Authors: Philip Gulley
B
ob Miles watched from across the street as Ned Kivett removed the Thanksgiving mannequins from his display window at the Five and Dime. Like most of the Five and Dime decorations, these had come with the store in 1956, when Ned had won the store from Marvin Danner in a poker game at the Odd Fellows Lodge. A thousand dollars in the hole, Marvin had offered Ned title to the Five and Dime instead. It had taken Ned less than a week to realize Marvin had gotten the better end of the stick.
In the window, Mr. and Mrs. Pilgrim were smiling happily at an Indian sporting a Mohawk haircut. The Indian was frowning, as if sensing he were about to get the shaft. He looked a little like Ned Kivett had in 1963.
Ned piled the mannequins in a shopping cart and pushed them through the store to the back room. Arms and legs hung lifelessly over the sides of the cart, casualties on their way to a storeroom burial. Ned stacked them in the corner next to the Easter Bunny, then loaded the Christmas decorations onto the cart and wheeled them to the front of the store. Another trip back to the storeroom for a load of snow—a bag of cotton that over the years had grayed to a wintry slush. Rudolph the reindeer, his red nose rubbed raw from years of children picking at it, stood next to Santa, who looked like an Odd Fellow after a hard night of fellowship.
Santa was actually Mr. Pilgrim in more festive garb. Ned had stripped him in the storeroom, wheeled him naked through the store, then propped him in the window before dressing him as Santa. He’d forgotten the extra padding and had returned to the storeroom in search of a pillow.
What a sorry mess, Bob thought, looking on from the sidewalk as Santa Claus mooned the passing traffic. He thought of taking a picture of that for the front page, but could just imagine the letters to the editor he’d receive.
You cannot imagine the disgust I felt when I opened your newspaper only to find a naked man staring back! These must surely be the last days the Bible warns about, when depravity of all sort is unfolding before our very eyes!
The year before, Bob Miles had written an editorial bemoaning the wretched state of the town’s Christmas decorations—three strands of lights, a half dozen plywood cutouts Wilbur Matthews made in his garage back in the ’70s, and Ned Kivett’s pathetic excuse for a Christmas display—to no avail.
Bob had even sponsored a Christmas decorating contest, to be judged by the Sausage Queen and other dignitaries, but no one had entered. First prize had been a year’s subscription to the
Herald,
which was not much of an inducement since it was already free. Then he’d thought of sponsoring a beauty contest, a Miss North Pole, but his wife had nipped that in the bud.
Ellis and Amanda Hodge rumbled past in Ellis’s truck. Amanda was driving, squinting through the windshield, appearing to be in sore need of corrective eyewear. It was remarkable, Bob thought to himself, how a girl who’d won the National Spelling Bee could be such a dreadful driver. Success had attached itself so firmly to Amanda, it was a jolt to witness her deficiencies behind the wheel.
A clap of crunching metal snapped him out of his ruminations and he looked up to see the Hodges’ truck wrapped around a streetlamp. Though not a religious man, Bob breathed a prayer of thanksgiving for what would surely be a front-page photograph and hurried across the street, his camera at the ready.
Ellis had pulled a bandana from his pocket and was preparing to wipe away a slight stream of blood trickling from his nose.
“Not yet,” Bob cried out, clicking away with his camera. “Let me get a shot of that blood!”
There was nothing like gore and mayhem to increase circulation.
Amanda reclined in the seat, unharmed, but dazed.
A small crowd began to gather around the truck, shouting advice.
“Get ’em out of that truck before it catches fire.”
“Don’t move them. They might have broken necks.”
“Keep away from that blood! No telling what diseases he might have.”
Ellis and Amanda scrunched down lower in the seat, thoroughly embarrassed.
“Somebody call an ambulance!”
Antifreeze leaked from the radiator onto the street.
“My Lord, that’s gasoline,” a voice yelled out. “She’s gonna blow.”
What a picture that would be, Bob thought. He studied the growing puddle. “It’s just antifreeze,” he reported, clearly disappointed.
