Billy swerved to the other side of the road to avoid the blue car at a
hair's breadth, but as it turned he looked up impudently to behold the
strange girl with the flour on her face and the green baseball bats in
her ears smiling up into the face of Mark Carter, who was driving.
Billy nearly fell off his wheel and under the car, but recovered his
balance in time to swerve out of the way without apparently having been
observed by either Mark or the lady, and shot like a streak down the
road. Beyond the church he drew a wide curve and turned in at the
graveyard, casting a quick furtive eye toward the parsonage, where he
was glad not to discover even the flutter of a garment to show that
Lynn Severn was about. That guy was there, but Miss Lynn was not
chasing him. That was as it should be. He breathed a sigh from his
heavy heart and stole sadly, back to the old mossy stone where so many
of his life problems had been thought out. Still, that guy was
there! He had the advantage! And Mark and that lady! Bah! He sat
down to meditate on Judas and his sins. It seemed that life was just
about as disappointing as it could be! His rough young hand leaned hard
against the grimy old stone till the half worn lettering hurt his flesh
and he shifted his position and lifted his hand. There on the palm were
the quaint old letters, imprinted in the flesh, "Blessed are the dead--
" Gosh yes! Weren't they? Judas had been right after all. "Aw
Gee!" he said aloud, "Whatta fool I bin!" He glanced down at the stone
as he rubbed the imprint from the fleshy part of his hand. The rest of
the text caught his eye. "Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord!"
There was a catch in that of course. It wasn't blessed if you didn't
die in the Lord. "In the Lord" meant that you didn't do anything
Judas-like. He understood. The people who didn't die in the Lord
weren't blessed. They didn't go to heaven, whatever heaven was. They
went to hell. Heaven had never seemed very attractive to Billy
when he thought of it casually, and he had taken it generally for
granted that he being a boy was naturally destined for the other place.
In fact until he knew Lynn Severn he had always told himself calmly
that he expected to go to hell sometime, it had seemed the manly
thing to do. Most men to his mind were preparing for hell. It seemed
the masculine place of final destiny, Heaven was for women. He had
ventured some of this philosophy on his aunt once in a particularly
strenuous time when she had told him that he couldn't expect the reward
of the righteous if he continued in his present ways, but she had been
so horrified, and wept so long and bitterly that he hadn't ever had the
nerve to try it again. And since Marilyn Severn had been his teacher he
had known days when he would almost be willing to go to heaven--for her
sake. He had also suspected, at times, that Mr. Severn was fully as
much of a man as Mark Carter, although Mark was his own, and if
Mark decided to go to hell Billy felt there could be no other destiny
for himself.