates, but they weren't biting. Older and different, however slightly, I encountered more caution and reluctance than I usually had the time to overcome. Addicted to intercourse since puberty, I dreaded having to do without it and yet a week or two of that didn't tempt me to rape the first woman I saw. Was I aging already? To my surprise, concentrating on my studies kept my mind off of sex. Case histories fascinated me. Let me tell you a few of my favorites. 

An airline pilot had a wife and a child in each of the two cities between which he flew. What precautions didn't he take to keep each family from suspecting the existence of the other? Taking off one day after an intermediate stop, he was passing through some clouds when he collided with an amateur pilot who had lost his way. The impact damaged the tail so badly that he struggled to control his plane, which, despite violent lurches, he turned and landed at the same airport. This feat seemed nearly impossible to all the pilots and other experts who found out what he had done. The more he avoided admirers and reporters, the more he convinced them that his modesty was as great as his heroism. Yet fascination with celebrities is relentless. Furtive photos appeared in the media, while some reports mentioned a family in one city and others a family in another one. As reporters and photographers besieged both of them, the questions began to probe the existence of two at either end of the pilot's route. Both wives sued for divorce and both states prosecuted him for bigamy in litigation that delighted jurists specializing in interstate conflicts of this kind. Faced with fines, alimony and support, the pilot fled to an underdeveloped continent where flying contraband enriched him far beyond his airline salary and he could have as many wives and children as he wished.

That was one of my favorites. Here is another one: A couple who had grown up in a city, married and leased a farm. While they managed to live on the farm, they discovered that they couldn't have children without resorting to means that revolted them. So they adopted one, whom they came to love, and he responded to their love. They had to work hard to support him, but they were willing to work even harder to support another. They had adopted eleven orphans fifteen years later when some embarrassed policemen served a warrant for their arrest on evidence that they had been molesting their children and encouraging the older ones to molest the younger ones. Horrified and outraged, the couple gave the poor policemen a tongue lashing and the older children supported them. Yet they went to jail, the older children, to a reform school and the younger ones, to an orphanage. According to a neighbor, their oldest boy, who was thirteen, had described the molestation to his daughter in an attempt to seduce her. A teacher complained that their two youngest children had made lewd advances to others in her class. One had even incited a little girl to play with his weewee. When the teacher scolded him, he told her that his Mommy and Daddy didn't see anything wrong with that. Others made less telling allegations founded on their observations. 

Although many of the teacher's examples resembled those of the neighbor, both witnesses denied that they had discussed the matter with each other before testifying. This denial would cost them conviction for perjury during the second appeal. The couple couldn't afford a lawyer, so the judge appointed a defender, who admitted his reluctance when hysteria over the molestation of children was sweeping the country. Repulsive adults and pathetic chldren were appearing on television every evening. With a recent degree from a mediocre law school, the prosecutor pounced on an opportunity to embark on an illustrious career. He easily persuaded the judge to exclude from the record the fact that the neighbor and the teacher belonged to the same church. Stressing rectitude, the church condemned deviation from the traditional morality of relations between men and women. The judge also excluded testimony that the neighbor's daughter had embarrassed and angered her father by her adventures with other boys. In the witness stand, she recited words that she had learned by heart while glancing fearfully at him. She even repeated his favorite locution: "likeahsayd," though with less solemnity. The defender didn't bother to ask for the exclusion of the fact that the indicted couple didn't attend any church. He did introduce testimony by one of the teacher's colleagues that the failure to find a husband had turned her against the usual means of seeking one. The prosecutor requested that it be deleted and the judge granted the request. Questioned about the charges against them, the defendants attested a conception of their duty as parents that shocked some people and disconcerted others. From the earliest years on, they asserted, children should feel at ease with the male and female bodies. They should understand their reproductive functions and the appropriate use thereof. Far from inciting them to abuse these functions, the couple strove to instill in them a healthy restraint. They contradicted the teacher's version of the incident involving their little boy. He had entered the first grade a year ahead of time because of the instruction they had already given him. Since he was smaller than the others, the girl and her friends were always teasing him. One morning, they surrounded him on the playground, a friend of hers jerked his pants down and she flipped his penis before he could jerk them back up. The teacher, who arrived on the scene only then, accepted her explanation and ignored his.

