Chapter 18

18

Abraham Lincoln Panim thought about his future quite a bit during the next several weeks. He also went for walks at night, every night, in hopes of meeting up with the girl he had met running during the evening.

He went on these walks many times without his mother, who was busy with school affairs for a few weeks and came home late and exhausted.

And since he was hoping to meet the girl who was running each night, he was kind of happy that his mother was too busy with schoolwork to accompany him. He was a little embarrassed, and he didn’t want his mother to know.

Abraham Lincoln Panim met with the girl just about every night for the next few weeks or so, as she ran every night, and he could pretty much figure out when she would stop for a rest, at the same place and time each and every night.

“How are you doing tonight?” he asked her as she took her regular break during one of those nights.

“I am doing fine,” she replied. “How are you doing?”

“I am OK,” he replied. “It seems to be a little cool outside tonight, and it looks like we are getting a lot of clouds up in the sky. Maybe we are going to get rain.”

“I think we are going to get rain too. I can’t see them, but my bones ache a little bit more when I am running when the weather is like it is, and my pal here”—pointing to her dog—“he kind of gets a little more steady when he is running with me. He doesn’t want me to stumble and fall.”

Abraham Lincoln Panim nodded approval, even though he realized that the girl could not see him.

“Well, look, since I think it is going to rain, I better get moving,” the girl said to Abraham Lincoln Panim. “I guess I will see you around.”

As she got up and started to run, Abraham Lincoln Panim remembered that he had wanted to ask her name, but as she ran away, he decided to put off the formal introduction for another night, something he had done since he met her. He had never had the nerve to ask her name, and she never asked him for his name.

As he got up from the bench, he once again saw what he thought was an older woman sitting a few benches down from him. When he started to walk home, he turned to see the woman again, but once again, she was not there. He didn’t think much of it, and went home.

As for the girl, he thought, “Another night won’t matter much,” he thought, and he headed home in the darkness as raindrops began to fall from the moonlit sky.

Chapter 17

17

Abraham Lincoln Panim and Mrs. Panim made sure Mrs. Stottle had a proper burial at a local cemetery, and even had a custom headstone made for her.

It read:

“To a saint of a woman.

A true educator, teacher, companion and friend.

Do unto others as you would have the do unto you … treat other people the way you would like to be treated yourself.”

The Panims had lost a true friend, and after a period of mourning, it was time to move on. Mrs. Stottle would have wanted them to do just that.

Mrs. Panim went back to school, but it was now time for Abraham Lincoln Panim to decide what he wanted to do with the rest of his life, and do it without the guidance of Mrs. Stottle, the one friend he had in all the world.

He looked through the want ads in the local newspaper, but always thought that nobody would hire him because of his rat face. He couldn’t keep his scarf on indefinitely, and one day, whoever hired him would find out, and he wouldn’t last very long at any job because of that rat face and the embarrassment it would cause for him.

One day, during their evening walk, Mrs. Panim asked Abraham Lincoln Panim about his future.

“So, what do you think you would like to do with your life?” she asked. “I know you have been looking at the want ads in the newspaper.”

“Yes, I have,” Abraham Lincoln Panim said. “But once they find out about me, who is going to hire me? And if they hire me, once they find out, I will be shown the door.”

“Maybe I can help you,” Mrs. Panim said to her son. “Let me make some calls, do some work on it. Give me a few days.”

Mrs. Panim was tired that particular evening, and she proceeded to go back to the house, but Abraham Lincoln Panim decided to continue his walk, as in the corner of his eye, he had seen someone nearby who interested him.

A long and lean girl with long blond hair had passed him any amount of times while on his late walk, and this time, he saw her sit down on a bench. He also saw her trusty dog with her, a dog which always seemed to accompany her when she did her running.

As she was already sitting, and it wasn’t very far away, Abraham Lincoln Panim approached the bench and sat down at the other end of it.

“Nice night out here,” he said to the girl, hoping against hope that she would reply.

