I came by train. Mr. Schmitt and I met at a diner in Keene, New Hampshire. 1965.
(Carl Schmitt enters, crew cut, New England reserve, early forties, also in a jacket and tie. He and Jim sit in a diner booth. Carl figures out Jim’s credits on a napkin. They have a stainless steel pot of tea. Jim forgets the audience.)
MR. SCHMITT: Jim.
JIM: Mr. Schmitt!
MR. SCHMITT: I read your transcript, Jim. You’ve had a pretty bumpy two years.
JIM: Yes, I guess I have.
MR. SCHMITT: Can I ask you something?
JIM: Sure.
MR. SCHMITT: It says you were suspended for saying you didn’t believe in God. Is that true?
JIM: It’s true that I said it, but I didn’t mean it.
MR. SCHMITT: Then why did you say it?
JIM: I just was trying to wake the teacher up. Brother Henry. He taught Religion, but the way he taught it, he just read from the book. He didn’t like questions. So I raised my hand and said I didn’t believe in God to see what he’d do.
MR. SCHMITT: And what did he do?
JIM: Well, it definitely woke him up, but he wasn’t happy. He sent me to the principal.
MR. SCHMITT: It’s a serious thing to say you don’t believe in God, Jim.
JIM: That’s what the principal said. He suspended me.
MR. SCHMITT: What got into you?
JIM: Just crazy stuff.
MR. SCHMITT: What?
JIM: Well, the thought came into my head to say I didn’t believe in God, and I thought, “Who put that thought there?” And I thought it was probably God, you know?
MR. SCHMITT: What if it was the Other Guy?
JIM: I don’t think so. I feel like the Devil would want me to be lazy, and God would want me to speak.
MR. SCHMITT: You’re fifteen?
JIM: Yeah. Yes. I’ll be sixteen in October.
MR. SCHMITT: I teach Religion. Comparative Religion. But unlike your friend Brother Henry, I don’t read to the class from a book. I understand you attended a retreat this summer at my school, sponsored by Opus Dei.
JIM: Yes.
MR. SCHMITT: To see if you wanted to be a priest.
JIM: I didn’t. I don’t.
MR. SCHMITT: How’d you get involved with Opus Dei?
JIM: Mr. Benishek, my Political Science teacher brought me to their house. They kind of adopted me.
MR. SCHMITT: Lot of smart people at Opus Dei.
JIM: And The John Birch Society.
MR. SCHMITT: What’s that?
JIM: Mr. Benishek. He took me to hear The John Birch Society, too. You know, a speaker.
MR. SCHMITT: What did you think?
(Jim laughs.)
JIM: Oh, he messed up.
MR. SCHMITT: In what way?
JIM: He said bad stuff about President Kennedy to a bunch of Irish Catholics in the Bronx. They almost lynched him.
MR. SCHMITT: But what did you think of the speaker?
JIM: I thought he was crazy. But I liked hearing what he said because I’d just never heard anybody talk like that. I like things I haven’t thought of.
MR. SCHMITT: Is that why you went on the retreat?
JIM: Pretty much. I never really thought I’d be a priest. My mother’d like it.
MR. SCHMITT: You met a member of our faculty at the retreat. Alan Hoffman.
JIM: He told you about that?
MR. SCHMITT: He said you were very good at Charades.
JIM: He did?
MR. SCHMITT: He was amazed. Apparently you guessed The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám after one clue.
JIM: I really like that poem.
MR. SCHMITT: Why?
JIM: I don’t know. I’d like to live like that guy.
MR. SCHMITT: You mean, drink a lot of wine?
(Jim laughs.)
JIM: No. He’s just not . . . There’s no misery, you know? You know that poem?
MR. SCHMITT: Sure.
JIM: He saw day and night like a chessboard, and God was a big finger writing in the sky. He just seemed to see things so . . . he saw the size of things. And he was free. Happy. He saw Time goes really fast. I think that, too. Life is so short.
MR. SCHMITT: If you only live in the physical, it is short, but some people think beyond their own lives. “The future’s more beautiful than now.”
JIM: It is?
MR. SCHMITT: A French theologian named Teilhard de Chardin said that. He believes that we’re headed somewhere as a race, to a moment of epiphany. He calls it the Omega Point.
JIM: The Omega Point. Sounds like a science fiction movie.
MR. SCHMITT: Yes. So why do you think you did so badly in your last school?
JIM: I don’t know. I felt like I was trying but I just couldn’t do it. The building was ugly. All the classrooms, everything looked like a kitchen. It made me feel bleak.
MR. SCHMITT: Lot of students?
JIM: Yes.
MR. SCHMITT: Thomas More is different than that. The main building’s an old mansion, and the student body is very small. Do you know who Thomas More was?
JIM: He was a martyr. He wouldn’t lie about what he believed. So the king had him killed.
MR. SCHMITT: I’m surprised you didn’t do better on the IQ test.
JIM: I used to do good on them.
MR. SCHMITT: Well.
JIM: Excuse me?
MR. SCHMITT: You used to do well on them.
JIM: Right. I used to do well on IQ