The prosecutor enlisted the support of a psychologist who worked as a consultant for the orphanage. They agreed on the depravity of child 

molestation. One by one, the psychologist took the couple's youngest chldren to a room, which he had equipped with toys, games, audio-visual gear, a refridgerator, a small oven, a cupboard and furniture designed for children. There he entertained them, fed them the kind of food they liked and questioned them, anticipating the replies he wanted to hear. As a concealed camera and microphones recorded the proceedings, he coaxed them to accuse Mommy, Daddy and their older sisters and brothers of the abuses alleged by the teacher, the neighbor and fellow members of their church. Once they had answered the questions as he wished, he extracted their best performance on a tape, which he played before the court.

The prosecutor had persuaded the principal of the reform school to help him convert the older children into witnesses against their parents or, at least, against themselves. The principal only needed to insinuate what he wanted in order to get it from the delinquents in his charge. As he and his guards looked the other way, the delinquents molested their victims day and night. Boys entered and exited the girls' pavilion by hiding under the clothes in laundry hampers, which the guards had stopped checking. With the help of the girls, they raped the couple's daughters repeatedly. Forcibly drugged unconscious, they smuggled the oldest son into the same pavilion where the girls pinched, scratched and masturbated him until he bled. When the victims complained to the guards, the latter betrayed them to their tormentors who took revenge. In ten days, the victims had succumbed to a cringing bestiality. The defender hadn't bothered to keep the promise he had made to their parents to visit the children. The prosecutor did visit them, however, and, when they complained, he told them that cooperation with him would put an end to their ordeal. The delinquents and the guards were also harassing them to cooperate with him. One by one, they relented, each agreeing to plead guilty and two of them, to testify against their parents.

Sentenced to many years in prison, the couple lost their appeal for lack of a competent and dedicated defender. When the hysteria over molestation subsided four or five years later, a lawyer began to worry about the victims it had caused. After an investigation, he initiated a second appeal and overcame many obstacles motivated not only by reluctance to admit an error, but also the fear of retribution. While this lengthy and complicated litigation fascinates jurists, you will find the results more interesting. After 

more than two years of persistence, the lawyer obtained the acquittal and release of the couple. Now an assistant of the state attorney general, the prosecutor deflected the investigation of his role in the trial against the psychologist, who lost his licence, and the principal, who lost his job. The same judge sentenced the neighbor and the teacher to a fine and a suspended sentence. The neighbor hardly cared since he was earning extra income from the couple's property, which he had bought for a ridiculous price. The teacher had already moved to another state where she continued to teach little children. Other couples had readopted three of the couple's younger children and they went to court to defend their right to keep them. Self-supporting by then, the two older ones who had betrayed them hung up as soon as they heard their voices on the phone and tore envelopes addressed in their handwriting up without opening them. Reunited in the city where the parents had married, the rest of the family discovered that that the hardship they had suffered independently of each other had inflicted serious damage on their solidarity with each other.

"How awful!" said Joe after a long silence.

"How many saints know they are going to be one before the Lord inspires them?"

"Your decision to practice that kind of law is an even greater surprise than the one to apply to law school."

"Where did they come from?"

"Nothing comes from nowhere."

"Well, haven't I been praying for you?"

He touched my shoulder: "This decision is unlike any you have ever made before."

"Before, it was sex and no law."

"And if you had been one of the children?"

"See?"

I had invited him down to Concordia to discuss my decision to specialize in family law, which most of my fellow students disdained. Maybe this disdain was a secondary incentive. Dropping everything, Joe drove down on purpose and I told him my favorite scenarios. I added another one that I had imagined and written up for a professor who encouraged students motivated by this unorthodox exersize. I have deleted the legal considerations that she required.

