Preacher's Boy (10 page)

I might be a conscienceless apeist who didn't have to obey the commandments, but that didn't mean I had lost all human feeling. I decided to persuade Vile and Zeb to come to town. Pa would help them. What kind of work would Zeb be able to do? He didn't look smart enough to work in the quarry or in the stone sheds. It might have to be the poor farm, at least for a while. How could they be too proud to go to the poor farm? They were squatting in an abandoned cabin, stealing what food they had. Wasn't the town farm better than jail? Which was sure where Zeb was headed if he snatched one chicken too many. He wasn't oversmart. The law was sure to catch up with him soon.

I didn't sleep all that well. When I did fall asleep, it was to dream. In the dream I didn't have Ma and Pa
anymore. I was living with Zeb and Vile. They made me do the stealing for them because I was smarter than Zeb, and Vile was a girl.

The night was hot and seemed to press in on me as I crept down to Mr. Webster's chicken house. It was so still, I could hear my own loud breathing. But then, just as I grabbed a bird, all the hens began to squawk, the dogs commenced to bark, and Webster came yelling out of the house with his shotgun.

"Don't shoot!" I was crying like a baby. "It's only me, Robbie Hewitt!"

Mr. Webster cocked his eye at me. It was clear he didn't recognize me. He raised the gun and sighted.

"Mr. Webster!" I cried out. "It's me, Robbie Hewitt, the preacher's boy!"

I heard the crash of the shot. Everything went black. Then I could feel a warm, thick liquid oozing up and spreading across my chest. I knew I was dead.

I sat up in bed. I couldn't breathe. I just sat there gasping for air. What I wanted to do was run down the stairs to Ma and Pa's bedroom and crawl into their big bed with them, but I couldn't do that. I was nearly eleven years old.

It was only a dream, I told myself. Just a bad dream. I forced myself to lie down again. Was it a warning dream like in the Bible? People got warned in dreams. Maybe it meant I shouldn't go near the cabin again, shouldn't let myself get messed up with the likes of Zeb and Vile. That was it. I'd just stay away, and they couldn't hurt me. I lay down and put my hand over my heart until I could feel that it was slowing back down to normal. Then I turned over and finally went to sleep.

N
EXT DAY
I
HELPED
W
ILLIE WITH HIS CHORES
. I
COULD
tell he was puzzled by my sudden attack of industry, but he wasn't going to ask nosy questions and scare me off. He chopped the wood himself. He said it took me too long, and I never split it even. He sent me to pull weeds from the carrot bed. We needed rain bad. I broke off most of the weeds at ground level, the ground was so hard and dry.

"I think we should water these vegetables some," I yelled to Willie.

"Can't!" he yelled back. "The well's low." He was right. It would be worse to have no drinking and cooking water than to lose a few carrots. He took another swing, cracking a log neatly down the middle. He set up one of the halves and split it.

"Say," I said, coming over to where he worked. "Why don't we hike over to the pond and take a dip after you're done?"

His eyes lit up. "Shhh," he warned. "Don't let Aunt Millie hear you."

We took our fishing poles to pretend we might be bringing home dinner, but once we were out of sight, we laid them down beside the road and took off flying down the hill to Main Street, south to Cutter's Pond Road, and out into the countryside below the eastern hills.

The smell of summer, even a dry and dusty one, is perfume to a boy's nostrils. The pastures with grass and even cow dung ... the fields of hay ... the dust puffing up from the road under our bare feet...

"Wait." Willie was panting and holding his side. "I got a stitch."

"Sissy!" I hollered, running on. True, I hadn't split a pile of wood that morning. But I would have kept running even so. The faster I ran, the farther behind I left the demons that had been at my heels for days. No more Zeb. No more Vile. No more Reverend Pelham or Deacon Slaughter. No more Elliot.

If I stopped pounding down the road long enough to think straight, I would have been ashamed, but I wasn't going to think—just slap down my bare sun-browned feet till they were lost in the dust of the road.

I didn't run the whole mile and a half. That was too much even for me that day. Still, I reached the pond long before Willie did. I threw myself on the huge flat rock at the south end that belonged to us boys by right of conquest, lay back, and let the sun bake my face. My limbs melted and I was nearly asleep by the time Willie came laboring up, still holding his side. He was breathing so hard, I could barely make out the words, but he
was jabbering like a blue jay at me, full of excuses as to why he couldn't keep up. I just lay there, my face warm, my body still as the face of the pond. For that little while it felt as if all was right with the world.

