Three Mormon Boys

By Homespun [Susa Young Gates]

Chapter 10

One day after his return to the city John and his companions, Bertie and Martin, met Jim Balfour who joyfully exclaimed, “Say boys, you are just the ones I am after. Come along down to Thompson’s barn, and we will have the rummest time.”

“What doing?” answered John.

The four of them stood close together in the dense darkness, and Jim Balfour whispered to them a few minutes. John asked again in a loud tone of voice, “What is it you are asking us to do? Go and drink wine? we don’t any of us either drink wine or smoke tobacco.”

“Oh, you don’t. Well all three of you are not so pious. Mart has got a mind of his own, if you others are too babyish to take a little home-made wine. You needn’t be afraid, it is the same kind of wine that our Bishop drinks; I know all about that.”

“Oh come along boys, let’s let this business alone. Come on home, we’ve had fun enough for one night,” said John roughly but anxiously.

Bertie followed his friend with willing feet, but Martin fell behind with Jim, and on reaching the corner of the street, the boys in the rear silently turned off to go down the street, and John and Martin were left to pursue their way alone.

“If it wasn’t so dark and late, Bertie, I would follow them, boys up for I feel some way kind o’ uneasy about Martin. He seems to get a little reckless now that he has begun to go with Jim again, and I am afeard they will do something they oughtn’t to.”

“Tomorrow,” said Bertie, “I shall go and talk with grandma about Mart, and tell her all about how he is carrying on.

While John and Bertie were wending their way homeward in the darkness of that spring night, the other two boys were hurrying to join a small crowd of boys who were the roughest and rudest boys in all the confines of the city. Jim was the acknowledged ring leader of this crowd. Jim did not tell Martin where he had obtained the wine, but Bro. Jerrold’s cellar could have told a tale of theft and larceny that would have angered John and Bertie even to desperation. Once the boys were together, they all followed Jim to the place chosen for their orgies. It proved to be the barn of the Thompsons, for there they were so far away from houses that they could make a good deal of noise and yet be safe from the hearing of others. The lantern was lighted as soon as they were once safely inside the big adobe building, the upper story of which was now vacant. Here the boys gathered around the demijohn and each drank all he wanted.

Martin was not as accustomed to drink as were some of the other boys and as the wine was not of the best, it was not long before he was crazy drunk.

“Ho,” shouted Jim Balfour, “them pious kids down in their beds, that Parson Bertie and his friend John, what do they know of real fun? They thought we was going to cry cause they wouldn’t join us in our spree. I tell you what it is this here wine is just as good as the wine they sometimes use in passing around their bread and wine on Sundays. I would get up and give this here wine a Jackson County blessing for two cents. It would then be good enough I guess even for them.”

“Do it, Jim,” yelled Martin in a maudlin way. “I’ll help ye do it.”

This made the others laugh until one of them declared he had got the side ache from laughing so much.

“I’ll fix your side ache,” grinned Jim Balfour, filled with the unholy ambition to do something which would really shock John and Bertie if they were present. He arose, and going to the shelf in the corner he got a box of wagon grease and coming up to the crowd sprawling on the floor, he said,

“Say, which one of ye can give us the proper blessin’ for this yere grease. I wants to heal this yere feller from his side ache?”

Martin staggered to his feet too crazy drunk with his recent potations to realize at all what he was about, and going up to Jim he held out his hand in a stupid way and answered,

“I’m the feller that can do that thing; for I heard the men do it only last week in meeting.”

He took the can of grease and in a mock manner he held it up and pronounced upon it in thick, rambling tones the usual blessing given to the oil by the elders. Then reaching down to the boy who had complained of a pain in his side, he stooped down to put some of the stuff on him. The boys had all been laughing and hollowing and cursing, but as the words of blasphemous blessing arose from the lips of the drunken Martin, a strange and sudden silence seemed to fall like a pall over the whole crowd. Even as Martin leaned down to administer the grease to his companion, he too felt the influence he had invoked, and as he stooped over to touch the boy, he gave a low but sickening groan and rolled over in a heap upon the floor.

Jim laughed as Martin rolled over and shouted out, “You’re drunk, old feller.”

