"More griddlecakes, Reverend Pelham?" Ma asked quietly.
"Don't mind if I do," he said.
I told Pa after supper that I had a terrible bellyache (I didn't want to break his heart and tell him I'd lost my faith) and didn't believe I could sit through the evening service. He stood there for a minute listening. Reverend Pelham was in the study with the door closed, but we could hear him pacing up and down practicing his sermon. Pa looked at me thoughtfully, felt my forehead, and said in a whisper, "I'm not feeling all that well myself, boy, but that doesn't mean either of us can stay home."
By the time he got up into the pulpit, I could have given Reverend Pelham's sermon for him. Besides, hadn't I decided not to believe in God anymore? Why did I need to listen at all? I spent that hour trying to figure out what I wanted to do with the final days of my life.
Trains were high on the list, but getting to California by Christmas was about as likely as flying to the moon. Then I thought of something I had never done that would just break my heart if I never was able to do it in this life. I wanted once, just once, to ride in a motorcar. I even, just for a minute, imagined myself driving a motorcar, but that, like a train ride to California, seemed too far-fetched even for daydreaming. Riding in a motorcar would be enough. I began to make a picture in my mind of me riding in a motorcar, the wind blowing through my hair, horses shimmying off the road as I passed, people staring, their eyes full of envy and admiration.
Now, at that time I'd never actually seen a motorcar. I'd just read about them in the newspaper, where someone had done a drawing of one that was enough to make a boy's mouth water. Little did I imagine that motorcars were to play a large role in my future.
Reverend Pelham was to leave on the southbound morning train. I was rereading Tom Sawyer. I couldn't read it the day before because Mark Twain, like most of my favorite writers, is not thought suitable reading for a Sunday. I've tried to argue with Ma about this. "When does a person need comfort from a good book more than on a Sunday?" I asked. Beth just snorted. Seems all her favorite books are suitable for Sunday reading. What's happened to her? She used to like Mark Twain almost as much as I do. So I was in the kitchen reading fast and deep to make up for a whole day's deprivation, and I only half realized that Deacon Slaughter and Mr. Weston had come and were holed up with Pa and Reverend Pelham in Pa's study. The door was shut.
An hour or so later Ma hauled me out of my book in time to say good-bye to the reverend, which I did, being careful to use my best manners, so no one could tell how happy I was to be seeing the back of him.
The reverend thanked Ma very kindly for her gracious hospitality and good cooking and shook hands with all of us. He didn't even look funny when Elliot laughed and grabbed him by the left hand instead of the right.
Finally, he turned to Pa and said sort of sadly, "I will be praying for you, Brother Hewitt."
Pa was shaking his hand as he answered, "And I'll be praying for you, my friend."
Then Mr. Weston and Deacon Slaughter hustled the reverend out to Mr. Weston's buggy and off to the depot. I didn't know what all that praying back and forth meant until later that evening, when Ma sent me to the study to call Pa to supper. I opened the door and he was sitting there reading.
I guess I must have dropped my jaw to my knees for the pure shock. My pa was sitting right there in the manse of the Congregational church reading The Descent of Man by Mr. Charles Darwin. It was a well-known fact in Leonardstown that this book was inspired by the Devil himself.
Pa let me stare awhile before he said quietly, "J. K. Pelham is a good man, Robbie, but he appears to be afraid of new ideas. I don't believe God wants us to be afraid of ideas."
But the idea in that book, so Deacon Slaughter had announced one Wednesday night at prayer meeting, was that your great-great-great-great (and so forth) granddaddy was a monkey. I couldn't believe my pa, who was an ordained minister of the gospel and the father of impressionable children, would entertain such a horrifying notion. I said as much.
"I believe that God created us, Robbie, but I'm not wise enough to know just how he chose to do it. I think Mr. Darwin's theory merits study."
