Nature's Gift

CHAPTER 1

In the Beginning

Sol paced up and down the waiting room that was painted grey and contained the usual mundane furniture so prevalent in hospitals. Miriam had been inside the delivery room for what seemed to be forever. According to his watch, her water had broken at 3 a.m., and they had arrived at 8.30 a.m. when the contractions had come at intervals of nine minutes. Now it was quarter to four, and still there was no news. She must be suffering terribly, and he knew that although she was a real soldier, she was not that strong physically.

Several minutes later, the physician appeared to tell Sol that he had a son and both the baby and the mother were fine and that Sol could see both of them as soon as they emerged from the recovery room in another half an hour. For most women and the majority of men, there is no greater moment than the birth of a child, except perhaps their own birth, which of course they have no memory of.

‘How are you?’ asked Sol.

‘It was tough, but we have a beautiful son, so it was all worth it. Look at him, isn’t he just something?’ she replied, although she felt totally exhausted.

‘How much did he weigh? He seems so large.’

‘Nearly 9 pounds.’

‘What would you like to call him now that you’ve seen him?’

‘I think we should stick with the name we picked,’ she said with love in her voice and a smile on her face.

From the moment he saw his firstborn, Sol’s love was total and beyond words. Welcome to the world, Marcus Joshua Fein, just born in a small town in Idaho. This wouldn’t have been totally unusual except that the baby’s father, Solomon Abraham Fein, was both Jewish and a farmer. The chance of having a father who was a Jew and a farmer in Idaho was about the same as the occurrence of three eyed toads. But then Marcus was a rarity. Rarities are the spice of life, and they enrich our lives, whether they are the eye color and face of Elizabeth Taylor, a symphony by Beethoven, the Einstein equation, the Canadian Rockies, the white whale of Moby-Dick, or a single white poppy in a field of golden ones. Like Mark’s father, his mother, Miriam (née Levitsky), was originally from Chicago.

At birth, Mark was long and thin. Based on his vast experience, the obstetrician that delivered Mark thought that the baby weighed around 7 pounds 3 ounces. When the nurse wrote 8 pounds 15 ounces, the doctor told her to reweigh the baby, but she reported back with the same figure. Later, the doctor went to the nursery where the newborns were kept when not with their mothers, and put the baby on the scales there. Again the scale read almost 9 pounds. Obviously, the baby was particularly dense. The doctor wondered, had this baby somehow swallowed a piece of lead or iron? The infant already had dark hair, and Mark remained a brunette throughout his life. He was well formed, and his parents were overjoyed because a previous pregnancy had spontaneously aborted. From the moment that Sol first held Mark, he knew that his son had been born with the great strength that characterized Sol and some of the members of Sol’s family, at least back to his grandfather’s generation. The Brit Mila, the ceremony of circumcision, took place in Boise and his parents’ families flew in from Chicago for the ceremony.

Mark began standing up very early and walking at 11 months. From the second he began running, he ran like an older child rather than a toddler, and his parents were hard-pressed to keep up with him.

After giving birth, Miriam felt fine but then began to feel weak. When this continued, Sol took her to various doctors until a definite diagnosis was made. Miriam had uterine cancer. In the English language, cancer is about the worst word in the dictionary. It sent chills through Sol’s entire body, especially when it turned out that it had spread throughout her body and uterine removal was no longer an option. Even chemotherapy would not help. Sol felt broken. Miriam maintained a facade and poured all her love on her beautiful infant son. She tried to make up for a lifetime in the three years that remained. As she became too weak for household chores, Miriam and Sol engaged a housekeeper.

Mark was too young to be aware of his mother’s failing health, and it was a shock to him when she passed away shortly after his third birthday.

‘Dad, what will we do without Mom?’ said Mark in a voice choked with tears after the funeral.

‘I don’t know, but we’ll just have to go on since there is no other choice. We will always remember her and try to behave as she would have wished.’

