Preacher's Boy (6 page)

"C'mon, Robbie. Nobody's calling nobody nothing. I'm just trying to think of everything."

"I know," I said. "Let's go check around the stone sheds. If he ain't there, we'd best go home. Why, he's probably there right now, safe and sound, while you and me is running around looking for him like crazy men."

There was no sign of him around the stone sheds, their low metal roofs gleaming ghostly under the single tall gaslight. It didn't help to know that under those roofs lay hundreds of gravestones in the making. We
headed up West Hill Road, then turned at School Street, not talking until we reached the manse. Neither Elliot nor Pa was there, but Ma was so relieved to see Willie and me that she refused to let me go out again. "Go on home, Willie. Your aunt will be frantic if you stay out much longer. Mr. Hewitt will find Elliot. I know he will. Thank you, though." She gave him a large piece of pie to eat on the way and hurried him out the door.

Letty was already in bed. Ma and Beth and I sat at the table and tried not to look at each other's faces, pale and drawn in the gaslight of the kitchen.

"He's dead. I just know he's dead," Beth burst out.

"Oh, Beth, I'm sure he's all right." But how could Ma be so sure?

The silence among us was so huge that each tick of the hall clock hit my head like the stroke of Teacher's ruler against my palm. I cleared my throat.

"What, Robbie?" Ma looked at me all expectant, as though I might have come up with a good idea. I felt pushed to say something.

"Me and Willie combed the town—all Elliot's favorite spots. We even hunted up the creek." The look of fear that crossed her face made me hurry on. "It's running low," I said. "You know how dry it's been."

She tried to smile.

Beth scraped back her chair and got noisily to her feet. "I can't stand just sitting here staring," she said.

Ma looked up, all lit up with hope. She really thought one of us was going to come up with some great idea, but we didn't have any, not any we could bear to put into words. The quarries east of town and the pond to the south—they were too unthinkable.

I made a picture in my mind of Pa, the lantern swinging in his right hand, climbing East Hill Road toward Quarry Hill. He was calling out,
Elliot! Elliot!
and then a little voice from the dark calls back,
Here I am, Pa.
And he takes Elliot by his big left hand and brings him home, rejoicing.

"I'll make some tea," Beth said, bringing me back to reality.

"Thank you, Beth," Ma said, her voice low with disappointment. "That would be nice."

We drank our tea. I put two large lumps of maple sugar into mine, stirred it as hard as if it was porridge, blew across it, and slurped it. Nobody corrected me, not even Beth. I wished they would.

At first we couldn't be sure. When you been listening for what seems like hours, your ears strained with the waiting and wanting to hear the sound that's not there, you hardly dare to trust them when it does come. Then, suddenly, we all jumped up at once and ran to the door. Our chairs clattered backwards to the floor, but we didn't stop to right them. Ma got there first and yanked the door wide.

There was Pa, bent nearly in half with the effort of carrying a long load of what we knew was Elliot onto the porch. Ma gave a sharp cry and was still. None of us could breathe.

"He's all right," Pa said quietly, answering the question we couldn't bear to voice. "Just very, very tired." He came on into the kitchen and gently laid Elliot's crooked frame down on the daybed we keep in there in case someone is sick and needs to stay close to the stove. Slowly Pa straightened up and kind of crunched
his shoulders. "He was in the cemetery. I found him stumbling around the tombstones. He didn't seem to know why he'd gone up there. I asked him, but he couldn't seem to explain." He turned toward Ma. "It doesn't matter, does it? He's safe."

"Oh, Frederick," Ma said. "Thank God."

He kept looking at her for a minute, and then he went over to the door where she was still standing and, right in front of us children, he put his arms around her, laid his head on top of hers, and commenced to weep.

"I went all the way to the quarry....It was too dark to see anything down in the ... in the ... I was so afraid..." The words were coming out between the sobs. I may not have heard them just right, but I swear that is what it sounded like he said.

I shut my eyes. I wanted to clap my hands over my ears as well. How could I bear to witness it? My pa hanging on to Ma, crying like a baby. It did something to the pit of my belly. I was ashamed for him. Even when he humiliated me or carried on against war, I'd never seen him when he was anything less than a real man. But at that moment he was not the tall preacher that folks had to crane their necks to look up to, not only physically but in every way. He was a scared little boy. It was all I could do to keep from running out of the room.