I couldn't understand. Pa was a preacher. He had no business reading heathen books that question the Bible. Also, how could he be so careless as to leave a terrible book like that just lying around where anyone could see it? No wonder Reverend Pelham was upset. As for Deacon Slaughter and Mr. Weston, they could tell the congregation not to hire Pa again when his year was up come next May. Then what would happen to us all? Pa didn't know any work but preaching. We'd all probably starve to death, if we didn't wind up on the poor farm. I was so upset, I left the room without telling him to come to supper, and Beth had to go fetch him.
The very next day, the first momentous event occurred. On Tuesday, June the twenty-seventh, 1899, at three P.M., I saw a motorcar. Pa had hired a surrey from the livery stable and was driving down to Tyler to see a parishioner. The man was a granite worker dying of the stonecutters' disease in the Tyler Sanatorium. "Want to go, Robbie?" he asked.
The fact that I'd lain awake half the night mad at him and worrying about what would become of us evaporated from my head like the dew of early morning. I even forgot I'd promised to go fishing with Willie. I couldn't imagine anything better than a trip to the city—except maybe a trip to the city with just me and Pa. As you've probably gathered by this time, to a preacher his family always comes last. First come the needy, then the parishioners, and then the family. And amongst the family I always felt that I got the short end.
I'm ashamed to keep complaining about Elliot, but the truth is he gets lots more attention than I ever do, maybe to make up for his twisted body and simple mind. Every year sets him more apart from boys his age. They're all big and braggy and thinking about girls. Elliot still plays with Letty. He's patient with her and lets her ride his crooked back and pull his hair like it's reins. He laughs when there's nothing to laugh at. It isn't to my credit that I have been a little bit ashamed over the years that he was the big brother and I was the younger. But still it used to cause me to pinch up inside—the attention that Pa gave to him. And he, of course, adores Pa. He kind of pants around him like a faithful dog. It used to embarrass me for folks to see a great big boy like that acting so simple—but my father always made it seem as though it was perfecdy all right, as if he liked it, even.
So, between my brother and all the poor and needy of the village and the church folks who demand lots of chatting up and tending to from their minister, there's never been a lot of time left for me. Did Ma and the girls feel cheated? I don't know. I wasn't much worried about them. I was thinking mostly about myself those days.
So when Pa invited me to go to the city with him, I jumped at the chance. Besides, he had hired Nelly, who was my favorite horse in the livery stable. You'd think with a name like Nelly, she'd be as prim and set in her ways as a deacon's widow, but Nelly is about the jauntiest horse you could ever hope to see. When another horse pulls up alongside her, she's been known to break into a full gallop and keep it up most of the ten-mile road to Tyler. I was hoping something like that might occur, but it was a tame trip. Although Pa let me hold the reins most of the way, he wouldn't let me put her in a gallop on purpose. The excitement came after we hit the outskirts of Tyler.
There was such a hubbub at the town limits that Pa almost took the back road around to the sanatorium. Thank goodness he didn't. At first I didn't even recognize the thing. It just looked as though the crowd was milling about a carriage that had got unhitched. Then it hit me. The thing sitting right there on the main street of Tyler, Vermont, was a horseless carriage. I jumped out of the surrey. "I'll wait here!" I yelled to Pa.
The motorcar's wheels were big and spoked like buggy wheels. There was a high seat with a kind of lever. Someone said that was what you steered with. The motor was hidden. I think it was under the seat on which the driver sat. He was wearing a scarf and goggles and a huge overcoat even though it w
as hot enough to melt the tar in the sidewalks. He didn't smile much. I reckon when you own a motorcar, it doesn't do to look too casual. Every now and again when some grimy-fingered urchin would get too close, he'd raise an eyebrow and growl something like "Don't touch the finish. The Winton's just been polished," which seemed only right for such a grand man to say.
I kept hoping he would start the engine so I could see how it was done. I really wanted to hear the roar and see the motorcar blazing down the road, sending all the horses into a panic. But he just sat there in the center of that curious and mostly awestruck crowd. Now and again someone would ask a question like, "How fast does it go really?" or taunt him, saying, "Bet you couldn't keep up with my horse." The driver would look superior—as well he might, owning such a beauty—and remark offhand that he wouldn't put it in a race with a horse, hinting by his manner that it would be cruel to get the poor beast in such a lather. Why, the poor critter might drop dead from exhaustion.
