A Season of Gifts

by Richard Peck

  “It was mainly an elderly lady—”

  “Ugly as sin, calls herself Wilcox?” Grandma said. “She’s been in the state hospital for the insane until just here lately, but as a reporter I guess you nosed that out.”

  Mary Alice nudged me hard, and the reporter’s eyes widened.

  “They tell you how Shotgun come by his name?”

  “Opinions seem to vary, ma’am.”

  “Ah well, fame is fleeting,” Grandma said. “He got it in the Civil War.”

  The reporter’s hand hovered over his breast pocket, where a notepad stuck out.

  “Oh yes, Shotgun went right through the war with the Illinois Volunteers. Shiloh in the spring of sixty-two, and he was with U. S. Grant when Vicksburg fell. That’s where he got his name. Grant give it to him, in fact. Shotgun didn’t hold with government-issue firearms. He shot rebels with his old Remington pump-action that he’d used to kill quail back here at home.”

  Now Mary Alice was yanking on my shirttail. We knew kids lie all the time, but Grandma was no kid, and she could tell some whoppers. Of course the reporter had been lied to big-time up at the cafe, but Grandma’s lies were more interesting, even historical. They made Shotgun look better while they left Effie Wilcox in the dust.

  “He was always a crack shot,” she said, winding down. “Come home from the war with a line of medals bigger than his chest.”

  “And yet he died penniless,” the reporter said in a thoughtful voice.

  “Oh well, he’d sold off them medals and give the money to war widows and orphans.”

  A change crossed the reporter’s narrow face. Shotgun had gone from kill-crazy gunslinger to war-hero marksman. Philanthropist, even. He fumbled his notepad out and was scribbling. He thought he’d hit pay dirt with Grandma. “It’s all a matter of record,” she said. “You could look it up.”

  He was ready to wire in a new story; “Civil War Hero Handpicked by U. S. Grant Called to the Great Campground in the Sky.” Something like that. “And he never married?”

  “Never did,” Grandma said. “He broke Effie Wilcox’s heart. She’s bitter still, as you see.”

  “And now he goes to a pauper’s grave with none to mark his passing,” the reporter said, which may have been a sample of his writing style.

  “They tell you that?” Grandma said. “They’re pulling your leg, sonny. You drop by The Coffee Pot and tell them you heard that Shotgun’s being buried from my house with full honors. He’ll spend his last night above ground in my front room, and you’re invited.”

  The reporter backed down the porch stairs, staggering under all this new material. “Much obliged, ma’am,” he said.

  “Happy to help,” Grandma said.

  Mary Alice had turned loose of my shirttail. What little we knew about grown-ups didn’t seem to cover Grandma. She turned on us. “Now I’ve got to change my shoes and walk all the way up to the lumberyard in this heat,” she said, as if she hadn’t brought it all on herself. Up at the lumberyard they’d be knocking together Shotgun Cheatham’s coffin and sending the bill to the county, and Grandma had to tell them to bring that coffin to her house, with Shotgun in it.

  * * *

  By nightfall a green pine coffin stood on two sawhorses in the bay window of the front room, and people milled in the yard. They couldn’t see Shotgun from there because the coffin lid blocked the view. Besides, a heavy gauze hung from the open lid and down over the front of the coffin to veil him. Shotgun hadn’t been exactly fresh when they discovered his body. Grandma had flung open every window, but there was a peculiar smell in the room. I’d only had one look at him when they’d carried in the coffin, and that was enough. I’ll tell you just two things about him. He didn’t have his teeth in, and he was wearing bib overalls.

  The people in the yard still couldn’t believe Grandma was holding open house. This didn’t stop the reporter who was haunting the parlor, looking for more flesh to add to his story. And it didn’t stop Mrs. L. J. Weidenbach, the banker’s wife, who came leading her father, an ancient codger half her size in full Civil War Union blue.

  “We are here to pay our respects at this sad time,” Mrs. Weidenbach said when Grandma let them in, “When I told Daddy that Shotgun had been decorated by U. S. Grant and wounded three times at Bull Run, it brought it all back to him, and we had to come.” Her old daddy wore a forage cap and a decoration from the Grand Army of the Republic, and he seemed to have no idea where he was. She led him up to the coffin, where they admired the flowers. Grandma had planted a pitcher of glads from her garden at either end of the pine box. In each pitcher she’d stuck an American flag.

