Preacher's Boy (7 page)

When I was younger, Ma and Pa would sometimes urge me to play with Elliot. "You used to have such good times together," they'd say, hoping I'd remember how when I was a toddler I loved romping with Elliot. But by the time I was four, I didn't want to play with Elliot anymore. He was big and clumsy. He knocked over all my block towers and broke my toy boats. As I grew older, I passed him by in the race of life. We couldn't talk about books, because when I was devouring Robert Louis Stevenson, he couldn't even read the first primer. He could never catch any ball I threw him, and he was hopeless with a bat. Baseball only made him cry in frustration. If we walked down to the pond to swim, he was too slow to keep up. Nor could he get the hang of swimming, so if he went with me, I had to stay in the shallow water every minute for fear he'd wander out above his head and drown.

Usually he stayed home with Beth and Ma. Beth always liked Elliot better than me. I was too independent for her tastes. He worshipped her, trailed her around, and obeyed her. He loved the paper dolls she made for him and played with them by the hour. He never in his life sassed her or wished to heaven she'd never been born first.

Letty, when she came along, fit right in with the two of them. They made a great pet of her, and she adored them both. Sometimes Ma would rope me in to watch Letty, but usually I could slip out of the noose. I was the freest member of the family.

It's hard to see the cabin from any distance away. It has sort of folded itself into its surroundings. Only the chimney half is still upright. It's like a great toadstool with a chimney attached, which some giant has come along and stomped, crushing one end. I sometimes wonder if the smashed-in part of the roof might not just come crashing down on us someday, but I guess I'm not too worried about it, or I would have quit going there a long time ago.

I never fail to wonder what became of those folks who built our cabin. It dates back to the days when Revolutionary War veterans who had passed through this beautiful Vermont wilderness during the war came back, bringing their families up from the crowded lands of Connecticut and Massachusetts. Our soldier had come and chopped out a clearing and built his log house, full of hope as anyone who builds a house, I guess, and this is what it had all come to in hardly more than a hundred years.

I was standing still for a minute, thinking and quieting myself, listening to the birds and a couple of quarreling squirrels, when I heard a sound that made my heart collide with my Adam's apple.

At first it seemed like the angry snort of a large animal—a bear, or a moose, or a mountain lion (which was strictly my imagination, as none has been seen in these
parts for years). When my heart settled down a bit lower than my wishbone, I realized that what I was hearing was a snore.

The growl of a mountain lion would have been less surprising. Was it man or beast? It couldn't be woman or child. Neither would be capable of that prodigious sound. I stopped being afraid. There's something near comical about a snore. How can you be shaking in your boots in the face of something that's producing a sound like that while locked, as my grandma used to say, in the arms of Morpheus?

So I started in, not stomping or anything, just sort of tippy-toe. I was really annoyed that something or someone would dare set up its bed in what was by all squatters' rights
my
cabin. Oh, all right, Willie's and my cabin, but he wasn't there to help me protest and run the varmint out.

The door, which was once in the center of the cabin, is now at the end of the side that has fallen in on itself. Fireplace and big chimney are to your left as you come in. I could see at once that the source of the noise was a huddled figure on the hearth—a figure under what had once been a bed quilt, so it was not any animal that runs wild in our mountains.

"Hey, you!" I yelled, stepping toward it, gripping my fishing pole like a baseball bat, just in case I'd need to swat whoever was lying there. I didn't get more than two feet or so into the room when
splat!
I was flat on my nose on the dirt floor, dry leaves stuck in my still-open mouth.

Pushing myself up to my knees, I looked about, a little dazed, to see what might have tripped me. It wasn't
the snorer. He hadn't moved. He was just sawing away as carefree as before. Blinking the stars out of my head and accustoming my eyes to the dark, I saw behind me to my right a small, skinny form. The light from the door caught the shape of a raggedy skirt, so I knew it to be female before I heard the giggle.

"Guess I gotcha," she said when she saw I was looking straight at her.

"What are you doing trespassing in my cabin?" I asked the question with as much dignity as I could muster while spitting out leaves, brushing off my clothes, and getting to my feet.

