Preacher's Boy (3 page)

If all this was not enough to scare the dead, the reverend took to hinting that we were not only panting to the end of the century, we were sneaking up on the End of the Age. Oh, yes, we might be sitting here fat and content, as it were, but we ought to be trimming our lamps like the wise virgins in the Bible. Although he admitted that the Bible itself says, "No man knoweth the day or the hour," and he wasn't going to be presumptuous and name a particular day or hour. But when eighteen ninety-nine rolled over into nineteen aught aught, we'd be fools if we hadn't prepared ourselves for that Dread Day.

"There are those," he went on, and I swear he was looking straight at me when he did, "there are those sitting here in our very midst who will never sit at table in the Kingdom of Heaven. You know who you are!" He was staring daggers at me. "You know who you are." This second time he said it in a real sad way. "I beg you, my brother, turn from your evil thoughts. Turn again and be saved before the night cometh when no man can repent! Repent and join me on that glorious day in the Eternal Kingdom of the Righteous!"

Sitting there in the Leonardstown Congregational church, I just gave up trying to be a Christian. The whole business was too much of a burden for a fellow like me—high-tempered as I was and hating to be tamed down. Let's face it, I ain't got the knack for holiness. Besides, I didn't have the slightest little desire to join the likes of Reverend Pelham at the dinner table for fourteen minutes, much less at the banquet table of Heaven eternally. Eternity is a mighty long time to be stuck with people who judge every word you say and think and condemn most of what you do. It struck me as pretty miserable company. And if Reverend Pelham was the kind of company God preferred to keep, well, I just hoped they'd be happy together.

As for me, I would leave the fold and become either a heathen, a Unitarian, or a Democrat, whichever was most fun. Because if the reverend was by any chance in on God's secrets, the Dread Day (providing it was January first, nineteen aught aught) was only six months away. I aimed to pack a lot of living into that time, and Reverend Pelham had made it clear you couldn't do that and remain a faithful Congregationalist.

Reverand Pelham was, of course, eating at our house. The deacons thought it would be insulting, not to mention expensive, to put their beloved former pastor up in the Leonardstown Hotel.

Well, I got through Sunday dinner (during which the reverend pretty much repeated his earlier sermon, looking across the table to me as though he suspected I'd missed a word a two). As soon as I was excused from the table, I went off to find Willie. I'm not allowed to fish on Sundays, so we were lying on the side of the hill, staring at the clouds, chewing our wood-sorrel twigs, which taste, if you don't know it, almost like lemonade. I watched the sky for a while, listening to the song of a hermit thrush. When the bird hushed, I told Willie in a solemn voice that, as of that very morning, I was a convert to disbelief, and that since life threatened to be short, I was determined, as they say, to make hay while the sun still shone.

"But Robbie," Willie said, "if you don't believe in God, how come you believe He's going to make the world end come January?"

I struggled for a logical answer. Willie's one fault is that he takes everything strictly literal. Not much imagination in him, for all his good qualities. "Wal, Willie," I started, moving my sorrel stick to the other side of my mouth, "it's like this. No man knows the day or hour, but you'd be a fool not to take precautions. Wouldn't I be mad if suddenly the end came and I hadn't made the most of my remaining days? Why, Willie, I tell you, I'd just be furious."

"You think deep, Robbie," he said, his voice fair dripping with respect.

"Thank you," I said modestly. "I reckon I do."

From far off down the valley echoed the whistle of the afternoon train coming up from the south. "I tell you one thing, Willie. If it all goes bust, I'm sure going to miss the trains."

"Don't God have any trains?"

"Think about it, Willie. If there is a Heaven, about which I am currently in grave doubt, everyone would have wings. You'd probably despise trains if you could fly. And then there'd be the problem of firing up the locomotive. If it's like the reverend says, the fire is all someplace else."

"Wal," he said, and quite cheerfully, too, "then you'd be more than likely to see a lot more trains than most, seeing how—"

"Just in case," I said, a bit hurriedly, "let's go down to the depot and see the train come in before we have to go home to supper."

We got there just in time. The locomotive was whooshing and blowing steam as it slowed down. It was only the clank of metal wheels on those silver rails that made us know it was a mighty invention of man and not a fire-breathing dragon of the old stories. We strained to see who was in the cab.

