Isaac the Courageous

Gym class at Odyssey Middle School ends with a fire engine parked outside and a very small boy clinging to the very top of a climbing rope. The gym teacher stands underneath promising a net and a soft landing, but Isaac Morton has no intention of letting go. A fireman sizes up the situation, decides the power ladder will have to come in through the double doors, and the gym teacher agrees on one condition - nobody scuffs his newly refinished floor. Isaac comes down. The story is all over school by the end of the day.

Lucy Cunningham-Schultz catches up with Isaac on the walk home and wants to know what a boy who hates heights was doing at the top of a rope. The answer is Rodney Rathbone. Rodney runs a club called the Bones of Wrath, he is taking new members, and the rope was phase two of the initiation. Isaac has already survived phase one and has a bruise he is oddly proud of to show for it. Lucy is unimpressed. Rodney is sixteen and still in middle school, every kid in Odyssey is afraid of him, and anyone who runs with him ends up with a reputation. Isaac says she does not understand. Being a Bone would finally give him something he has never had - and when Lucy guesses he means a police record, he tells her the truth instead. Everybody thinks he is a coward. Everybody calls him chicken. Joining is how he plans to prove otherwise, mostly to himself.

Behind the baseball bleachers, phase three is waiting, and it has a grand name: the line of bravery. Two rows of boys face each other holding paddles, and when Rodney calls a name, the candidate has to run the gauntlet between them. Isaac and Lucy arrive in time to hear one boy cry out and get thrown out on the spot, and to watch Rodney call Howie Farnsworth forward. Then Peter Dillon steps up. Peter is smaller than anyone there, and he goes through without a sound, though afterward he is pale and quiet and asks to be left alone. When Rodney turns to Isaac, Lucy answers for him, and Isaac stalls. That is all Rodney needs. He christens Isaac the Chicken in front of the whole gang, tells him there is no room in the Bones for a twerp like him, and sends him away. Lucy apologizes. Isaac tells her the favor has already been done - now he knows exactly what Isaac Morton is - and asks her to leave him alone.

Days later Mr. Whittaker finds Isaac at Whit's End, keeping a low profile behind a book about the Knights of the Round Table. Isaac wants to know what makes a person courageous. It depends on the situation, Mr. Whittaker tells him. Sometimes courage means doing something and sometimes it means not doing something, and you rarely know you have it until you need it, rather like an umbrella. Then he opens a Bible to the first chapter of Joshua and has Isaac read it aloud. Moses has died, Joshua has to lead a whole nation into the Promised Land, and three separate times God tells him to be strong and courageous. One of the bravest men who ever lived needed reminding, because his courage was never his own to begin with - the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. Anyone can ask for courage like that, Mr. Whittaker says. Isaac wants to know how he will recognize it if he gets it. He will know, Mr. Whittaker promises.

Isaac walks down to the river, which has frozen solid for the first time he can remember, and Lucy finds him there. So does Rodney, running the last stage of the initiation on the ice: sprint out, grab a pine cone, sprint back. Jeff makes the run and comes back a hero. Rodney greets Isaac as Mr. Chicken and asks who wants to show him how it is done, and Peter volunteers, insisting he is no chicken either. While Peter is out on the ice, Isaac finally says the thing nobody has said. Rodney is very good at inventing dares for other people, and nobody has ever seen him take one. A real leader would not ask anyone to do what he would not do himself. Maybe Rodney is the chicken. Rodney is threatening to put him in the hospital when they hear it - the ice is cracking, and Peter is standing on it.

Isaac shouts for Peter to get off. The ice gives way. Rodney refuses to go out, so Isaac sends Lucy running for Mr. Whittaker and takes charge himself: everyone flat on the ice, each boy gripping the ankles of the one ahead, a human chain pushing him out over the cracks. He whispers a prayer as they go. He reaches Peter, gets one hand and then the other, and the chain hauls them both back.

Afterward, warm at Whit's End with a cup of hot chocolate, Isaac hears from Mr. Whittaker that the doctor says Peter will be fine. Lucy explains where the whole mess came from, and mentions that the police have already had a word with Rodney about sending kids out onto a frozen river. Mr. Whittaker tells Isaac he was very brave. Isaac says he did not feel brave at all - he felt like he was going to be sick, and he did not want to go out on that ice. Then why did he? Because otherwise Peter would have died. That, Mr. Whittaker says, is the whole lesson: courage has nothing to do with how you feel and everything to do with what you do, and it is a long way from a foolish dare. Lucy decides the story belongs in the Odyssey Owl, and Isaac agrees on one condition - she leaves out the part about Isaac the Chicken. From now on it is Isaac the Courageous, all the way.