Christmas Stories Rediscovered. Sarah Orne Jewett
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seein’ a creatur’ die?” he said. “I live like the birds an’ the varmints. I kill ter eat—the Almighty’s way.”
In front of him, across the rough road and over a half-cleared and enchanting woodland of old trees, rose the wildest of hills to the west; and behind him, half a mile to the east and south, were other cones and shoulders, strangely formed and freakishly upheaved, with narrow hollows between them and meandering streams tearing down, and falling down, and laughing over jagged rocks. Over the rarely trodden forests and on these hills tramped Pop Baker at will. He gave his whole soul to the delight of solitude, of falling in with nature’s moods. His heart grew more tender as the days went by. He gathered a great hoard of nuts for the children. He halved the crop from his patch of pop-corn, and he traded corn for a barrel of red apples. Something was working in him that, in earlier years, had never bothered him. The “seven livin’” had brought in Christmas and “Sandy Claws” to the cabin with them, and the idea would not be swept out with their going.
All along through the fall Pop Baker was the maddest of merrymakers at the dances, the weddings, infares, and quiltings. He never heard of any social event, far or near, but he greased up his boots, tied his red comforter round his neck, and racked Bully Boy over the hills to it. He never waited for an invitation, and he was always expected. There was sure to be some congenial spirit there, either a young widow or a mischievous girl willing to spite a bashful swain, or, at the worst, one or two uproarious young blades to slap him on the shoulder.
Nothing daunted him, nothing stayed him. The cold only made his cheeks rosier; his eyes sparkled. They called him “Old Christmas hisself”; they applauded him, and egged him on to dance and flip speech. So the days and nights passed, and Christmas was at hand.
Bully Boy and The Other—for Pop Baker disdained, in his partiality, to name his less intelligent mule—pulled up over Jefferson Hill and down into Bullitt County with Pop’s Christmas for Mahale’s young ones in the wagon. There were the apples and the nuts, the molasses, and a big green ham. Mrs. Peter gave him a welcome, a good meal, and started him home early. To her he was only an old man who ought to be in his chimney-corner at night. The seven swarmed lovingly over him as he mounted the seat. “Leetle Pop” smeared him with molasses as he murmured:
“Wanter buss ye one, gran’dad. Ye’re so dern goody, ye air!”
Then came a splendid ride homeward under the frosty starlight. Pop Baker sat on an old skin robe and rode with a bed-comfort and a horse-blanket around his legs. Straw heaped the wagon-bed in front of the empty barrel. The wagon wheels creaked over the road, broke into the forming ice on Knob Creek, and rattled down the steep slope of Mitchell’s Hill. Then along the deep shadowy ways he passed through interminable woods, where sometimes there were hollows hundreds of feet below him, and sometimes there was a narrow cut under a rocky cliff where dry branches broke and crackled down. Sometimes there appeared below him, like fireflies or sparkling human eyes, half-frozen streams that ran and crossed, and reflected back the stars. Bully Boy had his master’s own spirit, and literally dragged The Other up and down hill right sturdily. Pop Baker did not have to drive, Bully Boy would have resented any imputation of being driven. He knew every step of the way, and he pulled—that was his duty, Christmas or Fourth of July—without shirking. Pop took it easy, and watched the processional of the stars across the cathedral of the heavens. Now he was on the highest point of the county, on Jefferson Hill. Far, far away in the wide valley he saw glows of light. He knew that there lay the distant city, with its hundreds of shop-windows lighted up and Christmas-gay, draped with tinsels and bright colors, and full of what in his sterner moments he called “trash,” in his softer moods “purties.” The thick carpet of fallen leaves on the road deadened the sound of the wheels and the mules’ feet. Pop Baker looked at the stars with a new awe and joy.
“Might’ fine, them! Sorter hail a man ter notice. Seen ’em walkin’ over thet big space many a night, but, dern it all! they never war so bright. Might’ good comp’ny—the bestes’ o’ comp’ny fer an ol’ man. Merry ’n’ cheerful, ’n’ deliverin’ the message thet thar hain’t no doin’ erway with whutever air made ’n’ placed—anywhar. Thet’s whut I hev figgered out. I been put right here, ’n’ I hev figgered out I’m in the percesslon, an’ bount’ ter stay,—out o’ sight er in sight—perceedin’ on an’ never stoppin’, ’ca’se I oncet war made an’ do be.”
No human being had ever seen the rapt face Pop Baker turned to the stars—no one but his Maker.
“Folkses thinks ez how I’d git lonesone; but when a man gits ter some age, he air got suthin’ er nothin’ in ’im—Dern yer buttons, Bully Boy! whut air ye stoppin’ fer?”
There was a halloo, clear and high, from the bottom of the hill.
“An’ ye heared that when I didn’t, Boy? Waal, consarn ye! what else hev I got sech a smart mule fer? Halloo, yerself, down thar!”
“Come on down came up a stentorian sound. Then a bound barked long and loud.
“Tobey shore we wull, Bully Boy,” commented Pop Baker; “for I’ll bet ye yer feed it’s some un thet hev been ter town an’ got plumb full o’ Sandy Claws, wagon-bed an’ all. We air comin’ down!” he hallooed merrily; then he began singing one of his own improvised songs on cider—the one that was always the chief delight of the hill folk’s revels and routs:
“Ol’ Unkie Doc an’ the cider-pot!
He liked um col’ an’ he liked um hot;
Stick in the poker, an’ make um sizz,
Hi! d’ ye know how good thet is?
“Tetty-ti, tooty-too!
You likes me, an’ I likes you;
Stick in the poker, an’ make um sizz,
Hi! d’ ye know how good thet is?”
He had rollicking company in the chorus long before he got to the bottom of the hill. If you had seen that hill you would have said that Bully Boy tumbled down it. As for The Other, it was his place in the order of things to fall after.
“Hi! d’ye know how good thet is?”
And there the two wagons stood side by side at a slightly widened curve in the steep road.
“Now, would ye think it!” said a sarcastic voice. Ef it hain’t Pop Baker, an’ not some young rake a-trapesin’ after a sweetheart on a Christmas eve. But I orter ’a’ knowed thet mule. Not another un in the county ‘d run down Jefferson thet erway.”
“He air gittin’ thar, Dink Smith,” retorted Pop Baker; “’sides, Bully Boy air allers cavortin’ arter nightfall, goin’ or comin’. The Other has plumb los’ his wind, I swanny! Waal, how’s Christmas?”
“Burnin’ me up,” replied Dink facetiously. “I sold a hawg, an’ some sorghum, an’ some eggs, an’ some butter, an’ dried peaches. Got groceries in thet box, closes in thar, ’n’ small tricks fer the kids in thet thar chip basket. Stop yer howlin’, ye Dan’el Webster!”
The hound in the wagon whined and subsided.
“Wonder yet ol’ woman hain’t erlong with ye,” observed Pop Baker.
“I guess ye hain’t heared thet we got a boy yistidday,” returned the young hill man. “Yes, by the great horn spoon, we got ’im, Pop! An’ looky here whut I bought fer ’im—now! Jes ye wait—I’ll strike a match. Ye shorely must see them that purties—jes must.”
By the light of several matches a small pair of red-top boots were exhibited, handled, and commented upon. Pop Baker’s face was a study.
“Waal, waal!” he said, much impressed, “thar’s a thing ter grow up ter fit! Um-m-m! Dink, I’d ’a’ got ye ter hev fotched me a pair o’ them ef ever I’d ’a’ known sech things war. War did ye git ’em?”
“Seen um in a winder,” said Dink, solemnly.