by Kate Seredy
“May I run ahead now? Is it all right now to run and tell them?”
So near to their homes and people, and knowing the excitement the grown people were going to show, it was time for the boys to act superior and calm. Dick shrugged: “Go ahead, Sis, it’s your party.”
When she was out of hearing, Andy grunted: “Won’t mind at all if they give us a hand . . . now that WE have bagged it. There’ll be no holdin’ Gramp now. He got into many a scrap with city fellers who laughed at him, they won’t even believe we got bobtails here. Call them lynx or somethin’ and say they ain’t around these parts at all. Like your Pa. No use arguin’, you got to show them.”
Dick asked, his voice holding a hint of suspicion: “Did you . . . think we were going to?”
Andy stopped to frown at him. “NAW! You think I would’a taken her? But she is somethin’, Janet is, when you come to figure wasn’t actin’ like a girl at all. Plucky, that’s what she is.”
“Boy, that was something! Oh gee, I’m getting excited all over again,” Dick cried. “That sure was something, wasn’t it, Andy?”
“I guess it was. It sure was,” Andy agreed, his grin matching Dick’s. “Come now, heave again an’ . . . when they come . . . act natural like. You know!”
It was almost dark when they got to the spot where trail turned into road. Twin beams of car lights were topping the rise where the Preston house sat, turned and came rapidly nearer. The car was racing, they could hear the deep hum of the motor. It was Father’s truck. Dick waved and a blast of horn answered him. Then the truck screeched to a stop and people began to pile out. Father, Mother, Gran, Janet, Gramp and Granma Van Keuran, they were all there, surrounding the boys, exclaiming, shuddering, asking foolish questions. It was simply a marvelous reception, the most wonderful chance to meet with cool smiles and cooler answers, with the perfect attitude of patient boredom.
Finally Father took Andy by the arm. “Andrew, I apologize. I’m sorry I laughed at you.”
Andy, so cool up to now, blushed. “Guess it’s all right. I ain’t never sure of nothin’ but what I see . . . guess you’re the same. Guess you believe it now.”
“You’re darn right I do. Lord, what a narrow escape! Just look at the brute, as big as a Great Dane.”
Andy shrugged. “Wasn’t any danger at all. Not with Dick around, the way he plugged it between the eyes . . . cool like.”
Dick shook his head. “Don’t believe him, Dad. He shot first. Honest, I didn’t even hear my own gun.”
Father looked from one boy to the other. “Wasn’t any danger at all, huh? Three kids go for a hike and come home with a full-grown puma, that’s all. Darn you, kids, weren’t you scared at all?”
“Some. We sat a little, afterwards, shiverin’ like. But then it was all over. But it sure made me powerful hungry and now I aim to get my supper;’ Andy said in a new, very sure voice. “Got somethin’ good cookin’, Granma?”
“Make you some apple dumplin’s in a hurry if’n you’d like it, Andy boy,” Granma Van Keuran’s brand new, soft voice spoke and Andy answered: “Let me at them!”
He and Granma walked off toward their house and the men lifted the puma into the truck.
Home in their own kitchen, Father said: “Monday we’ll take it to have it stuffed, but before we do, I’ll drive up and down North Street in Middletown, shouting: “Seeing is believing, folks, my son just bagged a catamount! Want to have your picture taken with it, Dick?”
“Naw,” said Dick, in perfect imitation of Andy’s manly, deprecatory voice. “It wasn’t anything, Dad, not with Andy right there. It really wasn’t anything at all.” He smiled at Janet, who was contentedly stuffing herself with supper. “You know, Dad, Janet didn’t even scream when she saw it. But she screamed when the guns went off. Isn’t that just like a girl?”
CHAPTER XVII
A STAR TO SEE BY
JANET was far more interested in Christmas, now just a few days away, than in her adventure with the “critter.” She was getting impatient and sighed every hour:
“Why doesn’t Christmas hurry up a little? Days don’t go away at all now; they just sit and wait to be chased.”
Gran, for whom days seemed to be racing on winged feet, didn’t agree with her. She said she liked to wait for Christmas.
