CHAPTER LVII
THE BACKWOODS OF INDIANA
Stopping to look at the old school door I went in. I recalled how, once upon a time, when we were first starting to school here, we tried to induce Ed to enter, he being the youngest and very shy as to education. But he refused to go and ran back home. The next day my sister Sylvia and I and Tillie took him, but at the gate he once more balked and refused to enter. It was a dreadful situation, for already we others had found the discipline here to be very stern. Perhaps it was Ed’s subconscious realization of what was about to be done to his soul that terrified him. At any rate, when pressed to come he cried and even screamed, making such an uproar that that same Herr Professor Ludwig Falk, ogreific soul that he was, came rushing out, grabbed him, and carried him, squalling, within. For a time he was not to be dealt with even there, but finding eventually that no one harmed him, he sat down and from that day to the time he left, two years later, learned nothing at all, not even his catechism—for which same I am truly grateful. But the formalism of the church caught him, its gold and colors and thunderings as to hell, and now he is as good a Catholic as any and as fearful of terrific fires.
Once inside, in the same room in which I used to sit and fear for my life and learned nothing, I encountered a black-garbed sister, her beads dangling at her waist, the same kind that used to overawe and terrify me in my youth. Because she looked at me curiously I bowed and then explained: “Once I went to school here—over thirty years ago.” (I could see she assumed I was still a good Catholic.) I went on: “I sat in this seat here. It was the third row from the wall, about six seats back. A Mr. Falk was my teacher here then, and a Father Dudenhausen the pastor.”
“Yes,” she said simply, “I have heard of Mr. Falk—but he has not been here for years. He left many years ago. Father Dudenhausen died fifteen years ago.”
“Yes, so I heard,” I replied, “and Father Livermann—do you know of him?”
“No, I never heard of him, but if you will go to the pastor in the house back of the church, he can tell you. He would be pleased to see someone who had been here so long ago.”
I smiled. I was only fortyfour, but how old I really was, after all.
Then Franklin came in with his camera.
“Do you mind if we take a picture of it?” I asked.
“Not at all,” she replied. “It would be nice.”