suddenly collapsed. He maintained, however, that Julian had hit him over the head. In any case, a few hours after what seemed full recovery, he became feverish and, by degrees, delirious. Dr. Hovorka examined him and pronounced with what seemed utter irrelevance—we would not have been surprised at hearing a diagnosis of epilepsy, plague, Huntington’s—that the patient was suffering from a strep throat. He should be kept in bed.
We kept him in bed. In a few days he had recovered and gone home. And just before Elaine’s vacation was up, she got a letter from him. Charles and Julian had both done their best to convince my mother that he was insane and Elaine’s protests that he was an intellectual served merely to reinforce this idea. But even Elaine’s sentiments were confused by the arrival of the letter. It started with compliments and went on to anecdotes and small talk, but one passage stood out and she went back to it again and again.
. . . I felt you had somewhat cooled towards me. I don’t mean at your home, where I was very sick, as you know, sicker perhaps than you know, but before, at Miltonvale where I will soon, I trust, see you soon again. I am afraid that they
(Here he had apparently started to write some name, possibly Elaine’s college roommate, but crossed it out and put “they.”)
have told you evil stories about me.
Understand, I don’t mean to accuse anyone of willful lying. But they may be mistaken. It’s hard to say what I mean, but they may have reported with the best of intentions a falsehood. Oh if you knew what it costs me to write this. Because, you see, I don’t know if it is false or not. I have asked my Redeemer for forgiveness, even if I did not actually sin.
What I am trying to say is that if it is a story about a woman they may have seen me with very late at night, long after hours, a few months ago, I would like to tell you the whole story. I did not know what kind of woman she was. Oh it is too painful, I cannot tell you how I came to be in her room that night. What I want you to know is that when I realized the sort she was, what she wanted of me, I started to leave.
Then everything blacked out. Later I had no memory of what came after that moment. The next thing I knew was that we were walking along the street and she had hold of my arm. I pulled my arm loose and ran. It may be that they saw me walking with her arm. But what would they have been doing out at that hour.
That makes no difference. I only wish I knew what happened while I was out. In any case, it is under the blood. Believe me. . . .
And on. And then to other things.
Elaine went back to Miltonvale, and might well have married him. But Mother had now decided he was possessed. The letter (she always liked things to be documented—the letter went into her trunk) was a perfect admission of guilt. The demon had possessed his body while he was with some sinful creature. That was why he had no memory of the events. And if the devil had him once, what was to prevent its happening again? She decided that Elaine should be far away from him, at some other college. This was the sign that pointed us to Sharon.
III
One whole dinner party, once, I had to be polite and listen to a philosopher, whose name I can’t recall, expand on the notion of divine omnipotence. No doubt Rosmarie was suffering more than I, since her Catholic background remains with her in the form of a distaste for religious conversation. (My mother, almost at the end of her life, was heard lamenting by telephone to her last pastor, “I had three sons—two of them married witches, and one married a Catholic.” Her firmest conviction was that once a Catholic, always a Catholic.)
The miracles of the Bible are violations of the so-called laws of nature, but these laws are based on observation, are merely empirical, and deity is above them. When Jesus, after the resurrection, comes into the room without opening the door, it is a miracle—in the sense that one cannot ordinarily do it. To raise the dead is miraculous and, likewise, to make the sun stand still. We cannot do these things, but God can, just as he performed the greatest miracle of all: the creation. He is omnipotent, which is to say, he can do anything. No—he can do anything that can be done.
Me, Charles (holding me), Julian, Elaine
(Emporia)
For beyond these mere physical impossibilities—saying to this mountain, Be removed—there are the true impossibilities of logic. Even God cannot annul the law of identity, which says that whatever is, is. He can, of course, destroy what is, but cannot make it at the same time be and not be. He can create seven times seventy worlds, but cannot keep seven from being a prime number. Two plus two equals four in all possible worlds, created or uncreated.
Well, I had heard all this before, and while he was talking, and on the way home, I was faintly amused by anyone taking such things so seriously. But later that night I was unreasonably angry, to think that people professing belief in God should turn and subject him to Copi or Quine. If I were to invent a god, I would make sure he didn’t get stuck with the primeness of seven or have reason to feel threatened by Godel’s proof. He might produce a square circle, if he felt so inclined. And, yes, he could, at one and the same moment, exist and not exist.
Elaine, me, Charles, and Julian on a visit to Leeton.
Elaine, Charles, me, and Julian (Emporia)
Sharon College, sitting on a hill in South Carolina, at a point where the Blue Ridge has petered out, was founded by Wesleyans shortly before the First World War. It is recorded (by the Reverend Eber Teter, a founding father whose health failed before he could accept the office of treasurer) that when the first spadeful of clay was turned, those present fell on their knees with one accord, sang repeatedly “Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow” and prayed many a fervent prayer. “How we felt our hearts,” his account says, “burn within us.” When my mother and Elaine and I got to Sharon, walking the last half-mile through the dusk, the fragrance of apples gradually replacing the soot in our lungs, Wednesday night prayer meeting was on in the chapel and they were singing “Jesus Paid It All.”
Sharon was a junior college, but boasted a four-year program in theology—leading to the degree Th.B.—and it had a high school as well. We moved into three rooms of a building called Teter Hall, which had been the original men’s dormitory but, converted now, housed married students and us. And the English teacher Miss Yodle who, to mutual regret, lived just below us. On each floor, at the end of the hallway, a john had been installed, though to shower one had to trudge to the basement. Miss Yodle would not use these inside facilities, I suppose because the rest of us did, and so she had a private outhouse—not the only one around but the only one still in use, which every Halloween of course got tipped over, leaving a two-hole stool on exhibit.
Julian was then stationed on the West Coast, having joined the navy on V-J Day. When his discharge was due, as I found out later, Charles had driven (from where, I have no idea) to California to get him (to take him where, Charles probably had no clear idea either). Julian, it turned out, was in the brig. He had bashed the mess cook with a serving spoon after the cook refused him seconds. I remember how once, when Julian was growing up, he ran to Mother crying and tried to get her to hide him.
“They’re going to put me in jail,” he kept screaming.
“What have you done?”
“I pulled Swint’s nose,” he said and Mother, relieved,
