A Year Down Yonder

by Richard Peck

  “Grandma, it’s the program tonight.”

  Waving away her own forgetfulness, she said, “Well, then, you better wear this.” She produced something from a big apron pocket. It looked like a coil of baling wire.

  She handed it over. It was a coil of baling wire. Twisted in it were tiny tin stars, cut from cans. A day’s work to make. Grandma stood back, her hands clasped, a little eagerness in her eyes. “Watch out them stars don’t dig your scalp.”

  She’d made me a halo so Carleen Lovejoy in all her tinsel wouldn’t outshine me. It looked more like a crown of thorns, but I handled it, carefully.

  I’d have come dangerously near kissing Grandma then, if she’d let me.

  Then I was walking through town in galoshes to save my shoes. We’d done all our rehearsing at school. But the program was to be at the United Brethren Church. Though Jesus was born in a stable, the school basement didn’t seem quite right.

  The church threw stained-glass light out on the snow, and people flocked up the front steps. As I went inside, the train from St. Louis pulled in at the Wabash depot. The whole town became a little village under a Christmas tree, with the electric train circling and the glowing cardboard houses and the steepled church, sunk in cotton snow.

  If you think one Christmas program is like another, you didn’t see ours. The robing room where we girls got ready was full of bad omens. Who knew what went on across the chancel, where the boys were dressing in the choir room with Mr. Herkimer?

  The girls who were only in the chorus flapped like bats in United Brethren choir robes. The angels were Irene Stemple, Mona Veech, Gertrude Messerschmidt, and the littlest angel was Ina-Rae Gage. None of their wings matched. Ina-Rae, the smallest, had the biggest wings—chicken wire. She could barely move in the room. It was like a birdcage in there. Then in swept Carleen Lovejoy.

  Her shimmering gown, cut on the bias, was meant to outdo the other angels. Her halo hovered high over her head, supported from behind. She was made up for the New York stage. She’d shaved off her eyebrows and drawn on new ones. Her cheeks were pinker than nature. Her lips were a deep red Cupid’s bow, with fingernails to match. She was a natural blonde, and that was the only natural thing about her.

  Miss Butler edged into the room, and Carleen very nearly blinded her.

  “Carleen! Wipe all that stuff off your face,” she said, stricter than school. “You look like you’re bleeding from the mouth.”

  Carleen bridled and stood firm. Seeing that I was in three hanging sheets, Miss Butler turned to secure my costume. When I reached for my coat and drew out the baling-wire halo, she nearly swallowed her pins.

  But there was an opening-night excitement even among us. From backstage you could hear the rustle of paper programs and the creak of pews. The organ boomed “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing!” and there was no going back.

  The United Brethren preacher, Reverend Lutz, rose to quiet the crowd with a passage from Saint Luke. Miss Butler was pushing the choirgirls on. We in costume were to hang back here offstage, singing through the open door to add volume, but keeping out of sight until the Nativity scene. No choirboys came forth, because they were all in costume. But we could see shepherds and kings in the door behind Mr. Herkimer.

  We sang our hearts out, onstage and backstage. Miss Butler kept the pacing peppy, though we never did get the bugs out of “Once In Royal David’s City.” Then came the tricky part.

  We of the Nativity scene had to creep low under the curtains behind the choir. Here was the stable all set up, with cardboard sheep. I groped for my stool beside the manger. Above me Milton Grider fell into place as Joseph. We had shepherds behind us and kings opposite. Between, under the star, the heavenly host of so-called angels, Carleen at center stage.

  From what I could see of Milton, he was wearing his father’s bathrobe and a false beard. The kings were beginning to hold up frankincense and myrrh.

  As the choir parted and broke into “O Holy Night,” Mr. Herkimer pulled the curtain, and the lights went up on us. Mr. Fluke was the electrician. We’d practiced how to sit stone still for up to five minutes.

  When we froze in place, I ought to have been looking into the manger at Baby Jesus. But the curtain caught me staring out at the audience, so I had to stay that way.

  “Long lay the world in sin and error pining,” sang the choir as I counted the house. The full pews gasped as we came into view, a living picture. And why not? Milton in bathrobe and false beard. Carleen like Sally Rand without her fans. Ina-Rae looking like she was about to take off. Me in baling wire and three sheets, showing a Cuban heel.

