The Christmas Sweater

by Glenn Beck

  One time, about three years earlier, I’d found a bottle of lemon-lime Alka-Seltzer in our kitchen cabinet, where we stored all the medicine. I saw the fizz that it made when you dropped a tablet in water, and figured that it was “instant pop.” For the next few nights I waited until my parents had gone to bed, and then I savored the taste of what I thought was an exclusive (albeit disgusting) drink. I didn’t understand why people loved pop so much, but I figured it would grow on me.

  My clandestine soda factory was put out of business a week later when my mother had heartburn, found the half-empty bottle, and confronted me. I’d told her that I was sorry for drinking all the instant pop. She probably would’ve been mad if she’d been able to stop laughing.

  As I now savored my real soda pop I noticed that Mr. Ashton was wearing a suit and tie, something that I’d never seen my father or grandfather wear outside of church. I wasn’t a clothing expert, but his suit looked expensive, and I could tell that Mr. Ashton’s shirt wasn’t exactly homemade.

  I was so busy noticing all the expensive things they had that I didn’t notice how little the Ashtons actually spoke to each other.

  About halfway through dinner Mr. Ashton broke the silence by saying that he had a surprise. He had some work to do in Southern California, and he was going to take the family with him so they could all go to Disneyland for a week. To my surprise, Taylor didn’t look the least bit excited. In fact, he looked angry. “Oh, come on,” he said, “not again. I’m so sick of going there.”

  I couldn’t believe it. How many times had they gone? What kid could ever be sick of Disneyland? “If you guys want to go,” Taylor continued, “that’s fine, but I’m staying home.”

  There were a few moments of uncomfortable silence. I was prepared for Taylor to get the “Now you listen here, young man” speech that I would’ve gotten had I made a comment like that, but it never came. Instead, Taylor’s mom simply replied, “Oh, well, maybe that would be okay.”

  What? I couldn’t believe this family!

  “You know, Taylor,” his father continued while staring down at his meal, “if that’s what you want to do, then I think it’s fine. The last thing I want to do is drag you around to someplace you don’t want to go. Maybe we can find somewhere else to go later in the summer.”

  I wanted to shout out, “You can drag me around!” but I think I was still in shock. Not only did Taylor not want to go on vacation to California but he’d also told his parents he was going to stay home and they’d said yes! He was my new hero. It was as if Taylor had been a grown-up and his parents had treated him as such. My grandparents could sure learn a lot from Stan and Janice. They were the perfect family.

  “Thank you so much for having Eddie over for dinner,” my grandmother said through the rolled-down window of the Ashtons’ giant Continental.

  “You’re welcome. It’s nice to know that these two boys each have someone nearby for the summer.” The two women shared a look I recognized from watching my mother and Aunt Cathryn together.

  “We’ll have to invite…” My grandmother’s voice trailed off as she looked at Taylor.

  “Taylor…”

  “…Taylor over for a visit soon.”

  Mrs. Ashton drove away, and my grandmother stood, smiling, between me and the house.

  “What a nice turn of events, don’t you think, Eddie?”

  “I guess.” I walked past her and through the front door. She didn’t come in. In fact, she didn’t move at all. She just stood there looking at where I had been standing.

  I had never hurt my grandmother like that before, but in that moment I didn’t really even notice. I was too busy thinking about how great Taylor’s life was and wishing I could be part of his family. I unknowingly made a decision that would impact Taylor and me greatly: I planned to erase the past by ignoring it.

  And Grandma was part of the past.

  Nine

  I spent a lot of time at the Ashtons’ house that summer. Aside from age, Janice had nothing in common with my mother, and that was okay with me. I didn’t want to be around anyone that reminded me of all that I’d done and said, or, more importantly, not done and said.

  I didn’t realize it until much later, but Mrs. Ashton was very lonely. I never saw her drunk, but she hardly ever spent an afternoon without a crystal tumbler nearby. At the time I just assumed that it was all part of the life that “rich” people lived. It seemed glamorous. I felt at home.

