Preacher's Boy

"Okay." I'd given up reminding her that my name was supposed to be Fred.

After much thought I decided it would be fitting to write the note with a chicken quill dipped in berry juice the color of blood. Unfortunately, raspberries was the only thing I was sure was ripe. I didn't know how raspberry ink would work, but I sent Vile down to the patch with her tin cup to get some. We couldn't risk anyone seeing me down there. Using birch bark for paper would be a nice touch, but the Finches had all that paper tied up in the kerchief, so why not use it? Besides, only Indians would think to use birch bark. Hoboes, I figured, were more likely to use the backs of Wanted posters. I wondered if Zeb's picture was on one of those posters, but I wasn't sure I had the nerve to ask.

It seemed to take Vile forever. The more I thought of the chicken quill and berry ink, the less I liked the idea. I longed for the pencil stub that along with my pocketknife was at the bottom of Cutter's Pond. And that wasn't all. There was my taw (I'd never be able to shoot a decent game of marbles without it), a ragged handkerchief (my ma often checked to make sure I had one on me), even a few pennies, in case I was seized with pangs of uncontrollable hunger just as I was passing the general store and had to have a sourball or lemon stick. Darn it all.

I wondered if they were missing me yet. I sighed. Pa wouldn't start looking for me while it was still daylight. Then I remembered it was Wednesday. He wouldn't start looking for me until after prayer meeting was done. I told myself that was a good thing. It would give me lots of time to work out the scheme.

I squinted up at the sun. I made it to be no later than four in the afternoon. I shouldn't have thought about sourballs. I was seized with pangs of hunger unlike any I had ever experienced before. My belly had let those few bites of dace go past without hardly noticing. I tried not to smell the pot bubbling in the cabin, which I felt sure my gut would reject altogether.

I wondered what Mr. Weston had said to Pa, and what Pa had said back. Did Pa take up my side? If I'd been a Filipino, he would have. But how could he defend me? He knew the kind of temper I had. He was not likely to doubt that I had indeed tried to drown Ned Weston, or at least scare the Devil out of him.

For a fellow who'd given up on God and the Ten Commandments, I was feeling myself strangely close to what Reverend Pelham would have called a vile sinner. I recalled the awful rage that had come over me, making me shove Ned Weston's head under the water. Willie thought I was fixing to kill Ned. He was right. I might have. I really might have. I felt sick all over just remembering it.

Then it occurred to me that it was really Pa's fault-not altogether, not even mostly, but surely a little bit. He had no business having those heathen books around where anybody, especially some pious deacon or hellfire reverend, could just wander in and see them sitting bold as brass on the shelf. Like Reverend Pelham said, Pa was a preacher. He owed it to God not to go flirting with the powers of evil and unbelief, now, didn't he? Surely Pa didn't think people descended from apes, no matter what trashy books he had sitting around.

But ever since the night Elliot was lost, I was thinking worrisome thoughts about Pa. Why did that crying over Elliot get to me so? Was he having some kind of nervous disorder? If so, what would my disappearance do to him? Or, for that matter, his knowing that his son was a near murderer? Would that do him in?

Yes, it would be better for him to think I was kidnapped than to think I was a fugitive from the law. Wouldn't it? I was banking heavy on Mr. Weston coming to feel sorry I was gone and forgetting all about my attacking his boy. What if, even after I was miraculously returned to the bosom of my family, Mr. Weston still hadn't forgiven and forgotten? Then Pa would get it with both barrels—his son the victim of a vicious crime and his son the perpetrator, or near perpetrator, of an equally heinous crime, one against the son of the town's most important citizen. Oh, mercy.

Along about then, Vile trudged up the hill into sight. "Birds got most of your berries," she said. I couldn't help but notice that her mouth was stained light purple. She held out the cup. It was about half full. I got a stick and smashed the berries into a pulpy juice. Vile fetched me a handbill from the kerchief in the cabin. It had a sketch on the front of a bank robber in Albany. I restrained myself from asking questions about robbers or what she and Zeb had been doing in New York State. Avoiding as best I could the fish mess on the flat rock, I set to work.

Have you ever tried to write anything with a chicken-feather quill? I swear, I don't know how Thomas Jefferson could possibly have got through anything the length of the Declaration of Independence with just a quill pen. Of course, he had a proper desk and real ink. In about ten minutes I had only managed, in pale wobbly letters, to write "Help!"

Vile was leaning over my shoulder, bumping my right arm to make matters worse. "Awful weak," she said. "I can't hardly read it."

"I can't help it," I said. "Raspberries ain't good ink." I had planned to write out "Help! I have been kidnapped!" But after all that trouble with "Help!" I just put "Kidnapped!" next. I still had to write all that stuff about the ransom—where and when.

"I don't think it's going to work," she said.

"You're right," I said finally. "But where are we going to get proper pen and ink? Or even a lead pencil?"

She put her hands on her hips, thinking. "Hmm. Why don't we go down tonight to the general store and help ourselves to one?"

"'Cause if we're caught, the jig is up."

"We wouldn't get caught. Leastways, /wouldn't."

I didn't ask her why she was so sure. I didn't really want to know all Vile's experiences with breaking the law. "If we were to get caught—and you got to allow the possibility, Vile, that something might go wrong—if we did get caught, not only would we lose any chance of getting the ransom money, we'd both be thrown into jail."

"What jail? You can't tell me this one-horse town's got a jail."

"Yes, we do," I said in a dignified way as befit a loyal citizen. "In the town hall basement. It's not big. It's, well, it's more like a circus cage—"

"A cage?" She drew back, horrified. "They put people in a cage like some wild beast?"

I nodded solemnly. I had actually never seen anyone in the cage, but I had often seen the cage—all iron bars—in the town hall basement.

"Wal, I guess that puts the lid on your big scheme, then."

I wasn't quite ready to give it up. It was prayer-meeting night at both the Congregational and Methodist churches. A good night for a minor burglary. I could burgle the manse while everyone was down at church. There'd be no one around to catch me, and even if someone did, it wasn't likely that they'd call the sheriff to arrest me for robbing my own house. And I could pick up some foodstuff while I was at it. Vile liked that idea fine. All we had to do was wait until prayer-meeting time and hope our stomachs didn't cave in before then.

Vile dug the rest of the raspberry "ink" out of her cup and slurped it up. Then she went in and dipped out some of her soup into both the cups. She handed me Zeb's. It seemed unmannerly not to take it, though you can just imagine how anxious I was to drink that soup out of a cup belonging to that man.

Let me tell you, I have tasted some bilious potions in my time, but nothing quite to beat that single sip of Vile's antique chicken-head soup. It was all I could do not to throw up my guts.

She was watching me anxiously. "It ain't my best effort," she said apologetically.

"It's fine," I said, coughing and covering my mouth. "I'm just not very hungry, that's all." I couldn't imagine even God (if there was a God) would blame a person for lying under those circumstan