Preacher's Boy (8 page)

The family had already gathered around the table
when I got home. I scurried for my place, which is next to Beth's, at the kitchen table. As I sat down, she pinched her nose, her little finger curling in the air like a comma. "Phew," she said.

"Elizabeth!" Ma was shocked to hear Beth using such an unladylike word.

"I can't help it, Mama. Please make him change. He smells like a dead fish."

"How could I? I didn't catch nothin'."

"Anything," said Pa.

I think Ma was more annoyed at Beth than she was at me, but she made me go change anyhow. Honest, sometimes the burden of having a sister who's a lady-in-training is more than a boy should have to bear.

Ma had fixed up beans and boiled some ham, almost like it was still a holiday. We all tried to eat to please her, but it was a hot day and no one was really hungry. Except Elliot. Ma watched him shovel in those beans, her eyes shining like she was proud of some big accomplishment the boy had managed.

Pa made appreciative noises over the food, but I could tell he was no hungrier than me. There were dark shadows under his eyes, making them look old and puffy. Whether from lack of sleep or crying I didn't want to guess. I kept harping on those tears. I didn't mean to, but it really shook me to see my pa so small and scared, a little boy who's hurt and running to his ma.

Beth kept turning and giving me queer looks.

"What?" I said finally. She was making me feel prickly and guilty.

Everyone turned to me like I needed to explain myself. "Tell Beth to stop looking at me," I said. I
couldn't believe the stupid words that just jumped out of my mouth. I turned as red as a flag stripe.

"I can't help looking," she said sarcastically. "You're just too pretty for words."

I jumped up from the table. Pretty? I've given bloody noses for less than that.

"Sit down, Robbie," Pa said quietly. "And calm down, both of you." I gave Beth a smirk, in case she missed the point that I wasn't the only one out of line.

Willie couldn't fish after dinner. His aunt had him working the vegetable patch. Sometimes I help Willie with his chores, but that day I just couldn't make myself. Elliot was going to help Pa in our garden, so I wasn't needed at home. Or wanted. At least that was the way I was seeing it.

Without thinking, I headed back up to the cabin. Nobody was there. I called out, gently at first. When no one answered, I went on inside. There was enough light now to see around. The squatters had a couple of quilts, ragged and filthy to be sure, but still quilts. They must have built a fire sometime earlier, as there were ashes still smoldering in the old stone fireplace.

I tried to figure where they got their food. They could have marched down the hill into town and bought it same as most of us, but somehow I sensed that wasn't how they did things. I'd never seen anyone, not even the Pepin children, whose pa died in a quarry accident, look as needy as Vile did. At school, sitting close together near the wood stove, the Pepin children smelled different from us. Here in the cabin, that odor, which I could only guess was the smell of
poor folks, was multiplied ten times. It made me want to gag.

There was a big kerchief by one of the quilts, tied up, I guessed to protect their worldly goods. My fingers itched to unknot those corners. What would people like Vile and her pa carry from place to place? Where had they come from? What did they call themselves? Not Gypsies, I was sure.

There was a Gypsy caravan that camped in the flats south of town every September. They'd stay a week or so. We boys loved to go and spy on them. Their wagons were painted in bright colors. Their clothes were motley colored, too. Both the men and women wore gold in their ears. They made me think of Solomon in all his glory. When Ned Watson said they kidnapped babies and ate them, I knocked him down. "Wal, you're one baby they'd spit out," I said.

At night, around their fires, the Gypsy folk sang songs, the likes of which you'd never hear in any church—wild songs that would make your blood race and sad tunes that would make you feel lonely and homesick even when you couldn't understand a word. I liked the horses best. They were smaller than Morgans or any farm horse I had ever seen. But they weren't ponies. They were too proud to be ponies—and decorated as beautifully as the people. Nobody who had such wonderful little horses could be evil. I was sure of that.

No, Vile and her pa were no kin to Gypsies. More's the pity.

Were they then what some folks had taken to calling "hoboes"? Pa wouldn't let us use that word. He said it
insulted honest men who had been thrown out of work when times got bad, as they had too often in the last few years. How blessed—Pa never used the word
lucky—
how blessed we were that the quarries had stayed in production, making it possible for the farmers to sell their produce and for most of us in this part of Vermont to eat regular. But even if I was allowed to use the word
hobo,
Vile couldn't be one. I'd never heard of little girl hoboes—just grown men.

