by Rod Serling
Rance stared at him wide-eyed. “Knocks me through the window? Rance McGrew?”
Jesse’s eyes narrowed into slits, not unlike the openings in a Mark III tank. His pupils were the business ends of atomic cannons. “You heard me, Marshal,” he said. “Knocks you through the window and makes his getaway out the back”
Rance heaved a deep sigh, turned, and reentered the saloon.
Jesse could hear the mumble of voices from inside. There was one piercing wail that belonged to Sy Blattsburg, and some jumbled colloquy that sounded like “Areyououtofyourmothergrabbingmind? JesseJamesdoeswhat?!”
Jesse smiled and deftly plucked the cigarette out of the holder, stamping it under his patent-leather loafers.
Another voice came from inside. “Scene one hundred thirteen-take two.”
There was the sound of a scuffle, and then Rance McGrew came through the window in a welter of shattered glass.
Jesse walked over to stand above him, but in the process took a script from the front seat of the jag. “I was readin’ next week’s episode, Marshal. The one where ya knock a gun outta Frank James’s hand from a fourth-story window half a block away, usin’ the base of a lamp.”
Rance slowly and painfully got to his feet. “No good?” he inquired softly.
“Stinks!” said Jesse. “The way I see it, Frank hears ya, whirls around, fires from the hip—knocks the lamp outta your hand.”
Jesse opened the car door and motioned Rance inside. Then he walked around to the driver’s seat, got in, turned the key, and stepped on the gas. The car zoomed backward three quarters of the way across the street, stopped, and then roared forward.
Jesse’s voice could be heard over the sound of the engine. “Now, two weeks from now,” the voice said, “I think we oughta give Sam Starr a break He’s a nice fella—awful good to his mother—”
The rest of his voice was drowned out by the engine’s roar as the car disappeared down the dusty street.
While nothing is certain except death and taxes—and even these maybe somewhat variable—it seems reasonable to conjecture that the range riders up in Cowboy Heaven felt appeased. Jesse James used his mandate well, and from that moment on, Rance McGrew, a former phony-baloney, became an upright citizen with a preoccupation with all things involving tradition, truth, and cowboy predecessors.
The Night of the Meek
It was Christmas. There was absolutely no question about that. Festive good will filled the air like the smell of maple syrup-sweet, sugary, and thick with insistence. There was one more day to complete Christmas shopping and this item of information was dinned into the minds of the citizenry like a proclamation of impending martial law “One More Shopping Day until Christmas!” It was the war cry of the big sell, and on this twenty-fourth day of the twelfth month of the one-thousand-nine-hundred-and-sixty-first year of our Lord, it served as a warning that just a few hours remained for people to open up their wallets and lay rather tired fingers on dog-eared credit cards.
“One More Shopping Day until Christmas.” The words were strung in tinseled lettering across the main floor of Wimbel’s Department Store. Mr. Walter Dundee, the floor manager of Wimbel’s, glanced at them briefly as he did his rounds up and down the aisles, casting businesslike eyes at the organized mayhem surrounding him.
He was a balding little fellow in his fifties, inclined to paunchiness, but briskly efficient in his movements and attitudes. Mr. Dundee could spot a shoplifter, a bum credit risk, or a grimy little child breaking a mechanical toy—he had an abhorrence of children of all ages—in one single all-pervading glance. He could also spot an ineffectual sales-person just by listening to a couple of sentences of the opening pitch.
