by Jan Karon
‘Really,’ said Winnie.
‘I hear you went down the mountain,’ he said.
‘It was a gruesome business. Pirate beards, Viking beards, and a Gandalf beard, which was very stringy.’
Shirlene was busy with her cell phone. ‘Ta-da! Santa beard! Just twenty-four ninety-five an’ two-day shipping! “So real,”’ she read aloud, ‘“you can convince even your own kids that you are Santa.” Oops, wait. Out of stock.’
He retired to the back of the store, popped in a little Bach, turned it up pretty loud, ate a few raisins.
Five million. The thought came to mind, uninvited. A car dealership in Holding would donate a new van. The pizza parlor in Wesley would donate a pizza, fully loaded, each month for a year. And so on. The auction committee was out there at every opportunity, hoping to bring something to the table when the campaign launched next spring. Abe was keeping a low profile—he heard they were coming after him for a pair of Michael Jordan high-tops.
As for himself, he remembered what Nanny Howard said when she wasn’t up to the job at hand: ‘I feel like I was sent for and couldn’t go.’
He slogged to the front. Hélène was on the phone, the meeting was winding down.
‘The important thing,’ said Marcie, ‘is to find th’ guy who’ll be Saint Nick. I mean, we’re puttin’ th’ cart before th’ horse here.’
‘How about J. C. Hogan?’ said Shirlene. ‘He’s portly.’
‘Too sour,’ said Winnie.
‘How about your daddy?’ Winnie asked Marcie. ‘He would be perfect.’
‘Too wrung out takin’ care of Mama.’
‘Hamp Floyd,’ said Abe, who had popped over for a coffee. ‘I notice he’s gettin’ a little paunch.’
‘Too short,’ said Winnie. ‘How about Mr. Abe Edelman here?’
‘Too Jewish,’ said Abe.
Heads turned as one; they were looking at him.
‘Too busy,’ he said. ‘Go find a Saint Nick and let’s get on with it.’
Running a bookstore or dealing with a vestry? Which was worse?
‘I’m out of here,’ said Winnie. ‘But first—I just had a great idea. Put a sign on the door.’
‘For what?’ he said.
‘Santa beard wanted. Gotta go.’
After lunch, he rounded up another author poster. He was scribing the suggested proclamation on the back when the phone rang.
‘Father, l’école est finis! We are not a cooked goose! Polly just called, she will run up the costume out of remnants and I will contribute Mother’s old fur for the trim! You will look wonderful in it, I assure you. You will not be disappointed in the least!’
Had Hélène Pringle gone deaf? How many times could he refuse to be part of this scheme?
It had spiraled out of control. It was a loose cannon.
• • •
‘OH, MY GOSH,’ said Vanita, ‘your window is gorgeous. I love th’ way th’ afternoon light shines on th’ straw an’ that old man kneelin’ down, he is so sweet. But where’s th’ baby Jesus?’
‘He comes on Christmas Eve, around midnight.’
‘Really? In my family, we pop him in his little basket right after Thanksgivin’.’
‘Some do that,’ he said.
‘I brought you somethin’.’ She dug in her enormous shoulder bag, pulled out a scrap of paper. ‘A book quote.’
‘You’re a reader!’ he said.
‘Not really. I am way too busy to read a whole book, sometimes I just read th’ first page an’ scoot over to th’ end. My cousin is th’ reader, she said give you this.’
All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened [Ernest Hemingway]
‘A gem. I’ll post it right away.’
‘You’re not wearin’ your ribbon.’
‘Not today, but I’ve worn it a lot. Ask anybody.’
‘You should wear it,’ she said. ‘So where’s your tree? Everybody on th’ street has a tree.’
‘A little early for a tree.’
‘We always pop ours in right after Thanksgivin’.’
‘Some do that,’ he said.
‘So what’s goin’ on in the other window, with th’ sign that says “Watch This Chair”?’
‘Someone will be sitting in it the next two Saturdays.’
‘Really! Who?’
‘It’s a surprise.’ The gospel truth if he ever told it.
