A Shiloh Christmas

by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

Mrs. Dawes opens the door, and I can tell I come at a bad time, ’cause she looks even more tired than usual, and Ruthie is standing next to her, tears on her face. That girl ever stop crying? I wonder.

  “Well, for goodness’ sake, Marty, how nice!” Mrs. Dawes says, looking at the cookies there beneath the plastic wrap. “Please come in.”

  The wind’s blowing right hard, so I’m glad to step out of it for just a minute, and don’t want to drop the tray.

  “Don’t tell me your mother baked all these herself !” she says.

  “Yes, ma’am. She just wanted your family to have some,” I say.

  Ruthie’s on tiptoe, looking at the cookies, but it don’t stop the tears. Mrs. Dawes puts one hand on her head.

  “Ruthie’s so disappointed that—”

  Suddenly Ma’s at the door, and Mrs. Dawes opens it for her.

  “Hi, Judith. Marty’s helping me with deliveries this year, and your card just blew off the box. I chased it across the lawn,” Ma says, laughing, and hands it to her. Then she sees Ruthie. “Oh, sweetheart! Why the tears?” she asks.

  “Ruthie’s disappointed because we can’t go to her grandmother’s for Christmas,” Mrs. Dawes says. “This is something the girls really look forward to each year, but my mom just came down with the flu that’s going around Parkersburg, so we’ve had to cancel our plans.”

  And now Ruthie’s bawling all over again, and I see Rachel standing back in the hall.

  And in two shakes, Ma says, “Then you’re coming to our house for Christmas dinner. That’s all there is to it. We’d be delighted to have you, really!”

  I stare at Mom.

  Ruthie’s face goes from sad to celebration in three seconds flat.

  Mrs. Dawes looks all flustered. “Oh, Lou. I—I don’t know—”

  “Oh, Mommy, can’t we go?” Ruthie begs, tugging at her arm.

  “I just—Jacob’s not here, and—”

  “Judith, you know he has the day off already. Please do this for your girls,” Ma says. Then she sees Rachel back by the stairs and says, “Rachel, wouldn’t you like to come?”

  Mrs. Dawes turns around. “Would you like that, Rachel?”

  And Rachel gives her shy little smile. “Yes,” she says.

  Mrs. Dawes turns back. “All right, then. And thank you so much for the cookies. They look delicious.”

  “One o’clock, Christmas Day,” Ma says. “We’re casual. And of course we’ll see you at the Christmas Eve service.”

  When we’re back in the car, Ma says, “I can’t believe I got her to say yes. Did you see the look on Ruthie’s face when I invited them? You know the girls want to come.”

  “Ma . . . ,” I say.

  “And I think Rachel would enjoy it, don’t you?”

  “Ma,” I say again. “Did you remember Judd Travers will be there too?”

  And suddenly Ma gets that blank look on her face, and her hands go limp on the steering wheel. But she recovers and starts the engine. “Marty,” she says, “we’ll deal with it.”

  seventeen

  AS WE HEAD TO DOC Murphy’s, Ma and I are trying to remember all the different jobs I did for him this past year to pay him for stitching up Shiloh. I washed his windows, dug up an old fence and filled the postholes, weeded his garden, scrubbed his kitchen floor, cleaned out his garage, and finally put up his Christmas tree.

  He’s so glad to see those cookies that he slips a finger under the plastic wrap and slides one out that very minute, taking a bite of the butterscotch swirl.

  “Tell your mom they get better every year,” he says. And then, “Got something for you.” Goes to his desk and comes back with an envelope. “Here you go.”

  I wish him a Merry Christmas and get in the car. While Ma’s driving on to the next house, I open the envelope. Then I choke.

  “Ma!” I cry out.

  She almost slams on the brakes. “Marty!” she says.

  Sounds like we’re just getting introduced.

  I am staring at a check for five hundred dollars! Then I read the note out loud:

  Marty: For a year I’ve watched you work off your debt to me. You never complained. Never asked how much longer you’d have to work, or said you’d expected it to be paid off by now, though you must have been thinking it. You have the qualities to become a good veterinarian, and if that’s what you decide to do with your life, I hope this check will be the start of your college fund. Doc Murphy

  Ma turns the car around, drives back up the road a piece, pulls in the driveway, and invites Doc to Christmas dinner.