  Mrs. Ashton’s whole life revolved around Taylor. She spent nearly all of her time and attention on making him, and now “us,” happy. It was a relief, a respite from what had become my daily reality. There wasn’t any past with the Ashtons, only a future. And it was bright.

  Their family was very different from what I was used to. What they didn’t have in laughter, they more than made up for with money. Taylor didn’t wear bread bags for boots (in fact he didn’t wear boots at all if he didn’t want to), and his parents would give him a bike any time he wanted one. I saw at least three of them sitting idly in their garage next to the Continental.

  Mr. Ashton was as tall and quiet as the house became when he was in it, which wasn’t all that often. His sales job required a lot of travel, but every time he came home from a trip he brought another gift with him. I thought it was great that he and Taylor never talked much. No talking meant no lectures.

  One recent trip ended with Taylor getting a brand-new TV game called Pong. Another time, after he’d been gone a long time, Mr. Ashton came back with a brand-new twenty-five-inch color television set. It was beautiful. Who needed to talk when everything was “in living color”?

  When I was growing up, our TV was so small that I would sit on the floor right in front of it to see better. Mom always told me that I would get cancer or go blind sitting so close to the TV set, but Dad said she was just trying to scare me. In retrospect, I think he only said that because I was his personal remote control. Every once in a while he would call out, “Eddie, four. Five. Try seven.”

  It never seemed right that I was the one who sat close to the television and he was the one who got the cancer.

  Taylor didn’t know how great he had it. Just looking around their modern, Brady Bunch–style house, you could tell they were happy. They even had a real remote control. Taylor would probably never get cancer or go blind and not even know why.

  After a while, I began to convince myself that I was a part of their family—even more than my “real” family just a few farms away. They didn’t have any problems, and life there was easy; it was what a real family was supposed to be like. Mom had always told me that “stuff” couldn’t make you happy, but I realized that she had been wrong. Taylor had a bunch of stuff, and he was happier than I had ever been.

  What at first seemed like a long walk to Taylor’s got shorter and shorter each time I made it. One of the farms along the way was overgrown and seemed abandoned, but on one of my trips home, I discovered that I was wrong.

  “Afternoon,” the well-worn man said as he leaned on one of the few sturdy sections of fence along the road. He was about as old as my grandfather but leaner and quite a bit shorter. His eyes looked like they belonged to a much younger man, but his face was nearly caked with dirt, and his full, speckled beard sprang from his face as if trying to escape. If I hadn’t been standing outside his farm, I’d have thought he was homeless.

  “Hello,” I answered, stopping a few feet away from him.

  “On your way from your pal’s house, are ya?”

  “Yes, sir,” I answered, uncomfortable that he knew where I was coming from.

  “I’ll bet you feel at home there,” he said with understanding.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, we’ve both got things to do and people to see. You have a nice evening.”

  “You, too,” I answered. I took a few cautious steps, then turned to see if he was watching me.

  He was.

  “Sorry to hear about your mother,” he said in a voice
that had changed so drastically from what I’d just heard that it could have come from a different person. His eyes were fixed on mine, but his face appeared completely relaxed. “But all is well, son. All is well.”

  Those words, my grandfather’s words, instantly brought me back to Mom’s funeral. I couldn’t move or even look away; the man’s gentle face and deep blue eyes had transformed into something else. My mother’s face came to me so intensely that I could no longer see the stranger—I could only see the last few days of her life running backward in front of me.

  She was painted and peaceful in a cheap casket.

  She was tired and hurt in the car headed home from the farm.

  She was disappointed and humiliated standing over a sweater on my floor.

  She was forcing down a bitter square of Baker’s chocolate.

  Grief exploded within me, forcing out sobs and streams of tears, which poured down my cheeks. I sank to the ground and sat in the rough grass, cross-legged, with my face in my hands. I cried for the first time since my mother died.

