From that day on, Max had been Giovanni’s constant companion, running just ahead of him as he gathered wood, picked berries, and planted tree seedlings. Giovanni knew how to live off the land better than anyone else around. But some things, such as coffee, kerosene, and the occasional dog biscuit for Max, required money. For that, Giovanni had his Christmas trees.
Growing Christmas trees suited Giovanni’s solitary, observant nature. The ground beneath the trees had to be kept constantly cropped to prevent diseases. In the spring and fall, he trimmed up the branches so they would grow into the graceful shapes that people in Ryland Falls wanted. Then, as winter approached, he would walk between fragrant rows of Scotch pine, blue spruce, and Douglas fir and tie ribbons around the ones that were mature enough to cut down.
All last week, Giovanni had worked well into the night cutting, hauling, and loading the trees upon his truck. His back ached and his mind rebelled against the trip that lay ahead, but it was time to go. Picking up the box of provisions, he stepped outside onto the porch and drew a deep breath as if to take the mountain with him in his lungs. Locking the door, he called to Max, “Come on, boy, we’re ready.”
In truth, Giovanni was never ready to leave the mountain. He loved everything about it—how the birds formed a wreath of song around the roof in the early morning, the sound of the melting creek tumbling over the rocks in the spring, the way the wind bent the treetops during a storm. The face of Old Rag was constantly changing its expressions, and Giovanni hated to miss any one of them. But three weeks of camping out in Ryland Falls made it possible for him to live on the mountain the rest of the year.
Walking toward the truck, he mentally ticked off everything that should be loaded on it: army tent, portable woodstove, firewood, cot, bedding. All there. Radio. Yes. Then he remembered something he had left behind. Letting himself back into the cabin, he walked over to his bed and picked up a large, tattered book on the bedside table and tucked it under his arm. He never left it behind. Climbing back into the truck, he put the engine in gear and headed down the mountain.
When Giovanni reached Ryland Falls, the Crimmins Clock Tower had just chimed six o’clock. He drove past the inn, the police station, the library, and several blocks of stores—the Whistle Stop Ice Cream Parlour, Workout Wonder Gym, Shear Power Hair Salon, First National Bank. It was always a shock to Giovanni when he returned to civilization.
On the mountain, Giovanni’s days were regulated by heat and cold, light and darkness. Off the mountain, these things were taken care of, and the standards of measurement were full and empty, fast and slow. Giovanni gripped the wheel and stared straight ahead. At the far end of Center Street was Elwood’s Market. Next to Elwood’s was a vacant lot where every year Giovanni sold his trees.
He pulled to a stop. Max jumped out of the truck, did a brief patrol of the lot, then followed Giovanni as he set up camp with a woodsman’s efficiency. First he erected the army tent. Next, he put together the woodstove and fit the stovepipe through a flap in the center of the canvas roof. Then he got a fire going and arranged his cot and provisions along the walls. Outside, it was below freezing, but soon the inside of his tent was as warm and cozy as his mountain cabin.
Then Giovanni unloaded his trees, their branches rustling like silk as he pulled them off the truck. Nobody could ask for trees that were fresher or more gracefully shaped, and as he arranged them all by height and kind in orderly rows upon the lot, he began to cheer up. The smell of pine sap, mingled with the wood smoke from his stove, made him feel as if he were back on the mountain.
By seven-thirty, everything was in place. Pulling a wooden chair across the entrance of the tent so the stove would warm his back, he sat down to rest and survey the small mock forest in front of him. Max laid his head upon his knee and looked up at him reproachfully. Giovanni smiled.
“You want to go home, too, don’t you? Well, we’ll be back by Christmas … maybe sooner.”
Giovanni cast his eyes toward the sky and tried to decide whether it had the look of snow. A little snow on the branches always made his trees sell better. But he wasn’t worried. Every one of them was a beauty and Giovanni knew he would sell them all.