  Our happiness carries right over into supper, and even though Dad’s bone-tired from delivering Christmas mail, he’s feeling pretty proud of me. Proud of his whole family, right then. That’s the way happiness is, you know. Contagious. Dara Lynn and Becky got the giggles, and Ma’s so happy about getting her cookies delivered, and about that check, that when she realizes she had some stewed tomatoes on the stove top and forgot to serve them, she just laughs and says we’ll eat them along with the cookies, and sets ’em both on the table. Shiloh makes his way from one of us to the other. Figures he might as well get in on the celebration, we got any crumbs to spare.

  Since we’re all going to church Monday night, Christmas Eve, Dad stays home from service the next day and heads over across the creek to help put up the frame of a new house for one that burned down. Belonged to the Keegans, a young couple expecting a new baby, their second child, in February. Judd goes over with him, and Sunday afternoon a number of men from church arrive in their work clothes, including Brother Hatch, everybody wanting to help this family that probably needs a place to go more than anyone.

  I’m there too, doing whatever anybody needs—pound a board in place, look for a different kind of pliers, pour somebody a cup of coffee, lift a concrete block. Couple women arrive in the afternoon with ham sandwiches and apples and more of Ma’s cookies. Nice to see Judd working right alongside the rest. Never had no mechanical training, but they say he picks up the work fast at Whelan’s Garage, and he seems to know the basics of building a house.

  I’m feeling real good about being there with all these men, helping build a new home for a new baby. Being treated like a man too—handed a cup of coffee just like everybody else.

  We work until it’s getting so dark we can’t see much, and my hands are stiff from the cold, even though I got work gloves on. So finally we all pack up our tools and cover the unused lumber, everybody in a good mood, Christmas just two days away. Dad’s whistling “O Come All Ye Faithful,” and when Brother Hatch hears it, he starts to sing.

  And then, wouldn’t you know it, another voice joins in, and then another, and here’s this pack of tired men, singing together in the frosty air, smiling at one another as first one, then another, climbs in his car and drives away.

  Next morning, Christmas Eve day, Ma’s got a lot to do in the kitchen, and I know I can help most by keeping the girls from bothering her, so I agree to play Monopoly with Dara Lynn. We let Becky be the banker. We tell her how much to pay out and how much to collect, and meanwhile she arranges all the extra houses and hotels in patterns off the board and has her own little game going on the side. Ma gives me a grateful look as she rolls out the crust for a pie.

  In the afternoon, she takes index cards with the names of all our guests on them, and asks Becky and Dara Lynn to draw little Christmas decorations on the sides with green and red felt-tip pens, just so I can have a break. I put the Monopoly game away, and the second I get my jacket from the closet, Shiloh’s up and ready for his hike. Don’t think he cares all that much for the leash, but he can go pretty far on it, and sometimes I think he forgets it’s there.

  We walk down to the bridge, and this time, just like the last, Shiloh trots on across. Guess he’s forgiven Judd for all the old meanness. I’m wondering how in the world Shiloh was able to track Judd’s white dog and bring him back, unless maybe he could smell Judd’s scent on him somehow and figured that dog should be out in ou
r tent too. Wonder if he ran into any of those raccoons along the way.

  If there were Ten Commandments for Dogs, I know what the first three would be: thou shalt be loyal, thou shalt be kind, and thou shalt be brave.

  When I get back, I help Ma in the kitchen—peel potatoes and onions and chop up cranberries. We’re all hoping Dad will be home in time to go to the Christmas Eve service. Last year he didn’t get back from the post office till eight at night. We know he’ll be tired no matter what.

  But this time he’s home by six, and we all of us go to church. Ma asks me to help the girls hang up their stockings before we leave, because it will be past Becky’s bedtime when we get home, and she’s grumpy when she’s tired.

  Dara Lynn won’t do it unless I do it too, so I find me a clean tube sock with red and blue stripes at the top. Dara Lynn first comes out with a kneesock, biggest sock she can find, but I tell the girls that Santa knows that Ma’s trying to keep things simple this year—all our extra money going to the new addition—so he’ll do his part by leaving only a little. I tell them to find their prettiest sock, not the biggest, and soon we got three socks hanging in weird places in the living room, on account of we don’t have any fireplace. One sock’s on a drawer handle, one’s on a lamp knob, and I got mine caught between the Bible and Favorite Bedtime Stories in the bookcase.