  A few more people willing to brave Grandma came and went, but finally we were down to the reporter, who’d settled into the best chair, still nosing for news. Then who appeared at the front door but Mrs. Effie Wilcox, in a hat.

  “Mrs. Dowdel, I’ve come to set with you overnight and see our brave old soldier through his Last Watch.”

  In those days people sat up with a corpse through the final night before burial. I’d have bet money Grandma wouldn’t let Mrs. Wilcox in for a quick look, let alone overnight. But of course Grandma was putting on the best show possible to pull wool over the reporter’s eyes. Little though she seemed to think of townspeople, she thought less of strangers. Grandma waved Mrs. Wilcox inside, and in she came, her eyes all over the place. She made for the coffin, stared at the blank white gauze, and said, “Don’t he look natural?”

  Then she drew up a chair next to the reporter. He flinched because he had it on good authority that she’d just been let out of an insane asylum. “Warm, ain’t it?” she said straight at him, but looking everywhere.

  The crowd outside finally dispersed. Mary Alice and I hung at the edge of the room, too curious to be anywhere else.

  “If you’re here for the long haul,” Grandma said to the reporter, “how about a beer?” He looked encouraged, and Grandma left him to Mrs. Wilcox, which was meant as a punishment. She came back with three of her home brews, cellar-cool. She brewed beer to drink herself, but these three bottles were to see the reporter through the night. She wouldn’t have expected her worst enemy, Effie Wilcox, to drink alcohol in front of a man.

  In normal circumstances the family recalls stories about the departed to pass the long night hours. But these circumstances weren’t normal, and quite a bit had already been recalled about Shotgun Cheatham anyway.

  Only a single lamp burned, and as midnight drew on, the glads drooped in their pitchers. I was wedged in a corner, beginning to doze, and Mary Alice was sound asleep on a throw rug. After the second beer the reporter lolled, visions of Shotgun’s Civil War glories no doubt dancing in his head. You could hear the tick of the kitchen clock. Grandma’s chin would drop, then jerk back. Mrs. Wilcox had been humming “Rock of Ages,” but tapered off after “let me hide myself in thee.”

  Then there was the quietest sound you ever heard. Somewhere between a rustle and a whisper. It brought me around, and I saw Grandma sit forward and cock her head. I blinked to make sure I was awake, and the whole world seemed to listen. Not a leaf trembled outside.

  But the gauze that hung down over the open coffin moved. Twitched.

  Except for Mary Alice, we all saw it. The reporter sat bolt upright, and Mrs. Wilcox made a little sound.

  Then nothing.

  Then the gauze rippled as if a hand had passed across it from the other side, and in one place it wrinkled into a wad as if somebody had snagged it. As if a feeble hand had reached up from the coffin depths in one last desperate attempt to live before the dirt was shoveled in.

  Every hair on my head stood up.

  “Naw,” Mrs. Wilcox said, strangling. She pulled back in her chair, and her hat went forward. “Naw!”

  The reporter had his chair arms in a death grip. “Sweet mother of—”

  But Grandma rocketed out of her chair. “Whoa, Shotgun!” she bellowed. “You’ve had your time, boy. You don’t get no more!”

&n
bsp; She galloped out of the room faster than I could believe. The reporter was riveted, and Mrs. Wilcox was sinking fast.

  Quicker than it takes to tell, Grandma was back, and already raised to her aproned shoulder was the twelve-gauge Winchester from behind the woodbox. She swung it wildly around the room, skimming Mrs. Wilcox’s hat, and took aim at the gauze that draped the yawning coffin. Then she squeezed off a round.

  I thought that sound would bring the house down around us. I couldn’t hear right for a week. Grandma roared out, “Rest in peace, you old—” Then she let fly with the other barrel.

  The reporter came out of the chair and whipped completely around in a circle. Beer bottles went everywhere. The straight route to the front door was in Grandma’s line of fire, and he didn’t have the presence of mind to realize she’d already discharged both barrels. He went out a side window, headfirst, leaving his hat and his notepad behind. Which he feared more, the living dead or Grandma’s aim, he didn’t tarry to tell. Mrs. Wilcox was on her feet, hollering, “The dead is walking, and Mrs. Dowdel’s gunning for me!” She cut and ran out the door and into the night.