“Yes, it is beautiful out here, perfect for me and my friend here to do our running,” the girl replied, but she did not look at Abraham Lincoln Panim when they spoke.

Abraham Lincoln Panim saw that the girl never looked at him as they continued to converse, and he asked about her dog.

“It is a seeing eye dog. He helps me to see,” the girl said, and it finally dawned on Abraham Lincoln Panim that the girl could not see, and was blind, and was the same girl that he had met when he went to school, and that she was friendly with Brandon Hartung.

“He helps me to maneuver around here, and not bump into anything or anybody,” she told Abraham Lincoln Panim.

“You mean, you can’t see anything?” he asked, as if he didn’t already know that she was blind.

“No, I can’t. I never have been able to see anything, and little Snuff here helps me out, helps me get from one place to another.”

The dog than nudged the girl as Abraham Lincoln Panim moved his scarf a little bit away from his face.

“You know, I kind of know you from school,” he said to her. “I met you on the line the first day, we were on the line together--”

“Yes, I thought your voice sounded familiar,” the girl said as she got up from the bench.

“Ooh, it is time for me to run a little more, and then I have to go back home.”

As she began to run, she said, “Nice meeting you, again,” and began to run with her dog seemingly leading the way.

“What’s your name?” Abraham Lincoln Panim asked, but she was too far away and did not respond.

Abraham Lincoln Panim continued to sit on the park bench for a few minutes as people moved about. He wasn’t the only one taking it easy on one of the benches, as he saw a few benches down, out of the corner of his eye, that there was what he thought was an older woman sitting, too.

He got up from the bench, instinctively looked a few benches down, but the woman was gone, almost as quickly as he had seen her.

Abraham Lincoln Panim went home after that, and he had a lot on his mind.

Mrs. Stottle was still on his mind, and what about his future?

And what about the girl. Would he see her again?

Chapter 16

16

Abraham Lincoln Panim and his mother knew the end was near for Mrs. Stottle when the EMTs carried her out of their house, and later that night, Mrs. Panim received a phone call from the hospital, telling them that Mrs. Stottle had passed away.

The hospital called the Panims because they had tried to locate any family for Mrs. Stottle, and could locate no one. Mrs. Stottle had no family, and Abraham Lincoln Panim and Mrs. Panim were the only “family” she had.

“We have one question for you,” said the hospital worker making the call to Mrs. Panim.

“I will try to answer it if I can,” Mrs. Panim sobbed through her tears.

“Well, it is not really a question, but it is … Look … I don’t know how to say this … I don’t want to be crass, but we are going to have to move the body to a funeral home soon … but please, can you come over here, right now? It is of utmost importance that you do.”

“Well, yes, we have to make arrangements, but it is so late—“

“Please m’am, please come over here as soon as you can.”

Mrs. Panim woke up Abraham Lincoln Panim, who wasn’t really sleeping, but thinking about Mrs. Stottle and praying that she would be OK, even though he knew that she was really sick.

The two of them dressed, and went directly to the hospital. They were shown the room Mrs. Stottle was in, and they approached where the older woman was, in a bed near the room’s one small window.

As they approached, with tears falling down both of their faces, they saw that Mrs. Stottle was covered up by her bed blanket from nearly head to toe.

An attendant came into the room and saw Abraham Lincoln Panim and Mrs., Panim at Mrs. Stottle’s bedside. As the attendant approached, so did a few nurses and doctors, all crowding around the bed.

The attendant said, “Thanks so much for coming here so quickly. I mean, you really needed to come here as quickly as possible.

“Why? Does she have to be moved immediately?” Mrs. Panim asked. “I mean, couldn’t this have waited a little bit? It happened just so suddenly … it is so early in the morning—“

One of the doctors stepped forward.

“No, it had nothing to do with that, It had to do with … I mean, I guess we have some questions … maybe you know something—“

Through his scarf which was over his mouth, Abraham Lincoln Panim said, “Please get to the point. Why were we called and asked to come over so quickly?”

The doctor approached the bed and grabbed the end of the bed sheet covering Mrs. Stottle.

