The young ones were never to drive a car. If any of them found himself on the spot behind the steering wheel, he was to slide over to the passenger’s side and wait for someone older to come and do the driving.

Everyone agreed that Arthur had been very thorough and had thought things out logically.

“Samuel” read the Old Testament, ate only kosher food and loved to sculpt sandstone and carve wood. He took the spot on September 27, Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and said a prayer in memory of Billy’s Jewish father.

Samuel knew of Arthur’s strict rule concerning the selling of paintings, but one day when he needed money and no one from the family was around to give him advice or to tell him what was going on, he sold a nude signed by Allen. Nudes offended his religious sensibilities, and he did not want it where he could see it. He told the purchaser, “I am not the artist, but I know the artist.”

Then he sold Tommy’s painting of a bam, a painting that clearly had fear surrounding it.

When Arthur learned what Samuel had done, he was outraged. Samuel should have realized he was selling paintings the others held dear to themselves, paintings so personal they were never meant for the eyes of strangers. He ordered Tommy to find Samuel’s favorite creation—a draped Venus surrounded by cupids, done in plaster.

“Destroy it,” Arthur said.

Tommy took it out back and smashed it with a hammer.

“For this terrible crime of selling other people’s art, Samuel is henceforth an undesirable. He is hereby banished from the spot.”

Samuel argued his fate. He pointed out to Arthur that he should not be banished, since he was the only one among all of them who believed in God.

“God was invented by those who are afraid of the unknown,” Arthur said. “People worship figures like Jesus Christ only because they fear what might happen to them after they die.”

“Exactly,” Samuel said. “But look, it wouldn’t be such a terrible idea to have a little insurance. If after we die we find out there is a God, what should be so bad that there should be at least one of us who did believe in Him? That way one of us has a shot at getting the soul into heaven.”

“If there is a soul,” Arthur said.

“So whats the rush to take the gamble? What would it cost to give me another chance?”

“I’ve made the rule,” Arthur said, “and my decision stands. October sixth is your holiest day, Yom Kippur. You may take the spot to fast on your Day of Atonement, but then you are banished.”

Later, he admitted to Tommy that in making his judgment in anger, he had made a mistake. Since he couldn’t know for sure that there was no God, he should not have acted so hastily in banishing from the spot the only one of them who believed.