by New Yorker
Chapel was at eight-thirty, and it was held in the large hall on the first floor. Captain Foster was seated in the center of the platform, with Mr. Gaines and Mr. Martin, who had been at the school the longest, seated on either side of him. Mr. Parsons sat at one end of the row. He was a thin man in his early thirties, and his hair, his skin, and his tweed suit were the color of dust. He wore a sprig of holly in his buttonhole, and as his class filed in, he smiled down at them. The 1-A boys and the 1-B boys sat in the front rows, as they were the class that would graduate in the spring, and they sat quietly and didn’t fidget in their seats, as the younger boys did.
(photo credit 2.1)
Captain Foster waited until all the boys were settled, and then he nodded to Mr. Howard, who taught music and played the organ, and the school rose to sing the St. Benedict’s Christmas hymn. The boys’ voices were high and clear.
“Christmas is nighing. Hark!” they sang.
Mr. Parsons sang with them. He had learned the hymn the night before. The hymn, Captain Foster had explained to him, was, like the St. Benedict’s school song, “very dear to us all,” and by that Mr. Parsons understood that he was supposed to learn it by heart. It was not a very good hymn, but as he stood on the platform singing it, looking down at his boys, Mr. Parsons almost felt at home. His shoulders relaxed and the color came to his face. “Upon this holy night,” he sang. And then, as the hymn ended, he bowed his head for the Lord’s Prayer. With his head bowed, he could see where his sleeve was frayed, and he thought that he must do something about a new suit. It was quite all right to look comfortably shabby, but his suit was a step beyond that, and once he knew where he stood, he would feel justified in getting a few things for himself. Not that he hadn’t understood Captain Foster’s point when he explained that it was a question of getting the boys to like you, getting their confidence. In a school like St. Benedict’s, you had to get the boys to like you, because boys had a way of complaining to their parents, and if the parents weren’t satisfied—well, there was no school. “Of course,” Captain Foster had said, “we can only give up to a point. But we do have to see eye to eye with the boys and their parents up to that point.”
CHRISTMAS RUSH
Dropping in at the main Post Office to see how business was a week before the deadline for soldiers’ Christmas presents, we found the staff in a light perspiration. The man who took us around, a Mr. Gillen, said that since September 15th they had handled some four million parcels with APO addresses and that the last-minute rush was sure to be something fierce. Many of the temporary helpers are high-school students, who are of no great help in a Christmas log jam. “We have spiral parcel chutes in the building, and the kids keep running up to the fifth floor and sliding down,” Mr. Gillen told us wearily. The real worry at the Post Office, though, is improperly wrapped or addressed parcels. Improperly wrapped par-cels are handled by the “reconstruction department,” which has now been built up to fifty men working three overlapping shifts of twelve hours a day. Between them they do what they can for the day’s intake of flimsy parcels, which averages about eight thousand.
If a package has merely softened up enroute, it’s just a matter of cutting off the address, rewrapping the contents in brown paper, and pasting the address on the new package. An experienced man can handle twenty such packages an hour. A really insoluble problem is the gummed address label of the “To —– From —–” type. Some people just don’t use enough spit, the label drops off, and the anonymous package winds up six months later at a public auction. “There’s going to be some mighty disappointed guys this Christmas,” Gillen predicted. In general, the wrapping jobs done by the stores are good, Gillen told us. He had a word of special commendation for Schrafft’s. “Can’t budge their packages,” he said. The Post Office gets a good many lunches in smashed shoe boxes, which would have been contraband anyhow under the rules for mailing food. Most of them are mailed by people with R.F.D. addresses and no sense of geography. Naïve addresses are not uncommon. We peeped over one postal man’s shoulder and found that he was puzzling over a box of candy addressed to “Richard F—–, Infantry, U.S. Army. Overseas.” “By the time I go off work, I’m wondering just what goes on in people’s heads,” he muttered to us.
