Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage: Stories Read online

  “And a fair wind to your—” he said. Later there was controversy—about whether he actually said the word “arse” or let it hang unspoken in the air. But even if he had not actually said it he had surely given offense, because everybody knew how the phrase could be completed.

  The students were taking a new tack these days.

  “It’s not that we necessarily want the religious view, sir. It’s just that we wonder why you don’t give it equal time.”

  Lewis let himself be drawn into argument.

  “It’s because I am here to teach you science, not religion.”

  That was what he said he had said. There were those who reported him as saying, “Because I am not here to teach you crap.” And indeed, indeed, said Lewis, after the fourth or fifth interruption, the posing of the question in whatever slightly different way (“Do you think it hurts us to hear the other side of the story? If we get taught atheism, isn’t that sort of like teaching us some kind of religion?”), the word might have escaped his lips, and under such provocation he did not apologize for it.

  “I happen to be the boss in this classroom and I decide what will be taught.”

  “I thought God was the boss, sir.”

  There were expulsions from the room. Parents arrived to speak to the Principal. Or they may have intended to speak to Lewis, but the Principal made sure that did not happen. Lewis heard about these interviews only later, from remarks passed, more or less jokingly, in the staff room.

  “You don’t need to get worried about it,” said the Principal—his name was Paul Gibbings, and he was a few years younger than Lewis. “They just need to feel they’re being listened to. Need a bit of jollying along.”

  “I’d have jollied them,” Lewis said.

  “Yeah. That’s not quite the jollying I had in mind.”

  “There should be a sign. No dogs or parents on the premises.”

  “Something to that,” said Paul Gibbings, sighing amiably. “But I suppose they’ve got their rights.”

  Letters started to appear in the local paper. One every couple of weeks, signed “Concerned Parent” or “Christian Taxpayer” or “Where Do We Go From Here?” They were well written, neatly paragraphed, competently argued, as if they might all have come from one delegated hand. They made the point that not all parents could afford the fees for the private Christian school, and yet all parents paid taxes. Therefore they deserved to have their children educated in the public schools in a way that was not offensive to, or deliberately destructive of, their faith. In scientific language, some explained how the record had been misunderstood and how discoveries that seemed to support evolution actually confirmed the Biblical account. Then came citing of Bible texts that predicted this present-day false teaching and its leading the way to the abandonment of all decent rules of life.

  In time the tone changed; it grew wrathful. Agents of the Antichrist in charge of the government and the classroom. The claws of Satan stretched out towards the souls of children, who were actually forced to reiterate, on their examinations, the doctrines of damnation.

  “What is the difference between Satan and the Antichrist, or is there one?” said Nina. “The Quakers were very remiss about all that.”

  Lewis said that he could do without her treating all this as a joke.

  “Sorry,” she said soberly. “Who do you think is really writing them? Some minister?”

  He said no, it would be better organized than that. A masterminded campaign, some central office, supplying letters to be sent from local addresses. He doubted if any of it had started here, in his classroom. It was all planned, schools were targeted, probably in areas where there was some good hope of public sympathy.

  “So? It’s not personal?”

  “That’s not a consolation.”

  “Isn’t it? I’d think it would be.”

  Someone wrote “Hellfire” on Lewis’s car. It wasn’t done with spray paint—just a finger-tracing in the dust.

  His senior class began to be boycotted by a minority of students, who sat on the floor outside, armed with notes from their parents. When Lewis began to teach, they began to sing.

  All things bright and beautiful

  All creatures great and small

  All things wise and wonderful

  The Lord God made them all—

  The principal invoked a rule about not sitting on the hall floor, but he did not order them back into the classroom. They had to go to a storage room off the gym, where they continued their singing—they had other hymns ready as well. Their voices mingled disconcertingly with the hoarse instructions of the gym teacher and the thump of feet on the gym floor.

  On a Monday morning a petition appeared on the Principal’s desk and at the same time a copy of it was delivered to the town newspaper office. Signatures had been collected not just from the parents of the children involved but from various church congregations around the town. Most were from fundamentalist churches, but there were some from the United and Anglican and Presbyterian churches as well.

  There was no mention of hellfire in the petition. None whatever of Satan or the Antichrist. All that was requested was to have the Biblical version of creation given equal time, considered respectfully as an option.

  “We the undersigned believe that God has been left out of the picture too long.”

  “That’s nonsense,” Lewis said. “They don’t believe in equal time—they don’t believe in options. Absolutists is what they are. Fascists.”

  Paul Gibbings had come round to Lewis and Nina’s house. He didn’t want to discuss the matter where spies might be listening. (One of the secretaries was a member of the Bible Chapel.) He hadn’t much expectation of getting around Lewis, but he had to give it a try.

  “They’ve got me over the bloody barrel,” he said.

  “Fire me,” said Lewis. “Hire some stupid bugger of a creationist.

  The son of a bitch is enjoying this, Paul thought. But he controlled himself. What he seemed mostly to do these days was control himself.