"It's Mr. Webb!" Willie yelled. I could hardly hear him over the noise of the engine. We both yelled as loudly as we could and waved like crazy. Mr. Webb waved back from the cab window, yelling something we couldn't understand. Mr. Webb is our favorite engineer. He's never too proud or too busy to wave at you.

We waited in respectful silence while one or two passengers climbed aboard. I sighed. I'd only ridden
the train a couple of times, and then only as far as Tyler, which was just ten miles down the track. This train went on to Montreal in Canada, and from there you could catch a train that would take you west to Chicago and then another that would take you straight to California.

"Wal," I said, after the train pulled out and it was quiet again, "that's one thing."

"What is?"

"One thing I want to do before ... you know. I want to ride a train so far west that it will drop into the Pacific Ocean if the brakes don't hold."

I could tell Willie didn't like the idea of dropping into the sea, but he didn't say so. "Won't you get homesick so far away from Vermont?"

"Nah," I said. "You know me, Willie. Do I strike you as the kind of feller who mopes around for his ma?"

"No," he said, "I guess not."

Later I remembered how he said it, and I wondered if he was remembering when his ma and pa died. He was only a little kid. He must have missed them something terrible.

You might think a fellow who'd given up believing in God would lose his appetite, but I didn't find this to be the case. Besides, Sunday night supper was nearly always flapjacks with maple syrup. I figured a boy who might have only a few months to live ought to eat up so as to have strength for all the adventures he was going to have to pile into them. Let's see. It was nearly the end of June. That was good. July Fourth always promised firecrackers and about as much excitement as a boy might want for a few days. Then I could begin to
plan the rest of the summer. I wondered, considering the impending apocalypse, if school would open in September. I sighed. It probably would. Grownups would see to it—just in case our future was extended into the next century, after all.

Still, there was the summer, or most of it, wide open.

Even with flapjacks, supper was a sober meal. I know Pa says I am unfair and judge people too harshly, and maybe it's because I still want to blame Reverend Pelham for things that in truth were nobody's fault but mine. Nonetheless, I can't erase the memory of Reverend Pelham shoveling in those good griddlecakes while at the same time talking about how we had to set our minds on heavenly things. He wanted Pa to rejoice at how many people had truly repented after the morning service, and how he was just warming up, and how, after the evening message, the angels in Heaven would be singing alleluias because of all the sinners he'd dragged in. All right. He didn't say it exactly that way, but that was more or less the gist of it.

"More griddlecakes, Reverend Pelham?" Ma asked quietly.

"Don't mind if I do," he said.

I told Pa after supper that I had a terrible bellyache (I didn't want to break his heart and tell him I'd lost my faith) and didn't believe I could sit through the evening service. He stood there for a minute listening. Reverend Pelham was in the study with the door closed, but we could hear him pacing up and down practicing his sermon. Pa looked at me thoughtfully, felt my forehead, and said in a whisper, "I'm not feeling all that well
myself, boy, but that doesn't mean either of us can stay home."

By the time he got up into the pulpit, I could have given Reverend Pelham's sermon for him. Besides, hadn't I decided not to believe in God anymore? Why did I need to listen at all? I spent that hour trying to figure out what I wanted to do with the final days of my life.

Trains were high on the list, but getting to California by Christmas was about as likely as flying to the moon. Then I thought of something I had never done that would just break my heart if I never was able to do it in this life. I wanted once, just once, to ride in a motorcar. I even, just for a minute, imagined myself
driving
a motorcar, but that, like a train ride to California, seemed too far-fetched even for daydreaming. Riding in a motorcar would be enough. I began to make a picture in my mind of me riding in a motorcar, the wind blowing through my hair, horses shimmying off the road as I passed, people staring, their eyes full of envy and admiration.

Now, at that time I'd never actually seen a motorcar. I'd just read about them in the newspaper, where someone had done a drawing of one that was enough to make a boy's mouth water. Little did I imagine that motorcars were to play a large role in my future.

