The Light in the Woods

by Jean Marie Pierson

  But Ray did believe. It was before the fifth grade. Before there were Axis and Allies. Before loose lips sank ships. Before salvage drives. Before when fathers were mechanics and not soldiers. Before a little man started a great big war, there was Santa Claus. And only two years earlier, Raymond believed in Santa Claus with his whole heart. Every kid in Mrs. Hansen’s third grade class in Southold Elementary School did if they knew what was good for them. So back then when the rumors started to fly around that Santa didn’t really exist, Ray tried his hardest to ignore the talk. But the facts his buddies were lining up during gym class were hard to ignore.

  “Every house in one night? Impossible, I tell ya. Impossible,” said Ted as he sat next to Ray, waiting for the record to be changed in their square dancing lesson, his pudgy fingers refastening his Roy Rogers pin on his gym T-shirt.

  “What about magic hooves and antlers?” Ray questioned.

  “Magic antlers?” Ted scoffed. “What does that do?”

  Ray fumbled with his thoughts and reasoning as much as Mrs. Hansen fumbled with the knobs and switches on the new record player. Neither seemed to be getting them anywhere.

  “I don’t know,” Ray stammered. “Fly?”

  “So he can fly. Big whoop. How can he go down every chimney in the world in one night?”

  Olive sat in the bleacher by herself behind the boys, polishing her eyeglasses. She jumped to Ray’s defense. “He doesn’t hit every house,” she said, matter-of-factly. “There were lots of kids who didn’t get presents last year. Maybe that saves him time?”

  Olive’s inch-thick spectacles made her eyes the size of green golf balls. They also gave her an air of knowledge when she spoke about anything. When she stood silent, however, she looked slow, like her older brother. Her glasses and genealogy made her a constant target of her classmates. But since Ray lived next door to her and her four older siblings, he never said a word. Kids who lived on your block were treated like family. You couldn’t pick on them because they were the ones you played with after school. Their toys were your toys. Their snacks were your snacks. And though Olive’s family didn’t have many toys or snacks, she was always up for any game, sport, or covert spy mission Ray could think up. Besides, Olive made a mean bunker from a fallen maple tree. She would always be swell in Ray’s eyes.

  “See?” said Ray, pointing to Olive.

  Marty, who was recruited by Mrs. Hansen to help read the small numbers on the dials of the player, trudged back to the bleachers and plopped next to Ray. Ted broke his concentration with his pin and hit Marty on the shoulder.

  “Whadda you think? Santa Claus real? You see any magic hoof prints on your roof last year?”

  Marty rubbed his shoulder and surveyed the girls behind him on the bleachers, hoping he’d find one to dance with. “Magic smagic,” he said in a hushed tone. He leaned in. “I saw my old man put presents under the tree last year. Said he doing it for the big guy but I found the receipt for the train set in the car.”

  Ray’s eyes bounced from Ted to Marty to Olive. This couldn’t be true. There was only one person who could straighten this mess out. He believed in Santa. And he would never steer Ray wrong.

  Ray didn’t wait for Olive when the school bell rang. He took off out of the classroom with his books tied together by an old leather belt and headed out towards Main Street. The only busy road that cut through the small farming town barked and buzzed with its everyday excitement. Cars raced home from the local grocers while kids scrambled into Kramer’s Soda Shoppe to nab the corner stool. High schoolers perched on the wall in front of the library and smoked Pall Malls and Woodbines as the sky grew gray, giving the feeling that it was about to snow. Ray zigzagged through traffic trying to get to Mick’s Garage where his father worked. Those who knew Ray gave a honk and asked him if he’d like a lift since most knew where he was headed. But Ray, too, focused and full of fear that the only person responsible for bringing a new toy each year wouldn’t be arriving, just waved them off. Would Santa be angry and skip his house if Ray even doubted his existence? After all, times were tough for everybody. Last year five kids in his class only got oranges and underwear for Christmas. And though his mother would be happy with that, Ray couldn’t stomach it.

