Gentile Gibbs’ Boy

Gentile Gibbs' Boy First-Prize Story, By Mrs. Elsie Chamberlain Carroll The drop of a pin could have been heard in the crowded little church as the voice of the young man ended his masterful speech. It was the final one of the contest. For a moment no one stirred. Then the old man on the front row, whose rapt face had rob- bed the brilliant young speaker of part of my attention, drew a handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose. In- stantly the spell was broken. There was a thunder of applause, followed by a subdued buzz of appreciative comments. The judges, as everyone knew they would, awarded the prize to the last speaker, listed as number four in the contest. While the choir was preparing to sing, I leaned over and asked Bishop Whiting the name of the boy who had just finished. "That's Donald McKell — Gentile Gibbs' boy," he answered; adding hurriedly, "remind me to tell you his story." There wasn't any danger of my for- getting to remind him, for never in all my experience in M. I. A. work had my interest been so challenged by the words of a young speaker. I am afraid I didn't hear much of the song for my eyes kept seeking the face of the young contestant. It was not a handsome face, but there was character written all over it. The old man whose eager listening had attracted me was also still looking up at the boy who had just spoken, his face shining with adoring pride. I wondered if that was Gentile Gibbs of whom I had heard on my intermittent visits to Banak. I was not long in discovering that a third pair of eyes was neglecting the music to stray to the sandy-haired lad. These were soft brown eyes, looking out from the pretty face, framed with brown curls, of a little girl who sat in the choir. Two or three times the lad looked in her direction and each time the tan of his cheeks seemed to deepen. Immediately after adjournment the young winner was surrounded by congratulating friends. I crowded up with the rest of them, and when Bish- op Whiting said, "Donald, Brother Blank of the General Board would like to shake hands with you," I was hap- py to tell the young man how proud we were of the thing he had done. He received my congratulations with re- serve, but with genuine appreciation. He soon left the stage and began talking with the old man, while the little brown-eyed girl stood waiting a few steps away. The Bishop had invited me to spend the night with him, so as soon as we were in his car and headed for his home, I reminded him of his promise. "You were going to tell me, Bishop, about that young lad who won the contest — Gentile Gibbs' boy, you called him." "Yes, yes; a very interesting story — and helpful because it's true and hap- pened right here in our own midst. "You perhaps know," the Bishop commenced, "that Hank Gibbs had been the only permanent Gentile in Banak for as far back as most of us can remember. There have been tran- sients, of course, now and then, but Gentile Gibbs has always been with us. and as we used to say, he was a regular 'Mormon' eater. I remember when 1 was a youngster, during the period we used the term 'the raid,' when men with plural wives lived in a regular nightmare of dread of the deputy mar- shals who used continually to harass them, old man Gibbs usually spent most of his time securing information for 'the deps,' and several of our older men have him to thank for their terms in the state prison and for what their families suffered in consequence."

498 IMPROVEMENT ERA April. 1919 "But," I interrupted the Bishop, "wasn't that he, there on the front row tonight — the most attentive and appreciative person in the room?" "Yes; that's what makes it all so interesting. "You see we had grown up here in Banak to regard Hank Gibbs as the em- bodiment of all that is evil, never dreaming that there might be a vein of good in his character if only someone should try to reach it. "He wasn't always a Gentile, — an apostate, you see. When he was a boy, so I recall, soon after he had mar- ried Emily Callister, the daughter of Bishop Callister, who had been sent down here to help settle this part of the country, he was disfellowshiped for something he considered quite in- significant. From jthat time he was a bitter enemy of the Church. His young wife died a few years later, of a broken heart, as everyone said, leaving a little girl. "Brother and Sister Callister, natur- ally, wanted to take the baby, but Gibbs took her away to a relative of his in California, and we never did hear much about her. Once in a great while she would come out for a short visit, and while her grandmother Callister lived I think she sort of kept in touch with her. "Then we heard she was married and later that her husband had been killed in the World War. Soon after that she came back with her little boy and kept house for her father. But it was only for a couple of years, for she died when Donald was about ten years old. "I have often thought of late, Brother Blank," the Bishop comment- ed as we started up the path to the house, after putting the car in the ga- rage, "that we Latter-day Saints who have borne so much persecution should have learned the lesson of toler- ance. But we haven't learned it; we are just as intolerant and probably as cruel in our way as many of our persecutors." The Bishop went on with his story as we sat in his comfortable living room. "You see because little Donald was old man Gibbs' boy he was at once ostracized — set apart, and branded as a Gentile. As a child he was retiring and shy, and as none of the other children sought his companionship he lived in a world of his own. In school he was very bright and read everything avail- able, but he took no part in school doings — that is, he was given no chance to participate in the normal activities of school and community life — and all because he was Gentile Gibbs' boy. "You remember perhaps that a few years ago there was quite an oil en- thusiasm created about some wells discovered just south of here. It brought in a flock of adventurers. Sev- eral families, in fact, came and settled for the winter here in Banak. There were among them half a dozen young- sters a little older than Donald. They took him into their crowd and almost over night he seemed to have become a different boy. He lost interest in school. He began to smoke and to sit on the street corners and try to tell as vile jokes, or swear as profanely, as the rest of them. "That winter we had a regular reign of terror here. Our own youngsters went through the hoodlum period of course as each new crop came along; but we had never known what it meant to have our nights disturbed by drunken yelling and profanity in the streets; to have our cars stolen and smashed up and our places of business looted. "The strange thing about it was the way old man Gibbs took this change in Donald. My own wife couldn't have been more distracted had she seen our Joe suddenly going to the dogs. He used to spend his nights hunting for the boy, and he paid out hundreds of dollars making good the damages done by the boy and his associates. "It was two years ago last fall that the gang took a car from the curb in front of the Co-op. store one night and

