27. The Novel ... THE FARM EAST OF PINE VILLAGE

By the time Robert was a junior, he had reached a height of six feet, one inch. His hair was cut short because Ida preferred it that way. He liked a certain green hopsack shirt that he wore all too often in the warm months, and he liked a certain green corduroy pullover that he wore all too often in the cold months. During the fall and spring, he was most often to be seen wearing a tan, brown, and brick CPO coat—even indoors. He had a collection of turtleneck inserts in different colors, and he frequently wore them. When he wore sports coats for public piano performances, he generally wore clip-on bow ties, one of which—a dark red crushed velvet—was his favorite. He wanted a Nehru jacket, but Ida was not fond of them. She was, however, fond of the new polyester suits, and Robert received a dark blue one with a reversible vest of dark blue on one side and orange plaid on the other. It would not be long before Ida would begin to fill his closet with what came to be called “leisure suits,” accompanied by polyester shirts in mod styles. Robert’s favorite leisure suit was a caramel-colored one with ivory running stitches at every hem. The shirt that he most often wore with it had baby blue flowers overlapping russet flowers amid forest-green leaves.

One day at school, Robert (attired in his CPO coat and hopsack shirt) was talking with Dennis as they filed band music. They had been reading Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell.

“He should have named it Nineteen Seventy,” Dennis said.

“Doublethink and thoughtcrimes are already here,” Robert offered.

“Big Brother is watching us,” Dennis commented.

“We’re living in Oceania,” Robert remarked.

“‘Attention! Your attention please,’” Dennis quoted, sounding just like the school intercom.

Robert glanced up from the sheaf of musical scores in his hand. His eyes clouded over. He could see Big Brother in the school’s main office, Winston Smith teaching chemistry, and Julia O’Brien teaching English. Robert turned to Dennis and …

… a satire, 1985, was born!

Assisted by Mr. Boots’ hall passes, Robert and Dennis devoted weeks to the writing and illustrating of 1985.

But how could such an artistic work be duplicated and shared with adoring readers as an octopus releases purple ink into the sea before making its escape?

Robert approached the desk of the main office.

“Yes, Robert?” Mrs. Brutus greeted him.

“Could I have a stack of purple ditto masters (for a satire that will be distributed throughout the school)?” Robert asked.

“Yes,” Mrs. Brutus smiled, returning to her desk. “Help yourself.”

Robert pressed an inch of masters between his thumb and fingers and hoped to keep them together, so that it would not be obvious how many he was taking.

“Thank you,” he said, as he walked nonchalantly toward the door.

“I assume those are for a school project,” Mrs. Brutus spoke up while sorting papers.

“Yes, they’re for a project (parodying Nineteen Eighty-Four and caricaturing the teachers),” Robert confirmed.

Mrs. Brutus shot him a keen look but went back to her work.

For days, Robert carefully transferred the illustrations to purple ditto masters. The front page sported disintegrating Greek columns and a pediment above a portrait of Winston Smith, the chemistry teacher. The title 1985 appeared to be carved from stone and cracking. Here and there throughout the work were portraits of additional characters, dressed as Orwell described but otherwise looking very much like other teachers. Next, Robert patiently typed every page of the lengthy satire that Dennis and he had composed. Robert had only enough masters, and he could not afford typographical errors. When he made one—which was rare, as slowly and deliberately as he was progressing—he threw away that precious master and started the page again. Finally, the book was complete.

Running the copies was all that remained.

How?

Dennis and Robert turned to Susan, who knew her way around the office.

“Now, wait!” Susan said. “You want me to run copies of a satire?”

“Yes,” Dennis said, sheepishly.

“Let me see it,” Susan said.

She hurriedly read the first few pages and looked up with beams of sunlight playing about her eyes.

“Oh, this is good,” she said. Then she explained that an allotment system specified how many pages could be duplicated for a student project. She said she would look into running off pages for Robert and Dennis, but, at most, only a few copies could be produced.

Later, she brought Dennis and Robert a heavy stack of pages exuding the intoxicating balm of damp purple ditto ink.

“These are all I could make,” Susan said.

