A Year Down Yonder (7 page)

Then she was down in the snow again, gasping with the work and the cold. Steam rose off her. She wired a trap to a fence post. She stuck the little flag of rabbit fur in the workings of the trap and drew the cork from the vial with her teeth. She’d driven the wooden stake. Now she poured a little of the fluid on it.

“Grandma, what is that stuff?”

“Fox urine,” she said, and set the jaws of the trap.

Once more she dragged herself upright. We moved on along the fence. She gave me the trapping basket to carry, making me part of this. She swung the fox by his brush tail, after she’d reloaded the pistol.

“He’s smart,” Grandma said, mostly to herself but teaching me. “Wily. He can smell me, and I can’t smell him. But there’s some fox in me, and I know how he thinks. He likes fence lines and standing water and ditches. And I need the snow to track him.”

We came to two more of her traps. I guess I was relieved to see them empty. Then on across another pasture a trap yielded a fox already dead. Though Grandma was quick on the trigger, I think she was glad of that. I was. She tied her two foxes together with twine from her pocket. She was never without twine.

We followed a fresh track of prints to the edge of a frozen drainage ditch where she set another trap. How quick and sure she worked with those stiff old hands of hers.

I was cold right through. We worked back to the road by a meandering route, leaving our own tracks behind. Now she had four foxes twined together. When she held them up, you could see how they’d be—fox furs with glass eyes, arranged around some lady’s shoulders, far from here.

The next day Grandma skinned the foxes and nailed their pelts to the cobhouse wall. And when the fur broker came around, they did a deal. He tried his best, telling her he was mainly in the market for muskrat and beaver. But she was better with foxes, and at driving a bargain. She sold every last skin at her price. This began to clear up the mystery of where Grandma got such ready money as she had.

I went out with her many a December night when the snow was on the ground. Something drew me away from the warm stove. I dreaded the scream of a trapped fox. But I’d have heard it anyway, in my head, at home. So I’d go out with Grandma to work her traps in the ebony and silver nights. There were little changes stirring in me. I began to notice how old Grandma was, how hard she worked herself, how far from town she’d roam in the frozen nights, across uneven ground. I began to want to be there with her, to make sure she’d come safely home.

 

At school we practiced for the Christmas program all month long. Miss Butler couldn’t sing either, but she was a feisty director. After we’d run “Lo, How a Rose” into the ground, she took it off the program. And she wasn’t satisfied with our “Once in Royal David’s City.” She took the Christmas program personally, as teachers do.

We had our stage props now: a radiating tinfoil star and one of those mangers you see in Nativity scenes and nowhere else. Baby Jesus was a battered doll with eyes that opened and closed. It was Ina-Rae’s. She said she’d had it when she was little, but the rumor was that she still played with it.

I had a sheet shawl and drapings. Carleen Lovejoy looked straight out of Hollywood in her satin gown and wings as head angel. But other people whined that they weren’t nearly set for the big night. In a rehearsal both Johnson boys went bone-white and fainted. They had bad cases of stage fright, though they were only shepherds.

Grandma naturally took no interest, even when I complained to her about Carleen Lovejoy’s halo. It was all tinsel and practically lit up. Grandma was busy. But then I wouldn’t have taken her for a Christmas kind of woman anyway.

Still, one day after school I found her poring over mail-order catalogues. She handed me the one from Sears, open to “Fashions in Footgear for the Junior Miss and the Younger Active Woman.”

“Pick you out a pair,” she said.

“Grandma, do I get a Christmas present?” I said, to test her.

“You need shoes,” she said. “Otherwise you’ll be binding your feet in rags to get through the winter, like Valley Forge.”

I considered every pair on every page, trying them on in my mind. A lot rode on my decision. These shoes had to go everywhere I went. And there’d be room in the toes, which made my heart sing.

Grandma had long grown restless when I finally made my choice. They had to be practical, with a closed toe. And still being fifteen, I wanted something a little older, with a Cuban heel. I knew they’d have to lace up, or Grandma wouldn’t go for them. I checked off a pair—gunmetal gray to go with everything.

Grandma considered my choice. The toothpick hovered. “That them?” she said at last.
“Whoooeee,
two dollars and seventy-five cents.” Her eyes filled her spectacles. “I remember when you could shoe a whole family and the horse for that money.”

