My adjustment to high school life first unfolded under the command of Father Bly, who presided from an elevated desk with a dog-eared Bible on it, as he had since the 1960s, teaching the Old Testament. He had reluctantly consented to the mixing of girls and boys a few years earlier, but had succeeded in refusing to allow his room to be renovated, so we sat in those fifties-style seats with the desk built into them, bolted on to the floor. With a sort of terrified reverence, we held still as Father Bly expounded on the wisdom of the ages, beginning with Genesis. As he lectured, he rarely budged from the stool behind his raised desk; rumor had it that with an imperceptible movement he could send that Bible flying into the forehead of any student caught sleeping.
Occasionally he would lighten things up by passing out copies from what must have been a mountainous library of National Geographic back issues, so we could look at pictures of the Holy Land or something else he considered interesting. Once, he distributed an issue that contained satellite photos of subdivisions and golf courses being built in the deserts of Arizona, made possible by irrigation schemes that diverted water from the Colorado River. You could see the giant green squares in the satellite imagery, surrounded by barren sand and mountains. There are whole towns in Mexico, he explained, where the riverbed now runs dry because the water is drained upstream in the American Southwest. Next came the moral of the story:
“This weekend, you will probably go to the University Park Mall, and you may run into some atheists,” he pronounced, lingering on the consonants at the end of the word, hissing a little, atheisssttsss, without losing his aloof posture and hundred-yard stare.
“These atheists will tell you, ‘There is no God, there is no heaven, and there is no hell.’ And how will you answer them? You will tell them, of course there is a God, and a heaven and a hell. There must be a hell. Because where else would you put the man who built this golf course!”
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IN GOVERNMENT CLASS, WE WERE shown the 1989 film Romero, in which Raul Julia plays the Salvadoran bishop assassinated in 1980 by right-wing paramilitary after challenging the ruling elites in El Salvador. Shocked that this could have happened within living memory with what looked like American complicity, I began paying more attention to human rights. The school had a small chapter of Amnesty International, which raised a few hundred dollars a year and conducted letter-writing campaigns. I joined and eventually became president of the six-or-so-strong group. Here came an early lesson in the realities of organizing—it was nearly impossible to get people to volunteer to help write letters to political prisoners at the little card table I put up outside the lunch hall, but we got hundreds to come to the Battle of the Bands organized to raise money for the club.
On balance, the school faculty was far from a liberal bunch. A monument to aborted fetuses on school grounds reminded us all that pro-life politics was an article of faith, and many teachers were skeptical of the perceived bleeding-heart tendencies of their more social-justice-oriented colleagues. Mr. Dubois, who taught gym and drafting, comes to mind. He spoke with a thick southern Indiana drawl, combed what remained of his white hair back, and usually called gym class to order by barking, “LAAAAAHN UP, YOU IDIOTS.” Or occasionally, for variety, “LAAAAHN UP, YOU MORONS.” Over time, I would come to understand that this was a way of showing affection. But you can see how, at least early on, this could be a little intimidating—especially since gym class was not my scene. It would be a good ten years or so before I experienced any real level of physical fitness, so the primary objective was to survive without embarrassment. I could handle myself in touch football just by throwing my weight around, because half my classmates had not yet caught up to my then-imposing five feet eight. But basketball was more nuanced and less forgiving.
Once, after I somehow made a basket, Mr. Dubois pulled me aside at dismissal and offered something that might be described as encouragement. “Butt-man,” he began, “I see a lot of poh-tential in you. Keep working at it.”
But some weeks later, he stopped to talk to me with something else on his mind: he’d heard I was getting mixed up in Amnesty International. Mr. Dubois was not fond of “Ay-rabs,” so I could see where this was going. I stiffened, and told him that I was, that I was running our chapter now, and that I felt that was consistent with the values we were being taught in theology class. There must have been a little more force in my voice than either of us had expected, because he responded with a respectful nod followed by a cheerful snort: “Well, to each his own, I guess.” He smiled and returned his gaze to his clipboard as he proceeded toward a new victim on the gym floor, a sophomore whom he had decided for some reason to nickname “Recruit.”
By high school I had traded my oversized, thick glasses for contact lenses, but my eyesight was getting worse every year, smothering my childhood aspiration of becoming an astronaut or at least a pilot. But in the meantime I had begun to wonder what it would be like to be involved in public service directly, instead of reading or watching movies about it. Could political action be a calling, not just the stuff of dinner table talk?
I got onto every mailing list I could, and from every political persuasion, from the local Republican Party to the Democratic Socialists of America. I wanted to find out how people went about being involved in ways more impactful than lonely letter-writing campaigns. And I decided to try my hand at leadership in student government, first losing an election for student body treasurer but then winning one for senior class president. In an assembly in the dining hall, the five or so candidates for class president gave our short speeches, using a closed-top trash can as a kind of makeshift podium, and once the scraps of paper got counted up, I had won my first election.
I kept up top grades, and by senior year a flow of mailed college recruiting brochures accumulated into an avalanche on our dining room table. Sifting through them, I tried to picture a future as a college student. There was something distant and even intimidating about the imagery—confident, smiling, diverse students in sweatshirts chatting and laughing in small groups on tidy quadrangles, or walking cheerily with their backpacks through autumn foliage on slightly different variations of the universal college campus. It was hard to picture myself at ease like these students; I wasn’t even at ease in the halls of my own high school, even as a class president. But the letters and brochures made it seem like the colleges were happy to have me. I applied to about ten of them, hoping above all for a shot at Harvard. The odds seemed long—I’d heard of even valedictorians from Saint Joe being turned away—but I had to make the attempt.
When I got home one day and saw a letter from Harvard on the mail table, I didn’t get my hopes up too much. It was not a thick envelope. I feigned nonchalance, setting my backpack down before heading back to pick up the letter that might hold a key to my future, while my parents kept a discreet but unconvincing distance in the living room. I usually open letters with my finger, but this one deserved a letter opener. Pulling out the page of watermarked paper, I read the opening line over and over again: “I am delighted to inform you . . .”
Slowly, I allowed myself to believe the letter from this dean of admissions, and by the time I studied the bottom, with a little “Hope you will join us” written in ballpoint pen near the signature, it felt like the establishment had thrown its doors open and beckoned me inside.
All I had to do was leave South Bend.
I HAD NEVER BEEN TO BOSTON, but I wound up going twice during that last semester of high school. The first was a planned college visit after I got admitted, sleeping on the floor of a freshman dorm and learning what to expect from the campus, at least physically. The second was an all-expense-paid trip that came as even more of a surprise than the admission to Harvard.