A couple reached the age where they had to resign themselves to their inability to have children without resorting to means unacceptable to them. They mentioned their disappointment to the wife's niece, with whom they 

had close relations, and the young woman sympathized with them. Her parents had died in an accident, leaving her and her aunt the only surviving members of their family. She had been through three love affairs without finding a man willing to have a family with her. This time, she told her aunt and uncle, she was looking for a father and not a lover. Embarrassed, her aunt laughed and assured her that she could find a man fully qualified to perform both functions. She didn't have to remind her that she was under thirty, still attractive and had a good job. Certainly she could find the right man, her uncle agreed, and, in fact, the right husband if she wanted one. He didn't have to tell her that marriage provided an opportunity to determine whether a couple could have children before they went through with it. Husbands like him, she teased him, didn't grow on trees. The uncle and the aunt both enjoyed the joke, but each in a slightly different way.

Five months later, the aunt ran into the niece at a beauty parlor. Since both had fluffy light hair hard to dress, the aunt had recommended one of the hairdressers who could shape it. Afterwards, the aunt gave the niece a ride home and the niece invited the aunt up to her apartment for a drink. The aunt asked whether the niece had found any likely candidates, the niece reported that she hadn't and the aunt encouraged her to keep trying. Once the aunt had finished her drink, the niece deployed an elaborate diplomacy that she had been preparing for weeks. A subtle parallel between the childlessness of the young woman and that of the older couple emerged. The aunt shrieked, jumped to her feet and hissed, "Shame on you!" She was so distraught that she rushed back and forth trying to find her handbag, which she had left on the sofa where she had been sitting. Tearfully, the niece gave it to her and followed her to the door trying to make peace. "Our family is just dwindling away," she moaned.

During the next few weeks, the niece felt so guilty and so lonely that only the necessity of keeping her job kept her from a nervous breakdown. Despite her efforts to hide her feelings, her fellow workers kept sympathizing with her and trying to improve her spirits. Unfortunately, their efforts only humiliated her. Then, one morning, she got a call from her uncle, who invited her to lunch without saying anything about her aunt. She had never seen him without her, his profession was entirely different from hers and his office was in the suburbs while hers was downtown. Though fearful of offending her aunt, she accepted his invitation, he picked her up 

and he took her to a restaurant on top of a skyscraper. The dining area was on a turntable that made a complete turn every half hour. When they saw the stadium again, said the uncle pointing at it, they would have to go back to work. Her aunt, he continued, had insisted on his inviting her without wanting to come herself. Although he had seen that she was distraught for some time, he had only succeeded in persuading her to tell him why during the previous night. Alternating between determination and revulsion, she kept begging him to have a child with her niece. She had, for instance, scorned the disapproval of other people at first and then she had agonized over it. The scandal, he had objected, would torment everybody involved, including the child, and it would torment the aunt even more than the others. He had refused until she threatened to leave him and actually begun to pack her bags.

She demanded that he visit the niece until she became pregnant and yet without letting her know or even suspect it. Suspicious and jealous, however, she kept questioning him and trying to catch him. Thus the uncle and the niece resorted to trickery in order to spend a frantic quarter of an hour in bed together from time to time. How could they have helped thinking that, without the tyranny of wife and aunt, they might have enjoyed it and taken satisfaction in their collaboration? Eventually the niece became pregnant so the uncle stopped seeing her, but the aunt wondered why she didn't see her and suspected the pregnancy. The birth of a baby so enraged her that she accused her husband of betraying her. When he protested that she had forced him to do it, she complained that he had known only too well that she didn't mean it. Hadn't he seen how distraught she was? He didn't dare mention his duty to help support the child and father him as much as he possibly could. Yet he couldn't hide his efforts from her and, when he came home from a visit with mother and child, he found that she had left in her car with two big suitcases.

