Mark Dunn - American Decameron

A quiet boy who kept largely to himself, Matthew liked nothing better than the chance to go off fishing alone on warm summer mornings and brisk Saturday afternoons in autumn, almost always returning home with an empty creel due either to poor luck or to the bequeathing of his piscatorial gain to a poverty-stricken widow and her hungry children who just happened to live along Matthew’s path to and from his favorite fishing hole.

At least this is what Matthew told his father, and because Matthew was a boy who had never before been caught in even the whitest of lies, Abel Adamson had no reason not to believe that what his son said was true.

Of course, Abel Adamson could not have been more wrong about his son.

The truth came to him one Saturday afternoon in September. This was the Saturday Abel was scheduled to drive to Jonesboro and meet with the district superintendent and others whose charge it was to plan a choir festival that would enlist all the district’s M.E. church choirs and would be, in the words of the superintendent, “so joyous a lifting of voices as to put the Welsh to shame!”

The location of the meeting was an hour’s drive away, and though Abel could easily have made the trip on the train connecting the two towns, he enjoyed the sweet solitude of driving his second-hand flivver along tranquil country roads. The trip offered Abel the opportunity to collect his thoughts in the midst of a beautiful cottony-white landscape, evidential of the hand of both God and man at his most agrological, while commanding a machine that rarely questioned his authority (except upon those rare occasions when it overheated) or argued for a different path than the one that Abel, in all his directional wisdom, had chosen for the two of them.

The meeting lasted two hours. Perhaps because Abel had a good voice and often sang with the tenors in his own church’s choir, he was made co-chairman of the committee, and, exercising his endowed leadership, was successful in convincing the committee to program a nice mixture of both the hymns of old and those newer songs of praise that had of late gained popularity among the more urban churches — hymns that injected a little pomp and collegiate muscularity into the songful portion of the worship service.

Abel had been forced by a busy market day to park his Model T several blocks from the large church in which the meeting was held, a spot not too far from the majestic Empire Theater, which added an element of architectural sophistication to this somewhat unsophisticated block of downtown Jonesboro. Abel had parked so close to the theatre, in fact, that upon returning to his car he found himself within easy sight of the bill for that weekend’s fare; the picture was Grandma’s Boy , starring Harold Lloyd. It looked to Abel like a fun picture and he wished he could disregard his own pulpit repudiations of Hollywood decadence — repudiations that took the form of exhortations against the attending of any cinematic performance — and slip inside. This movie, in particular, seemed far from decadent and was perhaps even morally instructive. Was that not the warmest and most chaste of familial embraces depicted upon the poster? Was not the bespectacled Mr. Lloyd both affectionate and properly deferential toward his aged, loving grandmother (who resembled several of the septuagenarian members of Abel’s own congregation)? “But I’ll resist the temptation,” said Abel to himself as he slid behind the wheel of his Tin Lizzie. “For that which is not inherently evil may in giving the appearance of evil divert the mind nevertheless from thoughts both spiritual and pure.”

On the other hand, the motion picture did look to be quite funny. In fact, were not those patrons presently emerging from the darkened theatre, squinting in the bright afternoon sun — were they not smiling and laughing and elbowing one another in fresh recollection of some of the photoplay’s more amusing scenes? And look at that boy there! marveled Abel. He hasn’t even a companion, and still he laughs heartily to himself in private merriment.

That boy who bears a remarkable resemblance to my own son Matthew.

That boy who is, in fact, my own son Matthew!

Father and son sat upon stools at the pharmacy fountain counter across the street and sipped and slurped from their tall glasses of orange phosphate. “And what is it you usually do with the fishing pole?”

“Oh, I ditch it behind the train depot.”

Slurp.

“I see.” Abel nodded his head in the manner of the contemplative pastor, assaying all the facts before pronouncing an ecclesiastic verdict. “Please make note, son, that our sitting here partaking of refreshment with one another shouldn’t be construed as a reward for your misbehavior.”

“I know that, Dad.”

“I’m actually quite displeased with you for going to the pictures without seeking my consent first.”

Matthew wiped his mouth with his napkin. “But if I’d asked your consent, Dad, you would have said no.”

Abel thought about this for a moment — thought so long, in fact, that his son felt it necessary to put the supposition to him again: “ Wouldn’t you have?”

Abel rubbed the tendons running up the back of his neck. “I suppose I would have.”

“And then if I went, I would have been disobeying you. This way, I’m not disobeying you because I never asked you in the first place.”

Abel marveled at his son’s impeccable logic.

“But you know how our church feels about moving pictures. It is our denomination’s studied opinion that most of them are products of the Devil’s handiwork.”

“Do you really believe that, Dad?”

“Well, I—”

“Gee willikins, Dad! They don’t all have Rudolph Valentino or Gloria Swanson in them!” Matthew took another long drink of his phosphate. “Next month they’re playing Clarence —you know, from the Booth Tarkington story. And then Robin Hood with Douglas Fairbanks. Douglas Fairbanks , Dad! I really want to see it. And now I suppose I’ll have to ask you for permission, and I suppose you’ll say no because somebody might find out.”

“If I found out, Matthew, don’t you think the possibility exists that other people from our church might see you going in or out of that theatre? Our congregation isn’t small and our members do venture into Jonesboro on occasion.”

“ Robin Hood , Dad! He does good works for the poor just like Jesus did.”

“Yes, I know the story of Robin Hood, son.”

Matthew scowled. “Sometimes you act just like a Baptist.”

“Stay your tongue, boy.” Abel cleared his throat. “On the other hand, I’m not an Episcopalian either — and neither are you. Being, in fact, a careful and deliberating Methodist, I shall think about it. I may even do a little praying on it.”

Father and son grew silent.

Abel finished his orange phosphate and poked the bubbles at the bottom of the glass with his spoon. Then he said, “It’s a clever picture? The one with Harold Lloyd and his grandmother?”

Matthew nodded.

“Would you like to see it again?”

Matthew nodded again, a big grin brightening his previously fretful face.

That Saturday afternoon the Reverend Abel Adamson of Second Methodist Episcopal Church of Blytheville, Arkansas, and his thirteen-year-old son Matthew watched Grandma’s Boy , starring Harold Lloyd and Mildred Davis.

Over the weeks that followed (on those Saturdays for which the pastor had no visitation appointments) the two sat together in close companionship, father and son, in Jonesboro’s Empire Theater, and enjoyed, as well, Tom Mix in Arabia, Brawn of the North starring the German Shepherd Strongheart, Clarence with Wallace Reid, Robin Hood starring Douglas Fairbanks, Oliver Twist featuring Jackie Coogan in the title role, and The Prisoner of Zenda with Lewis Stone and a newcomer to the silver screen named Ramon Navarro. There was sin and bad behavior in every picture, but every transgression was properly punished in the end.