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Willie and me tried to make life easier for her. We really did. Even Pa helped. He offered to give her extra tutoring, but Vile claimed she had something that made her break into hives if she got too close to a preacher. I told her that was nonsense, but she showed me these red spots on her arms and said, "See!" I suspect they were bedbug bites, but I decided to leave it be. Next
thing she'd claim she couldn't sleep in a regular bed.
Elliot was crazy about her, but Elliot likes everybody. The interesting thing is that Vile liked him back. Sometimes she would come up to the house not to see me but just to play paper dolls with Elliot and Letty. It was the only time I ever saw her acting like a regular little girl.
Anyhow, the first snow fell in October soon after Zeb's three-month parole was up. They disappeared the night after it snowed, heading, I guess, for warmer territory. They were originally from somewhere farther south. Anyhow, I got a postal card from Vile at Christmastime written in smudged pencil. They had made their way as far as Massachusetts, hopping trains. Zeb was mostly behaving himself, she said. She herself was working in a mill, which she didn't mind at all since no one made her recite lessons in a mill. I mustn't worry. She had taken the primer that Pa had given her and was teaching herself. Couldn't I tell how much her writing had improved even without her having to go to school? She spelled writing as ritin. And that was about the best spelling on the card. I spent more than an hour puzzling out what she was trying to say. It made me furious that she didn't know what was good for her. She could have had a swell life here in Leonardstown with us, but she threw it away.
It made me sad, too. Even if she was happier in Massachusetts, she was like a buddy to Willie and Elliot and me. We all miss her. Now that I'm back to being a Christian, I pray she'll come back. She hasn't so far.
The whole town was planning to stay up on December the thirty-first and watch the new century dawn. Deacon Slaughter and Mr. Weston had already determined that our celebration would be simple and in the good taste befitting a God-fearing town in Vermont. Unlike those festivities being advertised in the larger cities, Leonardstown would tolerate no raucous behavior, drunkenness, or dancing in the street. (Not that anyone would be tempted to dance on a street of packed snow in their winter boots.) There was to be a band concert in the town hall at seven P.M., followed by prayer meetings in the individual churches. The plan was that everyone would assemble on the green afterward and say a proper farewell to the nine-teenth century and welcome the twentieth. Willie and I had stuffed our pockets with strings of firecrackers and matches in honor of the occasion. But when the concert and prayer meetings were over, it was still not ten-fifteen and the temperature was plunging faster than a wild goose full of buckshot.
People stood around, shuffling their freezing toes and mumbling. After a while Mrs. Weston remarked rather loud that anybody with any sense would go home and welcome in the new century in the comfort of their own homes. The crowd began to drift away after that. We young ones complained, but we were not listened to. Maybe someone had gotten wind of those firecrackers and was scared one of us fellers would burn our britches or worse.
If anyone but me was thinking about it being almost the End of the Age, they didn't say so. It wasn't even mentioned during the prayer meeting. I wondered if people had forgotten so quickly all the excitement over the potential apocalypse when Reverend Pelham was here in June, or if they just didn't want to dwell on the possibility.
We sat in the kitchen. Ma made us hot sassafras tea and Pa popped corn. We had a good time for a while until Letty fell asleep in her chair. Then everyone started to yawn. As it turned out, only Pa and me could keep our eyes open past eleven-thirty.
"Come on, Robbie," he said, consulting his watch, "why don't we greet the new age outside among the stars."
We put on our coats and caps and high boots. Pa grabbed the lantern from the kitchen table. The two of us tromped through the snow across the back yard to the edge of Webster's pasture. It was bitter cold, as it tends to be when the sky is perfectly clear. The stars were sparkling and winking like they were dancing for joy. We craned our necks back to stare. A shooting star sped across the dome of the sky and disappeared behind the mountains.
"Pa," I said, "do you think—do you think it will all be over soon?"
"What will be over, Robbie?"
"The world. Do you think it's coming to an end?"
He didn't laugh. "We can't know that sort of thing for sure, son. But my hunch is that this old earth will be here a long time after we are." He was quiet for a minute. Then he added, "I think the world's at a sort of beginning, myself."
"A beginning?"
"Lots of things, things we can't even dream of today, will be happening in your lifetime. The world is changing so fast on us. Telephones, electricity, motorcars—who knows? You might live long enough to see flying machines."
I looked up at the stars and tried to imagine myself like a shooting star, flying up there in a motorcar with wings. Nothing seemed impossible anymore.
"I pray it will be a good century," he went on. "I want my children and my grandchildren to grow up in a world where people have learned to think with their minds and hearts and not with weapons of destruction. But I don't know, the human race being what it is..."
I shivered. He put his free arm around me and drew me close. "Pa," I said after a bit, "let's ring it in." I waited for him to say no.
Instead he said, "Last one to the church is a rotten egg!" He thrust the lantern into my hand and took off down the hill, retracing his own tracks in the snow so he could go faster. I followed after, holding the lantern high and stepping carefully into his footprints. He was waiting for me on the church porch, smiling and out of breath. We went in together.
"Don't turn the bell over!" he warned.
"I won't!" Only greenhorns who don't know how to ring proper pull the rope so hard it makes the bell turn over. I took hold of the rope. Pa fit his big hands in between mine, and we began to pull.
High above us from the steeple, the bell of the Congregational church clanged across the valley, pealing out a joyful welcome to the twentieth century.
