Georgia Boy (2 page)

“But, Martha—” Pa said.

“Ma, can’t we sell the old newspapers and magazines?” I asked.

“Shut up, William,” she said. “Stop taking up for your Pa.”

Handsome pulled the wire loose, and stacks of song books and magazines began tumbling to the floor. Ma stooped down and picked up one of the books.

“My heavens above!” Ma cried. “These are the new song books for my Sunday School class that we took up the collection for. Those poor trusting souls thought their song books would be safe in my house. And now just look at them!”

She began digging into the pile of papers and magazines on the floor. Then she began digging into one of the other bales. She jerked off the wire before Handsome had a chance to break it.

“What’s this, Morris?” she said, raising her voice and staring at one of the letters we had brought out and baled.

“It’s just a piece of old waste paper I found stuffed away in a closet,” Pa said. “The rats and mice would have chewed them up sooner or later, anyway.”

Ma’s face became red all over, and she sat down heavily in a chair. She did not say anything for a minute. Then she called Handsome.

“Handsome,” she said, biting her lips a little and dabbing at her eyes with her apron, “undo that bale this minute!”

Handsome leaped across the pile of paper on the floor and pulled the baling wire loose. The whole pile of letters fell in a heap on the floor at Ma’s feet. She reached down and picked up a handful. When she read some of the writing in one of the letters, she screamed.

“What’s the matter, Martha?” Pa asked her, getting up and crossing the porch to where she was.

“My letters!” Ma said, dabbing at her eyes with her apron. “All the love and courtship letters I’ve been saving from my old beaus! All the letters you ever wrote me, Morris! Now, just look at what you’ve gone and done!”

“But they ain’t nothing but old letters, Martha,” Pa said. “I could write you some new ones almost any time, if you want me to.”

“I don’t want new ones,” she said; ‘I want to keep the old ones!”

She burst out crying so loud Pa did not know what to do. He walked to the other end of the porch and came back.

Ma reached down and picked up as many letters as she could hold in her apron.

“I’ll write you some new letters, Martha,” Pa said.

Ma got up.

“It looks like you’d have more respect for the letters all my other beaus wrote me,” she said, “even if you didn’t have any for the ones you wrote me.”

She lifted the apronful of letters and went inside, slamming the door behind her.

My old man walked up and down through the litter of loose papers and song books, kicking through them with his feet. He did not say anything for a while, but after that he walked back to the baling machine and rubbed his hands over the smooth wooden sides.

“It seems like a shame to see all this paper go to waste, son,” he said. “It’s a pity your Ma had to go and take on so about old letters and things. We could have made us a heap of money selling them to the fellow when he comes to town again next week.”

W
HEN
I
GOT HOME
from school, Preacher Hawshaw, the Universalist minister, was standing on our front porch talking to my old man. I didn’t pay much attention to them at first, because Preacher Hawshaw was always coming to our house and trying to make my old man promise to go to church on Sunday, but Pa always had a good excuse for not going, usually saying Ida, our sugar mule, had the colic and that he couldn’t afford to leave her all alone until she got well, or that Mr. Jess Johnson’s hogs were running wild and that he had to stay at home to keep them from rooting up our garden, and so I thought they were arguing about the same thing as they always did, I stopped at the bottom of the steps to listen to them, wondering what excuse Pa was going to use that time, and the first thing I heard was Preacher Hawshaw saying that old Uncle Jeff Davis Fletcher, the colored janitor of the Universalist church, had gone over into the next county to visit some sick relations for a few days and that there was nobody to ring the church bell that afternoon during Miss Susie Thing’s wedding when she was going to marry Hubert Willy, the substitute mail carrier. My old man listened to all Preacher Hawshaw had to say, but he didn’t show any signs of wanting to ring the bell for him.

“I tell you what, Mr. Stroup,” Preacher Hawshaw said, after waiting a long time for my old man to say something. If you’ll ring the bell while the wedding’s taking place this afternoon, I won’t pester you about attending church services the whole rest of the year. Now, ain’t that fair, Mr. Stroup?”

“It would be a heap more fairer if you’d promise never to pester me about going to church—this year or any year to come,” Pa told him.

