A Season of Gifts

by Richard Peck

  * * *

  There was a tree in every front window in town, against the blue glow of television sets. And a wreath on every door. A full-size beaverboard nativity scene, floodlit, appeared in the park uptown where Gypsy Piggott’s big top had stood last summer. Woody’s Zephyr Oil filling station gave out inflatable plastic snowmen with every lube job.

  And night after night the strains of a heavenly host singing al-le-lu-ia welled out of our church as Mother rehearsed the concert choir.

  Actual heavenly hosts looking down on the town could have taken it for the toy village under a Christmas tree, complete with train track and winking lights. A light dusting of snow on Christmas Eve was the final touch.

  The town bustled now with company coming: kids home from college, soldiers on leave. Company for Christmas.

  After a sketchy supper at our house, the bustle turned to panic. Mother said the Christmas choir concert was her first opportunity to share Methodist music with what she called The Larger Community. She was worried sick they didn’t have all the bugs out of “Ring Out Wild Bells.” Then she couldn’t find her pitch pipe.

  The Methodist women had made Christmas choir robes out of army surplus sheeting. Phyllis said she looked like Casper the Ghost in hers. She and Mother had given each other Toni home permanents, but this hadn’t calmed them. Ruth Ann’s choir robe was a mile too long. She kept tripping over it and stumbling into things. She was sure she had her solo down pat. Mother wasn’t.

  The house vibrated with women. They were in and out of every room. You couldn’t hear yourself think. And the concert was still an hour off. Dad and I got our coats and went outside, but it was too cold on the porch. We went around back and sat in the Pickle to be out of the wind. Dad had on his old pea coat from the navy, over his robe with the velvet. He hadn’t worn it since the princess’s funeral.

  As soon as we were in the car, I knew it wasn’t a good idea. There was a heavy evergreen smell and pine needles everywhere. For some reason.

  We had a clear view of Mrs. Dowdel’s house. Lights were on upstairs and down. The kitchen glowed like a blazing pumpkin with last-minute cooking. She’d sent Ruth Ann home way before dark, and she’d been seen down at the depot, waiting for somebody off the train.

  “She has a fine tree,” Dad remarked, brushing pine needles off the Pickle’s dashboard.

  To change the subject, I said, “But there aren’t any presents under it. She doesn’t give gifts.”

  One of Dad’s hands rested on the steering wheel, there in the dark. “You sure about that?”

  I thought I was. “She mentioned inflation.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t wait for Christmas. Have you had a gift from her already?”

  “You don’t mean anything wrapped up with ribbon, right?” I said.

  “No,” Dad said. “Nothing that small.”

  I thought. But I couldn’t get past the day she’d told me to drive the Pickle. That was a great day. Every night since, I’d dreamed myself back to it. In my dreams I was behind the wheel, gearing down, double-clutching. And there was never oncoming traffic, and I was always in the right gear. I drove with one elbow out of the window in my dreams. And I was sixteen and six foot tall. With shoulders out to here. And nobody, but nobody was going to tie me up and pitch me in the crick. Let them try.

  Dad sat there, giving me some time. You could see our breath. The glow from Mrs. Dowdel’s tree spilled out of her bay across the white yard like a welcome mat.

  “Dad, who’s that tree lighting the way for? Mrs. Dowdel didn’t mean the Christchild, did she?”

  “No,” Dad said. “The Christchild’s been there all year long.”

  A moment passed, pine-scented. “Then who?”

  Dad stirred, reached for the door handle. “Somebody we’re just about to meet. And he’s due now. We’d better get in the house to make him welcome.”

  I was stumped. “To our house?”

  Dad nodded. “A visitor from afar.”

  “You mean like one of the three Wise Men?” I was as lost as usual.

  “Not exactly,” Dad said. “But he’ll probably be bearing a gift.”

  We headed up to the house then. Dad’s hand was on my shoulder, which I liked.

  “And son,” he said, “when you get a minute, take that crosscut saw out of the Pickle’s trunk and put it back in Mrs. Dowdel’s cobhouse.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  A Christmas Wedding

  In the house the countdown to Christmas was ticking like a time bomb. Mother had found her pitch pipe, but her sheet music was out of order. They’d pinned up Ruth Ann’s robe. Phyllis was at a mirror, biting her lips to make them pinker. Dad and I hadn’t been missed.