‘I love surprises!’ She wrangled a notebook from her shoulder bag, pulled out her point-and-shoot. ‘I’m doin’ a story on this, okay?’
‘Okay,’ he said.
‘But I don’t know about a front page, I can’t guarantee a front page. It’s Christmas, you know.’
• • •
DRIVING DOWN MAIN AFTER CHURCH, they noticed a plastic bag hanging on the knob of the front door at Happy Endings. He parked at the post office and went across to check it out.
‘Good Lord!’ he said. It was frightening.
A bag full of white beards.
He unloaded the bag in the garage. Three of the blasted things, one with eyebrows. Dusty. He had a sneezing fit.
A note read: Oh thank you forevermore for taking these off my hands. I would sign my name but you might try to give them back. Merry Christmas!
He stuffed them in the bag and trotted through the hedge to Hélène’s. No answer to his knock on the rear door. He hung the bag on her doorknob, anonymous note included, and fled down the steps.
‘Father Tim!’
Kenny was putting a bag of garbage in the can by Miss Pringle’s driveway.
‘How are you, Kenny?’
‘Tryin’ to get my head around leavin’ in a couple of weeks. I’ve decided to take off the day after Christmas.’
‘We’ll miss you. You’ve been a fine influence on Sammy.’
‘My grandparents are to thank for that. I was goin’ wild like Sam, but they didn’t give up on me, they kept prayin’. And my girl back in Eugene, she’s been a huge help, she really understands why I had to come out here and find my brothers and little sister and stay awhile—not just find everybody and run back to Eugene. It’s been hard to be away this long.’
‘You’ve made your brothers and sister into a family again.’
‘I’m tryin’ to forgive my mother, but I don’t know . . .’
He nodded, took Kenny’s hand. ‘If you need anything—anything at all, anytime at all—will you call?’
‘I will.’
‘I’m glad we’ll be together for Christmas. Thanks for making that happen. We wish you a lot of success in school. You’ve saved some money, Dooley says . . .’
‘Five thousand. Not easy in my pay range, but the rent was low.’ Kenny smiled—he voted Kenny the best smiler in the family. ‘Harley’s a great guy, a really good influence. Sammy’s pretty connected to Harley, but Harley needs to do a little butt-kickin.’
He laughed. ‘Somehow, I don’t think that’s going to happen.’
‘Thanks for puttin’ up with Sammy and helpin’ him. He really likes you, he’s probably never trusted an older guy before, especially somebody who lays down the law to him.’
‘We all need the law laid down to us now and again, it was sure laid down to me.’
Nanny Howard had taken no prisoners when it came to making him toe the line. His mother and Peggy hadn’t slacked in that department, either.
‘We’ll talk more before you leave,’ he said. ‘But I’d like to make sure you know you can call anytime. We all need to keep in touch, we can’t afford to lose one of you—one of us—again.’
Kenny gave him a determined look.
‘We’re done bein’ lost.’
• • •
ON SUNDAY EVENING, he took the Eucharist and a baked pasta dish to the Murp
hys’. They offered a prayer of thanks for the donor of the carriage house, and for Hope’s sister, Louise, who was coming on board after Christmas.
‘Louise once said that to be an aunt, she would give anything,’ Hope told him. ‘By not going to Denver and moving here, she’s actually giving everything.’
‘Starting a new life again in Mitford,’ he said. ‘A very good place to start a new life.’ That’s what he had done, and Cynthia, and Scott, and Hope, and Winnie’s Thomas, and Abe, and Shirlene . . .
Hope looked at him, happy. ‘Scott has something to tell you, Father.’
The chaplain sat on the side of the bed and took Hope’s hand. There was a kind of radiance in Scott that he’d never seen before.
‘Pretty soon, someone else will be starting a new life in Mitford. Her name is Grace.’
Chapter Twenty-eight
People were watching the chair.
They were watching the manger.
They were watching the upstairs window for the appearance of ‘the bookstore tree.’
And he, converted to the rigors of retail, was watching Hope’s bottom line. According to Marcie, annual sales were ‘up a little.’ In these last ticking hours of the year, he was going for ‘up a lot.’