Meanwhile, in a second-floor apartment above Elwood’s Market, a tall young man with rumpled hair stood at the window and looked down at the man and the dog. His pale, appraising eyes took in the whole scene: the woodsman in his rough coat, the light cast by the open stove door upon the inside of the tent, the gentle line of the dog’s mouth as he rested his head upon the woodsman’s knee. Will Campbell was a painter. Automatically, he noticed these kinds of details and put a frame around them. But the scene did not inspire him to paint. He shivered. He had promised himself that he would come to a decision by Christmas, and Giovanni’s trees reminded him that Christmas was almost here.
Chapter Four
FROM THE MOMENT he’d stepped off the bus in front of Elwood’s Market, Will Campbell had made a distinct impression. A black duffel bag was slung over one shoulder. Tucked beneath his arm was a skateboard, also black, but with hand-painted silver edges. He fished inside his pocket for a piece of paper. The school was at the other end of Center Street. Stuffing the directions back into his pocket, he slapped down his skateboard, stepped on, and pushed off. Riding down the middle of town on a skateboard, he looked like a tree on wheels, and long after people in Ryland Falls had grown accustomed to the sight, they still held their breath when they saw him coming. The children thought he had suction cups on the bottom of his shoes. But Will Campbell had something better. He had grace.
Will never raised his voice when he spoke to his students. With the smaller children, he knelt down so they wouldn’t have to crane their neck to see him. His eyes were sharp but kind, and it seemed to amuse him to see children misbehave when he knew that deep down they didn’t really want to misbehave, but were just feeling lonely or misunderstood or wanted to go outside and play instead of sitting in a hot classroom. All he had to do was point a finger or look in a particular direction and the entire class would follow his eyes, like members of a symphony orchestra.
Will Campbell had a magic hold on the children, and at times the principal wondered what exactly Will did to keep their attention without seeming to exert the least bit of authority over them. Peering through the window into Will’s classroom, he would see him sitting, like a disjointed scarecrow in his all-black outfit, with crossed legs on a stool, talking to them or holding up a student’s work.
Fortunately, thought the principal, Will Campbell was only part-time. Too many free spirits in one school could undermine the whole operation. Still the principal had to admit that the school had never had a more gifted art instructor. Children who used to have trouble holding a crayon were now producing nice work. Too bad, he thought, it was in the wrong subject. If only he could find as gifted teachers for the math and science departments, that would really put the school on the map.
Will turned away from the window, plucked his jacket off the bedpost, and headed for the door. Tonight was Open House at school and he had to get there extra early to hang his students’ work. Grabbing his skateboard, he fumbled his way down the narrow wooden staircase, walked through the meat department, and into the darkened market.
It was seven-thirty and Elwood’s Market didn’t open for another half an hour, but Tommy Elwood was standing inside the front window, trying to untangle a bunch of Christmas lights.
“Looks like you’ve got your hands full,” said Will.
Tommy nodded. “They never put them away right. Every year it’s the same thing.”
Outside, Will stepped onto his skateboard and shoved off from the curb. Behind him, lying in a messy stack on the floor of his apartment, was a pile of half-finished drawings in various stages of development. None of them came close to what he had intended, and one by one he had shoved them aside. As he pushed himself down the street to school, Will felt that he was leaving one scene of failure and heading toward another.
Only a year ago when he had first arrived in Ryland Falls, fresh out of art school and dreaming of becoming a great artist, all he had needed was a part-time job that would pay the bills. The ad on the school’s job-placement bulletin board sounded perfect—“Wanted: part-time art teacher in Ryland Falls Elementary School. Drive bus as needed.”
The pay was low and the only place he could afford to rent was the storage room and bath above Elwood’s Market. But his needs had been few, the light was good, and after he had pushed all the tin buckets, busted chairs, and old toothpaste display racks into a corner, plenty of room was left over for a bed and workspace. He was twenty-three and eager to begin his life. Now, at twenty-four, he was beginning to think the price of living in Ryland Falls was too high.