Sam Gardner, sitting in the chair at Kyle’s barbershop, had witnessed the entire calamity. He’d rushed from the shop and begun helping Amanda from the car. “Did the same thing myself when I was your age,” he said, in an effort to console her. “Except I hit a Corvette.” He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to her. “Thank God for seat belts. You don’t look any worse for the wear. Don’t you worry about the truck. It can be replaced. You can’t.”
Ellis had climbed from the truck and was inspecting the front end of his once unblemished truck. Johnny Mackey rolled up in his ambulance, his siren fading into silence. He studied Ellis’s nose. “Maybe we oughta take you to the hospital. I read this story once about a man who broke his nose and he didn’t have it looked at and a bone splinter had poked itself into the brain and three days later the guy dropped over dead, just like that.”
“I’m fine,” Ellis grumbled.
Johnny pulled him aside. “You know, Ellis, events like this remind us of life’s uncertainties. Why don’t you and Miriam stop by tomorrow so we can discuss funeral prearrangements? We’ve got a special this week. A 10 percent discount on embalming with the purchase of every casket.” He slipped Ellis a business card. “We never know when the Lord might call us home,” he said with the solemnity befitting a mortician.
The crowd began to disperse, except for the men who lingered to offer counsel on how best to remove a truck from around a streetlamp. Ten minutes later, Nate Logan arrived with his tow truck, hitched it to the back of Ellis’s truck, and pulled it loose with a long, loud screech, like fingernails on a chalkboard.
By then, Harvey Muldock, having caught wind of a potential customer, had appeared. “Got a real good deal on new trucks, Ellis. Why don’t you and the little lady come on down and we’ll fix you right up?”
“Vultures!” Ellis yelled, uncharacteristically for him. “You’re all trying pick my carcass clean. Johnny Mackey wants to sell me a casket and now you’re after me to buy a truck.”
“Leave the man alone,” Bob Miles ordered. “Can’t you see he’s in a state of shock.” He put his arm around Ellis. “Now why don’t you and Amanda lay down here on the street beside your truck and I’ll get one last picture for the
Herald
.”
This is all my brother’s fault, Ellis fumed to himself. Not one good thing has happened since he moved back here.
Sam Gardner gave them a ride home. By then, half a dozen concerned citizens had phoned Miriam to tell her the news. The wreck grew in severity with each call. By the sixth one, Ellis and Amanda, or what was left of them, were being helicoptered to the hospital in the city, clinging to life, vestiges of their former selves.
Miriam was backing the car from the barn when they pulled in the driveway. She was so relieved they were alive, the destruction of the truck didn’t faze her. “I thought you were dead. Oh my Lord, I thought you were gone.” She began to weep, clutching Ellis and Amanda to her.
“It’s my fault,” Amanda said. “There was a naked man in Kivett’s window and I was watching him.”
Miriam reddened, and Ellis blushed.
“It wasn’t Ned, was it?” Ellis asked. Rumors of Ned and his mannequins had been circulating for years.
“I couldn’t tell. I couldn’t see very well. I just saw his backside.”
“Man ought to be arrested, standing naked in broad daylight like that,” Ellis groused. “What’s this world coming to?”
Losing his truck had soured him considerably.
It was suppertime. Miriam made Amanda’s favorite meal—blueberry pancakes, milk, and bacon on the side. Then Amanda did her homework and went to bed, done in by the day’s events.
Miriam and Ellis lingered at the supper table, contemplating life without a truck.
“It’s that brother of mine,” Ellis said. “He moves back and everything goes wrong. I tell you, Miriam, we ought to pack our bags and take Amanda and move out of this place. Not tell a soul in the world where we’re going.”
Miriam reached across the table and took his hand. “Ellis, you know you don’t mean that. This is our home. And today wasn’t your brother’s fault. He wasn’t anywhere around when you wrecked. You’ve had a rough day. Why don’t you take a shower and let’s go to bed.”
Ellis hung his head, the picture of gloom. “Now that Amanda’s seen a naked man, I suppose you’ll have to give her the birds and the bees talk.”