“Christmas never comes all of a sudden. It shouldn’t. It has to be hoped for and waited for with joy. It is like a beautiful, bright, glowing comet that one can see from very far away. It floats closer and closer, growing more beautiful as it comes. The few days before it finally envelops the whole world in a shining, warm light, are perhaps the best part of Christmas. They mean secret smiles at bulky, strange objects trying to hide in closets and under beds, or anywhere, where people are not supposed to look, but, because it’s Christmas, always do. They mean wonderful, spicy odors all through the house. They mean whispered conversations that suddenly stop when one comes into a room unexpectedly, and the bubbling feeling inside one that comes from the knowledge that there is another surprise being talked over and plotted with such secrecy that one can’t help but know about it. That is the best part of Christmas; the waiting, the preparing, the hoping for the joy to come.”
It was all there, in the Preston house. The whispers, the strange packages, the spicy odors of cookies and candies in the making, mingling with the best smell of all—the fresh, clean smell of the tree. The smiles were there and the shining eyes—all the beautiful warm, glowing light that would be Christmas Eve three days, two days from now, then tomorrow, then just a few hours . . . and it was Christmas Eve.
Their own Christmas tree was in the front parlor, shining and beautiful with glittering baubles, waiting to be lighted. Really lighted, for it had small candles fastened to every branch-tip. It was almost too much to wait until next day to light it; but they decided to, for no one wanted to worry about the tree catching on fire while they were at the Van Keurans’. Packages were waiting under the tree too; they’d be there tomorrow and one more night of waiting to open them was that much more pleasure.
After milking was finished, Father and Dick took over the kitchen for a real scrub. Gran, Mother, and Janet were already dressed; gifts for the Van Keurans were heaped by the door, waiting, with coats and shawls and overshoes, for the moment of departure.
It was, again, a cold night, but a starry one. The snow had disappeared from everywhere but the deep cuts along the road, and small patches of it gleamed blue-white along the north walls of buildings. The bright, shining light on top of a pole in the Van Keuran yard, was like a star that dropped down from the sky for a closer look at a real, miraculous Christmas, for stars may be very, very old, but few of them have ever seen a lost Christmas found again after twelve long years of darkness.
“A new light to see by,” Gran said very softly, when they stopped by the door of the Van Keuran house. “A new light for a new kind of life. I am terribly . . . foolishly happy, John,” she went on with a little, laughing catch in her voice, “that we . . . got lost in the wilderness that day in June.”
Father pulled at the handle of the old fashioned doorbell and he said: “And found the gate open into a haven at a dead-end road. Yes, so am I.”
The sweet, mellow tone of the bell ringing inside the house, sounded as if it was part of his voice, happy, contented. “We had a bell like this on our farm, didn’t we, Mom? I used to love it very much, somehow it meant . . . coming home. It still does.”
The door opened; Mr. Van Keuran stood inside the hall that glowed with the light of kindly, gentle old oil lamps. “Welcome, folks, welcome,” he reached out for them, his face as eager as his hands, to pull them inside.
“Em’ly is right busy in the kitchen, we got the parlor open an’ fire a’goin’ on the hearth,” he said, opening the door off the hallway and standing aside, waiting for them to enter.
It was a lovely room, but loveliest of all was the tree that almost touched the ceiling; a tree as beautiful as only hands, that have almost forgot
ten the sweetness of trimming a tree for a boy, could make it. It was blazing in beauty, with as many candles and as many colored trimmings as the branches would hold; as if this one tree and the two old people who trimmed it, were trying to make up for twelve dark Christmas Eves.
The room had been freshly painted and crisp curtains hung against sparkling windows, that were like mirrors reflecting the many lights. It was a warm, happy room, a glowing room, smiling, like someone who had been sleeping through a very long dark night and found, on awakening, a lovely new day around him.
Andy stuck his head in to say: “Supper is most done.” With his glowing ears and blazing blue eyes, the thick shock of yellow hair that refused to be tamed by comb and brush and with his wide grin he looked like a little hunk of Christmas posing as a boy. They followed him into the kitchen, for Granma Van Keuran had changed a lot, but not enough to tote victuals all over the house. The kitchen was the place for victuals to be cooked and eaten in; it always had been and, on that, she was never going to give in.