  The sound of a cowbell clanging marked Ray’s entrance into the shop. He raced past Betty, the shop’s receptionist. She was busy filing her nails with a coy smile as Bobby, one of the shop’s grease monkeys, begged her to let him drive her home in his new Ford. She looked up from her red talons to see Ray hustle on by without a greeting.

  “Hey ya, Big Ray. Where’s the fire?”

  Ray didn’t answer as he made a straight line for the floor of the shop. All the mechanics hunched in and over their Hudsons, Packards, and Chevrolets in stained overalls gave a shout or a nod to Ray as he weaved around the cars. He didn’t bother to say hello to the fellas, he just kept calling out for his dad. The shop’s owner, Mick, emerged from the tiny back office wiping his blackened filthy hands with an even blacker, filthier rag. A tough, bald Lithuanian fellow roughly the size of a small horse, Mick walked with a limp which he got when he taught his daughter to drive. Rumor had it that even though she backed into him with a Studebaker he didn’t break any of his bones. The car, however, lost its bumper.

  “Looking for your Pops, Ray?” asked Mick with a cigarette dangling out of his chapped mouth. His voice sounded as if he ate the rest of the pack.

  “He here, Mr. Mick?” asked Ray.

  “Nah. Sent him home an hour ago. Said he had some urgent holiday ‘business’ he needed to tend to.” Mick rocked back on his heels and widened his eyes on the word “business,” which made Ray even more nervous. “Can I help you with something?”

  Ray paused for a moment. “Well, my friend told me that…that…” he began to say until he thought the better of it. Ray remembered his mother said that more gossip got spread around that garage than any beauty parlor. And he was positive that if Santa skipped any houses, it would certainly be some of the men in Mick’s garage. A few, like Bobby, had to be on the “naughty list” for sure. All the mechanics slowed their working and peeked over their engines at Ray.

  “Well, what is it?” Mick asked. “Spit it out.”

  Ray thought fast and spoke even faster. “That the Brooklyn Dodgers will get beat by the Giants next year, for sure.”

  Ray’s fib worked. This comment elicited a round of laughter from the men on the floor as their focus returned to their respective engines. Mick managed to let out a hearty laugh while still holding the Lucky Strike between his lips. “Your friend has, what we like to call around here, a lug nut loose. Beat the Giants? Ha! That kid’s talking crazy.”

  Ray let out a sigh of relief. Snow began to fall outside, which gave Ray his next excuse to run.

  “I better get going. Mom will start to get worried if I’m not home soon.” Ray turned on his heel and began a dash out of the garage.

  “Hold on now! Your mom will be a lot more worried if she knew you were out in this weather. Bobby’s heading home. Let him give you a ride.”

  Bobby looked up from Betty’s sweater, confused.

  “I wasn’t heading home just yet, Mick,” he said, deflated.

  “Yes you were,” Mick said slowly. “And don’t hit anything. The Hamans thought the world of that dog.”

  Ray sat silent in the passenger seat of Bobby’s Ford as Bobby muttered to himself and periodically hit his steering wheel with the palm of his hand. Ray could feel a calm settle over him as Bobby made the turn onto his street, Jacob’s Lane. He kept an eye out for Olive but figured she must have already made it home before the snow. The stench of low tide began to creep into the car as they approached Goose Creek. Bobby began to accelerate once he got over the bridge in an attempt to outrun the smell of rotten seaweed and sulfur. Just as Ray was about to tell Bobby to slow down so that they wouldn’t miss his driveway a deer
bounded out of the woods and jumped in front the car.

  “Holy shit!” cried Bobby as he slammed both feet on the brakes. The car hit a patch of icy leaves and spun in a full circle until it skidded to a stop. Neither Bobby nor Ray said a word. They just faced forward and stared out the windshield with their mouths open, both stunned as if their lives, and not a deer, just dashed in front of their eyes.

  Bobby, still panting from fright, turned to Ray. “Don’t tell Hal I said the word ‘shit’ in front of you, got it?”

  Still holding his breath, Ray answered. “Got it.”

  Ray got out of the car and began to walk towards his house. As Ray walked away, Bobby rolled down the window and waved him back.

  “Don’t tell him I almost killed ya, neither.”

