“I grew up with them. Don’t forget I’m a country lad. We children were quite certain that fairies and elves lived amongst the flowers in the beech wood.” Rand suddenly shook himself. “I’ve kept you standing here talking and it’s gotten dark on us. We’re keeping your father waiting.”
His warm hand held mine firmly as we walked back to the house. Once on the lighted back porch, Rand groaned. “I can’t believe it. Here I’ve talked on and on and still haven’t answered your question about the unicorns.”
For days the Editor sidestepped any probing questions about his talk with Rand. The following Monday afternoon, Emily and Dean were out of the office and I was going over the subscription lists when Dad approached me. He was smiling.
“Still upset with me for turning down your article?”
The feeling of rejection was less now and I could smile back at him. “Just you wait. I’ll get it published in the New York Times. Then you’ll be sorry.”
“A good piece of writing. I wish the people in the Lowlands could read it. But it did lack balance.”
“Rand helped me see that you were right.”
“How did that happen?”
I hesitated. All at once, I felt shy about revealing an experience I had been savoring for days. “It’s just that he told me I was too hard on the rich.”
“Hmmm.” The Editor’s face was reflective. Then he pulled up a chair beside me. “Perhaps you should know something of what we talked about that night.”
He paused again, suddenly in the father role, his brown eyes full of love. “You like Rand a lot, don’t you?”
I was startled. “Does it show?”
“Some.”
“I’m afraid he thinks of me as he would a younger sister.”
Dad chuckled as if he did not quite accept that. “Maybe so. But you’re turning into a beautiful young lady, Julie.” Then he shifted in his chair and once again became the Editor as he summarized his discussion with Rand.
It seemed that the elder McKeever had not only rebuked Rand for granting the interview, but had angrily confronted the Club staff and the Board of Directors about rumors being spread in connection with the dam’s safety.
“The inspections will attest to its safety,” he had snapped. Then he promised the Board that repair work to the dam would be done as it was needed. The Board meeting had closed with a unanimous endorsement of management policy regarding the dam.
Rand had come to report these facts to the Editor at McKeever’s suggestion and mention that he might want to put something in the Sentinel to reassure local people about the dam.
My father had then asked Rand if he knew of any engineer’s report on the dam other than the ones filed by Benshoff. Rand had stated that he knew of none.
“I told him that there had been an engineer’s report made on the dam prior to its sale to the Club,” Dad continued, “but that it had disappeared from the files of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Rand said he knew nothing about that either, and I believed him. Then I said I’d very much like to reassure people about the dam in the Sentinel if I were given a report by a qualified engineer—not Benshoff—which revealed that the dam was safe.”
“Where does that leave us?” I asked.
“Probably nowhere. I think it’s a dead issue unless the report turns up.”
After Spencer Meloy had worked out an arrangement with the Editor to have his weekly church bulletin printed at the Sentinel, he brought us handwritten copy every Thursday afternoon. On Friday he would return to pick up two hundred freshly printed bulletins for the Sunday service. After the first run, Dad turned the project over to me.
I was surprised at how readily Spencer accepted my hesitant suggestions for small word changes and layout revisions. As we talked of his goals for the church, he would probe me constantly for my ideas. I loved it.
In turn, he read my paper on Yoder Steel and praised it lavishly. When I gave him the Editor’s reasoning for not using it, he sighed. “I understand his position, and I guess he had no choice, considering Yoder’s influence here in Alderton. Yet businessmen need to hear these words, Julie,” he said, rattling the pages of my article. “If they don’t change, the labor situation will explode in their faces.”
I felt so encouraged by Spencer’s reaction that I actually did mail my article to the New York Times with a short letter explaining—a bit extravagantly—that I was a staff writer for the Alderton Sentinel, whose editor had decided that my piece was too controversial to use, given our local situation. I was being naive, I knew, to believe that the Times would even read it.