  A knock came at the front door.

  Ruth Ann began to turn to it. Dad’s hand came out to hold her back. Mother never looked up from her sheet music. She made sure Phyllis had to answer the door.

  A boy was standing out there with something in his hand. It looked like a cellophane-covered brick, tied up in Christmas tinsel. He took one look at Phyllis, and his eyes bugged slightly. Evidently she didn’t look too much like Casper the Ghost. She may have seemed like an angel in all that white, if you didn’t know her.

  “Hello. I’m Brad Dowdel. Mrs. Dowdel’s great-grandson. Joey’s son.” His voice had already changed. “Here for the holidays.”

  Phyllis made a small squeaking sound. It took her a while, but she got out of his way so he could come in. Ruth Ann’s eyes were saucers. He was one good-looking dude of a boy. Blond-headed. And he was wearing a bomber jacket with some fine Levi’s and white buck shoes. No sideburns, yet. But come to find out, he was just fourteen, Phyllis’s age. Her real age.

  And very polite for a Chicago guy. We all introduced ourselves, and he handed Mother the present, which was a fruitcake.

  “There’s more where that came from,” he said. “Great-grandma thought I might go on up to the Christmas concert with you folks.”

  “I expect she’ll be along later,” Mother said.

  But I wondered, since Mrs. Dowdel wasn’t a church woman. Still, I was beginning to figure out that adults move in mysterious ways.

  “Phyllis will be up in the choir loft,” Mother told Brad. “And of course Ruth Ann. But you can help Bob usher.”

  So as Dad predicted, we did have a visitor from afar—Chicago. He was even bearing a gift, if you count fruitcake.

  * * *

  Brad Dowdel and I had our hands full finding everybody a place to sit. Finally people were standing at the back. It wasn’t quite the overflow crowd we’d had for the princess’s funeral, but it was getting there.

  As Mother said, we were making a joyful noise for the larger community. There were people there you wouldn’t expect. Not Miss Cora Shellabarger. But then, she’d been spotted off her porch only twice since before the Korean Police Action. But I myself showed Miss Flora to a pew.

  Everybody noticed everybody else. As the pews filled, a murmur swept the congregation. People craned to look back to a disturbance at the door.

  Barging in were four or maybe five of the roughest characters I ever saw. Not a haircut among them and only about six teeth. They were bundled up against the winter night in a raggedy combination of caked army surplus and dirty denim. All wore farmer caps, and all were chewing something. As the saying went around here, hogs wouldn’t have stayed on their place. One or two of them may have been women.

  A whispered name fanned like a breeze across the pews: “Burdicks.”

  Just in case Brad and I thought we were going to show them to a pew, one of them put out a big banged-up hand, meaning “back off.”

  And in they ganged, sticking close. They were carrying something, a bundle in their midst. People in the back pew scooted over to make room for them. Way over. There in the pew the bundle they’d brought stirred. And sat up. One minute it was a pile of rags with an old floppy hat on top. The next minute it was Aunt Madge. Aunt Madge Burdick.

  She gla
red around at the crowd, who were all staring back. There must have been plenty of people here who hadn’t seen her in this century.

  “Are they goin’ to give me any supper?” she demanded in a high, cracked voice. “Where is my teeth?”

  We heard singing from outside then, not a moment too soon. I switched off the lights. Voices rose from out on the sidewalk, “O come, all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant . . . ” The choir proceeded inside, two by two, carrying candles. It was a choir twice the Sunday size.

  O come let us adore Him, O come let us adore Him,

  they sang, all the way up to the choir loft.

  The VFW had donated all their unsold trees, so the choir gathered in front of a somewhat scrubby pine forest.

  Last in the procession came Dad in his robe. And holding his hand, Ruth Ann, who looked like the littlest angel, at least for this evening.

  Dad ascended the pulpit, though he did very little preaching from up there. Ruth Ann hiked her robe and took giant steps up into the choir loft, between Mother and Phyllis.

