Read Preacher's Boy for Free Online Page A

sculptors in the tradition of Michelangelo and the only true artists we got around here.
    This year the Wilson children were riding ponies. They are younger than me, but their rich grandpa gave them each a pony. Another of my failings, you might as well know, is the sin of envy. And to tell the truth, I was more jealous of those ponies than I was of Tom and Ned Weston's new sets of wheels. But since it was plain impossible to imagine ever owning a pony, I spent most of my sin of covetousness that day on the Weston boys' wheels, because owning a bicycle seemed closer to possible than owning a pony. No point in wasting a sin on
something that's just plain not going to happen in this world. I kept forgetting that I had decided not to believe in God and that therefore it didn't matter about sin anymore. Old habits die hard, as my grandma used to say.

    It was a good parade while it lasted, but once it was done, Willie and I dragged Letty home as fast as her weight and those wobbly wheels would allow. It was nearly noon, but I begged off dinner, as did Willie. Ma made us sandwiches to take to the creek. She didn't have to tell us to be home before dark. There would be fireworks at dark, and besides, supper would come before that. A couple of sandwiches apiece would not suffice to stave off starvation between morning and bedtime.
    Wouldn't you know? Fast as we hurried, Ned and his big brother Tom was sitting sassy as overfed cats at Willie's and my fishing spot. Ned knew perfectly well whose spot it was. He had seen Willie and me there often enough. I wanted like Christmas to teach him the lesson I hadn't been able to earlier that morning, but his brother Tom is two years older than me and a good boxer to boot, so I decided that it was one of those occasions when "digression is the better part of valor," and me and Willie had to be content with our second-favorite spot.
    We were quiet for a long time, busying ourselves threading our worms on our hooks, making a few trial throws, until finally we settled back into the bank, our caps over our eyes to shade them from the sun. I sighed. With the heat and the loss of our best place, we weren't liable to need many worms.
    "So," said Willie after a while, "you still an apeist, Robbie?"
    "A what?"
    "You know," he said in a dignified tone, "one of them there heathens who don't believe in God."
    I hadn't known the proper term for people like me, and it was months before I found out that the word was
atheist,
not
apeist.
When Willie said "apeist," my first impulse was to thump him on the head. But I controlled myself. Maybe it was all in one package, and if I was going to be an unbeliever, I had to be an apeist whether I liked the notion of monkey granddaddies or not. Besides, I pride myself on having the largest vocabulary in Leonardstown school, on account of all the reading I do. I couldn't admit to not knowing the proper word for what I had determined to become. "I reckon," I said, even though the monkey part made me queasy in the belly. "Eh-yup. One of them apeists."
    "Ain't you—wal, ain't you the least bit scared?"
    "Scared of what?" I probably sounded belligerent.
    "I mean, apeists is liable to end up going someplace you wouldn't be all that pleased to end up in."
    "You forget, Willie," I said, as much to myself as to him, "if there ain't no God, there ain't no down nor up."
    He considered this for a minute or two, twitching his line a bit. "Neither one, eh?" he asked at last.
    "Stands to reason, don't it?"
    "I reckon."
    "I forget sometimes," I confessed, to soften it some. "I forget that I don't believe anymore. I been known to throw up a prayer now and again."
    "Yeah?"
    "It don't do no good nor harm neither, I suppose." I jerked my pole up and threw the line farther out. Not a nibble. Curse those blinking Westons. "But it is a relief," I continued, "not to have to bother myself anymore about commandments."
    He sat straight up. "What are you talking about?"
    "You see,