Late one afternoon in mid-May, Spencer Meloy entered the Sentinel office, smiled a greeting to Miss Cruley, and headed directly for my desk.
“Julie, I think we’ve found it!”
Startled, I stared at him while he grabbed a nearby chair and positioned himself directly across from me. That was the instant I knew: Spencer Meloy’s interest in me went beyond that of a spiritual mentor who is attracted to one of his charges. I’d known he liked me from the beginning, but until this moment, I had not thought it went any deeper. I felt a tremor, an inner excitement.
“Found what?” I heard myself saying, as I brought my racing thoughts under control and met the piercing intensity of his dark brown eyes.
“A place for the Community Center. Remember?”
“Oh, sure.” Spencer had spoken often of the need for some building in the Lowlands where the people there could gather for talk, recreation and small meetings. One possibility was the flood-damaged house which Cade Brinton and his family had vacated.
“I think I’ve found a way to persuade the McKeevers to let us have the Brinton house.” Meloy paused a moment to stare at me so directly that I let my eyes drop. “It involves you. Tom McKeever Jr. is coming to my office Wednesday afternoon at four,” he went on. “Trustee matter. Can you be in the church between four and five? I want you to tell McKeever why the young people in our church want to renovate this old house.”
“Why would he pay any attention to me?” My resistance was rising at the thought of being cross-examined by a McKeever. I had seen the effect of this on Dad.
“He’ll listen to you because you’re the same age as his son, Bryan. And Bryan might become involved with our project. Does that surprise you? Well, he surprises me at times. For example, did you know he was a nature lover?”
I shook my head and started to tell Spencer how critical Bryan was about the Church, but stopped. Bryan’s problems with his parents, with school and with his drinking were so well-known—why should I go into them? I drew a deep breath, realizing I could not let Spencer down.
On Wednesday afternoon I arrived at the church a little before four o’clock and told Spencer Meloy I would be in the Social Hall. Tom McKeever Jr. appeared shortly thereafter and the two men closeted themselves in Spencer’s office. I had brought proofs to read, but I was so nervous that it was hard to concentrate. Shortly after five, the pastor asked me to join them.
McKeever looked harried and uncomfortable, though he was gracious as I shook his hand and took a seat.
“Julie, I’ve filled Mr. McKeever in briefly on our ideas about a modest Community Center in the Lowlands. I think he needs to hear more about it from one of the young people in the church.”
McKeever listened restlessly as I described our visits to the mothers and children in the Lowlands and the needs we found there.
“I know all about that,” he interrupted. “What I don’t understand is why the teenagers in our church should be so interested in, well, things that are of no concern to them.”
“But, Mr. McKeever, these things are of concern to us. When people we know don’t have the right clothing or enough to eat, it bothers us a lot.”
“Our country is in a serious depression, Julie, and many people don’t have the clothing or food they need. I sometimes wonder why there are so many tears shed over the poor worker and so little interest in businessmen like your father, who stru
ggle so hard to survive and whose success means jobs and income for working people.”
Spencer then intervened. “Mr. McKeever, one reason for this Community Center is to ease the overcrowding in so many homes there.”
Tom McKeever frowned. “No way to change that.”
“But given the fact of the crowding,” Spencer persisted, as his glasses slid a bit down his nose, “if there were a place where women could bring their babies and toddlers, where they could read or sew or cook or attend child-care classes—perhaps even have some Bible study—it would relieve some of the pressures on your steelworkers.”
“Sounds nebulous,” McKeever interrupted. “Who’s going to do the teaching? And who’s going to pay?”
“If we find a place, the WPA will find the teachers and hire them.”
McKeever shook his head vigorously. “Don’t you see the danger of all this? It’s the beginning of government control. Whenever central government grabs power—with whatever emergency excuse—no matter how they bait the hook with gifts or handouts, every citizen loses part of his liberty. What’s more”—he leaned forward and jabbed the air with his forefinger—“in the long run, handouts do nothing except weaken a man’s character.”
