I couldn't understand. Pa was a preacher. He had no business reading heathen books that question the Bible. Also, how could he be so careless as to leave a terrible book like that just lying around where anyone could see it? No wonder Reverend Pelham was upset. As for Deacon Slaughter and Mr. Weston, they could tell the congregation not to hire Pa again when his year was up come next May. Then what would happen to us all? Pa didn't know any work but preaching. We'd all probably starve to death, if we didn't wind up on the poor farm. I was so upset, I left the room without telling him to come to supper, and Beth had to go fetch him.
The very next day, the first momentous event occurred. On Tuesday, June the twenty-seventh, 1899, at three P.M., I saw a motorcar. Pa had hired a surrey from the livery stable and was driving down to Tyler to see a parishioner. The man was a granite worker dying of the stonecutters' disease in the Tyler Sanatorium. "Want to go, Robbie?" he asked.
The fact that I'd lain awake half the night mad at him and worrying about what would become of us evaporated from my head like the dew of early morning. I even forgot I'd promised to go fishing with Willie. I couldn't imagine anything better than a trip to the city—except maybe a trip to the city with just me and Pa. As you've probably gathered by this time, to a preacher his family always comes last. First come the needy, then the parishioners, and then the family. And amongst the family I always felt that I got the short end.
I'm ashamed to keep complaining about Elliot, but the truth is he gets lots more attention than I ever do, maybe to make up for his twisted body and simple mind. Every year sets him more apart from boys his age. They're all big and braggy and thinking about girls. Elliot still plays with Letty. He's patient with her and lets her ride his crooked back and pull his hair like it's reins. He laughs when there's nothing to laugh at. It isn't to my credit that I have been a little bit ashamed over the years that he was the big brother and I was the younger. But still it used to cause me to pinch up inside—the attention that Pa gave to him. And he, of course, adores Pa. He kind of pants around him like a faithful dog. It used to embarrass me for folks to see a great big boy like that acting so simple—but my father always made it seem as though it was perfecdy all right, as if he liked it, even.
So, between my brother and all the poor and needy of the village and the church folks who demand lots of chatting up and tending to from their minister, there's never been a lot of time left for me. Did Ma and the girls feel cheated? I don't know. I wasn't much worried about them. I was thinking mostly about myself those days.
So when Pa invited me to go to the city with him, I jumped at the chance. Besides, he had hired Nelly, who was my favorite horse in the livery stable. You'd think with a name like Nelly, she'd be as prim and set in her ways as a deacon's widow, but Nelly is about the jauntiest horse you could ever hope to see. When another horse pulls up alongside her, she's been known to break into a full gallop and keep it up most of the ten-mile road to Tyler. I was hoping something like that might occur, but it was a tame trip. Although Pa let me hold the reins most of the way, he wouldn't let me put her in a gallop on purpose. The excitement came after we hit the outskirts of Tyler.
There was such a hubbub at the town limits that Pa almost took the back road around to the sanatorium. Thank goodness he didn't. At first I didn't even recognize the thing. It just looked as though the crowd was milling about a carriage that had got unhitched. Then it hit me. The thing sitting right there on the main street of Tyler, Vermont, was a horseless carriage. I jumped out of the surrey. "I'll wait here!" I yelled to Pa.
The motorcar's wheels were big and spoked like buggy wheels. There was a high seat with a kind of lever. Someone said that was what you steered with. The motor was hidden. I think it was under the seat on which the driver sat. He was wearing a scarf and goggles and a huge overcoat even though it w
as hot enough to melt the tar in the sidewalks. He didn't smile much. I reckon when you own a motorcar, it doesn't do to look too casual. Every now and again when some grimy-fingered urchin would get too close, he'd raise an eyebrow and growl something like "Don't touch the finish. The Winton's just been polished," which seemed only right for such a grand man to say.
I kept hoping he would start the engine so I could see how it was done. I really wanted to hear the roar and see the motorcar blazing down the road, sending all the horses into a panic. But he just sat there in the center of that curious and mostly awestruck crowd. Now and again someone would ask a question like, "How fast does it go really?" or taunt him, saying, "Bet you couldn't keep up with my horse." The driver would look superior—as well he might, owning such a beauty—and remark offhand that he wouldn't put it in a race with a horse, hinting by his manner that it would be cruel to get the poor beast in such a lather. Why, the poor critter might drop dead from exhaustion.