  We ooh and aah at all the houses lit up along the way as we drive to church. And when we get inside the sanctuary, it’s got candles at the windows and red and white flowers on both sides of the pulpit. Becky loves that we sing songs she knows—“Away in a Manger” and “O Little Town of Bethlehem”—but I can see by her lips that when she don’t know all the words, she makes them up.

  Preacher Dawes has put aside sin and blasphemy this time; he reads the Christmas story from the book of Luke, about Mary and Joseph being turned away at the inn. And then he wonders how many of us would recognize Jesus and take him in if he came today.

  After the service, someone turns out the lights, so all we’ve got is candlelight, and Brother Hatch leads us in “Silent Night.” When we sing the last verse, he tells us, we should sing it real soft and make our way out to our cars.

  I like that. We’re singing as we go, and the preacher’s at the door, just smiling and nodding as we pass by. When the last verse is finished, Mrs. Maxwell plays it again to make sure everybody has a chance to sing all the way out to the parking lot. I think about the men singing as they went to their cars the day before—the good feeling I had then and the good feeling I got now. And I’m thinking that my own idea of what religion should be is something that brings people together, don’t separate ’em.

  We talk about the sermon on the drive home, Christmas lights burning in the houses all along the road. Dad asks us would we recognize Jesus, and I say it depends. If a woman riding a donkey came up to our house wanting a place to sleep, I think we’d pay attention, Jesus or not. Figure the whole neighborhood would be out just to see the donkey.

  “I wouldn’t turn them away,” says Becky. “Jesus could sleep in my bed and I’d sleep with Dara Lynn.”

  “Some people believe that there’s a little bit of Jesus in every one of us, and we just don’t recognize it,” says Ma.

  I think about that, and about the essay I wrote for Mr. Kelly. Maybe I was trying to say something like that. Anyway, Mr. Kelly gave me a good mark. Along the side he wrote, Excellent insight here, Marty. Check out the mistakes in grammar. But I very much enjoyed your essay. Well done.

  Christmas morning. We’re allowed to look in our stockings the minute we get up, but Ma’s got a rule: we don’t eat any candy until we have breakfast. She don’t want it in our stomachs without some scrambled eggs to land on.

  Becky’s squealing about a tiny little doll made out of cork and calico that I’m sure Ma made just for her, with a candy cane, a rubber frog for the bathtub, and some chocolates in red and green foil. Dara Lynn’s got a tiny calico purse and a harmonica, and I got a knit cap and a dog whistle, supposed to be so high-pitched only dogs can hear it. Dara Lynn carries on about how Santa knows just what we want, and then she puts a big red bow on the back of Shiloh’s collar. Looks like a hair ribbon behind his ear.

  “Get that thing off my dog!” I tell her.

  “Oh, it’s Christmas, Marty,” she says, and I let it stay as long as Shiloh will put up with it. Her cat has one too—a green one—that stays on for about three seconds; all Tangerine cares about is the end of the couch closest to our potbellied stove.

  After we’ve eaten our scrambled eggs and sausage and honey toast, we carry our dishes to the sink and gather over by the Christmas tree. Several packages been added to the ones I put there the day before.

  We open the presents the girls made first—a red-and-green macaroni necklace for Ma and bracelets for Dad and me, and we put ’em around our necks or on our wrists, and say “Just what we need to look Christmassy,” and Dara Lynn points out we each got a red-and-green pot holder to go with it, and we exclaim some more.

  After that, everyone opens their gifts from me—the free things I got from the animal clinic. Since all anybody got so far was macaroni necklaces, my gifts don’t look so cheap, and they like them, every single one. Dad’s happy the key chain flashlight gives off more light than you would think, and Ma says she’ll hang up that dish towel for everybody to see when they come to dinner.

  Even though Ma’s gift from Dad was to be the icicle lights, he’s got a little box for her under the tree with a tiny perfume sample the stores were giving out, and Ma’s made a shirt for him that she sewed herself on the machine—a red-and-black flannel shirt. He takes off the one he’s wearing and puts it right on, ready for company.

