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“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 a
“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 begi
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.