“Me? Why me? I thought we’d both do that…”
“You can’t be serious. I’m a man. I can’t be talking with her about those things. That’s a mother’s job. If she were a boy, it’d be different.”
“I wonder if they told her anything in school.”
“Not anymore. Dale Hinshaw made them stop. Remember?”
“Then let’s have Dale talk to her,” Miriam suggested.
“It would serve him right,” Ellis agreed. “But let’s not do that to Amanda.”
They sighed.
“I’ll talk to her this weekend,” Miriam said. “Why don’t you make yourself scarce Saturday morning and we’ll have a girl talk then.”
“I suppose I could go look for a new truck,” he said with a sigh.
Upstairs, Amanda was listening through the heating duct, absolutely horrified. In a life that had seen bleak days, today was one of the worst. Not only had she wrecked Ellis’s truck, Miriam was going to talk with her about sex. She thought of running away before Saturday morning. She imagined their conversation. Her listening and trying not to be embarrassed and thanking Miriam for telling her things she already knew, having heard all about sex from Melissa Yoder, her best friend. Not that Melissa was speaking from personal experience; she read widely.
Boys, Amanda thought, who needs them anyway? She’d seen her first naked man today and it was no big thrill. He’d been standing there in Kivett’s window like a moron—pale, slack-jawed, and lifeless.
She lay in bed, estimating the number of days she had before going away to college.
Downstairs, the phone rang. She could hear Miriam speaking. “Hello, Ralph. Yes, she and Ellis were in a wreck, but they’re all right. She’s upstairs in bed just now. Would you and Sandy like to come by tomorrow to see her. I’m sure she’d love to see you.”
Oh, great, Amanda thought, they’ll come out, Ellis will go to the barn and sulk, and when he comes back in, he and Miriam will argue.
Lately, all they’d done was argue—Miriam reasoning with him, encouraging him to forgive his brother; Ellis standing firm against these graces, hidebound in his loathing.
It wasn’t like she could talk to Ellis about it. She felt she had to be constantly grateful to Miriam and Ellis for taking her in five years ago when her real parents were drunkards. And though she appreciated their sacrifice, she felt their charity required her unwavering thankfulness. Melissa Yoder would occasionally talk back to her parents, the prerogative of every hormone-addled teenager. Amanda couldn’t imagine doing that to Ellis and Miriam, after everything they had done for her. Now she’d wrecked their truck and the burden of gratitude weighed even heavier.
No way she could ever put them in a nursing home now. She’d go to college, they’d make sure of that, but then she would have to come back and take care of them in their dotage, wiping their drool and laundering their undershorts.
Amanda rolled to her side and thought of Ralph and Sandy, her real parents. As bad as they had been to her, she wished them well. How weird is that? she thought. I get mad at the people who helped me, but aren’t angry at the people who would have ruined me. Then she felt even worse for thinking ill of Miriam and Ellis.
She knew he didn’t do it on purpose, but sometimes Ellis made her feel she had to choose between them and her parents, like it was a contest with her affection as the prize.
For seventeen years old, Amanda Hodge was unusually perceptive, but some things she’d never understand, like why Ellis couldn’t believe his brother had changed.
A few weeks before, she’d seen her parents at the Kroger. They’d stood in the produce aisle, visiting. Her parents had been looking at a two-bedroom house next to the school. “Maybe we can work things out so we could spend more time together, like regular families,” her parents had told her. “We can start over.”
She hadn’t mentioned it to Miriam and Ellis. Not yet. She’d thought about starting small, maybe living with them on the weekends. She suspected Miriam wouldn’t mind. Ellis, on the other hand, would achieve orbit. She’d been ready to ask him right before she’d hit the streetlamp and would have if not for that naked man in Ned Kivett’s window.
She watched out the window as snow began to spit against the windowpane, wondering why it was some folks, once they made up their minds about someone else, could never believe something good about them. And there in the darkness, she began to pray God would soften Ellis’s heart, so it wouldn’t break the day she went home.