Pa came back far too soon, even though he had been gone fully an hour by the clock on the Unitarian church steeple. I tried to persuade him to wait a bit, hoping maybe the man would start the motorcar and we could actually see it run, but he just laughed. "It doesn't look as if that fellow is going to move until those gawkers head for home, and that may be suppertime. We've got to get the horse and buggy back to Jake's before then."
From that day on, my ambition was fixed. I was determined. Someday, if the world didn't end before I grew up and got rich, I was going to own a motorcar. And if six months was all I had left, I was at any rate determined to have a ride in one before the world went bust.
There was a problem, however. No one in Leonardstown owned a motorcar. How could I ride in one if no one I knew had one? To my knowledge, and I knew pretty near everything that went on in our village, no motorcar had ever even come through Leonardstown.
I consulted Willie the next morning when we went on our delayed fishing trip. He wasn't very happy with me going off to the city without letting him know and seeing a motorcar when he wasn't around. I tried to cheer him up, saying that when I owned one, I would give him a ride whenever he wanted.
"If the world comes to an end this year, there's not much chance you're ever going to own one," he grumped.
"Exactly what I was thinking, Willie. So my best bet is to get to ride in one sometime in the next six months."
"You ain't seen but one motorcar since you was born more than ten years ago. How come you're not only going to see another one in six months, but you're going to go riding in it to boot? Don't seem likely to me."
"Just what I was thinking, Willie. But there's got to be a way. I just got to have that one satisfaction before the end comes."
"Too bad you can't pray."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, when I want something impossible, I ask God for it because God can do the impossible. But you can't pray."
"Why not? My father's the preacher. I'm a ten times better prayer than you are."
"You don't believe in God no more. Remember?"
"Well, I could pray just in case."
"I don't think it would work. God would know."
I ignored Willie and that evening slipped in a to-whom-it-may-concern prayer to say that before the world collapsed in dust and ashes, I would sure like to ride in a motorcar just once.
3. The Glorious Fourth
WE ALWAYS GET EXCITED ABOUT THE FOURTH OF JULY. Why wouldn't we? It is the biggest thing ever to happen in our town, if you don't count the ice storm that broke down half the trees and let us ice-skate down Main Street on Christmas Day a few years back. But that only happened once. Fourth of July happens every year.
We love the parade. First comes the marshal, who also happens to be the mayor, and since we've had the same mayor all my life, it's always been Mr. Earl Weston. Mr. Weston is the mayor because no one else can spare the time. I don't mean that only lazy men go into politics, but Earl Weston has some mysterious source of money that means he doesn't have to farm, or work in the quarries or stone sheds, or slog away in the livery stable or blacksmith shop, or preach like my pa. He doesn't even clerk in his own store. He was the one, I understand, who thought a board of selectmen wasn't a fancy-enough government for a growing town on the main line of the railroad and that we ought to have a mayor. When no one else could understand why, he volunteered. I reckon Mr. Weston figured out that somebody has to lead off the Fourth of July parade, and that it was only fitting that that someone be the town's mayor. If anybody grumbled, I never heard tell of it.
So first comes the mayor. He is riding, of course. Up until that time Mr. Earl Weston had not been known to walk far, and since he owns his own buggy, he might as well ride in it. Then, mostly walking, come the veterans. Now, the Civil War was over in 1865, and this is 1899, so only the ones who went as youngsters are near spry anymore, and some of them is downright decrepit. But they are mostly walking behind Mr. Weston's buggy, except for Colonel Weathersby, who is a farmer and owns his own horse and thinks that a colonel should ride a horse if he's got one handy. And all of us boys agree. Colonel Weathersby's horse is a beautiful Morgan. He's black and sleek and adds a lot of class to the parade. The veterans need the dignity of that horse, because they are by and large shuffling along. Rafe Morrison lost an arm, and so he's got this empty sleeve sewed up, and Warren Smith is still on crutches on account of a missing leg, but he insists on walking the whole route even so. I think he's kind of thumbing his nose at Mr. Earl Weston, but I ain't heard anyone else say as much, so I keep it to myself.