He taught children whose parents didn’t really believe in art. They were quick to tell him how much the children loved him and how important art was—oh, very important! But the school board only gave out serious money for the math and science departments, and this year, it had voted to do away with recess in kindergarten—so the children could spend more time in the computer lab.
For another thing, part-time didn’t mean half-time. It meant interrupted time, with so many demands to go to meetings and fill out forms that Will was usually too tired at the end of the day to paint anything for himself. Yesterday, he had come home and tried to do a simple sketch of a bowl of grapes on a stool. But he had fallen asleep with the pencil in his hand.
Will had not lost his eye for beauty. He could still see it, just as plainly as he could see Old Rag Mountain. But less and less was he moved to do anything about it. His heart for art was weakening. Weary, disappointed, and beginning to wonder whether he really had the drive he needed to persevere, Will could feel the fire inside him going out. He couldn’t let that happen.
Gliding to a stop in front of the school, he kicked his skateboard up and under his arm—a deft one-two motion that every child tried to imitate without success. Whenever Will Campbell thought about leaving Ryland Falls, the children made him hesitate.
Ryland Falls was full of decent, hardworking people who loved their children and wanted what was best for them. But most of them believed only what they could see right in front of them, like a well-mowed lawn or a good report card. Children like Neddie Crimmins—and there were more of them than their own parents knew—wanted to see what wasn’t there, except in their imaginations. If he left, who would be there to protect them, to tell them that staring out the window was an important part of keeping their imaginations strong?
He unlocked the art room and went to his desk, which was piled high with students’ work to hang on the walls. Neddie Crimmins’s drawing was on top. Will looked down at it and smiled. “The Best Chair in the World” was eccentric, whimsical, and accurate, just like Neddie. Picking up the drawing, he walked out into the hall and looked for the best spot. Yes. He would hang it right outside the principal’s office, so Neddie’s father couldn’t miss it.
Chapter Five
EDWARD BENCHLEY CRIMMINS took a watch out of his vest pocket and laid it on the breakfast table. Arranged in a neat fan by his napkin were a half dozen travel brochures. On Christmas Day, Neddie and his parents always flew out of town to a warm, sunny place for their annual Christmas vacation.
Shaking the napkin into his lap, he scanned the brochure covers and the note his wife had clipped on top of them. (“December 1st is the reservation deadline. We have to decide today.”)
“I don’t have time to go through these this morning, Olivia. I’ve got a meeting in half an hour. What do you recommend?”
Olivia Crimmins cast a sidelong glance at Neddie, whose face was hidden behind a cereal box. She knew he was scowling. That morning, when he’d come down for breakfast, he’d seen the brochures and dropped like a rock into his chair. “Why can’t we be like everybody else and just stay home and open presents!”
“Your father,” she’d replied, “needs the vacation. And so do I, for that matter. And Christmas is the one time of year that we can all be together and just be a family—with no interruptions.”
Neddie had stared glumly at his place mat. “Everybody else gets to go sledding on Cemetery Hill on Christmas night. I’ve never gone, not even once!”
Olivia Crimmins sighed. In truth, she hated these vacations as much as Neddie did. Islands bored her. She spent most of the time feeling guilty about how much money they had compared to the people who lived there. And since birth all Neddie had known of Christmas was a series of expensive resorts in hot climates, with nobody his age to play with. Every year, Olivia Crimmins was torn between a husband who hated to be in Ryland Falls on Christmas Day and a son who hated to leave.
She looked across the breakfast table at her husband, who was still waiting for her to answer.
“Well,” she said dispiritedly, “I was thinking that we haven’t been to St. Maarten’s in a while. Perhaps we could get one of those guesthouses on the beach.”
“Hmmf,” said Edward Crimmins, whose mind was already thinking ahead to the morning conference with his sales manager. “Sounds good to me. Why don’t you go ahead and make a reservation.” He took a piece of toast from the toast rack and buttered it absentmindedly. Something was on his calendar for this evening, but he couldn’t remember what it was.
