Morning Is a Long Time Coming Read Online Free Page B

than it was for me. “Nothing but a bunch of rednecked anti-Semites! Since when does a human person have to get credentials before they’re allowed to give food to a hungry man?”
    Actually, I wasn’t as innocent as that. Because all the time I was hiding Anton in those abandoned rooms above our garage, I knew I might get into trouble, but I also knew that it wasn’t wrong. Nothing that God would consider wrong! Wish I could just once talk to somebody ... almost anybody! I’d like to explain it to them. I’d want them all to understand that Anton didn’t escape our prisoner-of-warcamp to bomb our cities or even to return to Germany to fight again.
    Only thing in this world that he wanted was to be a free man. Why is that so impossible to believe? But I’d have no more luck getting people to believe that than I would getting them to believe something else which is equally true. Outside of Ruth, Frederick Anton Reiker was the finest person that I’ve ever known.
    “Well, aren’t you going to open it?” asked Grandpa, who had, in fact, taken the envelope from me to remove the handwritten card inside. “I wrote it, so I’ll read it.” He adjusted his glasses and cleared his throat. “Poetry it’s not.”
    “Just read,” said Grandma. “And leave the commenting to Walter Winchell.”
    “A-hem. It says: To Patty our dearly beloved granddaughter on her graduation day, we give this check so that it can help you prepare for your life and your work at the college whichever you choose. Love and kisses from Grandma and Grandpa.”
    I ran into Grandpa’s arms so that nobody would even suspect my tears. Part of it was that they could still love me in spite of everything. And the other part was the awful suspicion that they’ll stop loving me once their gift money is spent on something other than college. It won’t be spent on anything but college! I can still stop myself! I am very much in control.
    Because if I did spend my money on what I’m thinking about,, then they, like me, would consider it nothing but a betrayal. A bare-faced betrayal.
    “Now that you’ve heard the sentiments from the heart,”said Grandma, adjusting a diamond stud in her ear, “you aren’t a tiny bit curious to see how much the check is for?”
    I nodded yes while wondering if they had forgotten telling me periodically over the last few years about their plan to give me a thousand dollars for each year that I stay in college.
    Grandma patted my shoulder. “It’s for a thousand dollars.”
    It took several swallows to clear my throat of enough tears to be able to express just how much I appreciated both them ... and their check.
    Later when my mother, Sharon, and I (my father was napping) walked my grandparents out front to their well-polished black Buick, Grandma said, “Patty, darling, take the morning train to Memphis next Wednesday. Stay for at least a week. We’ll buy college clothes.”
    I searched for the words to tell her, to tell them both, that I didn’t know if I’d be needing college clothes. That everybody had been operating under certain false assumptions which I had more or less deliberately perpetuated.
    But then if I said that, wouldn’t Grandpa ask, “What false assumptions?”
    Well, I wouldn’t have to answer much more than I don’t think I’ll go to Memphis State College or even the University of Alabama this fall.
    Grandma might add that there are other places where Jewish boys and girls meet. Places like the University of Texas. And so where did I plan to go?
    What could I say then? How could I even begin to explain something to them that I have never satisfactorily been able to explain to myself? Even the first part of it, the going-to-Europe part, would be incomprehensible to them. Grandfather would raise his voice: Jews don’t go to Europe. They come from Europe.
    I understand that, I tell him as I feel my dream begin to sink beneath the moving sands of never-never land.
    Probably my grandmother