Free Black Sunday by Thomas Harris Page B

don't need no mama's boys no way," he says.
    Michael moves very deliberately in the dressing room, leaving his equipment in a neat pile on the bench with his locker key on top. He feels only a dull heaviness inside, no surface anger.
    Riding home in the Kaiser, he listens to a torrent of abuse. He replies that, yes, he understands how he has embarrassed his parents, that he should have thought of others. He nods solemnly when reminded that he must save his hands for the piano.
    July 18, 1948:
    Michael Lander is sitting on the back porch of his home, a mean parsonage beside the Baptist church in Willett. He is fixing a lawn mower. He makes a little money fixing lawn mowers and small appliances. Looking through the screen, he can see his father lying on a bed, his hands behind his head, listening to the radio. When he thinks of his father, Michael sees his father's white, inept hands, the ring from Cumberland-Macon Divinity School loose behind the knuckle of his ring finger. In the South, as in many other places, the church is an institution of, by, and for women. The men tolerate it for the sake of family peace. The men of the community have no respect for the Reverend Lander because he could never make a crop, could never do anything practical. His sermons are dull and rambling, composed while the choir is singing the offertory hymn. The Reverend Lander spends much of his time writing letters to a girl he knew in high school. He never mails the letters, but locks them in a tin box in his office. The combination padlock is childishly simple. Michael has read the letters for years. For laughs.
    Puberty has done a great deal for Michael Lander. At fifteen he is tall and lean. He has, by considerable effort, learned to do convincingly mediocre school-work. Against all odds, he has developed what appears to be an affable personality. He knows the joke about the bald-headed parrot, and he tells it well.
    A freckle-faced girl two years older has helped Michael discover that he is a man. This is a tremendous relief to him after years of being told that he is a queer, with no evidence to judge himself either way.
    But in the blossoming of Michael Lander, part of him has stood off to the side, cold and watchful. It is the part of him that recognized the ignorance of the classroom, that constantly replays little vignettes of grade school making the new face wince, that flashes the picture of the unlovely little scholar in front of him in moments of stress, and can open under him a dread void when his new image is threatened.
    The little scholar stands at the head of a legion of hate and he knows the answer every time, and his creed is God Damn You All. At fifteen Lander functions very well. A trained observer might notice a few things about him that hint at his feelings, but these in themselves are not suspicious. He cannot bear personal competition. He has never experienced the gradients of controlled aggression that allow most of us to survive. He cannot even endure board games, he can never gamble. Lander understands limited aggression objectively, but he cannot take part in it. Emotionally, for him there is no middle ground between a pleasant, uncompetitive atmosphere and total war to the death with the corpse defiled and burned. So he has no outlet. And he has swallowed his poison longer than most could have done.
    Though he tells himself that he hates the church, Michael prays often during the day. He is convinced that assuming certain positions expedites his prayers. Touching his forehead to his knee is one of the most effective ones. When it is necessary for him to do this in public places, he must think of a ruse to keep it from being noticeable. Dropping something beneath his chair and bending to get it is a useful device. Prayers delivered in thresholds or while touching a door lock are also more effective. He prays often for persons who appear in the quick flashes of memory that sear him many times a day. Without willing it,