Thr3E

1Praise ;Friday ;Noon ;THE OFFICE had no windows, only electric lanterns to light the hundreds of spines standing in their cherry wood bookcases. A single lawyer's lamp spread its yellow hue over the leather-topped desk. The room smelled of linseed oil and musty pages, but to Dr. John Francis it was the scent of knowledge. ;"Evil is beyond the reach of no man." ;"But can a man remove himself beyond the reach of evil?" Kevin asked. ;The dean of academic affairs, Dr. John Francis, gazed over bifocals at the man who sat opposite him and allowed a small smile to nudge his lips. Those blue eyes hid a deep mystery, one that had eluded him since their first meeting three months earlier when Kevin Parson approached him after a philosophy lecture. They'd struck up a unique friendship that included numerous discussions such as this one. ;Kevin sat with his feet flat, hands on knees, eyes piercing and un-moving, hair ruffled despite a compulsive habit of running his fingers through his loose brown curls. Or because of it. The hair was an anomaly; in every other way the man groomed himself perfectly. Clean shaven, fashionably current, pleasantly scented-Old Spice, if the professor guessed right. Kevin's ragged hair begged to differ in a bohemian sort of way. Others fiddled with pencils or twirled their fingers or shifted in their seats; Kevin ran his fingers through his hair and tapped his right foot. Not now and then or at appropriate breaks in the conversation, but regularly, to the beat of a hidden drum behind his blue eyes. Some might consider the idiosyncrasies annoying, but Dr. Francis saw them as nothing more than enigmatic clues to Kevin's nature. The truth-rarely obvious and almost always found in subtle-ies. In the tapping of feet and the fiddling of fingers and the movement of eyes. ;Dr. Francis pushed his black leather chair back from the desk, stood slowly to his feet, and walked to a bookcase filled with the works of the ancient scholars. In many ways he identified with these men as much as he did with the modern man. Put a robe on him and he would look rather like a bearded Socrates, Kevin had once told him. He ran a finger over a bound copy of the Dead Sea Scrolls. ;"Indeed," Dr. Francis said. "Can man step beyond evil's reach? I think not. Not in this lifetime." ;"Then all men are condemned to a life of evil," Kevin said. ;Dr. Francis faced him. Kevin watched, unmoving except for his right foot, tapping away. His round blue eyes held steady, stared with the innocence of a child's, probing, magnetic, unabashed. These eyes attracted long stares from the secure and forced the less secure to avert their gaze. Kevin was twenty-eight, but he possessed a strange blend of brilliance and naivete that Dr. Francis could not understand. The full-grown man thirsted for knowledge like a five-year-old. Something to do with a unique rearing in a bizarre home, but Kevin had never been forthcoming. ;"A lifetime struggle with evil, not a life of evil," Dr. Francis clarified. ;"And does man simply choose evil, or does he create it?" Kevin asked, already many thoughts beyond his initial question. "Is evil a force that swims in human blood, struggling to find its way into the heart, or is it an external possibility wanting to be formed?" ;"I would say man chooses evil rather than creates it. Human nature's saturated with evil as a result of the Fall. We are all evil." ;"And we are all good," Kevin said, tapping his foot. "The good, the bad, and the beautiful." ;Dr. Francis nodded at the use of the phrase he'd coined, which referred to the man created in God's nature, the beautiful manDekker, Ted is the author of 'Thr3E', published 2003 under ISBN 9780849943720 and ISBN 0849943728.