Part 4

“Taken when he went to Niagara Falls on his honeymoon, dear,” said her mother. “Uncle Martin was a great traveler.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, feeling that comment was expected.

“Wouldn’t you like to travel, Herbie?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Well, be a good boy and read your Bible and maybe some day God will make you a great traveler.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“But don’t travel on Sunday, Herbie.”

“No, ma’am.”

And crunch went the rocker and we turned another page, to find Aunt Ella smiling gently at us through a mass of glorious flounces and trains and switches. We learned from the mother that Aunt Ella had been converted, at an extraordinarily early age, during a revival near Hazel Run, and had lived a singularly devout and godly life. Then we looked through the stereopticon at various places of interest, murmuring our awe when the mother swished gently into the room and pointed out, in a view of Niagara Falls, the exact spot where Uncle Martin had stood. It was, she explained, one of God’s rocks.

To my knowledge this family had some very comical stereopticon views, scenes depicting the life of an unfortunate tramp who was kicked heartily and effectively at every place he applied for nourishment, but we did not see them on Sunday afternoon. They were Saturday-night stuff. Saturday night was nigger night in Farmington, and the whole town let down the bars somewhat. That was the night when those who drank got tight, and when those who bathed got wet, and when those who had amorous intentions did their best to carry them out. Had I called on Saturday night I should have been permitted to enjoy the adventures of the unfortunate tramp, but not on Sunday. They had been put away, under lock and key in the writing desk, and would not be brought out until Monday. They were not calculated to promulgate a proper respect for the Lord’s Day; they were considered downright wicked one day a week and funny the other six.

Even in my infatuated condition an hour or so of this was quite enough. Ordinarily this girl and I had much in common; at that time I ranked her high among the beautiful flowers of God, and had I stopped at her house on a week day we would have had gleeful and uproarious converse, although even then we would have been liable to religious instruction and catechism from every snooping Brother and Sister who saw us. But the taboos that this Christian family had raised on its holy day stood between us and could not be broken down; we were horribly uncomfortable in each other’s presence, and we never got over it. She was never afterward the same girl. And when I took myself and my Sunday suit into the sunlight of the porch her mother stopped rocking and crooning hymns long enough to demand.

“Are you going to church to-night, Herbie?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I replied. “I got to.”

And so I went out of the gate and away from there.

This sort of thing in the homes of Farmington drove all of the boys to more or less open revolt as rapidly as they reached an age at which they felt able to defy parental and churchly authority. By the time I left the town the Sunday-afternoon callers, except those who made unavoidable duty calls, were to be found only in the homes of the ungodly, where there was music and pleasure and gayety, where the parlor was wide open seven days a week and the phonograph blared and the piano tinkled whenever anyone wanted to hear them. To these houses also went the girls from the devout families for clandestine meetings with their sweethearts; they could not entertain anyone in the dismal mausoleums into which their fathers and mothers had transformed their homes. Many a small-town romance has been blighted by the Sunday-afternoon call.

AGENTS OF GOD

1

In Farmington we had not only those Preachers who had been ordained to the ministry and so licensed to preach by both God and man, but the town was overrun with volunteers, Brothers and Sisters who shouted the word of God whenever they could find an audience, who gave the testimony at the camp meetings, the protracted meetings, and at those orgies conducted by the professional evangelist who chased the Devil from any town that would guarantee him a fat fee. These Preachers and their allies controlled Farmington to a very large extent, and when they were defeated, at elections or otherwise, they raised their voices in howls of denunciation and called upon God to punish the guilty. It was many years before I learned that a candidate endorsed by a Preacher was not necessarily called by God to assume the office.

It was essential for any man who wanted to hold public office to profess religion and be seen at church, and usually the more noise he made in religious gatherings, the greater his chances of success at the polls. If any candidate dared to hold views contrary to those of the godly, a vile whispering campaign was started against him, and his personal life was raked over and bared with many gloating references to the Christian duty of the people to punish this upstart. Occasionally the ungodly or anti-religious element elected a mayor or what not, but generally religion triumphed and thanks were offered to God, and then throughout his term the office-holder was harassed by pious hypocrites seeking favors and special privilege. My father, as county surveyor and city clerk, was constantly being checked up to determine if he remained steadfast in the faith.