Pa came back far too soon, even though he had been gone fully an hour by the clock on the Unitarian church steeple. I tried to persuade him to wait a bit, hoping maybe the man would start the motorcar and we could actually see it run, but he just laughed. "It doesn't look as if that fellow is going to move until those gawkers head for home, and that may be suppertime. We've got to get the horse and buggy back to Jake's before then."
From that day on, my ambition was fixed. I was determined. Someday, if the world didn't end before I grew up and got rich, I was going to own a motorcar. And if six months was all I had left, I was at any rate determined to have a ride in one before the world went bust.
There was a problem, however. No one in Leonardstown owned a motorcar. How could I ride in one if no one I knew had one? To my knowledge, and I knew pretty near everything that went on in our village, no motorcar had ever even come through Leonardstown.
I consulted Willie the next morning when we went on our delayed fishing trip. He wasn't very happy with me going off to the city without letting him know and seeing a motorcar when he wasn't around. I tried to cheer him up, saying that when I owned one, I would give him a ride whenever he wanted.
"If the world comes to an end this year, there's not much chance you're ever going to own one," he grumped.
"Exactly what I was thinking, Willie. So my best bet is to get to ride in one sometime in the next six months."
"You ain't seen but one motorcar since you was born more than ten years ago. How come you're not only going to see another one in six months, but you're going to go riding in it to boot? Don't seem likely to me."
"Just what I was thinking, Willie. But there's got to be a way. I just got to have that one satisfaction before the end comes."
"Too bad you can't pray."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, when I want something impossible, I ask God for it because God can do the impossible. But you can't pray."
"Why not? My father's the preacher. I'm a ten times better prayer than you are."
"You don't believe in God no more. Remember?"
"Well, I could pray just in case."
"I don't think it would work. God would know."
I ignored Willie and that evening slipped in a to-whom-it-may-concern prayer to say that before the world collapsed in dust and ashes, I would sure like to ride in a motorcar just once.
3. The Glorious Fourth
WE ALWAYS GET EXCITED ABOUT THE FOURTH OF JULY. Why wouldn't we? It is the biggest thing ever to happen in our town, if you don't count the ice storm that broke down half the trees and let us ice-skate down Main Street on Christmas Day a few years back. But that only happened once. Fourth of July happens every year.
We love the parade. First comes the marshal, who also happens to be the mayor, and since we've had the same mayor all my life, it's always been Mr. Earl Weston. Mr. Weston is the mayor because no one else can spare the time. I don't mean that only lazy men go into politics, but Earl Weston has some mysterious source of money that means he doesn't have to farm, or work in the quarries or stone sheds, or slog away in the livery stable or blacksmith shop, or preach like my pa. He doesn't even clerk in his own store. He was the one, I understand, who thought a board of selectmen wasn't a fancy-enough government for a growing town on the main line of the railroad and that we ought to have a mayor. When no one else could understand why, he volunteered. I reckon Mr. Weston figured out that somebody has to lead off the Fourth of July parade, and that it was only fitting that that someone be the town's mayor. If anybody grumbled, I never heard tell of it.
So first comes the mayor. He is riding, of course. Up until that time Mr. Earl Weston had not been known to walk far, and since he owns his own buggy, he might as well ride in it. Then, mostly walking, come the veterans. Now, the Civil War was over in 1865, and this is 1899, so only the ones who went as youngsters are near spry anymore, and some of them is downright decrepit. But they are mostly walking behind Mr. Weston's buggy, except for Colonel Weathersby, who is a farmer and owns his own horse and thinks that a colonel should ride a horse if he's got one handy. And all of us boys agree. Colonel Weathersby's horse is a beautiful Morgan. He's black and sleek and adds a lot of class to the parade. The veterans need the dignity of that horse, because they are by and large shuffling along. Rafe Morrison lost an arm, and so he's got this empty sleeve sewed up, and Warren Smith is still on crutches on account of a missing leg, but he insists on walking the whole route even so. I think he's kind of thumbing his nose at Mr. Earl Weston, but I ain't heard anyone else say as much, so I keep it to myself.