The Light in the Woods

by Jean Marie Pierson

  After examining a row of Douglas firs, she noticed a small tree sitting at the end of a row, almost in the woods. She circled and shook the tree the same way Hal would circle a car and kick the tires. She tilted her head and nodded.

  “Looks like it could work. What do you think?” she asked.

  “Looks small,” Ray said, wondering if his mother was trying to shrink Christmas.

  “Oh, I don’t know. I think maybe we’ll have enough room for a star this year. Wouldn’t that be a nice change?” Usually, Ray’s dad cut a tree down so large that he would have to chop the top off just so it would fit through the front door. Its shape resembled a trapezoid rather than a triangle. They never had room for a star. Ray figured that this Christmas his mother might need one.

  “If you think so,” Ray said as he knelt down and crawled on his belly towards the trunk. It didn’t matter to him what size the tree was. It didn’t even matter if they put up a tree. But it made the house smell nice and his mother happy. He would give her at least that.

  As Ray bellied up to the trunk he noticed Mick’s size 14 boots next to his mother’s rubber galoshes.

  “Let me help him with this, Estelle,” he said. Ray saw Mick’s knee drop into the snow with such force that it shook the ground.

  “Thank you, Mick, but Ray can handle this.”

  “It’s not a problem, really, Estelle…”

  “No, Raymond is the man of the house. He can handle it. Can’t you, Raymond?” she called down to him.

  Ray knew that Mick didn’t even need a saw to take the tree down. He could probably break it off its stump with his bare hands. But Ray wanted to do this. He didn’t need Mick. He didn’t need anyone. He just needed his saw. Mick took over his father’s job at the shop. If anyone was going to take over his father’s job running the house, it would be him.

  “Got it, Mom,” he called out. With that Mick’s knee rose out of the snow.

  “If you need anything, Estelle, I’m over there. Just wave.”

  “Thank you, Mick, but I’m sure we’ll be just fine.”

  Ray pulled the saw up to the tree and began to rub its teeth against the fir’s bark. The sharp green smell oozed off the trunk. He tried harder to cut but the saw seemed like it hit cement and refused to cut any further. In his anger he pushed the blade back and forth and realized that no matter how hard he tried, it wouldn’t budge. His hand, sticky from sap, felt like it was glued to the trunk. His arm grew tired and he laid his saw down in distress.

  “Everything ok down there?” she asked.

  “Just resting,” Ray answered as he rested his head on his burning arm. He stared out aimlessly at the trunks of the trees that left the straight lines of the Christmas tree farm and ran amuck in the woods. It was then he noticed the four hooves of a deer. He kept waiting for the animal to move as deer usually do not like to stop and hang around people. Then the deer’s head lowered and appeared to be looking Ray right in the eyes. Ray’s head jolted up at the sight of its face.

  “Are you sure you don’t want some help with this?” his mother asked.

  Ray didn’t answer. His eyes were locked on a six-point buck that seemed to be staring right back at him and wondering the same thing.

  “Ggg…got it,” Ray sputtered as he lay frozen in the snow. The deer didn’t move from its stance. Its legs buckled slightly at its joints as its proud head hung low, as if it were noticing the beauty of a geranium right before devouring it. Under Ray’s breath he muttered, “Shoo…shoo,” hoping the animal would prance back into the woods. But it didn’t. The body of the animal was the color of wet sand until it reached its neck, where a white patch crept from up around its throat to the area behind its snout. His ears rimmed in black and with white centers blended into a soft shade of ash on its face. His antlers, sprinkled with a slight crisp of snow, looked like branches sprouting from his head. But what caught Ray’s breath was the deer’s forehead. He couldn’t tell if the deer got into trouble with a paintbrush, lightning bolt, or a snowball as it looked like a bright white star was in the middle of its forehead, with a lighter streak fading up its head and disappearing behind its antlers. By the way the deer’s eyes examined Ray and the warm breath turning into puffs from its nose, Ray didn’t want to sit there too long to figure it out.

