Part 9

Brother Butters:—“Be prepared for the opening of the eternal gates of pearl that are bathed in the light that shines for the meek and the pure in heart. The blessings of repentance are now before you. The choice of taking or leaving is yours!”

Brother Hyatt:—“Nuthin’ could be fairer than that!”

“Oh, Bless the harps that played the tune, That brings us together this afternoon!”

Brother Butters:—“Be prepared for that awful day of judgment, when the paths that lead to heaven and the paths that lead to hell are divided by the width of a hair!”

Brother Hyatt:—“A-A-MEN—A-A-MEN!!!”

“There is a fountain filled with blood, Drawn from Immanuel’s veins, And sinners plunged beneath that flood, Lose all their guilty stains.”

At this point the rain descended out of the kindly skies, the flaming oratory was extinguished, and everybody retreated into the store. It was getting dark, and while the services were not completed, the exhorters felt that much spiritual progress had been made.

Most of the regulars departed silently when the shower was over.

“Say, Rat, was that you down on the marsh the night we tried the goose call?” asked Bill Wirrick. “I seen somebody out near the channel w’en them funny streaks was in the sky. Since it all come out about the goose call we don’t try to keep it dark no more. The fellers ’round the store got onto it, an’ they’ve been devillin’ the life out o’ me an’ Tip. The dad gasted thing wouldn’t work an’ we’ve took it apart. We tried to make it sound like a flock o’ geese, but it sounded more like a flock o’ thunder storms. Them sky streaks that night was a funny thing. They’s a paper here some’rs that’s got it all in. Lemme see if I c’n find it. Tip had it yisterd’y.”

Wirrick finally found the newspaper. Hyatt took it to the dim kerosene lamp and spent some time studying the long account of the magnetic storm. It was explained by scientific authorities, and bemoaned by the interests it had affected. The telegraph and telephone companies had been put out of business for several hours, and commerce had suffered while Hyatt’s soul was being purified in celestial fires.

Disillusionment came. As long as the things that were going on in this world were natural, and could be explained, Rat saw no reason for worrying about the next. A cherished idol was shattered; his piety was dead sea fruit.

With the calmness of a cool gamester, who has thrown and lost his all—slightly pale, but with firm and deliberate step, he went behind the door and secured the rifle and cartridges he had asked Bill Stiles to restore to the swindled trapper. With no word of farewell to those around him, he lighted his long neglected old pipe, reeking with sin and nicotine, whistled to Spot, and walked away down the path to the river bank where the canoe had been left, and disappeared.

Brother Butters went out on the platform and looked longingly after him.

Night had fallen upon the river. Somewhere far away in the purple gloom, that softly lay upon its dimpling and restless tide, was a lost sheep. Its fleece had become black, but it was more precious than the ninety and nine that were still within the fold.

VII THE TURKEY CLUB

“We’re goin’ to take you up the river to the Turkey Club tomorrer,” announced “Rat” Hyatt, as we left Posey’s store one night. “There’s goin’ to be some doin’s there that you’ll like, an’ you’ll meet a lot o’ people you never seen before, an’ prob’ly some you won’t never want to see ag’in.”

We had spent the evening with the usual group that clustered around the smoky stove when the weather rendered the platform outside uncomfortable. It was late in the fall and Thanksgiving was only a few days away, but Indian Summer still lingered, with its purple days and frosty nights, and I was loth to leave the river country while it lasted.

The council around the stove often varied in composition, but not in character. It was always picturesque, not only in its light and shade and color, but in the primitive philosophy, spontaneous wit, original profanity and ornate narrative that issued from it.

On this occasion “Pop” Wilkins had told, with much circumstantial detail, a long story about his old plug hat. He said it “was minted about thirty years ago some’rs down east,” and was bought for him by subscription by the congregation over which he at that time presided. The hat was in the Allegheny river a couple of days during its journey to his address, but when it finally got to him the congregation had it all fixed up so that everybody said it was just as good as new. Since then he had only had to have it repaired twice. He had a great affection for it, on account of its old associations, and hoped that it would be buried with him when he died—a hope that was shared by all present. The old plug was an echo of years long departed and a never-failing butt of merry jest. The tickets of all the raffles that had ever been held in that part of the country, that anybody could remember, had been shaken up in Pop’s hat.