  ’Course, Dara Lynn and Becky can’t wait to get to the bigger presents. Becky gets two, because hers are smaller, and a four-year-old always thinks that a big present is the best. In one box she got a stuffed pelican, you can store secrets in its pouch, and in the bigger one she got a microscope set for little kids, and I promise that as soon as all the presents are opened, I’ll show her what to do with it.

  I think she’s disappointed, ’cause it don’t look like anything she’d choose right off, but she’s got her nose in Dara Lynn’s wrapping paper, and in that box is a pair of knee-high boots with white fur around the top.

  “Ma, it’s the exact same thing that Corine has, and it’s just what I wanted most of all in the whole world!” Dara Lynn cries.

  And then I open the biggest box of all from Ma and Dad, and think how puny my gifts were compared to what they bought for us.

  “Handle it gently, Marty,” Ma says. And when I get the last of the tissue paper off, I lift out a lampshade that’s got the map of the world on it, and then the desk lamp itself, with a heavy white base. I stand it upright and put the shade on top, and when I get a bulb in the socket, plug it in and turn it on, the shade’s like a lighted map, and I can turn it around without the lamp turning. Not only that, but I discover that the base itself is a radio.

  “For your room, when you move into it,” Dad says.

  “Man!” I keep saying. “Man, this is really great!” I can’t wait to show it to David Howard. “Thank you.” And I feel sort of cheap, I didn’t pay a cent for the gifts I gave them. Then I think, well, I worked for them, so that’s the same thing, I guess.

  Becky’s tearing up ’cause she got a present she don’t know how to use, so we set the microscope up for her on the coffee table. Show her the slides that come with it—what a spider looks like flattened out and enlarged; a bee’s leg; a leaf . . .

  Dara Lynn wants to try it next. “You can try on my boots if I can have the microscope for a while,” she says to Becky.

  So Becky puts her feet in the boots—come clear up to the tops of her thighs—and she goes clomping around, happy as a clam, while Dara Lynn’s putting all sorts of weird things under the microscope—a hair off Shiloh, a piece of fingernail, a dead fly from off the windowsill—and the girls are squealing and carrying o
n how nasty things look when they’re bigger.

  Suddenly Dara Lynn looks at me and says, “I forgot!”

  She ducks back in her bedroom and comes out with another present for me. It’s sort of flat, about a foot square.

  “What’s this?” I say.

  “I was afraid it would get broken if I put it under the tree,” she says. “Go ahead. Open it up.”

  “Wow,” I say, and now I feel twice as bad for just giving her a little rubber mouse. “Wonder what it could be?”

  This time it appears not even Becky knows, ’cause she’s got one hand on my shoulder, face close to the wrapping paper.

  I guess I’ve opened it facedown. Looks to be a piece of cardboard with a rope handle at the top. I turn it over. Glued to the cardboard are short pieces of green macaroni, and they spell out the words DO NOT DISTURB.

  I look at Dara Lynn, but she’s all smiles.

  “To hang on the door of your room,” she tells me.

  An hour later I hear Judd dropping wood on our front porch. Dad let him use our hatchet, and he chopped up a lot of deadwood on our property. I’m wondering how Ma is going to tell him that she’s invited the Daweses to Christmas dinner.

  Judd knocks and comes in with an armload of kindling that’s just the right size for our stove. He’s stacking it, and I’m listening with both ears as Dad moves over to him and says in a low voice, “Judd, I got a favor to ask. When we found out that Pastor Dawes and his family couldn’t go to the grandmother’s house for Christmas on account of her having the flu, Lou invited them to come here.”

  I can see Judd’s back stiffen and he stands there straight, a piece of wood in one hand, the stove door open. But Dad goes on, “Now, I don’t always see eye to eye with the preacher, and I’d like you to sit down at my end of the table, and if you see I’ve started in on a subject that’s getting under his collar, will you give my foot a nudge? I’m trying to keep this a happy dinner for the kids.”

  Judd bends down and feeds the wood to the fire. Don’t say anything for a few seconds, and finally he says, “Yeah, if I don’t say something first. You may have to nudge my whole leg to get me to stop.”