13. Locusts

Mother had a very straight back but her older sister, Winifred, was stooped. Aunt Winnie was a widow and she lived with us. She had white hair and always wore long, loose, black dresses. Father didn’t approve of her stance. If she had ever stood high on a bare limb outlined against the sky, you would have thought she was an over-sized South American condor. Once as Father watched her creeping up the stairs he said to Mother, “Why doesn’t Winnie stand and walk erect?”

Mother, on the defensive, replied, “Perhaps if you had had nine children you would hump over too.”

A quizzical expression played over Father’s face as he decided he didn’t want to think about it. There was no answer. I always admired the way Father said nothing when there was nothing to say.

Father may not be a saint in Heaven but he was a saint on earth. All of Mother’s large family had big families and a thing like this can come down on you like a ton of brick. Even in Louisiana he could not remember a night or a meal that was not shared by from one to six of them. They were mostly country people—good, plain and law-abiding, nice old-fashioned structures, knitters and porch sitters. You could look at them and know that they could make good lemon pies, and syllabub, and liked to look for eggs around the barn. The only trouble was there were just too many of them. It was in Father’s thoughts, I think, that something had to be done, though it was hard to say what.

It was especially drouthy one year. Nature had bravely struggled in vain to respond to spring, and the grass, leaves and crops were sere and summer brown. The heat was stifling. Father in his summer-weight, black alpaca suit, wouldn’t admit it. He stood perspiring, but chin-up with oxlike fortitude, at the washbasin letting cold water run over his wrists. Electric fans hadn’t been thought of—at least none had materialized. Eating ices or drinking lemonades or soda water was the accepted way of surviving the punishing heat. (Soda water came in heavy glass bottles with a rubber-based plunger in their necks. You had to push this plunger into the neck of the bottle in order to get the soda out. This was a painful procedure by hand so I usually used my shoe to ram it in.)

One day the ranks of our kinsmen were thinned by the departure of a cousin for California. He stayed on and began writing enthusiastic letters to all his relatives. He described the abundant, lush, and juicy fruit, the damp, cool, exhilarating climate, and the jolly sea. It was more than human nature could be expected to stand. Courage to stay on in Texas, quickly bled to death, so another of our kin left for California. Soon it was like watching a cloud of locusts arise and head west.

Bending candles bowed to the heat and puddled the tables. I carefully straightened them and took them to the basement, which was the coolest place to store them. While doing this small service I was musing over the dense flight pattern of the locusts. I wasn’t sure what to make of it.

The first night our small immediate family sat down cozily to a shortened dinner table there was certainly a secret celebratory aura about Father. The close compact neatness of peas in a pod was gone. We could flap out our elbows if we wished. Slowly the idea entered my thoughts that perhaps Father might have bought the first train fare, and even some of the subsequent ones. It had not been an easy problem to solve but I decided he had solved it. I was beginning to recognize strategy and the smooth tarmac approach when I saw it, and to suspect that underlying Father’s angelic behavior there was at times a ruddy rascal. I decided not to try to get to the bottom of it and that I had a fine opportunity to keep my mouth shut—so I did.

Christmas with us was observed with almost ritual dignity and simplicity. People in general did not take Christmas in their teeth and shake the life out of it just as if they were so many rat terriers.

Ours seemed to begin on Christmas Eve, although I know now that much preparation had gone into it. Father called our living room “the hall.” After dinner we gathered around the fireplace and Father read from the Bible or Dickens, or just made up a story with the Christmas spirit exemplified. Then there was eggnog and, taking lighter tactics, Father recited Clement Clarke Moore’s immortal “The Night Before Christmas.” Before going to bed we hung our limp black cotton stockings from the mantel and during the night they became lumpy with a coin in the toe, and oranges, unshelled almonds, and sweets. Oranges were a real part of Christmas because we only saw them at this season.

There were lots of Christmases like this; but one wasn’t. Among the locusts, who were still with us, there was every sort of figure and some were exactly the proper shape for Santa Claus, but the rotund ones were too stolid. However one locust had a fine sense of the dramatic and Mother chose him this year to wear the white whiskers and the red suit.

That year we were to have our presents on Christmas Eve and as Father finished the last line of a merry tale we distinctly heard the sound of sleigh bells. We dashed to the door and Santa swept in covered in real snow. Up to now the proceedings had the authentic ring that is waited for with expectancy by the dime-store cashier when she drops a doubtful coin upon a marble slab.

We welcomed Santa with somewhat overdone cordiality as we eyed his large bag of gifts and led him back to the hall and the fireplace. A large fourfold screen had been removed and there stood a lovely Christmas tree, ablaze with white and burning wax candles. The tree was placed in front of a mirrored wall which doubled its brilliant display.

Santa’s natural flair for drama was somewhat augmented by the warmth of the fireplace, and a few shots of Bourbon, which made him reach a little too far for the part he was to play. He had arrived full of “ho! hos!” and his featherpillow stomach twitched in merriment. He was wick as a cricket, as he took his place by the Christmas tree and began delving into his big bag. Drawing forth present after present after present, he proffered each with a mighty flourish, a gay and impish remark and more and more “ho! hos!” I was beginning to wish he would say “ha! ha!” for a change when I became fascinated by a small spiral of smoke traveling up his back.

Father weighed two hundred and ten pounds but he played a fast game of tennis until he was nearly seventy years old. Like Disraeli, he had “a very fine leg” which may have been the reason that he sometimes put on his kilt and danced the Highland Fling and the Sword Dance, which he executed as lightly as if he were made of duck’s down. He was always trustworthy in a tight spot and his reflexes were good that night too, as Santa burst into flame. You have to be quick to put a tea cozy over a sharp-eyed mouse and being swift was another of Father’s strong points. That night it was like watching a trick rider snatch up a handkerchief on the gallop. Father grabbed the bowl of eggnog, poured it over Santa, and propelled him in the nick to the shower bath. There stood Santa in the tub—wildered, in a maze of thought—with water sluicing down upon him, a particularly gory sight, as the red ran out of the suit and brown bits of burned cloth fell to his feet.

This incident probably holds the world’s record for brevity in the art of sobering up. Somehow all other Christmases fell a little flat after this one.