I do not think that my father was regarded as a first-class Christian in Farmington; I am sure that in many quarters it was felt that he was more or less disgracing his ancestry because he did not bound to his feet at camp meetings and similar gatherings and make a holy show of himself with hypocritical testimony. He went to church, and until I was old enough to do pretty much as I pleased, he saw to it that I went also, and to Sunday school and Epworth League and other places where the Methodist God could take a peek at my soul. But he was only passively religious; he showed no tremendous enthusiasm for the Wesleyan Deity, and he never made a particularly active effort to keep me in the path that, according to some, leads to spiritual glory.

In a religious sense I was annoyed much less by my father and my mother than I was by the busybodies who seemed to be appointed by the Lord to take care of everybody’s business but their own. Most of the religious instruction that I received came from volunteers, either relatives of my parents, or Brothers and Sisters whom I encountered during my pathetic efforts to have a good time. And, of course, from the Preacher. To many of these I put questions; I asked them to explain certain things in the Bible and in the church service that I did not understand, and which seemed to conflict with the little definite knowledge that I had of life and human beings. Invariably I was told that the Bible needed no explaining; I was merely to believe it and have faith.

I was afraid of the Preachers in Farmington, and of the Brothers and Sisters, desperately afraid of them, because they filled my mind with horrible pictures of Hell and the roaring fires of old Nick; their object in talking religion to small boys seemed to be to frighten them into being good. And I think that most of the other boys were afraid of them, too, except such brave souls as my cousin, Barney Blue, who was a “bad boy” and afraid of neither God nor Devil. One of my great moments was when I heard Barney tell a prying old Brother to go to hell. And curiously enough, and incomprehensibly to many of the good old people of Farmington, Barney is to-day exceedingly prosperous and well thought of in his community.

But there were very few like Barney; most of us trembled in our boots, even the red-topped ones we were so proud of, when a Preacher or a Brother or Sister came snooping about, head bowed under its burden of religious horror, and demanded information as to our conduct and the condition of our souls. In the cities the cry of the youngsters was “Cheese it, the cop,” but in Farmington it was “Look out, there’s a Preacher!” We could not start a game of marbles anywhere in town but one of them, or else a Brother or Sister, did not pounce upon us and demand to know if we were playing “for keeps.” And since we invariably were, and did not know enough to tell the Preacher what was politely called a fib, the game stopped then and there while we absorbed a little religion and learned that God abhorred little boys who played for keeps.

We were told that God had His eye on us when we did such things, and that our Guardian Angels put black marks in their little books every time we shot a marble.

“You must give your heart to Jesus,” we were told. “He will not let you dwell in the Heavenly Mansions if you persist in this sinful practice.”

We used to play marbles in a vacant lot behind the Christian church, and it was a very fine playground, with a level stretch on which the marbles rolled beautifully. But we had to give it up, because the lot was near the home of a Sister, who spent most of her waking hours in front of her window, staring out through the curtains in a constant search for sin and scandal. We had no more than drawn the ring and legged for first shot than she came out on her porch and shouted:

“Are you boys playing for keeps?”

And we answered in unison, politely, as we had been taught:

“Yes, ma’am.”

She stopped the game, swooping down upon us with the glint of the Heaven-born fanatic in her eye. She told us that we were wicked and sinful and blasphemous and Heaven knows what else besides to play for keeps in the very shadow of a House of God. She invariably threatened us with punishment ranging from spanking to everlasting torment in Hell, and if we dared to say anything to her other than the conventional “Yes, ma’am,” she said we were saucy and threatened to telephone our mothers. Occasionally she did so, and a marble game behind the Christian church was then followed by the wails of little boys being led into the woodshed. She performed her war dance many times, and finally we went to play near the livery stable. The atmosphere there was not so uplifting, but at least we were in peace, for the hostlers had no interest at all in our immortal souls, although they were very much interested in who won the marbles.

2

The livery stables in Farmington were a sort of symbol of the heretical element of the town. The big Mayberry & Byington barn, down the block from Braun’s Hotel and Saloon, was a particularly delightful place to loaf; it was infested by sinners, abandoned wretches who swore horrible oaths, smoked cigarettes, and drank whisky and gin out of big bottles. The politicians loafed there at such times as they felt they would not be seen by the more godly part of our citizenry.

