Plain Mary Smith: A Romance of Red Saunders

by Henry Wallace Phillips

It was a little that way with mother. This time she was talking to me, she brought up for my instruction Great-grandfather Saunders, who fought in the Revolution. He was one of 'em that clubbed their muskets at Bunker Hill. When they asked the old man about it afterward he said he acted that way because he was too darned scart to run. Howsomever, he was a fair-to-medium quarrelsome old gentleman when his blood was up. Mother carefully explained to me that was different—he was fighting for his country. Yet, at the same time, I recollect seeing a letter the old man wrote, calling his neighbors a lot of rum-swilling, psalm-singing hypocrites. Now a man's neighbors are his country. I think Grandpa Saunders liked a row, myself.

Next, mother told me about my French forebears, and a nice peaceful lot they were, for sure. The head of the outfit—the Sieur De La Tour—sassed the king himself to his teeth—he didn't care no more about a king than I do—unless it happened to match on a two-card draw. There was some racket about a friend of Many-times-great-grandfather De La Tour's offending the king. He took refuge with the old man, while the king sent the sheriff after him. "You must yield him to the king!" says the sheriff. "Not to any king under God!" says Many-times-great-grandfather De La Tour. Hence, trouble. My! How mother's eyes shone when she repeated that proud answer. Yet suppose I sassed father like that? There's something about distance lending enchantment to the view. Well, they downed the old man, although he stacked the posse around him in great shape. Meantime his friend was using both feet to acquire some of that distance to lend enchantment to the view, I just spoke of.

One thing stuck out in these old-timers. Whatever their faults might be, meanness wasn't one of 'em. Therefore I indorsed the lot. I left her that day determined to be such a son as anybody would be proud of. Why, in half an hour's time I was wondering how I could make the virtuous jobs last. Already my chest swelled, as I see myself pointed to on the street as a model boy.

My first stagger at being the Village Pride come off next day—Sunday. It would take a poet to describe how much I didn't like Sunday, and a large, black-whiskered poet, at that. Man! Sitting in that little old church of a warm day, with the bees bumbling outside, and all kinds of smells coaxing, coaxing me to the woods, and a kind of uneasy, dry feeling of the skin, that only the water-hole by the cider-mill could cure. Then to know, too, that the godless offspring of the unregenerate were at that minute diving from the dam—chow!—into the slippery cool water—and me the best diver in the crowd....

I wriggled, squirmed my fingers into knots, and let my fancy roam. Roaming fancy was my one amusement in church.

We had the kind of minister who roars one minute and whispers the next. I always imagined he shouted as loud as he dared, short of waking the baby. I never was done being surprised, after he'd hissed the conclusion through his teeth in a way that should have sent chills down your backbone, to hear him rattle off a bunch of notices as fast as he could talk.

I couldn't get interested in the sermon, so my mind wandered. At times an elephant sneaked through the back door and blew a barrel of water down the preacher's back. Then there was the monkey. He skipped gaily from pew to pew, yanking the women's bonnets off, pulling the men's hair, hanging from the roof-beams by his tail, and applying a disrespectful thumb to his nose. That elephant and monkey got to be as real as anything. Sometimes they'd jump into life when I wasn't thinking of 'em at all.

This Sunday, however, I made a manful stand against temptation. As soon as the elephant peeked through the door, I took a long breath and forced him out. I didn't let the monkey much more 'n bob his head over Deacon Anker's pew, although one of my pet delights was when he grabbed the deacon's top-knot and twisted it into a rope.

And my reward for an honest try was to listen to as lovely a tale of treachery and unladylike behavior as I can remember. The sermon was about a Mrs. Jael. She took in one of the enemy, fed him fine, and while he was asleep, grabbed a hammer and a railroad spike and nailed him to the floor by his head. Whilst I was revolving in my mind how, and on what person, I could best apply these teachings, another thought occurred to me.

"Mother!" I whispers, pulling her sleeve.