Mr. Morgan's Sermon

Accustomed as we were to a minister who liked planting flowers, making house calls and believed whole heartedly in fighting sin with forgiveness rather than hellfire, the Reverend Mr. Morgan's upcoming arrival in the village was a cause for some concern. James and Lily, called away to tend to Lily's widowed mother after a sudden stroke, hadn't had the time to greet him so it fell to the island women to ready the parsonage and be a last minute welcoming committee. Under the watchful eyes of Miz Hilda, they were still cooking and cleaning when the mail car pulled up and delivered our substitute pastor and his son.

He was impossibly tall, closer to seven foot then six, I thought blurrily, and thinner'n than a matchstick, nearly to the point of frail, with a mane of thick black hair, a badly hawked nose and sunken, cavernous dark eyes. From the dusty fedora to the tips of his scuffed boots, he was dressed all in black but the clothes were ill fitting - the sleeves of his frock coat ended above his scrawny wrists and his trousers hung on his hips for dear life – even without the dingy, telltale white collar, he could've stepped out of some dark and dreary Victorian novel. Everyone save Miz Hilda and Miz Clara took an involuntary step backwards, as if wanting to distance themselves from what was surely an apparition, surely some kind of evil.

“Ok,” I whispered urgently to Ruthie, “We've seen 'im. Let's go!”

“Not yet!” she hissed back at me, “I wanna see the boy!”

My heart was racing and I'd have rather faced down a barrel of snapping turtles but as I turned to run, a pair of leathery hands clamped down on my shoulders and held me in place.

“Stay put, child,” Miz Clara warned me quietly, “Remember your manners.”

Caught between a nameless fear, a wash of shame and Miz Clara's firm grip, there was no escape. Mr. Morgan, towering above the crowd and, I was quite sure, concealing a bloody ax beneath his frock coat, was listening to Miz Hilda's welcome speech impassively, his face mostly in shadow, his enormous frame blotting out the sun. The boy beside him was urchin-like, dark like his father but as short and squat as his father was tall and gaunt. Like Mutt and Jeff from the funny papers, I thought, only not so silly or entertaining and fearfully not so innocent even with his knickers (oh, Lord, what a feast the island boys were going to have with that) and his knee high argyle socks. Watching him kicking defiantly at the dust and refusing to meet anyone's eyes, all I could think of was a petulant and bedraggled Little Lord Fauntleroy.

“My son, Evan,” Mr. Morgan was saying and gave him a slight but rough-ish shove forward toward the crowd. The boy glanced up, scowling and unwilling, mumbled a few low words and immediately lowered his eyes and that was when everyone saw the deformity. Even Miz Hilda faltered midway through some British pleasantry and then several things happened all at the same time. Miz Clara's grip on my shoulders inexplicably tightened while a sudden chill shot from my tailbone all the way to my ears. A cloud passed over the sun and threw everything into shadow and worst of all, Ruthie went pale and without the slightest warning bolted like a startled deer. Far too late, Miz Clara reached out a hand to snatch her back and seeing my opportunity, I wrenched free and followed. Just before I caught up with her, there was a distant but very clear rifle shot of thunder and then we were caught in a fierce sun shower. We took what shelter we could under the overhanging eaves of the old post office and waited it out, cold, wet, too ignorant to know what we'd seen and too horrified to talk of it. After a time, Miz Clara's wagon passed on her way back to The Point and when she offered us a ride, we jumped aboard like fleas. Not a word about Mr. Morgan or his son was said but gossip rides a fast horse and word of the boy's affliction had already spread like fire. None of it was kind nor true but it didn't seem to matter. No one had ever heard of a cleft palate but they all knew about two headed calves and the mark of the beast.

Church attendance dropped sharply the next four weeks. Mr. Morgan's preaching, though eloquent and often delivered with the violent sort of passion that made you want to shout “Hallelujah!”, was never able to overcome that first impression of imagined evil. His final sermon, Matthew 7: 1-3, didn't just echo with the thin congregation, it ricochet'd all around them.

“Judge not that ye be not judged!” he railed, one hand clutching his Bible and the other a raised fist. My grandmother paled visibly and for several seconds I was sure my heart was going to hammer its way out of my chest or just plain stop and leave me in a cold, dead, and sinful heap on the floor of the Baptist church.

Mr. Morgan recovered himself admirably, Miz Hilda would say later. My last sight of him was as he stood quietly, head slightly bowed and hands clasping his Bible, something near a smile on his dark, brooding features and the boy at his side.

"Go with God," he called out clearly.

We were too busy hurrying out to return the blessing.