Mr. Dundee walked through the aisles of Wimbel’s that December 24th, barking out orders, snapping fingers, and generally riding herd on these last few moments of Yuletide humbuggery. He extended watery smiles to harried mothers and their squalling children, and he gave explicit and terse directions to any and all questions as to where merchandise could be found, where rest rooms were located, and the exact times of delivery for all purchases over twenty-five dollars, no matter how far out in the suburbs they went. As he walked up the aisles past Ladies Hand Bags, toward the Toy Department, he noted the empty Santa Claus chair. One of his sparse little eyebrows, set at a rakish tilt over a tiny blue eye, shot up in fast-mounting concern. There was a sign over the chair which read, “Santa Claus will return at 6:00 o’clock”
The large clock on the west wall read “6:35.” Santa Claus was thirty-five minutes late. An incipient ulcer in Mr. Dundee’s well-rounded abdomen did little pincer things to his liver. He belched, and felt anger building up like a small flame suddenly blasted by a bellows. That Goddamn Santa Claus was a disgrace to the store. What was his name—Corwin? That Goddamn Corwin had been the most undependable store Santa Claus they had ever hired. Only yesterday Dundee had seen him pull out a hip flask and take an unsubtle snort—smack dab in the middle of a Brownie troop. Mr. Dundee had sent him an icy look which froze Corwin in the middle of his tippling.
Mr. Dundee was noted for his icy looks. As a boy, thirty-odd years before at military school, he had become Sergeant Major of the Fourth Form—the only non-athlete ever to achieve this eminence—because of the icy look that he carried with him throughout his professional career. It made up for the fact that he stood five feet four inches tall and had a figure like a coke bottle.
Now he felt frustrated that his rage had no outlet, so he scanned the store until he spotted Miss Wilsie, Ladies Inexpensive Jewelry, primping in front of a mirror. He stalked over to her, pinioned her with his look, and then announced:
“You have nothing better to do, Miss Wilsie? Preparing yourself for a beauty contest? There are customers waiting. Be good enough to attend to them!”
He waited only long enough for the color to drain out of the girl’s face as she hurried back to her place behind the counter, then he turned again toward the empty Santa Claus chair and cursed the errant Santa Claus, now thirty-eight minutes late.
Henry Corwin sat at the bar, a moth-eaten Santa Claus outfit engulfing his sparse frame. Discolored whiskers hanging from a rubber band covered his chest like a napkin. His cocky little cap, with the white snowball at the end, hung down over his eyes. He picked up his eighth glass of inexpensive rye, blew the snowball off to one side, and deftly slipped the shot glass toward his mouth, downing the drink in one gulp. He looked up at the clock over the bar mirror and noted that the two hands were close together. Precisely where they were he couldn’t tell, but he did feel a sense of time passing. Too much time.
He suddenly noticed his reflection in the mirror and realized that he was not drunk enough, because he still looked like a caricature. The Santa Claus uniform, which he had rented from Kaplan’s Klassy Costume Rental, had seen not only better days but many earlier ones. It was made out of thin cotton, patched and repatched. The color had faded to a kind of ailing pink and the white “fur” trim looked like cotton after a boll weevil assault. The cap was several sizes too small, and was actually a reconverted Shriner’s fez with the insignia taken off. The face looking back at him had gentle eyes and a warm smile that was slightly lopsided. It crinkled up at the ends and made you want to smile back.
Corwin was neutral to the face. He rarely took note of it. At this moment he was more concerned with the costume, fingering it and noting considerable lollipop stains, week-old ice-cream spots, and some brand-new holes, sizable enough to reveal the two pillows he had strapped over his union suit. He took his eyes away from the reflection and pointed to his empty glass.
The bartender walked over to him and gestured at the clock. “You told me to tell yuh when it was six-thirty,” he announced. “It’s six-thirty.”
Corwin smiled and nodded. “That’s exactly what it is,” he agreed.
The bartender picked his teeth. “What happens now? Yuh turn into a reindeer?”
Corwin smiled again. “Would that that were so.
” He held up his empty glass. “One more, huh?”
The bartender poured him a shot. “That’s nine drinks and a sandwich—that’s four-eighty.”
Corwin took a single five-dollar bill from his pocket and put it on the counter. He started the shot glass toward his mouth. But as he did so, he noticed two little faces staring at him through the frosted glass of the front door. Big eyes looked at him in rapt attention and breath-catching worship—the eyes of every kid who, with the purest faith, had known that there was a North Pole, that reindeer did land on rooftops, and that miracles did come down chimneys. Even kids like this had this faith on grimy one-hundred-and-eighteenth street, where Puerto Ricans crowded into cold dirty rooms to gradually realize that poverty wore the same clothes both on lush islands and in concrete canyons a thousand miles away.
