A Code of Honor

Jack Allen returns to Odyssey and moves into Whit’s house while Jason remains in a room at Whit’s End. The two men explore Whit’s crowded workroom and find an old ledger filled with several kinds of handwriting, all written in code. The discovery gives Jack an intense feeling that he has dreamed of this moment before - though in the dream he stands beside an unknown young man who seems lost.

Jason deciphers the simple code and learns that the book contains the minutes of a children’s club called the Israelites. The members used biblical code names such as David and Jonathan. Among their records are lists of Odyssey residents, addresses, and short instructions like “garden” or “paint garage.” Connie recognizes one name, Emma Douglas, who once knew Whit and worked at Whit’s End.

When Jack asks Emma about the Israelites, she first pretends to know nothing. His questions about her separate garage and its old paint job trick her into revealing that the club painted it. Annoyed but amused, Emma invites him inside and explains the rest. Not long after her husband died, she was too proud to admit that she needed help. Members of the Israelites secretly gardened and worked around her house while she slept or went out.

Whit had first organized the children for imaginative Bible activities, then turned the club into a gang devoted to good deeds. He assigned acts of service and demanded secrecy so the young people would help from kindness rather than a desire for praise. Emma discovered them only when a noise in her garage made her think burglars had entered. Whit calmed her without betraying the club’s members, and she promised to keep their secret. She knows the identity of only one boy: Billy MacPherson, who later apologized for frightening her.

Jack learns that Billy’s family moved toward Connellsville. Jason joins him on the search, though the back roads leave them lost for an hour. They stop at a service station for directions to Howarth Road, where the MacPhersons are said to live. The attendant’s name patch says Billy. Before Jack has even seen the name, something about the young man has startled him; Jason suspects that Jack recognizes the lost person from his dream.

Over lunch, Billy remembers that the Israelites lasted two summers. Six children began with Bible games, then joined others on two or three evenings each week to receive assignments and help neighbors. Sometimes Whit chose the work, and sometimes the children found needs themselves. What mattered was that someone benefited. Whit refused to keep the club alive on his enthusiasm alone, and by the third summer its members had developed other interests and drifted apart.

Billy calls those two summers the best he ever had and remembers Whit as a Sunday school teacher who greatly influenced him. Yet Billy admits that he rarely attends church now. Jack encourages him to return, then gives him the coded Israelite Chronicles. Billy instantly remembers that the key begins with A represented by five. Deeply moved, he promises to read and remember, and he begins considering church again.

Jason presses Jack about the dream, but Jack will not claim certainty about something he cannot prove. He does know that rediscovering the Israelites has brought an old idea back at the right time. With destructive gangs troubling Odyssey, perhaps the town is ready again for a group whose code of honor is to do good without seeking credit.