“That’s asking a great deal of me, Mr. Stroup,” he said slowly. “It’s my duty to keep after folks until they go to church.”

“If you want the bell rung bad enough,” my old man said, “you’ll treat me like a Methodist or Baptist, and stop trying to make me go to the Universalist church to hear you preach. I’ve got a religion of my own, and if it’s good enough for me, listening to a Universalist preacher preach would only make me dissatisfied with what I’ve got. You wouldn’t want to be the cause of making me turn my back on my own religion, would you?”

Preacher Hawshaw leaned against the wall as if he were all tired out, and thought for a long time. Pa sat where he was on the banister and waited for him to make up his mind.

“Let’s not discuss religion any more today, Mr. Stroup,” he said at last. “I’m all fagged out, and I’ve got that marriage ceremony to perform in less than half an hour. It’s too late for me to hunt up anybody else to ring the bell, and if you don’t ring it for me, I’ll be in a pretty pickle.”

My old man got up from the banister and walked down the steps into the yard. Preacher Hawshaw followed him as fast as he could.

“I’ll ring it for you this time, just to help you out,” Pa said. “Nobody has ever been able to accuse me of refusing to lend a helping hand in a time of trouble.”

“That’s fine!” Preacher Hawshaw said, smiling and beaming at Pa. “I knew all along I could count on you, Mr. Stroup!”

He began dusting off his clothes and adjusting his necktie.

“Now, there’s not much to do,” he said. “All you have to remember is to ring the bell the instant I start reading the marriage ceremony, and keep on ringing it until the bride and groom have left the church and passed out of sight down the street. When you can’t see hide or hair of them any longer, you’ll know it’s time to quit ringing it. That’s plain enough, now ain’t it, Mr. Stroup?”

“I couldn’t get balled up doing a simple thing like that,” my old man told him. “It’ll be as easy as falling off a log.”

He backed down the path towards the street.

“I’ve got to hurry over to the church now,” he said nervously. “The ceremony is due to start in about twenty minutes. You dress yourself up and come over there as fast as you can, Mr. Stroup. I’ll be waiting in the vestibule right beside the bell-rope.”

Preacher Hawshaw turned around and hurried off towards the Universalist church three blocks away. My old man started inside the house.

“Come on, son,” he said to me, waving his arm in a big sweep. “Let’s get ready to go to the wedding. I’ll need you to help me ring that bell. Come on!”

We went inside and Pa doused his head in the wash basin and slicked down his hair with the brush. As soon as he had finished that, we were ready to go.

“Will you let me ring it some by myself, Pa?” I asked, running along beside him in order to keep up. “Can I, Pa?”

“We’ll see when we get there, son,” he told me. “If it ain’t too heavy for you to pull all by yourself, you can.”

People were walking towards the church already, and we passed them and hurried ahead so we would be there in plenty of time to start ringing the bell. There was a crowd of people standing in front of the church when we got there, but Pa only waved at them and we hurried into the vestibule.

Preacher Hawshaw was standing right beside the bell-rope just as he said he would be doing. He was pretty nervous by that time, and it was all he could do to keep still in one place. As soon as he saw us, he began pacing up and down and glancing at his watch every few steps.

“This is an important wedding, Mr. Stroup,” he whispered out loud to Pa. “The parties represent two of the firm pillars of my church. I wouldn’t want any thing to go wrong for the whole world. This marriage means a lot to me. It will unite two bickering families and heal the bad blood that’s been keeping the whole congregation upset.”

“You don’t have to worry over my part,” Pa told him. “You just go ahead about the rest of your business, and I’ll take care of the bell-ringing. I used to ring the bell at the school house when I was the janitor up there, and I know all there is to know about ringing bells.”

“I’m glad to hear that, Mr. Stroup,” he said, wiping his face with his handkerchief. “It’s a big load off my mind to be able to turn the bell-ringing over to an experienced hand.”

The people were walking into the church by that time, and the organist began playing music. Pretty soon I saw Miss Susie Thing, all dressed up in fluffy white clothes and carrying a big armful of flowers, come in one of the side doors. Almost at the same time Hubert Willy came in one of the other doors. That was a sign that the wedding was about to begin and I told my old man that it looked as if it would be time to start ringing the bell almost any minute. Preacher Hawshaw came running back up the aisle, looking at his watch and almost tripping over somebody’s foot that was sticking out from one of the benches.

