Preacher's Boy (16 page)

"Are you feeling all right, Robbie?" Ma asked.

"Yeah," I said, my voice strangling in my throat.

I watched the rest of them eat their oatmeal, my head whirling even though I was flat on my back. Was I to be the cause of my father lying in court after laying his hand on the Holy Bible and swearing to tell nothing but the truth?
He doesn't know what the truth is or isn't.
A voice came into my head powerful as though it had come down from Mount Sinai.
But you know the truth, and you let him bear false witness.

I managed to choke down a little oatmeal with a lot of maple sugar and cream.

"Will you be all right if the girls and I go to the sewing circle this morning, Robbie? We missed it last week—"

All of a sudden it seemed God was clearing the way. "Sure," I said. "I just want to nap this morning, I think."

"If you need anything, just send Elliot down for us, all right?"

I waited until I was sure Ma and the girls were well out of sight of the house. Elliot was on the porch, where Ma had told him to stay in case I needed him. He was playing paper dolls, it sounded like, from the way he kept switching his voice from treble to bass. "Elliot!" I called.

He came at once, running in his lopsided way to my bedside. "Wha's a matter, Robbie? You need me t' get Ma?"

"No. Something else. Will you go upstairs and get me my Sunday suit and cap and my shoes and stockings?"

"Why for, Robbie?"

"I got to get dressed. Pa's in trouble, and I have to help him."

"Pa in trouble?" The idea was uncomprehensible. His eyes were wide as poppies and his mouth agape.

"Don't worry. He'll be all right. Only I have to get dressed." He didn't move. "Please, Elliot. Just go up and get my things. Now!"

He jumped a little at the last word, then hurried to obey.

I got up very slowly and even more slowly walked to the sink. I turned on the spigot and caught a little water in my hands and rubbed my face. Next thing I knew, I was grabbing the front of the sink with both hands. I held on until I stopped swaying. All the time since I'd been hurt, I'd only gotten up to use the chamber pot beside the daybed. Walking across the kitchen floor was about to do me in. I sat down on the nearest chair until my head settled.

"You aw right, Robbie?"

"Yeah," I said, pressing my lips together. "Just put the clothes down on the bed, Elliot. That's all."

"Not even 'Sank you, Elliot'?"

"Oh, sure. Thank you, Elliot." Behind my back I could hear a little grunt of pleasure. "Now go along to the porch and play or—whatever you do."

"I wanna help you, Robbie."

"No, I'm fine. Thank you, though."

"I wanna help you help Pa. Can I?"

"No, Elliot." It would be hard enough for me to pull this off alone. How could I manage if I had to take care of Elliot as well? He had come over to my chair and twisted his head around to put his face right into mine.

"Pleash." He looked as though he was about to burst into tears.

I pulled back away from his face. "Oh, yeah, there is something else you can do."

"Wha', Robbie?"

"Go get my bank off the dresser. We'll need some money."

At the word
we
he broke into a grin and lumbered over to the stairs and thundered up the two flights. I had to figure out something fast, some way to keep him occupied while I did what had to be done. Despite his clumsiness he was back by the time I'd gotten around the table and sat down on the daybed.

"Now"—I lowered my voice to a whisper, making it up as I went along—"your job—your job is to go down to the general store—"

He looked puzzled. "By myshel'?"

"Yeah," I said. "We're going to have to split up at first."

"Wha' I do at da store?"

"You—uh—wait. In case, just in case they show up."

"Who show up?"

"The—the bad men," I blurted out. I looked close to see if I'd scared him. I hadn't meant to.

"Da bad man gone to Tyler."

"Well, one of them has—the worst one. But he's got some bad friends. They're the ones we got to get for Pa."

"Oh." He hesitated, then raised his drooped shoulder a bit so he seemed to be standing up a little straighter. "'kay," he said. "How dey look?"

I had to think fast. What I was trying to do was keep Elliot safely on the porch of the general store until at least dinnertime. I wasn't trying to scare him, for heaven's sake. So I thought of the most impossible description in the world. "They'll be riding in a motorcar," I said.

"Wha'?"

"You know, Elliot. I've told you about them. They're just like buggies, but they don't need a horse."

"How dey go?"

"Magic," I said.

