Preacher's Boy

We got twenty-seven veterans in our town, but only about nineteen or twenty were in the parade. The other citizens that went to the Civil War are sleeping in the cemetery up on East Hill or in some cornfield grave down south.

This year there are two men returned from the war in Cuba, but neither of them got further away than Tennessee. They are walking toward the back of the parade so as not to draw attention away from the real veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic.

The town band follows the veterans. We got a pretty good band for a town our size. This is on account of Mr. Pearson, who used to teach music at the military college in Northfield and then retired to his old family farm right outside town. He heard our band once and volunteered the next day to take it over. Believe me, he whipped it into shape, and now our band is the pride and envy of the whole county. Someday Pm going to get ahold of a cornet and play in the band, if I can just figure out how to get one. As I was listening to the band, wishing for a cornet, I caught myself hoping all over again that the world wouldn't come to an end. It would wreck all my plans for the future.

So there's the band, sixteen strong including a big bass drum that makes you jump like a bullfrog if Owen Higgins happens to boom it just as he passes you. But this past July I wasn't standing on the sidelines. Me and Willie decorated his old wagon, and we were marching in the parade. We meant to pull his aunt Millie's cat in the wagon, but every time we practiced, the cat would just jump out and run away.

"What about your little sister?" Willie asked. "I bet she'd sit there proper. Your ma could dress her in red, white, and blue." I was horrified. Letty was only five years old. I never got to be in the parade when I was five years old. It didn't seem fitting somehow. But the trouble was, Willie mentioned it to Letty before I made up my mind, and she went running to Ma, and so we were stuck with pulling my baby sister in the wagon.

You may be surprised to know that it ain't easy pulling a little girl the whole length of a parade in a wagon. No, she didn't try to jump out or anything. She was pleased as punch just to sit there. But Willie thought as soon as he'd pulled a few feet that since she was my sister I should have the honor. I soon saw why. That little scallywag was heavy. I was sweating like a plow horse. And the wheels were funny, so no matter how straight I pulled, the wagon kept moving to the left.

First thing I knew, I had hit Ned Weston's brand-new bicycle. The Weston boys are very particular about their precious

wheels, and Ned claimed right out loud that I was jealous and did it on purpose. Now, you're obliged to belt someone for an insult of that magnitude, parade or no parade. Willie caught my fist in midair. "People is watching!" he muttered, so I had to give up fighting for the time being and endure another of Ned's superior smirks.

Even including that unfortunate incident, it was a jim-dandy of a parade. The Ladies' Society of the Methodist church (they aren't as dignified as the Congregational ladies) had this farm wagon with streamers on it, and the ladies were standing and sitting around all decked out in flowers. I forget what the banner read—"The Methodist Ladies Are the Flower of Vermont Womanhood" or some such. The Congregational ladies smiled politely from the sidelines, but you could tell they were a little bit miffed.

The Grange had a wagon, too. July is too early to show off much in the way of the fruit of the land, but they had a few unhappy lambs and heifers on board to baa and bleat and represent the glory of our agricultural tradition. Rachel Martin and some of the other girls were riding in that one. They were smiling bravely, though you had the feeling that, standing there in the middle of all that livestock, they'd rather be pinching their noses.

There was a wagon of stonecutters, mostly just the Scotch and French-Canadian ones. The Italian stonecutters stood on the sidelines, looking on and laughing. I think personally that some of their jollity came from a bottle of that homemade wine, which as you know is illegal, unlike cider, which may serve the same effect when it gets a little elderly but is a Vermont product and therefore perfectly legal and not frowned down upon. Pa says judgmentalism is one of my worst failings, next to my temper, and besides, spirits is spirits, and at least the Italians are honest about their drinking habits. Pa always takes up for the Italian stonecutters. He says they're not just stonecutters, they're sculptors in the tradition of Michelangelo and the only true artists we got around here.

This year the Wilson children were riding ponies. They are younger than me, but their rich grandpa gave them each a pony. Another of my failings, you might as well know, is the sin of envy. And to tell the truth, I was more jealous of those ponies than I was of Tom and Ned Weston's new sets of wheels. But since it was plain impossible to imagine ever owning a pony, I spent most of my sin of covetousness that day on the Weston boys' wheels, because owning a bicycle seemed closer to possible than owning a pony. No point in wasting a sin on something that's just plain not going to happen in this world. I kept forgetting that I had decided not to believe in God and that therefore it didn't matter about sin anymore. Old habits die hard, as my grandma used to say.

It was a good parade while it lasted, but once it was done, Willie and I dragged Letty home as fast as her weight and those wobbly wheels would allow. It was nearly noon, but I begged off dinner, as did Willie. Ma made us sandwiches to take to the creek. She didn't have to tell us to be home before dark. There would be fireworks at dark, and besides, supper would come before that. A couple of sandwiches apiece would not suffice to stave off starvation between morning and bedtime.

Wouldn't you know? Fast as we hurried, Ned and his big brother Tom was sitting sassy as overfed cats at Willie's and my fishing spot. Ned knew perfectly well whose spot it was. He had seen Willie and me there often enough. I wanted like Christmas to teach him the lesson I hadn't been able to earlier that morning, but his brother Tom is two years older than me and a good boxer to boot, so I decided that it was one of those occasions when "digression is the better part of valor," and me and Willie had to be content with our second-favorite spot.

We were quiet for a long time, busying ourselves threading our worms on our hooks, making a few trial throws, until finally we settled back into the bank, our caps over our eyes to shade them from the sun. I sighed. With the heat and the loss of our best place, we weren't liable to need many worms.

"So," said Willie after a while, "you still an apeist, Robbie?"

"A what?"

"You know," he said in a dignified tone, "one of them there heathens who don't believe in God."

I hadn't known the proper term for people like me, and it was months before I found out that the word was atheist, not apeist. When Willie said "apeist," my first impulse was to thump him on the head. But I controlled myself. Maybe it was all in one package, and if I was going to be an unbeliever, I had to be an apeist whether I liked the notion of monkey granddaddies or not. Besides, I pride myself on having the largest vocabulary in Leonardstown school, on account of all the reading I do. I couldn't admit to not knowing the proper word for what I had determined to become. "I reckon," I said, even though the monkey part made me queasy in the belly. "Eh-yup. One of them apeists."

"Ain't you—wal, ain't you the least bit scared?"

"Scared of what?" I probably sounded belligerent.

"I mean, apeists is liable to end up going someplace you wouldn't be all that pleased to end up in."

"You forget, Willie," I said, as much to myself as to him, "if there ain't no God, there ain't no down nor up."

He considered this for a minute or two, twitching his line a bit. "Neither one, eh?" he asked at last.

"Stands to reason, don't it?"

"I reckon."

"I forget sometimes," I confessed, to soften it some. "I forget that I don't believe anymore. I been known to throw up a prayer now and again."

"Yeah?"

"It don't do no good nor harm neither, I suppose." I jerked my pole up and threw the line farther out. Not a nibble. Curse those blinking Westons. "But it is a relief," I continued, "not to have to bother myself anymore about commandments."

He sat straight up. "What are you talking about?"