“Are we doing anything tonight?”
“We definitely are,” said Olivia Crimmins. “At six o’clock. Open House at Neddie’s school.”
“Oh, right!” Edward Crimmins exclaimed. Reaching across the table, he snatched the cereal box away from Neddie’s face and smiled at him. “Are we going to see a lot of gold stars and blue ribbons tonight, Neddie boy?”
Neddie’s heart jumped at the words blue ribbons and then relaxed. Mr. Campbell had sworn he wouldn’t tell anybody, not even the principal. But before Neddie could answer, Edward Crimmins glanced at his watch and saw that he was late. Flinging down his napkin, he pushed himself away from the table and stood up.
“Time to go,” he announced, scooping up his watch and dropping it back into his vest pocket. He kissed his wife and brushed the top of Neddie’s head with his hand as he passed his chair.
“Six o’clock,” he said to no one in particular. “Six o’clock … I’ll be there.”
But he wasn’t.
Not at six o’clock, when all the other parents were pouring into the school and Neddie took up his position in front of his drawing.
Not at six-thirty, when Neddie was still standing there, straining his eyes down the hall for the first glimpse of his father.
And not at seven, when Olivia Crimmins called his office and demanded that the secretary interrupt his meeting.
“Your son,” she whispered fiercely through her tears from a phone booth down the hall from the principal’s office, “is standing beside his drawing—which won the school’s first prize, Edward!—and he—is—waiting for you!”
She could not contain her sobbing. Holding the phone with one shoulder against her ear, she leaned against the side of the booth and let the tears spill through her fingers as Edward Crimmins battled to control them at the other end. But his words had no connective thread: “important”—“couldn’t cancel”—“tell Neddie”—“can’t afford.”
She interrupted, “His heart is broken, Edward.” She leaned her head against the wall and whispered into the phone, “I’m not sure I can bear it, Edward. I’m not sure I can.”
Hanging up the phone, Olivia Crimmins wiped her eyes, then strode down the hall to where Neddie was standing.
“Neddie,” she said, trying to make her voice even, “I want you to know that I am so proud of you. And that even if your drawing hadn’t won first prize—which it definitely deserved—I think it is the most original and wonderful picture you have ever made.”
“Why didn’t Dad come?” Neddie asked.
Kneeling down, she put her arms around him and looked him in the eye. “Your father said … your father said that he …”
It was no use. She could not get the words to line up in her mouth the right way. She began to cry.
Neddie had never seen his mother cry and it frightened and embarrassed him. What if somebody saw them? “That’s okay, Mom,” he whispered, “that’s okay.” He pushed against her arms, but she only hugged him tighter. “Mom! Please! I want to go home.”
That night, it got so cold in Ryland Falls that the seams in the sidewalk outside of All Saints Church buckled. A branch from an elm tree behind the feed store abruptly broke off and pierced the tin roof like a dagger. The pipes burst beneath Elwood’s Market. And a crack where none had been before appeared on Neddie Crimmins’s heart.
A crack in the heart of an eight-year-old boy is not a very noticeable thing on earth. For one thing, there are so many eight-year-olds. For another, most of them have a rather small vocabulary. They don’t have the words to call attention to their condition. But in that other place where all cracked, broken, lost, and hardened hearts are recorded, it was noticed right away. And when Neddie Crimmins’s heart was placed gently upon the scale with all the other damaged hearts in Ryland Falls, it was considered one heart too many.
That night the snow that was scheduled to fall didn’t. The next day, the sky was the color of pavement, dull and lifeless, like the color of Neddie’s eyes.
Chapter Six
MIRANDA BRIDGEMAN opened up her nightstand drawer and took out her diary. Skipping over the empty pages to “December 7,” she uncapped her pen, tapped it thoughtfully against her recently straightened front teeth, and began to write.
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