  As I stared unblinking at the far door of the church, it opened. Grandma walked in. It had to be her. She filled the door. A tall man was with her. I watched her scoot people along a pew and sit. The pew popped like gunfire beneath her.

  When the choir went into “What Child Is This?” the star lit up and sent a beam down on Ina-Rae’s doll. This was to be the high moment, and was. The minute the beam hit the manger, Baby Jesus roared out a loud wail.

  Milton moved. A shepherd’s crook clattered to the floor. I couldn’t hold my pose. I shifted my crowned head to see in the spotlit manger a real live baby, red as a beet, punching the air with tiny fists. Carleen was upstaged and went completely out of character.

  A wave of wonderment swept the pews. Some people may have thought a living baby had been cast in the part. And if so, whose? But then Ina-Rae, flapping her wings, shrieked out, “Where is my dolly?”

  Miss Butler fell back, and the choir broke ranks, never to reach “We Three Kings of Orient Are.” Reverend Lutz, Principal Fluke, and Mr. Herkimer all advanced on the manger, like wise men in street clothes. But a newborn in a damp rag for a diaper, or swaddling clothes, stunned them.

  Now people stood on pews, trying to see. Suddenly, Grandma was there, heaving up the steps past the pulpit. Her hat was alive with pheasant feathers. She reached into the manger for the red, squalling baby. She lifted it up, and the light was good.

  The baby had one blue eye and one green. Grandma blinked. She held it up to the audience. “It’s all right,” she hollered out. “It’s a Burdick!”

  They talked about that Christmas program for years. In its way, it was the best one they ever had, though Miss Butler never really got over it. Of course the baby was another reason why Mildred Burdick never had been back after my first day of school in September.

  Just when the Burdicks had managed to spirit an unwanted baby into the manger, we couldn’t imagine. And why they thought the whole town wouldn’t know another Burdick when they saw one, nobody could say. Grandma pointed out that the Burdicks weren’t broke out with brains. The general view was that the United Brethren orphanage could find the baby a better home.

  The evening lay in ruins on the stable straw at our feet. But there was one more miracle. I looked up at the tall man behind Grandma, and it was Joey.

  Taller and leaner and handsomer. But Joey—changed and the same. And so I was looking my Christmas in the face. I hugged the wind out of him, tangled him in my sheets, nicked his chin with my halo.

  It was Joey, fresh from the west, off the evening train. Grandma had sent him the ticket. That’s where most of the fox money went. That’s what it was for.

  I had to turn away, quick. There was a lump in my throat, and that would mean tears on my face, and I didn’t want Joey to see them. Then with a rush of wings, two angels lit on either side of me. The gawky one was Gertrude Messerschmidt. The dumpy one was Irene Stemple.

  “Is that your brother, Mary Alice?” wondered Gertrude, suddenly my new best friend.

  “Oh, Mary Alice, honey, he looks just like Tyrone Power,” Irene breathed, feathering out. “But taller.” Her pudgy small hand found mine in the drapings and she clung to me.

  After we got home that night, Grandma showed me another ticket. It was a round-trip to Chicago for me, so I could go on with Joey to have some Christmas with Mother and Dad. It must have cost Grandma her las
t skin. First, though, we’d keep Christmas right here around the spindly tree in the warm front room. Just the three of us, like the old summer visits. Grandma and Joey and me.

  But what I remember best about that evening is the three of us walking home from church. I see us yet, strolling the occasional sidewalks with our arms around Grandma, just to keep her from skidding, because she said she was like a hog on ice. And every star above us was a Christmas star.

  Hearts and Flour

  After several weeks of hard winter, this end

  of the county is enjoying a January thaw. Mrs.

  Dowdel, a lifelong resident, observes that “A

  January fog will kill a hog.”

  —“Newsy Notes from Our Communities” The Piatt County Call

  We’d just finished up a Saturday breakfast when we heard a pecking of sharp heels out on the back porch. Grandma looked up. A shape showed in the steamy window of the back door. There came a fumbled knocking.

  “Better let her in,” Grandma said.

  It was Mrs. L. J. Weidenbach, the banker’s wife. Fools rush in, and she plunged past me into the kitchen.