Mark’s father felt crushed. Maybe he should have told Mark that his mother was in heaven to comfort the child, but he just couldn’t bring himself to impart such a myth. He and Miriam had been together since their college days, and she was the first and only woman that he had loved romantically.

The full-time housekeeper somewhat served as a substitute mother for Mark while Sol worked on the farm. For the first two months Mark felt a great sadness at the loss of his mother and often woke up at night screaming for her.

Little children accept reality far more readily than their adult counterparts, and this flexibility meant that Mark soon adjusted to Mrs Abbott, who was a widow and had two grown sons. One of her sons was in the Marines, the other at Idaho State University. She spoiled Mark even more than she had her own. For her, Mark was like a grandson of which, as yet, she hadn’t been blessed since her two sons were still single. Anyway, grandchildren aren’t like one’s own children. A grandparent is older, and the second round is so much sweeter because one is one step removed from the continual fear that something that is beyond one’s control might happen to one’s offspring. All parents have been children themselves and are frightfully aware of just what kind of trouble their kids can get into. After cooking and serving dinner, Clara Abbott went home to a night of reading and television.

During the day from nine to twelve, Mark was enrolled in a nursery school in town. There were only eleven other kids because most youngsters were kept at home, and those in the school mostly had mothers who worked in town. The contact with other kids was a real treat for Mark, and he wouldn’t have objected to staying the entire day as some of the others did.

Every night after Miriam’s death, Sol sat with Mark in the family room and played and talked with him, using a rather richer vocabulary than one might hear on the radio or TV. He also read children’s stories to Mark while pointing out the different letters and words. At first Mark only pretended to read since he already knew most of the stories by heart. At around four and a half, Mark began to take a real interest in what was written and shortly thereafter began to read by himself, continuously asking Sol about this word or that. Sol also played number games with Mark and thus taught him to add and subtract and convert verbal problems into abstract numbers. From his own experience in the Chicago school system, Sol felt that it was this inability that made Americans generally so bad at math.

At 5, Mark learned checkers and the next year graduated to chess, which he and his father played at least one night a week. Between dinner and bedtime there was usually classical music in the background. Sol and Mark didn’t watch any TV except on the weekends when Mark was older. Sol infused the evenings with carefully-thought-out contents that would further Mark’s intellectual development in many directions. All this was Sol’s understanding of a good Jewish education, and in this he wasn’t far wrong, though he was somewhat out of touch with the addiction of modern kids to TV.

From the age of 4, Mark was given chores that Sol thought he could handle and that would both build his body and teach him many practical things. Without siblings, Mark was quite alone without realizing it. During the Jewish High Holy Days and sometimes around Christmas, which usually was close to the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, Sol took Mark to Chicago to be with their relatives. Sol had a brother and sister living there, and his father was still alive and living with his daughter. Miriam’s father was also still alive but in failing health. The loss of his daughter had been the final blow in a life filled with the death of all his relatives during the Holocaust and then that of his wife shortly after Miriam married Sol.

Both of Sol’s siblings had several children, and a couple of them were around Mark’s age. For Mark, Chicago was pure heaven and also educational as he had to learn not to be the sole focus of attention. Surprisingly, he was not really spoiled in spite of all the attention he received on the farm. Apparently, this was just an innate part of his personality. The adults realized almost immediately that Mark was a lot stronger and more physical than his cousins, and Sol told Mark not to play too rough with them. He explained that, after all, they were just city kids while Mark was used to hard work on the farm. This little white lie satisfied Mark, and he was careful not to hurt his cousins when they roughhoused, especially Rachel, whom he adored.

Sol had always been a big baseball fan even though his team, the Chicago White Sox, meant that most seasons he had to suffer through a very long summer. When Mark was 4, Sol began playing catch with Mark, showing him how to throw and how to hit. Sol was amazed at the hand-eye coordination that his son showed. He bought him a batting tee and some plastic balls, and Mark practiced hitting them against the barn wall. Understanding that Mark was no ordinary kid, Sol paved a small area near the house and put up a basketball hoop at 6 ½ feet and bought Mark a small kid’s basketball. Later the hoop was raised to 8 feet and then, when Mark was 10, it was raised to the standard height of 10 feet. Mark practiced baseball with his father for an hour every afternoon before dinner, which was invariably at six. When Mark got tired of reading books, he spent a lot of time shooting hoops.