Spencer Meloy opened his mouth to reply, then shut it again.
For a moment the silence in the room was so intense that we heard the ticking of Spencer’s small brass desk clock.
I was determined not to be shut out of the discussion. “The money part doesn’t concern me or the other high school students involved, like your son, Bryan. These people in the Lowlands are hurting and we want to go down there and help them.”
At the mention of his son’s name, the hardness left McKeever’s eyes and his resistance suddenly vanished. “I’m surprised Bryan is interested,” he said quietly. Then he turned to Spencer. “Perhaps we can work out something with the house.”
The first work party for the Community Center project in the Lowlands was set for Saturday, June 15. Because Cade’s water-wrecked house was a mass of debris, shattered floorboards, broken fixtures, and ruined furniture, Spencer asked Neal Brinton to help round up the needed skilled labor.
Margo Palmer and I had made a list of students who might help, then divided up the names between us for telephoning or contacting in person. Everyone was to wear old work clothes and bring his or her own lunch. Beverages would be supplied by the church.
Margo and I tried to approach everybody with the idea that this kind of work could be fun. On the whole, we got a good response. Working for us was the fact that even on weekends, Alderton offered scanty recreational inducements. That particular Saturday movie at the Picture Palace was to be Jimmy the Gent with James Cagney and Bette Davis, a picture most of us had already seen.
Early that week, following my English class, I drew a deep breath and walked up to Bryan McKeever and asked him if he would like to come to the work party.
“Don’t think I can make it,” he said, staring at me.
“Then forget it, Bryan. I heard from Mr. Meloy that you might be interested, but I guess he was wrong.” His blandness riled me.
Later he stopped me in the hallway. “I’ll make a deal with you, Julie. You go to the graduation dance with me on the twenty-second and I’ll go to that church thing in the Lowlands this Saturday.”
Nonplussed, I hesitated. I had already refused two invitations to this dance, reluctant to be a part of what I heard would be an all-night drinking party. Yet it was important to have Bryan at the work party. “Okay, Bryan. You have yourself a deal.”
At nine on Saturday morning sixteen of us, including Bryan McKeever, showed up at Cade Brinton’s water-damaged house in old work clothes. The Brinton residence was at the end of a row of six; it had obviously taken the brunt of the devastation. The outside corner both upstairs and down had been sheared off, leaving these rooms open on two sides. Ceiling slats were dangling.
It was obvious that Cade and his family had taken whatever possessions were salvageable and fled the place. The mud on the floors had dried into inches-deep, silty dust, but the stench still lingered. The work ahead of us would be anything but pleasant.
As we stood in the tiny front yard, Spencer Meloy gathered the group around him. “Folks, you can see the situation for yourselves.” Our eyes followed the sweep of his hand to the clutter around us: rusting cans, shattered glass, pieces of splintered wood, old tires.
“We’re not here to talk, but to work, so I’ll make this brief. We’re out to turn this damaged house into a thing of beauty for the people of this community. We hope to beg or borrow the fixtures we need to put in a bathroom. The kitchen is too tiny, so we’re going to add about four feet to it. We’ve decided to knock out the partitions between the two front rooms to make a decent-size meeting room; we’ll do the same to the two bedrooms upstairs.
“Now let’s divide up into two work crews. Julie, you and Margo will lead the girls inside to do cleanup. Neal Brinton and I will form a wrecking crew to get the partitions down. Once the wrecking is finished, we’ll become a carpentry crew. Let’s get going.”
When our female contingent had gathered, Neal Brinton warned us not to touch any electrical outlets until he had checked them.
“Test every s-step for loose flooring. Beware of those dangling boards overhead; watch out for rusty nails.”
Four of us took on the upstairs rooms to prepare them for painting. Most walls and ceilings were flyspecked and splotched with stains; the floors were caked with tracked-in mud. While scraping and sweeping out the debris, I began to realize the magnitude of the project we had taken on.