  His uneasiness gave him a quick adrenalin jolt, causing his arm to saw easily through the uncut layer of trunk. From above he heard his mother cheer as the tree slowly eased its way to the ground.

  “Hooray! I knew you could do it!” she cried as she leaned over to give Ray a hand up. Ray patted off the snow on his pants as he looked behind him for the deer. Instead, he only saw the prints the buck made in the snow.

  The two dragged the tree through the yard to the old farmhouse. Her happiness at Ray’s accomplishment couldn’t be contained as she wished everyone a Merry Christmas twice upon entering and exiting the building. As they pulled the tree over to the car, Oscar Taglieber walked over to the two holding a large ball of twine. Ray’s mother greeted him with a double dose of Merry Christmas.

  “Mr. Taglieber, Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas,” she chanted. “My Raymond here cut down his first tree.”

  Oscar leaned back on his heels and pushed his thumbs in his pockets. “You don’t say? That’s impressive with those Douglas firs. Hard as rocks, those trunks.”

  Ray gave a slight smile but his attention drew back into the woods. Ray’s mother, slightly embarrassed by her son’s distraction, turned to Oscar.

  “Well, we could use your help getting this onto the roof. Would you mind giving us a hand?”

  “Not in the least,” he answered.

  The tree went on top of the car easy enough. As Ray steadied the trunk, Oscar wrapped the twine around the fir and through the car windows. Realizing he forgot the saw, Ray abandoned the group and ran back to the edge of the woods. The saw was still there, like a party hat left the day after a New Year’s celebration. Sawdust and scattered needles circling a castrated trunk were the only traces remaining of their once living Christmas tree. Ray picked up the saw and began to clean its handle when he heard the snaps of the branches. He spun around and noticed the same deer, this time standing tall, his neck elongated, stretching upwards to show off the span of its antlers. Ray froze as he looked into its glassy marble black eyes. He had never seen a deer this close up before and never one so brazen as to not appear to be afraid of a person.

  “Scram,” Ray said as he waved his arm in the air. The deer twitched its snout but did not move. Ray walked closer to the deer, only twenty feet away, and pointed the saw at him.

  “Beat it, will ya?!” Ray yelled. This time the deer lowered its head slowly then jerked it back up. The deer didn’t seem to be afraid of him. Ray grew angry as he felt that he did the duty of a man by cutting down a tree. A deer should at least run at his sight. Ray ran closer to the deer and began screaming out.

  “Go on! Get out of here!”

  The deer jilted its body around in the direction of the woods but kept its head pointed back, looking at Ray. Ray instantly focused on the deer’s face, in particular, that white birthmark. Maybe the deer was branded or electrocuted and not afraid of a kid. Maybe this deer had seen worse than a child wielding a hacksaw. But what army would take him if he couldn’t fight off a wounded animal? How could he take care of his mother if he couldn’t shoo a deer away? He put the saw on the ground and took a large step forward. With arms waving wildly in the air, Ray hollered out at the animal.

  “Ahhhhh!”

  The buck turned around in a circle but wouldn’t move past its stance in the snow. Just as Ray was about to throw his saw in the air, he heard a sharp high-pitched whistle followed by a light-hearted command.

  “Hup, hup!” ordered Oscar as he crunched his way through the snow towards Raymond. Ray watched the buck snap to attention, turn, and spring back into the woods. The two st
ood silently as they watched the upturned white tail rise and fall with each leap, eventually fading into the fog of the woods.

  “I couldn’t get him to move,” Ray uttered, dumbstruck.

  Oscar, a man who was never prone to smiling, tilted his head back and let out a hearty laugh. “That’s ok, Raymond,” he said, patting him on the shoulder. “Sometimes, I can’t get them to move either.”

  A small cloud of dust flew off the star onto the breath of Ray’s mother.