Yet he too grew alarmed as the groans continued and they did not sound exactly as the groans of a drunken man, but were full of bodily agony.

Jim arose to go to the groaning boy who lay prostrate, but as he reached his side his own drunken condition caused him to vomit up the contents of his stomach, and Martin lay there covered with the filth of his drunken companion and groaning in awful distress.

The boys, bad as they were, were sobered with the terrible scene before them, and with what steadiness they could, they wiped the filth from Martin, and with much difficulty they got him into a better position. His groans were something painful to hear, and only one word did he utter, and that was, “Mother.” Then without any warning he fainted away, and lay there as if dead.

To say the rough and rowdy boys were frightened by the effect of their own ill-doing, would be to tell their condition in mild words. What was to be done? That was the question. Jim, sobered now, gave directions for lifting the body up and getting it down the ladder with as little waste of time as possible. Then with their silent burden in their arms, they managed to get up to the house of his mother, and knocking at the door, Jim stood on the step and as the door was opened by Mrs. Thompson who had hastily thrown on a wrapper, he said, “Here is Martin. We were up in the loft of the barn havin’ some fun, when all of a sudden he gave a groan and rolled over on the floor. We don’t know what ailed him, for he hasn’t been sick at all tonight.”

Mrs. Thompson smelled the wine in the breath of her visitor, and looking into the faces of the boys as shown by the light of the candle she held in her hand, she drew her own sad conclusions as to what “fun” they had been indulging in. This, alas, was not the first time Martin had been brought home in a drunken condition, and she thought that now he was only a little drunker than usual, and that his condition was one not necessarily alarming. So she gave directions in a few words for them to bring him in, and then she turned on Jim, and gave him, as he afterwards said the “worst tongue-lashing” he had ever received. Some power seemed to unloose her tongue and she so chastised the young man that he cowered like a whipped cur before her righteous indignation. He was glad to get away at last, and the boys went to their homes with more fear for their night’s work than either cared to confess to the other.

Poor, poor mother! Who can relate in words the anguish of that night, when she discovered the bodily condition of her son. Consciousness restored, his every breath was a heart-rending groan, and no one, not even the good old doctor who came towards morning could give the least idea of what was the cause of the boy’s terrible anguish. The sweat stood out on the lad’s forehead with great drops of mental suffering, and in vain they put hot cloths and all sorts of remedies inward and outward to relieve his pain. Once towards noon of the next day, his tongue twisted out the words, “my head.” Then he was exhausted with the effort of speech, and the groaning breath was all that remained to tell there was life left in the body.

The days and months dragged by while poor Martin suffered and groaned in exquisite anguish. No one knew what ailed him. No one of the few doctors then living in the city could tell the cause of his suffering. Certain it was that he was dying by inches.

One night, a few days before his death, he begged his mother to send for his old friends and companions, Bertie and John. When they entered the sick room they found Martin lying pale and wan on his pillows watching with eager eyes for their coming.

They knelt down on each side of his couch, and each took one of the thin, pale hands in his own.

“Boys,” whispered the weak voice, “you see how I am. I am dying. Don’t cry, boy’s, it’s all right. You know all will die some day. But what makes me feel bad is to know I have brought this on myself. Yes, that’s so; but I have told my Heavenly Father all about it, and I just believe it’s His great kindness that let’s me pay the penalty of my sin with my life. Then I can start with a clean record in the next world. But oh boys, always tell everybody to be so careful how they ridicule sacred things, for those who do may have as bad or worse than I’ve got to pay for such sacrilege. I have learned lots of things lying here, but none so strong as that, to reverence God and His gospel. Now boys, you’d better go, my pain is comin’ again hard — oh so hard — oh — o — o — h.” And the poor lad closed his eyes and the clinched hands and drawn face were pitiful to behold.

As the boys left the room, the weak voice whispered once more,

“Don’t forget — honor our — Father,” then the whisper died away in a groan and they went out sobbing in grief for the sufferer within.

Think you they have forgotten? Never. For all their lives the lesson was stamped upon their minds, and it is for the good of their young brethren who read this Juvenile Instructor that they have allowed to be recorded here the youthful experience of Three Mormon Boys.

(The End)