58
PARTISAN REVIEW
the time, he never looked it. Indeed, it is a curious fact about Mr.
Verne that he never seemed to grow a day older. From my earliest
childhood until the time I last saw him about five years ago, he
changed very little. He grew a little fatter, maybe, but not really
older: still handsome, still possessed of an amiable and youthful
personality, and always the master of that incredible voice. But
what struck me most, on that visit home, was that his reputation
in
the town was just as secure on the one hand, and just as notorious
on the other, as it had always been.
It
taught me something about
the small-town mind.
"Well, Ted went into the city on Saturday a couple of weeks
ago--on the bus, as he intended from the beginning-and bought
his precious sailcloth. His mother was in a stew all day long and
called me-she called me an
inhuman monster,
no less, for letting
a little boy of fourteen undertake such a thing. She said he never
could carry thirty-six yards of sailcloth all by himself any more
than I could, and that I was a brute to even let him try.-See what
I have to put up with for your sake, Snitch?"
When I was fourteen I sang in our church choir, and my
brother too. He was twelve then and we had been in the choir
since we were small boys, with Ray Verne as the organist and
director of the singing. And this one year, because I had a pretty
good voice, Mr. Verne picked me out of the rest of the boys to sing
a solo on Palm Sunday, during the Offertory. The hymn was "The
Palms," which was sung every year in our church by somebody or
other, and this year it fell to me. It was a nice hymn, all about
Christ's entry into Jerusalem the Sunday before he was crucified,
and everybody throwing down palms in his path; and the music, I
had always thought, was very beautiful. It was simple, easy to
learn, and well within my voice range, but Mr. Verne thought I
needed a lot of private rehearsing. So afternoons after school I'd
go to the church and meet him and he'd play the music for me over
and over and I'd sing. We were up in the chancel alone, there was
nobody else in the church, and once as I finished he put his arms
around me and hugged me. I was sitting on the bench beside him,
and though I thought he hugged me only because I had sung well
and he was pleased, I got up and stood at the end of the bench.
"No, stand here where you can see the music," he said, "and we'll
try again;" and he pulled me in between the bench and the organ,