“How can we ever thank you?” Dennis asked, grinning.

“Don’t thank me!” she said. “I just hope you don’t get in trouble.”

Robert and Dennis assembled and stapled thirty copies of 1985. The next morning, they clandestinely placed them here and there in the school and in the gym. No authors’ names appeared on the booklet, thereby giving the writers plausible deniability.

In English class that afternoon, Miss Matthews said, “Alright! Who wrote 1985?”

No one spoke.

Miss Matthews stared at Robert.

“Robert, this has your name written all over it,” she said.

“Show me where!” Robert exclaimed, as if he truly wanted to know.

Miss Matthews faced Dennis.

“Dennis, do you have something you want to tell me?” she asked.

“I can’t think of anything,” Dennis said.

“Well, I wanted to tell the authors that this is a creative send-up,” Miss Matthews commented. “The teachers have been talking about it all morning. The book shows a deep understanding of irony and a mastery of character development. Whoever wrote it can take pride in a job well done.”

Robert raised his hand.

“Yes, Robert,” Miss Matthews acknowledged.

“Are you saying that no one is upset?”

Miss Matthews smiled. “No, no one is upset,” she answered. “In fact, the response has been quite the opposite. The teachers are genuinely impressed with the talent and skill of the authors, whoever they may be.”

Later, in the parking lot, Robert asked Dennis, “Should we take credit for it?’

Dennis frowned and shook his head. “Are you crazy?”

So 1985 remained anonymous.

26. The College Student ... THE FARM EAST OF PINE VILLAGE

The August day arrived when the family said goodbye to Charles outside Wright Quadrangle on the campus of Indiana University in Bloomington. He was excited, looking forward to his time in college. On the drive home, Joe, Ida, and Robert were not excited. Robert had a lump in his throat. Joe said nothing, and Ida made only the occasional observation about a flower in someone’s yard or a bird on a fencepost. How could the sanctity of a family be broken so nonchalantly? The knowledge that the home would never be the same again weighed heavily on all three.

When the Pontiac pulled into the driveway and everyone went inside the house, the home that had seemed so full of promise only a little over two years earlier now felt vulnerable. A big change had occurred. Spot wondered where Charles was and watched for him for many days, until the terrier gave up watching.

Robert thought he should be especially kind to his parents, now that Charles’ room was quiet and felt empty.

In the mornings, Robert waited for the bus alone.

Joe and Ida hoped for letters from IU, and a few came. Charles was busy, studying up to four hours a night. Ida, meanwhile, wrote and mailed many letters to Bloomington. She could be seen scrawling on a pad of lined paper while taking a moment to sit at the kitchen table with a dusting of flour up to her elbows and pies in the oven.

Ida had been to college; Joe had not. She had knowledge of what Charles was encountering; Joe had none. The move to the new house in 1968 had been one of two of the most traumatizing events in Joe’s life. The second occurred when Charles moved away.

Without either of them sensing the change, the bond between Joe and Robert—already strong—was becoming stronger.

Ida and Robert kept trying to grow a vegetable garden. Their first attempt—in the first spring and summer at the new home—had been made west of the driveway, but the plants did not thrive. Next, Ida had Joe plow the area north of the house where, in Lizzie’s youth, a garden had been located. As before, sprouts were few, mature plants fewer, and the quality of the produce poor at best. No one could understand why corn, soybeans, and wheat crops customarily were spectacular when grown in presumably the same soil in the fields just beyond the hedge apple trees.

Uncharacteristically, Ida gave up. She supplied the family’s table with vegetables from grocery stores. Robert no longer enrolled in the gardening project for the 4-H fair.

“If we don’t plant a garden, I’ll have more time to dust,” Ida said. In the country, the furniture and floors became dusty far faster than they had in town. Up until Joe bought a window air conditioning unit, the windows were kept open through the hot, muggy days, although a heavy green blind might be lowered by pulling on the little ring dangling from the string at the bottom of the shade.

Little by little, levity returned to the farm east of Pine Village.

