Preacher's Boy (2 page)

Besides, a lot of my fights in those days were because of Elliot. You'd think Pa would admire the fact that I was willing to get my nose bloodied for Elliot's sake. But no, he thought I should let those ignorant Westons call me a yellow-livered coward and never raise a finger. All because I was born to be his son.

Pa hates any kind of fighting. It's because he can remember the Great War, though just barely. His father fought in it. They were living in Massachusetts then. Pa says what he remembers is how much grieving the womenfolk did, and how, when his pa came home,
everyone was laughing and crying at the same time. He says he couldn't understand, being only four years old, why his mother should be laughing and crying and all because of some stranger. It didn't make sense to him.

Pa started talking about all the pain and sorrow that the Civil War caused when everyone was yelling and hollering that President McKinley should hurry up and send troops to get the goldurned Spanish out of Cuba; Pa didn't like it one little bit. In fact, he said in church one Sunday right in the sermon that war was Hell, and he thought it broke the heart of God to see His children killing and maiming each other.

Deacon Slaughter rose up from his pew kind of slow like and marched down the aisle and clean out the door. Willie, who is my spy in the world at large, says that Deacon Slaughter told Mr. Weston that the Reverend Hewitt needed to learn a bit more about Hell before he went to throwing the term around. For once in my life I was inclined to agree with Deacon Slaughter.

Don't get me wrong—most days I really like my pa. I wouldn't trade him for anyone else's, even the Westons', who owns half of Leonardstown and has bought them both brand-new bicycles. But land o' Goshen, why did I have to be a preacher's boy?

It isn't just Pa. The whole town thinks they got a right to tell me how to behave. People just have unrealistic expectations if your pa happens to be a preacher. One: You are supposed to be clean—all the time, not just on Sundays. And Two: You are supposed to be good. I don't have a talent for either—nor wish to.

I wasn't the one wanted to be a preacher. It was Pa, and he's clean and good enough for eight or ten people.
They should be plenty satisfied with that and not go laying impossible demands on his offspring.

Of course, Beth is clean and good in the way girls her age tend to be. Which makes her a pain in the neck to me and a joy and comfort to the rest of the world. No one's keeping score on Letty yet. She's still a baby to their way of thinking. Poor Elliot. I guess he's kind of in the baby category, too. So it is always and only me that gets the pursed lips and tut-tuts and "Robbie, you of all people! And your father a minister!"

All right, back to the problem of Mabel Cramm's bloomers. No one got caught. There was mighty speculation, as I think I've said, down at the livery stable. Neither Willie nor me was privy to those conversations, but I think I can assure you that our names never came up in that sniggering talk.

The ladies of Leonardstown were noisily appalled, and whatever their menfolk might have thought privately, there was a general agreement, at least among the members of our Congregational church, that it was yet another evidence of the creeping moral decay that was rotting America from the core like a worm in an apple. Previously, they had been able to look down their noses at the other forty-four states, but America's worm had invaded the Green Mountains of Vermont and crawled all the way into our beautiful little village.

In addition to the shocking affair of the flying bloomers, there was the rowdy crowd that hung around the livery stable. They weren't just talking horseflesh, that was plain. You don't do that much snorting and knee slapping discussing gait and coat and size of livery-stable mares and geldings.

And then there were the Italian stonecutters. Now, the Italians go to the Catholic church in Tyler if they go anywhere at all, and in my opinion that isn't any business of the old-time New England Protestant population. But while the pious folks were on the subject of wickedness, they started in on the Italian population as well. Those men were drinking something considerably harder than the local cider—and none of them even pretended it was for medicinal purposes. Everyone knew that certain of the Italian women brewed their own, so to speak. But in a state that enshrined prohibition as law, maybe it was high time the sheriff stopped looking the other way.

And getting closer to home, there was the current preacher at the Congregational church. Whether you were Methodist, Baptist, Unitarian, or nothing at all, you still looked to the tall white steeple on Main Street as a symbol of purity and piety come from Heaven straight down to earth. There was, it was noted, a certain lack of rigor in the current occupant. According to the going opinion, he was a good man, but he was far too easy on sin.

