As Lambs to His Fold

by Kurt F. Kammeyer

CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Who’s On The Lord’s Side?...

  For the most part, I was contented with my life. Still, I had a few worries, mostly caused by advertisements I had read in magazines or heard on the radio. Did I have any of those things that made people shun you? pink tooth brush, for instance, or dandruff? Or athlete’s foot? Or, horrible thought, B.O? Of them all, B.O. seemed the worst. It caused your friends to turn away and say bad things about you. I tried to sniff my armpits; but that wasn’t very effective. I was used to my own smell and couldn’t tell if it was bad or not.

  The ads said that the only safeguard against B.O. was Lifebuoy soap. I asked Mamma if she would buy some, but she replied that the soap we were using was perfectly good.

  But how could you tell?

  To make absolutely sure I wasn’t socially offensive, I sneaked into Irene’s room, borrowed her Odorono, and rubbed it generously under my arms. Then, I went down to supper. Irene, sitting next to me, paused in the process of cutting her pork chop and sniffed the air.

  “What’s that smell?” she demanded.

  “Nothing,” I said, and got busy with my peas and carrots. But that didn’t satisfy Irene. She grabbed my arm, hoisted it, and smelled my armpit.

  “Mother! She’s been using my deodorant!”

  I yanked my arm away. “Have not!”

  “Yes, you have, you little liar!” Then she snarled, “You stay out of my things or I’ll give you something to be sorry for!”

  “Girls!” said Mamma. “Go upstairs and finish your quarrel there.”

  Irene stomped ahead of me up the stairs. Then she got a piece of paper and a crayon and printed on it, “Stay out! This means Beth!” Then she thumb tacked it to her bedroom door.

  But when Mamma saw it, she made Irene take it down. And she wasn’t a bit happy about the marks of the thumbtack in the door. So Irene got scolded — which went to prove that there was some justice in the world, after all.

  __________

  “Lee’triss, where’s Bethlehem?”

  “Right across the street from Thalilly.”

  “Huh?”

  She looked at me as though I hadn’t any brains.

  “You know: ‘In the beauty of Thalilly Christ was born across the street’.”

  “Then why didn’t they say, “In the beauty of Bethlehem?”

  “I guess it’s because Thalilly’s prettier.”

  “Maybe that’s where the Three Wise Men stayed — like a hotel — when they came to visit Baby Jesus.”

  “Prob’ly.”

  “I’d sure like to see Thalilly. I’ll bet it’s gorgeous, with all that gold, an’ frankincense, an’ myrrh.”

  “Yeah.”

  __________

  We were sitting up in our cherry tree, eating cherries and swishing our heads back and forth to set our cherry earrings to swaying. We were spitting pits down on Titty-Poo, who was squatting below and who was too stupid to know he was getting his fur all full of cherry pits.

  Leatrice shot a cherry pit very accurately and pinged ol’ Titty-Poo on the nose.

  “Got ‘im,” she said with satisfaction, as Titty-Poo leaped, and meowed, and ran away. I knew that Titty-Poo was only second best as a target and that when Leatrice said, “Got ‘im,” she was really wishing she could have pinged her sister. Irene and Dorajean hadn’t been nice to us. They had tattled and gotten us into even more trouble than we already faced.

  Aunt Mabel had sent us down to Grandma’s to get a jug of milk. The day was warm and the milk jug was heavy as we walked back. We decided to sit on the ditch bank, and rest, and refresh ourselves. Our sisters came along riding their bikes and caught us pouring milk into the lid and drinking it. They told our mothers, and we got scolded.

  “Who do you s’pose will go to heaven besides us?”

  The question came up because of an argument I’d had with Meeow-Meeow Harris as we were leaving Sunday school. She said that rich people couldn’t get to heaven unless they crawled through the eye of a camel.

  I said that was stupid. She said it was in the Bible, and I’d better watch my mouth saying something in the Bible was stupid.

  “Meeow-Meeow says rich people won’t get to go there.”

  Leatrice shrugged. “I dunno.”

  That was a shocker, coming from Leatrice. I had never known her to admit ignorance.

  “Meeow-Meeow said it was in the Bible.”

  “Well, if it is, it hasta be true.”

  I didn’t know about rich people, but I was pretty sure that our sisters wouldn’t make it — not with the way they treated us.

