When spring came he went to the woods behind his new home and built a retreat for himself. It was a lean-to, fashioned of saplings, fir branches, moss, bark, and reeds from the edge of the brook, and it stood by the willows, where the stream took a bend. The water always looked so inviting that he dug himself a well, to act as a filter. There, with the sun shining on him, he sprawled through the long spring and summer afternoons, reading as if possessed. When autumn faded and he had to go indoors, he huddled by the kitchen stove, undisturbed by his mother, who looked over his shoulder now and then to see what chapter he was reading and to whisper something about it that helped him to understand the words.
Again and again he went through the books and chapters, until the pages were as familiar to him as the pictures on the walls of the living room. Each time he waited from day to day with rising excitement for the great climax: the last chapter of Malachi, the end of the Old Testament, when the coming of the Lord was prophesied:
“For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.
“But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall.”
Just four more verses, after that, and he could turn the page and find, “The New Testament of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.” Then came the first chapter of Matthew:
“The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham . . .”
Then he was happy, because Jesus triumphed over evil, and healed the sick and the blind, and raised the dead. Even when they crucified Him, He rose from the dead and went to live with His Father in heaven. And in St. John He told His disciples how they could also go to heaven, and how all people could go there if they obeyed the law of loving God and each other.
When it was all over and the fiery Book of Revelation was finished he would rush back to the beginning, to be again with his heroes of the wilderness, Babylon, Egypt, and the Promised Land. Cain killed Abel, Noah built the Ark, Hannah bore Samuel, Lot’s wife was turned to a pillar of salt . . . on and on marched the heroes and the villains, the wicked and the mighty.
So quickly did he read that, by his own count, he had been from Adam to John a dozen times by the spring of his thirteenth year. As soon as the weather was good he went back to his retreat in the woods. There, one afternoon in May as he sat at the entrance of the lean-to, reading the story of Manoah, he became aware of the presence of someone else. He looked up.
A woman was standing before him. At first he thought she was his mother, come to bring him home for the chores—the sun was bright and his eyes did not see well after staring at the book. But when she spoke he knew it was someone he did not know. Her voice was soft and very clear; it reminded him of music. “Your prayers have been heard,” she said. “Tell me what you would like most of all, so that I may give it to you.”
Then he saw that there was something on her back; something that made shadows behind her that were shaped like wings. He was frightened. She smiled at him, waiting. He was afraid his voice would not make a sound, the way it did in dreams. He opened his mouth and heard himself saying:
“Most of all I would like to be helpful to others, and especially to children when they are sick.”
He was thinking of Jesus and the disciples; he wanted to be like a disciple.
Suddenly she was no longer there. He looked at the place where she had stood, trying to see her in the beams of light, but she was gone.
He took his Bible and ran home, anxious to tell his mother about it. He found her in the kitchen, alone. She sat down at the table and listened to him.
When he finished he was suddenly ashamed.
“Do you think I’ve been reading the Bible too much?” he said. “It makes some people go crazy, doesn’t it?”
She reached over and took the book from his hands. Turning its pages to the Gospel of St. John she read to him:
“. . . Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you.
“Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full.”
She looked at him and smiled.
“You’re a good boy, you want to help others, why shouldn’t your prayers be heard?” she said. “I don’t think you need to stop reading the Bible. I’ll know if something is going wrong with you. But we had better not tell anyone about this.”
“No, I just wanted to tell you, so I’d know what to think. But what does it mean?” he asked.
She got up and went to where he was sitting and put her arms around him.
“It might mean that you’re going to be a doctor, perhaps a very famous one, who will have great success with children,” she said. “It might mean that you’re going to be a preacher or a missionary. Sometimes, you know, men study medicine and then go out as missionaries, so they carry the word of God and help the sick in heathen lands at the same time.”
“That’s what I’d like to be, a missionary,” he said.
“Well, let’s get a start by cleaning the milk pails,” she said. “Cleanliness is next to godliness.”
—
That night he slept very little; the next day he was more than ordinarily dull and listless in school. The teacher, his uncle Lucian, asked him to spell “cabin.” He couldn’t do it. Uncle Lucian was irritated.
“Stay after school and write it five hundred times on the blackboard,” he said.
It took a long time to write the word so many times. He was late getting home. There was no time to go to the woods; he had to hurry to get the afternoon chores finished before the supper chores were ready.
Squire Cayce was furious when he came in. The family was disgraced, he said. Uncle Lucian had told him what a stupid son he had. All during supper the squire talked about it. After supper he took the spelling book and the boy and went into the parlor.
“You’re going to start learning your lessons or I’ll know the reason why,” he said. “Sit down here now and get to business.”
It was a long evening. Time after time the squire would take the book and ask the lesson. The answers would be wrong. He would hand back the book and say grimly, “All right. I’ll ask it again in another half hour.”