  “Haven’t seen you in a while,” she said quietly to herself. She stood on a small stool as she shined a small tiny star that was meant to top a Christmas tree. It was a wedding gift from Ray’s aunt in Chicago. The star was engraved with his parents’ monogram and read, “Our First Christmas 1932.” The five tips grew black and tarnished from the years of being kept in its box but the heart of the star still held its shine.

  “I think you should face it towards the window,” said Olive as she carefully draped each strand of tinsel on the tree. “This way people outside can see it too.”

  “That’s a good point, Olive,” she said as she stood tiptoe on the stool. “What do you think, Ray? Towards the window or towards the couch?”

  Ray sat on the floor amongst opened boxes of ornaments trying to untangle last year’s garland. “Doesn’t matter to me. Why do we need a stupid star anyway?”

  “Don’t call this star stupid, Raymond,” his mother warned. “It represents the Star of Bethlehem.”

  Ray scratched his head. “But stars are in the sky, not a tree.”

  Olive laid down her tinsel, made two circles with her hands, and looked through them as if she were looking through a telescope. With one closed eye she peered through the holes in her hands as if she were practicing for the real thing.

  “It’s supposed to look like it’s above the tree in the sky. Like it’s somewhere way off in the distance,” she said, squinting up at the star. “Our teacher said that some think that the Star of Bethlehem may have actually been a comet.”

  “You don’t say,” Ray’s mother said as she angled the star towards Olive.

  Ray shrugged his shoulders in disinterest and returned to the tangled mass that sat in his lap. His mother looked down at Ray and drummed her fingers on the metal star in thought.

  “I’m happy we ran into Mr. Taglieber at Dart’s,” his mother said as she fastened the star on the top branch. “Do you know what he makes this time of year? Toys. Can you believe it? A company hires him to make toys for kids who write to Santa Claus. Like Santa himself.”

  Ray did not register what his mother said. He snapped the garland in half as he tried to pull a knot apart.

  “He even looks like Santa Claus,” Olive said as she held up shiny strands of tinsel to the light for inspection. “With his white beard and big belly and all.”

  Ray’s mother nodded in agreement. “You know, it never occurred to me but you’re right, Olive. He would make a good store Santa.”

  Ray wasn’t listening to the talk of his silver-haired, portly neighbor. Christmas and all its words just made him feel bad. The word Santa made him feel guilty about Tommy. Gifts did not matter. There was nothing he wanted. Trimming the tree used to be fun. Now Christmas felt like the garland that sat in his lap: a knotted mess of last year’s cheer. “I don’t get it,” Ray said. “How did they know where to go?”

  “Who?” asked his mother.

  “The wise men? I mean, how did a star get them to Jesus?”

  Ray’s mother cocked her head to the side. “I don’t know,” she wondered aloud. “I guess when you’re looking for direction and you see a light that bright in the sky, you follow it.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Taglieber House – Southold, New York, 1944

  “Was it because I said the star was stupid?” Ray asked as he lagged behind his mother. She marched at least five feet in front of Ray as they headed up Jacob’s Lane. Ray had no idea where they could be going. His mother already dragged him to the Goldsmith’s house to apologize to Tommy. He would never forget Mrs. Goldsmith’s scorn as her rotund figure teetered on the edge of her loveseat like a boulder on the edge of cliff. Her legs were crossed and her hands stacked on her knees as she took in Ray’s humiliation. The only person who didn’t want Ray to be standing in the Goldsmith’s living room to recite an apology more than Ray was Tommy. When Mrs. Goldsmith asked Tommy if he found the apology acceptable, Tommy jumped up, grabbed Ray’s arm, pulled him out of the room and said, “Ray, I got two mitts! I’ll be Mickey Owens.”

  Ray followed along and racked his brain to think of anyone else he might have indirectly wronged. His stomach sank when his mother turned onto Oscar Taglieber’s driveway.

  “Mom!” Ray cried. She whirled around and stared Ray down.

  “Do not say a word. I’m doing all the talking. Understand?”