  Grandma looked her up and down. Mrs. Weidenbach’s hat spilled black artificial cherries off the brim. Her upper arm clamped a big pocketbook, and her coat featured a stand-up muskrat collar. Grandma considered the fur with a professional eye. Her gaze fell to Mrs. Weidenbach’s hemline, though she had to peer around the table to see. This may have been when Grandma saw that skirts were getting shorter.

  Mrs. Weidenbach showed a good deal of leg. “I won’t keep you, Mrs. Dowdel,” she sang out, “as I see you are a busy woman.”

  Having polished off a plate of scrapple and corn syrup, Grandma lolled. “I will cut the cackle,” Mrs. Weidenbach said, “and come straight to the point.”

  Mrs. Weidenbach never came straight to the point. Her voice dropped. “Word will have reached you about poor Mrs. Vottsmeier over at Bement.”

  “Will it?” Grandma said.

  Mrs. Weidenbach clutched a chair back and leaned nearer. “The Change,” she said.

  “If she’s thinkin’ about making a change, who could blame her?” said Grandma. “Vottsmeier’s no prize.”

  Mrs. Weidenbach rested her eyes. “I mean the Change of Life.” She tried not to notice me nearby.

  “Hitting her hard, is it?” Grandma inquired without interest.

  Mrs. Weidenbach clutched her own furry bosom and reeled. “The night sweats! The hot flashes! Of course it’s nothing to what I suffered, but ...”

  Still, I wouldn’t go away. I was just off her elbow, hearing every forbidden word. And she was coming to the best part. Her voice fell. “And her womb dropped.”

  “Do tell,” Grandma said. “How far?”

  “She says it feels like it hit the floor.” Mrs. Weidenbach gave me a cold shoulder because I was sticking like Grandma’s glue. “But as you know, I never gossip.”

  Grandma lurched in surprise. Coffee jumped out of her cup.

  “All I am saying is Mrs. Vottsmeier is out of the running.”

  A dreadful vision of Mrs. Vottsmeier trying to run with some of her insides bouncing on the floor almost sent me reeling.

  “And so we are up a gum stump about our Washington’s Birthday tea. It’s our sacred tradition to serve cherry tarts to honor General Washington. And as the world knows, there is nobody to touch Mrs. Vottsmeier for her cherry tarts.” Mrs. Weidenbach’s eyes snapped. “She is a plain woman, but there is poetry in her pastry.”

  “Who’s throwing the party?” Grandma said.

  “Who?” Mrs. Weidenbach blinked. “Why, the DAR, of course. The Daughters of the American Revolution, of which I have the honor to be president.”

  The DAR was a club of only the best ladies in town. They all traced their families back to the Revolutionary War (our side).

  “As I expect you are aware,” Mrs. Weidenbach said, warming up, “my family descends from Captain Crow, who was at Yorktown when Cornwallis capitulated. My mother was a Crow, you know.”

  “Ah,” Grandma muttered. “That explains it.”

  “Frankly, Mrs. Dowdel, one of the sorrows of my marriage is that I don’t have a daughter and, yes, a granddaughter who will step into my DAR shoes when the time comes.”

  I couldn’t help it. I looked down at her shoes. They were high-heeled and a size too small.

  Mrs. Weidenbach looked at me bleakly. After all, she had no granddaughter, and Grandma had me. Now she began her retreat because the January thaw hadn’t thawed Grandma.

  “I leave you with this thought, Mrs. Dowdel. The Daughters of the American Revolution maintain a proud tradition of American aristocracy in even as humble a town as our own. Without cherry tarts, we are letting down General Washington. The town is still abuzz about your pumpkin and pecan pies. And I bow to nobody in my admiration for your flaky pastry. I charge you, Mrs. Dowdel, to play your part and come through for us.”

  With that, she was gone. We listened to her pecking off the porch. Silence fell like a benediction.

  Grandma took her sweet time, then remarked, “Skimpy coat, wasn’t it? She’s courting pneumonia going around naked to the knee. She wasn’t wearing enough to pad a crutch.”

  We sat at the table, listening to the icicles drip from the eaves.

  Finally, I said, “Grandma, are we going to be making cherry tarts for her?” Because we’d need cornstarch, and we were about out of lard.