  After my shoulders heaved for the last time, I looked through bleary eyes toward the fence and the stranger.

  I couldn’t believe it—he was smiling. He began walking back toward the farmhouse. Then he stopped and turned around, his eyes meeting mine. “Until we meet again, Eddie.”

  “Grandpa, who lives in that run-down farm next door?” I asked that night at dinner, still a little shaken from my earlier encounter.

  “Nobody, Eddie. It’s been vacant for six or seven years. The Johnsons still own it, but they moved back East.”

  “Well, somebody’s over there. A man was at the fence, and he talked to me.”

  My grandfather stopped chasing peas around his plate and narrowed his gaze. His bushy white eyebrows almost met above his nose. “What did he say?”

  I wasn’t sure whether or not to answer. “He was trying to be nice, I think. He knew I was coming from Taylor’s house, and he just wanted to say hello.”

  “What else?” Grandpa asked, noticing my hesitation.

  “He knew about Mom and said he was real sorry but that everything would be okay.”

  Grandpa looked over at my grandmother and then back to me. “Everybody knows everybody’s business on this road, Eddie, and I guess it’s possible some neighbor was checking up on the place.”

  “He kind of looked like he belonged there.”

  Grandma tried to hide it, but I caught her flash a worried expression to Grandpa. I knew the look well, because I’d seen it about a year earlier. We were sitting around the table having dinner when the phone rang. Grandma answered and, without saying a word, gave Grandpa the same look that I’d just seen.

  A neighbor who lived at the end of the street was away and someone had broken into his house. As word spread, guys from the neighborhood ran toward the home—rifles in hand. They reached the Bauer farm just in time to catch the guy as he ran out the side door. They pinned him down and held him at gunpoint—actually, at eight gunpoints—until the police arrived.

  The cop could barely contain his laughter as he walked up and saw the impromptu vigilante mob that had formed. “Boy, you’re either not from around here or you’re the dumbest criminal I’ve ever met,” he said to the man with his face in the dirt. “This has got to be the safest road in the county. These people would give the shirt off their backs or the bullets out of their guns for each other.”

  The men all silently nodded and smiled to themselves in a rare moment of recognition about how wonderful life was on their little road. The officer continued, “Normally I’m called out to protect the homeowner, but in your case, I actually think I’m here to protect you.” The men all laughed as the would-be robber was put into cuffs.

  Now, as I saw the same worried glance on my grandmother’s face, I knew exactly what it meant: Grandpa would be personally checking out the Johnsons’ place—and he’d likely be bringing David Bauer and some of the other neighbors, along with a few Winchester lever-action rifles, with him.

  I went to bed early, but I was afraid to sleep. My mother had been a character in some of my dreams before, but always in a dull, black-and-white way. I’d never had a dream so vivid as what I’d experienced on the road that day—and I didn’t want them to start now.

  Unlike the Ashtons, my grandparents had an old color console Zenith television set that they’d bought at an auction. About fifteen minutes before we were going to watch a show, my grandfather would say, “I’m gonna go in and warm up the set.” It took forever before the picture finally came on and looked right (with “right” in this case meaning colors that always made everyone look a little seasick).

  The one show that my grandparents never missed was Lawrence Welk’s. Grandma loved him, but now that I’d seen Taylor’s TV, Lawrence Welk only annoyed me. The show was anything but “Wonderful, wonderful!” and watching him was a constant reminder that I wasn’t able to see Starsky and Hutch or even Happy Days, which Grandma called a “cute” show, except for “that Fonzie Boy.”

  But while I hated Lawrence Welk, I loved the idea of television. It amazed me that a camera somewhere in Welkland captured him leading an orchestra and that a moving image somehow made it through the air to the big device humming in the living room. When Grandma turned the television off, I would keep watching as the picture collapsed on itself until nothing was left but a fading dot in the center of the screen.