"
Your
cabin? It ain't been nobody's cabin for a coon's age until me and Paw took possession." Scrawny as her body was, her mouth was as sassy as an overfed cat.

"Me and Willie claimed it years ago," I countered. Two makes "years." I wasn't lying. Besides, the tres-passers couldn't have been here more than a few days at most.

"If it's yourn, why ain't you living in it?" she asked. "You left, and me and Paw come in and took over." She eyed me belligerently. "And don't think for one minute we're planning on leaving"—she paused and looked over at the snorer—"until we is good and ready."

"I ain't never seen you around these parts," I said. It seemed fit to match my language to hers.

"Yeah?" she said, meaning
So what?

"That one your pa?" I asked, pointing to the snorer.

"Jest what business is that of yourn?"

"I told you," I said. "It's my cabin—me and Willie's. We come on it first."

"Prove it."

"Wal, it's got our stuff in it," I said.

"Yeah?"

I realized then that any apples or butternuts the animals had left would have been consumed by this pair of tramps. Likewise the corn silks. Extra fishing poles were, likely as not, part of that gray ash in the old fireplace by now. Our old shirts, dime novels, and pipes were nowhere in sight. There was no evidence I could point out, even if she'd allowed some of it to link Willie or me to this claim.

I sighed. "Wal, it
is
ours."

The snoring in front of the hearth turned into a series of snorts, a raspy cough, the loud clearing of catarrh from a clogged throat. The bundle sat up and shuddered. "Vile!" it bellowed. "Whar's my medsin?"

Neither the girl nor I moved. The bundle turned itself around with some difficulty and stared, taking in me and the girl at the same moment. "Whozat?"

"Git up, Paw," she said quietly. "Viztor come calling."

Visitor? I was the landlord. I was a little wary of the snorer once he was upright, but if I didn't put my foot down immediately, there was no telling how long they'd stay. "It's mine," I said. My voice squeaked, so I boomed out the next sentence like a bass drum. "By rights, I'm owner of this cabin."

The man began shuddering to his feet.

"It's all right, Paw. It's no more his 'an ours." She gave me a glance. "He's nothing but a little kid talking big."

The man looked me over head to toe as if measuring how big a threat I might be. I squinched my eyes to
keep from blinking. He was head, shoulders, and half a chest taller than me.

To my enormous relief and small satisfaction, he broke the gaze. "We was here first," he said to the girl in what was not quite a whine.

"Yeah, Paw," she said. She put one hand on her narrow hip. "We ¡my here and we where. You can jest rest easy on that."

He lurched toward us. I stepped out of the way. I couldn't help it. Then I realized it was the doorway he was heading for, not me. I did another quick sidestep.

"Jest got up," he muttered. "Got to—"

She sort of shoved him out the doorway before he could finish his sentence. So there was some delicacy about her—something girllike. She watched, silent, her back to me, as he stumbled toward the trees to take care of his morning business. I was sure she didn't want me staring, so I walked in toward the hearth, pretending I was looking for something. I was embarrassed for her now, more than sorry for her. The smell of his quilt was a mixture of alcohol and vomit and filth. A drunken old fool for a father. When she turned around again to see what I was up to inside the cabin, I tried to muster up a bit of bravado. "Wal, Vile," I said.

"Violet to you," she barked. But I could tell no one in her memory had ever used her proper name. She was just trying to make herself seem a little less wretched.

I wasn't in a mood to be any kinder than I had been already. "Wal, Vile, Violet, whatever you call yourself, you're just lucky I aim to go fishing this morning. That'll give you time to eat"—she snorted—"and clear out of here before I get back." She snorted again.

We did a little dance as I tried to pass her in the doorway; then she stepped grandly aside and gave me a sweeping bow. I made a wide arc around the noise of the old man in the woods. I didn't want to stumble into him.

Seeing a spruce, I pulled out my pocketknife and pried off a patch of resin. I stuck it in my mouth. Pa says I'm going to sacrifice every tooth in my mouth to chewing resin, but it's free, and I can't afford store-bought gum. Sometimes, when you got a lot of thinking to do, you have this need to be chewing on something.

