The Early Stories by John Updike Read Free Book Online Page B

church, liked him. David liked him, and felt liked in turn; sometimes in class, after some special stupidity, Dobson directed toward him out of those wide black eyes a mild look of disbelief, a look that, though flattering, was also delicately disquieting.
    Catechetical instruction consisted of reading aloud from a work booklet answers to problems prepared during the week, problems like, “I am the _________, the _________, and the _________, saith the Lord.” Then there was a question period in which no one ever asked any questions. Today’s theme was the last third of the Apostles’ Creed. When the time came for questions, David blushed and asked, “About the Resurrection of the Body—are we conscious between the time when we die and the Day of Judgment?”
    Dobson blinked, and his fine small mouth pursed, suggesting that David was making difficult things more difficult. The faces of the other students went blank, as if an indiscretion had been committed.
    â€œNo, I suppose not,” Reverend Dobson said.
    â€œWell, where is our soul, then, in this gap?”
    The sense grew, in the class, of a naughtiness occurring. Dobson’s shy eyes watered, as if he were straining to keep up the formality of attention, and one of the girls, the fattest, simpered toward her twin, who was a little less fat. Their chairs were arranged in a rough circle. The current running around the circle panicked David. Did everybody know something he didn’t know?
    â€œI suppose you could say our souls are asleep,” Dobson said.
    â€œAnd then they wake up, and there is the earth like it always is, and all the people who have ever lived? Where will Heaven be?”
    Anita Haier giggled. Dobson gazed at David intently, but with an awkward, puzzled flicker of forgiveness, as if there existed a secret between them that David was violating. But David knew of no secret. All he wanted was to hear Dobson repeat the words he said every Sunday morning. This he would not do. As if these words were unworthy of the conversational voice.
    â€œDavid, you might think of Heaven this way: as the way in which the goodness Abraham Lincoln did lives after him.”
    â€œBut is Lincoln conscious of it living on?” He blushed no longer with embarrassment but in anger; he had walked here in good faith and was being made a fool.
    â€œIs he conscious now? I would have to say no. But I don’t think it matters.” His voice had a coward’s firmness; he was hostile now.
    â€œYou don’t.”
    â€œNot in the eyes of God, no.” The unction, the stunning impudence, of this reply sprang tears of outrage in David’s eyes. He bowed them to his work book, where short words like Duty, Love, Obey, Honor were stacked in the form of a cross.
    â€œWere there any other questions, David?” Dobson asked, more softly. The others were rustling, collecting their books.
    â€œNo.” David made his voice firm, though he could not look up at the man.
    â€œDid I answer your question fully enough?”
    â€œYes.”
    In the minister’s silence the shame that should have been his crept over David: the burden and fever of being a fraud were placed upon
him
, who was innocent, and it seemed, he knew, a confession of this guilt that on the way out he was unable to face Dobson’s stirred gaze, though he felt it probing the side of his head.
    Anita Haier’s father gave him a ride down the highway as far as the dirtroad. David said he wanted to walk the rest, and figured that his offer was accepted because Mr. Haier did not want to dirty his dark new Oldsmobile with dust. This was all right; everything was all right, as long as it was clear. His indignation at being betrayed, at seeing Christianity betrayed, had hardened him. The road reflected his hardness. Pink stones thrust up through its packed surface. The April sun beat down from the center of the afternoon half of the sky; already it had