  That night, after tossing and turning in bed for an hour, I snuck down to the family room and turned the television on. The control made a thunk so loud that I was sure one of my grandparents would come to see what the noise was. I didn’t dare turn the channel selector; it made even more noise than the power switch.

  As I waited for the picture to materialize, I noticed for the first time how old their TV set was. I wondered if it bothered my grandmother that Grandpa couldn’t afford a new one. It sure bothered me.

  I sat right next to the screen—way too close to avoid getting cancer or going blind. That was when the cast of characters in my new life at the farm became complete: There were my grandparents; Taylor and his folks; the stranger next door; and my three newest friends—Johnny, Ed, and Doc.

  I watched The Tonight Show that night and, at least for an hour, escaped the farm and my thoughts. I would have watched all night, but the station signed off after the show ended, leaving me with an American flag waving as “The Star Spangled Banner” played in the background.

  Then there was just an Indian head on top of an odd circle—and I was alone again.

  Ten

  When I told Taylor that my grandparents only watched TV once a week and when we did it was Lawrence Welk, he was shocked. His parents let him watch whatever he wanted, as long as he finished his chores in the summer and his homework during the school year. Every Tuesday night he taunted me by watching Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley. His parents even let him stay up to watch some show called Soap. Taylor said it was about a puppet and some guy who thought he was invisible. Sounded pretty weird to me, but even puppets would’ve been better than Lawrence Welk.

  But while television was a great excuse for me to sleep over at Taylor’s house, the real reason I wanted to spend more time there was that the Ashtons treated me like a son. I imagined living there, Taylor and I hanging out and doing whatever we wanted, both of us so sick of Disneyland that we actually begged his parents to take us someplace new.

  “Grandma,” I said as I headed for the door late on a September afternoon, a green, tattered army-surplus knapsack that Grandpa had given me slung over one shoulder, “I’m goin’ over to Taylor’s for the night.”

  “No, you’re not, Eddie. You have spent three of the last seven nights there and I’m sure that you must be wearing out your welcome.”

  “The Ashtons don’t mind. Really. Call and ask them if you want.” I was trying out Taylor’s tactic of just telling them how it would be.

  “They are just too polite to say otherwise.” Grandma wasn’t
caving as easily as the Ashtons did. “You need to stay here tonight. I’ll make Sloppy Joes.”

  “I don’t want Sloppy Joes. Stan and Janice were going to take Taylor and me out to eat. We had plans!”

  My grandmother took a few moments to get over her shock at my casual use of the Ashtons’ first names. She didn’t like it. “I’m sorry that my cooking isn’t up to your new five-star standards, but if you had plans, maybe you should have run them by your grandfather or me first.” Grandma’s voice was kind but firm.

  “But Grandma”—I had one final bullet left in my chamber—“school starts next week, and after that I’ll only get to sleep over there on weekends.”

  “No, Eddie. Not tonight. In fact, you won’t be sleeping over there until you are settled in at school and we see how your homework is coming.”

  I couldn’t believe it. I’d had enough. I took my knapsack by one strap and threw it. I only intended for it to go a few feet, but I’d given it a good swing. It flew through the air and crashed against the wall, leaving a big dent in the plaster.

  Grandma stared at me in disbelief for a moment. “You are very lucky that your grandfather wasn’t here to see that.” The kindness had disappeared from her voice.

  “Yeah, I’m feeling really lucky lately!” The words escaped from my mouth as I stormed up to my room. My grandfather had only laid a hand on me that one time, but I couldn’t even imagine how he was going to react to how I’d just treated my grandmother. I was sure he would beat me with some exotic farm implement.

  Deep inside I also knew that I deserved whatever punishment I would get. That pushed me even further away.

  About an hour later I heard Grandpa’s pickup backfire as he pulled up the driveway. The noise made me remember how much I hated that old truck. A few moments later I heard the front door open and close and then my grandmother’s muffled, calm voice. Grandpa’s voice answered and was not nearly as calm.