She did have a nervous breakdown and it served as evidence that he had mistreated her when a lawyer persuaded her to sue him for a divorce. The suit cost him an outrageous amount of alimony and he lost his job because of a trivial mistake his employer tricked him into making. The niece's employer, who went to no such trouble, laid her off on the excuse of a reduction in his budget. She had to resort to employment beneath her ability, but her uncle couldn't even find another job because of his age. The 

scandal alienated practically all of their friends, so that they practically lived in isolation. Adversity increased their affection for each other and they might have moved in together if each didn't blame himself for the misfortune inflicted on the other. Despite the aunt's hostility, they felt sorry for her as she teetered on the edge of insanity and poverty. Though poor themselves, they made drastic sacrifices to ensure the best possible education for their son. He discovered their anxiety over his relationship to them long before he understood that relationship itself. This anxiety enabled him to punish and coerce them at will, a fiendish incentive for learning when available to such a selfish child. He took pleasure in repaying their kindness with meanness and in shocking them by dishonesty or vandalism. The older he grew, the worse he tormented them, not only to wring money out of them, but also to humiliate them. Convinced that they had wronged him by conceiving him, he sought compensation by indulging his appetite and concocted an ideology of self-justification. He introduced himself to his aunt hoping to take advantage of her as well, but she jumped off of her balcony five stories up. His father, who had high blood pressure, neglected his medication until a stroke put him out of his misery. For fear of losing his only surviving victim, the young man watched his mother closely, which so revolted her that she threw herself out of the car as he was passing a truck. He only regretted the loss of his victims, but he soon found others including women who bore his children. Thus the family survived after all, although it hardly resembled his parents' and his aunt's hopes.

After a few seconds, Joe said: "I would call that the story of family man without God." 

"I wouldn't deny that, but I think the creator has kept ultimate control over genetics. Your villain would always make everyone he came into contact with miserable, including himself. Yet I doubt that he would ever be a threat to many people, let alone try to exterminate an entire nation."

"Criminal and political power multiply good and evil as well as genius and ineptitude... You don't suspect me of disapproving of the niece's solution for the problem of family continuity, do you?" 

"I didn't know how you would react. Fornication, adultery and incest are sins, despite the attenuating circumstances."

"My Lord is no drill sergeant, who scolds recruits for breaking step when they encounter a log or ditch across the road. You didn't intend to justify the social backlash that ostracized the uncle and the niece, and deprived them of their jobs, did you?"

"You don't hold the Lord responsible for the pessimistic outcome of your story, do you? Might the outcome have been optimistic with better luck? Aren't you substituting luck for the Lord?"

"It's the most important one: whether you were substituting luck for the Lord."

"Every time, you lose your footing, you grab something and get it back."

From noon on Saturday when he arrived until one on Sunday afternoon when he left, we never stopped talking except for seven hours of sleep. Was it a year later that he invited me to OI for a weekend celebration that occurred every spring when the dogwoods bloomed? Since nobody knew exactly when they would bloom, hosts and guests had to keep their calendars open, which was easier for the hosts than the guests. Nor would innocent and wholesome entertainment tempt every taste. No smoking, no drinking, no rock, not even any sex to speak of? Such entertainment did appeal to me, however, as strange as that always seemed, and I was looking forward to the phone call that finally came.

"Do you remember Peg Acob?" Joe asked.

"... The one I bumped into?"

"Who wouldn't have?... Are you going to marry her or something?" 

"Marry her? You sound like Mom. She would make a nice wife all right, but I wasn't thinking of anything like that. She has some friends up here and they invited her to Dogwood Bloom."

"And she could use a ride? I would love to give her one. She was the best collision I ever had."

"Of course not. Fifteen minutes, twenty with traffic. What is she doing at ZTech? I thought women hated it as much as ZTech men hate women... or at least say they do."

"School of Agriculture?"

"Give me her telephone number."

"I promise I will keep both hands on the wheel, especially in the mountains."

"Especially?"

"How do I know you won't get lost on some untraveled road?" 

"You don't know how much I hate getting lost. I will give you a map with our route marked in red. You can make sure I don't miss any turns."

She didn't reply, as if trying to make up her mind.

