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"What Is It?"

by Gary Swanson

I slipped my magnetic fare card into the slot and pushed through the turnstile of the Metro station. When a train rolled to a stop at the platform, I found a seat next to a window. Fourteen stops and 45 minutes to sit through.

At the first stop a crackly voice hissed, "Fort Totten."

The doors opened, and among the rushing commuters I spotted a boy of about 12. His Baltimore Orioles baseball cap caught my attention, but then I noticed something in his hands. It looked like a rectangular piece of cardboard with a clumsy structure on it.

The boy sidled into the seat in front of me, carefully setting down the object between himself and the window. He half leaned forward, as though trying to keep others from seeing it.

I'm usually like the thousands of other commuters on the Metro: I hardly speak a word to anyone. But this thing got me curious.

Leaning toward him, I asked, "What do you have there, a school project of some kind?"

The boy nodded yes but said nothing.

"What is it," I asked, trying to get a better look, "the Alamo?"

"No," he said quietly.

"I know," I said, "it's the White House."

"Nope," the boy said.

"Hey," I smiled, "if you don't want to tell me what it is, you don't have to. But I really am interested. I'm not just trying to give you a bad time."

The boy looked at me and then at the other passengers around us. No one else was paying any attention, so he decided to answer.

"It's a tomb."

"A tomb?" I asked. "Whose tomb is it?"

"It's the tomb of Jesus."

"What's it for?" I watched him.

"Mrs. Turner, our teacher, assigned us to make some kind of special project about an important event in history. The rest of the kids are building models of a printing press, the Battle of Waterloo, the Pilgrims landing on Plymouth Rock--stuff like that."

"Where do you go to school?"

"Kennedy Elementary, over on Forest Glen Road."

"You must be a Christian."

"Yeah," he said.

"Tell me." I couldn't help asking. "Some of the other kids in your class are probably not Christians. What do you think they'll say about your project? Think they'll see the historical importance of Jesus?"

The boy shrugged. "Yeah, right! Most of them don't ever go to church. About all they know is that Christmas is supposed to be Jesus' birthday."

I nodded. "I guess that's the way it is for us Christians in this world. How do you feel about that? Do the kids in school sometimes make fun of you?"

The boy was silent for a long moment. He looked out the window at the trees and homes rushing by. Finally he nodded yes. "The other day someone asked me if I had seen something on TV on Sunday morning. Tony Hendricks butted in; `No, Darnell goes to church on Sunday mornings. He's a Jesus boy!'"

Tears came to his eyes. He bit his lips hard and looked away from me again.

"It's OK, Darnell," I said. "I think I know how you feel. I've had people say the same kinds of things about me."

"You know," he said, "it really makes me feel ashamed."

"Hey," I said, "don't be ashamed of being a Christian--ever. I know it hurts sometimes, but just try to keep Paul and Peter and Stephen and the other great Christians in mind. They had to put up with the same thing. Isn't it kind of neat to know we face some of the same challenges as guys like that?"

The boy shook his head. "That's not what I mean. I'm not ashamed of being a Christian. What I'm ashamed of is that I let the kids at school embarrass me all the time."

"Forest Glen," the intercom crackled again.

"This is where I get off," Darnell said. "Gotta go!"

He grabbed his class project, exited through the open doors, and was gone.

I watched the empty train platform as we pulled away. And I thought about Darnell carefully carrying the tomb of Jesus--taking it into his grade school world. Darnell, like the early apostles, declaring the resurrection of Jesus despite ridicule and unbelief.

What a brave little soldier. It made me think of the words of the apostle Paul: "I am not ashamed of the gospel." I too wanted to live those words.

Gary Swanson lives in Silver Spring, Maryland. This story won third prize in the general short story category of our 1993 writing contest.