  “I didn’t come over here to talk about that. I mean a lot of people will think this bunch is just being reasonable. Including people on the Board.”

  “Make them happy. Fire me. March in Adam and Eve.”

  Nina brought them coffee. Paul thanked her and tried to catch her eye, to see where she stood on this. No go.

  “Yeah sure,” he said. “I couldn’t do that if I wanted to. And I don’t want to. The Union would be after my ass. We’d have it all over the province, could even be a strike issue, we have to think of the kids.”

  You’d think that might get to Lewis—thinking of the kids. But he was off on his own trip as usual.

  “March in Adam and Eve. With or without the fig leaves.”

  “All I want to ask is a little speech indicating that this is a different interpretation and some people believe one thing and some people believe the other. Get the Genesis story down to fifteen or twenty minutes. Read it out loud. Only do it with respect. You know what it’s all about, don’t you? People feeling disregarded. People just don’t like to feel they’re being disregarded.”

  Lewis sat silent long enough to create a hope—in Paul, and maybe in Nina, who could tell?—but it turned out that this long pause was just a device to let the perceived iniquity of the suggestion sink in.

  “What about it?” Paul said cautiously.

  “I will read the whole book of Genesis aloud if you like, and then I will announce that it is a hodgepodge of tribal self-aggrandizement and theological notions mainly borrowed from other, better cultures—”

  “Myths,” said Nina. “A myth after all is not an untruth, it is just—

  Paul didn’t see much point in paying attention to her. Lewis wasn’t.

  Lewis wrote a letter to the paper. The first part of it was temperate and scholarly, describing the shift of continents and the opening and closing of seas, and the inauspicious beginnings of life. Ancient microbes, oceans without fish and
skies without birds. Flourishing and destruction, the reign of the amphibians, reptiles, dinosaurs; the shifting of climates, the first grubby little mammals. Trial and error, primates late and unpromising on the scene, the humanoids getting up on their hind legs and figuring out fire, sharpening stones, marking their territory, and finally, in a recent rush, building boats and pyramids and bombs, creating languages and gods and sacrificing and murdering each other. Fighting over whether their God was named Jehovah or Krishna (here the language was heating up) or whether it was okay to eat pork, getting down on their knees and howling out their prayers to some Old Codger in the sky who took a big interest in who won wars and football games. Finally, amazingly, working a few things out and getting a start on knowing about themselves and the universe they found themselves in, then deciding they’d be better off throwing all that hard-won knowledge out, bring back the Old Codger and force everybody down on their knees again, to be taught and believe the old twaddle, why not bring back the Flat Earth while they were at it?

  Yours truly, Lewis Spiers.

  The editor of the paper was an out-of-towner and a recent graduate of a School of Journalism. He was happy with the uproar and continued to print the responses (“God Is Not Mocked,” over the signatures of every member of the Bible Chapel congregation, “Writer Cheapens Argument,” from the tolerant but saddened United Church minister who was offended by twaddle, and the Old Codger) until the publisher of the newspaper chain let it be known that this kind of ruckus was old-fashioned and out of place and discouraged advertisers. Put a lid on it, he said.

  Lewis wrote another letter, this one of resignation. It was accepted with regret, Paul Gibbings stated—this too in the paper—the reason being ill health.

  That was true, though it was not a reason Lewis himself would have preferred to make public. For several weeks he had felt a weakness in his legs. At the very time when it was important for him to stand up before his class, and march back and forth in front of it, he had felt himself trembling, longing to sit down. He never gave in, but sometimes he had to catch hold of the back of his chair, as if for emphasis. And now and then he realized that he could not tell where his feet were. If there had been carpet, he might have tripped over the least wrinkle, and even in the classroom, where there was no carpet, a piece of fallen chalk, a pencil, would have meant disaster.

  He was furious about this ailment, thinking it psychosomatic. He had never suffered from nerves in front of a class, or in front of any group. When he was given the true diagnosis, in the neurologist’s office, what he felt first—so he told Nina—was a ridiculous relief.

  “I was afraid I was neurotic,” he said, and they both began to laugh.

  “I was afraid I was neurotic, but I only have amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.” They laughed, stumbling along the silent plush-floored corridor, and got into the elevator where they were stared at with astonishment—laughter being most uncommon in this place.

  The LakeShore Funeral Home was an extensive new building of golden brick—so new that the field around it had not yet been transformed into lawns and shrubbery. Except for the sign, you might have thought it a medical clinic, or government office building. The name LakeShore did not mean that it overlooked the lake but was instead a sly incorporation of the family name of the undertaker—Bruce Shore. Some people thought this tasteless. When the business had been conducted in one of the large Victorian houses in town and had belonged to Bruce’s father, it had been simply the Shore Funeral Home. And it had in fact been a home, with plenty of room for Ed and Kitty Shore and their five children on the second and third floors.

  Nobody lived in this new establishment, but there was a bedroom with kitchen facilities, and a shower. This was in case Bruce Shore found it more convenient to stay overnight instead of driving fifteen miles to the country place where he and his wife raised horses.