Two of our most celebrated darkies, Uncle Louis Burks and Uncle Mose Bridges, spent most of their time at the Mayberry barn, and we considered them quite fascinating, especially Uncle Louis. He regaled us with tales of the days when, in the South before the Civil War, he had no duties except be the father of as many children as possible; that was his job. He estimated the number of his progeny anywhere from fifty to five hundred, according to the amount of liquor he had consumed before counting, and we generally gave him the benefit of the doubt and called it five hundred. We ranked him with the great fathers of the Bible, and I recall that it seemed to me somewhat strange that the preachers did not offer Uncle Louis’s achievements as proof of the truth of certain portions of the Book.

Uncle Mose’s principal claim to our attention was his dog, a sad-eyed little mongrel that trotted at the end of a string everywhere Uncle Mose went. We were permitted to play with the dog occasionally, much to the disgust of our parents, as we invariably went home scratching. Both Uncle Louis and Uncle Mose were regarded as sinners, partly on account of their color. It was not believed that a black man could enter the Kingdom of Heaven, although the deluded creatures had churches and prayed to God. And then their domestic arrangements were somewhat haphazard, and Uncle Louis frequently boasted that he did not marry all the mothers of his children before the War. Both he and Uncle Mose were familiar figures around Farmington for many years; they did odd jobs at the homes of the godly, and for their pay received part cash and part religious lectures and prayers. They thrived on the cash, and apparently the prayers did not hurt them.

It was at the livery stable, also, that the drummers from St. Louis, waiting for rigs to take them to the towns of the lead-mining district around Bonne Terre, Flat River and Elvins, left their stocks of stories. The coming of a drummer was an event with us; it meant that we should hear things that were not meant for our little ears, and that for a little while at least we could revel in the sight of a man given over to sin and seemingly enjoying it. He used to assure us solemnly that playing marbles for keeps was not a sin anywhere in the world but in Farmington, and tell stories, which we regarded as fanciful untruths, of towns in which little boys did not have to go to Sunday school.

The drummer came in on the herdic from De Lassus before the interurban railroad was built, and he was generally a gorgeous spectacle. He was not welcomed in our best homes, and even his presence in church was not considered a good omen for the forces of righteousness, so he could usually be found loafing in front of the livery stable or dozing in a chair tilted against the wall of the St. Francis Hotel. He brought with him not only the latest stories, but the most advanced raiment; the first peg-top trousers ever seen in Farmington adorned the legs of a shoe drummer traveling out of St. Louis, and they created a furor and established a style. Soon our most stylish dressers had them.

Besides being the abode of wickedness and the lair of Satan, and therefore an extraordinarily fascinating place, the livery stable was also the principal loafing place of a darky who had fits. He was one of our town characters, and was regarded by myself and the other boys as a person of remarkable accomplishments. We felt that to be able to have fits set him above us; we gloated enormously when he suddenly shrieked, fell to the ground and began foaming at the mouth. Our attitude toward him was respectful, and he appreciated it. He was, it seemed to me, proud of his fits. I have known him to rise, finally, brush himself off and ask, simply:

“Was it a good one?”

Generally we thought it was. This darky became such an attraction for us that for a long time, when a group of us could find nothing interesting to do, and when there was for the moment no one in sight to remind us of our duty to God and the church, it was the custom for one of us to say:

“Let’s go over to the livery stable and see Tod have a fit.”

We thereupon trooped solemnly to the big barn and gathered in a circle about the darky, who was generally sitting against the side of the building whittling on a stick. We watched him silently for a while, and then someone mustered up courage enough to say:

“Going to have a fit to-day, Tod?”

With the instinct of the true artist, Tod ignored us for a time, intent upon his whittling. Finally he gave us brief attention.

“Maybe,” he said, and returned to his task.

And then suddenly he uttered a blood-curdling shriek and tumbled headlong from his chair. We watched, fascinated, uttering little murmurs of “ah!” as he writhed and moaned, and when it was all over we settled back with a little sigh of satisfaction. We felt that we had seen a first-rate performance, and when the darky had a fit in front of the Post Office, or in the yard of the courthouse, his audience was increased by as many boys and men as were downtown, shopkeepers leaving their wares to run across and watch.