But then we drew paper patterns around my feet to send back for the right size. She filled out the order form with the toothpick aslant in the corner of her mouth. She stamped the return envelope. That’s the only time I ever saw her use a stamp.

Later, I caught her studying the catalogue from Lane Bryant: “Winter and Spring of 1938 Modes for the Fuller-Figured Woman.” But I stole away without a word.

The days slipped faster off the December calendar. Tension mounted at school, and both Johnson brothers were often absent. Carleen Lovejoy preened in advance. Clearly she thought that her angel was going to outshine my Virgin Mary. She was going to be the Christmas program’s center of attention or know the reason why.

Something was coming over Grandma too. She was jumpier than a jackrabbit, and the short days were too long for her. One evening when it was hardly dark, she had us both out, tramping the road north. We pulled an old handmade sled of my dad’s. “Grandma, now where are we going?”

“Greens,” she replied.

When we came upon Asbury Chapel standing out in open country, I noticed the graveyard. It was screened by a stand of evergreens. “Grandma,” I said. “You wouldn’t. ”

No, she wouldn’t swipe Christmas greens from a graveyard, though I heard it cross her mind. We tramped on to the timber in the bottoms along Salt Creek. There we found long-needled pine and blue spruce. Grandma took Augie Fluke’s knife to them, and we began to stack the sled with greenery. Then, as if it was meant to be, we came upon a little fir tree. It wasn’t three feet tall and far from full. But Grandma fell on it, and her knife gnawed away at its spindly trunk.

We trudged back to town with the greens tied to the sled. I went over the words to “Bring a Torch, Jeanette, Isabella” in my mind. Grandma was looking ahead.

By the night of the program, I should have known something was up. Grandma had lit the stove in the front room for the first time this winter. A merry fire crackled behind isinglass windows, and she was hanging a wreath in the bay. The Christmas tree stood in a nest of cotton batting on her marble-topped table. It was decorated with a string of popcorn and pinecones from the timber. On top was a tin star she’d cut out of a can.

I stood soaking in the warmth of the room, pine-scented. The idea of going to the Christmas program herself had clearly not crossed Grandma’s mind. She certainly wasn’t dressed for it.

I was. I had on my costume, bristling with pins. Under it my new gunmetal shoes, fresh from the box. And over all, last year’s plaid coat. Now it had lush cuffs of red fox fur, making my sleeves long enough again. Grandma turned on me in surprise. She looked down to see I was wearing sheets.

“Grandma, it’s the program tonight.”

Waving away her own forgetfulness, she said, “Well, then, you better wear this.” She produced something from a big apron pocket. It looked like a coil of baling wire.

She handed it over. It
was
a coil of baling wire. Twisted in it were tiny tin stars, cut from cans. A day’s work to make. Grandma stood back, her hands clasped, a little eagerness in her eyes. “Watch out them stars don’t dig your scalp.”

She’d made me a halo so Carleen Lovejoy in all her tinsel wouldn’t outshine me. It looked more like a crown of thorns, but I handled it, carefully.

I’d have come dangerously near kissing Grandma then, if she’d let me.

Then I was walking through town in galoshes to save my shoes. We’d done all our rehearsing at school. But the program was to be at the United Brethren Church. Though Jesus was born in a stable, the school basement didn’t seem quite right.

The church threw stained-glass light out on the snow, and people flocked up the front steps. As I went inside, the train from St. Louis pulled in at the Wabash depot. The whole town became a little village under a Christmas tree, with the electric train circling and the glowing cardboard houses and the steepled church, sunk in cotton snow.

If you think one Christmas program is like another, you didn’t see ours. The robing room where we girls got ready was full of bad omens. Who knew what went on across the chancel, where the boys were dressing in the choir room with Mr. Herkimer?

The girls who were only in the chorus flapped like bats in United Brethren choir robes. The angels were Irene Stemple, Mona Veech, Gertrude Messerschmidt, and the littlest angel was Ina-Rae Gage. None of their wings matched. Ina-Rae, the smallest, had the biggest wings—chicken wire. She could barely move in the room. It was like a birdcage in there. Then in swept Carleen Lovejoy.

