Preacher's Boy (11 page)

"Robbie?" he called again in his soft, tentative voice, pushing the door open just wide enough to squeeze in. He started forward.

"Watch it!" I jumped up to grab him. I didn't want him stepping into the ice pit.

"Robbie! You scare' me!"

"Stay right by the door," I ordered hoarsely, returning to my dark spot. "There's a big hole in the floor."

"Aw right," he whispered, blinking like an owl. "You naked, Robbie," he said at last.

"Don't stare," I said. "It ain't polite."

"Sorry, Robbie. Oh." He held out a little bundle. "Willie shay I gotta bring closh to you?" His voice went up in a question.

I took a step forward to take the clothes. In the light from the door my skin gleamed white.

"You
really
naked," he said.

"Just gimme my clothes, Elliot, and stop staring, okay?"

"Sorry, Robbie," he said, snuffling his very drippy nose.

"Where's Willie?" I asked, dressing as fast as I could. "Why didn't he bring these himself?"

"Mr. Weshum come callin'. Willie shay he ha' go home. He tol' me I ha' to bring you closh." He looked up proudly, then dropped his eyes when he saw I was still buttoning up my britches. "I foun' you, din' I? I foun' you aw by myshel'?"

"Yes, Elliot."

"Wuzzat good?"

"Yes, Elliot."

He was staring at me again, squinching his eyes against the dark, but I didn't object since I was nearly dressed. "Wha' happen?"

"What do you mean, 'wha' happen?' I lost my clothes. That's wha' happen."

"How?"

I don't know what made me say it. I swear I don't. I guess I was just exasperated and angry and—scared. Yes, that, too. "Some kidnappers got me."

"Wha'?"

"Kidnappers. They steal kids. They thought if they took my clothes away, I couldn't escape and run home."

His eyes were wide and wild now. He peered all around the icehouse in case the villains were lurking in the shadows. "Oh, Robbie." He breathed my name. "Tha's tumble."

"Yes," I said. "Terrible."

"Worse'n bein' los'."

"Yes," I agreed. "Because kidnappers don't care what they do to you, long as they get their money."

"Wha' money?"

"The ransom money. They make your family and friends pay lots of money to get you back safe."

"Oh, Robbie," he said in his little-boy voice. "But it's aw right now. I brung your closh. You can run 'way home."

"It ain't that easy, Elliot," I said sadly. "Ain't that easy."

"No?"

"No. You see, they got me hypnotized."

"Hippo—?"

"Hypnotized. It means they got control of my mind. It ... well, it just ain't safe for me to go home right now."

"It ain'?" He gave another look around the icehouse. "Robbie," he whispered, "I scare'."

"Don't worry, Elliot. They don't have any hold over you. You just run along home and act like you don't know where I am or anything. Then they won't do nothing to you. But if you were to tell—well, I can't say what might happen if you tell."

"Not even Pa or Ma?"

"Nobody," I said. "Especially not Pa or Ma."

"Oh," he said. "I don' want da bad men to hur' you, Robbie."

"You needn't worry about me, Elliot. I'm a smart boy. I'll figure something out. You go along, now. And don't tell anyone you saw me, hear?"

"I won' tell, Robbie." He hesitated a few more seconds, then bolted out the door, leaving it wide open behind him.

A
FTER
E
LLIOT LEFT
, I
CLOSED THE DOOR
. O
NCE AGAIN
the darkness nearly suffocated me. I felt my way around the wall to the stool. With britches on, I dared to sit down. What was I to do? I couldn't stay in the icehouse, even if I'd had a wish to. Elliot could hardly be trusted to keep my hiding place a secret for very long.

The cabin. Only Willie and I ever went there. Zeb and Vile were tramps. They'd probably swallowed their filthy stew and gone on their way by now. Jeezums crow, I hoped they had.

I made for the eastern hills. I felt safer running through the woods, at least until I was well on the other side of town. I came down from the woods a mile or so north of the town limits, still on the run.

Mostly, I was just running to keep from facing the music. If Mr. Weston had already "come calling," as Elliot said, then it wasn't a social visit. Pa, poor Pa. He
tried so hard to help me get hold of my temper. It wasn't his fault I was such a hothead. But Mr. Weston would blame him, I felt sure. A preacher is supposed to keep his own children in line, clean and good, an example to other men's children. I was sure Willie had fled to keep from having to tell what he knew. Oh, drat it all.