  Dad spoke out:

  “Let us go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened.”

  An old, cracked voice called out from the back pew, “Luke. 2:15!”

  It was Aunt Madge Burdick.

  “Ring Out Wild Bells,” the choir sang, under Mother’s direction. And then “O Holy Night!” Phyllis kept losing her place from glancing up for a glimpse of Brad Dowdel, out here in the dark.

  Dad followed up by reading the Christmas story, the one that begins: “Now there were in the same country shepherds living out in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks by night . . . ”

  “Luke,” Aunt Madge crackled out from the back, “every bit of it!”

  The choir sang all the carols in the hymnal, and then it was time for Ruth Ann. Mother gave her a little boost forward, and Ruth Ann raised her candle.

  “Sing out, honey,” Mother was heard to murmur, and Ruth Ann began,

  “Away in a manger, no crib for a bed,

  The little Lord Jesus laid down His sweet head . . .”

  Everybody in the flickering room listened with both ears as Ruth Ann worked through the stanzas to

  “Bless all the dear children in Thy tender care,

  And fit us for heaven, to live with Thee there.”

  She had it down pat.

  Then it was nearly over, or so we thought. Dad stood to give us a benediction:

  While shepherds watch their flocks by night,

  We’re gathered here by candlelight;

  Snug we are and manger-warm,

  Against the winds of winter storm.

  Gathered behind these windows stout

  That keep December’s fury out,

  Gather we here from near and far

  To wait with the world for a glimpse of the star.

  Aunt Madge’s old crooked finger came up in the dark, but she drew it back. This may not have been Scripture. It may have come straight from Dad.

  The choir rustled their robes, getting ready to proceed out. They shuffled their sheet music to “As with Gladness Men of Old.”

  Then everything changed. Brad and I were at the back, flanking the door when it banged open. Wind blew in. Candles blew out. People jumped. Brad and I fell back. An enormous figure filled the door—bear big. “Hit the lights,” it said.

  So I did. The church flooded with electric light, and it was Mrs. Dowdel there in the door. Her hunting jacket was over an arm, but she was dressed as I’d never seen her. It must have been her good dress. Maroon with a lot of tucks or whatever across her massive front. Big black shiny shoes too. The bun on the back of her head rode high, with combs. She was . . . all dolled up.

  The choir hung in the loft. Mother had put up a hand to hold them there. Why did I have the sudden suspicion that she and Mrs. Dowdel were working as a team again?

  I had a vague vision of Mother with that Winchester broken open over her arm. But the front pew people were on their feet, looking back. Mrs. Dowdel’s name swept the room.

  “Hold it right there, Preacher!” she hollered out to Dad. “We’ve got us another item of business in the presence of these witnesses.”

  People gawked at each other. Who did she think she was, busting up a choir concert? She wasn’t even a church woman. And what business?

  But Dad didn’t look too surprised. In fact he looked glad to see her. Delighted even. He beamed. “And what is that business, Mrs. Dowdel?” he called back to her.

  “A wedding,” she said. The room buzzed like a hive. “A Christmas wedding.”

  “Marriage is a sacrament, Mrs. Dowdel, as you know,” Dad remarked. “But it is also a legal contract, and we’ll need to see—”

  “The marriage license,” she boomed. “I got it right here.” She reached down the front of her dress and drew out the marriage license. She could have kept the entire Bill of Rights down there.

  “The bride’s not of age,” she called out, “but her mother’s signed off on her. She don’t have much choice.”

  “Without further explanation, Mrs. Dowdel,” Dad said, “let us have the happy couple come forth.”

  Mrs. Dowdel lumbered aside and waved them in.

  A couple stepped up. I was as close to them as I am to you, and it was the surprise of my young life. At first, I thought it was Elvis Presley come among us. I wasn’t the only one. The room gasped. But it wasn’t Elvis.

  It was Roscoe Burdick with a GI haircut and a close shave in the dress uniform of a U.S. Army private: the full pinks and greens, and spit-shined shoes. Necktie and all. A necktie on a Burdick was a sight to behold, though Roscoe was swallowing hard. It was Roscoe home on special leave from Basic Training at Fort Leonard Wood.