Sometime later, after Willie had calmed himself down, we stripped to our birthday suits and dove off the rock. The coldness shocked our warm skin, but in a pleasing, bracing kind of way. I turned over on my back, spewing out a mouthful of water at the sky in my whale imitation. Then, forgetting even to show off, I just hovered there, feeling as though I was one of the clouds, floating lazily in the blue.

Long minutes later we climbed back up on the rock and fell asleep in the sun.

"Hey there, fellers! Havin' a nice nap?"

We both woke with a start and grabbed for our clothes, which were no longer there. Out in the middle of the pond Tom and Ned Weston were treading water, paddling with one hand, while holding something in the air with the other. "Need these?" Tom called, waving what looked like Willie's shirt and britches. Ned laughed and waved mine.

"Don't you dare!" I yelled. Willie didn't stop to yell, he just dove in and headed for Tom Weston as fast as he could swim. "Don't you dare!" I yelled once more before I dove in.

"Nyeh! Nyeh! Nyeh!" Ned waved my clothes toward me, but before I could get halfway across, he turned and hurled his bundle as far away toward the other side as he could. Then Tom threw his, but Willie had nearly caught up, and he grabbed his shirt and britches before they sank. Willie didn't wear underwear
in the summer. He swam back to shore and pitched his soaking clothes up on the rock, then started out to help me find mine.

I had swum to the spot where Ned had thrown them. There was nothing to be seen, not even underwear. I dove over and over again. Each time I surfaced, I could hear Ned's "Nyeh! Nyeh! Nyeh!" They were both screaming with laughter.

"Forget them, Robbie," Willie was saying. I guess he could see something roiling in my face every time I came up for air.

Finally we gave up. It was no use keeping on. The pond was at least thirty feet deep in the center. "You little rat!" I yelled at Ned.

"Whatcha need clothes for, Robbie? Ain't you a monkey's boy?"

Tom began to laugh. "That's what his daddy thinks!"

"And he's got a brother to prove it, too!" Then Ned began to sing: "Wha a fen we ha in Sheeshush! Aw our shins and grease to bear!"

"Shut up, Ned!" I yelled. "Shut up!"

"Monkey sons! Monkey brothers! Monkey papa! Monkey boys—"

By this time the blood was raging between my ears. I swam like fury over to Ned Weston, and in the middle of his chant, I reached over and shoved him facedown in the water. He was flailing his arms. Tom and Willie both yelled at me. But I didn't let up.

Willie started toward us, crying out as he came, "Stop it, Robbie!"

I forced Ned's stupid little pointed head deeper into the water.

Willie snatched my hand and pushed me away. When Ned came sputtering up to the surface, still flailing, Willie hooked his arm around Ned's neck and held him up. Tom, looking scared and dazed, swam up to them. No one said a word. Still towing Ned, Willie turned his back on me and headed for the shore. Tom followed them in.

I watched from a distance as the two of them helped Ned onto land. The Weston boys pulled on their britches and, still buttoning their shirts, started for home. Willie put on his own sopping clothes, never raising his eyes to where I was treading water. It took me a minute to figure it out. He was fixing to leave me there stark naked.

"Hey!" I yelled, splashing for the shore. "Willie, wait!"

He glanced over his shoulder at me. I didn't like the look on his face.

I clambered out. I'd never been so aware of being naked in my life. "I wouldn'ta killed him. You know that."

"How could I know it?" he asked, so sofdy I could barely hear him.

"What? C'mon, Willie. You know me." My skin was all gooseflesh. "You don't think for a minute..."

He gave me a look—anger and pain mixed. "How can you know what a feller will do? One who don't have to pay no mind to the Ten Commandments?"

I stood there naked, shaking in the sun, my mouth wide open. "Willie! You know me," I protested. But I didn't know myself. A flood of horror washed over me. I
had
meant to kill Ned Weston. I could deny it to the
day I died, but I knew I'd felt the rage boiling in my head that proved me kin to every murderer in history from Cain to Jack the Ripper.

"Still," said Willie, "they had no business mocking Elliot, much less your pa."

