"Fifty cents."

"Have you asked your father?"

Almost before I said the words I heard the cracking of another bow. I saw his gaze drop.

“I . . . I don't have one." He looked up at me and quickly down again. "Oh."

For a terribly long moment we could find no words. He wanted to—as did I. I longed to take back my question but I couldn't.

So, we just stood there-boyless man-manless boy.

Finally I spoke. "Fifty cents? Wait right here, will you? Maybe I can find something in the house."

He didn't believe me . . . "Aw, you're kidding me."

"You're kidding me!" He said it again as I came out of the house a few moments later. He looked at my closed fist as I held it out towards him. He looked unbelievingly at my face then back to my hand as it opened over his and dropped a quarter, two dimes, and a nickel.

Two eyes lit up-no,

four! He put the money in his pocket and mounted to the pedals of his bike, pausing only long enough to say one long "Gee, thanks!"

You can read, "Gee, thanks!", but you cannot hear it as I heard it. I cannot write vowels that long, nor make their pitch rise and fall as did his.

It was clear, he had not been led to expect such gifts of life. As he looked back at me I could see puzzlement in his gaze ... an unspoken "Why?" on his lips.

I answered him aloud "because I like you!" It required no answer so it did not matter that he had none. It will be awhile yet before he learns that "men just don't speak words like these to one another!" Time yet before he feels tension applied, just as he applied it to the bow which now lay broken in the gutter.

Dare we hope that those who stretch his bow-string to send his arrows across the arc of life will be sensitive enough to care if he is lemon-wood or pine? For there are those who think wood is wood, men are men, and women are women. But the loving woodsman knows the value of each grain and perceives there is room in life's great forest for every tree. The trees of the forest do not call names; and the only important deeds to them are drinking from the earth and reaching for the sun-the one, a need, and the other, a response to its fulfillment.

Somewhere in the city the boy still rides his bike . . . riding on to new hurt, new kindness-learning more of himself from his failures than his successes. In the self-knowledge of his limitations he will perhaps better understand the limitations in all of us, though they are never the same limitations from one to another; for we do not choose limitations-we only discover them . . slowly. If we are fortunate, we come to accept them while yet reaching for the

sun.

Perhaps the lad will learn to save his pity for those who never know either themselves or their limitations, for they can never know the strength that is in themselves and in others, though srength is there too.

And perhaps he will remember a kindness and a moment of rare communication. Perhaps one day, as he passes my house, a friend will point and whisper to him," The guy that lives there is a queer!" . . . and perhaps—just perhaps— it will make little difference to him.

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