"Oh." It was explanation enough. "Wha' I do when dey come?"

I was getting impatient to be rid of him, so I said the first thing that came into my mind. "Catch 'em."

He nodded importantly. "'kay, Robbie."

"Here," I said, shaking two pennies into his hand. "Buy yourself a couple of fireballs to suck while you wait."

"Sank you, Robbie. You good braver." I think he might have hugged me if I hadn't ducked. "Why
you
goin' get aw dress' up?"

"I have to get dressed in case, you know, just in case they come here."

He looked totally confused, so I began to talk faster. "See, when you catch the bad guys for Pa—boy, he'll be proud, he'll say what a hero you've been—after you catch 'em, you have to bring 'em up here for me to identify, to make sure they the ones that really helped that feller—you know—the feller they took to Tyler."

He nodded his big head seriously. I was relieved he didn't have the sense to ask me how he was supposed to make them come up to the manse. "I wouldn't want those villains to find me lying here in my nightshirt, now would I?"

He giggled.

"Hey! You better get going."

I had to sit down twice even before I came to pull my stockings up and buckle my stupid knickers. Crikey, but I'll be glad when Ma admits I'm man enough to wear long pants on Sundays. When I leaned down to tie the laces of my shoes, my head spun around so fast, I had to bring my foot up to the bed to get the job done.

Just dressing myself had exhausted me, but I couldn't go puny now. I stood up and held still until the spinning stopped. At the door I had a glimpse of myself in the kitchen mirror. The dratted bandage. I tried on my Sunday cap, but it sat on the top of my bound-up head like a rabbit on a snowdrift. On the porch I grabbed Pa's gardening hat off a peg. It would have to do.

I cannot adequately describe the horrors of that walk. I tried to pretend I was a prisoner, just released from Andersonville Prison after the Great War, making my way home to Vermont. My mind was telling my body to run, but my poor body was crying to lie down and die. Somehow I made it down School Street to West Hill Road, pausing to lean against the Martins' stone wall to catch my breath, praying that none of the neighbor ladies had stayed home from sewing circle.
That was all I needed—some nosy woman to come running out to force me back home to bed. Or, worse yet, Rachel Martin to spy me in the state I was in.

When I finally got down the slope to Main Street, I was seen. But it was only a couple of the stonecutters taking a smoke outside the sheds. They stared at me, especially at my strange headgear, but I knew they wouldn't interfere.

It was ten miles from there. When I was young and healthy, I'd done it in under three hours. That day I was slower than a wounded veteran in the Fourth of July parade.

I tried not to remember how far I had to go. Didn't those veterans walk home from way down South somewhere? I kept telling myself just to keep one foot in front of the other, not to think of the distance, just to keep going down the road.

I kept remembering those wounded soldiers. How had they kept marching hour after hour? They sang, didn't they? I tried a chorus of "John Brown's Body," but "moldering in the grave" brought to mind that they'd hanged John Brown. It didn't seem lucky to sing about a man who had ended up on the gallows.

During the third verse of "Onward, Christian Soldiers" I heard a great commotion. My first thought was that it was all happening inside my head, that something like a charge of the black powder they use up at the quarry was going off inside my skull. I grabbed my head between both hands, hoping against hope to keep it from exploding right there in the middle of the Tyler road. Then I heard a honk like that of a giant goose right on my rump. Bad head or not, I
jumped, I tell you, high as a hound after a treed coon.

"Get out of the middle of the road, you young fool! Do you want to be run down?"

The thing that had stopped just short of my rear end was a bright red motorcar. This motorcar made the one I'd seen in Tyler look like a toy. It was huge—with lanterns, black leather seats, one behind the other—and it had a wheel to steer with. A man, his face almost as red as the motorcar, was at the wheel. Beside him sat a woman, beautiful as an angel, in a huge hat with netting tied over it and under her chin.

I didn't move an inch. I guess I did look like some kind of fool standing there staring, my mouth wider than a granite quarry.
A motorcar!
There'd never been a motorcar on this road since the blinking things got themselves invented. I couldn't do anything but just stand there and gape. It was the most beautiful machine I had ever laid my eyes on, growling like it was raring to leap up and pounce on the road.