Well, it wouldn't be any mystery to Pa why I hadn't come home for dinner or supper even, maybe. He'd reckon I was lying low for a spell. I figured it would be true dark before he started to worry. And as soon as he began to fret, Elliot would tell him I was in the icehouse, which he would believe, and that I'd been kidnapped, which he wouldn't (would he?). Anyhow, he wouldn't know to look for me at the cabin. That was Willie's and my secret, and Willie was no snitch.

If I stayed away long enough, everyone would forget how mad they were at me and take to fretting over my welfare. All I had to do was stay gone overnight, or at the most a couple of nights, and the whole town would organize a search. Even the Westons would forget how awful I had been and wonder if I was dead or lying out in the woods, calling faintly for help which never came.

Maybe, if I could stay out of sight long enough, they'd have a funeral for me, like they did for Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. I'd like that. I'd like it even better if I could peek in on the proceedings and hear people say what a good fellow I was—just a little mischievous, as befitting a red-blooded American boy, but in reality a prince of a fellow, a credit, all things considered, to his grieving parents.

But what if they were still mad at Pa? For not
believing enough in Hell and believing too much in monkeys? Well, if I was dead, they'd have to forgive him, a man who'd lost his only real son. Had he lost Elliot, they'd have said it was all for the best, like they do when any maimed or suffering creature dies. If he lost me, though, they'd talk about "lost promise" and "untimely demise" and "cut off before his prime"—that sort of pitiful phrase. Yes. It would truly elevate Pa's standing both in the community and the church if folks was to see him suffering a bit.

Would he cry for me? Would he? I mustn't think about that.

There's a wild raspberry patch growing alongside the tracks north of town. With all the sun we'd had that summer, the berries were already ripe. I stopped and stuffed my mouth with the sweet red fruit. I didn't even bother to pick off the little green bugs that like raspberries as much as I do. Now and then I got a bitter taste of one in a mouthful, but I didn't care. The berries took the warmth of the sun right to my cold belly. Or was it my cold heart?

If I'd had anything to carry berries in, I would have taken some with me to the cabin for later, but I didn't, so I just ate until my belly gave a warning pang that I had overdone it. Then, bellyache or no, I left the tracks, crossed the Tyler road, and forded the North Branch. I climbed the west hill a lot more cheerfully than I had come down the east.

There was no smoke curling up from the cabin's crumbling chimney, which I took to be a good sign—until I went inside. The iron kettle, complete with chicken bones, head, and feet, was still on the cold
hearth, as was Zeb's ragged quilt. From the smell, I guessed it was the same old chicken I'd met the week before. There was no sign of either Zeb or Vile.

At least I'd have a chance to setde in. I went into the woods and broke off some pine boughs, stripped the branches off the tough limbs, and made myself a bed, as far away from Zeb's as I could get without moving under the broken part of the roof. I lay down to try it out. A pine-bough bed is not nearly as soft as it sounds in books. The needles poked my body and tickled and pricked my cheek. I rolled over on my back and pulled my shirt collar up to protect my neck. After a while, lying there listening to the birds and squirrels and the rustling of the breeze in the leaves, I fell asleep.

"What're you doing here?" Vile was leaning over me, a couple of small black-nosed dace dangling in front of my nose.

"You been using my pole," I said, secretly glad she'd caught nothing but dace with it.

She snorted. "Everything's yourn, ain't it?"

I sat up, pushing the fish out of my face. "Where's Zeb?"

"Mr. Finch to you."

I don't know why it surprised me that Zeb, and for that matter Vile, had a last name. "Sure," I said. I wasn't adverse to calling Zeb "Mister." Hadn't I always been taught to respect my elders? Whatever else Zeb was or was not, he was my elder. "Where's
Mister
Finch?"

"No need to be sassy." There was obviously no way to get it right. She gave my pine-bough bed the once-over. "Made yourself right at home, I see."

"As a matter of fact—"

"Yeah, I know. You own it." She sighed and went over to the cooking pot, looked in, and gave a deeper sigh. Starting for the door, she tripped on Zeb's quilt and nearly fell. She gave the quilt a kick. "If you was really at home here, you wouldn't leave everything in such a mess."