She didn't of course and we had a wonderful time. During the first hour, we said all the things we didn't mind others knowing. During the second, however, we said a few that we only wanted each other to know. Despite her affection for the dogs and her interest in her studies, she didn't care for the professors and the other students. Maybe they had lived so long with dogs that they had lost a little of their humanity. Dogs had always made her feel more human, she said looking at me as if for confirmation. "You have never seemed more human to me than you do right now." I regretted the lack of a playful overtone in my voice. In fact, she couldn't decide how to respond and fell silent. I had to say something, so, changing the subject, I confided in her that, while family law fascinated me, what family member would trust me to represent him or her? Especially her! In discussing this predicament with her, I realized that I had been ignoring it like hair you keep pushing away when it falls over your eye. She had an analytical approach that implied neither sympathy nor antipathy, yet she explored my vice as far as abstraction allowed. She requested no details and I offered none, but we reached a point where I realized that I had made a confession. Surprized, both of us fell silent and then, after a few minutes, she told me in a voice that vibrated with barely audible emotion: "I guess I would trust you, Trav." Although we had little to say during the rest of the trip, we did smile at each other once as if to agree that our trip had yielded an unexpected and and as yet undefined dividend.

Peg stood as tall as I did and I was a little over six feet. Slender and supple, her figure distinguished her from other women. I hadn't even noticed her until I bumped into her, but, from then on, the more she moved, the more I watched. I loved to see her run, she seemed to enjoy running, I always wanted to run after her and catch her. Pleasant rather than pretty, her features expressed both sympathy and restraint with equal intensity. Flopping back and forth as she turned her head, her pony tail tempted me to grab it. When I finally did, it was only because I realized that she wouldn't mind. That took quite a while. Nor did I pay much attention to her voice until I began to hear things that she didn't say and they were as interesting as 

what she did say. Like Lee, she had a unique and indescriptible charm that I only discovered with time, but it wasn't the same kind. Like Betsy and Lee, she used very little makeup. What a difference with Holly! Like Betsy, Peg knew how to dress, but she dressed with a simplicity so elegant that I didn't even notice it until I had noticed it. She wore subdued and yet unusual colors that harmonized with each other and with those of her complexion and hair, light blue in particular. Well-made, her clothes fit her atypical figure as if made for it, the result of patient shopping and a limited wardrobe. It didn't bother me to find her in familiar clothes, on the contrary, I wondered which ones she would wear and I looked forward to seeing her again as I had seen her before. During that weekend at OI, I was trying to find excuses to approach her and, since her friends kept her occupied, I was disappointed when I didn't find them.

Dogwood Bloom demonstrated that you could have a lot of fun doing something you wouldn't expect to find amusing. Early on Saturday, guests, students, faculty and staff assembled with backpacks at the kitchen door behind South. We received part of our lunch, a bottle of water and, most of us, something else, such as a frying pan or an ice pack. Only a watchman stayed behind. The heftier students took turns piggy-backing an invalid, who would reward the most comfortable ride with a prize. Right from the start, the trail ascended at an angle that justified the sign pointing the way: "Peter Path." The sign changed mysteriously every year on the eve of Dogwood Bloom. The year before, it had read: "Up" and, the year before that: "Are You Ready?" I discovered a collection of these signs in The Refuge, a basement lounge in South with rough stone walls and a large fireplace where people warmed up after skiing. A few hundred yards up Peter Path, I was panting, drooping and dripping, and the other guests looked as badly as I felt. The effort merely invigorated the OIs, as they called themselves, and they were giving us ironical invitations to "stop and admire the view." A little old widow with a pack on her back that seemed almost as big as she did was striding effortlessly up and down beside us grinning and encouraging us. Planting my foot on the next higher clod, stone or root, I pushed down with my thigh, an effort that seemed to exhaust me and yet I found the strength to take the next stride with my other leg. The OIs were talking and laughing as if we were crossing a level field. I kept looking up ahead, trying to find a place where the trail climbed less steeply. When it disappeared around a bend, I hoped to find such a 

place on the other side and set the bend as a goal. Struggling to reach the bend, however, I only found that the trail continued at just as steep an angle on the other side. When I looked down behind me, the slope dropped away, leaving me perched on a narrow foothold. The human variety below and above me formed a climbing chain linked by common effort and recreation. We slanted up from the ground at an acute angle like the trees on either side of us.