Ida would turn from the kitchen sink to face Robert while suds rolled down her wrists from her upturned hands, and she would quote Lady Macbeth: “The thane of Fife had a wife: where is she now?—What, will these hands ne’er be clean?” Robert would laugh until he could hardly catch his breath.

Robert would squeak a pink rat made of rubber and fling it beneath the sofa. Spot would bark and jump up and down, finally resorting to twisting the front half of his body on its side and pushing with his hind legs, until he could reach the rat and pull it out. Then he would shake it, to everyone’s delight! “You get that ol’ rat!” Robert would say.

Naturally, events conspired to dampen Robert’s good spirits. Miss Beegle retired. Robert’s beloved piano teacher recommended that he continue his training with Miss Ruth Jamieson.

Such a huge change! Miss Jamieson had a small apartment above a men’s clothing store near Purdue. Robert trudged up several flights of stairs that snapped as if they would break. In the gloom at the top, a dim light bulb with no shade and yellowed with grime hung at the end of a dirty cord. Robert knocked, and Miss Jamieson swung open the door with what Robert would come to discover was her characteristic impulsiveness. There she stood. Her hair was pulled back tightly in a severe bun. Her very red lipstick was applied in a hasty smear—once across the lips and done! Her stare pierced Robert’s confidence. He looked down awkwardly.

“Well, I suppose you had better come in, don’t you suppose?” she asked, stepping back, so that Robert could enter her tiny, tiny apartment.

Her piano was a reddish upright, nothing like the twin grand pianos that Miss Beegle owned. Miss Jamieson’s reading material lay wherever it fell on the sofa or on the carpet. French paintings in gilded frames hung at odd angles. Strings of beads separated her tiny living room from her kitchen, and, every now and then, she unexpectedly leapt up from her rocking chair, dove through the beads (which tinkled against one another), and returned with a heavily scented hand cream that she rubbed vigorously between her palms.

For the first year of lessons, Miss Jamieson found fault with every facet of Robert’s playing—beginning with the way he clipped his nails. “Cut them much shorter!” she commanded. Quite often, as he stood on a windy street corner waiting for his parents to pick him up after a lesson, he thought about quitting. At the beginning of his training under Miss Jamieson’s sharp tutelage, he could not have predicted that she would eventually occupy the same place in his affections as a dearly loved aunt. Slowly, Miss Jamieson built Robert back up after tearing him down, transforming his playing.

In the beginning of his studies with Miss Jamieson, Robert often stumbled. At his first recital in Duncan Hall, he became lost in a Beethoven Sonata. His fingers flailed around, striking wrong notes in all directions. Instead of feeling horror or shame, Robert smiled. In his mind’s eye, Robert could just see the dramatic Miss Jamieson backstage, groaning, swooning, and falling to the floor.

When Robert walked into the wings, Miss Jamieson rushed up to him. “What happened to you, my boy?” she begged.

“I couldn’t remember where I was.”

“Oh,” she said in a kind of guttural utterance, as if someone had hit her in the stomach. Recovering, she said, “Well, it has happened to the best of performers and is one of the best ways to learn. Recitals may appear to be about winning and losing. Competitions may present the illusion of winners and losers, but, oftentimes, the losers are the winners, my boy! When you discover that making music is not about victory and defeat, you will be a pianist!”

Several weeks later, Miss Jamieson and Robert attended a piano concert by Vladimir Ashkenazy in the Edward C. Elliott Hall of Music at Purdue. Robert knew that he was in the presence of a prodigious talent. He observed Miss Jamieson’s gestures, such as pressing her hand against her heart while her lipstick formed the letter O. Suddenly, he could read her mind, which was not saying “I am in the presence of a prodigious talent.” Her mind was saying “Ah! How beautiful!”  

Miss Jamieson designed separate exercises for each of Robert’s fingers, and she coined fascinating expressions to help him overcome difficult passages in the music. For a rapid run in another Beethoven Sonata, she said, “It’s like small monkeys scurrying up trees in the jungle.” Somehow, that description made it possible for Robert to play the run accurately every time. When she was young, she had studied in France for a lengthy period, and she affected a French manner, calling Robert “Ro-BAIR.”