In town there was a sports store, and the owner was an ex-minor-league baseball player. Sol took Mark to the store for baseball instruction.

‘Hello, I’m Sol Fein, and this is my son, Mark. I would like you to give him some lessons on the basics of the game.’

‘Well, lessons cost $15 for half an hour,’ replied Roger Jones. All these farmers thought their kid was the next Mickey Mantle. This kid looked tall and well built but a bit on the skinny side. ‘Come over to the batting cage, and I’ll set up a batting tee and see how you swing. How old are you, son?’

‘I’m 6 years old. My dad has shown me how to hit from a tee.’

Another budding star. A bit young to swing a bat properly. Roger picked a girl’s bat and set up the tee.

‘Take a few tries at the balls and we’ll see how you do.’

Mark began hitting ball after ball with great force and without missing a single swing.

‘That’s pretty good, but try to swing the bat with a more level swing.’

‘The bat seems a bit light, my bat at home is much heavier,’ commented Mark, who was really enjoying this and the accompanying male attention.

‘Well, pick one that seems right, but I don’t like youngsters swinging bats that are too heavy.’

With the heavier bat, Mark imitated the swing that Roger had demonstrated, and the balls began flying off the bat like rockets.

The kid was much stronger than he looked, but some of these farm boys were quite developed because they worked around the farm rather than looked at TV all day long. Roger had a pitching machine that was set for kids of around ten, and on a whim he decided to see what Mark could do against balls that were in motion. He set the machine at the slowest speed and told Mark to try to make contact and not to worry if he missed some. After several pitches, Mark began hitting every ball. Unlike most kids, he wasn’t fouling off many pitches but rather making solid contact.

‘That’s really good, son. Do you think that you could hit the balls if they came a bit faster?’

‘I don’t know, but I’d like to try.’

This kid was hitting better than most 10-year-olds. But Mark’s modesty impressed Roger. Usually when kids managed to hit a few good balls, they thought they were ready for the major leagues.

Roger set the machine at medium speed. Mark continued to hit almost every ball without slowing his swing, which most kids did when the pitches were too fast for them. Only when Roger put the machine at full speed did Mark begin to miss a few balls, but he never chickened out by slowing his swing in order to make some contact.

‘You’re right, Mr Fein, your child has real potential. It’s hard to believe that he is only 6. The bat he chose is for 9- and 10-year-olds. But even with that, he was able to get it around at the higher speeds.’

‘I’m pleased that you think Mark has some potential. It seemed to me he did, but I had no way of judging. If you’re willing, I’d like to arrange several lessons a week and hope you will also teach him to throw and field correctly.’

‘That could get pretty expensive. Anyway, once a week should be enough because improvement depends on a kid’s willingness to practice what he’s learned. Otherwise, the value of a lesson is mostly wasted.’

Roger Jones began giving Mark a lesson every Saturday morning. It was hard to tell who enjoyed these lessons more because Roger had never seen any child with more athletic ability. Once Mark was shown a technique, he had it. Many great athletes have the ability to translate something they have seen into the physical act. Sometimes he took Mark to a local field and held a practice on throwing and fielding. He encouraged Sol to plant a section of good lawn behind the house where Sol and Mark could practice. Being rather starved for male companionship and rather lonely, Mark loved the sessions with Roger Jones. Anyway, Mark just loved playing games with balls in the way that fish love water. People tend to like things that they are naturally good at, and in this Mark was no exception.

Roger’s idea was to prepare Mark for Little League baseball, which he could start with other little kids when he would be 7 or 8. Although the first couple of years would only be hitting from a batting tee and later slow pitch, this would be good for Mark because it would introduce him to organized sports and help him perfect his basic skills.

