Preacher's Boy

I WAS UP NEARLY WITH THE ROOSTERS THE NEXT morning, up before anybody except Ma. Sometimes I wondered if she ever slept. There she was, the fire stoked up, stirring the porridge. It was the same Scots blood in her that had caused her to name me Robert Burns Hewitt that made her boil that porridge, summer or winter.

I didn't feel hungry, but I knew it made no difference to say so. I wouldn't get out of the house until I'd downed my bowl of it. It's not that bad, porridge isn't, but it's heavy and sticky, and if you don't happen to be hungry, it's like wading waist deep through a bog.

Ma watched while I poured about twice the usual amount of maple syrup on it, but she didn't object. She just stood there, her lips parted a little ways, no words coming out. She looked dog tired. In a way I was ashamed of behaving in what I knew was a defiant manner, taking all that syrup, but I needed it that morning—needed sweetening, I reckon, or just some kind of proof that I was worth something extra to her, if not to Pa.

"You're up early, Robbie," she said, turning back to the big iron stove that takes up a quarter of the back wall.

"Yes, ma'am," I said. "Couldn't sleep too good."

"I guess it was a hard night for us all," she said. "But it's all right now. Elliot's safe and sound."

"Yes, ma'am." I chewed my way through another bite. Mercy, it was work to get through a whole bowl of porridge. I asked for another mug of milk. I needed help to wash it down. I stretched across the wide table to hand her the empty mug.

"I'm glad to see it hasn't hurt your appetite," she said, refilling my mug. Instead of reaching across, she walked around the table to give it to me.

I grunted, but she took it for a thank-you and patted my shoulder when she put the milk down at my place. Then she went to the stove, poured herself a cup of tea, and sat down at the table opposite me. Ordinarily I would have been pleased. She hardly ever took the time to sit down like that just with me. She bent her head over her cup and took a tiny sip. Then she sat back and stared into the space above my head.

It relieved me that she wasn't going to try to make conversation. I wasn't feeling chatty, and I still had half a bowl of porridge to work my way through.

"Your father's sleeping like a baby," she said finally. "I've never seen him so exhausted."

I nodded and swallowed and washed down what was still stuck in my throat. She sighed deeply and took another sip of her tea.

I took her distraction as a chance to escape. I got up and hastily washed out my half-finished bowl under the kitchen tap. "Wal," I said in a fake cheery voice, "I guess me and Willie will try some fishing before the day gets too hot."

She nodded and smiled absentmindedly. She'd quite forgotten to ask me if I had finished all my porridge. I hightailed it out of there as fast as I could grab my pole and basket and jump off the porch.

Just as luck would have it, Willie's aunt had him splitting wood for the cookstove. "You found Elliot okay, I guess," he said as I came near.

I shrugged a yes. "Wanna go fishing?"

"I ain't ate yet," he said, studying my face.

"Come when you can," I said. "Maybe I'll go up and check the cabin first anyhow."

"The cabin?" We always went up to our hideout together. We both knew that. "You okay, Robbie?"

"I don't know, Willie. I just need to mess around a little. See if everything's all right, dig a few worms up there in the woods." I tried to s

ound ordinary. "I'll get back down to the creek before the Weston boys think about getting up. Promise."

"All right, then. See you." He brought the ax down dead in the center of the log. The boy can sure split wood. You got to give him credit for that.

I started for the hill directly from Willie's, skirting the field where the Robertses had their bull penned, crossed their pasture, and headed toward the edge of the woods from there. It wasn't the best way to get to the cabin. It would have been easier to go back down School Street and go up from my house, but I didn't want Pa or anyone to see me. I really needed to be by myself, even though I wasn't finding myself particularly delightful company just then. I wished I'd brought a book to read, but for that I'd have to go back home. I wasn't going back home until hunger drove me to it.

The hay on the hill had been mowed just a few days before, and the stubble was prickly but not overly painful. If I have a good quality, in addition to my prodigious vocabulary, it is my feet. They are as tough as hippo hide. I can't help being proud of them. I bet I could walk on nails like those swamis in India should the necessity arise. When I hit the first line of trees, I walked along parallel to the woods until I could look far down the hill to the back of Mabel Cramm's house—she who started it all—then down to the Branscoms', the Wilsons', and, of course, the Websters' farmhouse, barn, and chicken yard. All the fields and pastures behind School Street belonged to them. Then there was the big, rambling manse, and below that the steeple of the Congregational church pointing upward to the empty sky. I sighed. It seemed lonely to be an apeist that morning.

I didn't spot any tiny figures outside the manse. Nobody splitting wood. There's never any need to split wood before breakfast at our house. Pa makes sure the wood box is full at all times. He's really faithful about that.

Sometimes, if people are out of work or needing help, he'll hire them to chop or split wood, but mostly he does it himself. "Get Robbie to give you a hand with that," Ma will say, but he'll just smile and shrug. "It's good for me," he'll say. I can't help but notice that whenever there's some little upset in the congregation, wood is just overflowing that box to the floor beside it, and the woodpile outdoors is taller than me.

I turned and put the morning sun, now high in the sky and drifting southward, at my back and entered the woods. Suddenly my world was dark and cool. Since the snow melted, Willie and I had worn the path down until it was nearly as smooth as Main Street. I don't know why we went to the cabin so much. Oh, we kept a little stuff there—some extra fishing gear, a couple of old shirts for warmth in a cold snap, some lucifer matches to make fires, a couple of homemade cob pipes, and some corn silks we'd dried in case we needed a smoke. From time to time we'd try to store a little food—green apples we'd pinched from the Websters' orchard, some butternuts we were planning to eat as soon as we took the trouble to smash them open. Mostly the squirrels and coons got into the food. I was always surprised, when I went up, if they'd left anything for us.

In the quiet of the woods the sound came into my head as clear as if I was really hearing it. The sound of Pa crying. It was so unlike him. I think that was what turned me inside out. So unmanly. Whatever some folks may think about preachers who work more with their heads than their hands, nobody ever accused my pa of being anything less than a real man.

All because of Elliot. Because he was lost and might not have been found safe and then was. I've tried all my life not to mind Elliot being my brother, not to let him spoil what is, by and large, a pretty good life for a boy. Once the Weston boys talked about him just loud enough to make sure I could hear them, wondering whether Elliot's "condition" was a family weakness or a family sin. I gave Ned Weston a bloody nose for that one. To me it was a questioning of my parents' honor. I couldn't let that pass. I'm proud to say that even when Tom got big enough to whip me, the Westons didn't hold that discussion in my hearing again.

When I was younger, Ma and Pa would sometimes urge me to play with Elliot. "You used to have such good times together," they'd say, hoping I'd remember how when I was a toddler I loved romping with Elliot. But by the time I was four, I didn't want to play with Elliot anymore. He was big and clumsy. He knocked over all my block towers and broke my toy boats. As I grew older, I passed him by in the race of life. We couldn't talk about books, because when I was devouring Robert Louis Stevenson, he couldn't even read the first primer. He could never catch any ball I threw him, and he was hopeless with a bat. Baseball only made him cry in frustration. If we walked down to the pond to swim, he was too slow to keep up. Nor could he get the hang of swimming, so if he went with me, I had to stay in the shallow water every minute for fear he'd wander out above his head and drown.