  Ray nodded as Bobby slowly backed his Ford up and drove away. As he watched the car disappear down the road he noticed Oscar Taglieber, the old clockmaker, standing in the street without a coat on, shaking his fist in Bobby’s direction. Once the car passed, Oscar turned and yelled up the street to Ray.

  “You alright?” Oscar bellowed. His low voice echoed up the street as if he were yelling to him from the end of a long tunnel. Ray nodded and called back.

  “Yes, sir. I’m fine.”

  Oscar threw his arm up and let it down. His focus did not stay on Ray. He instead peered down at the snow as if he lost something or was following a trail. Whatever it was, it led him into the woods. Ray watched Oscar shuffle off into the trees and disintegrate into the background.

  Southold town had always been filled with deer. So much so that the mayor made every season deer season with no regulations on the animal’s size, the time of year, or place to hunt. A person could shoot a doe with a bow and arrow during the July Fourth parade if they thought they could get a clear shot. This made most people happy as now they could add venison to their diet instead of eating cured pork and potatoes for days on end. But Oscar Taglieber chased most hunters off Ray’s street. He chased most people off as well.

  Ray didn’t give Oscar a second thought. His attention went right back to the question at hand. Was Ted right? Were all the letters he had written to St. Nick in vain? Were they just a cheap attempt from his mother to get him to practice his cursive handwriting? He walked into his warm home and tossed his books on the couch. The silence of the gray snow falling outside was broken by the sound of the Lux Radio Theater and the smell of a pot roast cooking. Ray’s mother stood in the kitchen and ironed as she listened to Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Young bicker over the ownership of their Madison Avenue mansion. The house rule of the small colonial on 5245 Jacob’s Lane was to never talk to mother during the Lux Radio Theatre hour. Normally, she wouldn’t even look up from her ironing during her radio program but this day she stopped long enough to give Ray a kiss and directions.

  “Father’s in the basement,” she said before pounding her foot on the floor. A petite woman with soft features, she always kept her hair twisted and pinned back into a bun so that it never fell in her face. Ray got his black hair, hazel eyes, and love of pickled herring from his mother. Ray got his cowlicks, laugh, and love of tools from his dad.

  Ray hustled downstairs into the musty, but organized basement. In the corner, under the light of a bare hanging bulb, stood Ray’s dad, quickly packing up the contents of a large box on his workbench. Wood shavings littered the floor as the green scent of stripped elm and basswood mixed with the scent of the meat roasting upstairs. The light bounced off the rows of glistened shiny metal tools that lined the wall like soldiers waiting for their orders. After placing the box up on a high shelf, he turned to Ray.

  “Hey, Big Ray. What did they teach you at school today?” his father asked before settling back down on his stool. Henry Lee Kozak’s kind smile stretched lines across a young but weathered face. Although shorter than most men in the shop, Henry, or Hal, as everyone called him, was a giant in Ray’s eyes. At least a giant in all ways a dad needed to be. He could fix anything, explain any of Ray’s questions, and get the most irate man or dog to eat right out of his hand. Even the Kelly’s mean German shepherd, Fluffles, that sometimes broke off his leash and ran barking and biting into their neighborhood. Ray pulled up a stool next to him and watched his father begin to clean off his woodworking tools.

  “Dad?” Ray asked while his fingers fiddled with a file. “You believe in Santa, right?” His head faced the workbench while his eyes crawled up to read his father’s expression.

  Hal kept on shining the handle of the rasp as if the question didn’t bother him. “Sure do. Why you ask?”

  “Well, Ted said that it was impossible to do what Santa does in one night.”

  “Is it now?”

  “Don’t know,” Ray gulped. “Is it?”

  Ray’s father put his rasp and rag on the table and slapped his knees. “Why yes, Raymond. It is impossible.”

  Ray’s mouth dropped open. His worst fears were about to be realized. Without knowing it, he shook his head in disbelief. “You mean Ted’s right?”

  “Well, you asked me if I believe in Santa. I do. Do I believe he comes into our house every Christmas? That’s something I’m not so sure about.”