  Last night had been one of those nights because of the accident north of town. A car full of teenagers had crashed into a bridge abutment. This sort of thing—a newly licensed driver or one not licensed at all, everybody wildly drunk—usually happened in the spring around graduation time, or in the excitement of the first couple of weeks at school in September. Now was the time when you looked more for the fatalities of newcomers—nurses fresh from the Philippines last year—caught in the first altogether unfamiliar snow.

  Nevertheless, on a perfectly fine night and dry road, it had been two seventeen-year-olds, both from town. And just before that, in came Lewis Spiers. Bruce had his hands full—the work he had to do on the kids, to make them presentable, took him far into the night. He had called up his father. Ed and Kitty, who still spent the summers in the house in town, had not yet left for Florida, and Ed had come in to tend to Lewis.

  Bruce had gone for a run, to refresh himself. He hadn’t even had breakfast and was still in his jogging outfit when he saw Mrs. Spiers pull up in her old Honda Accord. He hurried to the waiting room to get the door open for her.

  She was a tall, skinny woman, gray-haired but youthfully speedy in her movements. She didn’t appear too cut up this morning, though he noticed she hadn’t bothered with a coat.

  “Sorry. Sorry,” he said. “I just got back from a little exercise.

  Shirley’s not in yet, I’m afraid. We sure feel bad about your loss.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Mr. Spiers taught me Grade Eleven and Twelve Science, and he was one teacher I’ll never forget. Would you like to sit down? I know you must have been prepared in a way, but it’s still an experience you’re never prepared for when it happens. Would you like me to go through the paperwork with you now or would you like to see your husband?”

  She said, “All we wanted was a cremation.”

  He nodded. “Yes. Cremation to follow.”

  “No. He was supposed to be cremated immediately. That’s what he wanted. I thought I could pick up his ashes.”

  “Well, we didn’t have any instructions that way,” said Bruce firmly. “We prepared the body for viewing. He looks very good, actually. I think you’ll be pleased.”

  She stood and stared at him.

  “Don’t you want to sit down?” he said. “You did plan on having some sort of visitation, didn’t you? Some sort of service? There’s going to be an awful lot of people want to pay their respects to Mr. Spiers. You know, we have conducted other services here where there wasn’t any religious persuasion. Just somebody to give a eulogy, instead of a preacher. Or if you don’t even want it that formal, you can just have people getting up and voicing their thoughts. It’s up to you whether you want the casket open or closed. But around here people usually seem to like to have it open. When you’re going for cremation you don’t have the same range of caskets, of course. We have caskets that look very nice, but they are only a fraction of the cost.”

  Stood and stared.

  The fact was that the work had been done and there had been no instructions that the work was not to be done. Work like any other work that should be paid for. Not to mention materials.

  “I am just talking about what I think you’ll want, when you’ve had time to sit down and consider it. We are here to follow your wishes—”

  Maybe saying that was going too far.

  “But we went ahead this way because there were no instructions to the contrary.”

  A car stopped outside, a car door closed, and Ed Shore came into the waiting room. Bruce felt an enormous relief. There was still a lot he had to learn in this business. The dealing-with-the-survivor end of it.

  Ed said, “Hello, Nina. I saw your car. I thought I’d just come in and say I’m sorry.”

  Nina had spent the night in the living room. She supposed she had slept, but her sleep was so shallow that she had been aware all the time of where she was—on the living-room sofa—and where Lewis was—in the funeral home.

  When she tried to speak now, her teeth were chattering. This was a complete surprise to her.

  “I wanted to have him cr
emated immediately,” was what she was trying to say, and what she started to say, thinking that she was speaking normally. Then she heard, or felt, her own gasps and uncontrollable stuttering.

  “I want—I want—he wanted—”

  Ed Shore held her forearm and put his other arm around her shoulders. Bruce had lifted his arms but didn’t touch her.

  “I should’ve got her sitting down,” he said plaintively.

  “That’s all right,” Ed said. “You feel like walking out to my car, Nina? We’ll get you a bit of fresh air.”

  Ed drove with the windows down, up into the old part of town and onto a dead-end street which had a turnaround overlooking the lake. During the day people drove here to look at the view—sometimes while eating their takeout lunches—but at night it was a place for lovers. The thought of this might have dawned on Ed, as it did on her, when he parked the car.

  “That enough fresh air?” he said. “You don’t want to catch cold, out without a coat on.”

  She said carefully, “It’s getting warm. Like yesterday.”

  They had never sat together in a parked car either after dark or in the daylight, never sought out such a place to be alone together.

  That seemed a tawdry reflection to be having now.

  “I’m sorry,” said Nina. “I lost control. I only meant to say that Lewis—that we—that he—”

  And it began to happen again. All over again the chattering of her teeth, the shaking, the words splitting apart. The horrid piteousness of it. It was not even an expression of what she was really feeling. What she felt before was anger and frustration, from talking to—or listening to—Bruce. This time she felt—she had thought she felt—quite calm and reasonable.