[Troublesome Creek 01] - Troublesome Creek (26 page)

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Authors: Jan Watson

The sweet, rich tones of a dulcimer came from the back row as John Pelfrey played “O Little Town of Bethlehem.”
As the last note faded, Brother Isaac continued from the Scripture: “‘And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.’”
When Issac finished, Copper took her place on the small stage and, still holding the infant Julie, sang “Silent Night.” Her angelic soprano wafted through the church and soared into the cold, clear night.
Isaac finished the reading of the Scripture, and each baptized believer filed to the altar to kneel and partake of Communion, the symbolic broken body and shed blood of Jesus.
 
“Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas!” rang out from family to family after the service. At the church door each child received a gift from Santy Claus—a little poke of hard candy, an orange, an apple, and a Brazil nut it’d take a hammer on an anvil to crack. In the churchyard, a few men fired their guns into the air. Fire-crackers sputtered and banged, repeating like shotgun blasts up and down the valley as mothers captured children, and fathers unhitched horses and wagons.
 
Home from church, Willy and Daniel dressed in gray flannel nightshirts and lay wide-eyed in their feather bed. “You just don’t understand, Sissy—me and Daniel have important things to do before Santy comes. We can’t just go to bed like babies. You forget we’re six now.”
“Willy, Santy Claus will not come to our house if you’re awake. He is very shy. Now please,” Copper urged, more exasperated by the minute, “close your eyes and go to sleep. You too, Daniel.”
“Huh,” Willy retorted, her words clearly having no effect on him. “You think we would let old Santy see us? Me and Daniel want to trap him and see what’s in that poke of his. Just think—we’d have enough toys and candy to last a year if we could just get that red sack.”
“Yeah, Sissy,” Daniel chimed in. “Just think.”
“Scoot over, fellows,” Copper said with a sigh. “I want to talk to you about Christmas.” She eyed them both to make sure they were paying attention. “Were you listening in church tonight? Christmas is to honor the birth of Jesus. Many years ago He came to earth as a tiny newborn baby.”
“Like baby Julie?”
“Yes, Daniel, like baby Julie, but Jesus had a great big job. He came as a newborn so He could live as we do, here on earth instead of with His Father in heaven. He gave us the greatest gift, eternal life, which means that if we believe and put our trust in Him, when we die we go to heaven, where it’s like Christmas every day.”
“I know that, Sissy,” Willy snorted. “That’s why you got baptized that time, right? Me and Daniel here are gonna get dunked soon as we can. Brother Isaac’s been talking to us about it.”
Daniel snuggled up under Copper’s arm. “That’s all good, Sissy, but what’s it got to do with Santy Claus?”
Actually, not much,
Copper thought. “Santy is to teach us about giving. He gives gifts to all good little boys and girls. What would happen to the other children if you took Santy’s pack?”
Willy leaned toward his brother in alarm. “We didn’t think about that, did we, Daniel? Daniel?” He kicked his feet up and down to shake the bed. “Oh, fiddle-faddle—he’s gone to sleep and left me to do the figuring out of everything.” Willy rubbed his eyes. “I’m not the least bit tired. I’ll just listen for the reindeer.”
When he glanced hopefully at Copper, she could see the wheels turning in his head. “I’ll leave old Santy alone, but I’m gonna see them flying deer. Yes, siree, I’m gonna get me a reindeer. An’ I’ll be real good and share and let sleepyhead Daniel ride it even if he didn’t stay awake to help me.”
Willy yawned and snuggled under the covers until just his eyes peeped out. “Will Santy think I’m good,” he mumbled around his thumb, “if I let Daniel ride that deer?”
Copper pried Daniel’s arms from her waist and climbed over Willy. “I’m sure Santy will be pleased. You’ll have to be real quiet to hear the sleigh bells when the reindeer come.” She smoothed out the covers, making sure Willy didn’t steal them all away from Daniel. “Good night, Willy. Sleep tight.”
“Don’t let the bedbugs bite,” he muttered in return.
The soft breathy sounds of sleeping little boys followed Copper as she stepped from the room they shared. It was barely big enough for her bed under the window and theirs next to it. Not that the boys used their bed. Most mornings she woke to find one or the other—and sometimes both—wrapped around her. It was surely a blessing when Daniel had finally quit wetting the bed. Oh, that made for a cold night.
Mam was busy filling stockings with candy and toys when Copper came out.
“They’re asleep at last. Willy’s keen on catching one of Santy’s reindeer. And he wants to take Santy’s pack. He can be really selfish sometimes.”
A smile tugged at Mam’s lips. “They’re just boys.
Understanding that it is more blessed to give than to receive comes with maturity, Daughter. Remember the bonbons?”
Copper did remember. . . .
 