"It's all right now, Frederick. It's all over now." Ma was patting his back and comforting him like he was Letty and not her husband. "It's all right."

Finally, Pa let her go and reached into his pocket for his handkerchief and blew his nose. He laughed in a funny, choked kind of way. "My," he said, "you'd think I was the lost one."

He blew his nose once more before pocketing his handkerchief and going over to the daybed. He bent nearly double to get his head as close to Elliot's as he could. "How're we doing, young man?" he asked softly.

"It's aw right, Pa," Elliot whispered back. "I wa' scare', too."

"Good thing we found each other then, eh, son?" His voice was so gentle, so full of love that at that moment I was seized with such a jealousy of Elliot that if I had been abiding by the commandments, I would have shattered the one on covetousness to powdered smithereens. How could Pa love Elliot that much? Elliot wasn't a son a man could take pride in. He was a poor simpleton to be pitied. He'd never grow up and accomplish anything in this world. Mercy. He'd never even be able to shoulder the duties of the stupidest farmhand or stableboy. Pa and Ma were likely to be taking care of him the rest of their natural lives, and then who'd have the burden of him? No one in his right mind would want it. But here was Pa worshipping his poor simple boy like a wise man come to the manger. Whatever else it all meant, I knew better than I knew my own name that I had never heard Pa speak to me in such a voice. He'd never cried for me.

Nobody was paying me the least attention, so I climbed on upstairs to my room—to Elliot's and my room—and went to bed. I couldn't sleep. I kept hearing the sound of Pa's crying in my head. At long last I heard his heavy footsteps on the stairs. He was carrying Elliot to his own bed.

"Night, Robbie," he said. "Thanks for helping."

I turned my face to the wall and pretended to be asleep.

I
WAS UP NEARLY WITH THE ROOSTERS THE NEXT
morning, up before anybody except Ma. Sometimes I wondered if she ever slept. There she was, the fire stoked up, stirring the porridge. It was the same Scots blood in her that had caused her to name me Robert Burns Hewitt that made her boil that porridge, summer or winter.

I didn't feel hungry, but I knew it made no difference to say so. I wouldn't get out of the house until I'd downed my bowl of it. It's not that bad, porridge isn't, but it's heavy and sticky, and if you don't happen to be hungry, it's like wading waist deep through a bog.

Ma watched while I poured about twice the usual amount of maple syrup on it, but she didn't object. She just stood there, her lips parted a little ways, no words coming out. She looked dog tired. In a way I was ashamed of behaving in what I knew was a defiant manner, taking all that syrup, but I needed it that morning—needed sweetening, I reckon, or just some kind of proof that I was worth something extra to her, if not to Pa.

"You're up early, Robbie," she said, turning back to the big iron stove that takes up a quarter of the back wall.

"Yes, ma'am," I said. "Couldn't sleep too good."

"I guess it was a hard night for us all," she said. "But it's all right now. Elliot's safe and sound."

"Yes, ma'am." I chewed my way through another bite. Mercy, it was work to get through a whole bowl of porridge. I asked for another mug of milk. I needed help to wash it down. I stretched across the wide table to hand her the empty mug.

"I'm glad to see it hasn't hurt your appetite," she said, refilling my mug. Instead of reaching across, she walked around the table to give it to me.

I grunted, but she took it for a thank-you and patted my shoulder when she put the milk down at my place. Then she went to the stove, poured herself a cup of tea, and sat down at the table opposite me. Ordinarily I would have been pleased. She hardly ever took the time to sit down like that just with me. She bent her head over her cup and took a tiny sip. Then she sat back and stared into the space above my head.

It relieved me that she wasn't going to try to make conversation. I wasn't feeling chatty, and I still had half a bowl of porridge to work my way through.

"Your father's sleeping like a baby," she said finally. "I've never seen him so exhausted."

I nodded and swallowed and washed down what
was still stuck in my throat. She sighed deeply and took another sip of her tea.

I took her distraction as a chance to escape. I got up and hastily washed out my half-finished bowl under the kitchen tap. "Wal," I said in a fake cheery voice, "I guess me and Willie will try some fishing before the day gets too hot."