April. 1929 GENTILE GIBBS' BOY 499 went over to Granville, which is across the state line, you know. There they got some whisky, and while coming back about three o'clock in the morn- ing they ran into the car of some tour- ists who were camped by the road about a mile east of town. A woman and a child who were sleeping in the car were rather seriously hurt as were also Donald and one of the other boys. "The three boys of the gang who were not injured walked back to Granville and somehow got out of the country before the officers learned of the job. "Donald and his companion were of course arrested, and things looked pretty serious for them. The other boy was nearly twenty-one and Don- ald only seventeen, so they tried them separately. When the older boy was sentenced to a term in the penitentiary, people began to say that if the judge would only send Donald to the re- form school for a few years (since the rest of the gang had skipped), the community might breathe easy again. "During the preliminary hearing and the time between that and the trial, old man Gibbs went about like a wild man, declaring that Donald had been led into the trouble by the older boys and that if there was any justice in the law they wouldn't make a criminal of him by sending him up and brand- ing him for life. But most everyone in town had some grudge against the old man and thought this served him right for the way he had made other people suffer. "It's strange, isn't it," the Bishop stopped to philosophize, "how blind our prejudices can make us?" Not one of us was thinking of the boy and what this was going to do to him. We were all rather gloating over the fact that after all Gentile Gibbs was get- ting what he deserved. It took a stranger to see Donald's side of the af- fair and to show us what an un-Chris- tain lot we had been. That stranger was Hal Benson, — you know him, our seminary teacher who was new that year. "We had asked Benson to take over the M Men's group in Mutual and, although school had been going but a little over a month, he had contacted with every boy in town and with their homes. When that affair happened he knew more about Hank Gibbs' boy than all the rest of us had learned in the seven or eight years he had lived here. "I'll never forget the night Benson came to see me. It was the night be- fore the boy's case was to come up for final hearing. I'm sure I have never felt so chagrined and unworthy of my position in my life. 'Bishop,' Benson said, 'we've got to save that boy. He's not a criminal any more than your Joe is. He's a vic- tim of — I suppose I shouldn't say prejudice — but I wonder if you or any one in your ward really know the boy. He's been denied all the normal social contacts a boy ought to have because his grandfather is a Gentile, — at least that's as I understand the matter — though I may, of course, be mistaken.' Benson paused to give me a chance to tell him he was mistaken, but I couldn't. "Then he told me about the boy — his loneliness and the different ways he had tried to substitute things in his life to take the place of the things we self-righteous folks had denied him. We had rather restrained our children when they wanted to play with him. We hadn't welcomed him into the organizations of the Church. He had been shunned merely because he was Gentile Gibbs' boy. So he had built bird-houses in his grandfather's orchard, and had collected moths and butterflies and studied and written up their habits, and had made a little aquarium out in the barn, and had collected quite a library of government bulletins on a dozen different subjects. " 'Why Donald is the most inter- esting lad in this town,' Benson de- clared to me, 'and it's our duty to save him.' "I was amazed at the things he told me about the boy, and still was un-

