The Twilight Zone: Complete Stories (65 page)

He fingered the worn cotton “fur’ around his neck. “I wish, Mr. Dundee,” he said as he started to turn away, “I wish that on just one Christmas...only one...I could see some of the have nots, the shabby ones, the hopeless and the dreamless ones...just on one Christmas...I’d like to see the meek inherit the earth.”

The crooked smile came again as he looked down at his bony hands and then up at Mr. Dundee. “That’s why I drink, Mr. Dundee, and that’s why I weep.”

He took a deep breath, the strangely twisted little smile still on his face, then turned and shuffled down the aisle past the whispering salesgirls and the tired shoppers, who looked at this symbol of Christmas who was so much more tired than they.

Henry Corwin walked down the avenue past l04th Street. He felt the cold snow on his face and looked vaguely at the festive windows of the stores as he passed. When he reached his block he headed toward the saloon, walking very slowly, hands buried in his armpits. He turned a corner and headed down an alley toward the rear door of the bar, and it was then that he heard the sound.

It was a strange sound. Sleigh bells—or something like them. But very odd. Somehow muffled and indistinct. He stopped and looked skyward. Then he smiled to himself and shook his head, assuring himself that sleigh bells or anything else could be found only in his mind—that tired, whiskey-dulled brain. But after a moment he heard the bells again, this time more persistent and louder.

Corwin had stopped near a loading platform of a wholesale meat plant. He looked up at the sky again and wondered. He started at the caterwauling dissonance of a night-prowling cat that suddenly leaped out from behind a barrel and scurried past him in the snow. It raced across the alley to another loading platform on the other side, leaping to the top of a garbage can and in the process knocking over a burlap bag that rested precariously on top of it. Then the cat disappeared in the darkness.

The burlap bag landed at Corwin’s feet and spilled open, depositing half a dozen dented tin cans in the snow. Corwin reached down and righted the bag, shoving the cans back inside. Then he lifted the burlap bag over his shoulder and started to carry it back to the platform. Halfway there he heard the bells again. This time much clearer and very much nearer.

Again he stopped in his tracks and stared up toward the sky, wide-eyed. Another sound joined that of the bells. Corwin couldn’t describe it except to make a mental note that it was like the sound of tiny hoofbeats. He very slowly let the burlap bag drop from his shoulders, and once again it fell over and spilled its contents on the ground. Corwin looked down at it, blinked his eyes, rubbed them, and stared.

Protruding from the open bag was the front end of a toy truck, an arm and a leg of a doll, and evidence of other toys of every description. He fell to his knees and started to reach into the bag, taking out truck, doll, playhouse, a box marked “Electric Train,” and then stopped, realizing that the bag must be filled with all such things. He let out a cry of surprise and jammed the toys back in the bag. He hoisted it to his shoulder and started a slow, stumbling trot toward the street, occasionally stopping to pick up a toy that fell, but feeling the words bubbling up inside him and finally coming out.

“Hey,” he shouted as he turned the corner onto 111th Street. “Hey, everybody! Hey, kids—Merry Christmas!”

The 104th Street Mission was a big, ugly, barren place, sullen to the eye and deadening to the spirit. Its main room was a naked square full of straight-backed, uncomfortable benches, with a small platform and organ at the far end. Large signs dotted the walls with little homilies like, “Love Thy Neighbor,” “Do unto Others as You Would Have Others Do unto You,” “Faith, Hope and Charity.”

Seated up and down the rows of benches were perhaps fifteen shabby old men. A few of them held cheap china mugs filled with watery coffee. They cradled them in cold hands, feeling the warmth and letting the steam rise up into their bearded tired faces. They wore the faces of poverty and age, each encrusted with layer after layer of the hopelessness of lonely old men whose lives had somehow swiftly and silently disintegrated into false teeth, and cheap coffee mugs, and this ugly, drafty room that traded religion and thin gruel in exchange for the last remaining fragments of dignity.

Sister Florence Harvey headed the Mission. After twenty-four years, she had begun to blend with the walls, the benches, and the miserable atmosphere. She was a tall, sour-looking spinster with deep lines imbedded at the comer of her mouth. She pounded the organ with a kind of desperate verve, playing badly but loudly an obscure Christmas carol that had spirit if not melody.

An old man rushed in from the outside and began whispering to another old man who sat on the rear bench. After a moment all the old men were whispering and pointing toward the door. Sister Florence noted the disturbance and tried to drown it out by playing even louder, but by this time some of the men were on their feet, talking loudly and gesturing. Sister Florence finally struck a discordant chord on the organ, rose, and glared at the old men in front of her.

“What’s all this about?” she asked angrily. “What’s this noise? Why the commotion?”

The old man who had brought the original message took his cap off and rolled it nervously in his hands. “Sister Florence,” he said diffidently, “I ain’t touched a drop since last Thursday and that’s the gospel truth! But I swear to you right now, on account of I seen him with my own eyes—Santa Claus is comin’ up the street headin’ this way and he’s givin’ everybody their heart’s desire!”

There were mumbled exclamations from the other old men. Dull and saddened eyes turned bright. Tired old faces became animated, and their voices punctuated the room.

“Santa Claus!”

“He’s comin’ here!”

‘‘And he’s bringing us whatever we like!”

The door leading to the street burst open and in walked Henry Corwin, his face red, his eyes shining, and over his shoulder he carried the bag, brightly wrapped packages protruding from its top.

Corwin put the bag down on the floor, looked up, twinkling, and made a Santa Claus gesture of a finger to nose tip. He looked around the room, smiling—his voice absolutely gurgling with excitement.