The driver was getting more impatient by the second. "Move, I say. Move."

"Oh, Oliver," said the woman. "He's just a boy. He's probably never seen a motorcar before."

I had, but I wasn't about to argue. I moved, though, to let them pass. "Excuse me," I said.

The machine began to roar and move forward, but as it did so, a figure popped up from the back, waving both arms. "Robbie! Robbie! I catch 'em!"

I did what turned out to be the smartest thing I could have done. I fainted dead away.

T
HE NEXT THING
I
KNEW,
I
WAS LYING STRETCHED OUT
in the ditch with three heads hovering over me, blocking out the sun.

"He not dead! He not dead!" Elliot was hollering over the roar of the motor as I came around.

"No, but he's been hurt." The lady was examining my bandage. Pa's garden hat was in her hand. "We're terribly sorry," she said to me. "My husband had no intention—"

"What were you doing wandering out alone in your condition?" the man demanded. "Where are your parents that they'd let you..." Abruptly, he turned from me to Elliot. "And you, who are
you
? And
what
were you doing in my motorcar?" He looked at Elliot, not pitying like most people do, but furious. "Why, you little—You must have climbed in when we stopped at the store. I knew we shouldn't stop."

"Shh, Oliver, not now, please. The child's been hurt." She fanned my face with Pa's hat. "Feeling any better?" she asked.

I nodded. It seemed wise not to recover too quickly.

"Well, on your feet, then," the man said. "I suppose we'll have to take you home." He looked at Elliot. "Both of you."

Elliot looked at me, a troubled expression clouding his face. "But dey bad—" he muttered.

"It's all right, Elliot," I whispered quickly. "The bad fellers were in a different car. This one's fine."

The woman helped me to my feet. Elliot tried to dust my knickers and stockings, but I brushed away his hand. I didn't want to try the man's patience further by keeping him waiting.

Between Elliot and the lady, I managed to climb up into the back seat. Elliot clambered up after me and made to crouch down between the seats. "It's okay, Elliot. You can ride the rest of the way on the seat by me."

"Where do you boys live, then?" the driver asked once we were all settled in the motorcar.

"Tyler," I said.

Elliot poked me in the ribs. "Robbie," he whispered. "Da's a lie."

I ignored him. "Tyler," I said louder.

"Both of you?"

"We're brothers," I said. Elliot grinned proudly.

"Where on God's earth is Tyler?" the man asked.

"Straight down this road, sir." I mouthed the word
Pa
at Elliot. He nodded solemnly. "Just a little way." The driver craned around and gave me a look. I didn't blink, so he eased forward.

The road to Tyler is bumpy and dusty, but I hardly noticed. I felt like I had hitched a ride in Elijah's chariot on a straight path to the Pearly Gates. I was riding in a motorcar! The one thing I had wanted most to do before the world went bust, and God had let me do it. Moreover, God hadn't given me just a ride, He had provided a saving help in my time of trouble. The Reverend Pelham could have his white robes and golden crowns and choirs of angels; I was in Heaven already.

I grabbed Elliot's hand. "Can you believe it, Elliot? You and me? We're riding in a genuine motorcar!"

"Is dat good?"

"It's a miracle!" I yelled over the racket of the motor. "A genuine miracle!"

"Wheeee!" cried Elliot. Then he leaned over and kissed my hand.

And do you know? From that very moment I stopped all pretense of being an apeist and signed on as a true believer for all eternity. How could I not? God had worked a personal miracle especially for me.

The main street of Leonardstown becomes, at the town limits, the Tyler road, and roughly ten miles later, Main Street, Tyler. By the time less than half those miles had rolled under the rubber wheels, our driver was getting audibly impatient. Seems they were trying to get to Burlington and had no idea how they had got on this "back road to nowhere." I couldn't see why anyone would complain. We were whizzing (well, rattling is more accurate) down the road by at least fifteen miles an hour. Tyler is hardly more than fifty miles
from Burlington. He'd be there before suppertime. I kept my observations to myself.

I can't tell you how it saddened me to reach the city limits. No matter that every rock and rut along the way jarred my poor brain against my pitiful skull; I wanted to go on riding in that heavenly chariot forever. When I saw the courthouse, however, I pulled myself together. Duty demanded it.