500 IMPROVEMENT ERA April, 1029 willing to give up my prejudices. I reminded Benson that the boy had picked up with those rough chaps from the south almost as soon as they ar- rived in town, and that there was an old saying about 'birds of a feather." 'The fact that he took up with them is no proof at all of any natural criminal instincts,' Benson insisted. 'Any normal boy is gregarious — he likes to be with others of his own age. It was the most natural thing in the world that he should fall in with them when they showed him a little friend- liness. Perhaps I ought not to say it Bishop, but those youngsters are not so much to blame for Donald McKell's delinquency as you people right here in Banak are.' Benson got all warmed up as he explained some things to me from a psychological viewpoint that I had never sensed before." At this point Bishop Whiting sat long looking into space; I had to re- mind him that he hadn't finished the story. "The trial — they had the trial I suppose?" "Oh — yes, yes," the Bishop an- swered, coming out of his reverie with a start. "First, though, I went with Ben- son to see the boy — they had him there in the jail. It was just dusk when we went, and he looked so little and lonely in that bare cell — and his head and one arm still bandaged. Well, I felt extremely guilty for the things we hadn't tried to do for the boy. I had never noticed before how much his eyes were like his Grandmother Callister's, and I couldn't help thinking what if it had been our Joe — in a place where nobody cared any more than we had cared. , | "When we left the jail we went to see Hank Gibbs and to talk things over with him. I dreaded that — he had been so wild at first and he hated everybody in Banak — or at least we thought he did. But the sight of the old fellow, huddled in a corner of the untidy kitchen, was even more pathetic, if possible, than the sight of the boy had been. He had lost all hope and was trying to resign himself to the loss of the only thing in the world he loved. "When we had really convinced the old man that we were genuinely inter- ested in the boy and wanted to see that the best thing possible was done for him, the old fellow broke down and cried like a baby. "Well the outcome was that Donald was given a year's sentence but was pa- roled to Benson. "Benson persuaded him to come back to school and with the support of the other boys and what little help I could give him, finally got Don- ald to feeling that he was a member of the community and not a pariah. He began by taking part in school activ- ities; then he started to come to Sunday School and Mutual. Before the winter was over he was one of the most active members of the M Men's group. The result was that in the spring just before school was out he came to Benson one day and said he wanted to be baptized. "Talk about dramatic incidents in stories," the Bishop went on after an- other pause, "you don't read things much more dramatic than what we had right here in Banak the day Donald was baptized. We don't have a font, but do our baptizing down in the res- ervoir below town. Saturday after- noon, the last of May, had been set apart for baptisms. A large group of children were ready for the ordinance, since no baptizing had been done dur- ing the winter months. That, together with the fact, which had become known, that Donald was going to be- come a member of the Church, brought about half the town out. The time set was four o'clock. Everybody was wondering how old man Gibbs would take it — and whether he knew or not. He had rarely been seen on the streets or in places of business all winter. Heretofore it had always been his cus- tom to spend his afternoons on the street corners or in front of the post office or stores, railing at things in gen- eral, but at the Church and Church officials in particular. Naturally there

April, 1929 GENTILE GIBBS' BOY 501 was considerable excited speculations as to how he would take Donald's bap- tism. "The children were baptized first and Benson was just going into the water to officiate for Donald when a suppressed whisper ran through the crowd that Gibbs was coming. We all looked up the road, and sure enough, the old man on his sorrel mare was hurrying toward us. There was a tense silence. Instinctively we all felt sure that he had heard about Donald and was coming to interfere, not that he had made any fuss about Donald's activities during the winter as far as we knew, but we took it for granted his changed attitude was due to gra- titude that the boy hadn't been sent to the reform school and consequently didn't openly resent anything Benson thought best for the boy. The fact that he had rarely been seen all winter made the sight of him now seem crit- ical, to say the least. "Donald was the only one in the crowd who did not become excited — that is, the only one except Benson, who, with his back to the road as he walked into the water, hadn't seen Gibbs approaching. "When he asked Donald if he was ready and the boy answered affirm- atively, we all held our breath, for the grandfather wasn't more than half a dozen rods away. We expected any second to her him belch forth a stream of profanity and forbid the ceremony. "Donald walked to Benson's side and Benson was just ready to begin when Gibbs rode up by me and got off his horse. In my fear of what was going to happen and in my effort to decide what I should do when the outburst came, I failed to look at him. "But no outburst came. Donald was baptized! "Then I turned my eyes to Hank Gibbs and received the surprise of a lifetime. The old man was standing there with his hat off and his head bowed. His face was working piti- fully. When Donald stepped upon the bank, the grandfather seized both his hands and bent over him. "We all stood there watching. For a moment there wasn't a sound or a movement. Then Hank Gibbs turned to me and said: 'Bishop, do you think — God would — be insulted if — you should baptize — me — again ? ' "Well, we baptized him. And since that time he hasn't missed a meeting and he's paid enough tithing to make up for years and years of negligence, and he can't do enough when it comes to contributing to ward maintenance, and helping the poor or those in trouble. I have been hearing all week from different widows in town that sacks of flour have been left on their doorsteps during the last month. I know the queer old fairy who has been doing all this is Hank Gibbs. Only yes- terday he made arrangements for Nellie Snyder to go to the hospital for an operation she has been needing for years. It's pathetic to see how hard he is trying to make up to the Church and to the Lord for those years of hatred. And his pride in Donald — " The Bishop was interrupted by the opening of the outside door. To my surprise the little brown-eyed girl of the choir came in. "Brother Blank, this is my daugh- ter," the Bishop said, and as I stepped forward to shake hands with the girl, he asked: "Did Donald tell you, Ruth, that he received his call for a mission today?" "Oh, yes," the girl answered, a deep- er pink flushing her pretty face, "and he's so thrilled about it. His grandfath- er hopes he can go to Europe, but Donald will be satisfied to go anywhere they want him to go." The light that shone in the girl's brown eyes set me to dreaming of an- other chapter that would doubtless be added to the story of Gentile Gibbs' boy.