  Seeing the disappointment in Ray’s face, his father smiled and planted a stained leather hand firmly on Ray’s shoulder.

  “I think it’s about time you know the truth about the big guy in the sleigh. You’re eight…”

  “Nine in eight months.”

  “Forgive me, almost nine. Practically a man. You’ll be working at Mick’s any day now. So I think you can handle what I’m about to tell you. After all, if anyone is going to tell you the truth, I think it should be your old man.”

  Hal rubbed his chin as he put on a stern, concerned expression. The kind Ray would see him give to older men and women who would come into the garage and explain why their new car won’t start when they stick their keys into the cigarette lighter. He would never tell them they needed to find their glasses or that they might want to have their kids drive them to church. He would just scratch the white streak in his shaggy light brown hair, push his eyebrows together and go, “You don’t say?”

  “It’s like this. Santa’s a busy man. Busier than the storybooks and songs really let on.”

  “Too busy to give everyone presents?” Ray interjected.

  “Now, hold on. I didn’t say that. But he’s too caught up in all his duties to be everywhere at once. So to make sure that everyone gets what’s coming to them, he farms out his workload to a bunch of us so that no one goes without on Christmas.”

  “But I already wrote to him this year. Do I have to send it to someone else now?”

  “No, you still need to let him know what you want. But the older you get, the more he relies on his team of people to help him out. Take this for instance.” Hal walked over to his shelf and pulled down a small wooden chest. The unfinished oak lid was elegantly carved with the word HOP. Hal’s fingers glided over the word then passed it to Ray, who then did the same.

  “Who’s HOP?”

  “It’s ‘Hope.’ Or at least it will be once I’m done. I was told that I needed to carve it for the big guy so that it could go to Mrs. Stelzer this Christmas. He figured she needs a special place to put letters and pictures of her son who’s fighting over in the Pacific.”

  Ray’s eyes got large. “You mean Santa asked you to make this?”

  Hal’s chest puffed up with pride. “It’s a commissioned piece. You see, Mrs. Stelzer usually leaves every light on in her house when she goes to bed. She’s scared of everything. Even her cat. So Santa thought it was best that I make it and give it to Mr. Stelzer to give to her on Christmas. You agree?”

  Ray thought about it for a minute. House lights on all night would surely give Santa away to anyone who happened to walk by. And he would never want to scare an old lady, especially one whose brave son is fighting in a
war. Ray put his index finger to his pursed lips and nodded in agreement.

  “Makes good sense to me.”

  “Makes good sense to me, too,” Hal said in agreement. “And maybe one day, if you work really hard, Santa will give you a job. Would you like that?”

  Ray stood up and faced Hal, his eyes wild and wide at the thought. “You mean I could work for Santa?”

  “Why not? I do.”

  Ray cocked his head to the side and crinkled his nose in confusion. “I thought you work for Mr. Mick?”

  “Let’s let Mick think I work for him. But we both know who’s really the boss,” he said, giving Ray a knowing, hard wink. The same hard wink he would give when he checked under the hood of that elderly customer’s car. Hal would pull out a few plugs and wiggle a few wires and ask them to try and start the engine again. It would always turn over. He’d tell them to be careful on the wet roads and let them drive out without paying a bill. Said that learning how to fix their “unique” problem was payment enough. That’s why everyone went to Hal. They trusted him. That’s why Ray trusted him. His dad knew how to fix the things that people didn’t know they broke in the first place.

  Everyone went to Hal when they were in trouble so it came as no surprise when Uncle Sam did as well. Although he didn’t come himself, Ray learned that, like Santa Claus, he farms his work out to others. On a rainy summer afternoon, he came in the form of the postman. Hal had apparently been picked in some kind of lottery. This uncle Ray never met told his dad he was to enlist in the army and help Mrs. Stelzer’s son fix this war. Everyone seemed to congratulate Hal and appear very proud. Everyone except his mother. Ray often found her crying when doing household chores. For a while, Ray thought his mother just hated dusting but after watching her wipe down her wedding photo five times and her eyes seven, he thought that maybe winning this lottery wasn’t all that lucky after all.