  “But Ma…”

  “Not. A. Word,” his mother ordered, her voice barely a whisper, conveyed as much strength as a full-blown scream. She straightened her feathered cap and Ray’s head sank as they made their way to his front door. Ray watched from behind as his mother’s worn hands banged on Oscar’s front door. She didn’t wear gloves anymore. Being a corset maker made her once strong and smooth hands look as if she spent her days holding angry kittens. Oscar’s shadow grew slowly as he appeared in the doorway. He only opened the creaky storm door an inch as his breath took shape in the cold air.

  “Estelle,” he said matter-of-factly. “Raymond.”

  His mother’s stern look transformed in an instant to a sweet plastered smile. Her voice even raised an octave. “Hello Mr. Taglieber. I was wondering if Raymond and I could have a moment of your time?”

  Oscar turned around and looked back uncomfortably into the dark house. He shifted nervously in his black boots. “I would ask you to come in but the place is covered with sharp tools. I wouldn’t want you to touch something and get…”

  Holding up her hand to the glass on the door as if to tell him stop, the polite smile she put on vanished from her face. She flipped her hand around to show him the other side, a side covered in punctures, scraps, and scars like frost on a window pane. “I can assure you there is no more damage you could do. May I please have a word?”

  He looked down and let out a long exhale. His breath turned into a white mist which dissolved into a flag of surrender.

  Ray and his mother followed Oscar as he lumbered down the hall. His heavy gait creaked the boards as her heels hammered the Kozak’s presence from behind. As they walked, Ray noticed each room they passed seemed frozen in time, as if a lady stepped out for a cup of tea but couldn’t find her way back. Dust covered all the dainty features that were once lovingly and particularly placed in the room. A doily was draped on every piece of tiny furniture. The delicate lace parlor shades hung on every window. Porcelain figurines of dancers curtsied to each other from the edges of the end tables. The house reminded him of a museum until they made the turn into the living room. Ray figured it had to be called the living room since it was the only part of the ranch house that seemed to have been actually lived in. But instead of a room designated for company or entertaining, it was filled with tools. Handsaws and hammers, wrenches and rags, screws and screwdrivers, nails and nuts, snips and solvents and everything in between littered each surface. It smelled like paint, oil, and wood, much like Mick’s shop if a tornado had picked it up and dropped it in the middle of a lumberyard. The once precious couches were covered in various stains and tears. The chairs were no longer used for holding people but rather as legs for makeshift workbenches. But the most shocking part of the room was, by far, the walls. Every inch of each wall held a clock. Numbers fat and slim, swirling 8s, military 2s, faces with only dots or dashes or jewels, and roman numerals in every style one could dream up covered the walls. From father to cuckoo, not one looked like the other. Each clock looked as if it were made
in a different country and by a different maker. The only thing they had in common was the position of their respective minute hands.

  Oscar searched over the table he constructed from an old door resting on a radiator and handed each of them two clean towels. Finding anything clean on that table was a miracle in this living room workshop.

  “You’ll need these in about two minutes.”

  “Oh, thank you, it will only take me as much.” Ray’s mother, not knowing what to do with the towel, laid it on a chair and sat on it to protect her dress.

  “Raymond here,” she said with a smile, “and I were wondering if you might need some help,” she swallowed as she nodded to the room. “You mentioned at the farm that you make toys for the children who write to Santa. I take it you must be very busy.”

  “Well,” Oscar said as he patted his forehead with a dirty rag. “I seem to get along just fine. There is quite a bit of work. We try not to scale back, even with all that’s going on. War and all.”

  “I understand, Mr. Taglieber, but my Raymond. He is so eager.” She cleared her throat as if it weren’t in her to stretch the truth so far into a lie. “I am so eager to keep him busy around the holidays.”

  “Well,” Oscar said as he rubbed his knees nervously. “That’s awfully kind of you to offer his help.”

  “Ray is very handy with tools,” she said. Ray looked down at his mother’s hands and noticed she was wringing the other towel into rope. “His father taught him a great deal on how to handle himself around a shop. Ray spent every moment of his free time around some kind of saw or jack.”