“All right, Mr. Stroup!” he whispered in a hoarse loud voice to Pa. “As soon as you see me reach down and pick up my little black book from the table, you’ll know it’s time for you to start ringing the bell.”

Pa nodded and got up a good grip on the heavy thick rope that hung down from the belfry through a large round hole in the ceiling.

“Grab a good hold on it, son,” he told me. “It’ll take both of us to get this thing started. It’s a heap bigger than the school-house bell.”

Both of us got good grips on the rope as high up as we could reach.

“Now,” Pa told me, “look at Preacher Hawshaw and tell me when it’s time to pull on this rope.”

Miss Susie Thing and Hubert Willy walked up in front of Preacher Hawshaw. Hubert’s face was as red as a beet, but I couldn’t see Miss Susie’s because she had her face almost buried in the big bunch of flowers. Preacher Hawshaw reached down and picked up the little black book he had told us about.

“Now’s the time, Pa!” I whispered as loud as I dared. “They’re starting off!”

We pulled on the heavy rope until we got the bell swinging back and forth in the belfry. Pa showed me how to pull down as hard as I could, and then to turn loose and let the rope run back upward through the hole in the ceiling. After five or six times the clapper hit the bell, and we had the rope going up and down the way we wanted it.

The bell was ringing long beats that sounded a little peculiar, but I looked up into my old man’s face and he looked so pleased that I decided it was ringing the way it should. I happened to look down the aisle just then, though, and I saw Preacher Hawshaw beckon to an usher and whisper something to him. A lot of people were turning around in their seats and looking back towards us in the vestibule as though we were doing something wrong. The usher came running up the aisle, and as soon as he got to us, he leaned forward and whispered in Pa’s ear.

My old man shook his head and went on ringing the bell just as we had done from the start. The usher hurried back to where Preacher Hawshaw was standing in front of Miss Susie and Hubert. Preacher Hawshaw had already stopped readings from the little black book, and as soon as the usher whispered something to him, he laid the book on the table and came running up the aisle towards us.

“Look here, Mr. Stroup!” he said out loud. “Quit tolling that bell!”

“What are you talking about?” Pa asked him. We kept on pulling the bell-rope and letting it run back upwards through the hole in the ceiling just as we had from the start. “I’m ringing the bell like you told me. What’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong!” Preacher Hawshaw said, running his finger around the inside of his collar to loosen it up. Don’t you hear that
ding-dong, ding-dong
up there in the belfry?” Everybody in the church had turned around by that time and a lot of them were making motions at us with their hands. “What you’re doing is tolling the bell. That’s for a funeral. Stop making it
ding-dong
!”

“What in the world do you want me to do?” my old man asked him. “When I was the janitor at the school house, I rang it just like I’m doing now. Nobody ever accused me of tolling it then.”

“The school-house bell ain’t nothing compared in size to this one, Mr. Stroup,” Preacher Hawshaw said. “There’s all the difference in the world in size. The school-house bell would make the same sound no matter how you rang it. Now, quit ringing this bell the way you’re doing it. It makes people sad. It don’t set the right mood for a wedding.”

“What do you want me to do to it then?” Pa asked.

“Trill it!”

“Trill it?” my old man said. “What’s that?”

Preacher Hawshaw turned and took a quick look at the people in the church. Miss Susie and Hubert were still standing down in front of the pulpit waiting for Preacher Hawshaw to come back and finish reading the wedding ceremony, but Miss Susie looked as if she might drop out of sight any second, and Hubert looked as though he might leap right through the stained-glass window.

“Ain’t you ever trilled a bell in your life?” Preacher Hawshaw asked.

“More than that,” Pa told him, “I ain’t never heard about it before.”

“It goes
ding-a-ling, ding-a-ling-ding
,” he said.

“It does?” Pa asked, still pulling on the rope the way we had from the beginning. “That’s something I never knew about, neither.”

“Well, stop tolling it and begin trilling it, Mr. Stroup!” Preacher Hawshaw said. “There’s people in there who’ve already begun to cry!”