We got twenty-seven veterans in our town, but only about nineteen or twenty were in the parade. The other citizens that went to the Civil War are sleeping in the cemetery up on East Hill or in some cornfield grave down south.
This year there are two men returned from the war in Cuba, but neither of them got further away than Tennessee. They are walking toward the back of the parade so as not to draw attention away from the real veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic.
The town band follows the veterans. We got a pretty good band for a town our size. This is on account of Mr. Pearson, who used to teach music at the military college in Northfield and then retired to his old family farm right outside town. He heard our band once and volunteered the next day to take it over. Believe me, he whipped it into shape, and now our band is the pride and envy of the whole county. Someday Pm going to get ahold of a cornet and play in the band, if I can just figure out how to get one. As I was listening to the band, wishing for a cornet, I caught myself hoping all over again that the world wouldn't come to an end. It would wreck all my plans for the future.
So there's the band, sixteen strong including a big bass drum that makes you jump like a bullfrog if Owen Higgins happens to boom it just as he passes you. But this past July I wasn't standing on the sidelines. Me and Willie decorated his old wagon, and we were marching in the parade. We meant to pull his aunt Millie's cat in the wagon, but every time we practiced, the cat would just jump out and run away.
"What about your little sister?" Willie asked. "I bet she'd sit there proper. Your ma could dress her in red, white, and blue." I was horrified. Letty was only five years old. I never got to be in the parade when I was five years old. It didn't seem fitting somehow. But the trouble was, Willie mentioned it to Letty before I made up my mind, and she went running to Ma, and so we were stuck with pulling my baby sister in the wagon.
You may be surprised to know that it ain't easy pulling a little girl the whole length of a parade in a wagon. No, she didn't try to jump out or anything. She was pleased as punch just to sit there. But Willie thought as soon as he'd pulled a few feet that since she was my sister I should have the honor. I soon saw why. That little scallywag was heavy. I was sweating like a plow horse. And the wheels were funny, so no matter how straight I pulled, the wagon kept moving to the left.
First thing I knew, I had hit Ned Weston's brand-new bicycle. The Weston boys are very particular about their precious
wheels, and Ned claimed right out loud that I was jealous and did it on purpose. Now, you're obliged to belt someone for an insult of that magnitude, parade or no parade. Willie caught my fist in midair. "People is watching!" he muttered, so I had to give up fighting for the time being and endure another of Ned's superior smirks.
Even including that unfortunate incident, it was a jim-dandy of a parade. The Ladies' Society of the Methodist church (they aren't as dignified as the Congregational ladies) had this farm wagon with streamers on it, and the ladies were standing and sitting around all decked out in flowers. I forget what the banner read—"The Methodist Ladies Are the Flower of Vermont Womanhood" or some such. The Congregational ladies smiled politely from the sidelines, but you could tell they were a little bit miffed.
The Grange had a wagon, too. July is too early to show off much in the way of the fruit of the land, but they had a few unhappy lambs and heifers on board to baa and bleat and represent the glory of our agricultural tradition. Rachel Martin and some of the other girls were riding in that one. They were smiling bravely, though you had the feeling that, standing there in the middle of all that livestock, they'd rather be pinching their noses.
There was a wagon of stonecutters, mostly just the Scotch and French-Canadian ones. The Italian stonecutters stood on the sidelines, looking on and laughing. I think personally that some of their jollity came from a bottle of that homemade wine, which as you know is illegal, unlike cider, which may serve the same effect when it gets a little elderly but is a Vermont product and therefore perfectly legal and not frowned down upon. Pa says judgmentalism is one of my worst failings, next to my temper, and besides, spirits is spirits, and at least the Italians are honest about their drinking habits. Pa always takes up for the Italian stonecutters. He says they're not just stonecutters, they're sculptors in the tradition of Michelangelo and the only true artists we got around here.