“Oh, this is lovely!” Mother expressed in words what they all felt and what every face was showing. Fresh, pale cream paint covered the once gloomy walls, curtains, as crisp and gay as curtains can be, billowed on the windows and the table was a picture of old fashioned charm. The red and white tablecloth was welcome itself under the soft light of an old, painted-china lamp. The light caught and sparkled into life on the many facets of fine old goblets, on the polished, thin, mellow silverware. The light wasn’t satisfied with the table as a playground; it jumped up onto the mantel, to laugh back from crystal candlesticks, found the golden eagle on the top of the clock, then spilled over onto the open cupboard to dance among the dishes and vases. Then perhaps tiring of glass and china that had, after all, no life of its own, the light shone into the many pairs of eyes and decided to stay there.
Two more pairs were added shortly, for Mike and Linka came, bringing sparkling lights of their own, in merry eyes, happy smiles and, wonder of wonders that no one knew about, a marvelous big, shining accordion.
There never was, and maybe, never will be a Christmas Eve meal like that. For food, there was everything that Granma Van Keuran once knew how to cook and, now again remembered. It was marvelous food; it seemed too bad that of all these people, ten of them all told, a little auction hound, called Funnyface, the eleventh of the party, was the only one who seemed to know that food is supposed to come first. Not foolish talk and smiles and carols and laughter. After food comes sleep, Funnyface knew that too and acted accordingly. She went to sleep by the stove and sighed with annoyance when silly humans disturbed her sleep with loud talk and laughter.
She slept right through the hour while dishes were duly washed and put away. She slept, when ten happy humans left her in sole possession of the kitchen, to go and sit around a tree, to sing carols, not very well, not very much in tune, for the voices of some were rusty; but they sang. The drooping ears of Funnyface twitched when she heard the sound never heard before in the Van Keuran house; Mike’s accordion going full blast and Mike and Linka his wife singing the old folk tunes of their country—the only memories of a much suffering small people that had remained sweet even to those who, so long ago, had to flee their homes to escape from the terror that was now reaching its ugly claws toward the haven they had found in the new world.
But even the recent news of that terror, could not overshadow the shining happiness that cast its glow over everyone in the old farmhouse that Christmas Eve. It tempered the happiness; all, except the sleeping little dog in the kitchen, were conscious of it; for men were dying in this unwanted war that the terror forced upon us, and there was a prayer in every heart in every home that night. A prayer for those who were giving their lives and a prayer for all, that they might not die in vain. That this, please God, be the last of wars and out of it peace would come to all mankind; peace, contentment, and happiness out of the darkness and grief.
But Funnyface slept on. She didn’t see or hear when Gramp Van Keuran came quietly back to the kitchen, alone. Or, he thought he was, but Andy, his face a little pale, came through the door without a sound. He waited until Gramp went to the window to stand, as he had for so many years, with hunched shoulders, his back to the light, just looking, just looking into the yard. Then Andy walked on quiet feet to stand beside the old man whom he loved so much.
For a while the clock on the mantel ticked very loud in the stillness. Then it struck the hour with a tired bell saying in so many chimes “It is eleven by the clock.”
After that, there was stillness again, so deep, that Andy thought he would be drowned in stillness. But, behind it, he heard, or thought he heard again, the tired voice of his Gramp as he clothed into words, so that Andy might know the story, the grief of that tragic Christmas Eve. A shiver ran through Andy again and again as he seemed to hear:
“The Lord have mercy, Jake Van Keuran, it was eleven by the clock when they died.”
Somehow, Andy found his voice, but it was barely a whisper:
“What do you see, Gramp? What do you hear?”
The old man turned his head slowly, to smile at Andy. “You know, boy, there ain’t a thing in that there yard but brightness. There ain’t a sound in that there yard lessen you call the stillness a song of peace.”
Then he turned his back on the window and put his hand on Andy’s shoulder.
“You got it all figured now, boy? What we were pond’rin’ on, about the folks next door?”
“I got it, Gramp. But havin’ it in your heart, the way you said we have, is not sayin’ it. Will I? Say it in words to them? I ain’t much for fine words, Gramp, I might mess it up considerable.”
