Preacher's Boy (18 page)

"A beginning?"

"Lots of things, things we can't even dream of today, will be happening in your lifetime. The world is changing so fast on us. Telephones, electricity, motorcars—who knows? You might live long enough to see flying machines."

I looked up at the stars and tried to imagine myself like a shooting star, flying up there in a motorcar with wings. Nothing seemed impossible anymore.

"I pray it will be a good century," he went on. "I want my children and my grandchildren to grow up in
a world where people have learned to think with their minds and hearts and not with weapons of destruction. But I don't know, the human race being what it is..."

I shivered. He put his free arm around me and drew me close. "Pa," I said after a bit, "let's ring it in." I waited for him to say no.

Instead he said, "Last one to the church is a rotten egg!" He thrust the lantern into my hand and took off down the hill, retracing his own tracks in the snow so he could go faster. I followed after, holding the lantern high and stepping carefully into his footprints. He was waiting for me on the church porch, smiling and out of breath. We went in together.

"Don't turn the bell over!" he warned.

"I won't!" Only greenhorns who don't know how to ring proper pull the rope so hard it makes the bell turn over. I took hold of the rope. Pa fit his big hands in between mine, and we began to pull.

High above us from the steeple, the bell of the Congregational church clanged across the valley, pealing out a joyful welcome to the twentieth century.