A good many packages simply disintegrate, and it’s impossible ever to tell which article goes in which package, let alone where the packages were intended to go. The contents of such packages are piled in crates and are sold at auction unless they are claimed within six months by the senders. In one salvage crate, we saw chewing gum, a bologna sausage, soap, an electric shaver, tobacco and cigarettes, and bath powder. We remarked that it all resulted in rather a heady aroma, and one of the wrappers said we should of been there yesterday. “We had four fried chickens,” he said. “From San Francisco.” Judging by the smashed packages, there’s a good deal of contraband going overseas—beer, wine, whiskey, and lighter fluid, all expressly banned. Most of the booze is spilled even before it gets to the post office. “We had a broken bottle of imported Scotch here yesterday,” a wrapper told us. “I could of wept.” That day’s prize package, so to speak, was one which, when opened for rewrapping, was found to contain a wristwatch, a Colt .45, and a box of chocolate-covered cherries.
—ROSANN SMITH, WILLIAM KINKEAD, AND RUSSELL MALONEY, 1943
Mr. Parsons lifted his head at the end of the Lord’s Prayer and sat down with the others as Captain Foster began to address the school. He wondered if he had tried to see eye to eye with Warren when reporting Warren’s stamp dealings and the little matter of the comic sections to Captain Foster. Not that he minded the boys’ trading things—it was a natural thing to do—but there was something about the way Warren did it. He looked down and his eyes found Warren. Warren was staring at Captain Foster, and suddenly Mr. Parsons heard what Captain Foster was saying.
“… and a certain boy who has been trading in stamps and has managed to get a monopoly on comic strips, which he peddles during school hours …” Captain Foster said.
It was all Mr. Parsons could do to keep from interrupting Captain Foster to tell him that it was a matter of no consequence and that he’d mentioned it to him only to ask his advice, certainly not to have it dragged out in front of the whole school. He looked back at Warren to see how he was taking it, and he saw that Warren was smiling a little, and suddenly Warren’s eyes met his in a way that made him uneasy. He was glad when Captain Foster left Warren and went on to the matter of water pistols and the unsportsmanlike behavior of some of the boys during a football game.
When the school rose once more, to sing the St. Benedict’s Alma Mater, Mr. Parsons relaxed again. He was glad he had not told Captain Foster about the loaded dice Warren had made in manual-training class, and when the exercises were over, he stopped to say a word to Captain Foster about the boy.
“Captain Foster,” he said, “I’m glad you didn’t mention the boy’s name.”
“We never do,” Captain Foster said. “We merely bring such matters up, lay them on the board, and start off the new year with a clean slate.”
“I see,” Mr. Parsons said. “I’m sure the boy means no harm. He’s a clever boy, does well in his studies, and I don’t think I should have mentioned it at all if he hadn’t proved himself to be so distracting to the rest of the class. There’s nothing wrong with the boy.” He swallowed, and his hand went up to the sprig of holly in his buttonhole. After all, he thought, it is Christmas. “The fact is,” he went on, “I like the boy.” Then he nodded brightly to Captain Foster and hurried out of the hall.
Mr. Parsons almost bounded up the flight of stairs that led to his own classroom, and when he opened the door and saw the tree shining with lights and saw the boys, who were waiting for him expectantly, he called out to them, “Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas!”
“When I jerk twice, pull as hard as you can.”
(photo credit 2.2)
He walked toward them as they stood grouped around his desk, nervously waiting
for him to open his packages. “Merry Christmas, sir,” they said.
He looked down at his desk, and the sight of the packages tied with bright ribbons warmed him. “Well, what’s this?” he asked.
“Christmas, sir,” Lockwood said.
“It looks like Christmas,” Mr. Parsons said. “Even to the fine tree. I think I’ll have to take that tree home with me.”
“Why not?” Brewster said. “I’ll help you carry it.”
The boys laughed appreciatively. “Open your presents, sir,” Pope said.
