Preacher''s Boy

  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.

  "The heads?"

  "I need them for the soup."

  "I—I pitched them into the woods."

  She sighed at the waste. "I reckon the coons had a feast," she said, then paused, a little embarrassed. "No way you can fetch us any more of those pitiful taters and carrots, is there?" She didn't wait for an answer, just sighed again and headed for the spring.

  I busied myself gathering wood and twigs for the next fire. I didn't want her to think I was mooching off her. But I was, wasn't I? She'd caught two small fish, and I had gobbled down most of one of them. I was worse than her dratted pa. I wasn't even kin.

  It was hours until suppertime—whatever supper could be made from rotting chicken head and feet—but I went ahead and laid a fire in the fireplace inside. Zeb was snorting and snoring. The smell of him was nauseous, so I worked fast and got out to the fresh air as soon as I could. Vile wasn't back yet. I imagined her squeezing the pot against the earth. Trying to force the spring to give up water would be worse than milking a dry cow. The North Branch was a long round trip, but in the end it might be easier. I planned to suggest it.

  I wondered if I should go down to the tracks and pick some raspberries. I went back into the cabin and found two battered tin cups. They smelled of old soup. I shuddered. They hadn't even been washed clean. I took them outside and wiped them as carefully as I could with maple leaves, but the grease just smeared around the inside. Cold water wouldn't help. It was the only time in my life that I felt a longing for the smell of good strong lye soap. How could you eat raspberries that had sat in old chicken grease?

  You should never run away from home unprepared, believe me. I didn't have so much as my own tin cup, and I didn't fancy sharing one of theirs. I tiptoed past the smelly body of Zeb to replace the cups on the mantel. Zeb snorted and turned over. How had he gotten liquor? I knew, if you had money, there were ways, but Zeb was dirt poor. He didn't have any money, or did he? The old scalawag. It was all I could do to keep from rolling him over and going through his pockets.

  At that moment I wanted more than anything to show him up. To make myself a hero and savior to Vile. See, I'd say. You ain't so poor. Here's money. You can go down into town and buy you some proper grub. But I didn't go through Zeb's pockets. I knew Vile'd never forgive me if I made a fool of her pa. She was like Willie—loyal to the core. I'd have to think of some better way to help her.

  Zeb was still asleep when Vile got back. "Might as well start the fire," she said. "It'll take eternity to make soup from this."

  If she was grateful for my laying the fire, she didn't say so. Just took one of the big lucifer matches Willie and I had left on the mantel and struck it, lighting the kindling. I held my breath. I didn't want Vile to despise me for not being able to lay a proper fire. I watched the flames leap from the dried leaves and twigs, dance around the loose bark, and then envelop the larger branches.

  Relieved, I went outside, leaving Vile to put the pot on to boil. When she came out, she was livid with rage. She waved a bottle at me. "Looka here!" she cried. "Can you beat this?"

  The half-filled bottle she held out for my inspection was Willerton's Digestive Remedy. The drugstore sells gallons of it. Half the town, mostly the male half, fancies it has digestive problems that only Willerton's can ease. "He musta had a bellyache," I said lamely.

  "Bellyache, my big toe!" She loosened the cap and jammed the bottle under my nose. "Just smell that."

  "Smells like Willerton's to me," I said, my eyes smarting from the fumes. "Stomach remedies gotta be strong to work."

  "You are a newborn babe, ain't you? Willerton's is nothing but booze with a fancy name. How you think he got drunk as a skunk?" She hauled back and threw the bottle straight and hard as a strike over the plate, crashing it against the rough bark of a nearby spruce. The liquid made a dark stain against the trunk. Then she did something that surprised me more than I can say. She sat down cross-legged on the ground, put her head in her hands, and burst out crying.

  I didn't know what to say or do. I called her name softlike a couple of times, but she paid me no mind. She was not going to be comforted by gentle words. I needed something more powerful than Willerton's to soothe her ills. That was when I came up with my brilliant idea.