Kindergarten was a lot of fun for Mark. The teacher, Mrs Howell, taught them the alphabet and told them stories. Since Mark already knew how to read, he was allowed to read stories that fit his age. There was also painting and playing various games in the school yard. It was Mark’s first real exposure to girls, and he found them very interesting. Of course, they were much more mature than the boys. And also they talked about different things, and their language skills were much better. Being more developed than the other boys, both physically and mentally, Mark fit right in with both sexes even though some of the topics the girls discussed were beyond him. All the kids talked a lot about shows they had seen on TV, and Mark was totally at a loss about these because this wasn’t part of his daily routine. Occasionally, he and Sol watched some sporting event on Saturday or Sunday afternoons, but that was it. The other kids were just starting to read, so they didn’t know anything about the books that Mark had finished, such as Black Beauty and The Black Stallion.

Still, he got on well with the other kids once the pecking order was established. After a few tussles, it became clear that he was the toughest of the boys, and no one messed with him. From talks with Sol at home, he knew he must protect the weaker kids and particularly the girls from the boys, and he often laid down the law when he saw someone bullying someone else.

With the first grade about to commence, a problem arose. Mark’s teacher and the school wanted to put Mark directly into the second grade. Sol wouldn’t hear of it because it meant that Mark would be separated from boys his own age and the girls would always be older than he. Lacking Sol’s permission, the school was forced to place Mark in the first grade, but this caused even more problems. Some of the kids could read a bit while others were just learning how to pronounce a written word. Mark was already able to read quite well, so they put him into the cloakroom with a book during reading lessons. The same was true for arithmetic. Mark could already add and subtract, so they gave him the arithmetic book from the second grade but did not remove him from the class. He sat there and worked on his book alone with occasional guidance from his teacher, Miss Dearing. Some of the kids thought he was teacher’s pet and were jealous.

When Mark was in the second grade, he tried Little League. His father would drop him off at the field and head back to the farm. When the kids practiced, all was fine, and Mark was a lot better than the others. However, when there were games, he was rarely put into the lineup. Kids whose fathers were present always got to play. Used to being obedient, Mark sat quietly on the bench. He could feel that some of the fathers had a bit of hostility towards him, but he had no idea what might be the reason. Actually, it aggravated some of the fathers that Mark was so much more talented than their sons, and others were anti-Semitic, or both.

Near the season’s end, Mark just wanted to quit. Sol was taken by surprise because it was obvious that his son was an athletically gifted child. Slowly he was able to pry it out of Mark that Mark almost never got to play but didn’t understand what was wrong. Sol went to the last game of the season but kept out of sight. It was obvious that the boys on the field were not nearly as good as Mark. Sol thought Mark was too young to understand what was behind his being left out. With the tremendous emphasis on sports in America, almost every parent had hopes that his kid would become a star and perhaps receive a scholarship to college, whose cost had become prohibitive for so many. Also, Sol had grown up in Chicago, and anti-Semitism wasn’t exactly new to him.

After talking to Roger Jones, Sol found a spot for Mark for the following season on a team from an even smaller, nearby town that hardly had enough kids of the right age to field a team. During the next three years, Mark starred for that team and played pitcher, infield, and sometimes outfield. Roger occasionally came to watch him and coach him. Mark led the league in hitting average, home runs, and extra-base hits and was chosen to the all-league team. Eventually there were not enough kids to even field a team, and the group was disbanded. Mark had no desire to return to his original team and turned his attention to basketball.

School remained very easy, and Mark’s real education was received at home. His father supplied him with an endless stream of books that became increasingly more sophisticated as he got older. Many of the nighttime sessions with his father were about what he had read, its factual content, what morals could be derived, what the correct way to act is and whether the story seemed reasonable or not. Since Sol had majored in mathematics and physics at the University of Chicago, they often discussed how situations could be solved by using numbers. Arithmetic computation was shown to be only a means to get an answer but nothing else.