Reverend Pelham was to leave on the southbound morning train. I was rereading
Tom Sawyer.
I couldn't read it the day before because Mark Twain, like most of my favorite writers, is not thought suitable reading for a Sunday. I've tried to argue with Ma about this. "When does a person need comfort from a good book more
than on a Sunday?" I asked. Beth just snorted. Seems all
her
favorite books are suitable for Sunday reading. What's happened to her? She used to like Mark Twain almost as much as I do. So I was in the kitchen reading fast and deep to make up for a whole day's deprivation, and I only half realized that Deacon Slaughter and Mr. Weston had come and were holed up with Pa and Reverend Pelham in Pa's study. The door was shut.

An hour or so later Ma hauled me out of my book in time to say good-bye to the reverend, which I did, being careful to use my best manners, so no one could tell how happy I was to be seeing the back of him.

The reverend thanked Ma very kindly for her gracious hospitality and good cooking and shook hands with all of us. He didn't even look funny when Elliot laughed and grabbed him by the left hand instead of the right.

Finally, he turned to Pa and said sort of sadly, "I will be praying for you, Brother Hewitt."

Pa was shaking his hand as he answered, "And I'll be praying for you, my friend."

Then Mr. Weston and Deacon Slaughter hustled the reverend out to Mr. Weston's buggy and off to the depot. I didn't know what all that praying back and forth meant until later that evening, when Ma sent me to the study to call Pa to supper. I opened the door and he was sitting there reading.

I guess I must have dropped my jaw to my knees for the pure shock. My pa was sitting right there in the manse of the Congregational church reading
The Descent of Man
by Mr. Charles Darwin. It was a well-known fact in Leonardstown that this book was inspired by the Devil himself.

Pa let me stare awhile before he said quietly, "J. K. Pelham is a good man, Robbie, but he appears to be afraid of new ideas. I don't believe God wants us to be afraid of ideas."

But the idea in that book, so Deacon Slaughter had announced one Wednesday night at prayer meeting, was that your great-great-great-great (and so forth) granddaddy was a monkey. I couldn't believe my pa, who was an ordained minister of the gospel and the father of impressionable children, would entertain such a horrifying notion. I said as much.

"I believe that God created us, Robbie, but I'm not wise enough to know just how he chose to do it. I think Mr. Darwin's theory merits study."

I couldn't understand. Pa was a preacher. He had no business reading heathen books that question the Bible. Also, how could he be so careless as to leave a terrible book like that just lying around where anyone could see it? No wonder Reverend Pelham was upset. As for Deacon Slaughter and Mr. Weston, they could tell the congregation not to hire Pa again when his year was up come next May. Then what would happen to us all? Pa didn't know any work but preaching. We'd all probably starve to death, if we didn't wind up on the poor farm. I was so upset, I left the room without telling him to come to supper, and Beth had to go fetch him.

The very next day, the first momentous event occurred. On Tuesday, June the twenty-seventh, 1899, at three
P.M.,
I saw a motorcar. Pa had hired a surrey from the livery stable and was driving down to Tyler to see a parishioner. The man was a granite worker dying
of the stonecutters' disease in the Tyler Sanatorium. "Want to go, Robbie?" he asked.

The fact that I'd lain awake half the night mad at him and worrying about what would become of us evaporated from my head like the dew of early morning. I even forgot I'd promised to go fishing with Willie. I couldn't imagine anything better than a trip to the city—except maybe a trip to the city with just me and Pa. As you've probably gathered by this time, to a preacher his family always comes last. First come the needy, then the parishioners, and then the family. And amongst the family I always felt that I got the short end.

I'm ashamed to keep complaining about Elliot, but the truth is he gets lots more attention than I ever do, maybe to make up for his twisted body and simple mind. Every year sets him more apart from boys his age. They're all big and braggy and thinking about girls. Elliot still plays with Letty. He's patient with her and lets her ride his crooked back and pull his hair like it's reins. He laughs when there's nothing to laugh at. It isn't to my credit that I have been a little bit ashamed over the years that he was the big brother and I was the younger. But still it used to cause me to pinch up inside—the attention that Pa gave to him. And he, of course, adores Pa. He kind of pants around him like a faithful dog. It used to embarrass me for folks to see a great big boy like that acting so simple—but my father always made it seem as though it was perfecdy all right, as if he liked it, even.