I opened my mouth to protest but caught myself. I might have to be here as long as two days. I didn't fancy sleeping in the woods. "You want me to pitch that stuff out in the trees someplace?" I said, waving my hand at the pot.

"What? The chicken? No. We got to get a couple more days of soup out of that." A couple more days? My stomach lurched at the thought.

"I could make a fire," I said, getting up, tucking my shirt in.

She turned in the doorway to study me. "Since when did you get so helpful all of a sudden?"

I could feel my ears tingling. Tarnation. Couldn't I do anything without turning red all over?

"Here," she said, handing me her puny dace. "You do the fish."

I hate to clean fish. Especially small ones. There wouldn't be much left of these once the head, fins, and tail were gone. I reached out to take them, then remembered that my pocketknife was at the bottom of Cutter's Pond. "I—I must have forgot my knife again," I said.

She pulled the horn-handled jackknife out of her pocket and threw it at me. I made a try at catching it in my left hand and failed. She giggled.

Outside, we both set to work. Vile was getting wood for the fire. She had a pile of dead branches she
must have dragged from the woods earlier in the day. She stepped on these and broke them into fireplace lengths. When she had an armful, she carried them into the cabin and came back to prepare more. I'd never seen a girl so handy at man's work. I guess she had to be or starve. Zeb didn't strike me as the industrious type. When she'd finished breaking up all the branches, she began to arrange the last bits teepee style for an outdoor fire.

Meantime, I'd found a flat rock where I could cut off the heads, fins, and tails of the little silvery fish. These I pitched into the woods. I scaled them best I could. The rock shone like it was set with slimy mica. Then I slit their bellies and pulled out the offal. My hands were slimy, too.

"Don't throw nothing away," she called to me without looking up from her work.

"Nothing?"

"Good for soup," she said.

I looked at the offal clinging to my hands. It wasn't going into any soup I was eating. I wiped myself as best I could on the dry leaves around the rock. Now bits of leaves stuck to the mess on my hands. I gave Vile the fish and went to the spring to wash.

She had the fire going and the dace browning on a green stick when Zeb came stumbling into sight. Vile straightened up from the fire and faced him accusingly. "You been at it again," she said.

"How could I," he asked pitifully, "when I ain't got a copper penny to my name?"

"I don't know how you manage it," she said. "But you been at the booze. No need to lie."

"Them leetle fish smell mighty good," he said.

"Oh, you're sweet, ain't you, now you got a little juice inside you?" She went back to her cooking, turning the fish until they were crisp. My mouth was fairly watering over those two tiny dace. Were we going to have to share them with the old drunkard, who hadn't done a lick of the work of catching or preparing?

"Go down to the spring and wash yourself up," she ordered him. "You look like a tramp."

His giggle was almost as girllike as her own. I thought he might protest, but he stumbled off in the direction of the spring.

"What am I going to do with him?" she asked, more to herself than to me.

When Zeb returned, his face was redder but no cleaner than it had been when he left, and his smell, if anything, was stronger. The three of us sat on the ground around the dying fire. Vile broke up the fish and portioned it out on three maple leaves. I couldn't help but think of the miracle in the Bible when Jesus fed five thousand with five loaves of bread and two small fish. Only this time there wasn't any miracle.

I tried to make my puny share last as long as I could. Even with no salt, the fish tasted fine, crisp and black on the outside and flaky inside. Zeb stuffed his portion into his mouth all at once, then looked around for more. Vile passed him her leaf with her last bite. He stuffed that in, too. White fish meat fell from his greedy lips to his shirt front. He fumbled to retrieve it, succeeding only in knocking it first to his trouser leg and then to the ground, where it was lost in the dead leaves on which we sat. I wanted to hit him for taking her food
that way—not even spending the time to taste it proper, then wasting it in his drunken clumsiness.

When he realized there was nothing more to eat, he struggled to his feet and lumbered into the cabin. Before long we could hear his drunken snoring.

"You gave him your dinner," I whispered. I was a little in awe of Vile at that moment.

"He's my paw," she said. "How could I not?" I wanted to say,
Fathers are supposed to take care of their children, not the other way around.
She went into the cabin and reappeared with the cooking pot. "Where's the fish heads and things?" she asked.