Mark looked up to Sol with total admiration. Once they had been in a store in town that sold farming supplies, and Mark had wandered off to the back of the store to look at the tools there. One of the town toughs, a big guy in his twenties, came up to him and started pushing him around and calling him a Jew-boy and kike. Mark was only 9 and very scared and kept backing away from him. Suddenly Sol appeared around the corner of an island of shelves and saw what was going on. The tough turned to Sol, but any defense was useless. With two punches, Sol knocked him out and then picked him up by his belt and collar and walked to the front of the store and threw him out like a sack of garbage. After that, no one ever bothered Mark again when he was little.

Mark was 11 when his paternal grandfather died. Even though there was a lot of distance between Chicago and Idaho, Mark loved his grandfather, Jacob, very deeply. Whenever Mark and Jacob were together, Jacob poured his love on his grandson, who reminded him of his brother Joseph, who had been killed by the Germans during the Holocaust. Mark’s paternal grandmother had always spoiled Mark without limit since he was an only child, but she had died a year and a half after his mother. He had never known his maternal grandmother, who had died before he was born, and he hardly remembered his maternal grandfather, who died when he was not yet 7.

The summers required intensive effort on the farm, and Sol usually sent Mark to stay with his relatives in Chicago for several weeks during school vacation. While this couldn’t replace the lack of brothers and sisters, it was the best that Sol could do. Among Jews, family is particularly important, and only Italians and Chinese perhaps surpass them in this regard. Those visits taught Mark about the give and take that is so critical to family unity. Those times also exposed him to urban life, which was so different from his life on the farm. The subjects discussed at dinner in Chicago were politics, family friends, and the usual trivial matters, and all these were quite different from the table fare in Idaho, which centered on the farm, books, and sports.

Among his cousins, only Rachel had an interest in sports, and Mark played all kinds of games with her that they invented by themselves. She was much stronger than any of the girls he had encountered at school even though she was a year younger than they. Every Friday night, most of the family gathered for the lighting of the Sabbath candles and the dinner that followed. In Idaho, Sol also lit candles every Friday evening, but it was so much more exciting when the whole family was gathered. His aunts and uncles often took the kids to restaurants and even for chocolate sundaes, neither of which Mark had experienced at home.

In junior high, Mark went out for the baseball team as a seventh grader. He easily made the team and played first string every season. There were still some parents that tried to push the coach to let their kids play, but Mr Simpson, the coach, was a math teacher and hated aggressive parents who often came to try to improve their children’s grade even though there was no basis whatsoever for doing so. As a coach, he played kids on the basis of their ability, and Mark had the full complement. From his time with Roger Jones, Mark’s fundamentals were excellent. Mr Simpson tried him at various positions and also let him pitch as a ninth grader. During Mark’s last two years on the team, he led the league in almost every category.

When Mark reached high school, he decided to try football, which was a fall sport and would still allow him to play baseball in the spring. Mark had never played football but had watched it on television. At his high school, football was the main sport. About twenty sophomores reported to try out for the team, which began practice in August since the season began in mid-September.

The first order of business was to measure everyone, and the coach looked at Mark as he went to the scales. A nicely built kid, but a bit skinny. Maybe 145 or 150. Mark tipped the scales at 172 pounds, and the coach came over to check. Well, he was a lot heavier than he looked and obviously would keep growing to become taller than his 5-foot-10-inch height. Then everyone was required to run time trials. The entire team was timed for their speed in a 40-yard dash. Mark timed the fastest by far. The coach was surprised. This kid had pro speed. To make sure, the coach pretended that the two fastest would compete for the team championship. The next fastest time had been by a junior who was a defensive back. This time the coach had the two of them run a 60-yard dash to eliminate the possibility that one of them might jump the gun at the start. Mark won by about 6 yards. This kid obviously had potential.