“I … well … .”

He lifted the bed sheet, and exposed Mrs. Stottle’s feet.

To various gasps, Abraham Lincoln Panim and his mother saw the exposed feet, and looked at each other.

What the Panims saw were two hooves, much like a horse’s hooves, protruding from Mrs. Stottle under the bed sheets.

Chapter 15

15

When he explained to his mother what had happened, Mrs. Panim tried to console her son.

“Look, it was my fault,” she said to him that night. “I … I thought that people in college would be a little more open to everybody, no matter who they were, where they came from—“

“But not for a rat-faced boy like me,” Abraham Lincoln Panim said. “Mom, please don’t blame yourself. I guess that I am … I guess too different, with my rat face. That has nothing to do with you.”

No walks were taken that night. Abraham Lincoln Panim was devastated. He went into his bed, shut off his light, and tossed and turned as he tried to sleep.

Once he did finally fall asleep, he had some terrible dreams that night, experiencing what had happened to him over and over and over, until he woke up in a cold sweat.

Abraham Lincoln Panim thought to himself, “Let me go to the bathroom. Let me put some cold water on my face, and then maybe I can get back to sleep.”

This happened for days, if not weeks. Abraham Lincoln Panim never slept through the night, hounded by his nightmares.

In the meantime, Mrs. Panim arranged with the school to have her son take his classes at home. Class work was sent to his house via special delivery, he would do the work, and then whatever he did was sent back to the teacher for grading.

He took all his tests at home, and was able to complete his coursework in about two years. Mrs. Stottle helped him with some things, but he generally did all the coursework himself.

At age 20, Abraham Lincoln Panim received his bachelor of arts degree in the mail. He did not attend any ceremonies, although his mother and Mrs. Stottle arranged a little party for him when he received his diploma.

“Son, you have done a great job getting that diploma,” Mrs. Panim said. “And you really earned it, studied hard, and you have made me so, so proud.”

She then brought out a big ice cream cake with the inscription “Congratulations to the Graduate!” and placed it on a table in the living room, and Mrs. Stottle began to cut the cake.

“You have done a great job,” Mrs. Stottle said, but she looked wobbly as she cut the cake.

She fell backward on the floor, and with his mom trying to revive the older woman, Abraham Lincoln Panim called 911.

The EMTs came and put Mrs. Stottle on a stretcher as his ice cream graduation cake melted off the table and dripped onto the floor.

Chapter 14

14

Abraham Lincoln Panim kept his scarf on for the first few weeks of classes, and when asked why he continued to wear his scarf, he said that he had a cold, or that he was cold, or he gave any other excuse he could provide so that the inquirer was at least somewhat satisfied with the answer.

He pretty much kept to himself, so the inquiries weren’t that many, and that made it easier for him to wear his scarf during classes.

He was also doing very well in his classes, getting mainly A’s on all of his work.

In between classes, Abraham Lincoln Panim went where most of his fellow students went, to the cafeteria to take a break and to maybe have a cup of coffee or eat a sandwich.

As was his norm, Abraham Lincoln Panim went to the cafeteria, ordered a cup of coffee, and sat alone at a table in the back of the massive room. He took out his books and studied them, and there generally was no one around him, as most students on their break sat with others further up in the room.

One day, Abraham Lincoln Panim followed the same protocol, but for the first time, he saw a group of fellow students, both male and female, pulling up some chairs to a nearby table and sitting directly opposite him.

“Hey, Abie, why don’t you sit with us?” one boy yelled out to him.

Not ever remembering when he was ever called “Abie”—and not liking it one bit--Abraham Lincoln Panim briefly looked up from his book.

“Well … I am into studying for that test we have in English tomorrow … I would like to, but I need to bone up on a few things,” he replied.

“We’ll give you a couple of things to bone up on!” the boy replied, pointing to a girl who was sitting with him at the table, who Abraham Lincoln Panim recognized as being the blind girl who spoke with him while he waited on line during his first day at school. “You can bone up on her!”