The old man’s story had reminded his listeners of others, and it was quite late when Posey remarked that he was going upstairs to bed, and “to keep things from bein’ carried off” he was “goin’ to lock up.”

At ten the next morning five of us started up stream in three of the small boats that were usually attached to stakes under the bridge. Hyatt and I were in his duck canoe, which he skilfully propelled with his long paddle. Posey and Pop Wilkins followed, in a leaky green craft with squeaky oars. Far in the rear Bill Stiles stemmed the gentle current in his “push boat,” which he declared was never intended for anybody but him. This idea had been generally accepted along the river, for Bill’s boat was the only one for many miles up and down stream that had never been borrowed or stolen. The fact that it was so “tippy” that nobody but Bill seemed to be able to sit in it without being spilled into the river accounted for its immunity.

“Some day,” remarked Bill, “a cold wet stranger’ll come to the store to git warm, an’ tell some kind of a story about fallin’ offen the bridge into the river, but ev’rybody’ll know what’s happened. Nobody that’s acquainted ’round ’ere’ll ever try to navigate with my push boat.”

He called the craft “The Flapjack.” The roughly lettered name appeared in yellow paint on each side of the bow, and to his subtle mind, it was a sufficient warning to the unwary. He said that the name was also lettered along the bottom of the boat underneath, “an’ anybody that wants to c’n take e’r out’n the river an’ read it. She won’t keep ’im wait’n more’n a few minutes.”

The river was low and we scraped gently over a few sand bars on the way up. After proceeding about two miles we came to a wobbly and much patched bridge, on which were several figures. A fringe of cane fish poles drooped idly from its sides. The figures were motionless and would remain so until the Turkey Club activities began.

“Here’s where we git off,” said Hyatt, as we turned in near the bridge. We waited for the rest of the flotilla to come up. When our party had all arrived we climbed a zig-zag path and walked along the road to the little gray church a few hundred feet away. It was here that the Reverend Daniel Butters—“The Javelin of the Lord”—was wont to expound the gospels, formulate dreary doctrines, and to depict the frightfulness of damnation to his superannuated and docile flock.

So far as human faith and opinion could influence the destinies of any of these aged and serene believers, their spiritual safety had been assured for many years. They went regularly to church, principally because they wanted to be seen there, and because they had nothing else particularly to do or think about Sundays. Alas, how the ranks of worldly worshipers would dwindle were it not for these things!

Like that of many preachers, the voice of Butters was of one crying in a desert to passing airs and unheeding sands. There were none to succor or uplift, and none to be beckoned to the fold. They were all in, and further effort was painting the lily and adding perfume to the rose. The strife was won, but yet he battled on. The great tide of human error flowed far beyond his ken, and he could drag no spiritual spoil from its turbid waters.

In fancy his religious establishment might be likened to a cocoon, into which none might enter, and from which none might emerge, except in a new and glorified state.

Some mournful Lombardy poplars stood in front of the unpainted structure, and on one side was the little cemetery, with its serried mounds and conventional epitaphs. A weeping willow wept near the center of the plot, some rabbits hopped about near the broken fence at the farther side of the enclosure, and a stray cow fed peacefully among the leaning slabs.

“There’s a lot o’ people represented in that flock o’ tombstones,” observed Hyatt, as we turned in from the road, “an’ they’s a lot o’ cussedness out there that it’s a good thing to have covered up.”

Both physically and spiritually the old church was a dismal remnant, but it was the regional social center. The building was utilized in many profane ways that saddened the pious heart of the Reverend Butters, but to him, its crowning desecration was the Turkey Club.

The membership of this unique organization comprised practically all of the male population within eight or ten miles up and down the river—and Sophy Perkins, of whom more hereafter. Most of the small politicians of the county were affiliated with the club, and used it for such propaganda as from time to time befitted their objects and petty ambitions. Originally its purpose was to foster and finance the annual “turkey shoot.” This popular event usually just preceded Thanksgiving, and was the occasion of a general holiday.