The trees up ahead began to thin out, so we could see blue sky between them, and then a hole opened up. Coming out from under the trees, we walked onto a small plateau overgrown with grass and wildflowers, which sloped slightly to the edge of a cliff. The little old widow was walking along the edge to show us the line we shouldn't overstep. I would have been afraid to come as close as she did. Captivated by the view, I forgot my fatigue. A white thread of water flowed along the crease of a vast ravine between the ridge we stood on and the one we saw on the other side. Budding trees blanketed the slopes with a dark, reddish down that formed a background for white bursts of dogwood scattered over them. The sun would have felt hot without a gentle breeze. Known as Top Step, the plateau sloped up to a rock wall rising from six to sixteen feet and rounding off in a convex outcropping from which you could see the other side of our ridge. Runted and twisted by the wind, scattered trees offered shade here and there if we wanted it. Suddenly tired, I took my backpack off and laid down where I had been standing. The next thing I knew, my nose tickled and I realized that I had fallen asleep. Unwilling to wake up, I scratched it, but soon it tickled again. Only the third time did I open my eyes: I saw a sprig approaching my nose and Peg smiling down at me. Laughing, she jumped up and ran away. I got up to chase her, but gave it up after a few steps. What would I do with her when I caught her?

Lunch was delicious, not only because it tasted that way, but also because we were hungry. Have I ever been that hungry? Then we had Bible stories. If you think the professors told them, think again. No, the students enacted them and they wrung every drop of ridicule they could out of them. Never have amateur actors had more effective inspiration. Shandra, the girl whose shoelaces I had tied, played Delilah to a Samson who would have delighted a football coach. Though slight and ugly, she had a suave voice and an insinuating persistence that contrasted with his tenor and reactive 

outbursts. In the seduction scene, she put him through his paces, releasing much energy by slight effort, much to the hilarity of the few hundred we were. The action took place in front of the rock wall, which served as a backdrop, while we sat in semicircles opposite it, cheering, jeering and making remarks. Nor did the actors hesitate to respond, initiating secondary dialogues that enhanced the humor of the principal ones. For the final scene, five stagehands built a temple of pine branches in five minutes, a feat that won enthusiastic applause. It was so flimsy, however, that Samson, around whose head Delilah had tied a blindfold, had to hold the columns up so that he could shake them down convincingly. The shaking needles and his tenor roar kept us in stitches.

Joe played Moses climbing Sinai, represented by the convexity above us. Although he didn't have far to climb, he expended so much effort and spent so much time doing it that we were laughing before he got there. When he finally reached the top, he kept looking around nervously as if expecting God. Suddenly, a chorus hidden on the other side treated us to a storm, an assortment of booms and whooshes to which girls contributed the most remarkable overtones. Moses cringed until the Lord, whose presence we imagined only by his reactions to it, had reassured him. Judging by Moses' pantomime, you could guess the drift of the conversation, which came to an end when he folded a piece of paper God had given him and slipped it in his pockets. Waving goodbye, he descended only to find the Israel Kids, as their t-shirts announced, prostrating themselves around the dean's dachshund. At first, Cigar, who knew everybody and whom everybody knew, looked around with hesitation, but then he barked his irritation at these silly friends of his. Knotting his eyebrows in a convincing rage, Moses reached for the paper, but couldn't find it because he had forgotten what pocket he had put it in. When he finally did find it, he tore it up with convulsive rips, threw it on the ground, stomped on it furiously. Then he attacked the worshippers, shoving some, kicking others and scorching their ears with epithets all the more frightening because none were audible.

"I didn't know you could make fun of religion without losing your respect for it," I told him afterwards.

