option c

Chapter 2

Bing was 6 * when he came to live with Mr and Mrs Daniel Keefer and the only thing he grew to love more than the dozen saintly cats was . . . playing "melancholy minister" with his uncle's sheep. Danny and Constance often puzzled over the doleful, sometimes macabre tones that Bing chose to employ in the spiritual shepherding of his uncle's flock. Happening upon the congregation one day, Danny overhead the following monologue:

"Open your Bibles please." Bing directed with as deep a voice as he could muster. Bing held a sizable flat rock in his pudgy hands. As he commenced his sermon, Bing directed a drooping gaze at the half a dozen sheep now meditating on the grass at his feet.
"The Lord is my shepherd," he began, "I shall not want. But I don't know why I don't want Him. The Bible says I don't want Him. He makes me lie down in green pastures. Do you like to lie down? I don't. So, sheep, you are just going to have to obey and lie down. I don't think you can pray to the cats. I prayed to the cats like Auntie Constance and it didn't work. So you'll just have to do what it says." A note of pathos in his voice, Bing set aside his Scripture, and solemnly patted each sheep on the head, ending his exhortation with an amen.

Danny was amused and looked for his dear Constance to recount the quaint episode. In so doing, he missed Bing's closing statement entirely.

"Brethren," the little lad's voice became resolute, "I will obey too. I know what happens to bad little boys." This said, Bing pointed his morose face in the direction of town and began to walk. His earnest zeal gave strength to his feet and within a half hour's time he was not only marching up main street, but within sight of the brown van that everyone said could get anything you wanted, anywhere you wanted it to go. Surely the vehicle with UPS on its side would know how to find a place called "green pastures" where one could fulfill one's duty to lie down. And so it was that Bing Keefer found himself in the bowels of the United States postal service, trusting as it were its kind bosom to transport him from his "Ur" to the promised land (though he did not know whither he went). And when the jostling of the moving vehicle finally ceased, Bing's eyes adjusted to the light of his destination, . . .

a. the big city of Cincinnati

b. a giant sign reading, "Hatam Sofer Jewish school for Boys"

c. a hippie commune

*author's edit for plausability