AUNT Lydia showed Danny to his room—a neat, clean basement room with a desk of his own and a small radio in one corner.
When she had gone, he sat heavily on the side of the bed and for a long while stared at the floor. Back home Mom and Dad would have long since finished reading the Bible and gone off to bed. Laddie would be lying on the hearth asleep, and if the wind was blowing, the lake would be lapping gently on the shore.
The young woodsman got up and walked over to the desk and back again. He could still see the disgust that had flashed across Uncle Claude's face when his uncle had realized that he was praying. He could still see the surprise and scorn in Bob's and Larry's eyes. It made him weak and sick inside.
Danny turned back to the dresser and picked up his Bible. It was the first time in his life he had ever stayed with anyone who wasn't a Christian. Slowly he laid down the precious Book, switched off the light, and dropped to his knees beside the bed.
He did not know how long he stayed there praying, but when he finally got to his feet and began to undress in the darkness, he felt better. After all, he wasn't alone. Jesus was with him.
He hadn't thought that he would sleep at all that night, but he closed his eyes, and the next thing he knew it was morning.
There was registration for school that afternoon, and the next morning classes started. Danny got through the first afternoon easily enough because Larry was with him showing him where to go and what to do, but the next morning he was on his own.
"There's your homeroom," Larry told him. "Do you think you can find your way around school?"
"I don't know," Danny said hesitantly. "I can track a deer through the muskeg or find my way around a lake, but I...I'm not sure whether or not I'll ever find my way around here."
"Oh, you'll be okay," Larry laughed. "Just follow the rest of the kids when the bell rings, and you'll get along."
Danny pushed his fingers through his rumpled, sandy hair and walked timidly into the room and found a seat.
The other kids were laughing and whispering, but Danny didn't feel like joining them. The bell rang so suddenly that it startled him, even though he had been waiting for it anxiously. He started to get up and then saw that the other kids had quieted hurriedly. The teacher stepped into the room and looked over the class. And in another moment or two a second bell sounded.
This time there was a stampede for the door, and Danny was the last one out. He hesitated, trying to decide which direction to go, then began to move off uncertainly in the direction most of the kids seemed to be going. He walked past stairways and corridors and finally turned into a big, airy room at the end of the hall.
He was inside and had closed the door when he heard a high-pitched snicker. He knew, then, that something was wrong.
"I...I beg your pardon," the teacher said, smiling, "but are you enrolled in Home Economics?"
Then he noticed for the first time that the room was entirely filled with girls.
"I...I..." he stammered, his face flushing scarlet. "I..."
With that he whirled and fled. He could still hear them laughing when he got to the other end of the hall. In spite of himself he laughed too.
When he finally got back to the house that evening after a bewildering day at school, Aunt Lydia handed him two letters. "One of them is from your mother and dad," she said, "but the other's an awfully important-looking letter."
Danny took the envelopes, and for an instant his heart leaped as he saw that he had a letter from the Federal Communications Commission. And then he saw Clarence's name typed under the address.
"You know someone in the Federal Commission?" Larry asked.
"Oh, a guy who was up at the lake."
"Boy!" Larry exclaimed. "Do you think you could get him to come over and speak to our amateur radio club?"
Danny straightened quickly. If he could just join a group like that, he could listen to the short-wave broadcasts himself, and he could find out about a lot of the guys in Iron Mountain who were interested in radio.
"I think Clarence would come," he replied.
As soon as Danny was alone, he opened the letter.
"I'm just writing to let you know," Clarence Gray had written, "that the monitoring stations got a fix on that broadcast that almost wrecked us. It came from somewhere in the Iron Mountain area. We know that much but can't go farther until they broadcast again. Keep your eyes and ears open."
For the first time Larry acted as though he were glad to have Danny around, and the next afternoon he took him around and introduced him to all the guys. And the next evening Bob and Larry asked him to go to a party with them.
"It's the bunch from the radio club," Larry explained.
They all gathered in the basement of the house where one of the guys lived and sat around talking radio until almost eight o'clock. Then one of them looked at his watch and got to his feet. "Well," he said, "we'll be just in time for the first feature if we leave now."
Danny turned to Larry. "Where are we going?" he asked.
"Why, to the movies, of course," his cousin replied. "Didn't you know?"
The young woodsman got slowly to his feet. He had never been to a movie before.
"You're going, aren't you?" Larry demanded.
Reluctantly he followed along. He had heard people say things about movies, but there wasn't anything like that on the Angle. He didn't even know what they were like.
One picture on the poster out in front of the theater showed a man with a cigarette dangling from his lips and a gun in his hand. The other showed a couple of guys and a woman drinking.
Danny hesitated again. If that was the kind of stuff he was going to see, he didn't know whether or not he wanted to go in. He shuddered to think what the actual movie would be like if the pictures on the outside were like this. He felt miserably unclean. He professed to love Christ and follow Him. He had tried to tell Larry and Bob what it meant to be a Christian. What would they think of him if he went in and saw a film? Would his testimony mean anything to them if he did exactly the same things they did?
Danny bowed his head momentarily and tried to pray, but he could not. At that instant he knew what he had to do. The other boys had just come from the ticket window.
"You'd better hurry and get your ticket," Bob said.
Danny turned to Larry. "I'm not going," he said seriously.
"What do you mean?" his cousin demanded, grabbing hold of his coat. "Don't be a fool. You're coming in to see this movie, or I'll know the reason why!"
“Don’t be a fool. You’re coming in to see this movie, or I’ll know the reason why!”