The End of the World in Ireton--ii

Part two of a story.

“We’re right in the middle of this talk about something-or-other in the catechism—something about doctrine, I'm sure, something like predestination," he said. 

Shelley looked up as she'd just spotted a bug. Betts knew Jake was overdoing it. 

"And all of a sudden in comes one of the preacher’s kids, boy named Corny," Jake said, both hands creating no bigger than a milk can, "just a little kid, sort of slinks in from the back, and Dominie Bergsma—”

It was clear Shelley had no clue.

“The preacher,” Betts grabbed Shelley’s arm as if to hold on to her. "He's talking about the preacher. The little boy was the preacher's son." 

“—and Dominie Bergsma spots him back there, his own little boy, see? And so he stops talking—remember that, Betts?—for once, he stops talking. Oh, my lands, that guy could go on and on—remember that?" He looked at Betts as if she was just as thrilled as he was. "Bergsma stops cold on whatever it was he was talking about and cranes his neck as if to make out who’s just stepped in in the back of the room ‘So, Cornie,' he says, 'what’ll it be?” he says. Bergsma was kind of a joker too, though—you remember that, Betts?”

“Tell her the story, Dad,” Betts said, "just tell her the story."

“So anyway, Cornie’s just a shrimp, see? —and he’s scared of walking up in front of all the big kids, so he sort of wanders up, looking as if he could wish himself invisible." Betts was glad he was on the other side of the table from the chandelier because it'd otherwise be threatened. "By then all of us knew it had to be something big," Jake said. "Preacher’s kids don’t usually come  walking into Young People’s, so we’re all hushed up, hoping that maybe we can pick up some secret here when the kid tells his old man what’s going on." Jake lifted a finger up in front of his lips. “’Pssst, pssst, pssst,’ that’s all we hear. But the good Reverend turns green up there in front of us—”

“Don’t overdo it, Dad,” Betts said.

“I remember like it was yesterday. He’s leaning over to hear his boy whisper, then he stands up straight, and he looks like he’s going to faint. He takes his one huge swallow of air and straightens his shoulders." All the while Jake is acting out what he's saying, like some guy on TV. "The kid darts right out of the basement like his pants's on fire, and then Bergsma says, real straight-faced, you know, like a trial judge or something. I'll never forget that moment. it was so terrible odd. 'It seems the Martians have just landed somewhere out east—’ 

"Just like that he says. Now Bergsma had this straight-faced way of making jokes, you know? And everybody is used to it, so when he says about the Martians, we all just bust out laughing—the whole kit’n’kaboodle.

“'I’m not kidding,' he says, and we're all about falling off the chairs.”

Shelley couldn’t stop herself. “Wasn’t really like that, was it, Grandma? He’s just telling stories.”

“Your grandpa likes to turn up the drama,” Betts told her.

“When finally he gets us settled down, all the time saying how we’ve got to believe him. And then he says it again, see?—how the radio claims maybe it’s the end times now, the end of the world as we know it.”

“That’s just about how it happened," Betts admitted. "I was there too.”

“Finally, he gets us settled down, and all the time saying how we’ve got to believe him. And then he says it again—how the radio claimed it was the end of the world.”

“From Martians?” Shelley said.

“That's what the preacher said all right,” Betts told her. “Your grandpa’s got that right.”

“Thing is, we're thinking how the preacher’s wife listens in to radio shows on the Sabbath,” Jake told her. "You know, people thought that mighty wrong, even a sin."

“Lots of things were warned against,” Betts said. "Trust me, lots of things."

Meanwhile, Jake was acting like Reverend Bergsma. “Right now I am dismissing Young People’s because the world is going to end, and I want to be with my wife—’ he says. And Jack Tolsma, he says kind of soft that maybe the two of them are going to go in totally different directions—well, you know—now that it’s the end of things. Then Jack sticks his head down between his knees 'cause he can't stop laughing—“”

He didn’t need to say that, Betts thought.Their granddaughter didn't have to hear that.

“Then he just up and walks out, saying how everybody ought to go home. Well, you can’t believe everything you hear anyway, we're thinking. Besides, it was the Depression times, and we couldn't help wondering what on earth Martians would want in Ireton anyway? That's what we were thinking."

"So you stayed in church?" Shelley said.

"None of us really felt much like going home. After all, Young People’s was the only time we got out all week, since it was the big night—Sunday night. We didn’t have no radios. We just thought Mrs. Bergsma lost a screw.”

“Jake!” Betts said.

“Well, it’s true. You know it too. There was some of us that had trucks and cars, but mostly it was wagons back then, it being the Great Depression. So most of us just hung around downtown because nobody really believed little green men from Mars was about to land on the prairie—”

“What a riot,” Shelley said. “You guys had all the fun. So then what happened?”

_______________________ 

Tomorrow: more memories roll.