The girls and the mother went to bed. At ten o’clock the answers were still wrong. The squire, exasperated, slapped the boy out of his chair, then hauled him up from the floor and set him down again.
“One more chance,” he said.
At half past ten the answers were again wrong. Again the boy was knocked out of his chair, landing on the floor. Slowly he got to his feet. He was tired and sleepy.
As he sat in the chair he thought he heard something. His ears were ringing from the blow that had floored him, but he heard words, inside him. It was the voice of the lady he had seen the day before. She was saying, “If you can sleep a little, we can help you.”
He begged his father for a rest; just for a few minutes. He would know the lesson then, he was sure.
“I’m going into the kitchen,” the squire said. “When I come back I’m going to ask you that lesson once more. It’s your last chance. You’d better know it.”
He went out of the room. The boy closed his spelling book, put it back of his head, curled up in the chair, and almost immediately was asleep.
When the squire returned from the kitchen he snatched the book, waking him up.
“Ask me the lesson. I know it now,” the boy said.
The squire began. The answers came quickly, certainly. They were correct.
“Ask me the next day’s lesson. I’ll bet I know that, too,” he said.
The squire asked the
next lesson. All the answers were correct. “Ask me anything in the book,” the boy said.
The squire skipped through the pages at random, asking the hardest words he saw. The answers were correct. The boy began to tell where the words occurred on the page and what the illustrations were.
“There’s a picture of a silo on that page. The word ‘synthesis’ is just under it. S-y-n-t-h-e-s-i-s.”
The squire closed the book and slammed it on the table. His patience was exhausted.
“What kind of nonsense is this?” he roared. “You knew that lesson all the time. You knew the whole book. What’s the idea? Do you want to stay where you are in school so you won’t have any more studying to do? Are you as lazy as all that? Do you want to stay in the Third Reader all your life?”
“I didn’t know it until I slept on it, honest,” the boy said.
The squire knocked him out of the chair again.
“Go to bed,” he said, “before I lose my temper!”
The boy ran upstairs, taking his book with him. Under the covers he prayed his thanks to the lady and hugged the speller. Next morning after his father had gone he gave the book to his mother and asked her to listen to his recitation of the lesson. He still knew it. He told her what had happened and she kissed him and told him she was sure the lady was keeping her promise. In school he was brilliant at spelling, but woeful as ever in his other subjects. He took the books home with him and put them under his pillow before going to sleep. Then he thought about the lady and prayed to her. Next day when Uncle Lucian asked him a question in geography the picture of a page in the textbook leaped to his mind, and he read the answer from it.
It was the same in other subjects. Each day he took his books home, and at night he slept on them. He had an idea that the first time was all that was necessary, but he wanted to take no chances. Besides, it would make everyone believe that he studied hard if he were seen with a lot of books.
He began to make progress as a scholar. Uncle Lucian advanced him a grade and spoke to the squire about it.
“He seems to know everything in the book, Leslie. No matter what I ask him, he has the right answer. It’s almost as if he were reading it. But I know he doesn’t cheat. He keeps his books in his desk and stands up and looks right at me when he recites.”
The squire took his son aside when he got home and asked a few questions.
“What’s going on? How do you do it?” he said. “Is there anything to that sleeping business you told me about?”
“That’s all I do, just sleep on them. When I wake up I know everything in the book. I don’t know how it happens, but it works.”
The squire stroked his mustache.
“I hope you’re not crazy,” he said.
THREE
The presidential campaign of 1892 was exciting for Christian County. Cleveland was trying to regain the office he had lost to Harrison in 1888, and for a running mate he had Adlai E. Stevenson, a native of the county. Everyone turned out to support the local boy who had made good, and Squire Cayce, who loved politics in any form, made speeches, argued at the crossroads store, and promised to take his fifteen-year-old son to Hopkinsville, the county seat, for the celebration.
Cleveland won and plans were made for a parade and a monster party. The day before it happened the new teacher at the school, Mr. B. F. Thomb, called the squire’s son to his desk at recess time.
“Old Man,” he said, “I’ve been talking to your father. I remarked to him that you were my best student; that you always knew your lessons. He told me that you go to sleep to learn them. Others have mentioned the same thing. What is it? How do you do it?”
“I don’t know, really . . . I just seemed to know once that, if I put my head on a book and went to sleep, I’d know the lesson. Then I did it with other books, and it worked. I don’t know what it is.”
He was embarrassed, blushing.
“There’s nothing odd about it,” Mr. Thomb said. “Don’t feel that you are different. There are many strange things in life that we know nothing about. How do you see your lessons, in pictures?”
“Yes, I see pictures of the pages.”
“Well, I won’t bother you any more about it. But I think it’s something that should be studied. There are so many things we don’t know about.
“Don’t let it worry you, and don’t stop doing it. There’s no harm in it. Now run along and play with the rest of the boys.”