"Thief! I caught you!"

Vile was standing over me. I looked up startled. The huge form of her pa—he was full and tall as mine-filled the door. His right arm was behind his back, as though he was hiding something.

"Thief!" Vile said again. I looked down and saw that while my mind had been picturing Gypsies and hoboes, my hands had been untying the ends of the kerchief. Vile fell to her knees and snatched it out from under my hand, but not before I spied printed papers—like bills that get posted up to advertise performances and revival meetings or criminals on the loose. I had no time to read anything. Vile had snatched the whole bundle and was busily retying it, mumbling under her breath at me.

"I didn't take nothing," I whispered. I wasn't anxious for her pa to hear me. "Honest." What things of theirs did she imagine I could possibly want?

"You was fixing to," she said. "You would have if me and Paw hadn't caught you in the very act."

"I was just curious," I mumbled, then wished I hadn't. It made me seem worse than a thief, poking about in their meager possessions, as though because
they had so few things, they had no right to keep private what they did have.

She finished knotting the kerchief, pulling the ends tight with her rough little hands. The nails were bitten, rimmed in black. By this time the man had come into the cabin, dragging behind him a burlap bag. He reached for the bundle with his free hand. It, too, was raw and red with filthy nails. I couldn't help but think of my father's strong, clean hands.

"What you doin' back here agin?" he asked. He was close enough now for me to see the dark red of his nose and the broken blue veins cobwebbing his face.

"This was—is—my cabin."

"We'll believe that when we see your bill of sale." Vile hawked and spit on the dirt floor like a hanger-on in the livery stable. I'd never seen a girl with such a dirty face. Her whole visible body was a strange shade of gray. She saw my look, snuffled, then wiped her nose on the back of her hand. "You can stop staring. Or didn't your momma tell you no manners?"

I could feel the red start at the roots of my hair. "My ma—"

"Git!" the man said, as though I was a stray dog.

"I didn't mean no harm. Really." I wiped my sweaty palms down the sides of my britches. "Look, if you need a better place to stay or—or anything—my pa's the preacher at the Congregational church—he'd be glad to-"

"We do jest fine, Mr. Prissy Preacher Pants," Vile said. "Jest fine. You heard what Paw said. Git."

"But what will you eat? There ain't nothing here."

The man's eyes shifted sidewise. So that was it. They were stealing food. I couldn't be too self-righteous on that score. Me and Willie often took apples and butternuts—all the fellows did. But more for sport, not to keep from starving. Besides, it was only the fifth of July. There's not much ripe this early in Vermont.

At that moment the burlap bag that the man was dragging behind him gave out a loud
bwraaaak.

I forgot to be scared. "I'll be snackered," I said. "You got a chicken in there."

As though to answer me, the bag began to hop about and holler.

They closed ranks in front of the suddenly lively sack. It jumped and squawked to a fare-thee-well.

I couldn't help it. I started to laugh.

"Hush up!" I couldn't tell if the girl's command was for me or the chicken.

"How'd you get past Webster's dogs?" I asked.

Her eyes narrowed. I had the upper hand now. "You ain't thinking to tell on us?"

"Naw. I ain't no snitch." Then, to assure them—and myself?—whose side I was on: "Want some carrots and a potato or two to cook with it?"

The girl was still giving me the suspicious eye, but the man pitched the kerchief-wrapped bundle into the corner and gave me a nod. "Vile, go fetch us some water. The boy may be some use to us after all." He turned and gave me what I could only figure out was his idea of a friendly smile. "Name's Zeb," he said, holding out his big dirty paw.

I gave him my hand. Somehow I couldn't make myself give him my name as well, so I rechristened
myself on the spot. "Fred," I said, quickly disentangling from his handshake. But I liked my new name. I always thought I should have been named Fred.

"Fred here will fetch the roots"—he gave me his smarmy smile—"while I remove the squawk from this here bird." With that he reached into the sack, grabbed the chicken by its neck, and twirled it around and around over his head like a lasso in a Wild West Show.

My mouth fell open wide as a bear cave, in awe or horror, I couldn't say which. "I reckon you don't need me to bring the ax, then," I said faintly.

"Not hardly," he said. His laugh showed me a mouthful of missing and rotting teeth.