The entire team was taken in groups to a local gym. Most of the juniors and seniors lifted weights regularly, both to increase their strength and to bulk up. This is necessary for football players. Mark was sent with an assistant coach and the other sophomores. First the coach had them warm up with fairly light weights and then tested them to see what the present limits of their strength were. Some would need to work out with lighter weights and lots of reps to reduce useless fat while others would need to bulk up by lifting heavier weights that would increase muscle mass. The coach was amazed that Mark was so strong for his size and capable of easily lifting weights that were beyond the ability of even the biggest lineman. He reported what had happened to the head coach, and they decided to make Mark into a running back.

All three coaches gave Mark more attention than the other players, and this didn’t sit well with them. Soon Mark was practicing with the first string. This meant that Steve Guest, who was a senior and had played the position the previous year, was demoted to second string. This really angered Steve.

Practice with pads began, and that meant contact. Mark quickly learned the basic techniques of the halfback position. It was hard to tackle him because he was not only fast but had very quick reflexes and could change direction in an instant. Also, hitting him often hurt the tackler; it was like grabbing a piece of granite. Once after being tackled, Mark felt a sharp elbow dig into his ribs after the play was blown dead. He looked at the offending lineman and saw a slight grin, indicating that the elbow was no accident. Several plays later, Mark again had the ball and was running towards the same lineman. Mark feinted as if he would cut right but then ran directly at the lineman and hit him head-on. The lineman was badly shaken up and got up very slowly. He’d gotten the message.

Steve Guest was able to incite several of his teammates on the basis of Mark being the coach’s pet, and a dirty Jew to boot. One afternoon after practice, everyone had left the locker room except for Mark, Steve, and three of Steve’s senior classmates. It didn’t need much to spark violence, and Steve began by calling Mark a dirty Yid and saying that Mark should quit kissing the coach’s ass or his big nose would turn brown. The others crowded around, and a mob formed spontaneously. When Mark told Steve that he was just too slow and too dumb an asshole to fill the halfback position, all of them attacked him. Mark managed to land a pretty good blow to Steve’s face, but then they were upon him. The hate in their eyes stunned Mark, who hardly knew any of them.

Mark was cornered with lockers behind him, and their rush took him to the ground. As he went down, he managed to hit one of them with his elbow, which broke a cheekbone and knocked him out. They were all big linemen except for Steve, who was about Mark’s size. The three remaining attackers hit him everywhere, and his nose and one ear were bleeding. Mark managed to bring a knee up into the groin of one of them, and that fellow rolled off groaning. The remaining brutes still had an advantage but not as much as before, and Mark landed blows on them as he absorbed the same.

One of the two heard someone coming and got up. Mark was in a total rage, and the adrenaline prevented him from feeling any pain. Mark showed no mercy to the remaining attacker. He managed to get him on his back and hit him on the nose, entirely flattening it. Another blow gave him a black eye and did some damage to that eye. A last punch to the ribs was delivered with all of Mark’s might.

Then the coach pulled Mark off. Mark tried to go after the attacker still standing, but the coach, who was 70 pounds heavier than Mark and an ex-football player, stopped him. The remaining assailant told the coach that Mark had attacked them, but the coach understood immediately what must have transpired. He dragged the one still standing to his office and ordered whatever ambulances were available to come to the school immediately.

The medics found Mark slumped against the lockers, half unconscious. Mark and three of the football players were hospitalized. One of them had a broken cheekbone and would be in a head cast for quite a while. The one that Mark had kneed wasn’t seriously hurt. The other had two broken ribs, a broken nose, and some slight eye damage. He would never regain full vision in his left eye. Mark had a severe concussion, a bruised rib, and a torn ear that needed to be surgically repaired.

Mark spent more than a week in the hospital. When he regained full consciousness, a reporter came to hear his side of the story because the whole town was in an uproar and everyone had heard about the fight. Almost everyone accepted Mark’s version as it was just too far-fetched to believe that a sophomore had suddenly attacked the others. Even the anti-Semitic angle seemed beyond the acceptable limits within a team. The coach had little choice but to kick all four of them off the team. Because of their injuries, two of them were probably out for the season anyways.

