He did not mind standing alone—and he was alone, a pariah to the powers—against the theology of the whole college ... which was almost solely devoted to making sure these young men and women were saved. That was the shame of the college, at the time, and the Nazarenes generally: from a movement to make a difference in men’s lives, to change the world by the power of faith, the doctrine had dried down to a barren set of rules, meant to insure personal salvation—as if God were the Great Hall Monitor, making sure the faithful carried their notebooks neatly, lest they plunge forever into the Fires.
The ministerial students were the worst—they were maybe one-third to one-half of each class, and this was their trade school. They came to learn the right words, all the proper formulae ... which they wrote down and memorized from the lectures of their profs. (Woe to the student who tried to mouth those comfortable truths back to Prof Johnson: “How do you know that?” he’d demand. “What does that mean?” ... “Can you support that?” ... Of course, most students got through without attending a single class with Johnson.) The idea was, these students would emerge, to live out perfect, and perfectly unexamined, lives ... until they earned their just rewards in Heaven.
Prescott Johnson could not abide the safe hypocrisy of it. It was selfish. It was obsessive. It was sick. For him, as for young Gary Hartpence, ideas had to have force in this world. They had to make a difference in people’s lives—otherwise, what was all the talk about? What did religion mean? What was it for, save to make the world better?
And so, by the end of that first year, Gary was fairly sure in his mind that he would not be a ministerial student—a professor, more likely, an examiner of truths. ...
And he knew, by that time, that he could hold his own in the world of ideas, even in the rigor of Prescott Johnson’s Socratic circle.
And he knew (as he’d always felt in Nina’s house) that ideas were of substance in the world, had to be of substance, had to make a difference. ...
And so, when the faculty, in recognition of his obvious intellect, his seriousness, his studiousness ... voted him Freshman of the Year, Gary Hartpence did a very logical thing, a very simple act.
He came back to Bethany for his sophomore year, and he refused to sign The Pledge.
The Pledge wasn’t any big deal—or it wasn’t till that point. It was a simple affirmation that the student undersigned would abide by all rules of the college. Just one simple line at the bottom of the entry form. Everybody signed it—except Gary.
See, there was a rule that you had to be in bed, with lights out, by eleven o’clock. But the way it worked, the rule only meant girls—no one checked on the boys, no one cared. In fact, in the boys’ rooms, the bull sessions went on into the wee hours—Hartpence knew: he was in there, arguing philosophy, two out of three nights. But the point was, he wasn’t in bed by eleven, and he wasn’t going to be in bed by eleven—and he wasn’t going to swear to abide by a rule by which he did not plan to abide.
Well!
The head of the college, Roy Cantrell, didn’t know what to make of it. Neither did the dean of students, or the dean of instruction, or any other dean. The students had to sign, and this young man refused to sign, and they couldn’t let a student change the rules, whenever he chose. ... They could go to his adviser, try to reason, cajole ... but his adviser was Prescott. He’d laugh in their faces! Of course, they could—they had the right to—refuse the lad admission, but, ah, ahem ... there would have to be some explanation. Perhaps the Board of Trustees would want to know why the rule was not enforced in the first place. And then, President Cantrell was reliably informed that the young man in question ... what was it? Hartpence? ... was the Freshman of the Year.
There ensued a Mexican standoff.
This went on for days.
Of course, Prescott Johnson was enjoying a tremendous hoot from it all, advising his student to stick to his guns. He was absolutely right! What did they mean, forcing these students to swear false oaths as the price of admission!
But he needn’t have worried about Gary’s resolve. Gary knew he was right: it was so obvious. And he knew (as Prescott used to say in class) the deans could not justify their assertions. In his shy and serious way, he’d explain this to anybody who asked.
And they did ask, as word got around. (Sooner or later, everybody knew everything ...) A lot of students thought Gary must be a troublemaker to challenge the rules ... or stuck on himself ... or awfully liberal. (Liberal, which at Bethany meant theologically liberal, was a term of great contumely among the ministry students. It went with drinking, tobacco, jewelry, cards, and dancing. ... Liberality paved the road to Ruin.)