“Don’t matter, Andy boy, if’n the words ain’t fine. Just say it, simple like, the way we figured.”
“All right, Gramp. I’ll try. Help me if I get tangled. Is it time, now “It’s almost Christmas mornin’, Andy, now is the time. See . . . why, it’s a mite after . . . after eleven by the clock. Time sure goes powerful fast if’n you are happy. Come on, boy.”
Inside again, where Andy’s first Christmas tree still glowed although the candles were burning very low, Gramp Van Keuran said:
“Well, Merry Christmas, neighbors, a very merry Christmas to all of us.” His voice did not tremble; it did not break on the words that no one had dared to say where he could hear them, for such long, dreary years. He smiled, an old, but very beautiful smile that was like a blessing on each face it touched. He pushed Andy forward with a little, gentle push, and said: “Speak up now, Andy boy, for the three of us.”
Janet, closest to them, heard the words and she clapped her hands:
“Oh Andy, you are going to make a speech!”
Andy’s self-conscious expression changed into a blushing frown. “NAW! I ain’t makin’ no speeches! Gramp an’ I, we figured a right pretty way of sayin’ what’s inside us . . . but that ain’t a speech. It wants out, powerful much . . . as much . . . as a . . . I can’t, Gramp,” he cried, his eyelashes blinking at Gramp, and he ran a finger inside his collar, very ill at ease. “ ‘Tain’t natural-like for me to say it . . .”
“Go on, Andy boy, like this, it was: ‘It wants out as much as a spring wants out when you blast the rock, chokin’ it down . . .’ ” Gramp prompted. Andy, squirming, looked helpless, but he brought out a few more words:
“An’ nobody has a way of knowin’ . . . how clear the spring is chokin’ . . . under the rock. . . . Naw, Gramp, it just ain’t natural for me to use them fine words . . . I can’t!”
The new voice of Granma Van Keuran spoke: “No need for it, Andy boy; the folks know what is inside us. Just say, polite-like, ‘Much obliged, friends,’ say it for all of us.”
Andy grinned at her. “Yes, Granma. That I can say. Much obliged.” His grin included all of them in the room; it was the wide, happy grin of a happy boy. He almost jumped across the room, to squirm between the window and the tree where Dick was standing. Dick was looking out and up, toward Fox Hill. J
anet ran after Andy and while the grown ups behind them went on talking, the three held a giggly, whispered conversation. There was a large basket under the tree. They knew what was in it; it said so on the handle: “A Merry Christmas to the little critters on Fox Hill,” Gran’s spidery, fine old writing on the card read, “from Gran and Gramp and Granma.” The basket was heavy with apples, carrots, and cabbages, and every crack between them was filled with nuts.
Father had watched the three of them and saw their twinkling eyes fly from basket to Fox Hill, that stood darkly outlined against the starry sky, then back to the promise in the basket. After a while he said: “Why not, kids?”
He wasn’t the only one who knew that Andy’s Christmas was not quite perfect, yet. Gran rose from her chair: “Let’s all go.”
Yes, they knew. Even Mike knew, and Linka. Mike grinned his irresistible grin. “Me, Mike, carry the basket. Me strong man. Linka, you bring music. We make good music for litt’ folks in dark, huh?”
They blew out the candles, but left the lamps burning, and all of them walked through the cold, starry night to make Andy’s Christmas perfect.
The little pine on Fox Hill stood dark and straight and alone. But there were tiny tracks in the snow under its lowest branches and Andy, on his knees, spreading the rich contents of the basket, whispered to Dick:
“Maybe the little critters even know it’s Christmas.”
Dick smiled. “They will, I guess, when they find this.”
Then Mike said: “Now we make good music for litt’ people in dark,” and started to play the oldest and sweetest of tunes, that means peace and contentment in every land:
“Silent night . . . holy night . . .”
They sang softly, very softly, for little timid folks of the dark are easily frightened; even the song of peace, if too loud, might send them back into their secret hiding places. Little folks, little people, little critters . . . one has to sing the song of peace ever so softly so they won’t get frightened.