The girl pushed the boy away, but he continued what he had to say.

“Hey Abie, why do you wear that scarf all the time? You cannot possibly be sick anymore. I am sure you are a very handsome guy, and I am sure the girls will love you if you just get rid of the scarf.”

Abraham Lincoln Panim briefly looked up, but he did not respond.

Then the boy asking all the questions came over to him, and directly addressed him.

“C’mon, Abie, let everyone look at you and see what you look like!”

Before Abraham Lincoln Panim could do anything, the boy grabbed his scarf, and began to pull it. Abraham Lincoln Panim tried to hold back the pulling, but in a few seconds, the scarf was off, and all eyes in the cafeteria were on him.

“Ha! ‘Eddie Munster’ is back!” the boy yelled, as everyone saw Abraham Lincoln Panim without his scarf, with his rat face in view. “Remember me, Abie?”

In horror and trying to cover his face, Abraham Lincoln Panim looked up at the boy, and who he was came into clear focus to him—it was the same boy who taunted him in school years earlier, Brandon Hartung, the boy who years earlier had poured Cheez Whiz all over him to make fun of his rat face. And he still wore a glove on his right hand.

As seemingly everyone in the cafeteria was laughing at him, Brandon Hartung ran back to his table, took a slice of pizza with his left hand, and rubbed it--including both the sauce and cheese--all over Abraham Lincoln Panim’s head.

Abraham Lincoln Panim, with laughs cascading from one end of the cafeteria to another, got his things, picked up his scarf from the floor, and ran out of the cafeteria as quickly as he could. He ran all the way home.

Abraham Lincoln Panim never attended college again in person.

Chapter 13

13

With his mother’s help and through some of her high school connections, Abraham Lincoln Panim became a freshman at the local college, but he was enrolled in night school, which was his own choice. He simply felt better taking courses during the evening, and he thought that he could handle this new challenge better during the evening than during the day, and his mother agreed.

The new freshman enrolled in liberal arts, and he was sent off to college by both his mother and Mrs. Panim in the early fall.

“I am so proud of you,” Mrs. Panim said upon his first day as a college student. “You look just great, and you are going to get in fine with the other students.”

“They will be so impressed at how smart you are, and I am sure you will make friends right away,” said Mrs., Stottle.

“I hope so … I am kind of nervous,” Abraham Lincoln Stottle said to the two ladies, as he headed out the door with his mother, who drove her son to college on this first day.

The two got into the car and sped off.

“Mom, I am a bit nervous,” Abraham Lincoln Panim said as the car approached the school. “What do I do, what do I say … ?”

“Just be yourself, and everything will work out fine,” replied Mrs. Panim, who tried not to show it, but she was as nervous, or even more nervous, than her son was.

They pulled up to the school, and Mrs., Panim stopped the car.

“Son, this is it,” Mrs. Panim said.

“Mom, I am so nervous.”

“Try not to be. Be yourself. Be ‘ABRAHAM LINCOLN PANIM,’ and everything will be fine.”

The boy kissed his mother and exited the car. He had a scarf around his neck, which he lifted over his face, both to protect himself from the cooler autumn air whisking around the campus and to cover up his face.

As he approached the building, he stood on a long line of people waiting to get in. He stood on the line, behind a female student.

The female student, long blond hair all bundled up in a heavy coat, turned to him, and she was wearing dark glasses, and he saw her with a guide dog. He figured that she was blind. “Man, it is cold out here. I wish they would open up the door already. I am frozen.”

“Yes, it is a bit cold out here,” Abraham Lincoln Panim replied, talking through the scarf that was covering his face, all but his eyes.

“Boy, you must be really cold,” the girl said, reaching out and feeling his scarf over most of his face. “I wish I had a scarf like that.”

“Well, I … well … I kind of like the scarf around my face.”

“It kind of muffles your voice, I can barely hear you—but look, the line is finally moving!”

The line moved, and the students went to their classes.

“See you sometime,” the girl said.

