Wait. Why do you want to see Bert Cates?

What’s he to you, or you to him?

Can it be that both beauty and biology

Are on our side?

(Again she starts to leave. But HORNBECK jumps down from his ledge and crosses toward her)

There’s a newspaper here I’d like to have you see.

It just arrived

From that wicked modern Sodom and Gomorrah,

Baltimore!

(RACHEL looks at him quizzically as he fishes a tear sheet out of his pocket)

Not the entire edition, of course.

No Happy Hooligan, Barney Google, Abe Kabibble.

Merely the part worth reading: E. K. Hornbeck’s

Brilliant little symphony of words.

(He offers her the sheet, but she doesn’t take it)

You should read it.

(Almost reluctantly, she starts to read)

My typewriter’s been singing

A sweet, sad song about the Hillsboro heretic,

B. Cates: boy-Socrates, latter-day Dreyfus,

Romeo with a biology book.

(He looks over her shoulder, admiring his own writing. He takes another bite out of the apple)

I may be rancid butter,

But I’m on your side of the bread.

RACHEL

(Looking up, surprised)

This sounds as if you’re a friend of Bert’s.

HORNBECK

As much as a critic can be a friend to anyone.

(He sits backward on a chair, watching her head. He takes another bite out of his apple, then offers it to her)

Have a bite?

(RACHEL, busily reading, shakes her head)

Don’t worry. I’m not the serpent, Little Eva.

This isn’t from the Tree of Knowledge.

You won’t find one in the orchards of Heavenly Hillsboro.

Birches, beeches, butternuts. A few ignorance bushes.

No Tree of Knowledge.

(RACHEL has finished reading the copy; and she looks up at HORNBECK with a new respect.)

RACHEL

Will this be published here, in the local paper?

HORNBECK

In the “Weekly Bugle”? Or whatever it is they call

The leaden stuff they blow through the local linotypes?

I doubt it.

RACHEL

It would help Bert if the people here could read this. It would help them understand…! (She appraises HORNBECK, puzzled) I never would have expected you to write an article like this. You seem so—

HORNBECK

Cynical? That’s my fascination.

I do hateful things, for which people love me,

And lovable things for which they hate me.

I am a friend of enemies, the enemy of friends;

I am admired for my detestability.

I am both Poles and the Equator,

With no Temperate Zones between.

RACHEL

You make it sound as if Bert is a hero. I’d like to think that, but I can’t. A schoolteacher is a public servant: I think he should do what the law and the school-board want him to. If the superintendent says, “Miss Brown, you’re to teach from Whitley’s Second Reader,” I don’t feel I have to give him an argument.

HORNBECK

Ever give your pupils a snap-quiz on existence?

RACHEL

What?

HORNBECK

Where we came from, where we are, where we’re going?

RACHEL

All the answers to those questions are in the Bible.