He dug out the tree stand and several boxes of ornaments from under the stairs. Sammy and Harley were off to a tree farm to cut the finest specimen of Norway spruce they could find. ‘Ten feet!’ he said.
Marcie and Hélène would drop by after closing time to start the bedecking. Shirlene asked if she could pitch in.
He called home. ‘Why don’t you come up and join us? Sammy and Harley, Marcie, Hélène, Coot, Shirlene . . .’
‘Shirlene!’ said his wife. ‘Why don’t you invite Omer?’
‘Should I?’
‘Tell him there’ll be food. Bachelors like that. I just made pimiento cheese for lunches at Irene’s, but I’ll do sandwiches for the tree-trimming instead. And I’ll take a tray of lemon squares out of the freezer.’
‘Bring a yogurt,’ he said. ‘Banana.’
‘What time?’
‘Anytime.’
• • •
THE NATIVITY WINDOW WAS PLEASING, but it lacked something.
Something tall.
Ha! He muscled the rubber plant to the window and positioned it left-rear of the camel coming from afar.
The painted pot just happened to be sympatico with the red in a saddle blanket.
Nice.
• • •
SAMMY AND HARLEY WERE WRANGLING the tree up the stairs with the help of Coot and Scott. Marcie was out buying drinks and chips; Hélène was on her way.
As he and Cynthia shelved new books close by, Shirlene and Omer tried out the chairs so long secluded in the Poetry section.
‘How’s Miss Patsy?’ Shirlene asked Omer.
‘She’d like to be here, but I didn’t want her gettin’ tangled up in th’ tree lights.’
‘She is adorable, you are both totally lucky. I would love to find a little dog just like her.’
‘She’s one of a kind, for sure. Don’t know about findin’ another one.’
‘Th’ breed books are so confusin’, plus a lot of those breeds are a house payment.’ Shirlene sighed. ‘I guess I don’t know how to find a dog.’
‘SPCA,’ said Omer. ‘Somethin’ for everyone.’
‘But people say when you go over there, they’re all barkin’ at one time and they all want to go home with you. That is really sad, plus how do you know which one?’
‘You just have to follow your heart. I hear you play Scrabble.’
‘Scrabble is practically my life.’
‘I pulled a bingo last night. My online partner played th’ word SQUARE; I hooked on to her word with a D, used all seven tiles.’
A gasp from Shirlene; a jangle of bracelets.
‘Got a triple word score both ways,’ said Omer. ‘Nailed a hundred and sixty points.’
‘What . . . was your word?’
Omer looked ten feet tall, sitting down. ‘J-A-P-Y-G-I-D.’
‘Oh, my gosh.’ Shirlene put her hand over her mouth. ‘Oh, my gosh.’
‘What?’ said Omer. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Are you . . . could you possibly be . . . WingDipper?’
‘Whoa. Are you . . . ?’
‘BocaGirl! Yes! You’re th’ one who killed me with that crazy word I never heard of in my entire life! I cannot believe this . . .’
‘Japygid!’ said Omer. ‘Any eyeless, wingless, primitive insect havin’ a pair of pincers at the rear of its abdomen.’
There went the toothsome grin. It was Scott Joplin’s ‘Maple Leaf Rag,’ it was Chopin’s Scherzo No. 2, Opus 31.
‘You’re a great Scrabble player,’ said Omer.
‘Oh!’ said Shirlene, fanning herself with a section of the Times.
‘Around town, I’m Flyboy, down th’ mountain, they call me Ragwing, but online, I’m WingDipper.’
‘So many aliases,’ she said, a mite breathless.
He and Cynthia stared at each other.
‘Truth,’ said his astonished wife, ‘is very much stranger than fiction.’
• • •
‘I HAVE A GREAT IDEA,’ he announced to all who were decorating the tree.
‘It’s about time,’ said Marcie. ‘Ha, ha, just kidding.’
‘Let’s stay open Friday and Saturday nights until Christmas.’