Mr. Parsons reached for a package, carefully untied the ribbon, and opened it. It was a bottle of whiskey from Brewster, and the boys screamed with laughter. Mr. Parsons read the label and held the bottle up to the light. “Too bad to waste it,” he said, “so I suppose I’ll have to drink a little of it—later.”
He picked up another package and opened it. “A cigarette lighter,” he called out. “From Pope!”
He pressed on the lighter and it worked, and the boys cheered. Mr. Parsons looked down at the table and picked up an envelope. Inside the envelope was a card. “From Warren,” Mr. Parsons read, and, feeling inside the envelope, his fingers felt a smaller envelope. As he felt it, he knew what was in it. He took it out and slipped it into his pocket.
“What is it, sir?” Brewster asked.
Mr. Parsons’ hand held the envelope in his pocket. It was the small kind that people hand to doormen and janitors.
“It’s money,” Warren said. “Five dollars.”
The boys glanced uneasily at one another and the room grew still. Someone jostled the tree and needles fell to the bare floor with a dry, cold sound. Mr. Parsons looked at Warren, and he knew that the boys were waiting for him to help them out. He took the envelope from his pocket, opened it, and held the five dollars so that they all could see it, and then he laid it with the other presents on the desk. When he spoke, his voice was without expression. “Thank you very much, old man,” he said.
1946
CHRISTMAS MORNING
FRANK O’CONNOR
We were living up Blarney Lane, in Cork, at the time, in one of the little whitewashed cottages at the top, on the edge of the open country. It was a tiny house—a kitchen with two little bedrooms off it—and the kitchen door opened to the street. There were only the four of us—my parents, my brother Sonny, and myself. I suppose, at the time I’m speaking of, Sonny was six or seven and I was two years older. I never really liked that kid. He was the mother’s pet; a proper little Mummy’s darling, always racing after her to tell her what mischief I was up to. I really believe it was to spite me that he was so smart at his books. In a queer sort of way, he seemed to know that that was what the mother valued most, and you might say he spelled his way into her favor. “Mummy,” he’d say, “will I call Larry in for his t-e-a?” Or “Mummy, the k-e-t-e-l is boiling.” And, of course, if he made a mistake, the mother would correct him, and next time he’d have it right and get stuffed up with conceit. “Mummy,” he’d say, “aren’t I a good speller?” We could all be good spellers if we went on like that. Mind you, it wasn’t that I was stupid, or anything of the kind, but somehow I was restless and I could never fix my mind on the one thing for long. I’d do the lessons for the year before or the lessons for the next year—anything except the ones I should be doing. And in the evenings I loved to get out to the Dempseys, the kids who lived in the house opposite and were the leaders of all the blackguarding that went on in the road. Not that I was a rough child, either. It was just that I liked excitement, and I never could see what it was in schooling attracted the mother.
“I declare to goodness, Larry,” she said once, catching me with my cap in my hand, “you ought to be ashamed of yourself, with your baby brother better than you at reading.”
“Ah, I’ll do it when I come back,” I said.
“The dear knows what’ll become of you,” she said. “If you’d only mind your lessons, you might be something worth while—an engineer or a clerk.”
“ ’Tis all right, Mummy,” Sonny said. “I’ll be a clerk.”
“I’m going to be a soldier,” I said.
“God help us!” my mother said. “I’m afraid that’s all you’ll ever be fit for.” Sometimes, I used to think she was just a shade simple. As if a fellow could be anything better than a soldier!
And then it began to draw on to Christmas, with the days getting shorter and, coming on to dusk, the crowds getting bigger in the streets, and I began to think of all the things I might get from Santa Claus. The Dempseys said there was no Santa Claus and that it was only what your mother and father gave you, but the Dempseys were a rough class of children and you wouldn’t expect Santa Claus to come to them anyway. I was scouting round for whatever information I could pick up about it from the mother. I wasn’t much good at writing, but it struck me that if a letter would do any good, I wouldn’t mind having a shot at one.
“Ah, I don’t know will he come at all this year,” my mother said with a distracted air. “He has enough to do looking after good little boys that mind their lessons, without bothering about the others.”