He ran out and joined the game of Old Sow—a variation of Prisoner’s Base—that the boys were playing. He ran faster than usual, and threw the ball harder, trying to forget the feeling that came over him when he thought about being different from others. People were always staring at him now, and the boys would holler, “Hey, Old Man, how about sleeping on our lessons for us?” It was because his father told everybody about it. The squire was proud of his son, and wanted him to show folks how smart he was, and how quickly he could learn anything by sleeping on it.
He burned with shame every time he thought about it. “Run, Old Man! Run!” the boys shouted.
He ran, and made it, but the ball hit him on the end of the spine just as he reached the base.
The bell rang then, and they ran into the classroom. All during the afternoon he acted queerly, laughing and giggling, making faces, throwing spitballs. Mr. Thomb was distressed, but did not keep him after school, thinking his questions had upset the boy.
Going home he rolled on the ground, jumped into ditches, and stood in the middle of the road, stopping buggies and teams with upraised hands. At home his mother had put some green coffee beans in a pan and was roasting them on the kitchen stove. He took the pan in his hands, unmindful of its heat, and went into the yard. There he sowed the coffee as if it were seed.
During supper he threw things at his sisters, laughed uproariously, and made faces at his father. The squire put him to bed.
When he was under the covers he became serious. He gave instructions for a poultice, to be put on the back of his head, near the base of the brain. He was suffering from shock, he said, and would be all right in the morning if the poultice were applied.
“What shall I do?” the squire said to his wife.
“Make it,” his wife said. “There isn’t anything in it that can hurt him: corn meal, onions, and some herbs. Come and help me. I’ll fix it.”
When it was ready they put it on the back of his head, and when he was satisfied with its position he relaxed and went to sleep. Several times during the night he shouted, “Hurrah for Cleveland!” and pounded the wall with his fist, but did not wake up. To keep him from harming himself the squire pulled the bed away from the wall.
When he opened his eyes the next morning neighbors and relatives were sitting around the bed, keeping vigil.
“What’s the matter?” he said. “Did I get run over?”
He remembered nothing from the time he had left Mr. Thomb at recess. The squire told him what had happened.
“You told us it was a shock, and to put the poultice on the back of your neck. How do you feel now?”
“I’m fine!” He jumped out of bed. “Can I still go to the celebration in town tonight?”
The squire beamed at his relatives and friends.
“Cured himself,” he said. “Ever see the beat of it? I tell you he’s the greatest fellow in the world when he’s asleep.
“Sure, we’re going to the celebration, Old Man! We’ve got two things to celebrate: Adlai Stevenson getting elected vice-president and you getting better!”
The relatives and friends said nothing. With thoughtful faces they watched the boy get dressed, then filed out of the room and went downstairs. They did not talk among themselves until they were out of the house.
Hopkinsville had its gayest time in generations that night. Torchlights illuminated the streets, banners and flags and bunting turned the business secti
on into a carnival lot, whisky flowed as easily as talk. Crowds jammed the sidewalks, overflowed to the roads, inundated the saloons. The squire and his son wandered about; the squire talked, took an occasional drink, listened to his friends, laughed at their jokes. The boy said nothing. He was having a good time with his eyes and ears. He even liked the fist fights that broke out periodically. But when one man pulled a gun from his pocket and shot another man who was only ten feet away from where he stood with his father, a wave of sickness swept over him and he wanted to go home. While men and policemen milled around he sat down on the curb.
When the excitement was over the squire found him and patted him fondly on the head.
“Well, it’s been quite a day, Old Man,” he said. “Let’s go back to the wagon. These people are getting too drunk. Somebody’s apt to get hurt.”
—
This was to be his last year in school. He was sixteen in March and big enough to do a man’s work. His Uncle Lee gave him a job. Uncle Lee was farming the old place for Grandmother.
All that remained of his boyhood was the closing exercises at school. He was to recite a piece; he began searching through his English books, trying to decide which selection he liked best. His father settled the matter for him.
On one of his trips to town the squire met Congressman Jim MacKenzie, who had won fame for himself in Washington by fighting to have the tax removed from quinine. He had made a fiery speech in the House of Representatives and had been nicknamed “Quinine Jim.” President Cleveland was sending him to Peru as minister, and he was at home for a visit before sailing to take over his post. He and the squire had a drink to celebrate the honor to Christian County.
The squire, pressed for something to match his friend’s distinction, bragged about his son. The boy could remember anything, he said, if only he were allowed to sleep on it. The congressman was skeptical. The squire insisted. The congressman demanded proof. The squire offered to produce it: his son was to make a declamation at the school exercises in a few days. He would let the congressman select the declaration; the boy would sleep on it; the congressman could witness the results. That gave the congressman an idea. The declamation would have to be long enough, and difficult enough, so the boy could not ordinarily learn it in the short time remaining before the exercises. Suppose he chose his own quinine speech? Would that be satisfactory?
There Is a River Page 7