During the forty odd years of the club’s existence it had gradually broadened the scope of its early activities until it became more or less identified with pretty much everything of a local public character. Its only rival as a social focus was Posey’s store.

Under its auspices the Fourth of July, golden weddings, and other anniversaries, were celebrated. Dances, amateur theatricals, old settlers’ picnics, tax protest meetings, lectures, political “rallies,” “grand raffles,” dog and chicken fights, greased pig contests, quilting bees, ministerial showers and other affairs were “pulled off” during the year. The ministerial showers were about the only functions that the Reverend Butters did not consider unholy.

There were special meetings for discussion of diverse subjects, including the mistakes of congress, advice to the President, the tariff, the oppressions of capital, the tyranny of labor, prohibition, the negro question, restriction of immigration, Shakespeare criticism, the Wrongs of Ireland, and a host of other things that generated heat and lasting acrimony. The meetings sometimes approached turbulency when some over-zealous orator gave vent to unpopular ideas, or made statements that seemed to justify somebody in the audience in calling him a liar. Few participants ever left convinced of anything in particular, except the correctness of the opinions they had brought with them.

We found a gathering of about a hundred club members and numerous small boys in the grove back of the church. We strolled about through the crowd and I was introduced by my companions to a number of their old friends.

Bill was the official head of the club and deservedly popular. To the small boys he was a deified personage. His constitutional title was “Chief Gobbler,” and he bore it with easy grace and a quiet air of _noblesse oblige_. His opinion prevailed on club matters, except when Sophy Perkins was in contact with the situation, and this was most of the time.

Sophy was the secretary, treasurer, general manager, board of directors, and, to her mind, constituted the greater part of the membership, although her duties were supposed to be merely clerical. All her life she had yearned for something besides her husband to regulate and superintend, and the Turkey Club had been a godsend.

She was a somewhat attenuated female, on the regretful side of fifty. Her physiognomy was repelling and expressed characteristics of an alley cat. There was a predatory gleam in her narrowly placed greenish eyes. They bespoke malignant jealousy and relentless cupidity. She seemed enveloped by an atmosphere—vague and indefinable—that prompted cautious and immediate retirement from her vicinity. In private conversation she was commonly referred to as “The Stinger,” and the soubriquet seemed to have been justly earned by a badly speckled record of secret intrigue and underhanded methods. Anonymous letters, petty trickery and duplicity in manifold forms were included in the misdeeds that had been tacitly laid at Sophy’s door.

She was of that female type that demands all male privileges, in addition to those of her own sex, and she often took advantage of the fact that she was a woman to do and say things that she would probably have been knocked down for if she had been a man—one of the most contemptible forms of cowardice.

Her shortcomings were legion, but nobody else was available who was willing to carry the burden of the clerical duties of the club, and she was allowed to run things to her heart’s content. Her main reward was the occasional mention of her name in the county paper, in connection with the activities of the club. She treasured the carefully garnered clippings and gloated over them through the dreary years. To her they were precious incense, and, while they gratified, but never satisfied her vanity and hunger for notoriety, they were the compensation of her narrow and disappointed life, and the food of her impoverished and selfish spirit.

She was without the consolations of religion, the resources of culture, or the sweet recompense of children’s voices, to soften the asperities of her fruitless existence. The gray hairs had come and there was no love around Sophy, for she had sent forth none during the period of life in which temples of the soul must be builded, if kindly light beams from their windows, and there be fit sanctuary for the weary spirit in the after years.

Successive official heads of the club, who seemed to be attracting more public attention than Sophy, were submarined, made officially sick, and retired gracefully. The supply of these official heads finally became restricted, and for the past few years Bill’s incumbency had been undisturbed, although he frequently threatened to “throw up the job.”

J. Montgomery Perkins was a subdued helpmate. He was an inoffensive little man, who was always alluded to as “Sophy’s husband,” and when this happened somebody would usually exclaim sympathetically, “Poor Perk!”