“He only comes to good spellers, Mummy,” Sonny said. “Isn’t that right?”
“He comes to any little child that does his best,” my mother said firmly, “whether they’re good spellers or not.”
Well, from then on I tried to do my best. God knows, I tried. It was hardly my fault if my teacher, Flogger Dawley, gave us sums we couldn’t do, within four days of the holidays, and I had to play hooky with Peter Dempsey. It wasn’t for the pleasure of it. December is no month for playing hooky, and most of our time was spent sheltering from the rain in a store on the quays. The only mistake we made was imagining that we could keep it up until the holidays without being noticed. Of course, Flogger Dawley noticed and sent home to know what was keeping me. When I came home the third day, my mother gave me a look she had never given me before and said, “Your dinner is there.” She was too full to talk. When I tried to explain to her, she only said, “Ah, you have no word.” It wasn’t the fact that I’d been playing hooky so much as all the lies I’d told her. For two days, she didn’t open her mouth to me, and still I couldn’t see what attraction schooling had for her or why she wouldn’t let me grow up like anybody else.
(photo credit 3.1)
(photo credit 3.2)
That evening, Sonny stood at the front door with his hands in his trousers pockets, shouting to the other kids so that he could be heard all over the road, “Larry isn’t allowed to go out. He played hooky with Peter Dempsey. Me mother isn’t talking to him.” And at night, when we were in our bed, he kept at me. “Santa Claus isn’t bringing you anything this year.”
“He is,” I said.
“No,” Sonny said.
“Why isn’t he?”
“Because you played hooky with Dempsey,” Sonny said. “I wouldn’t play with them Dempsey fellows. They’re no class. They had the bobbies up at the house.”
“And how would Santa Claus know that I played hooky with Dempsey?” I asked.
“He’d know,” Sonny said. “Mummy would tell him.”
“And how could Mummy tell him and he up at the North Pole? Poor Ireland, she’s rearing them still! ’Tis easy seen you’re only a baby,” I said.
“I’m not a baby,” Sonny said, “and I can spell better than you, and Santa Claus won’t bring you anything.”
“You’ll see whether he will or not,” said I, letting on to be quite confident about it. But in my own heart I wasn’t confident at all. You could never tell what powers those superhuman chaps would have of knowing what you were up to. And I had a bad conscience about skipping school. I had never seen the mother like that before.
I decided there was really only one thing for me to do, and that was see Santa Claus and have a talk with him myself. Being a man, he’d probably understand that a fellow wouldn’t want to spend his whole life over old books, as the mother wanted me to. I was a good-looking
kid, and when I liked, I had a way with me. I had only to smile nicely at one old gent on the Mall to get a penny off him, and I felt sure if only I could get Santa Claus alone, I could explain it all to his satisfaction and maybe get round him to give me something really worth while, like a model railway. I started practicing staying awake at night, counting five hundred and then a thousand and trying to hear first eleven and then midnight from the clock tower in Shandon. I felt sure Santa Claus would appear by midnight on Christmas Eve, seeing that he’d be coming from the north and would have the whole of the south side of town to do before morning. In some ways, I was quite an enterprising and farsighted kid. The only trouble was the things I was enterprising about.
I was so wrapped up in those plans of mine that I never noticed what a hard time my mother was having of it. Sonny and I used to go downtown with her, and while she was in the grocery shop, we stood outside the toyshop in the North Main Street, arguing about what we’d like for Christmas.
At noon the day before Christmas, my father came home to dinner and handed my mother some money. She stood looking at it doubtfully and her face went white.
“Well?” he said, getting angry. “What’s wrong with that?”
“What’s wrong with it?” she asked. “On Christmas Eve?”
“Why?” he said, sticking his hands in his trousers pockets and thrusting his head forward with an ugly scowl. “Do you think I get more because ’tis Christmas Eve?”
“Lord God!” she said, and raised her hand to her cheek. “Not a bit of cake in the house, nor a candle, nor anything!”