I jerked my head to agree, but I couldn't make myself look him in the eye.

"How're you gonna get home—like that?"

A quick glance assured me that he wasn't smiling. I should have known. Willie's too kind a soul to pile up on a person's despair. "Here," he said, unbuttoning his shirt. "You're turning blue. Put this on at least." He handed me his shirt. Willie's shirt barely scraped my privates, but it was better than nothing.

"What am I gonna do?" I asked him miserably. He thought I meant about being naked, but I meant way more than that.

"There's the icehouse," he said. "You can wait in there till I can fetch you some more clothes."

Ma and Pa. I thought my heart had sunk as low as it could, but it plunged into an even deeper gorge. What would they think of me? They'd know soon enough. Mr. Earl Weston was probably halfway to my house by now, nonetheless—"I don't want my folks—"

"Don't worry, Robbie," he said kindly. "I ain't as dumb as you think."

I wanted to deny it, but he was right. I did think I was smarter than him. I guess I thought I was the smartest boy in Leonardstown—nearly. Well, look what it got me—bare bottomed as a pig and blushing like a girl. And ashamed as Judas Iscariot.

The icehouse stands on the north side of the pond. Every winter the Cutters saw blocks of ice and store them, each layer covered in sawdust, in a pit in the center of the house. Then, come summer, they make a fortune selling ice to everyone in Leonardstown.

There were no windows in the wooden shack, only a door. It wasn't locked. Willie and me went in. Now I really began to shiver. By the light from the doorway I saw there was a splintery stool on one side under where the tongs and picks and ice saws were hanging. It made me feel a little like I was in a butcher shop, more like the meat than a customer.

"I'll need my shirt."

"What?"

"I'm sorry, Robbie, but I can't walk into town half naked."

He was right, of course, but I sure hated to give up what little protection his shirt afforded. I took it off and handed it back. "Hurry, won't you?"

"Fast as I can manage it," he promised. He shut the door after him, leaving me plunged in complete blackness. I worked my way along the wall to where the stool was. I didn't want to fall into the ice pit by mistake. I felt for the tongs and picks and then found a space of clear wall I could safely lean against. The splintery stool didn't seem inviting to bare buttocks.

Outside, a bird called and another answered. They sounded happy and full of life. I got tired of leaning. Besides, the wall was rough and could share its splinters as well as the stool could. I tried sitting on the cold dirt floor but had to get up soon. Mostly I stood on one foot and then the other. Time had no meaning in the darkness. Even after my eyes got accustomed to it and I
could see tiny bits of daylight through the chinks in the wall, I felt as though I had been confined in that dark dungeon forever. I didn't dare to crack the door. Suppose some more of the boys came to swim? Suppose Mr. Weston sent the sheriff to arrest me? Suppose Pa came looking for me?

I tried not to think. Everything that came to my mind twisted my stomach. What did the Weston boys mean calling Pa and Elliot monkeys? Was their father accusing Pa of believing in evolution? I knew that word, all right. It was the worst thing you could do even if you weren't a preacher—to believe that man wasn't created by God on the sixth day but had descended from the apes.

Even to someone who had decided not to believe in God—even to an avowed unbeliever like me—the idea of having a monkey for an ancestor was disgusting. Just because they had faces like people didn't mean we were kin, for goodness' sake. A thrush and a vulture both have wings, but that doesn't make them kissing cousins.

To taunt me, which those boys did love to do, even to taunt me that my pa would be so stupid and godless as to entertain the possibility—and then to take poor Elliot as proof—even in a joking way ... They had no right!...

Dear God. I had nearly killed Ned Weston....I began to breathe funny. I was freezing cold and sweating at the same time. Oh, Willie, I begged, hurry up. Please. I wanted out of that dark shed even if I had no place to go. I needed clothes. But after that—after I put my clothes on—then what? It wasn't just the fear of Mr. Weston or the sheriff. It was Pa. The shame I would
bring him. Mabel Cramm's bloomers were nothing compared...

Dok dok dok.
Who in Hades was knocking? I stooped down, squatting as close to the ground as I could, my breath so loud, I was sure it would give me away.

The door was gently pushed open a few inches. I waited, my eyes on the dark form in the crack.

"Robbie? You dere?"

Elliot?
What was he doing here? I was furious. What was Willie thinking, getting Elliot mixed up in this?