Pa. I'd hardly thought of Pa while meeting with the squatters at the cabin, but I dug my worms and reached the creek hours before Willie got there, which left me time to think. I started with the pair in the cabin, but too soon I was back home in my mind. A fellow shouldn't have too much time to ponder on things. It ain't healthy. I took a worm from my pocket and threaded most of it onto my hook. There he was, poor thing, dangling helpless from where I'd attached him. What had he ever done to me that I should treat him so cruel?

I chomped down on my wad of resin. Why did the worm make me think of Elliot? I didn't want to think of Elliot at all, much less as a worm. There's a hymn about Jesus' dying "for such a worm as I." I didn't like that line. Elliot might be born simple, he might cause me lots of grief, but he wasn't fish bait. I chomped down harder on my resin. Usually the strong, bitter taste of it made me feel like I imagined a man chewing tobacco might feel. Now it just made me feel glummer. I wanted something sweet in my mouth like maple sugar or candy or store-bought gum.

Pa. My pa crying. Even if in general people think preachers aren't real he-men, I knew most people in Leonardstown looked up to my pa. Else why did they bluster on about their true beliefs and hint darkly that his might be inferior? Wasn't it because they knew in their hearts that he was their superior in every way that really mattered? Even Reverend Pelham had almost admitted as much. Pa's critics were like boys on the school grounds bragging about what their granddaddies did in the Great War. That don't have nothing to do with how fine a person you turned out to be yourself.

That's all bragging about your beliefs amounts to. It's just a matter of trying to assure people you got something superior that they can't see and you don't have to prove. God or no God, it don't hang on what some puny little human beings say or do or think. Any little rooster can puff out his throat and crow the morning in, and he can fool everybody including himself, long as the morning keeps on faithfully coming in on its own. The same way, I reasoned, God, if there was a God, was going to run things His own way. He wasn't going to let mere people tell Him how to run things. God liked for people to be kind and helpful and good. No matter what the Reverend Pelham claimed, God wasn't just interested in how folks crowed.

I sat down there by the creek, and I knew all these things. I had lived for ten years in the knowledge of my pa's true strength. I didn't need to have a hero grandpa, even if I really did. As mad as I might get at him from time to time, Pa was my living hero—until I saw him put his head down on top of my mother's head and blubber like a baby.

Willie finally showed, but I was so talked out in my head, I could hardly speak out loud.

"Elliot all right?" he asked at once. "You didn't really say before."

"Elliot?" I hadn't been thinking much about Elliot just then. "Oh. Yeah. Elliot's fine. Elliot's always fine, ain't he?"

Willie looked at me funny. "Last thing I knew, he was lost."

"Pa found him." I guess I must have snapped the words out.

He was quiet for a minute, looking me over. "That's good," he said. I thought he was about to add
Ain't it?
But Willie has got sense enough not to push things. I like that quality in Willie; also that he is loyal. A friend who is loyal
and
knows when to shut up is as rare as a hippo in Cutter's Pond.

We didn't catch anything. The spring drought had been hard on fish and fishermen alike. We stayed, though, until the sun and our bellies told us that it was time for dinner.

Funny, looking back, I never mentioned to Willie anything about the cabin or its new "owners." You'd think I would have, that Willie deserved to know. Was I planning mischief even then? Something I'd be ashamed for Willie to know about? I don't think so. I just didn't quite get around to mentioning it. That's all. That's no crime, is it?

I
N
L
EONARDSTOWN MOST FOLKS HAVE THEIR BIG MEAL
in the middle of the day. The stoneworkers carry their dinner in pails to the quarry or to the shed, but originally this was a farm community, and farmers come in from the fields after a long morning of work. They need plenty to fuel themselves up for the rest of the day. Nobody in our house does farm work, but we follow the customs of the town. It makes us more a part of the community, though to tell the truth, we've never been quite a part of it. Neither of my parents was born here, for one thing. There are no grandparents or aunts and uncles in easy hailing distance when things go wrong or you want to celebrate. Pa's parents are both dead, and Ma's live up in the northeast corner of the state, away from the rail line. It's a long day's journey from here.