Several of Mark’s coaches came to visit him in the hospital.

‘Son, what exactly happened?’ inquired the head coach.

‘Well, one of them called me a dirty Jew, and then they all attacked me. I don’t even know who they exactly are since I’ve never talked to any of them.’

‘Did you swing first?’

‘No, they were on me so quick I was taken by surprise. I really don’t know what set them off.’

‘Well, your rib should be OK in a week or two, and we’re looking forward to you rejoining the team.’

‘I’m sorry, Coach. I really appreciate all I’ve learned from you, but I have decided to quit. If the players feel that way about me, I just don’t want to play with them.’

The coach was disappointed when Mark quit. After the fight, Mark wanted nothing to do with the team. He’d wanted to play and saw that he was good at it, but if some of his teammates disliked him for being Jewish, they could all go to hell. Mark was very hurt by what had happened. He had enjoyed playing football, and now he’d had to quit. Why had they attacked him? Thinking about that, he came to the conclusion that the Jewish thing might have set them off, but it was only partly the reason. Football is violent, and he was a sophomore and, for the seniors, an outsider. So probably almost anything could have acted as a reason for the attack. He had read about mob violence but now had seen it in action.

High school football was a big thing in their town, and many townsfolk and fellow students blamed Mark for destroying the team. However, some of his classmates thought he was a hero, although others avoided him as if he somehow carried the plague. Also, the other students treated him with a suppressed deference as they were afraid of him. Mark was so affected by the episode that he decided not to play baseball that spring. Sol was aware of how hurt Mark was emotionally and spent a lot of time with him talking about anti-Semitism and the history of the blacks in the Americas.

A summer hired hand had been an amateur boxer, and Sol allowed him to take a break every day to teach Mark the fundamentals of boxing. The laborer, Dan, was about Mark’s size, and they wore headgear during practice because Sol was still frightened by the concussion that Mark had suffered. Mark caught on quickly how to block a punch, to counterpunch, to jab and feint, throw uppercuts, and the rest. He was very agile and moved with great speed, and Dan thought he could go far in boxing and wanted Mark to compete in some of the amateur fights in the area, but Mark absolutely refused. Hitting someone with whom you have no conflict seemed entirely surreal to Mark. Sol also was not keen for Mark to box competitively for that and many other reasons. The types of people that hung out in boxing gyms were not the type of people that he wanted Mark to associate with. Sol was aware that Mark was still full of anger from having been assaulted, especially since it had prevented him from playing a competitive sport. The unfairness of that, the Jewish thing, and the attitude of some of the people in town and of his fellow students still burned in Mark’s breast, and Sol certainly didn’t want him taking it out on others. Mark was not a naturally violent kid and had never been exposed to all the violence so prevalent in movies and TV.

It really bothered Sol that Mark had no good friends and was now more suspicious than ever about kids his own age. Until the attack, most of the other kids had been jealous of Mark because he was a much better student than they and because they didn’t always find a common language with him as he was totally ignorant about TV and popular music.

Now that he had obtained his driver’s license in June, Sol bought Mark a used car. As Mark walked to his car after the first day of Mark’s junior year, he saw three of his classmates surrounding a black kid of about the same age. He could see they were taunting him, and things might end with them beating him up. Mark went over and told them to scram and leave his friend alone. There were three of them, but the black kid was pretty solid-looking, and the odds were now against them. Well, niggers and kikes. It was natural that they would be friends. Although loss of face bothered them, they backed off. Then again, Mark had taken on four football players, and they didn’t want to tangle with him. After they left, Mark introduced himself, and so did Charles Hartwell, who was nicknamed Chuck and new in town. Chuck was pretty amazed at what had taken place. Being the target of a group of white kids was nothing new to him. That Mark had come to his aid was a novelty and also how the three of them had suddenly been so scared.

