The Fall of the Year Read Free Page B

and helped fire the boiler himself, but this accident had not inspired the mill management to put any safety guards around the pit. So I was actually relieved when, on the second night of his new job, Foster Boy was summarily fired for a prank that could easily have resulted in a calamity.
    Father George and I heard about the episode from Doc Harrison, over coffee at the Common Hotel the next morning. At the instigation of a few of the graveyard-shift bullies, Foster Boy had smeared his face and hands red with ketchup from the ketchup sandwiches Silent Jeannine had put up for him to eat during his break, then pretended to have fallen into the Hog. He was still playing dead when Doc arrived in his bathrobe and slippers; then just as Doc rushed onto the machine floor, Foster Boy leaped up, all bloody-faced, and trumpeted out in a demonic voice that he’d been resurrected.
    Father George shook his head. “I guess my idea to put Foster to work at the mill wasn’t such a good one after all, Frank. But if the boy’s really serious about studying scripture, our ecumenical Bible study group meets tonight. I’ll wager dollars to doughnuts that Foster would be tickled pink if you went by his place after supper and invited him to attend.”
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    Tricked out in his overalls, gunboat brogans, and beloved baseball cap, fresh from his triumphal performance on the machine floor, Foster Boy not only monopolized the Bible discussion that evening, he insisted on raising racy scriptural issues. Precisely what, he demanded to know in the middle of a solemn paper on the Sermon on the Mount being delivered by Miss Lily Broom, the young Sunday School superintendent of the United Church, did Delilah do to Samson in bed to get him under her thumb? What did she know that the Hebrew girls didn’t?
    Miss Lily gasped. But Foster Boy, whose impulsiveness knew no bounds, shouted out, “Here’s an easier one. What, if anything besides her birthday suit, was Bathsheba wearing when King David gawked over at her sunbathing on her rooftop?”
    Father George suppressed a snicker. But the dozen or so other ecumenical scholars stared at Foster in consternation.
    Deacon Roy Quinn, head of the United Church board of trustees, grabbed the savant’s shoulders and shook him. “For heaven’s sake, Foster!”
    â€œExactly,” Foster Boy shot back. “What, for heaven’s sake, were the pleasures of the flesh Satan used to tempt Our Lord in the wilderness? Did the old red devil conjure up a troupe of hootchy-kootchy girls? Like the tent-show strippers at Kingdom Fair?”
    Reverend Miles Johnstone sprang to his feet. He pointed a finger at Foster and then at the door.
    â€œBe seated, Lot! Back to your daughters,” Foster commanded Rev. Johnstone, and he laughed like a hyena as I hustled him out of the room.
    â€œThat sanctimonious outfit of hypocrites could all benefit from an old-fashioned horsewhipping,” Father George told me on our way for coffee at the hotel the next morning. “Even so, I’m concerned that Foster may—my God, Frank! Look at that, will you.”
    Reeling blindly around the statue of Ethan Allen on the north end of the green was a full-grown moose. The animal, which seemed to be in the final stages of brain distemper, had evidently staggered into town in the night. A dozen or so Commoners had gathered on the sidewalk in front of the hotel to watch it, and not a minute later, who should heave into sight, feed sack and all, but Foster Boy Dufresne.
    â€œFoster, my man,” Bumper Stevens called out. “Here’s a bill of the realm with Honest Abe Lincoln’s picture on her, belongs to the first fella to march up to that Christly overgrown deer and plant a big kiss on its snout.”
    Bumper waved the five-dollar bill over his head. “Hey, hey, hey,” he chanted in his raspy auctioneer’s voice. “Going once, going twice, going three