Then I had to go and make matters worse. I was sitting with Willie in the evening service. Ma knows it is a burden for me to have to go to church twice on Sundays, and Wednesday-night prayer meeting to boot, so sometimes she lets me sit with Willie, making me promise to behave. Willie's aunt's pew is right behind the Westons'. I was behaving, just like I promised, but fate intervened.

The church was stuffy as a coffin. What was I doing in church on such a night? My mind drifted miles away.
I was a sweating private on the lines waiting for Johnny Reb to show the whites of his eyes over the rise. The rise being Mrs. Weston's back, which is about as broad as East Hill. Boy, it was hot. I pulled out one of the pew fans from the rack in front of me and begun to flap a little breeze toward my sweaty face. That was when I saw it. Right in the middle of the sermon, there was a large black spider crawling up that generous expanse of brown silk, heading for Mrs. Weston's high-necked collar.

I punched Willie with the fan, and we both watched fascinated to see how far the spider would get before Mrs. Weston knew it was there and what would happen if and when it got to the top of her collar. Well, what happened was it crept right up that stiff collar, teetered, and was about to get its balance and ruin all our fun. So I leaned over as if in prayer, and, delicate as a Civil War surgeon removing a bullet, put the edge of the fan under the spider's four lower legs and tipped it right down the back of Mrs. Weston's dress.

At first, Mrs. Weston just twitched a bit, but before long she began wiggling like a caterpillar when you tickle it with a stick. And the way she wiggled and pawed, you had to figure that the creature had made its way around to the front and was exploring the territory on the other side of the world. I tried to control myself, but before I knew it, a livery-stable-sized snort just popped right out of my mouth. That got Willie going and only made matters worse.

Suddenly I realized that there was silence where there should have been preaching. I felt it before I looked up. There standing at my elbow in the aisle was the tall form of my father. He wasn't saying a word. He
was just looking at me. Nobody ever sobered up as fast as I did that night. Pa never said a thing. He just marched back up the aisle, climbed the stairs to the platform, and took up preaching where he left off, leaving my face as red as the side of a new-painted barn. While every eye was on Pa, Mrs. Weston seized the opportunity to escape down the aisle and out the door.

It doesn't make much sense to me even now, but that night I raced home—the manse is just up the hill behind the church—ran up two flights of stairs to Elliot's and my bedroom, and climbed under the quilt. I guess I was hoping if Pa didn't see me right off, he'd forget the whole incident. It was Elliot, not Pa, who came looking for me.

"Oooo, Robbie, you in big trouble."

I stuck my head under the pillow. I was in no mood to deal with Elliot.

"You scare', Robbie?"

"No, I am not scare'."

"Den why you hidin'?"

I threw back the covers and jumped out of bed. "I'm not hiding, you dummy! Just go away and leave me alone, will you?" He stood there with his mouth open, looking more dumb than ever, which made me yell all the louder. "Get outta here," I said. "Take your stupid self out of my sight!"

"What is going on up here?" Pa was standing in the doorway. He's so tall, he has to stoop a little or bump his head on the doorjamb when he comes into our bedroom, which is under the eaves.

I shut up yelling pretty quick. He was staring at me something fierce, but I didn't want him to think I
was as ashamed as I felt, so I made myself look him in the eyes.

He turned toward Elliot. "Elliot," he said quietly, "please go downstairs. I need to talk to Robbie a minute."

Elliot smiled his sweet silly smile, "'kay, Pa." Sometimes that smile could drive me near crazy.

Pa waited until Elliot had clumped down the stairs. "Well, Robbie," he said, "I don't know where to begin."

I just sniffed. I was still furious, though I couldn't have told you who I was mad at.

He waited a minute, but when he realized I wasn't going to say anything, he went on. "I'm less concerned about your behavior in church than I am about your behavior just now toward your brother."

I shrugged my shoulders. Nobody needed to tell me I shouldn't have yelled that way at Elliot. But I didn't want him saying so.

I guess he realized that it wasn't the time for a lecture on Elliot. "As for your behavior in church—"

"I don't know why I always got to go to church—"

"Because you're a member of this family."

"Nobody asked me about that."

"Oh, Robbie—" I could tell he wanted to say more, but he was too exasperated and hurt to keep at it. "When you're ready to talk in a sensible fashion, I'll be in my study."

I showed him. I never went downstairs until the next morning.