“Ro-BAIR,” she said one day, “we must begin preparing for your audition at Indiana University, for you will audition there one day. We will surprise the judges by having you adopt a method of performance preferred by some in Beethoven’s age but seldom practiced nowadays. I am alluding to using only the middle three fingers on the black keys. No thumbs, no pinkies!” The last word almost burst from her.

“Further,” she continued, “you will sustain notes by holding the keys down, not by pedaling. Your foot will not come near the pedal.” She chuckled. “The judges won’t know what hit them,” she mused.

“Of course, they will want to hear your range, so we will give them Bach and Chopin. Your Bach will be strict, as if played on a harpsichord, and your Chopin will be unctuously Romantic. We must get started at once!”

For months, Robert was in the piano equivalent of training for the Olympics.

There were moments of joy, when Miss Jamieson flung herself backwards in her rocking chair, clasped her hands over her heart, smiled, and exclaimed, “Formidable!”

There were moments of despair, when Miss Jamieson thrust herself forward, shooed Robert’s hands away from the keys, placed her hands where his had been, and made him watch carefully as she demonstrated what he should be doing. “Voila!”

Each day, each week, un peu de progrès!

Then came the afternoon when Miss Jamieson rocked back and said, “I am pleased to say that you now have a good technique. Technique is essential, but you can have perfect technique and not make music.”

Miss Jamieson seized a chopstick and pointed to a line in the score of the sonata. “Sing the melody!” she ordered.

“Oh, I can’t do that!” Robert said.

“What do you mean?” Miss Jamieson asked, a look of shock on her face.

“My voice is not good for singing,” Robert answered.

“Rubbish!” she exclaimed. “I never heard such utter nonsense!”

“My father is a good singer,” Robert began, “but I didn’t inherit—”

“I didn’t ask your father to sing,” Miss Jamieson interrupted. “I asked you. Now sing!”

Robert sang the melody.

“Now play the same way you sang!”

His mouth open, Robert silently sang while his fingers ran up and down the keys.

Miss Jamieson laughed a deep belly guffaw. “You are making music! You hear the difference! Your technique is the body; the music is the spirit.”

From that day forward, Robert’s mouth remained open whenever he played piano. He was silently singing—sometimes, not so silently.

More importantly, from that hour—no, moment!—onward, his heart was open.

25. The Ouibache Experience ... THE FARM EAST OF PINE VILLAGE

As Charles had once spent a week at an experimental camp called Ouibache, a French word on which the English word Wabash was coined, Robert decided to look into it. He persuaded his cousin Pam to apply with him to become counselors, and they were accepted. They were to have training for a week at the end of May. Working with the staff, they would select any two weeks in the summer to return to the camp and to serve as leaders.

Many years earlier, the location had been a forestry station run by Purdue University. The grounds numbered some hundred acres of rugged land, heavily wooded, leading down to the Wabash River and including a small island in the stream. Purdue had built many well-appointed structures, including barracks for men, barracks for women, a cafeteria, a laboratory, and an amphitheater. At some point, the Hoosier 4-H Leadership Center had established a new purpose for the old outpost.

In that May between their sophomore and junior years, when Pam and Robert arrived at the camp, they were assigned rooms in a large A-frame fronting the west. They hardly knew what to expect. In the orientation session, the permanent staff introduced the thirty-odd counselors to one another and to their objective, which was to help children from farms, from cities, and from everywhere in between farms and cities to discover the joys of collaboration in the peaceful stewardship and preservation of nature.

It was 1970, a pivotal year. The Kent State shootings had just occurred, and it felt as if the lofty aims of the Sixties would never be attained. The staff members ranged in age from two to thirty years older than Robert and Pam, with many of them having graduated in the 1960s. Like strong ships, they had remained upright on the stormy seas of that disappointing decade. They eschewed empty platitudes; they had learned that it was wrong to promise Xanadu to brokenhearted people. They focused their attention not on the world but on the individual.

“We have one of the youngest counselors we have ever had,” Mick, a thin, guitar-playing fellow, began, smiling at Robert. “Welcome!”

Robert felt a little on the spot during the light applause, but he sensed that everyone was supportive.