I took to my heels and skedaddled down the hill. The winter vegetables, what was left of them, were down in the root cellar. It seemed strange to be stealing something that Ma would have gladly given me had I asked. But asking would mean explanations, and explanations would mean giving away the whereabouts of me and Willie's hideaway and the fact that two of the world's most needy thieves were tucked away up there.

I'm not sure why I didn't want to tell on them. Mainly because I pride myself that I am not a snitch. But I could tell about them without including the thief part. All the tramps who came to our door in hard times got hot meals and, if they were willing, work to do. None to my knowledge had ever hung around more than a week. They all figured there'd be better pickings down the road, I reckon.

Anyhow, just like a Union spy, I watched the manse until I saw Ma step off the kitchen porch with her market basket over her arm. Beth followed after, dragging Letty,
who was intent on observing something in the grass near the steps and not eager to get on down the path.

I waited until the whole little procession turned down off School Street onto West Hill Road before I sneaked down the hill. Pa and Elliot seemed safely engaged at the far end of the garden, but I kept a sharp ear out anyway as I crept into the house and down the cellar stairs.

Our cellar is all bounded about with huge granite boulders, which form the foundation of the manse. It's almost pitch-dark down there—just a tiny slit of a window at the bottom of the stairs. It smells dank like I guess the inside of a tomb might. Sometimes when I go down there, I pretend I'm the first archaeologist to go inside a pyramid. Willie hates that. It really spooks him.

I felt my way into the root cellar. I could tell the carrots by shape. This time of year they're dried and sort of bumpy. They taste reedy, too, but cooked up, they aren't too bad even if Letty tries to spit them out. The potatoes are soft and sprouting by May, not to mention July, but it couldn't be helped. That was all I had to offer. I stuffed the pockets of my britches until they bulged and flowed over. Then I headed around the granite wall toward the stairs.

"Robbie? Whatcha doin'?"

I jumped like a flushed rabbit. Elliot was standing on the top step, peering down into the dark. I hadn't heard him at all. Big and clumsy as he is, sometimes he can be quiet as a cat.

"Nothin'," I snapped, starting up the stairs. "Nothin' that's any business of yours." I pushed past him and headed through the kitchen for the porch door.

"Where you goin'?"

"Uh-fishing."

"Can I go, too, huh, Robbie?"

I tried hard to tamp down my impatience as I cupped my hands over my bulging pockets. "Maybe later," I said. "Say? Don't I hear Pa calling you?"

He cocked his ear to the silence. "Pa found me," he said.

"Yeah, Elliot. I know."

"Why you mad at me, Robbie?"

I could feel the gorge rise in my throat. "Why should I be mad at you?"

"I dunno. Shumtime you are, Robbie. I don' know why. Was I bad?"

I sighed. "No, Elliot. You was just lost. We was worried about you."

"Not bad?" he asked anxiously.

"No. Just not careful where you was going."

"Pa found me," he said, then worried all over again. "He cried."

"I know."

"Was he shad he foun' me?"

"No, Elliot, he was happy."

"Den why he cry?"

"Maybe he was really tired out."

"Oh." He seemed to ponder the idea. I opened the porch door and started out.

"Don' get los'," he called after me.

"I won't."

"Promish?"

"Promise."

T
HE HILL BEHIND OUR HOUSE, WHICH IS REALLY PART
of Webster's pastureland, is terraced by generations of cows meandering across it. Cows, as you might guess, don't fancy sliding headfirst down a slope like a child on a sled. They like to take the long road home, thus the zigzag cow paths. As often as I climb that hill, I still have to pay attention. But that afternoon I had the feeling someone was following me, and I tripped more than once, climbing as I was with one eye over my shoulder to see what might be at my back.

I kept wishing I'd taken time to put the vegetables in a sack or basket. It's hard to move with any speed whilst carrots and potatoes bump and poke at your thighs. Once I commenced to run, and a potato just popped out of my pocket and started rolling down the hill. It bounced on a dried cow pie and just kept going. I had to chase after it, and when I did, most of the rest
of the potatoes hopped out and joined the fun. I was breathing hard by the time I corralled the whole shebang or as many as I could run down. I slowed to an uphill crawl, holding my hands tight against my pockets to keep the blooming roots in place while I engineered across the cow-paths and around the sharpest rocks and sidestepped the wettest of the cow pies that decorate the pasture.