She had been a feisty nine-year-old the Christmas of the bonbons. Mam had ordered candy from a department store in Philadelphia to distribute to the neighborhood children after church on Christmas Eve. It had been delivered in a pasteboard box. Copper’s eyes widened as she and Mam carefully unwrapped the sweets—shiny peppermint canes, spicy ginger wafers, chocolate drops, red and green gumdrops, and the most entrancing of all: a packet of pink bonbons. Copper drooled while she removed the crinkled waxed paper that protected the delicate morsels. She imagined that anything that looked so lovely must taste like heaven.
She put a pair of green mittens, which she had helped knit, in the bottom of every small brown paper sack, then obeyed Mam and added two pieces of each candy.
“Why two pieces?” she had asked. “If we just put in one of each kind, then we’d have some left over for me . . . uh, us.” Her face reddened as she glanced at Mam.
“The first piece is to eat quickly, as children will. The second is to savor,” Mam replied. “Finish filling the bags while I nurse the babies. Then I’ll help you tie the bags with ribbon.”
It seemed like Mam was gone a long time. Copper could hear the twins mewling like new kittens from the bedroom. At least they were born with their eyes open, not closed tight like the barn cat’s kittens, but they were still funny-looking, Copper thought as she’d set out the rest of the candy. She played with the treats, admiring their rich colors. Scanning the room to make sure no one was looking, she licked the bottom of one bonbon before she put it in one of the little sacks, then nibbled just the tiniest piece of pink coating from another. She held one to her nose, sure she could smell its sweetness.
“Laura Grace,” Mam called from the bedroom, “have you finished?”
“Almost. I’m almost done, Mam.” She put the last of the candies in the bags . . . except for every other pink bonbon, which she stuck in her pocket.
I should have some for filling the sacks. Nobody will even know they should have two.
Not waiting for Mam, she tied a red ribbon around each sack, leaving a candy cane peeking from the top. Then, keeping an eye on Mam’s bedroom door, she wrapped the stolen treats in paper and tiptoed to her room to slide them under her feather pillow.
When Mam stepped into the kitchen, fastening the top button of her shirtwaist, she said, “Why, your gifts are beautiful! I would never have thought to put the canes just so. Just think how the children will enjoy them.” She gave Copper a hug. “I wish I could see their faces when you give them out, but the babies are much too small to take to church.”
Indeed, Copper had enjoyed standing by her father’s side, handing a bag of candy to each child as they departed the church after the Christmas Eve service. “A gift old Santy asked me to give to you,” Daddy said each time.
Copper had a cane as colorful as a barber’s pole deep inside her coat pocket. Mam had placed it there right before they left. She stuck the peppermint in her mouth as soon as they finished passing out the candy, and Daddy pulled her up behind him on the horse. It left a tingly clean feeling in her mouth, sort of like cleaning her teeth with salt and baking soda. It was good, but what she really wanted were the pretty pink bonbons under her pillow at home.
She feigned sleep after Mam tucked her into bed that evening. Eyes squeezed shut, she strained to hear the night sounds that would let her know her family was asleep: Mam’s rustling as she turned in bed, Daddy’s deep snores, and the absolute silence of the two babies who shared a cradle by Mam’s side of the bed.
Copper groped under her pillow for the candy, propped the pillow behind her, pulled the quilt over her knees, and slowly unwrapped one lustrous piece. The waxed paper popped and crackled. She froze like a startled rabbit, not daring to make the slightest move.
Finally giving in to temptation, she licked the candy shell with the tip of her tongue. “Yummy, the very best,” she whispered as she greedily popped the whole candy into her mouth. The hard pink sugar coating shattered, and she bit into the soft center.
“Yuck!” she gasped, covering her mouth to keep from blurting out her thoughts and being discovered.
What is this stuff? Oh no. Coconut.
She hated coconut! She spit the sweet out, then carried it to the fireplace and pitched it in.
How could anything so pretty on the outside be so ugly on the inside?
she wondered as she watched it sputter and melt.
Back in bed, she had asked herself what to do with the rest of the candy.
It won’t be a very merry Christmas if Mam finds it. She probably won’t even let me have a piece of the jam cake I helped her make this morning.
Her belly growled when she thought of the brown-sugar icing she’d stirred and stirred.
Well, nobody will be looking under the mattress tomorrow. I’ll hide it there and pitch it down the outhouse hole when no one is looking.
Her mind at peace, Copper had drifted off to sleep, wondering what was in her stocking that hung so temptingly from the mantel.
She woke that Christmas morning, so many years ago, when Daddy placed a squirming baby on her bed. “Good morning, Willy,” she said into the baby’s sweet-smelling neck. “Merry Christmas, Daddy.”
“Merry Christmas yourself, Copper. Come open your stocking before I go to milk.”
She flung back the covers and rushed to the cozy kitchen. Buttermilk biscuits and a platter of fried ham sat on the sideboard, and Mam was breaking eggs into a cast-iron skillet. “Just a minute, Laura Grace. Let me turn these. There . . . now sit on the hearth and let’s see what you have.”
Copper had warmed her back as Mam handed her a bulging knee-length sock. Watercolors and artist’s brushes spilled out, along with barrettes and beautiful plaid ribbons for her hair. A tiny wrapped box opened to reveal a small light green stone hanging from a fine gold chain.
“Oh, Mam . . . Daddy, it’s so pretty.” She held it to the fire and watched it glimmer. “The color looks wavy, like a piece of green glass underwater; don’t you think? I hope there’s a water-color this shade,” she chattered as she upended the stocking and shook two new pencils and a packet of pink bonbons onto the hearth. She felt herself blush as she stuck the candy back into her stocking.
“These are too pretty to eat right now. I’ll save them for later.” She hugged first Mam, then Daddy. “This is the best Christmas I have ever had.”
Just as in the Bible story of Rachel sitting on her father’s stolen household idols, Copper slept on hers. Until one fine spring housecleaning morning when she helped turn the mattress on her bed and two packets of crushed pink bonbons fell at Mam’s feet.
Copper learned valuable lessons that Christmas of her ninth year: things are not always as they seem, and pretty on the outside can be coconut-ugly on the inside.
 
“I still get embarrassed when I think of taking that candy,” Copper said finally. “You’re so generous, Mam, but do you ever wonder why we have so much when others have so little?” With a sweep of her arm she indicated the clean, warm kitchen, where three full stockings hung from the mantel.
Mam answered, “Remember, the Scripture tells us to whom much is given, much is required. You have to be careful to use wisely the gifts God gives you. He will hold us accountable if our neighbors want and we do nothing.”

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