I
t was two days before Christmas, and Dale Hinshaw was in his element. In a fit of Yuletide nostalgia and powered by a new heart, Dale had resurrected the progressive Nativity scene. It had been two years since the church’s last progressive Nativity scene, and they hadn’t had time to rehearse, which made it’s flawless production all the more miraculous. “I tell you, the Lord’s just got His hands all over this one. You can just feel Him here,” he’d said to Sam while they were setting up the manger in Harvey Muldock’s front yard.
Dr. Pierce and Deena Morrison were the blessed couple, Joseph and Mary, standing in Fern Hampton’s driveway beside her privet hedge, looking both elated and fittingly sober after birthing the Messiah. As for Jesus, he was borrowed from the Baptist church, it being a barren year for the Quakers. Nine months old, the infant was performing in his second pageant, and he had risen to the occasion, wrapped in swaddling clothes and reposing in Harvey’s front yard. Harvey’s beloved Cranbrook convertible was parked alongside the manger, sporting a festive string of blinking Christmas lights along its bumpers.
The heavenly hosts—Miriam and Ellis Hodge and Stanley Farlow—were praising God in front of the Harmony Friends meetinghouse, while the shepherds—the youth group in bathrobes—were abiding in the empty lot next to Opal Majors’s house.
It took twenty minutes to navigate the progressive Nativity route, with cookies and hot chocolate awaiting the weary pilgrims at Sam Gardner’s home, which he’d offered before consulting his wife, who was at that very moment cleaning chocolate milk from her new dining-room carpet. Hordes of citizens had descended upon their home, driven by pure nosiness. Dr. Neely, who’d owned it before the Gardners, hadn’t entertained many visitors, and rumors of its beauty had circulated for decades. Now the curiosity seekers were tromping through the rooms, peeking into medicine cabinets and inspecting closets.
“Quite a place you got here, Sam,” Asa Peacock said.
“The quilt on your bed is especially nice,” Jessie Peacock added. “Is it a family heirloom?”
A crash came from the general direction of the front parlor just before Kyle Weathers sauntered around the corner and into the dining room. “Sorry about that, Sam, but you really shouldn’t have lamp cords out where people can trip over them.”
Back at the meetinghouse, Dale Hinshaw was exhorting the heavenly hosts to appear a bit more cheerful, though it was difficult to repeat “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men!” with a high degree of enthusiasm for two hours straight. Especially if you’re the Hodges and had had a ferocious argument on your way to the meetinghouse to praise God and encourage good will toward men.
Sam spent the rest of the evening studiously avoiding his wife, who shot him dark glances when no one was likely to notice. He was dreading the time when the last person would leave and was giving serious thought to leaving with them, maybe heading off to a monastery for a time of spiritual renewal or some such worthwhile endeavor, until Barbara settled down and he could come home, sometime around Easter.
Though the goal of the progressive Nativity scene was to further the gospel, it was taking a fearsome toll on the marriages of its participants. Dr. Pierce and his newlywed wife, Deena Morrison, were engaged in a whispered debate about where they would spend their first Christmas.
“We spent Thanksgiving with your parents,” Deena hissed. “Surely they’ll understand us wanting to see my folks.”
“I just worry about my mother. This could be her last year with us. She’s not doing well.”
“Your mother is sixty-six years old and will outlive us all,” Deena said, leaving unspoken what she really thought of her mother-in-law—that witches don’t die unless doused with water.
They’d pause from their argument to smile at the people walking past, then pick it up again when they fell out of earshot.
An occasional pilgrim, upon seeing Mary and Joseph, would inquire as to the whereabouts of the Christ child, and Deena would have to explain that it was a progressive Nativity scene and the Son of God could be viewed three blocks north at Harvey Muldock’s home.
In early December, Sam had asked the elders to postpone the church’s Christmas celebration until March, when things were less hectic and people needed a holiday to lift them over winter’s hump and carry them into spring. It had gone over like a root canal.