A friendly Purdue student named Paul and a woman nicknamed “Mouse” said a few words. In no time, people felt at home.

As twilight fell, Paul stood a flashlight on end so that its beam struck the ceiling of the A-frame high above. All other lights were extinguished. Everyone sat cross-legged on the carpet.

“What makes you vulnerable?” Paul asked. “No one has to speak, but everyone can speak, if he or she feels so moved.”

Slowly, people admitted their fears. Paul thanked them and said, “Remember that the youngsters who come to the camp share your vulnerabilities but most likely are not equipped to identify them or to talk about them. Don’t ask them to try. For you to recognize their vulnerabilities is what matters.”

“What makes you invincible?” Paul asked next. Soon, people began responding.

Robert said nothing. He was fascinated by how easily others could express themselves without worrying about what someone else might think. He began to ponder what listening means: how vitally important it is to hear exactly what another person is saying and to filter the utterances through the self without using criticism as a weapon to destroy the exchange. Before long, he would begin to discover the power of expression and the grave responsibilities that accompany that power.

On the first night, as Robert and others had fallen asleep, suddenly there came a racket of fists pounding on doors while Paul’s voice was heard shouting “Night hike! Night hike! Put on your oldest clothes! Night hike!”

An other-worldly experience was transpiring! Groggy and disoriented, Robert put on old jeans and a sweatshirt. He joined the other counselors outside the A-frame as Paul’s flashlight raked the ground.

“Is this everybody?” he asked. “Mick, our able-bodied Night hike leader, will explain.”

Mick said, “I will be the only person with a flashlight, but I won’t use it, unless I have to. Everyone take the hand of the person behind you. Always remember that your duty is to help that person. Never let go of that person’s hand! We will be slipping and sliding over rough terrain, and, many times, the person behind you will need your helping hand. Let’s go!”

In single file with hands clasped, the group quickly entered the forested hills. Pam was three people ahead of Robert. In the deep darkness of the woods, the counselors snaked along on a trail so thin that only Mick new where it was. Twice, they crossed ravines on logs, and no one fell! At first, everyone chatted, but, after a while, there were only occasional statements that offered assistance. Robert heard Pam say to the person behind her, “There’s a muddy hole to your right, so keep to your left.”

Suddenly, Robert emerged from the velvety shadows. Moonlight filtered downward and sparkled on the ripples of the Wabash River. The air itself seemed aglow from the moonbeams. No one spoke. The water murmured and whispered where it lapped the shore.

Everyone walked in beauty.

Eventually, the now silent line reentered the forest.

To the tune of shuffling feet, thoughts ran in deep channels. Robert felt increasingly responsible for the counselors behind him and, symmetrically, for the counselors before him. He was beginning to understand the paramount significance of connection to others. When the group crossed a log in the night, they were one person with hands clasped, and no pearl could fall from the necklace.

Arriving back at the A-frame, counselors were eager to talk about the experience. Many stayed up half of the night, Robert among them.

The next morning, Robert felt invigorated, not fatigued. He watched the golden sunlight bathe the breathing leaves of the trees. The staff and the counselors took part in a flag-raising ceremony before filing into the cafeteria for breakfast. Robert sat across from Pam in her peasant dress and pigtails.

“And how is Robert this morning?” Pam asked.

“I slept great,” Robert replied.

“I did, too,” Pam said. “After the Night Hike, I wasn’t sure I could go back to sleep, but the conversation afterward was so peaceful I could feel myself drifting.”

Just then, Pam’s older cousin Bonnie came past the table and said hello. Bonnie was on the staff as a recreation leader in charge of the swimming pool, ball courts, and playing fields. The sun had bleached Bonnie’s blonde hair almost white.

Turning to Pam, Bonnie said in her customary tone of frank good nature, “I heard you went on a Night Hike. Now you understand the expression ‘easy as falling off a log.’”

Pam laughed. “What are you up to today?”

Bonnie said, “I have to drive into Lafayette for some pool supplies. Let me know if you need anything.”

Pam said, “I think I have everything I need, but it’s kind of you to offer.”

