Since Christmas is also the season of miracles, we were back before we were missed. On the last lap, I got a little overconfident the way you do at twelve. I needed more work on my steering and nearly took out Mrs. Dowdel’s mailbox. But then we were creeping back past our house. I managed to park the Pickle in its regular ruts. It lurched one last time, and the engine died. I put the keys back where they belonged.
Maybe Mother and Dad thought the tree that turned up in our front room was Mrs. Dowdel’s payment for chores I’d been doing for her. Maybe they thought that both that tree and the big one that filled Mrs. Dowdel’s bay window had come from the VFW tree sale up at the IGA. Maybe I let them think it.
Mrs. Dowdel and Ruth Ann decorated for days. They gilded pinecones and strung enough popcorn for two trees. The first graders made paper chains at school, and Ruth Ann made extra. The tree in the bay to show him the way glowed like Times Square with strand after strand of fat-bulbed lights.
There were no presents under Mrs. Dowdel’s tree though. She said she didn’t give any because of inflation.
* * *
There was a tree in every front window in town, against the blue glow of television sets. And a wreath on every door. A full-size beaverboard nativity scene, floodlit, appeared in the park uptown where Gypsy Piggott’s big top had stood last summer. Woody’s Zephyr Oil filling station gave out inflatable plastic snowmen with every lube job.
And night after night the strains of a heavenly host singing al-le-lu-ia welled out of our church as Mother rehearsed the concert choir.
Actual heavenly hosts looking down on the town could have taken it for the toy village under a Christmas tree, complete with train track and winking lights. A light dusting of snow on Christmas Eve was the final touch.
The town bustled now with company coming: kids home from college, soldiers on leave. Company for Christmas.
After a sketchy supper at our house, the bustle turned to panic. Mother said the Christmas choir concert was her first opportunity to share Methodist music with what she called The Larger Community. She was worried sick they didn’t have all the bugs out of “Ring Out Wild Bells.” Then she couldn’t find her pitch pipe.
The Methodist women had made Christmas choir robes out of army surplus sheeting. Phyllis said she looked like Casper the Ghost in hers. She and Mother had given each other Toni home permanents, but this hadn’t calmed them. Ruth Ann’s choir robe was a mile too long. She kept tripping over it and stumbling into things. She was sure she had her solo down pat. Mother wasn’t.
The house vibrated with women. They were in and out of every room. You couldn’t hear yourself think. And the concert was still an hour off. Dad and I got our coats and went outside, but it was too cold on the porch. We went around back and sat in the Pickle to be out of the wind. Dad had on his old pea coat from the navy, over his robe with the velvet. He hadn’t worn it since the princess’s funeral.
As soon as we were in the car, I knew it wasn’t a good idea. There was a heavy evergreen smell and pine needles everywhere. For some reason.
We had a clear view of Mrs. Dowdel’s house. Lights were on upstairs and down. The kitchen glowed like a blazing pumpkin with last-minute cooking. She’d sent Ruth Ann home way before dark, and she’d been seen down at the depot, waiting for somebody off the train.
“She has a fine tree,” Dad remarked, brushing pine needles off the Pickle’s dashboard.
To change the subject, I said, “But there aren’t any presents under it. She doesn’t give gifts.”
One of Dad’s hands rested on the steering wheel, there in the dark. “You sure about that?”
I thought I was. “She mentioned inflation.”
“Maybe she doesn’t wait for Christmas. Have you had a gift from her already?”
“You don’t mean anything wrapped up with ribbon, right?” I said.
“No,” Dad said. “Nothing that small.”
I thought. But I couldn’t get past the day she’d told me to drive the Pickle. That was a great day. Every night since, I’d dreamed myself back to it. In my dreams I was behind the wheel, gearing down, double-clutching. And there was never oncoming traffic, and I was always in the right gear. I drove with one elbow out of the window in my dreams. And I was sixteen and six foot tall. With shoulders out to here. And nobody, but nobody was going to tie me up and pitch me in the crick. Let them try.
Dad sat there, giving me some time. You could see our breath. The glow from Mrs. Dowdel’s tree spilled out of her bay across the white yard like a welcome mat.
“Dad, who’s that tree lighting the way for? Mrs. Dowdel didn’t mean the Christchild, did she?”
“No,” Dad said. “The Christchild’s been there all year long.”
A moment passed, pine-scented. “Then who?”
Dad stirred, reached for the door handle. “Somebody we’re just about to meet. And he’s due now. We’d better get in the house to make him welcome.”
I was stumped. “To our house?”
Dad nodded. “A visitor from afar.”
“You mean like one of the three Wise Men?” I was as lost as usual.
“Not exactly,” Dad said. “But he’ll probably be bearing a gift.”
We headed up to the house then. Dad’s hand was on my shoulder, which I liked.
“And son,” he said, “when you get a minute, take that crosscut saw out of the Pickle’s trunk and put it back in Mrs. Dowdel’s cobhouse.”