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.
2. Preparing for the End of the Age
NONE 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.
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.