“If you think of anything, catch me at the pool office in the next half hour,” Bonnie said, moving on in her usual energetic way.

“I wonder what’s in store for us this morning,” Pam said to Robert.

They soon found out, as Bill, a roly-poly recreation leader in his forties, ran the counselors and staff through an hour of hilarious games. He explained that, throughout the summer, he would be keeping the campers in similar good spirits through music and fun. Packing his speech with lingo like “far out,” “can you dig it,” and “outa sight”—all such expressions uttered with an ironic nod to popular culture—Bill kept everybody laughing. Robert needed no encouragement to unleash his sense of humor, but he was learning from Bill to be “laid back” and not take everything so seriously.

The three hours before dinner had been set aside for socializing or quiet reflection, so Pam and Robert invited any interested counselors to visit their hometown. A group of seven, counting Robert and Pam, took bicycles from the recreation building and began the ten-mile ride to Pine Village. The others were from such places as Aurora, Anderson, and Shelbyville. Gliding between flat or gently rolling land with small corn and bean plants in neat green rows, the bicyclists coasted along like a family of barn swallows sailing on outstretched wings. Picture-perfect white clouds drifted beneath the azure dome. Cows with lowered heads grazed the meadows. Reaching the town, Pam and Robert invited the riders into the corner grocery for soft drinks. After pedaling around the town and strolling past the businesses, they walked their bikes to the Methodist Church, parked them, went up the stairs, and through the unlocked door. Everyone admired the stained glass windows while Robert played Bach on the piano. Finally, the group rode to the school and entered the gymnasium to see the diamond pattern of the ceiling beams reflected in the highly varnished floor.

“No wonder you love it here!” said a counselor named Jill. “Everything is so pretty and peaceful.”

The others nodded their approval of Jill’s observation.

Then the group made the ten-mile return trip. The riders were tired—but not too tired—when they rolled into the Hoosier 4-H Leadership Center. Over dinner, the excursionists talked excitedly about what they had seen in Pine Village.

Mike said, “It’s exactly what you want a town to be.”

On the evening of the fourth day of their training, the counselors enacted Native American stories that they had rehearsed. Carefully researched through Purdue University’s extensive anthropology collections, the narratives included personified animals and cosmic myths. The light from the flickering campfire reflected on their faces as the counselors performed. Later in the summer, they would lead campers to share the same stories.

As the firelight began to die down and the stories were finished, everyone had to remain silent for the rest of the night. Communication by hand signals was permitted, but talking was prohibited.

Back at the A-frame building, the counselors fought the temptation to speak. To utter words was an incredibly powerful urge—nearly involuntary! Like most of breathing, itself, using the breath to intone words was so natural that the act of remaining silent felt unnatural—at first.

Again and again catching himself before he broke the rule, Robert began to notice his breath. He could not recall a time when he had thought about breathing, except when he was a little boy and had tripped over a wire supporting a clothesline pole, thus knocking the air out of his lungs and having to fight for the next breath.

Robert thought, “I am alive now because of each breath I take.” He next thought, “This time will never come again.” Then he thought, “As long as I keep breathing, my life will go on from this place and time.” The subsequent thought was this: “This night will become only a memory.” Then: “It is already becoming a memory.” And: “Each memory is a construction of the mind because it no longer exists.” Suddenly: “The past and the future are unreal.” All at once: “This instant—this breath—this, alone, is real.”

Robert looked around at the other counselors, all silent and trying to communicate by gestures. Abruptly, the injunction to love your neighbor popped into his mind and resonated with a sense of urgency that it had never had previously.

The next morning, when talking had resumed, Robert felt he had glimpsed the peace that surpasses all words and that cannot be contained by them.

The training sessions had reached their conclusion. Pam and Robert served as counselors together during one of their two weeks of leading, guiding, and inspiring campers. Each had a separate second week. All went well. A year later, Robert returned to Ouibache for another training week and two weeks leading campers before he began his first fall semester as a college freshman.

Ever after that, Robert readily called to mind an image of spangles of moonlight dappling the Wabash River, of a campfire lighting the faces of counselors pretending to be crows or coyotes, and of the breath entering and leaving each person’s body.