Her shimmering gown, cut on the bias, was meant to outdo the other angels. Her halo hovered high over her head, supported from behind. She was made up for the New York stage. She’d shaved off her eyebrows and drawn on new ones. Her cheeks were pinker than nature. Her lips were a deep red Cupid’s bow, with fingernails to match. She was a natural blonde, and that was the only natural thing about her.

Miss Butler edged into the room, and Carleen very nearly blinded her.

“Carleen! Wipe all that stuff off your face,” she said, stricter than school. “You look like you’re bleeding from the mouth.”

Carleen bridled and stood firm. Seeing that I was in three hanging sheets, Miss Butler turned to secure my costume. When I reached for my coat and drew out the baling-wire halo, she nearly swallowed her pins.

But there was an opening-night excitement even among us. From backstage you could hear the rustle of paper programs and the creak of pews. The organ boomed “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing!” and there was no going back.

The United Brethren preacher, Reverend Lutz, rose to quiet the crowd with a passage from Saint Luke. Miss Butler was pushing the choirgirls on. We in costume were to hang back here offstage, singing through the open door to add volume, but keeping out of sight until the Nativity scene. No choirboys came forth, because they were all in costume. But we could see shepherds and kings in the door behind Mr. Herkimer.

We sang our hearts out, onstage and backstage. Miss Butler kept the pacing peppy, though we never did get the bugs out of “Once In Royal David’s City.” Then came the tricky part.

We of the Nativity scene had to creep low under the curtains behind the choir. Here was the stable all set up, with cardboard sheep. I groped for my stool beside the manger. Above me Milton Grider fell into place as Joseph. We had shepherds behind us and kings opposite. Between, under the star, the heavenly host of so-called angels, Carleen at center stage.

From what I could see of Milton, he was wearing his father’s bathrobe and a false beard. The kings were beginning to hold up frankincense and myrrh.

As the choir parted and broke into “O Holy Night,” Mr. Herkimer pulled the curtain, and the lights went up on us. Mr. Fluke was the electrician. We’d practiced how to sit stone still for up to five minutes.

When we froze in place, I ought to have been looking into the manger at Baby Jesus. But the curtain caught me staring out at the audience, so I had to stay that way.

“Long lay the world in sin and error pining,” sang the choir as I counted the house. The full pews gasped as we came into view, a living picture. And why not? Milton in bathrobe and false beard. Carleen like Sally Rand without her fans. Ina-Rae looking like she was about to take off. Me in baling wire and three sheets, showing a Cuban heel.

As I stared unblinking at the far door of the church, it opened. Grandma walked in. It had to be her. She filled the door. A tall man was with her. I watched her scoot people along a pew and sit. The pew popped like gunfire beneath her.

When the choir went into “What Child Is This?” the star lit up and sent a beam down on Ina-Rae’s doll. This was to be the high moment, and was. The minute the beam hit the manger, Baby Jesus roared out a loud wail.

Milton moved. A shepherd’s crook clattered to the floor. I couldn’t hold my pose. I shifted my crowned head to see in the spotlit manger a real live baby, red as a beet, punching the air with tiny fists. Carleen was upstaged and went completely out of character.

A wave of wonderment swept the pews. Some people may have thought a living baby had been cast in the part. And if so, whose? But then Ina-Rae, flapping her wings, shrieked out, “Where is my dolly?”

Miss Butler fell back, and the choir broke ranks, never to reach “We Three Kings of Orient Are.” Reverend Lutz, Principal Fluke, and Mr. Herkimer all advanced on the manger, like wise men in street clothes. But a newborn in a damp rag for a diaper, or swaddling clothes, stunned them.

Now people stood on pews, trying to see. Suddenly, Grandma was there, heaving up the steps past the pulpit. Her hat was alive with pheasant feathers. She reached into the manger for the red, squalling baby. She lifted it up, and the light was good.

The baby had one blue eye and one green. Grandma blinked. She held it up to the audience. “It’s all right,” she hollered out. “It’s a Burdick!”

 

They talked about that Christmas program for years. In its way, it was the best one they ever had, though Miss Butler never really got over it. Of course the baby was another reason why Mildred Burdick never had been back after my first day of school in September.