“Why, I’ve never in all my life heard of such a thing,” Fern Hampton had said. “Everybody knows Jesus was born on Christmas Day. It says right there in the Bible that they’d gone to Bethlehem for the holidays. You ought to read your Bible more, Sam.”
Then he’d suggested a more contemplative Christmas program, perhaps some silent worship on Christmas Eve, maybe having Asa Peacock sing “Silent Night,” then standing in a circle, lighting some candles, saying a prayer, and then going home to bed.
“I’d like to think that after everything the Lord has done for us, we could do a little more for Him,” Dale Hinshaw had said, pausing for dramatic effect. “I believe the Lord is calling us to do a progressive Nativity scene.”
And that’s how Sam found himself sweeping up the pieces of the lamp Barbara had inherited from her grandmother. That the lamp was hideous and she’d been trying to dispose of it for several years mattered little; it was the principle of the thing—this pack of jackals slinking through her home, snooping through her rooms, spilling hot chocolate, and making a general mess of the place.
A minister’s wife! How’d she get roped into that? It wasn’t that she didn’t love Sam; she cared for him deeply. She even thought highly of God. There were just days she wanted a secular life in which she didn’t have to be on display as a model of Christian virtue.
That summer, her father had given Sam and her a bottle of wine, which they’d partaken of on their fifteenth anniversary. Opal Majors had rebuked her for placing the empty bottle in the recycling bin in front of their home. “You think this town wants to know about your drinking problem? Why can’t you hide your nasty little habits like good Christians?” The day before, Barbara had gone to Kivett’s to buy two wine glasses, and Fern Hampton had spied them in her shopping cart. “I hope those are for iced tea,” she’d said.
Five years at the same church, and the honeymoon was over. No more hiding your bad side and putting your best foot forward. The vows had been made, the marriage consummated, and both parties had their eyes wide open. Sam and Barbara knew the church, the church knew them; annulling their union would take too much effort, so they worked it out. And every now and then, something wonderful happened; they saw one another in a new light and remembered why they had gotten together in the first place. But the night of the progressive Nativity scene was not that time.
Sam had a theory about Christmas and its toxic effect on marriages. In a word, gifts. This was the seventeenth year he and Barbara had exchanged presents, he was running out of ideas, and the strain was building. The year before he’d given her an exercise bike, something she hadn’t asked for, which she thought implied a general lack of fitness.
“You think I’m fat, don’t you?” she’d asked.
“Not at all. It’s just that you can’t do your walking when it’s snowy outside, so I thought you’d enjoy having an exercise bike,” he’d explained.
She’d accepted his explanation, just barely, but he knew the pressure was on to improve upon last year’s performance.
Under the guise of visiting Shirley Finchum at the hospital in Cartersburg, he’d driven to the city the week before, to the north side where all the rich people lived, and had bought a dress she’d been eyeing in a catalog. The sales clerk had helped him select a matching bracelet, earrings, and shoes. It had set him back three hundred dollars, all his funeral money from that year.
Kyle Weathers had almost spoiled his surprise when he’d been poking around in the basement the night of the progressive Nativity and found the package hidden behind the furnace. He’d tromped upstairs, where he’d found Sam and Barbara in the kitchen. “Hey Sam, there’s a package of some sort next to your furnace. I’d move that if I were you. Gets too hot, it might catch on fire, and up goes your whole house, kids and all.”
Fortunately, the doorbell had rung just then and diverted Barbara’s attention, so Sam ran downstairs and moved the sack behind some shelves in the old coal bins.
When the last of the crowd had left, he’d cleaned the kitchen, while she’d gone upstairs to put the boys to bed. He bided his time downstairs, hoping she’d fall asleep before he came to bed, but there she was, under the blankets, her bedside lamp on, reading.
She looked up from her book. “What was that package next to the furnace? Did you move it?”
“Just an old sack that had fallen down there,” he explained, as he slipped into his pajamas and slid into bed. “Looks like it had been there for years. Probably when the Neely’s lived here. I threw it away.”
