Preacher's Boy Read Online Free PDF Page A

he answered, "And I'll be praying for you, my friend."
    Then Mr. Weston and Deacon Slaughter hustled the reverend out to Mr. Weston's buggy and off to the depot. I didn't know what all that praying back and forth meant until later that evening, when Ma sent me to the study to call Pa to supper. I opened the door and he was sitting there reading.
    I guess I must have dropped my jaw to my knees for the pure shock. My pa was sitting right there in the manse of the Congregational church reading
The Descent of Man
by Mr. Charles Darwin. It was a well-known fact in Leonardstown that this book was inspired by the Devil himself.
    Pa let me stare awhile before he said quietly, "J. K. Pelham is a good man, Robbie, but he appears to be afraid of new ideas. I don't believe God wants us to be afraid of ideas."
    But the idea in that book, so Deacon Slaughter had announced one Wednesday night at prayer meeting, was that your great-great-great-great (and so forth) granddaddy was a monkey. I couldn't believe my pa, who was an ordained minister of the gospel and the father of impressionable children, would entertain such a horrifying notion. I said as much.
    "I believe that God created us, Robbie, but I'm not wise enough to know just how he chose to do it. I think Mr. Darwin's theory merits study."
    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