CHAPTER 11
December 1983
Very early on Christmas morning, Mary Dell woke to the sight of Donny coming through the bedroom door wearing a Santa suit and carrying her breakfast on a tray.
“Merry Christmas, little momma!”
Mary Dell rubbed her eyes and took a look out the window. It was still dark. She groaned and propped herself up on pillows.
“What time is it?”
“Five o’clock. I was up half the night putting Howard’s Christmas presents together, so I figured I might as well make breakfast. Look here,” he said as he set the tray down next to Mary Dell on the bed, her stomach now too prominent to allow him to place it over her lap. “We’ve got eggs and orange juice and bacon and grits. The bacon is a little burnt, and the grits are a little runny, but I think they’ll taste all right.”
Mary Dell kissed him on the cheek. “Bacon is good a little burnt. Thank you, honey. That’s quite an outfit you’re wearing.”
Donny held out his arms so she could get the full effect. “Saw it on sale at the Woolworth’s in Waco. It came with a sack to put the presents in too, but it wasn’t big enough to hold everything so I didn’t fool with it.”
Mary Dell sipped her orange juice, wishing Donny had thought to make coffee too. “We’ve got too many presents to fit in Santa’s sack?” She yawned.
“Not us. Howard. Let me tell you something, those people who print ‘some assembly required’ on toy boxes are the biggest liars on God’s green earth. I about needed an engineering degree to put the fire engine together. Still have three washers left over. Can’t figure out where they go.”
Mary Dell blinked several times, willing herself into wakefulness. “Fire engine? You bought our unborn child a fire engine?”
Donny grinned. “Yep. Big enough to ride in. Has a siren, a battery-powered engine, and a hose that squirts real water. Finish up your breakfast and come out to the tree. You can see for yourself.”
Donny shared his wife’s love of all things big, gaudy, and shiny. Together they had picked out the biggest, gaudiest, shiniest tree they could find—a nine-foot-tall fir with a circumference as wide as a fat woman in a hoopskirt, coated in a thick spray of white flocking flecked with gold glitter—and decorated the branches with fourteen strings of blue bubble lights before hanging them with purple, gold, scarlet, and lime-green glass ornaments and five boxes of silver tinsel.
The living room of the two-bedroom, two-bath double-wide Donny and Mary Dell bought when they married and installed on its own electric and sewer system about a half mile from Dutch and Taffy’s place wasn’t large. The Christmas tree by itself took up about half the floor space; the toys took up most of the rest.
Besides the fire engine—which truly was big enough for a child, and not just a toddler but a child of seven or eight, to ride in—the gifts Donny purchased included a football, a basketball, a baseball and bat, a four-foot-tall stuffed giraffe, a replica of the space shuttle made from chunky plastic and suitable for toddlers, a red toy lawn mower that spat out soap bubbles, two tiny green bicycles with training wheels already attached, as well as a larger purple one with a white banana seat and matching wicker basket, and an even bigger blue bike with a horn on the handle and orange flames painted on the chain guard, a fishing pole and tackle box, a toy six-shooter and holster, a teeny-tiny Western shirt of blue gingham with rhinestone snaps instead of buttons and white fringe on the yoke, a tiny white Stetson, shiny black cowboy boots with silver stitching, a prancing plastic palomino horse suspended on springs hung from a metal frame, a set of wooden ABC blocks, a jack-in-the-box, a toy doctor’s kit, a chemistry set, and an entire set of the Encyclopædia Britannica.
Mary Dell’s eyes bulged when she saw the evidence of her husband’s generosity.
“Donny! Have you lost your mind? Where did you get all this?”
Donny’s smile faded. He scratched his left ear.
“Mostly at Toys‘R’Us in Waco,” he said. “But I found the boots, shirt, and hat in the Sears catalog, and I bought the encyclopedia from a man who knocked on the door one day while you were over at your sister’s. What’s the matter? Don’t you like it?”
Mary Dell spread out her hands helplessly, searching for words. “Well, it’s . . . it’s just . . . you’ve got four bicycles here, honey. How many do you think we need?”
“I bought those other three for your sister’s kids. Jeb’s been moping around so much. Thought it might cheer him up, and of course, I had to get something for Cady and the new baby too.”
“That was real nice of you, Donny.”
“We can afford it, if that’s what you’re worried about,” he said defensively.
“I’m not worried,” Mary Dell said gently, aware that she’d wounded his pride. “It’s just that this is an awful lot of Christmas. What’s there left to give him next year?”
“Have you been to that Toys‘R’Us store?” Donny asked. When Mary Dell shook her head, he said, “Well, it’s about as big as Texas Stadium, no kidding, stocked floor to ceiling with toys, sports equipment, remote-control cars, games, bicycles—even playhouses and swing sets. I didn’t buy but a tenth of what I could have. Didn’t want to overwhelm the little guy, not right off.”
Mary Dell tried to suppress a smile. “That was good thinking, honey.”
Donny narrowed his eyes. “Fine. Make fun of me if you want,” he said, “but this is my first and probably my only son we’re talking about. He’s going to have the best of everything and all the opportunities I never did.
“If Howard wants to be a rancher, then fine. He can be a rancher. And if he wants to be a doctor, a lawyer, a fireman, an astronaut, or a quarterback, or president of the United States, then he can do that. I don’t want anything to hold him back. I don’t know what our boy is going to do, but I do know it’s going to be something great. Something you and I could never have imagined. He’s going to surprise us, darlin’.”
Donny crossed the room, stepping over the bubble mower to reach his wife’s side, knelt down in front of her chair, and rested his head against Mary Dell’s stomach.
“You wait and see if I’m not right. This boy is going to be something special. One of a kind. Aren’t you, Howard?”
The baby kicked. Donny looked up at Mary Dell with a broad grin.
“Did you see that? He heard me!”
Mary Dell bent forward and kissed the top of her husband’s head.