  Beside him, her hair ablaze in the night, was Waynetta Blalock in the same outfit she’d worn on the homecoming queen’s parade float. It didn’t fit her as well now. Her dress-up suit strained around her middle. But she had a good firm grip on Roscoe. She’d always said she could make something out of him, Burdick or not.

  As the Sunday Piatt County Call newspaper reported, “The bride was attended by her bridesmaids, schoolmates all, Miss Barbara Jean Jeeter, Miss Edna-Earl Stubbs, Miss Vanette Pankey, Miss Bonnie Burhoops, all of this village and each carrying a nosegay of flowers in seasonal colors.”

  Waynetta was the first high school senior to be married, except for those who’d run off, so that was some satisfaction to her.

  It was a satisfaction to Mother too. I happened to notice her up in the choir loft, and I think I read her lips:

  A-le-lu-ia,

  they seemed to say. This was by far Mother’s best Christmas present: Roscoe Burdick not only in the army, but tied tight in the bonds of matrimony. The first Burdick ever married, in fact.

  It was the best present Phyllis ever got too, whether she knew it or not. I couldn’t tell from back here. But she seemed to be above it all up there, lofty in the choir loft. If she was having any thoughts at all, they were bound to be about Brad Dowdel.

  What Brad made of this sudden wedding I didn’t know.

  But he was a Chicago guy, so he’d probably seen everything. Besides, he was staying with Mrs. Dowdel, where the whole business must have been cooked up.

  * * *

  Dad pointed to Roscoe and summoned him down to the front. Every eye followed. Roscoe—Private Burdick—turned and gazed back over us. His posture was improved, but there was panic in his blue-and-green stare. Blind panic. Dad nodded to Waynetta.

  We had no piano, let alone an organ, and the Wedding March isn’t a choral number. Mother had the choir go straight into “Joy to the World.”

  Though afterward, long after, I overheard her tell Dad that “Lo! How a Rose E’er Blooming” might have been more appropriate. Or even “For Unto Us a Child is Born.”

  Waynetta teetered down the aisle in her high heels, trailed by her Iota Nu Beta sorority sisters. Mrs. Dowdel herself came next. And behind her for some reason, Mrs. Wilcox in he
r Mackinaw and veiled hat and carpet slippers.

  What her part in the plot was nobody knew. Except she was always all over Mrs. Dowdel like a rubber girdle in a heatwave. You’d have to chloroform her and tie her down to leave her behind.

  Several members of the DAR made room for them on the front pew, as Dad began, “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here . . .”

  When he came to “Who gives this woman to this man in holy matrimony?” Mrs. Dowdel waved a big hand and called out, “That’d be me, as her maw’s at home with a sick headache.”

  By now the whole congregation was having a whale of a good time. People said later that it was the best Christmas choir concert ever held in Piatt County.

  A terrible old cawing voice called out from the back, “And I give the groom!” It was his grandmother, Aunt Madge.

  “So do I,” called out Miss Flora Shellabarger, waving from the third pew. By now the whole church was practically rolling in the aisles. Waynetta and Roscoe were united in matrimony on wave upon wave of laughter.

  But as Dad said afterward, that’s not the worst beginning for a young couple embarking upon the choppy seas of the uncertain future.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  A Visit from Saint Nick

  It was nearly Christmas Day by the time we Barnharts left church. The bride and groom had long fled. What they drove I never knew. The rest of the Burdicks had hauled Aunt Madge back to the sticks. Brad went off between Mrs. Dowdel and Mrs. Wilcox. Miss Flora Shellabarger had fired up her Packard Clipper. But plenty of people wanted to linger on the church steps, replaying the evening and giving one another the greetings of the season.

  Dad and I made a final check of all the windows before he locked up the church. It was long afterward before I learned where we came by these top-of-the-line windows stout enough to keep December’s fury out.

  They’d been paid for with Mrs. Dowdel’s profits from her roadside stand back at the time of the Kickapoo Princess. So she hadn’t buried her money in Joey’s room or out in the melon patch. She’d given it to the church, though she wasn’t a church woman. All her gifts were supposed to be secrets, of course. But it took the whole town to keep a secret.