Preacher's Boy Read Free Page B

got further damaged, not mine. A preacher who couldn't prevent his own son from disrupting divine services was lacking proper authority even in his own household, they said. They all felt it would have helped if Pa had had the moral fortitude to lay a rod across my rear once a day and twice on Saturdays.
    But I wasn't the only problem, they said. The sermons themselves lacked passion. They asked each other when was the last time the word
Hell
had been thundered from the pulpit? Calling war "Hell" didn't seem to count. It occurred to them that they hadn't heard more than a thimbleful of fiery damnation since the Reverend J. K. Pelham left town twelve years previously to take a larger charge in western Connecticut. No wonder the town was about to disappear down the broad path of turpitude and outright wickedness. All that drinking and obscene thinking and flying you-know-whats from the town hall flagpole—no one was warning the citizenry about the wrath to come.
    Folks began to wax near nostalgic about those good old days. Why, Reverend Pelham's sermons would make tears come to the ladies' eyes and the sweat break out on the foreheads of grown men. Oh, that those mighty days should return. So the deacons determined to write to Reverend Pelham and invite him home to Leonardstown to preach on what they were calling "Revival Sunday." They figured a good dose of the old reverend would turn the town on its ear, if not lead it to righteousness.
    Pa, I don't need to say, was not overly pleased with the idea. I overheard him complaining to Ma that he'd spent the better part of twelve years mopping up damage from the Reverend Pelham's sermons. Because, you see, it wasn't the wicked people who got changed by them. It wasn't even the pious and prim who were well set in their ways and not about to change, for all their tears and sweat. It was the meek and easily frightened—they who had a fragile hold on the everlasting mercy.
    I felt terrible. I knew good and well it was the business of Mabel Cramm's bloomers that had set the congregation to thinking that the town was headed on the road to perdition. And me and Willie had done that just to get even with the Weston boys. It was like blowing a soap bubble to the size of a hot-air balloon. Even though God and I were on shaky terms in those days, I
prayed He would see how the situation had got all out of proportion and stick a pin in it. Well, anyhow, that He would somehow manage to keep Reverend Pelham home in western Connecticut.
    My prayer was not answered. Reverend Pelham wrote back the very day he got the letter. He said the Lord had told him to tear himself away from the sinners in Connecticut and hightail it to Leonardstown, where, apparently, the Devil had had a picnic since the reverend's departure twelve years before.
    So it was that at eleven A.M. on the last Sunday morning in June the Reverend J. K. Pelham mounted the pulpit, standing where by all rights my pa should have been, breathing fire and brimstone on the just and unjust alike.
    I wasn't too worried when he spoke out against drinking strong spirits and indulging in tobacco. I've never had anything more than a little hard cider myself, and the only thing I smoke regularly is corn silks and the occasional rabbit tobacco. In fact, I was wondering how Mr. Weston was taking that part of the sermon, since everyone knows he not only sells tobacco but is known to smoke and chew it himself. As for the strong drink, there were a number of menfolk out there that had regular bouts of indigestion for which alcoholic spirits had proved to be the only known cure. Or so they maintained.
    I began to get a bit squirmy when he started in to preach about impure thoughts and language. How can you blame a fellow for what he thinks? It's not as if I go looking for ideas that aren't proper. Sometimes thoughts just pop into my head like weeds in the vegetable patch.
The same goes for language. How can you blame a fellow for letting slip