Mark asked if he could give Chuck a ride home, and Chuck accepted even though he lived not far away in town. Chuck directed him to his father’s garage, which had just opened. His father was a mechanic and had heard that the town was lacking in auto garages and that the locals mostly took their cars to a nearby town. Chuck told his father, Hank, what had happened and how Mark had intervened. Hank thanked Mark, who said that three against Chuck was about even odds and that he really hadn’t done much. A lot of the local townspeople were ignorant and, being so, hated everyone who was different from them. On the spur of the moment, Mark said that as the Hartwells were new in town, they should be the Feins’ guests for dinner on Friday night. Not everyone in their town was inhospitable.

That Friday night, the entire Hartwell family came to dinner. Besides Chuck and Hank, there was Hank’s wife and their little daughter of 8. There was instant chemistry between the families. In one fell swoop, Mark had the friend that he so sorely lacked, and the Hartwells had in the Feins people that would help them feel somewhat welcome in their new town.

Hank was an experienced mechanic and a very good one. Although some of the people didn’t like taking their cars to a black man, his work was excellent and the rates so reasonable that the garage soon flourished. Chuck was still several months shy of obtaining his driver’s license, so Mark usually went to the Hartwells to spend time with Chuck. Mark had a lifelong effect on Chuck, but initially the main thing was that he convinced Chuck to work harder in school.

On most days after school, Mark went to the public library to search for interesting books. The public library was much better than one would have expected in a small town. A local farmer had died without heirs and had contributed his entire estate to the library for reasons no one could understand since he himself had never visited the place as far as anyone could remember. Probably he wasn’t aware of the thousands of other US charities that existed. A plaque was put on the new and larger library building in his honor, and it was called the Benson Library.

The librarians all knew Mark and talked about the kinds of books he checked out that were so unusual for someone his age. Mark read novels but mostly what would be called highbrow literature, along with history, biographies, and books about nature and farming. Books on Jewish history and Jewish literature were supplied by his father, who was an obsessive reader. Mark would usually spend half an hour to an hour at the library and then head for home.

As he was coming out of the library one day in the second week of the school term, Sophia Hoffman approached him and asked if he would give her a ride home. Sophie, as everyone called her, was about the best student in their high school and was a senior. She was better known as a sexpot, and it was rumored that she had slept with quite a few of her classmates and even some locals who were older. Sophie was of medium height but had a very lush body, with big breasts and hips. She dressed much sexier than the other girls in school, most of whom were quite jealous of her and her liberated attitude towards life. The usual restrictions and inhibitions of a small town didn’t seem to interest her. Her parents would have liked to intervene but were afraid of her and her intellect. They had lost control of her a long time earlier and were no match for her in any argument. In contrast, her younger brothers and sisters were very disciplined and behaved according to the town’s standards.

Mark knew who Sophie was but had never even talked to her. Like most of the boys in school, he had fantasized about having her even though he wasn’t sure just how that was done.

She was dressed in a simple floral skirt and a tight blouse that looked like it might burst at any moment from the strain put on it by her well-formed and large breasts. Just being in the car with someone like Sophie made Mark’s blood run hot, although he was ashamed at his foolishness since Sophie would never look at someone like him, who was younger and, in truth, had never been on a real date in his life.

On the way home she asked him to turn into a wooded dirt road and then to stop. Mark assumed she needed to pee. Sophie leaned over and began kissing him and caressing his face and body. For a second Mark was taken aback but then his body responded with feverish heat. Soon Sophie had her tongue in his mouth and put his hand on her breast as they squirmed over to her side where there was more room. After about an hour, she had him take her home.

Sophie told him that she would like to go out with him on the coming Friday night and that he should bring blankets and pillows. Mark was nonplussed. What could he say except yes. After dropping her off, Mark drove home feeling he was in a dream. All his sexual senses were on fire. What he couldn’t understand was why someone like Sophie, who could go out with anyone she wanted, had picked him. She had initiated their kissing and petting and, as far as he could tell, he had not said anything that might