She thought momentarily of reviving their argument about his volunteering them for things without checking with her first, but decided against it. She didn’t want to quash the meager bit of holiday spirit they had left. Besides, the chocolate milk hadn’t stained their carpet and Kyle Weathers had done them a favor breaking the lamp, so she let it pass. She turned off her light, kissed Sam goodnight, snuggled in next to him, and promptly fell asleep.
Sam waited until she was snoring before rising from their bed and tiptoeing downstairs to the kitchen pantry, where, in search of carpet cleaner, he’d spied an unfamiliar box on the top shelf, behind the flower vases.
Sam had never been good at waiting until Christmas to see what he’d gotten and had been making regular sweeps of the house the past few weeks sniffing out his presents. Somehow, he’d missed this one. He scooted a kitchen chair across the floor, stood on it, pulled down the box—it was deliciously heavy—and opened it. An eighteen-volt cordless drill with a complete set of carbide-tipped drill bits. He was elated, thinking of the holes he could drill with it.
What a wife he had!
He repackaged the drill just as it had come, placed the box back on the shelf, arranging the flower vases in front of it, then crept upstairs to bed. He looked in on the boys. They were lying perfectly still in a sugar-induced coma, their mouths ringed with the remnants of hot chocolate. He bent and placed his face against his younger son’s cheek until he stirred. “Love you, buddy,” Sam whispered in his ear.
“Love you, Daddy.”
Children, Sam thought contentedly to himself, are the berries.
Across town and three miles out into the country, Ellis Hodge was not feeling nearly so blessed. It had been a horrendous day and had not improved when he and Miriam had bickered all the way into town about whether or not to invite Ralph and Sandy to Christmas dinner. Now he was terribly unsettled and pacing around the house while Miriam and Amanda were asleep upstairs. Amanda hadn’t smiled in a week; Miriam was similarly depressed. Even his livestock seemed more distant than usual.
This morning had been worse. In an effort to lighten the mood, he’d asked Amanda what she wanted for Christmas. She’d looked up from her blueberry pancakes, then asked him to give her the one thing he couldn’t give. “I want you to love my father again. That’s all I want. I want you to remember when you were little and he was your brother and you played with him in the hayloft and swam in the creek and shared a bedroom and stayed up late at night to talk. I want you to love him now like you loved him then. That’s all I want. If you can’t give me that, then I don’t want anything.”
Then she’d excused herself and gone upstairs.
Miriam had busied herself picking up the dirty dishes and carrying them over to the sink, while Ellis sat at the breakfast table stunned into silence.
“She just doesn’t understand,” he’d finally said. “I welcome him back into the family and everything is hunky-dory for a couple of months and she goes back to stay with them. Then the next thing you know he’s drunk and slapping her around again and treating her like dirt. Can’t she see I’m doing this for her? I don’t like being this way. I would love to be on good terms with Ralph, I’d love to have my brother back, but it’s not that simple.”
Miriam didn’t know what to say, so she hadn’t said anything, which Ellis mistook for anger, which is why he’d spent the day in the barn and bickered with her all the way into town that evening.
Argument is unfamiliar terrain for them, and they don’t traverse it well. They’re at a distinct disadvantage compared to those couples who lose their tempers on a regular basis and have honed their reconciliation skills.
So Christmas Day passed quietly as an unspoken strain pervaded their home. Amanda received a new pair of blue jeans and a radio, which she politely thanked Ellis and Miriam for, then asked if she could go for a walk.
“Where to, honey?” Miriam asked.
“Oh, just around. I’ll only be gone a few hours.”
“All right then. Dress warm. It’s cold outside.”
She walked the three miles into town. An occasional car whizzed past. A mile out, she spied the water tower; then came the school and the meetinghouse and Kivett’s Five and Dime. She walked through the town and out again, heading toward the tourist cabins where her parents lived. She paused in front of their door. A string of lights was taped around the inside of their window, flashing in a tired cadence. Ralph spied her through the window. He opened the door and drew Amanda to him, overwhelmed with pleasure.
“I’ve come home,” Amanda whispered in his ear. “I’ve come home.”