But Gary was quiet, and modest, and they could see, if they talked to him, he wasn’t trying to raise a fuss (at least, he didn’t look like he was) ... and some people thought, well, he was just honest. And straightforward. He had integrity.
That’s what Oletha Ludwig thought.
She didn’t really care about The Pledge. (She’d signed, without a second thought. Of course, girls did follow the rules.) But she knew Gary now, from their shared honor, and the Freshman Banquet, and he mentioned the whole hullaballoo to her ... and he was right.
And it was awfully funny, when they had to just drop it—Cantrell and the deans. They finally just let Gary in, when they figured out there was nothing they could do. And they didn’t change the rules, or say anything. They just swept it under the rug (so much for that rule) ... like Gary said they would. He was awfully smart ... and funny. What was really funny was Cantrell’s face—when he saw them together ... Gary and Oletha.
Tell the truth, it was a surprise to everybody—Gary and Oletha. She was so pretty and popular, so much at ease in her standing at this place. And so much fun! She was a sparkplug—she and Talmadge—the way they got everybody to pile into cars and head off to Oklahoma City for pizza. Everybody would just scramble to go along ... with her and Talmadge. Now, they were a pair.
Talmadge Johnson was a handsome young redhead, with a drawling bravado; an accomplished speaker and promising preacher, and quite well known. In fact, he was known to hundreds of students from Oklahoma as the son of an Oklahoma district superintendent. Talmadge was conservative—theologically strict—he believed the rules paved the path to Personal Salvation. But that didn’t mean he didn’t like a bit of fun. For instance, there was the time—this was when Talmadge and Oletha were dating—when the ground near the Student Union was dug up in huge mounds of dirt ... some construction project, and the students snuck out of the dorms at night ... after lights out ... and put up signs with the names of profs and deans on the mounds, like they were graves, with a funny epitaph for each ... it was a riot.
That kind of thing.
As for Hartpence, he wasn’t into that kind of thing. That was partly because he lived in The Barracks, a makeshift dorm in old Quonset huts—they were off-campus, and uncool. (In fact, when Nina first delivered him to Bethany, she took one look at The Barracks and thought about taking her boy back to Kansas—that place was nothing but a slum!) But, tell the truth, it was partly how Gary was. He did have humor, when you got to know him, but it was quiet: witty asides about things going on, things people said, funny ways they acted. As far as pranks ... forget it. If he was in attendance, he’d be off to one side, gangly like he was then, his ears sticking out under his short hair, his bony jaw set, while he stared ... like he didn’t get it. Well, they knew he was smart ... but the girls in the dorm (the best dorm, Oletha’s dorm) had him figured as a geek.
Imagine the surprise, then, when Oletha Ludwig started going out, sophomore year, not with that dreamboat, Talmadge Johnson (who adored her—at least he did last year), but with Gary Hartpence!
Talk about it!
And imagine ... sophomore year, when the guys would be out on the lawn in front of the Student Union, shooting the bull, killing time until dinner, talking and talking, like they did all the time, and there’d be Oletha Ludwig, her skirt arranged on the grass
over her knees (all the girls had to wear skirts), listening to every word Gary said, never breaking in while he talked (like she could, and would, with anyone else), but just watching him, with such interest—no, excitement—like she could see something that no one else could.
She knew he didn’t think he would ever be a minister. Maybe a teacher ... and that was fine. That wasn’t what it was about—not at all. She was looking at the way he could be with her. The way her ease, her graces, complemented him. How he coveted that ease ... though he was so smart. And he was of another order of smart; he showed her a whole new way of looking at things—looking for yourself, asking, and deciding ... about things she’d always accepted ... like she always ate her vegetables at dinner. It was just part of growing up in her home, the tenets of the faith. And now, here he was, asking her about them: Why? ... Gary wanted to know what she thought. It was intoxicating.