A party that evening gave me an opportunity to dance with Peg, who danced better than any girl I have ever danced with. She followed my lead 

well, she felt light on her feet and her body moved in harmony with the music. Although we didn't dance cheek to cheek, we were close enough to want to be closer. I also danced with Shandra, who turned me over some more of her coals, and even the merry widow, who taught me the Charleston. There was square dancing too. The evening resembled those I had enjoyed at Resurrection Tabernacle and ZFF, except that the fun, though just as carefree, seemed more intellectual. We went to bed at a healthy hour and, thanks to the mountain air, I slept from the moment my head nestled in the pillow to that when the sun struck my eyes. After scrambled eggs, bacon, toast and coffee the next morning, we attended the service in the chapel, the only building built since the purchase of the hotel. A chalet with a steeple, it stood on higher ground behind the other buildings, thus overlooking the seminary and the valley below. The weather had darkened the walls to brown, except for the front which the sun had toasted to a reddish brown. Unlike others, the bell had a happy clear peel, which you almost regretted when it stopped. How fast the time went by! After Sunday dinner, Peg and I thanked our hosts and left with the feeling that we had were a couple. Although we had nothing unexpected to tell each other on the way back, Peg's company inspired an enthusiasm that I have never forgotten. As we turned into her street, she invited me to supper and, even before I could politely decline, she asssured me that she was expecting me. To my surprise, she offered me a drink and I drank it in her kitchen, dodging her as she hurried back and forth. Yet we bumped into each other a few times: by chance or design? I'm not really sure. The second time, I couldn't resist the nape of her neck.

"What was that for?"

"Wasn't it the drink I gave you?"

She was sticking a fork in the baked potatoes. "What did you need?"

It was a delicious supper and I told her so. I insisted on washing the dishes, so she tied a flowery apron around my waste. I washed, rinced and put things on the dryer. Once they had drained, she dried them and put them away. We didn't have much to say, but we must have been thinking the same things: 1. We were having fun. 2. Would it be as much fun every evening? 3. Could Peg trust me? We had both used that word on the trip to 

OI. Afterwards, she untied the apron, hung it behind the closet door and stood there uncertainly.

"It's time for me to leave," I said, "but not until I thank you."

She turned around: "I'm listening."

"More than words?"

"Maybe two." It must have been three before we let go and, as I headed for my car, I turned and said:

"No... The sooner..."

We waved to each other as I drove off and I wondered how I could have become so sentimental. On the way back to Concordia, it occurred to me that I had lost Lee by starting with desert. With Peg, at least, I had started with the hors d'oeuvre. Joe would have approved. Joe. Wasn't he the one who had given me her number?

Well, I used it that spring, that summer and that fall; at first, I used it every other week and then I used it every week. Sometimes I drove up to Mountain Ridge, sometimes Peg caught the bus down to Concordia, sometimes we drove up to OI, where Joe entertained us with enthusiasm, once I took her home with me to Nevers, where she delighted my parents, and once we stayed with her parents in Mapleton, where I passed their exam by the skin of my teeth. Had she told them about my past or did they see the evil in my eye? I will never know. Proud of her independence, she settled for scant approval. Or was it a probation? I will never know that either. We had dates because in those days lovers had dates, we went steady because in those days lovers went steady and we raised the same ante others were raising: necking, petting upstairs, then downstairs, undoing clothing, then taking clothing off and, finally, intercourse. I always took the next step and she always let me, but, afterwards, she felt ashamed. Before we left each other at the end of every weekend, she silently agonized over the conflict between love and guilt in her mind. I could see it in her face. Telling her how much I loved her only made the torment worse and I couldn't tame the devil in me, so I decided to reassure her on my intentions. 

One Saturday morning in Mountain Ridge, we simply took off on foot with her Golden Retriever, Chris for St. Christopher. We hadn't decided where to go, but we took a picknick along in backpacks and simply followed the paths that appealed to us. The leaves were just beginning to turn, so we wandered especially through woods with Chris running ahead and turning to see whether we were following him. Peg had adopted him after he failed the entrance exam to seeing-eye school. When I asked her why he had failed, she told me he liked other people too much and neglected his master when they approached. Indeed he rolled his eyes up at me so affectionately that I couldn't help laughing: "Do I look at you like that?"

"No. You still have some progress to make."

