Читать книгу Mike Mullins of Boston Crick - Owen Templeton Garrett Williamson - Страница 6
ОглавлениеA Tough Christmas
Pigs is it and Old John indeed. Him that hasn’t wore out his first set of store teeth yet! There’s plenty the same man could learn from pigs if he had the mind to do it. But no, it’s blacken a man’s character he’s after doing until every grinning engine-driver grunts to me as he drills by. Or it’s, “Mr. Mullins, have you any stock cars on the siding? There might be a bit of pulpwood to be loading in the morning.” ’Tis me that could be telling how he come to be drove out of Galway, no less, if I had a drop of his black blood coursing in my veins. Sure, I’m not one to be telling tales on him but—
It was the winter of ’34 and times was hard all over. MacDougall Chutes was hit hard like all the rest. Of course people was eating, for none ever starve in the North Country, but it was slim pickings at the best. There was little ready money and not much of anything in the store. All through November, the wood piles took an awful beating and every house was banked with snow right up to the sills. Come December and there was mornings when you couldn’t tell the time of day on any thermometer in the village. It was cold and no mistake and the snow kept coming.
The school was open and Nora, the school mistress, as pretty a girl as ever you’ll see outside of Ireland and always with a smile for me and John, was hard put to it to gather any sort of a class about her. The village children made the grade, except the littlest of them, but them that came in from the country stayed at home. We’d see them ploughing through the drifts, wrapped up like Eskimos and their little noses red when they wasn’t white with frost bite. I’m thinking that Nora was undressing them and thawing of them out and getting them ready to go home the most of the time.
One day we’re watching the children bucking through the drifts, when John says, “Mike, what day is it?”
“Sure,” I says, “it’s the eleventh of December.”
“And what will it be two weeks from now?” he says.
“It will be the twenty-fifth,” I says, for I’m quick at figures.
“And what day is that?” he keeps on like I’m one of Nora’s pupils.
“Bedad,” I says, “I was near forgetting. It’s my woman’s birthday and I’ll have to be after getting her a present.”
“You’re no better than a heathen,” says John, “not to be knowing that ’tis Christmas Day.”
“Sure, it’s no matter,” I says, “and me without chick nor child.”
“Take shame to you,” says John. “You see them kids. What kind of Christmas will they be having, with their dad’s not working and most of them living under the black shame of relief?”
By the powers, when he put it that way, it looked pretty slim and hopeless but, at the moment, we both cocked an ear at the schoolhouse right across the way. Bedad, if Nora and the kids wasn’t singing as if their little hearts would burst. “Good King Wenceslaus,” it was and they followed up with “O Little Town of Bethlehem” and “Silent Night.” I’m damned if John, the old fool, wasn’t crying, not that I could see the tears of him for there was a kind of a mist about.
“Well,” says John, when the singing stopped, “What are we going to do about it?”
For the life of me, I didn’t know and I waited for John to give the lead.
“I’ll tell you what we’re going to do about it,” he says. “We’re going to be Sandy Claus to those kids and give them a Christmas like they never seen before. There’ll be a tree in the schoolhouse, with candles on it and fixings like an Orangeman on parade, bad cess to all of them. There’ll be ice-cream and candy canes and animals and hot drinks and cakes and pies. And there’ll be a present for every blessed one of them and a big one for Miss Nora.”
“Where’ll it all come from?” I says. “Devil a bit of it is there in MacDougall Chutes, except the Christmas tree and it might be cakes and pies.”
“You’ll get them,” says John, “and I’ll tell you how.”
I knew it would be so, for he is a masterful man when it comes to giving orders to the likes of me.
“You’ll go this day and collect the money,” he says. “Here’s what I have on me for a starter.”
“Sure,” I says, “I’m working steady myself and I matches you dollar for dollar.”
“ ’Tis a start,” says John. “Now go to it.” And I did.
Before night, I had a roll would fill a boxcar. The lads at the mill come through handsome. The section gang wasn’t a bit behind. The store and the hotel kicked in with what they could. If it wasn’t much, it was worth more for the way they gave it. ’Twas done secret. No kid was to know anything about it. Him at the big house, that had known hard times hisself, just asked what we had and doubled it. I was scared, we had so much.
John had been working himself. Every good cook in the village, with an extra bit of flour in the barrel, was pledged to be mum and give a thumping contribution to the feast. John and me worked late that night. There was fifty kids and Nora to look after. An order went out to the big city for the lot of them. Something warm for everyone and something foolish. Drums and horns and games, dolls and sleighs and hockey sticks. I disremember all of it but it was sure enough and there was a red coat and white whiskers for John to play Sandy Claus.
School was out two days before Christmas. The bales and boxes was in the freight shed and as pretty a tree as you ever see was set up in the schoolhouse that very night. John’s woman and mine and a dozen others was all over it. You never see its equal. There was red and blue and white running every which way and, bedad, sparkly stuff like icicles hanging down all over. There was candy canes and animals, like John said, and stars and shiny balls. I just stood back and stared and I’m damned if my old woman didn’t kiss me in a corner. ’Twas all ready by midnight and not a kid the wiser. All the people in the country had been told and everything was set for the big day.
And what a day it was. An even zero with every flake of snow a diamond and it crunching and squeaking underfoot. Never was so many sleighbells in MacDougall Chutes when the teams started coming in. At seven o’clock the doors was opened. Every kid in town was there, except little Dinny Dixon and him down with measles right forninst the school. There was singing and Nora led such carols as you never heard. Old Rafferty was there with his fiddle and Pete Coture danced jigs and hornpipes like his legs was rubber. That slick young feller from the mill did tricks with cards and, easy as spitting, he’d take things out of the air I never would have thought was there. He took Bob Potter’s watch and smashed it with a hammer and there it was next minute safe in Mr. Potter’s pocket. You can bet, I kept my hand tight on my own. Then there was eating and it was good to see those kids dig in.
Long around ten o’clock, the big time came. John ducks out to dress hisself over at the station. When next I see him, what with the magic tricks and dancing and the carols still ringing in my ears, I didn’t know him. For me, he was just Sandy Claus, with his red coat and whiskers, a great bulging pack and a twinkle in his eye. I met him at the back door near the tree.
“ ’Tis fine,” I says, “but I can’t help thinking about little Dinny Dixon.”
“Give him never a thought,” says John. “When I come across, there he was, with his ma and pa, and their noses like putty on the window pane. So in I goes and Dinny thinking that I’m straight from the North Pole. He’s got his skates and his sweater and he’s as happy as a kitten with two tails.”
“ ’Tis well,” I says. “The fun can now go on.”
And fun it was as every little gaffer and his sister comes up and gives a bob and gets their presents. Sure, they believed in Sandy Claus that night. Nora comes last. For her, we had a deerskin parka, lined with rabbit skins and trimmed with wolf fur. She put it on and the pretty face of her, framed in the grey softness of it, was prettier than anything I ever hope to see. She made a little speech. At least, she started one and then she cried and kissed the only bit of John’s face that wasn’t whiskers. All in all it was a grand night. As they straggled home, they was all singing. It was “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” and, bedad, I’m not so sure that some of the angels wasn’t singing with them.
That’s the end of it—almost. But just to show you what a lunkheaded, ornery derail Old John really is, within a week every house in the town that had a kid was placarded with a red measles sign and old Doc. Macintosh was like to have a nervous breakdown. Pigs is it. Let him talk to me of pigs.