There was nothing of callousness in our attitude toward the darky. My own feeling in the matter was that Tod was having fits for our benefit, and because he enjoyed it, but at length I came to learn that he could not help it, that the poor fellow was ill. Then I was sorry for him, and one day I asked one of our most prominent Brothers why Tod had fits. He immediately seized upon the question to give me some religious instruction.

“He has sinned,” said the Brother, “and God is punishing him.”

He elaborated his statement, explaining that Tod had probably neglected to attend Sunday school, or had not read his Bible, and that he had thus become a blasphemous sinner and was being properly dealt with. He pointed out that I, too, might grow up and have fits if I was not a good boy. Now, I did not want to have fits, and neither did I want to be a good boy. I wanted to have some fun; I wanted to run about, and play marbles, and go swimming, and put tick-tacks against people’s window on Halloween night. I wanted to do all sorts of things that good boys did not do, yet I most certainly did not want to have fits.

“But, Uncle Si,” I said, “how do you know that God is making him have fits? And why does God do it?”

“Herbie!” He was shocked. “You are blasphemous! You must not question the wisdom of the Almighty. I have faith, and I believe in God and the holiness of His acts. I know that this man must have sinned, or God would not punish him so.”

I was not prepared to confound this faulty logic; it was not then the business of small boys to question anything their elders told them, but to accept without comment the pearls of wisdom that fell from bewhiskered lips. But it seemed to me small business for God to be engaged upon. Yet it did not cause me great surprise, for I had long known that the God who pressed so heavily upon Farmington was a conception of unutterable cruelty, an omnipotent Being whose greatest joy lay in singling out the weak and lowly and inflicting horrible tortures upon them, to the vast and gloating satisfaction of the Brothers and their kind.

Some time afterward, because I was worried over this torturing and punishment of the darky whose writhings had now become less an amusing exhibit than a terrible manifestation of the Almighty, I asked another Brother how he knew that God had a hand in it. But neither he nor Uncle Si ever told me. None of them were ever able to tell me how they knew so well what God wanted and what God did not want; they merely left with me the impression that on occasion they walked with God and that God spoke to them and asked their advice on the conduct of the human race. But the source of their information I could not determine.

I have never found anyone who could satisfy my curiosity on this point; I never then, or later, found a religious enthusiast who would admit that he was offering merely his personal interpretation of the utterances that other men had credited to the Almighty. But there was nothing that entered the mind of God that the Preachers and the Brothers and Sisters of Farmington did not know and that they could not explain and apply to local affairs. They knew precisely what was a sin and what was not, and it was curious that the sins were invariably things from which they received no pleasure. Nor was anything which paid a profit a sin. They knew very well that God considered it a sin to play cards or dance, but that He thought it only good business practice to raise the price of beans or swindle a fellow citizen in the matter of town lots, or refuse credit to the poor and suffering.

3

As I grew older, and began to be skeptical of what I was told, I became increasingly annoyed not only by the mental mannerisms of these people, but by their physical mannerisms as well. Not only did they walk as if their soles were greased, sliding and slipping about, but they talked as if their tongues were greased also. Their language was oily; they poured out their words unctuously, with much roundabout phrasing and unnecessary language. If they wanted to tell about a man going across the street from the Court House to the Post Office they would take him up the hill past the Masonic cemetery, with side trips to Jerusalem and other Jewish centers. If I went downtown and met a man like Sheriff Rariden, who will always have a place in my affections because he permitted his son Linn and myself to roam the jail yard and stare through the bars at the nigger prisoners, he would say:

“How’re you, Herbie? How’re your folks?”

But if I met a Preacher the greeting was this:

“Good afternoon, Herbert. And how are your dear father and mother?”

And then he patted me on the head, pinched my arm, and padded away, sliding greasily along the pavement, his eagle eye alert for little boys playing marbles or for other signs of sin. He might have been skinny and pitifully in need of food, but nevertheless I thought of him as greasy. He had about him an unwholesome atmosphere; I could not be comfortable in his presence. I felt that he had to be watched, and when I became old enough to understand some of the looks that he bestowed upon the young and feminine members of his flock I realized that he should have been.