  But she didn’t hear me. “There’s different kinds of people in the world,” she said. “There’s them who’ll invite you to join their bunch. Then there’s them who’ll pay you for your work. Then there’s Wilhelmina Weidenbach.”

  And that seemed to be her final word on the subject.

  Winter resumes its grip as the younger set at the high school looks forward to an exchange of Valentine cards, and the DAR is abuzz about its annual Washington’s Birthday tea.

  The high school will have its big red hearts But where will the DAR get its cherry tarts?

  —“Newsy Notes om Our Communities” The Piatt County Call

  “What’s all this about a valentine exchange?” Carleen Lovejoy said to Irene Stemple one February morning. “Nobody told me about it.”

  “Newsy Notes” may have been optimistic. There were a lot more girls than boys in school. And none of the boys seemed to be of a romantic nature.

  Ina-Rae leaned over from her desk and pushed her big-eyed little face into mine. Somehow she still looked scrawny and incomplete without her wings. “It says in the paper there’s going to be a valentine exchange,” she whispered. “At the grade school we always made our valentines. We cut out hearts at our desks and put on lace. Elmo Leaper ate the paste. It was fun. Do you reckon we’ll make them here?”

  “I doubt it,” I whispered back. “This is high school.”

  “Well, it beats what we’re doing.” Ina-Rae stuck out her tongue at her history book.

  The classroom door opened. Principal Fluke stood there with a new boy. The day had been gray, but crisp winter sun broke through and seemed to find the newcomer. He was as tall as Mr. Fluke and lots better-looking. His hair was red-gold, according to the sun, and not cut at home. It was razor-trimmed over ears flat to his head. Forrest Pugh, Jr.’s, ears stood straight out, like open car doors.

  “Miss Butler,” Mr. Fluke said. “I got you a new scholar. Looks like my prayers is answered, and I got me a scoring center for my basketball team.” Mr. Fluke pointed to the top of the boy’s head.

  Milton Grider flipped his pencil and slumped in his desk. At five nine, he’d been the tallest boy in school, till now. The new boy seemed to be six feet tall, easy. The back of Carleen Lovejoy’s head vibrated.

  “Name of Royce McNabb,” Mr. Fluke said. “His paw’s come in as surveyor for the county roads. Family’s from down Coles County way. Mattoon. Let’s call him a senior.”

  If Royce McNabb minded hearing his personal history blurted out in front of strangers, he didn’t
let on. But then, he was from Mattoon, which was citified for these parts. And sure enough, he was wearing corduroy pants, not overalls. An argyle pattern sweater strained across his broad shoulders.

  Ahead of me, Carleen gripped herself. “Be still, my heart,” she murmured loudly. Then she leaned across to Irene Stemple and said, “Hands off. He’s mine.”

  “Move over, Milton,” Miss Butler said, “and make Royce welcome.”

  Royce went through the day with the same smile for everybody. He’d probably been in a lot of schools and knew how to handle himself.

  When I got home, I told Grandma we had a new boy at school. She waved him away. “The town’s filling up with people you wouldn’t know from Adam’s off ox. Not like the old days when you knew your neighbors.”

  “The winters were colder back then too, weren’t they, Grandma?”

  “People starved to death because their jaws froze shut,” she said. “You getting interested in boys?”

  “Who, me?” I said.

  At that, we heard Mrs. L. J. Weidenbach fumbling at the back door. When I let her in, there were ice crystals in her muskrat. She elbowed past me, her eyes teary with cold and emotion. Grandma had been over by the Hoosier cabinet. Now she was sitting down, seemingly at her ease.

  “Mrs. Dowdel, we cannot pussyfoot anymore over these cherry tarts.” Mrs. Weidenbach grappled with her giant purse and came up with the Piatt County Call newspaper. “I need a commitment. My land, it’s in the paper now, where it has inspired two lines of bad verse.”

  Grandma didn’t read the paper, so Mrs. Weidenbach shook it open and read,

  The high school will have its big red hearts

  But where will the DAR get its cherry tarts?

  “Doesn’t that turn your stomach?” she demanded. “I don’t call it reporting, and I don’t call it poetry. It’s snooping, and possibly by a foreign power. The dignity of the DAR is on the line.”

  Grandma picked a loose thread from her apron front.