Corwin had to stare back at the little faces, and then he had to smile. They looked like slightly soiled cherubs on some creased and aged Christmas card. They were excited that the man in the red suit was looking at them.
Corwin turned his back to them, and quickly gulped the contents of the shot glass. He waited a moment, then looked at the door again. The two little noses pressed against the glass suddenly disappeared. But before they went they waved to Santa Claus at the bar and Corwin waved back.
He looked thoughtfully at the empty shot glass.
“Why do you suppose there isn’t really a Santa Claus?” he asked, speaking partly to the glass, partly to the bartender.
The bartender looked up tiredly from drying glasses. “How’s that?” he asked.
“Why isn’t there a real Santa Claus”—Corwin nodded toward the front door—“for kids like that?”
The bartender shrugged. “What the hell am I, Corwin—a philosopher?” He stared at Corwin for a long moment. “Do you know what your trouble is?” he said. “Yuh let that dopey red suit go to your head!”
He picked up the five-dollar bill, rang up the cash register, then put the change in front of Corwin.
Corwin looked at the coins and smiled a little crookedly. “Flip yuh—double or nothing.”
“What the hell do yuh think this is, Corwin—Monte Carlo? Go on—get outta here!”
Corwin rose somewhat unsteadily, testing soggy legs. Then, satisfied that they were serviceable, he walked across the room to the front door and out into the cold, snowy night, buttoning the top button of his thin cotton jacket, squeezing his cap down as far as it would go. He put his head into an icy wind and started across the street.
A big Caddie, with a Christmas tree protruding from the trunk, shot past him, honking. A red-faced, angry chauffeur shouted something as the car sped away. Corwin just smiled and went on, feeling the wet flakes cool on his hot face. He stumbled on the opposite curb and reached for the lamppost which was several feet away.
His arms encircled nothing but snowflakes and he pitched forward on his face, landing on a pile of snow next to a garbage can. With great difficulty he got to a sitting position, and became suddenly aware of four ragged little legs standing close by. He looked up to see the two scrawny Puerto Rican kids staring down at him, their little faces dark against the snow.
“Santa Claus,” the little girl said, catching her breath, “I want a dolly and a playhouse.”
The silent little boy alongside nudged her with an elbow.
“And a gun,” she continued hurriedly, “and a set of soldiers and a fort and a bicycle—”
Corwin looked up into their faces. Even their excitement, their exuberance, the universal Christmas look of all children, couldn’t hide the thinness of their faces—nor could the sweetness of them, and the gentleness, hide the fact that their coats were too small for them and not nearly heavy enough for the weather.
Then Henry Corwin began to cry. Alcohol had unlocked all the gates to his reserve—what flooded out of him were the frustrations, the miseries, the failures of twenty years; the pain of the yearly Santa Claus stints in moth-eaten costumes, giving away fantasies that he didn’t own, imitating that which was only make-believe to begin with.
Henry Corwin reached out and pulled the children to him, burying his face first against one and then the other, the tears cascading down his cheeks, impossible to stop.
The two little children stared at him—incredulous that this red-coated god, who dealt in toys and unbelievable wonders, could sit on a snowy curb and cry just as they did.
“Por que Santa Claus esta llorando?” the girl whispered to the little boy. He answered her in English. “I don’t know why he’s crying. Maybe we have hurt his feelings.”
They watched him for a while until his sobs subsided and he released them, stumbling to his feet and heading down the street away from them—this thin shabby man with the wet face, looking as if he believed that all the anguish of the world was of his doing.
An hour later when Mr. Dundee saw Corwin come in through the side door, he felt that perverse pleasure that is one of the parts built into mean men. Here was someone he could vent his wrath on—a wrath that at this moment was anointed with inflammable oil. He waited for Corwin to walk toward him, drumming his fingertips together behind his back and then deftly grabbing the Santa Claus by the arm as he walked past.