“It’s Christmas Eve, gentlemen, and I’m in business to make it a merry one.” He pointed to one of the old men. “What’ll be your pleasure?”

The scrawny little old man pointed to himself, amazed. “Me?” he asked in a toothless wheeze, then he wet his lips. “I fancy a new pipe.” He almost held his breath as he said it.

 
Corwin reached into the bag without even looking. He withdrew a curved Meerschaum. There were “Oh’s” and “Ah’s” as the old man took the pipe in trembling fingers and stared at it numbly.

Corwin pointed to another old man. “How about you?” he asked. This little old man opened and closed his mouth several times before a sound came out. “Maybe,” he croaked, “maybe a woolen sweater?”

Corwin made a sweeping theatrical gesture. “A woolen sweater you shall have,” he trumpeted. He stopped as he reached into the bag and looked up again. “Size?”

The old man held out two thin blue-veined hands. “Who cares?”

Out of the bag came a. turtleneck cashmere, and at this point the old men crowded around Corwin, their frail voices filled with hope.

“Another sweater maybe?”

“How about some pipe tobacco?”

“A carton of cigarettes?”

“New shoes?”

“Smoking jacket?”

And at each request, Corwin produced the desired item by simply reaching into the bag. He was unaware of Sister Florence looking at him angrily from the fringe of the crowd. Finally she pushed her way through to stand over Corwin.

“Now, what’s this all about?” she asked acidly. “What’s the idea of coming in here and disrupting the Christmas Eve music service?”

Corwin laughed aloud and slapped his hands together. “My dear Sister Florence,” he bubbled, “Don’t ask me to explain. I can’t explain. I’m as much in the dark as everybody else, but I’ve got a Santa Claus bag here that gives everybody just what they want for Christmas. And as long as it’s puttin’ out...I’m puttin’ in!”

His eyes were wet as he reached into the bag again. “How about a new dress, Sister Florence?”

The thin bony woman turned on her heel disapprovingly, but not before she caught a flash of a huge beribboned box that Corwin pulled out of the sack.

Again came the voices of the old men, gentle, plaintive, persistent’ and Corwin spent the next five minutes taking things out of the bag, until the room looked like the aftermath of an inventory in a department store.

Corwin was unaware of Sister Florence bringing the policeman in. She pointed to Corwin from the door and the cop made his way over to him. He reached Corwin and hovered over him like a symbol of all the law and order in the world. He put his hand on Corwin’s shoulder. “It’s Corwin, ain’t it?” he asked.

Corwin got to his feet, the grin so broad that his jaw ached. “Henry Corwin, officer,” he announced, and then laughed in a spasm of delight. “At least it
was
Henry Corwin. Maybe now it’s Santa Claus or Kris Kringle—I don’t know.”

The policeman regarded him blankly and then sniffed the air. “You’re drunk, ain’t yuh, Corwin?”

Corwin laughed again and the laugh was so marvelously rich and winning and infectious that all the old men joined in. “Drunk?” Corwin shouted.”Of course I’m drunk! Naturally I’m drunk! I’m drunk with the spirit of Yule! I’m intoxicated with the wonder of Christmas Eve! I’m inebriated with joy and with delight! Yes, officer—by God, I’m drunk!”

A toothless old man looked around bewilderedly. “What was them things he was drinking?”

The policeman held up his hands again for quiet and kicked at the burlap bag meaningfully. “We can settle this one in a hurry, Corwin,” he said. “You just show me the receipt for all this stuff.”

Corwin’s smile became frayed at the edges. “The receipt?” he gulped.

“The receipt!”

The old men smiled among themselves, nodded and winked, and turned, smilingly confident, toward Santa Claus.

Corwin didn’t nod. He simply swallowed hard and shook his head.

“No receipt, huh?” the policeman asked.

“No receipt,” Corwin whispered.

The policeman let out a single snort and kicked at the bag again. “All right,” he announced, “collect all the stolen goods and put them in a pile over here. I’ll see that they get claimed after I find out where he took the stuff from.” He turned to Corwin. “All right, Santa, let’s you and me take a little trip down to the precinct.” He grabbed Corwin’s elbow and started to push him toward the door.

Over his shoulder, Corwin got a last look at the old men. Each was depositing his gift on a pile on the floor. They did it quietly, with no complaints and no sign of disappointment. It was as if they were quite accustomed to miracles being fragile, breakable things. They had spent their lives trying to hold onto illusions, and this was no different.

Sister Florence went back to the platform and shouted out the name of the next carol. “A one, a two, a three,” she screeched, and then gave mortal combat to the music while the old men began to sing in sad, cracked little voices. Every now and then one of them would cast a wishful look over his shoulder at a Meerschaum pipe or a cashmere sweater on the pile of gifts that sat a million miles away from them.

In the small detention room at the station house, Officer Flaherty guarded the burlap bag and his prisoner, who sat despondently on a bench, his eyes staring at the floor. The brisk footsteps from outside sounded familiar to Corwin. He knew who they belonged to, and sure enough it was Walter Dundee who was ushered into the room.

Dundee wore a look of contented ferocity. He rubbed his hands together briskly, like a happy executioner. ‘‘Aah,’’ he murmured, “here he is.” He pointed toward Corwin. “And here we are.” He made a gesture encompassing the room, and then pointed to the bag. “And there
that
is! And you, Mr. Corwin, my wistful St. Nicholas, are soon going up the river!” He turned toward Officer Flaherty, his voice hopeful. “Do you suppose he could get as much as ten years?”