She nodded and smiled absentmindedly. She'd quite forgotten to ask me if I had finished all my porridge. I hightailed it out of there as fast as I could grab my pole and basket and jump off the porch.

Just as luck would have it, Willie's aunt had him splitting wood for the cookstove. "You found Elliot okay, I guess," he said as I came near.

I shrugged a yes. "Wanna go fishing?"

"I ain't ate yet," he said, studying my face.

"Come when you can," I said. "Maybe I'll go up and check the cabin first anyhow."

"The cabin?" We always went up to our hideout together. We both knew that. "You okay, Robbie?"

"I don't know, Willie. I just need to mess around a little. See if everything's all right, dig a few worms up there in the woods." I tried to sound ordinary. "I'll get back down to the creek before the Weston boys think about getting up. Promise."

"All right, then. See you." He brought the ax down dead in the center of the log. The boy can sure split wood. You got to give him credit for that.

I started for the hill directly from Willie's, skirting the field where the Robertses had their bull penned, crossed their pasture, and headed toward the edge of the woods from there. It wasn't the best way to get to
the cabin. It would have been easier to go back down School Street and go up from my house, but I didn't want Pa or anyone to see me. I really needed to be by myself, even though I wasn't finding myself particularly delightful company just then. I wished I'd brought a book to read, but for that I'd have to go back home. I wasn't going back home until hunger drove me to it.

The hay on the hill had been mowed just a few days before, and the stubble was prickly but not overly painful. If I have a good quality, in addition to my prodigious vocabulary, it is my feet. They are as tough as hippo hide. I can't help being proud of them. I bet I could walk on nails like those swamis in India should the necessity arise. When I hit the first line of trees, I walked along parallel to the woods until I could look far down the hill to the back of Mabel Cramm's house—she who started it all—then down to the Branscoms', the Wilsons', and, of course, the Websters' farmhouse, barn, and chicken yard. All the fields and pastures behind School Street belonged to them. Then there was the big, rambling manse, and below that the steeple of the Congregational church pointing upward to the empty sky. I sighed. It seemed lonely to be an apeist that morning.

I didn't spot any tiny figures outside the manse. Nobody splitting wood. There's never any need to split wood before breakfast at our house. Pa makes sure the wood box is full at all times. He's really faithful about that.

Sometimes, if people are out of work or needing help, he'll hire them to chop or split wood, but mostly he does it himself. "Get Robbie to give you a hand with
that," Ma will say, but he'll just smile and shrug. "It's good for me," he'll say. I can't help but notice that whenever there's some little upset in the congregation, wood is just overflowing that box to the floor beside it, and the woodpile outdoors is taller than me.

I turned and put the morning sun, now high in the sky and drifting southward, at my back and entered the woods. Suddenly my world was dark and cool. Since the snow melted, Willie and I had worn the path down until it was nearly as smooth as Main Street. I don't know why we went to the cabin so much. Oh, we kept a little stuff there—some extra fishing gear, a couple of old shirts for warmth in a cold snap, some lucifer matches to make fires, a couple of homemade cob pipes, and some corn silks we'd dried in case we needed a smoke. From time to time we'd try to store a little food—green apples we'd pinched from the Websters' orchard, some butternuts we were planning to eat as soon as we took the trouble to smash them open. Mostly the squirrels and coons got into the food. I was always surprised, when I went up, if they'd left anything for us.

In the quiet of the woods the sound came into my head as clear as if I was really hearing it. The sound of Pa crying. It was so unlike him. I think that was what turned me inside out. So unmanly. Whatever some folks may think about preachers who work more with their heads than their hands, nobody ever accused my pa of being anything less than a real man.

All because of Elliot. Because he was lost and might not have been found safe and then was. I've tried all my life not to mind Elliot being my brother, not to let him spoil what is, by and large, a pretty good life for a boy.
Once the Weston boys talked about him just loud enough to make sure I could hear them, wondering whether Elliot's "condition" was a family weakness or a family sin. I gave Ned Weston a bloody nose for that one. To me it was a questioning of my parents' honor. I couldn't let that pass. I'm proud to say that even when Tom got big enough to whip me, the Westons didn't hold that discussion in my hearing again.