“Corwin,” Dundee said through clenched teeth, ‘you’re almost two hours late! Now get over there and see if you can keep from disillusioning a lot of kids that not only there isn’t a Santa Claus—but that the one in the store happens to be a bar-hopping clod who’d be more at home playing Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer!” He gave Corwin a shove. “Now get with it—Santa Claus!” This last was spat out like an epithet.
Henry Corwin smiled wanly and started toward the Santa Claus section. He paused by the electric trains and watched two little colored boys staring at them as if they were a collection of miracles. Henry winked at them, went to the control panel, and started to push buttons.
Three trains started up simultaneously, racing around the tracks, over bridges, through tunnels, past station platforms. Little men came out and waved lanterns or threw mail sacks, or did anyone of a dozen marvelous things that toy trainmen do. But after a moment it seemed evident that Henry Corwin was not mechanically minded. The two little boys looked at each other with growing concern as a Union Pacific Flyer raced down the tracks on a collision course with a Civil War supply train.
Henry Corwin hastily pushed a few more buttons, but the collision was inevitable. The two trains met head-on in a welter of dented metal, ripped tracks, and flying toy trainmen.
Never one to leave well enough alone, Corwin pushed two more buttons which made the damage total. He switched another set of tracks that sent the heavily laden freight train piling into the wreckage of the first two. Toy trains flew through the air, bridges collapsed; and when the noise had subsided, Corwin saw the two little boys staring at him.
“What do yuh think?” Corwin asked them, smiling a little sheepishly.
The first little boy looked at his companion, then back toward Corwin. “How are yuh on erector sets?”. he asked.
Corwin shook his head a little sadly. “About the same.” He tousled the two little heads, and then climbed over the velvet rope that was strung around the Santa Claus chair.
There was a line of waiting children and clock-watching mothers and they surged forward when the slightly moth-eaten Kris Kringle mounted his throne. He sat there for a moment, shutting his eyes briefly as he felt the room start to spin around him. Christmas decorations and colored lights whirled round and round as if he were riding a merry-go-round. He tried to focus on the faces of the children as they kept streaming past him; tried to smile and wave at them. He shut his eyes again, feeling nausea rising inside of him. This time, when he opened them he was face to face with the blurred image of a small gargoyle being pushed toward him by a bosomy, loud woman with a set of shoulders like Tony Galento’s.
“Go ahead, Willie,” the woman’s voice screeched, “climb up on his lap. He won’t hurt you, will you, Santa Claus? You
go ahead, Willie, you tell him—” She gave the seven-year-old another insistent push toward Santa Claus. Corwin half rose, weaving unsteadily and extending a wavering hand.
“What’s your name, little boy?” Corwin asked, and then hiccoughed loudly. He tilted sideways, grabbed for the arm of the chair, and then pitched forward to land on the floor at the little boy’s feet. He sat there smiling a little wanly, unable to get up or to do anything else.
The small gargoyle took one look at Corwin and in a blaring voice, similar in pitch to his mother’s, shrieked, “Hey, mah! Santa Claus is loaded!”
The gargoyle’s mother immediately screamed, “You’ve got some nerve! You ought to be ashamed!”
Corwin just sat there and shook his head back and forth. “Madam,” he said very quietly, “I am ashamed.”
“Come on, Willie.” She grabbed the boy by the arm. “I hope this isn’t going to be a traumatic experience for you.” She looked over her shoulder toward Corwin. “Sot!”
People, hearing the tone, stopped and stared.
Mr. Dundee hurried up the aisle toward Toyland. He gave an all-pervading glance, and then his voice assumed that unctuous, placating quality of every hard-pressed floor manager.
“Is there some trouble here, madam?”
“Trouble!” the big woman spat back. “No, there’s no trouble, except this is the last time I trade in this store. You hire your Santa Clauses out of the gutter!”
She pointed toward Corwin, who was struggling to his feet. He took a hesitant step toward one of the brass poles flanking the entrance to his “throne.”
“Madam,” he said very gently, ‘‘please. It’s Christmas,”
Willie’s mother’s face twisted, and in the light of an illuminated sign which read, “Peace on Earth—Good Will to Men,” she looked like a cross between the Wicked Witch of the North and a female Ebenezer Scrooge.