Of late years the club had suffered from “too much Sophy Perkins.” Interest had begun to lag and apathy was creeping over the membership.

“You want to look out fer Sophy,” confided Hyatt, before I had met her. “She’s got a lot o’ wires loose in the upper story, but she knows where the ends of all of ’em are when they’s anything in it fer her.”

Promptly at 2 P.M. Bill pounded with a big stick on a board that was sustained at the ends by the heads of two resonant barrels. The confused hum of voices ceased and the eyes of the scattered groups were upon him. Sophy whispered to him that he was now to announce the opening of the shoot. It was Bill’s intention to do this anyway, but Sophy thought it better that she should take part in what was going on. Substantially his remarks were as follows:

“Gentlemen and One Lady: This ain’t no time fer a long speech. The annual turkey shoot o’ this club’s now on, an’ anybody that’s paid ’is dues an’ ’is entrance fee c’n git in on the game. Ten fat an’ husky birds are in them boxes, an’ the boxes are fifty yards from the rope that’s stretched between them two trees, an’ that’s the shoot’n stand. The chair has made the meas’erments. The birds’ll keep their heads poked up out o’ the holes in the tops o’ the boxes to rubber at the scenery, an’ they gotta be killed by a bullet in the head er neck. Hit’n ’em through the boxes don’t go this year like it did last. Them stone piles is to protect ’em up to the tops. Any eggs found in the boxes after the shoot’n belongs to the winners. Ev’ry shooter’ll have ten shots for ’is dollar, an’ ’e must stand an’ shoot without rest’n ’is rifle on anything but ’imself. No bullet bigger’n yer thumb’s allowed. If you bust the bird’s head, er break ’is neck, it’s yours, an’ if you don’t hit nuth’n in the first ten shots you c’n buy more chances as long as the turkeys an’ yer money last. The money from the shoot’n’ll go to pay fer the fowls, an’ if they’s any live ones left after the show, they’ll be auctioned off to the highest bidders, if they don’t git insulted by the low bids an’ fly off with the boxes.

“I guess I’ve told all they is to say, but if they’s anything anybody don’t understand, er if anybody’s got any kick comin’, speak up. Oh, yes, I fergot to say there’ll be a booby prize of a little tin horn with a purple ribbon on it, fer them that can’t shoot should be allowed to toot. If they ain’t no objection the shoot’n’ll now commence.”

With another loud bang on the board the address closed and the crowd drifted toward the taut rope.

“Hold on there!” yelled Sophy Perkins, frantically waving a small book. “Nobody’s paid a cent yet!”

“You fellers’ll have to ante up before any blood runs!” shouted Bill as he again pounded the board.

Nineteen contestants qualified at the barrel behind which Sophy presided. Her fishy orbs lighted up at the sight of the money, which she deftly deposited in her stocking after modestly turning her back to the crowd.

“She’ll chaperone that cash to the day o’ the resurrection if somebody don’t kep tab on it,” said Hyatt in an undertone as the proceeds disappeared among the mysteries of Sophy’s apparel. “We’re goin’ to put rollers under that old girl some day, but we can’t do it till we c’n git somebody else willin’ to do the work.”

Posey and Hyatt were provided with firearms, and Pop Wilkins had brought an old-fashioned muzzle loading rifle with a long barrel, which he handled with much tenderness.

“I used to shoot lady-bugs offen the edges o’ the leaves on the tops o’ high trees with this old iron when I was young an’ spry, an’ mebbe I’ll hit sump’n with it today,” he declared, as he ambled over toward the shooting stand.

“I didn’t bring no gun, an’ I won’t do no shoot’n,” remarked Bill. “It wouldn’t be dignified fer me as head of the club, an’ it wouldn’t be fair fer the rest fer me to shoot. It ’ud be like swip’n candy from little boys.”

As Bill had not been known to kill anything with a gun for over twenty years, his explanation was accepted without comment.

