Preacher's Boy Read Free

and good enough for eight or ten people.
They should be plenty satisfied with that and not go laying impossible demands on his offspring.
    Of course, Beth is clean and good in the way girls her age tend to be. Which makes her a pain in the neck to me and a joy and comfort to the rest of the world. No one's keeping score on Letty yet. She's still a baby to their way of thinking. Poor Elliot. I guess he's kind of in the baby category, too. So it is always and only me that gets the pursed lips and tut-tuts and "Robbie, you of all people! And your father a minister!"
    All right, back to the problem of Mabel Cramm's bloomers. No one got caught. There was mighty speculation, as I think I've said, down at the livery stable. Neither Willie nor me was privy to those conversations, but I think I can assure you that our names never came up in that sniggering talk.
    The ladies of Leonardstown were noisily appalled, and whatever their menfolk might have thought privately, there was a general agreement, at least among the members of our Congregational church, that it was yet another evidence of the creeping moral decay that was rotting America from the core like a worm in an apple. Previously, they had been able to look down their noses at the other forty-four states, but America's worm had invaded the Green Mountains of Vermont and crawled all the way into our beautiful little village.
    In addition to the shocking affair of the flying bloomers, there was the rowdy crowd that hung around the livery stable. They weren't just talking horseflesh, that was plain. You don't do that much snorting and knee slapping discussing gait and coat and size of livery-stable mares and geldings.
    And then there were the Italian stonecutters. Now, the Italians go to the Catholic church in Tyler if they go anywhere at all, and in my opinion that isn't any business of the old-time New England Protestant population. But while the pious folks were on the subject of wickedness, they started in on the Italian population as well. Those men were drinking something considerably harder than the local cider—and none of them even pretended it was for medicinal purposes. Everyone knew that certain of the Italian women brewed their own, so to speak. But in a state that enshrined prohibition as law, maybe it was high time the sheriff stopped looking the other way.
    And getting closer to home, there was the current preacher at the Congregational church. Whether you were Methodist, Baptist, Unitarian, or nothing at all, you still looked to the tall white steeple on Main Street as a symbol of purity and piety come from Heaven straight down to earth. There was, it was noted, a certain lack of rigor in the current occupant. According to the going opinion, he was a good man, but he was far too easy on sin.
    Then I had to go and make matters worse. I was sitting with Willie in the evening service. Ma knows it is a burden for me to have to go to church twice on Sundays, and Wednesday-night prayer meeting to boot, so sometimes she lets me sit with Willie, making me promise to behave. Willie's aunt's pew is right behind the Westons'. I was behaving, just like I promised, but fate intervened.
    The church was stuffy as a coffin. What was I doing in church on such a night? My mind drifted miles away.
I was a sweating private on the lines waiting for Johnny Reb to show the whites of his eyes over the rise. The rise being Mrs. Weston's back, which is about as broad as East Hill. Boy, it was hot. I pulled out one of the pew fans from the rack in front of me and begun to flap a little breeze toward my sweaty face. That was when I saw it. Right in the middle of the sermon, there was a large black spider crawling up that generous expanse of brown silk, heading for Mrs. Weston's high-necked collar.
    I punched Willie with the fan, and we both watched fascinated to see how far the spider would get before Mrs. Weston knew it was there and what would happen if and when it got to the top of