  Lord, deliver me from my brilliant ideas. But at the time, on a nearly empty stomach, with Vile crying her eyes out, it seemed born of pure genius.

  10. My Brilliant Scheme

  THE TWO OF US WERE SITTING OUTSIDE, LEANING against the side of the cabin. Vile was staring glumly at the ashes of our dinnertime fire. Through the wall I could hear Zeb snoring away like a bear in hibernation. It was time, I thought, to tell her.

  "Vile," I said, "I've got an idea."

  She sniffed and turned to look at me, one eyebrow raised.

  "No, really. I got an easy way for us to make money."

  "Yeah?" Ha! I'd figured the word money would make her sit up and take notice.

  "We write a ransom note, see?"

  "A what?"

  I stopped to explain to her about the Clark baby and the New York boy and how it happened all the time. She was still giving me her puzzled expression.

  "See, we pretend I got kidnapped and ask for money to get me back—"

  "Who would pay good money—?"

  "Just listen, Vile. People do it. They take up a collection. All we got to do is write the note. First they collect the money and put it in the secret place we told them to in the note. Next, you and I sneak down and get it and divide it up. Then you and Zeb skedaddle out of the county and I walk down the hill and appear on Main Street, sort of half dazed. I may have amnesia"—the look on her face made me hurry to explain—"can't remember anything about what happened to me, but since I've returned unharmed otherwise, everybody's happy."

  "Especially the sheriff who's on Paw's and my tail."

  "What sheriff?" I asked, and then was immediately sorry I had. Her look was enough to sizzle a sausage.

  "You was talking about—"

  "Yeah. My amnesia. See. For weeks I can't remember anything. Then, finally, after you and Zeb is well out of Vermont, little by little I start to recall stuff. But when I do, the kidnappers don't look anything like you two."

  "Yeah? And who's going to believe you?"

  "Oh, they won't doubt me. I'm the preacher's boy. Besides, I'm the only witness as well as the victim. They'll believe me, all right."

  "No."

  "No what?"

  "Just no. I don't want no part of such a fool plan."

  "I'm thinking we should ask for one thousand dollars—two might seem a bit greedy."

  Out of the corner of my eye I could see new interest flickering up. "Your paw got tha
t kind of money?"

  "Oh, no. He's a preacher. But that's just what will make everyone feel sorry and want to help. The town will raise it, you see. Just like they did in New York when Marion Clark disappeared in the arms of her nurse. The banks, the stores, everybody will pitch in."

  "But you ain't some darling little baby—"

  "C'mon, Vile, they'd do it for any child in town that got lost." I was arguing with myself as well as Vile. Surely they'd do it for me. Didn't the whole town turn out when the Wilson baby wandered out on Cutter's Pond and the ice was about to break up? They risked their lives, laying a human chain across the ice to her. Course, she was a darling three-year-old with yellow curls, not some rapscallion of a boy. I looked over at Vile. She wasn't watching my face for self-doubts; she was counting the cash in her mind.

  "You ask for it in small bills," I went on. "I mean, sure, if you was to show up in Tyler or even Montpelier, throwing hundred-dollar bills around—"

  "They got hundred-dollar bills?"

  "Sure," I said. Though I'd never actually seen one, I knew for a fact there was such a thing.

  "There's some piece of paper that's worth one hundred dollars?"

  "It takes ten of them to make a thousand," I said, in case her arithmetic was weak. "But you wouldn't want hundred-dollar bills. They'd look suspicious if you tried to spend one in a store."

  She looked disappointed. I think she liked the idea of holding a fistful of hundred-dollar bills.

  "And there's no chance we'll get caught?"

  "None a-tall. They leave the money whatever place we tell them to. We already warned them that we'll kill the victim if they try to watch for us or call in the sheriff. Like I said, after we divide it, I give you and Zeb—Mr. Finch—a day's start, then I let myself be discovered wandering down Main Street in a daze. A couple of weeks later I dimly recalls these—uh—hoboes with great black beards who took me captive and threatened my life."