The Longest Road by Jeanne Williams Page A

Mama taught you, but you can’t very well do everything she said all your life unless it grows out of your own heart and makes sense to you. For one thing, you’re going to come up against things she won’t have told you about. Now you know there are all kinds of churches and over the ocean, there’s plumb different kinds of religion, but there has to be just one God. What do you suppose he thinks about all these rules folks make up for worshiping him, especially when they hate and kill each over the rules? My guess is it makes him pretty sad and disgusted.”
    â€œBut people do bad things in the movies. They smoke and drink and lust and—”
    â€œLaurie, do you know what lust is?”
    Laurie flushed. “Not—not exactly . But it’s when men and women want to do things with each other that they shouldn’t till they’re married.”
    â€œMmm.” Rosalie smothered a chuckle. “I reckon we’d better have a talk about all of that one of these days. But look, honey, there are books that have bad things in them, too. Your Mama never told you not to read, did she?”
    â€œNo, but—”
    â€œTo my way of thinkin’, movies are the same way. Of course there are some you shouldn’t see now and some you shouldn’t see ever, prob’ly. But this afternoon—gracious, Laurie, besides the previews and newsreel, there’s Donald Duck and Porky Pig cartoons, the main feature’s In Old Santa Fe with that new singing cowboy star, Gene Autry, and the second feature is an Andy Hardy show with Mickey Rooney. Not a thing your Mama could worry about if she’d seen some movies for herself instead of taking her church’s word that they’re wicked.” Rosalie paused. “Now I’m not tryin’ to talk you into this. You can go to the library if you want, or over to the park. If you do come in, and they start showin’ something you think is wrong, just get up and go and meet us outside when the show’s over.”
    It was scary, doing something she’d been taught was sinful, but it was true that Mama had never seen a movie—and equally true that she’d have been scandalized had she known what was in some of the books Laurie had checked out of the library, especially those about Greek and Roman and Norse gods. But to use her own judgment instead of her mother’s—oh, that made Laurie feel guilty and nervous and at the same time exhilarated as if she’d been breathing fresh, clean air real fast after having been shut up in a stale, musty closet.
    I’ll leave if they show anything bad, she assured herself, and followed Rosalie down the aisle just as light hit the screen. On her two other trips to town, apart from the Fourth of July, she’d seen King Kong and a dancing couple named Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in Flying Down to Rio . Mama wouldn’t have approved of the dancing but it was beautiful to watch and again Laurie couldn’t see what was wrong about it.
    She had never been able to even get saved and now she fatalistically concluded that since she couldn’t go to heaven anyway, she might as well enjoy what was lovely and fun in this world—though of course she wouldn’t do anything against her conscience. This line of thought was probably what Mama would have called “hardening the heart” and maybe Laurie’s would wind up tough as a football, but losing herself in the world on the screen made her forget for a little while that Mama was dead and Daddy had left them.
    Among the differences between Mama and Rosalie was how they used money. In the Field household, one-tenth, the tithe, would go to the tabernacle first thing of all, because it was God’s. Then came food, the rent, light bill, doctor, and the most necessary clothing. If there was anything left after that, and in Laurie’s memory there’d never been a time when at least one of the