N
ONE OF THE CHURCH PEOPLE EVER SPOKE OF MY
behavior that night. They would see me coming and shake their heads, but they'd done that for years. It was Pa's reputation that got further damaged, not mine. A preacher who couldn't prevent his own son from disrupting divine services was lacking proper authority even in his own household, they said. They all felt it would have helped if Pa had had the moral fortitude to lay a rod across my rear once a day and twice on Saturdays.

But I wasn't the only problem, they said. The sermons themselves lacked passion. They asked each other when was the last time the word
Hell
had been thundered from the pulpit? Calling war "Hell" didn't seem to count. It occurred to them that they hadn't heard more than a thimbleful of fiery damnation since the Reverend J. K. Pelham left town twelve years previously to take a larger charge in western Connecticut. No wonder the town was about to disappear down the broad path of turpitude and outright wickedness. All that drinking and obscene thinking and flying you-know-whats from the town hall flagpole—no one was warning the citizenry about the wrath to come.

Folks began to wax near nostalgic about those good old days. Why, Reverend Pelham's sermons would make tears come to the ladies' eyes and the sweat break out on the foreheads of grown men. Oh, that those mighty days should return. So the deacons determined to write to Reverend Pelham and invite him home to Leonardstown to preach on what they were calling "Revival Sunday." They figured a good dose of the old reverend would turn the town on its ear, if not lead it to righteousness.

Pa, I don't need to say, was not overly pleased with the idea. I overheard him complaining to Ma that he'd spent the better part of twelve years mopping up damage from the Reverend Pelham's sermons. Because, you see, it wasn't the wicked people who got changed by them. It wasn't even the pious and prim who were well set in their ways and not about to change, for all their tears and sweat. It was the meek and easily frightened—they who had a fragile hold on the everlasting mercy.

I felt terrible. I knew good and well it was the business of Mabel Cramm's bloomers that had set the congregation to thinking that the town was headed on the road to perdition. And me and Willie had done that just to get even with the Weston boys. It was like blowing a soap bubble to the size of a hot-air balloon. Even though God and I were on shaky terms in those days, I
prayed He would see how the situation had got all out of proportion and stick a pin in it. Well, anyhow, that He would somehow manage to keep Reverend Pelham home in western Connecticut.

My prayer was not answered. Reverend Pelham wrote back the very day he got the letter. He said the Lord had told him to tear himself away from the sinners in Connecticut and hightail it to Leonardstown, where, apparently, the Devil had had a picnic since the reverend's departure twelve years before.

So it was that at eleven
A.M.
on the last Sunday morning in June the Reverend J. K. Pelham mounted the pulpit, standing where by all rights my pa should have been, breathing fire and brimstone on the just and unjust alike.

I wasn't too worried when he spoke out against drinking strong spirits and indulging in tobacco. I've never had anything more than a little hard cider myself, and the only thing I smoke regularly is corn silks and the occasional rabbit tobacco. In fact, I was wondering how Mr. Weston was taking that part of the sermon, since everyone knows he not only sells tobacco but is known to smoke and chew it himself. As for the strong drink, there were a number of menfolk out there that had regular bouts of indigestion for which alcoholic spirits had proved to be the only known cure. Or so they maintained.

I began to get a bit squirmy when he started in to preach about impure thoughts and language. How can you blame a fellow for what he thinks? It's not as if I go looking for ideas that aren't proper. Sometimes thoughts just pop into my head like weeds in the vegetable patch.
The same goes for language. How can you blame a fellow for letting slip the occasional cuss word? I don't cuss around ladies or church members—only do it around Willie or other fellows. After I've had a run-in with the Weston boys, it takes a few purple phrases to settle me down.

Reverend Pelham did not stop with condemning folks for unrighteous behavior or even wicked thoughts and words. He went on to say that people who behave themselves might be in worse danger than the murderers, thieves, adulterers, and the like, because being good never got a soul past the Pearly Gates. No, no. We mustn't be misled. Behaving yourself didn't cut any ice with God if you didn't
believe
everything just exactly proper. When the Day of Judgment came, all us doubters and unbelievers and followers after false doctrine would come to the same end as all the outrageous sinners. We would all go swooping down the coal chute to the fiery furnace. No, those weren't his
exact
words, but that's what he meant.