A Small Good Thing

Philippians 4:8: “whatever is admirable…”

Twenty years ago, Professor Dale Brown introduced me to “A Small, Good Thing,” a short story by Raymond Carver. I will tell you the story here, but it will still be worth your finding it, reading it, and then rereading it again.

In Carver’s story, a boy named Scotty is struck by a car on his birthday. He falls into a coma. The parents are shocked and confused. The doctors don’t know what is happening themselves, and they keep offering false assurances. “Go home and eat,” they say. “Everything will be fine.” But everything is not fine. After a few days, Scotty dies. Meanwhile, a birthday cake sits uncollected and unpaid-for at the baker’s. Fed up with customers who order cakes and abandon them, the baker begins prank-calling these parents. “Did you forget about Scotty?” he hisses into the telephone. Eventually, the parents figure out who it is and track down the baker at work in the middle of the night. We expect a terrible scene to follow. But what comes next is not a fight. It’s a meal. The baker is horrified at what has happened. He’s ashamed of himself. He apologizes. And unlike the doctors, he does not tell the parents that things are fine. He does not ask them to leave. He invites them to take a seat, to stay. He offers them food. He breaks open a new loaf of bread. In the dark of night, they commune. “Eating is a small, good thing in a time like this,” the baker says. And that’s how the story ends.

Dale Brown gave me that story long ago, and as an English professor myself now, I have taught it in many different places to many different kinds of students—future nurses and doctors, English majors, business students. What I find so admirable about this story is the recognition, in the end, of a wrong done that cannot be righted. There are no easy words, no false reassurances. The baker cannot rectify the situation. But he can give space to grief, and he does. He invites the parents to sit down and to eat. And then he talks with them as one who has known heartache and absence himself. 

It is no less than what Dale Brown did for me. When I came his way one day my junior year of college, I was very much a student in need—anxious, afraid, doubting, alone. My parents had just divorced, unexpectedly for me. And things that they had long taught me now sounded somewhat hollow. No answers seemed any good. Whatever others offered sounded mostly like false reassurances. 

Dale’s office door was open. It was always open. So I knocked on it, poked my head in, said hello. He invited me in and gave me a seat.

We talked and we talked. I have no idea how much time I took or what else Dale had to do that day. The papers were piled everywhere. The books were stacked knee-high around his desk. He probably had a class to prep for, essays to grade, maybe a paper to write or a book to research. But he did not ask me to leave. 

Dale did not have bread to break for me that day in his office, but he did have books. And that’s what he pulled opened, one after another. As we talked, he grabbed books from the shelf. “You might like this one,” he said. “This has a lovely passage here.” “You should listen to this.” Many sentences and paragraphs he had memorized, the texts tripping from his tongue. But he still broke open the books.

“I think Buechner would be a good friend for you right now,” he said at one point. He pulled Sacred Journey off the shelf and handed it to me. And it was true. I left with that book, and I began to read all of Buechner’s books after that. I had never heard of him before, but I found my own questions eloquently reframed by Buechner in ways that honored doubts and addressed me with no false assurances or easy answers. 

It was a gift to be given Buechner. And it was the kind of giving that kept happening in the English department. Dale’s door was not the only one left open. They all were. My English professors made time for me. They told me to pull up a seat. They opened books for me. They gave me stories. I am an English professor today because of the English professors I have known. It was a gift of their time I now find remarkably admirable, knowing as I do now, just how little time there is.

Ten years after I graduated from Calvin, Dale Brown was struck by a car while biking and killed. It was so sudden, and so tragic. There are no right words to say that would bring him back. But every day, I teach words he gave me to teach. I open texts he gave me to open. And I do my best to live up to the admirable model of a professor I found modeled for me in so many ways when I was a student in need.

The admirable is not always known beyond the moment when it appears. There aren’t really any awards for giving students space and time. Certainly there is no prestige in it. But for me and for so many other students, Dale and his colleagues at Calvin left open their doors, broke open their books, and met us in our time of need. 

In this Holy Week, as I think of what is admirable, I think of Dale and his gift of an open door. It was not some great and noble thing he did for me that day—or for countless other students on countless other days. It was a small, good thing. And it changed my life. 

Abram Van Engen is an Associate Professor of English, Dean's Fellow for Educational Initiatives, and a TCP Faculty Fellow.

He is also editing our Connections series.