Mr. Joshua T. Varney appeared at this stage of the proceedings, and offered to take two dollars’ worth of chances and pay three dollars premium if he could have the first trial and twenty successive shots. As it usually took a great many shots to hit a turkey’s head at fifty yards, his proposition was accepted after some discussion.

“Josh” Varney was a traveling salesman, who for several years had periodically visited Posey’s store, on his rounds through the county, and sold supplies adapted to the general country trade.

He was a smooth faced man of about forty, with keen gray eyes, a good story teller, and from him radiated the assurance and suavity of his kind. He had always been a “good mixer,” and was considered an all around good fellow. He had joined the club two years before, but had never attended a “shoot.”

He went to his buggy, that stood near the roadside among numerous other vehicles, and returned with a small repeating rifle. He then stepped over to the rope and began shooting at the bobbing heads above the boxes. In this way hundreds of venerable gobblers and dignified hen turkeys had lost their lives in past years through innocent curiosity as to the doings of the outside world.

The birds were all dead when Mr. Varney had fired fourteen times. Quiet but well chosen profanity troubled the air when the tenth bird succumbed and the performance was ended.

Bill again belabored the board and announced the end of the contest.

“Gentlemen, you prob’ly notice that the shoot’n’s all over! Sump’n has been done unto us, an’ somebody has had an elegant pastime. This ain’t been no turkey shoot, it’s been a horr’ble massacre, an’ after this all Deadwood Dicks’ll be barred, unless they git a mile away when they shoot at anything ’round ’ere. We better kill our turkeys with axes after this, an’ only sell the chance o’ one whopp. We ain’t got but one booby prize, an’ I guess you all better take turns blowin’ on it. This ain’t been no kind of a day, an’ it’s come to a sad end. The club’ll now perceed to its annual business, an’ as the day is nice an’ warm we might as well do it out doors ’stid o’ goin’ in an’ muss’n up the church. Sophy, what you got on the fire that ’as to be ’tended to?”

“They ain’t no business that I can’t ’tend to myself,” replied Sophy grimly. “The treasurer’s report’s been left home by accident, an’ they ain’t nuth’n else to come up, ’less somebody wants to pay dues, or you want to ’lect some new members.”

With this she favored me with a stealthy sidelong glance and I was thereupon proposed for membership by Rat Hyatt, who added that I seemed to be the “only outsider present from a distance that hadn’t hornswoggled the club durin’ the past hour.”

Sophy’s talon-like fingers closed quickly on the two-dollar bill that I handed her as the first year’s dues, after my election and the formal adjournment of the meeting.

While I was entirely out of sympathy with the turkey shoots, I was glad for several reasons to become a member.

After most of the crowd had dispersed I was solemnly conducted into the church and informed that, in order to become a full-fledged member, certain things must be imparted to me to complete my initiation. I was then told that all “Turkeys” knew each other by certain grips and cabalistic words. The “grip” consisted of shaking hands with three fingers only, representing the three front toes of a turkey. The “countersign” was “Pop-Pop!” signifying rifle firing at the annual shoot. The countersign, loudly uttered, with three fingers held aloft, constituted “the grand high sign,” and I was told that I must always relieve any brother Turkey who hungered or thirsted, and made such a sign. With my promise to remember all this, the ceremony, which my instructors, Bill and Rat, considered very humorous, was ended.

The Reverend Butters had been a sorrowful spectator of the proceedings of the afternoon, but his furrowed face brightened when Josh Varney gracefully presented him with one of the big dripping birds that he was carrying to his buggy. In prayer before his congregation on the following Sunday he expressed humble gratitude with the words, “Out of the iniquities of the world, O Lord, has sustenance come to the body of thy servant, and beneath a cloak of sin have Thy blessings been transmitted unto Thine anointed one.”

The relations between the old preacher and Rat Hyatt had been slightly embarrassing since Rat’s conversion and sudden backsliding of the year before, and they had little to say to each other when they met. Rat was now regarded as a hopeless loss and a minute part of hell’s future fuel supply. He considered his former spiritual comforter “a busted wind bag,” so there seemed little left to say on either side.