And he knew ... it was that ease of hers that drew him, the wonderful way she had of plunging in—on the hockey field, in a group of friends—she didn’t think twice ... it was beautiful to him. God knows, there was no one more acutely aware of Gary’s social unease ... than Gary Hartpence. If the Good Lord had suddenly appeared to him, and asked him what was the one thing ... well, of course, the way Gary was, he’d take it seriously, and ask for Salvation for All Mankind, or something ... but if the Good Lord had snuck up and asked, well, the one thing Gary would have wanted, what he coveted, was to be able to fit in, or even better, to lead, without even thinking, just as a matter of natural grace. That was his lack, his one mortal envy, that ease of belonging, and Oletha had it, in her every move at Bethany, that sense of acceptance, that sense of right without thinking ... and she liked him. It was intoxicating.
And soon he was more at ease, with her friends and their dates, when they’d pile into cars and go off to the city, or to someone’s house off-campus. Once they got to know him, Gary said things that were so funny. He was so quick, the way he’d mimic the profs: he was a wicked mimic. He had natural acting skill, which was why he got a part in that year’s Hamlet. Gary played the Ghost, and Oletha was Ophelia (of course, Dale Tuttle had the lead), and it was a terrific production. (Better than Oklahoma U’s Hamlet that same year, everyone said.) And, of course, everybody knew that Gary was Freshman-of-the-Year smart, and that’s probably why he got elected to the student council, and anyone who was at those meetings knew he was the brightest guy in that room—though the officers sometimes thought he was, you know, off in left field, a rebel ... you could count on Hartpence to question everything. ... But the point was, he was in the swim now, and very determined about that, too. He meant to make an impact on the place. And what with the people he knew from the council, and from the play, and Oletha’s friends, and people who would have liked to be her friends, and, of course, that band of brainy brothers around Prescott Johnson ... well, Gary Hartpence got to be quite well known.
So that was the year, spring of sophomore year, when he stood for election as student council president—he’d be sworn in as a junior, if he won. But it wasn’t automatic—no, not by a long shot, not the way it turned out, in a two-man race ... Gary Hartpence against Talmadge Johnson.
See, Talmadge was a young man of ambition, too, and definite ideas: he meant to arrest the school’s long slide into looseness and liberality. Why, there were students (who called themselves leaders!) who’d sneak into town and go to movies ... and then come back and brag about it! The girls were wanting to wear pants ... and the basketball team wanted to play in shorts! Things at Bethany were rumbling downhill fast. ... Talmadge and his friends smelt hellfire from the valley below.
Of course, Talmadge was greatly admired, and everybody knew him, so that gave him a head start. And then, too, he campaigned on what he called his Strong Christian Character. He didn’t have to draw the contrast directly with Hartpence, who after all, had lapsed from his ministerial studies ... Hartpence, who was a linchpin of the freethinking cabal at Prescott Johnson’s knee ... Hartpence, who (as everybody knew) refused to sign The Pledge. ... Well, the contrast couldn’t have been clearer: this was a battle for Bethany’s soul.
But Hartpence—well, you couldn’t count him out ... or just when you thought you could, you’d find someone else won over. He’d get to people so quietly, you’d never know they’d gone liberal. He’d just get to talking, asking them questions ... why they thought the girls shouldn’t wear pants, on outings, say ... did God make that rule about skirts? Or did the Good Lord simply want His faithful to be modest? Weren’t pants more modest than a skirt for a girl climbing hills ... what did they think?
And pretty soon, you’d see some fellow (or more likely, some girl) start nodding with Hartpence—or they were laughing—and there was a sign. ... He got people fired up, sure enough. And then there were the girls in Oletha’s crowd. She was strong for Gary now; and, of course, everybody knew she used to date Talmadge ... so there was something to think about. And what with everything rolled in like that, it was a very hot election for Bethany, in ’56 ... and neck and neck, near as anyone could figure.