“See you around,” Abraham Lincoln Panim said, as he looked for room 222, the room he needed to get to for his first class.

Finding the room, he walked in, sat down in the back corner of the class room, but did not take off his coat, nor did he remove his scarf from his face.

The teacher finally came into the class, a tall, thin man with practically no hair on his head.

“Hello, I am Mr. Figg, and I am going to be teaching you English … sir, are you staying for tea or are you about to leave?”

All eyes turned to Abraham Lincoln Panim, still all bundled up with his jacket on and his scarf being made even tighter as he realized the teacher was speaking about him.

Abraham Lincoln Panim stood up, took his jacket off, put it on the back of his chair, but kept his scarf on.

“Sorry, I have a cold and don’t want to pass it on to anyone else,” he told the class, as sweat poured down from seemingly everywhere on his body.

The teacher was not paying attention at this point, and the class began, with Abraham Lincoln Panim continuing to wear his scarf through this class and into the other classes he took that evening and during that first week of college.

Chapter 12

12

Although Alexander Lincoln Panim had earned his high school diploma, he sought more knowledge. Mrs. Stottle could only provide him just so much, and Mrs. Panim had her school to run.

Two years had passed, and Abraham Lincoln Panim was now 18 years of age.

“Abraham Lincoln Panim,” said Mrs. Stottle one day when she and the boy were studying with each other, “there is so much more for you to learn. You have a high school diploma now, and I really cannot teach you any more myself.”

“So how am I going to learn more?” asked Abraham Lincoln Panim, pretty much knowing the answer to his question.

“I will talk it over with your mother, but I believe it is time for you to venture out into the world, but do it without me or your mother leading you,” said Mrs. Stottle. “It is time you went to—“

“College?” Abraham Lincoln Panim asked, knowing that that was the answer.

“Yes, that is what I think you have to do,” Mrs. Stottle said. I mean, I simply cannot teach you what you need to know at this point, and quite frankly, I am getting a bit older now, and my eyesight and my feet are not well … maybe you should go out and meet people, make friends, go out and live your own life.”

“But how can I live my own life—“

“You can, Abraham Lincoln Panim. You might just have to take the good with the bad, and there is so much more good to higher learning than bad. I think you should try it, at least try it.

“Remember what I always say, ‘Do unto others as you would have the do unto you … treat other people the way you would like to be treated yourself.’

“But Mrs. Stottle—“

“Abraham Lincoln Panim, I do believe it is time for you to experience the outside world. Don’t equate it what happened to all those years ago when you were a little boy to now. Colleges have a much more liberal view of the world and people. I think that you will fit right in. Nobody will notice you as being odd or different—

“Because you aren’t odd, and you aren’t different.”

Later that day, when Mrs. Panim arrived home from school, Mrs. Stottle broached the subject to Abraham Lincoln Panim’s mother.

During one of their regular walks in the evening, Mrs. Panim decided to sit down on one of the benches where they usually took their walks, which was somewhat unusual, because the mother and son were used to walking and rarely stopping.

“Abraham Lincoln Panim, Mrs. Stottle brought up something to me today that I have been thinking about a lot lately myself, and that is—“

“Going to college, mom.”

“Yes, and I agree with Mrs. Stottle. It is time you get out on your own, meet people, and get a higher dose of education.”

“But mom, I don’t know, I haven’t been in school—“

“Yes, for many years, But with Mrs. Stottle’s help, you were able to learn, and you learned well. You are 18 now, you aren’t a baby anymore. I think it is high time that you tried to go to a public college.”

“But mom, I still look like a rat.”

“Nobody cares what anyone looks like when you get to college. And to me, you are very handsome, anyway.”

“Mom, come on, I look … well … different than a lot of people do.”

“But that is what colleges are for, to blend people from all different backgrounds into one. I loved college. Maybe you will too.”

“But will college love me?” asked Abraham Lincoln Panim, as the mother and son left the bench and continued their walk into the moonlight.

That talk signaled the beginning of a new chapter in Abraham Lincoln Panim’s life that was ready to unfold.