“Where does this thing go?”
“Where do you want this?”
“How about this box?”
Our furniture looked lost. In every corner, boxes and cartons and barrels seemed to huddle without order. Nothing looked right. Yet, while unloading, I couldn’t ask people to tarry while I decided where each item belonged.
“Bless you,” I said. “God bless all of you. Hope someday that I can do for you like you all done for us.”
They left, men and women, the wagons and horses. Alone, I discovered that Mr. Ferguson had forgotten to light a fire in the potbelly. So I did. Then I pegged beds together, my mother and aunt in one room, me in another, and unpacked dishes, a teakettle, pots, and a black cast-iron spider. A few table knives, forks, and spoons now sprouted from a large tumbler like a tarnished bouquet.
Next I undid quilts and blankets. I found towels and soap. How we’d use these, I had yet to figure, because from what Mr. Ferguson said, I’d have to haul water up the stairs by hand. In buckets. Well, it was easier than watering a cornfield.
Downstairs, the feedstore proprietor was decorating each of his double doors with a green wreath and a red ribbon.
“It’s the season,” he said. “Mercy, but it’s cold. Below zero. That’s all the festooning I intend to do. Wilbur, my nephew’s boy, brung me a Christmas tree. Don’t plan to put it up. Too much bother.” He looked at me. “Maybe you might use it. It’s free.”
“I’ll take it.”
“Then don’t stand there. Get to my house, first one on Oak Street, and fetch it back here. It’s on my back porch.”
I ran faster than a pig to mash and returned with a blue spruce. Took me little time to cross two boards for a standard. Yet, once upstairs, the tree looked green but naked.
“Rob!”
Hearing Mr. Ferguson calling me, I clumped down the stairs and into the store, where the little man was stirring through a mess of dinky hardware.
“Eye screws,” he told me. “They’ll shine like sparklers. So will these silver washers. Sorry. Don’t have any brass.” He laughed. “And I’m fresh out of frankincense.”
“You really are a caution,” I said.
“Yup. Now then, Rob, you leave dressing the tree to me. Fetch your mother and aunt, but don’t tell ’em our evergreen surprise.”
I couldn’t budge. “What church do you attend, Mr. Ferguson? I truly’d like to know and maybe test it. You sure are a Christian gentleman.”
“I don’t belong to any.”
“None at all?”
“Nope. I only go at Easter. Every year a different church. This coming spring, I’ll give the Methodists a try.”
Leaving next year’s Methodist pillar at his store, as ordered, I raced to Aunt Matty’s. Mr. Hume Plover, her husband, answered my knock and opened the door.
“Come in, Robert. You look froze.”
“Thank you, Uncle Hume. We can’t stay.”
I told Mama and Carrie that all was ready at the feedstore, hugged Aunt Matty, and hauled my mother and aunt, plus a bundle of food, down the street and around the corner. I made them almost trot, because I wasn’t giving them any time to grieve or waste on pity.
Up the stairs we climbed. The stove was heating. And the town’s most endearing elf was there to greet us.
“Welcome, you ladies,” he said. “Welcome home.”
As my mother and aunt stood speechless, staring at the spruce, I said, “Allow me to present Mr. Porter Ferguson, the lord of our manor. Sir, meet my mother and my aunt, Lucy and Carrie.”
He left. But he had trimmed our tree. It was glittering with a host of hardware. Outside it was late-afternoon dark, typical December, and the amber see-through triangles on the potbelly were shining a yellow glow, as if our tree was blossoming with little tiny lanterns. So pretty you could hear it jingle.
We ate in the twinkling light.
Martha and Hume Plover were generous friends, even if they were Baptists. Nobody’s perfect. Matty had packed pie and cookies, a tin of tea, cold chicken, eight apples, and an entire loaf of homebaked bread with little seeds on top. Oh, and did we ever feast.
I saved a few seeds for the sparrows.
Just after we finished at our table, I heard singing. Below, people were cutting through the alley, practicing a carol. It was Silent Night. There were only five of them. So I dashed down the stairs to outside, wished them merry, and tossed each singer a polished red apple.
It seemed neighborly to share with folks on a day when our family had been granted so many friends. Besides, Matty had packed us eight apples. Three were left. One for each of us. Yet I knew I’d present mine to Mr. Ferguson.
“Rob!”
Turning, I saw Becky and Mrs. Tate hurrying through the cold. Becky Lee’s mother was carrying a small parcel. It was pleasing to see both of them wave. As though good things were happening.
“We brought you a fruitcake,” Becky said, shining a smile at me. “And I baked it myself. You’d better like.” She laughed. “Because it’s … as you like it.”
“Thank you.” I took the cake.
Becky hugged me. “If Mom weren’t watching,” she whispered in my ear, “you’d receive a more personal present.”
“You too,” I told her. “Soon.”
They left.
Coming inside, I looked at my mother and aunt, as they were heating water in a saucepan for tea, and said, “I never felt so rich. Or so happy.”
After tea, although it was a bitter evening, the three of us bundled up best we could to venture outside and beneath a winter sky. The wind had stilled. Almost reverent. Above us, stars grew everywhere. As if God, with one wide sweep of His arm, had seeded the fields of Heaven.
The light seemed to hum a hymn.
Between them, I hugged Mama and Aunt Carrie, feeling grateful for all the harvest that had come my way to bless me. More than a heart could hold. I felt taller and stronger, as if I could leap to pocket the stars for toys.
The starlight appeared yellow and white. One particular December star was gleaming like a new birth. I couldn’t help pointing at it, so my mother and aunt could lift their faces to worship in its wonder.
“Look up,” I said, “at all our silver and gold.”
About the Author
Robert Newton Peck’s first novel was the highly acclaimed A Day No Pigs Would Die. He has written sixty books, including the sequel, A Part of the Sky. He is also the winner of the Mark Twain Award for his Soup series of children’s books. Many of his novels are deeply rooted in rural Vermont, where he grew up.
Rob plays jazz and ragtime piano, tends eleven mustang horses and two cats, and lives in Longwood, Florida.
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