“I’m frankly disappointed in you, Ian. A Spartan boy your age once secreted a fox cub under his cloak. It was his mission to release it in the hen-house of the enemy nearby. Challenged by an enemy sentry, he ignored the squirming and the sharp claws of the animal next to his skin while he charmed his way past the sentry. In spite of the pain, he smiled and hurried on, refusing to cry out until he was able to do his duty as instructed. That,” said George, panting up an incline and sweating profusely in the sun, “is what the Spartans were famous for: gritting their teeth and putting up with pain. What cannot be cured must be endured. Be a Spartan, Ian.”
The story, much embellished, was derived, Ian discovered years later, from Plutarch, but he was awed by it, and by the stories Brad’s mom read aloud from the Jungle Books during quiet time. He was intrigued by Kipling’s formulation of a Law of the Jungle that all animals could understand and obey except the tiresome monkeys, whose contemptible inability to think for themselves was summed up in their chant, “We all think so, so it must be true.” Ian read these stories avidly on his own, even when he was supposed to be doing beadwork, which he regarded as silly. When George heard about this, he urged his son to make an effort to ‘fit in.’
“In my squadron, we had a trio of Polish pilots. They sat by themselves in the mess, spoke only their own language to one another, and were resented for it. You do not want to be an outsider like that, Ian.”
But it seemed that Ian was doomed by temperament and circumstance to be a loner, making few friends, either out of stubbornness or shyness, resisting efforts to draw him out of himself, a daydreamer, finding solace in reading, preferring the imaginative life he was resolutely building for himself to any sort of group activity except for Cubs. Yet he showed no interest in merit badges except that of Book Reader, which he wore with pride on his sleeve. He particularly enjoyed his subscription to the American scouting magazine Boys’ Life, with its stories, jokes and puzzles, and its evocation in words and pictures of a confident pre-Vietnam America of wide interstate highways, picturesque hiking trails and vast Scout gatherings and jamborees held under giant redwoods in national parks, occasions reflecting the editors’ optimistic belief that all differences of culture and race and background would be subsumed in these international celebrations of the brotherhood of worldwide scouting. Yet a glimpse at the magazine photos of long-gone American jamborees reveal that there was not a single black or brown face to be seen in any of them. It was, of course, as old photos are, an insight into times that were once very different and yet had not changed for decades.
“What is it that Akela urges you all to do at the group howl?” asked George of his son one day.
“To do our best.”