"You are my lover and I'm [barely audible] your mistress."

She glanced at me both suspiciously and hopefully.

"That sounds tentative to me."

"What's wrong with you?"

"You are insulting me when you says things like that."

"That would depend on whether they will happen again."

"I know you have," she said sarcastically.

"When, Trav?"

"Where will we live?"

"Mapleton?"

"Will you love me and only me so help you God?"

"Leave God out of it?"

"... I believe you, but how long will you?" 

Exasperated, I sighed and shrugged: "How long are you going to take to make up your mind?"

Since I had raised my voice, Chris turned around to see whether I was talking to him.

Peg laughed: "How long should I tell him, Chris?"

"Hello?"

"Trav! Where are you?"

"Why didn't you tell me? You know you are always welcome."

"Are you going to come over here or do I have to come over there?"

"Unh! I will give you three: one... two..."

"Check out right away. I will give you twenty minutes. If I don't see you by then..."

I might have enjoyed the night I spent with her if I hadn't felt guilty, something unusual for me, and if I hadn't worried about Peg trying to reach me at the Pegasus. I hadn't said anything about calling her, but what if she tried to call me? Maybe I had raised her parents' suspicions by declining their invitation, maybe they had wanted to examine me in their daughter's absence, maybe they had questioned her trust in me and she had tried to reach me to prove them wrong. These conjectures seemed ominous to me at times and fastidious at others, but they spoiled the pleasures of a night that, otherwise, might have compared with the best I had spent with Holly.

"Hello?"

Unenthusiastic: "Hello, Trav."

"I'm glad for you."

She sighed: "I tried to call you at the Pegasus. You had just checked out."

"You weren't there when I called this morning."

Desperately: "Please tell me where you went."

"Holly's?"

"After we bumped into each other playing volleyball, I told Joe I thought you were nice. He said he was praying for you. That's all he said, but I guessed what he meant. When you and I sat together at that dinner in Concordia, you told me that God had put something in men and women that makes them want to hug each other."

Sniff. "You said 'men and women,' you didn't say 'a man and a woman'... When Joe called me to ask if I would like a ride to OI, I asked him if he was still praying for you. He said the Lord was answering his prayers. I hesitated to accept a ride alone with you on a trip that long, but he told me you had changed. As far as he knew, you hadn't seen either of your girlfriends since you graduated from ZU. 'Betsy' had returned to Mammoth and 'Holly' had moved to Mapleton."

Weeping: "It hurts, Trav, it really does! I don't know if I can stand it."

"He loves you as much as I do. That's just the trouble: I can't stop, Trav, I can't stop."

"I have already forgiven you for that."

"... I could only tell you what not to do."

"... I'm sorry Trav. I will have to be alone for awhile."

"Please don't, Trav. I will have to take my time. I will let you know."

"No, don't do that. I will have to make up my mind."

ground. The neighbors would think we had never grown up, they already did and maybe we hadn't. She would tie her apron around me every evening after supper, I would wash the dishes and she would dry them. Yet the dream was tormenting me. When Lee had left me, I knew she had and why. I didn't know whether Peg would leave me, but I knew why she might and time stopped. Insomnia punished me every night all night long and a daymare every day all day long. People kept asking me if something were wrong, an annoyance: "yes," I replied as politely as I could and left it at that. Confiding in associates or rivals didn't appeal to me and yet the need drove me to call Joe. We spent over an hour on the phone. He had spent just as much time with Peg, although he couldn't tell me what she had said, except that she felt even more strongly than she had before. That she did want me to know. Joe imagined that we were going through hell on earth, the only kind he believed in, an option allowed by Free Faith doctrine. He offered to pray with me as he had with her and, for once, I accepted. His prayer moved me so profoundly that I have never felt that I could repeat it.

As his voice reverberated in my ears, I heard a knock on my door. "Come in." It was the student who had the pigeon hole next to mine: Pickles, Clyde Pickles, now judge on the appellate court. When I saw a letter in his hand, the blood drained from my head.

"This was for you... I hope I'm not bringing bad news."