  We had some acquaintance with the rich, more than we had let on to our parents. We knew, for instance, how the people in Hollywood behaved. One day, walking down an alley behind the Cutey Beauty Shoppe, we had seen some magazines tossed in a trash can. Film magazines with stories about the life styles of the stars! We thought, Wow! Who’d throw out valuable stuff like that?

  We gathered them up, and hid them under our dresses, and took them home and put them in Leatrice’s dresser drawer, hidden by her underwear.

  When we were reasonably sure of no older person popping a head in, we would take out the magazines and read about the fast cars, and swimming pools, and big homes, and multitudes of servants possessed by the likes of Joan Crawford, and Carole Lombard, and Clark Gable.

  We’d seen that lavish life style shown on the screen, too. Mamma and Aunt Mabel had given their consent for us to see Shirley Temple in Rebecca Of Sunnybrook Farm. They didn’t realize that Rebecca was on a double bill with The Gay Divorcee. Did we sit through the second feature? Do cats like cream?

  There, to our wondering eyes were displayed not only Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers expertly hoofing it around an impossibly large ballroom, but there were white furs tossed casually over bare shoulders, and cocktails in tall glasses, and long cigarette holders held in languid fingers.

  When we got home, we told Mamma and Aunt Mabel all about Rebecca but never a word about what had really opened our eyes.

  Then our mothers came back from seeing another movie, shaking their heads in disapproval. They had gone to see Dinner at Eight. The title appeared innocent enough, although it seemed awfully strange. Who in the world would have dinner at eight?

  They came home murmuring, “All those cigarettes and cocktails!”

  “All those bare backs!”

  I was glad we hadn’t told Mamma and Aunt Mabel about The Gay Divorcee — yet, at the same time, I felt a strong desire to defend the wealthy — nice ones, that is.

  I said to Leatrice, “How about Great-Aunt Salina May Roundtree Gillis? She’s rich!”

  “Well, she was nice to us when Mooey Moocher ruined her hat. The angels’ll let her into heaven, I’m pretty sure. If they don’t, she’ll sure make a big fuss!”

  We giggled so hard at the image that thought created, we almost fell out of the cherry tree.

  “How about George an’ Louise? They’re rich. Are they gonna get there?”

  “Well, they’re relatives.”

  It seemed only fair that relatives should be allowed to go where we were going, as long as they were nice to us. Louise was Grandma’s cousin, and George was her husband. We knew them only by reputation, never having met them. How did we know they were rich? No one had ever sat us down and explained it to us; but, children learn things seemingly by osmosis. Somehow, we knew that George and Louise had lots of money.

  Then, one day we were playing jacks on Grandma’s front walk when a long, gray car with a beautiful, silver hood ornament glided to a stop. Out of this swell car stepped two people about the age of Grandma and Grandpa.

  We opened our mouths in astonishment and then ran into the bushes so we wouldn’t laugh in their faces. The man was wearing bright, checkered socks and baggy pants that came just to his knees. On his head was a little plaid cap with a pompon on the top. We would learn that these were golfing togs, and that the pants were called plus-fours — a name even sillier, i
f possible, than the clothes themselves.

  The woman, who was thin and freckled, was wearing high heels and slacks.

  We came out of the bushes as Grandma ran down the steps, threw her arms around the woman, and exclaimed, “Louise!”

  So these two were the famous George and Louise, who were rich and, therefore, so it seemed, would have a hard time getting into heaven. They were on their way to see the Grand Canyon, and had stopped to visit. After we got over the shock of how they were dressed, we found that George and Louise were very nice.

  George invited Leatrice and me to go for a ride in his big car. He put the top down, and we sat on the little jump seats and rode backwards, our hair blowing every which way as we sped along. We directed George to go past the homes of all our friends so we could show off.

  When they left, George pressed a shiny, silver dollar into each of our hands. Oh, boy! I couldn’t practice the George Washington mushroom trick with it; but I could spend it on candy and movies. However, our parents were spoilsports. They wouldn’t let us spend our wealth. We had to put the money in the bank — a black hole, as far as we were concerned.

  __________

  Now, once more straddling a branch in the cherry tree. I said, for the sake of argument, “How about the Three Wise Men? They were rich. Will they get to heaven?”

  “Well...” said Leatrice thoughtfully.

  I watched her anxiously. Her answer would decide, in my mind, whether certain people we knew of went to the Good Place or not.

  “Well, they were nice to Baby Jesus.”

  “An’ George an’ Louise were nice to us.”

  “That’s it!” I said excitedly. “The rich people who were nice to kids’ll be the ones that’ll get into heaven!