Free The Writing on the Wall: A Novel by W. D. Wetherell

contempt he was too free in expressing, his carelessness toward life. He knew his future was bright, that his brains would carry him far from these hills, but for the time being he seemed in no hurry. Except for his weakness for sarcasm, he seemed perfectly content to be the smartest, handsomest boy for a hundred miles around.
    Peter, once Lawrence and I raised our arms and yelled “Present!”, lectured while pacing back and forth in front of the chalk board, rubbing his hand across his forehead like he was polishing off his thoughts before releasing them. He wrote on the board so vigorously the chalk was always snapping in his hand and it was my job to collect the pieces after class and line them up again in the tray.
    As I said, he talked to us as equals, though this was more for Lawrence’s sake than mine. I had to struggle to understand, I was so far behind. But I enjoyed having to struggle. All my life I had been surrounded by people who wanted to make life as small as they possibly could and now for the first time I was with a man trying to make life as large as it could be made. Often in the middle of his talk he would go to the window and point outside, showing us that this is where the world of ideas was, not here in this stuffy classroom. The more excited he grew about his subject, the softer his voice became—Lawrence and I were always leaning forward to hear.
    What he enjoyed talking about most was American literature. This was not some dead mummified thing in a textbook, he told us, it had not been buried with Washington Irving or Fenimore Cooper, but was going on right now out that window—why, it was coming into maturity as we spoke, entering the golden age everyone had been awaiting for so long. Edward Arlington Robinson, Edith Wharton, Sherwood Anderson, Robert Frost who was writing about these hills, even Booth Tarkington who should not be ignored. We should pay very careful attention to every word they wrote.
    He told us the best thing about American authors was their faith in progress and their believing that America was the best chance mankind ever had for achieving that progress, not just in material things but in basic human values like honor, respect, tolerance and mercy. American writers believed that men, even simple men, could be trusted to set things right in time. That had always been the American wager, he said, and if writers were sometimes disillusioned, it was only because reality had not yet caught up with the dream.
    He got excited, rubbed his forehead, rumpled his hair, moved to the window and pointed outside.
    “Right now, understand? Out there, out across the country, men and women not much older than you are creating the books that teachers will tell their students about in a hundred years time.”
    Listening to his passion, it was impossible not to believe that these authors and poets were writing right outside on the high school’s lawn. I had never heard anyone talk like this and while I always felt ignorant and naïve and very much behind, I felt this less so as the weeks went on. “He who believes in the potential of life must also believe in its realization and be predisposed to work for it,” Peter told us. I wrote that down on my tablet and all the way to the train station stared down at it and by the time I got there understood.
    He went out of his way to recommend books to us. He told me about Celia Thaxter who wrote beautifully about living on an island off the coast and then recommended Mary Austin who wrote about her early life in the Western desert land and her later years working at a settlement house in the New York slums. The Land of Little Rain the first one was called and No. 26 Jane Street was the name of the second. The library did not have either, but when I came to school that Monday there they were gift wrapped on my desk and Peter, trying hard not to grin, pretended he had no idea where they came from.
    Peter never said very much about himself, not in