  When the screen door snapped to behind her, silence fell. Mary Alice hadn’t moved. The first explosion had blasted her awake, but she naturally thought that Grandma had killed her, so she didn’t bother to budge. She says the whole experience gave her nightmares for years after.

  A burned-powder haze hung in the room, cutting the smell of Shotgun Cheatham. The white gauze was black rags now, and Grandma had blown the lid clear of the coffin. She’d have blown out all three windows in the bay, except they were open. As it was, she’d pitted her woodwork bad and topped the snowball bushes outside. But apart from scattered shot, she hadn’t disfigured Shotgun Cheatham any more than he already was.

  Grandma stood there savoring the silence. Then she turned toward the kitchen with the twelve-gauge loose in her hand. “Time you kids was in bed,” she said as she trudged past us.

  Apart from Grandma herself, I was the only one who’d seen her big old snaggletoothed tomcat streak out of the coffin and over the windowsill when she let fire. And I supposed she’d seen him climb in, which gave her ideas. It was the cat, sitting smug on Shotgun Cheatham’s breathless chest, who’d batted at the gauze the way a cat will. And he sure lit out the way he’d come when Grandma fired just over his ragged ears, as he’d probably used up eight lives already.

  The cat in the coffin gave Grandma Dowdel her chance. She didn’t seem to have any time for Effie Wilcox, whose tongue flapped at both ends, but she had even less for newspaper reporters who think your business is theirs. Courtesy of the cat, she’d fired a round, so to speak, in the direction of each.

  Though she didn’t gloat, she looked satisfied. It certainly fleshed out her reputation and gave people new reason to leave her in peace. The story of Shotgun Cheatham’s last night above ground kept The Coffee Pot Cafe fully engaged for the rest of our visit that summer. It was a story that grew in the telling in one of those little towns where there’s always time to ponder all the different kinds of truth.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  RICHARD PECK has written more than thirty novels, and in the process has become one of America’s most highly respected writers for the young. A versatile author, he is beloved by middle graders as well as young adults for his mysteries and coming-of-age novels. He lives in New York City and spends a great deal of time traveling around the country to speaking engagements at conferences, schools, and libraries.

  Mr. Peck is the first children’s book author to have received a National Humanities Medal. In addition, he has won a number of other major awards for the body of his work, including the Margaret A. Edwards Award, the ALAN Award, and the Medallion from the University of Southern Mississippi. Virtually every publication and association in the field of children’s literature has recommended his books, including Mystery Writers of America, which twice gave him their Edgar Award. His A Year Down Yonder won a Newbery Medal, and A Long Way from Chicago was a National Book Award Finalist and a Newbery Honor Book. A Season of Gifts is his newest novel starring the incomparable Grandma Dowdel.

  A LONG WAY FROM CHICAGO

  What happens when Joey and his sister, Mary Alice—two city slickers from Chicago—make their annual summer visits to Grandma Dowdel’s seemingly sleepy Illinois town?

  August 1929: They see their first corpse, and he isn’t resting easy.

  August 1930: The Cowgill boys terrorize the town, and Grandma fights back.

  August 1931: Joey and Mary Alice help Grandma trespass, poach, catch the sheriff in his underwear, and feed the hungry—all in one day.

  And there’s more, as Joey and Mary Alice make seven unforgettable summer trips to Grandma’s—each one funnier than the year before. Now an old man, Joe Dowdel remembers these seven summers and the “larger than life” woman who outsmarted the law and used blackmail to help those in need.

  A YEAR DOWN YONDER

  And when Mary Alice turns fifteen, she faces a whole long year living with Grandma while her parents rebuild their lives after the tough times of the Great Depression. All Mary Alice can know for certain is this: When trying to predict how life with Grandma might turn out . . . better not.

  In the tradition of American humorists from Mark Twain to Flannery O’Connor, award-winning author Richard Peck creates a memorable world filled with characters who, like Grandma herself, are larger than life and twice as entertaining.

  Looking for more?

  Visit Penguin.com for more about this author and a complete list of their books.

  Discover your next great read!