When I leaned out the front window in midmorning to get a breath of fresh air, I saw that the men had already raked up a mountain of trash and were shoveling it into burlap sacks to be carted off to the town dump. And there was a newcomer dressed in neat khaki, his blond-red hair looking redder than usual in the sunlight. Randolph Wilkinson! What was he doing here? I looked down at my filthy hands and mud-stained work suit and moaned, “Not again!”
It seemed an eternity before a man’s voice bellowed from the yard, “Lunchtime! All assemble in the front yard.”
Neal had brought enamel wash basins, cakes of soap, and towels. Four wash-up lines formed, with several men emptying the basins and refilling them from huge cans so that each of us could have fresh water.
“Hello there, Julie.” There was no mistaking the English accent; I turned to look into warm and smiling eyes. “Would you like to eat together?”
“Sure—” My hair was tousled, probably stringy, my face flecked with soot, my blouse sweat-streaked, my hands the color of mud. I smiled back weakly, angry at myself for feeling so self-conscious.
After we washed I felt better. Rand’s exuberance was like a tonic. “Julie, you work your way to the head of the queue for two drinks, and I’ll stake out a spot inside the house. Hold on a moment.” He pulled from his pocket a white linen monogrammed handkerchief and, with a deft movement of his hand, flicked off a piece of soot from between my eyes.
When I returned with the drinks, plus the paper sack containing my egg-salad sandwich, Rand had an oilcloth spread out in a corner of the front room and was emptying onto it the contents of a picnic hamper, obviously from the Hunting and Fishing Club’s kitchen. Pieces of crispy fried chicken, dainty sandwiches of pimento cheese on whole-wheat bread, a salmon mixture with very thin slices of cucumber, tender ham with watercress.
“May I join you?” I looked up into the quizzical eyes of Spencer Meloy.
“Of course.” Quickly Rand made a place for Spencer.
Then Margo and Bryan McKeever placed an oilcloth next to ours and we were a five-some, but not a very jolly one. There was an awkward silence as we tore into our food.
“The ham is delicious,” I enthused.
“Tinned Westphalian.” At my questioning look, Rand added, “Imported from Germany.”
It was so incongruous that giggles erupted spontaneously. Rand never lost
his aplomb. Soon he was handing out delicacies to everyone in sight. Spencer declined them all and munched on peanut-butter sandwiches. As the Englishman began asking questions about the project, I let Spencer do all the talking, while I compared the two men.
Though I had seen him carrying heavy, muddy pieces of timber, Rand’s clothes were still fresh and clean. Spencer, however, was mud-soaked; even his shock of black hair was matted with dirt.
Rand’s questions were polite, showing interest. He obviously did not understand why such menial work was not being done by the Lowlands residents themselves.
Spencer’s answers had a surprising intensity, as if the young pastor were presenting his position to his trustees. “If church people aren’t willing to do this kind of work for their suffering neighbors, then the Church has no meaning for today,” he stated.
“I thought the purpose of the Church was to save souls,” Rand responded as he bit into a cookie.
“I don’t think you can meet the spiritual needs of people until you’ve met their physical needs.”
“I see. Do you plan to use this house as a center to feed and clothe the people here?”
“That’s our goal. We also want to give them a place to meet.”
Bryan McKeever had been listening to this conversation with surprising interest. “I understand that my father turned this house over to you rent free to fix up. Why don’t you ask him to send some men down here to do all this work at no cost to you or the people who live here?”
Spencer shook his head. “He might do that. But we think it’s important to do the work with our own hands; then it becomes an offering of love to these people. That’s a much better gift somehow.”
“How many residents of the Lowlands are members of Baker Memorial?” Rand asked.
“Not very many. Margo here, for one. Neal Brinton. The church officers have been, well, somewhat resistant to people from the Lowlands joining the church.”