THE SCOUT MASTER
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to the top step. And I wondered what might have become of me
tonight if it had not been for Uncle Jake.
Presently we entered the bright room and found all of the boys
sitting erectly on straight wooden benches that lined three walls of
the bare room.
"Good evening, Boys," Uncle Jake said. The sound of his voice
sent a chill up my spine. I felt goosebumps on the backs of my hands.
The light in the room was bare and sharp and sent a long blue-black
shadow of Uncle Jake's figure against the wall.
The boys answered in a chorus of high tingly voices.
Then Uncle Jake directed me to sit down beside Brother on
one of the benches, and he went to the table in the center of the
room.
As
my eyes moved automatically from one face to another of
those boys seated on the benches I was aware that every single face
was a familiar one. They were boys whom I had seen with Brother
either at school or in Sunday School. Yet tonight in their Scout suits,
they were total strangers. Whenever one of them met my gaze there
was no communication between us. Rather, our eyes seemed to rub
against each other in the cold room.
Though I was unable to follow the procedure of the meeting I
did at first try to stand up and to raise my hand when the other boys
did. And I even moved my lips when the oath was recited, feeling
a kind of elevation by the lists of adjectives. But it was while I was
watching Uncle Jake's lips pronounce the words "loyal, brave, trust–
worthy, clean, reverent" that it seemed that he too was becoming a
stranger.
After that I made no effort to understand what was being done
or said. I simply watched my kind and gentle Uncle as he became
more and more another stranger to me, losing himself in the role of
the eternal Scout Master. It was later, just before the meeting was
over (when the plans for Saturday's hike were completed), that I
braced myself with the palms of my hands flat on the seat beside me;
and while my heart pounded so that I imagined those around me
would hear or feel it I watched Uncle Jake as he stood by his table
speaking to the Boy Scouts. I realized now that Father had been
right. This was Uncle Jake fulfilling himself. And to fulfill ones self
was to remove ones self somehow beyond the reach of my own under–
standing and affection. It seemed that the known Uncle Jake had
moved out of his body just as Aunt Grace had moved out of hers
when she sang and laughed and as the Mother and Father whose
hands I liked to have placed gently on the top of my head left their