You could hear a spruce needle drop. Hardly anyone in Mitford stayed open at night, except for the Feel Good. Shop-Mitford-during-the-day-and-stay-home-at-night-where-you-belong-or-be-a-traitor-and-unload-your-money-on-the-college-liberals-in-Wesley was thought to be the unspoken philosophy.
‘I cannot work at night,’ said Marcie. ‘No way. I have a family last time I checked.’
‘Oh, vraiment! At night?’
‘I would help,’ said Shirlene, ‘but Fancy would kill me.’
‘I can do it,’ said Coot, who gave them all a rousing display of his dental condition.
His wife raised her hand. ‘Only for you.’
‘I’ll d-do it,’ said Sammy.
‘Done, then.’
A shock wave. How little it took in a small town. This was revolutionary.
And then, another revolution. After all the work on the tree, they decided not to plug in the lights until Saturday at dusk. All but one of them would stand across the street at the PO and watch as it lit the dark window.
In a culture of instant gratification, it felt good to wait.
• • •
THE CROWD ON FRIDAY NIGHT was ‘amazing’ and ‘huge,’ not to mention ‘unprecedented,’ according to customer reviews.
Even with the tree window still dark, people were driving by, parking, coming in, nosing around in the display windows, delivering the occasional gift for Children’s Hospital, asking about the empty chair, wondering about the baby Jesus—and actually buying books. At one point, the crèche included three small children on hands and knees, petting the sheep.
They had forgotten cookies—not a good thing. He sent Sammy to buy up ‘the day’s regrets,’ as Winnie called them, for fifty percent off.
Free gift-wrapping was a hit; it kept Coot and Cynthia busy. He wished for the old-fashioned cash register that rang the sales, it would have made a cheering sound. Instead, they had Bach’s Advent Cantatas going, a couple of which inclined toward the dark side and gave him new respect for the more upbeat ‘Twelve Days of Christmas.’
The toilet was a big draw—big enough to require a plumber the next morning—but alas alack, such was doing business with the public.
• • •
ON SATURDAY MORNING, the coffee was ready at a quarter ’til ten. Abe said he could smell it through the wall and came over for a q
uick pour.
‘You’re spoiling it for the natives, Father. Open at night? When does a man get his deserved rest?’
‘Abe, Abe, you’re talking like a gentile.’
‘True.’ Abe took a sip of coffee. ‘When is Saint Nick dropping in?’
‘Around noon, according to the sign on the door.’
‘So, okay, I’ll stay open tonight and next Saturday. But if you’re drumming up any such plans for Easter, I pass.’
• • •
‘AT FIVE-THIRTY SHARP,’ he announced, ‘we’re all going across to the post office and see the tree-lighting, and, of course, Saint Nicholas waving, and our wonderful Nativity scene.’
‘The whole megillah,’ said Abe.
Hélène raised her hand. ‘Who will light the tree?’
‘Somebody’s got to light th’ tree,’ said Sammy. ‘I’ll d-do it.’
Coot raised his hand. ‘I can do it!’
‘Nope. Change of plan. We’re all going across to the post office. The tree will be taken care of.’
‘It’s gon’ plug itself in!’ said Coot.
• • •
SCOTT CALLED TO SAY that he and Hope and Louise were planning a drive-by at six. Esther Cunningham called to announce a drive-by at seven, right after her meds.
‘Tell your grans to turn out a little before five-thirty to get a good spot on the sidewalk,’ he said. ‘Cookies after.’
‘What kind?’
‘Chocolate chip.’ He needed the word to get around.
Hélène arrived with the costume before noon. Flushed, rattling French like a house afire.
‘Who’s b-bein’ Saint Nick?’ said Sammy.
‘Father Tim, of course!’ said Hélène. ‘He is Saint Nick!’
Hélène took the costume from the box, shook out the alb, the cassock, the stole, the cord, even a mitre concocted of an unknown material . . . Any bishop of any century would be dazzled.
‘It’s gorgeous!’ said his wife. ‘Every piece. Look at this! Real fur! Amazing! And these are scraps?’
‘Oui! Forty years of sewing for the public!’
‘Okay, got to get moving,’ he said. ‘Where are the beards?’