He was too broken, too angry, his faith had been shaken to the core. Perhaps, he told himself, given his academic aptitude, he could use the seminary degree to teach, to help others wrestle with the deeper questions of life. Don did not want to apply to any conservative Christian seminaries. The comfort Pastor Tim had offered him had been peppered with religious platitudes: “It was God’s will, Don,” “You just have to trust God at this time,” and “They’re with the Lord now.” Don knew that there might be some spiritual wisdom in these words, but at the time, he was not ready to hear it. The emotions he was feeling, that were seething just beneath the surface, needed to be affirmed and expressed, even if he wasn’t ready to have this happen yet. Don also wanted the freedom to ask deeper questions and seek deeper answers than he thought his tradition could offer. Don had applied to a prominent seminary in the northeast, a mainline Protestant seminary in New England. He had reviewed the application materials they had sent him. They promised an academically rigorous curriculum and counted top-notch biblical scholars among their faculty. At the time this appealed to the side of Don that hoped to find rational biblical and theological explanations for the sufferings and sense of injustice he was experiencing. The seminary was also connected to a major university and presented itself, in the application materials, as both a seminary which trained its students for the pastorate and one of the university’s graduate schools, which appealed to students who hoped to become college or seminary professors.
In early spring Don had received a letter in the mail from the seminary. He had been accepted despite the bold gamble of applying. Don had not thought his chances of acceptance were very good. While the school’s minimal educational requirement was two years of college, the application materials indicated that consideration here was contingent on compensatory life experience. Don knew this usually referred to students older than him with more life experience. The seminary generally preferred student applicants with a four-year college degree. Don’s essay had, he assumed, turned the tide with the admissions committee. He had fabricated his reason for attending the seminary. Citing the accident, he had written that he now had deep empathy for all who suffered. He explained his call as a desire to utilize that empathy through ministry.
Once the school year was finished, Don had once again worked over the summer at the plant. The cauldron of anger within him had settled down somewhat, although this was largely due to the wide berth his coworkers now gave him. Don had, in the past, owned a couple of beat-up old cars that he continually had to fix up to keep on the road. He had bought the latest one, a 1979 Pontiac Catalina, off a friend for a few hundred dollars. Its suspension was shot, and it belched smoke, but it still got him from point A to point B. It would now take him to the seminary, where he was due to start in early September. Soon after, it would break down again.
The Incident
As Don drove his Pontiac Catalina through main street of the university town, he was amazed at how manicured the town appeared. As he passed the main gate of the campus on his left the lush green lawns of the campus in front of the administration buildings came into view. He saw students sitting on blankets studying. He noticed a couple on a blanket. The young man was sitting with the arms of a sweater tied around his neck, the sweater behind his back. The young woman with him was laying on her back next to him with a book resting on her stomach. The architecture of the buildings appeared colonial and they were built largely of stone. Don had also noticed that most of the cars lining the street were expensive models. There were BMWs, Mercedes, even Porches in the mix. Don suddenly felt self-conscious driving his beat-up old beast of a car through town. Almost on cue it belched smoke out the tailpipe just as he passed the main gate to the campus. Main Street was lined on both sides by upscale stores. It was the epitome of a quaint college town.
The graduate schools, including the seminary, were on the north end of town, the direction Don was headed. Don had received his room assignment with the acceptance letter. Once he had arrived at the seminary, he grabbed his suitcase and duffel bag, and made his way to Whitney Hall, the dorm he would be staying in. Don soon found his room and with the door unlocked he opened it and walked in. Two neatly made up beds lined the walls on either side of the room with desks at the head end of the beds, facing the back wall. A large window, in between the two desks, divided the room and let sunlight flood the room in the morning.
On the left side of the room his roommate sat in a recliner he had positioned at the foot end of the bed next to a bookcase. Don tried to smile congenially as he put his things down beside his bed, but he sensed intuitively that David and he could not have been more different. As Don turned back toward David, and smiled once again, he saw that David did not smile back, but simply puffed on the pipe that he held up to his mouth with one hand. Don extended his hand and introduced himself. “Hi, I’m Don Campbell.” David, without taking the pipe out of his mouth, extended the hand that had been holding it and in a formal tone said, “Good to meet you, I’m David Martin Edwards the Third.” Don suppressed a spontaneous urge to smirk. Who tacks a number onto the end of their name? He knew that in some high-society circles this might be the norm, but otherwise thought this a custom of an elite minority in a former era. Don also thought he had detected a slight English accent when David introduced himself. Don broke the awkward silence, “I’m from Kentucky, where are you from, David?” David spoke slowly and deliberately in what sounded faintly like an upper-class English accent. “I am originally from Houston, Texas, but more recently I lived in England and studied at Oxford University. As he spoke, Don had noticed that he seemed to be wearing a slight sneer of a smile on his horn-rimmed bespectacled face. Don initially thought that David had spent some years studying in England. He was later to find out that David had spent nine months studying at Oxford after college, in some special overseas study program. This of course begged the question as to how the English accent had developed in such a short period of a time, and even more mystifying was what had happened to David’s Southern drawl. Don was also to find out that David was indeed from a very wealthy Texas family, and the nephew of a US senator. At the time, though, Don’s follow-up impressions confirmed his intuitive hunch that David could not have been more different from him. As Don busied himself putting his things away, out of the corner of his eye he saw David sit back in his chair. Don turned his head sideways, smiled at David and looked again at the chair David was sitting in. It was a leather recliner that he had obviously brought into the room. Don also noticed that David’s side of the room was immaculate, with all his books neatly lining the shelves of the bookcase at the foot of his bed.
As David went back to reading the book that lay across his lap, he continued to puff on the pipe he once again held to his mouth. A Harris Tweed jacket with elbow patches that David was wearing completed the ensemble. Don didn’t want to be judgmental, but there was something about David’s whole manner and persona that seemed fake and pretentious. David seemed to be playing a role. His academic elitist demeanor was so over the top it almost came off as satire. Still Don was determined at this stage to make the best of the situation. Don finished putting away his things and then sat down on his bed. “So David, have you bought your books yet?” he asked. “Yes, I have already purchased all my books, I like to get a head start on the readings for my courses.” Don had found the slightly patronizing tone with which David had answered him annoying, and whatever further conversations he would have to have with his roommate, for now, he just wanted to make a hasty exit. “Well I think I’ll head over to the bookstore and see what books I will need.” Don had applied and been approved for a student loan in the months following his acceptance letter, that covered his room and board, as well as an additional allotment for books. Don paused and looked over at David waiting for a response. When he did not respond and kept on reading his book, Don got up and left.
The bookstore was in the basement of a large building that housed classrooms and sat diagonally across the quadrangle from his dorm, and next to the seminary chapel. As he passed the growing numbers of students walking across the campus, Don found that he had a hard time making eye contact with most of them to say hi. Many seemed to be walking and talking in small groups and he was unsure of how they had struck up their relationships so quickly. He also began to realize that his baseball cap, worn backwards, along with the hooded jacket and jeans he was wearing, set