And then, disaster struck ... but not so you’d hear it, in anything other than a whisper. Gary and his crowd (a lot of Prescott’s boys) were in Ned’s Pizza, in Oklahoma City, and somebody saw them ... passing a beer around the table. Well, of course, word got back, right away—they were passing that mug, and they each took a sip ... right out in the open! BEER!
Well! Wasn’t that exactly what Talmadge was talking about?
What did that say about people who called themselves leaders?
BEER!
And it did not matter that Gary insisted he was the one at the table who did not sip the beer. How could he prove a negative? How many people could he tell, anyway? He just would not do it. He was not going to say who did have beer—he would not dignify that kind of slur, at all. ... That was not what this campaign was about!
But, of course, it was.
Talmadge Johnson won the presidency by a handful of votes ... and Hartpence was crushed.
Thing was, Gary won the greater prize. Oletha was disgusted by the unfairness of the election. That’s the same way Gary felt. It wasn’t the result that bothered him so much, he told her, quietly, with sadness in his voice. It was how it happened, and what that said about the place ... about how people were. Of course, she understood. She was coming to understand him, more and more.
It was ’56 that Gary and Oletha started dating steadily, and in those days, that meant seriously. Their classmates were already pairing off to marry, and to move off campus. (At Bethany, that was the only way they could sleep together ... and even among the faithful, that thought did occur.) Junior year, the question occurred to Oletha and Gary: Where was their relationship going?
The difference was, Oletha got more serious. It wasn’t just the pressure of advancing age (though she was twenty now, and a girl had to think of what she would do, if she wasn’t married by the end of college). At the same time, she was getting more serious about herself: What kind of woman did she want to be? Gary made her think about herself: Why did she do those things, why did she believe that, why did she say things like that? ... It wasn’t that he pushed or demanded that she change—not at all. He was sweet to her, so courtly. (Valentine’s Day, he gave her an adorable furry kitty, a stuffed animal—she kept it for years.) It was just that she saw herself, as if for the first time, with the help of his eyes. All those little tricks, the ruses she’d learned as a girl ... what were they for? She didn’t like playing those games. She didn’t want to be that way. ...
She wanted to be straightforward, and honest—as honest as Gary. Somehow, other boys she’d dated now seemed ... just full of hot air. She’d never be as smart as Gary. She used to say that. (Her girlfriends would stare at her cockeyed. What was she talking about? Oletha always got straight A’s!) But she could think for herself. Had to think for herself. And had to make a difference in the world. That was the other thing. She wasn’t just go
ing to stare into herself, checking her soul, every day, every hour, for its purity, its standing on the scale of salvation. (That’s what half the stupid chapels were about, and the big revival meetings, with President Talmadge there on stage, whipping up the believers—it almost made her laugh.)
No, there was a great and needy world outside the gates of Bethany ... and outside the self. Gary felt it—that was the year he went to Oklahoma City, to the arena, to hear Eisenhower speak. Gary always had his eye on the wider world (he was already talking about graduate schools, the best schools, in big cities—he would get there, too), though he’d hardly been anywhere. It was Oletha who’d traveled, with her dad, in the summers. She’d been to New York! Her father had gone to Europe! But she knew (and it wasn’t just her who said this—Gary always said ...) that their church was born as a movement, a drive to remake the world. What happened to that? They lost track of that. Even her dad said so. He gave a speech about the role of the church college, and he told them all, they’d lost the way ... the orphans’ homes, the street services, the missions to the jails ... what happened to them? We have lost our sense of social vision. That’s what her dad said, her junior year.
That was the year ... she just knew. It wasn’t just dates anymore. They were together, all the time, whenever they could be. They’d eat together in the dining hall, and sit in the student lounge, or study together, or baby-sit at Prescott’s. And weekends, they’d double-date, find someone with a car, or Oletha would check out of the dorm for the weekend, and stay with a friend who had a place off-campus, and then, Gary could come, and they didn’t have to worry so much about the rules ... And they could kiss, and hold each other, and have the time. And they could talk. Lord, how they could talk—all day, all night—about what they could do, if they were off on their own ... together.
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