THE COMATOSE WARD

 

Another of my Christmas eve sermons. The Christian Century editors entered it in one of those “best of the year” contests by Associated Church Press, and it won, but, being churchly, there was no money or fame connected to the prize. Length warning: 2800 words]

 

THE COMATOSE WARD

John Robert McFarland

 

            He had never seen Jesus like this before. There he was, standing beside the bed, looking very unlike the pictures in the Sunday School papers.

            The Rev. Dr. Jackson Peter Taylor lay flat on his back in what he thought of as “the comatose ward.” It did not surprise him that Jesus had appeared there. Ever since he came across the theory of “the messianic secret” in the Gospel of Mark, during theological school, he realized that Jesus had a fondness for showing up in unexpected places. Jesus especially liked to reveal himself to people who would keep their mouths shut about it. The comatose ward was perfect. Of course, Christmas eve was the perfect time to pull something like this; hardly anyone was around.

            The Rev. Taylor liked being in the ward. When the stroke first hit, they put him in a private room. That was a joke. The last person who needed privacy was a paralyzed comatose stroke victim. He assumed it was really to give his family privacy to mourn his approaching demise. But J. P. Taylor knew he was not going to die yet. He still owed God, and he was sure God would make him drop his coins in the turnstile before allowing him into the big-top. That was something most Christians, with their “cheap grace” ideas, would never understand.

Even though it was usually credited to Spider Man, it was this Jesus, who was standing beside his bed now, who had first said it: “Of the one to whom much is given, is much expected.” Jack Taylor wished to high heaven that it really had been Spider Man instead of Jesus. He didn’t owe Spider Man anything. He preferred to go ahead and die and get this over with, but he knew that he had been given far more than he had yet paid the expectations on.

            Once the people in the white coats had realized he was not going to “check out” right away, and the people in the suits had found out that the insurance policy his church had provided him was not as comprehensive as the salesman—a member of the congregation—had claimed, he was moved to the ward. There were six beds, each with a breathing lump of flesh like himself. J.P. thought it was a great arrangement. It was shared privacy, which was better than lonely privacy or forced fellowship. He hoped his ward-mates were getting a good look at Jesus standing beside his bed. It would be a great event for them not to talk about with one another.

            The Rev. Dr. Taylor was sure that it was wonderful irony that the congregation that had “stroked” him so little in all the years he served it had finally given him “a stroke to last a lifetime,” just three months before retirement. The Christmas eve services were to be his last, and this it was four months off around the world with just Molly. The trip was a present from their sons and daughters-in-law. Well, now he would make a trip around the universe, assuming God would ever let him get at it, and Molly would make the trip around the world with her sister.

            In one of those unknowingly prescient moments that seem to come more frequently with age, he had told her that if anything happened to him, he wanted her to take her sister and go ahead and make the trip. “OK,” she had replied, with a shrug. He remembered that shrug now with such pride that his shrinking chest expanded until his sheets quivered. That was their type of love—made of steel. It could take whatever came and go right on without missing a beat. He knew it was the gift of that love that put him in debt to God, even now.

            Good grief! Maybe Jesus had come to collect. It had never before occurred to The Rev. Taylor that Jesus might be God’s bag man. What else would he be doing here? But how could Jesus insist that the beleaguered minister continue to answer “the call” here in the comatose ward?

            “Oh, no,” groaned the parson, silently, of course. “Don’t tell me I have to be a good example! That’s too much to ask of anybody.”

            The Rev. Taylor was always good at doing, but the thought of doing by being is enough to strike terror even in those in whose brain waves “the rough places are made smooth.”

            Seeing Jesus in the flesh, as it were, was a very different experience for the preacher. He had often spoken to others, in pulpit and out, of how God had become in-car-nate, “in the flesh,” in the person of Jesus. He had never really thought, however, that it was supposed to happen more than once. Yet, no doubt about it, here was Jesus, beside his bed. What a fantastic illustration for his Christmas eve sermon… and then he realized… he was not going to get to preach about this at all. He was in the comatose ward.

            “Damn,” he thought. “Every time you get a good illustration, there’s some reason you can’t use it.”

            It was like the other day when his associate pastor had come to serve him communion. That had always been The Rev. Dr. Jackson P. Taylor’s job in the past—to take Advent communion to all the patients and shut-ins. He loved doing it, even more than he loved preaching, and he loved preaching almost as much as chocolate-covered graham crackers. He would sit and chat, letting the other person steer the conversation, listening to their fears, coaxing forth their joys, just being there as the representative of the Body of Christ. In the course of their time together, he pulled the packet of wafers and flask of wine and the little glasses from his pockets. He worked the words of the communion ritual into their conversation naturally as they went along, talking of old times and the problems with children and hopes for the church. Then he broke the wafers and poured the wine. They shared as three friends having lunch together—the person, the parson, and the Christ.

            Now here was this nincompoop Charles Compworth, who had apparently learned absolutely nothing in nine years as his associate. He bustled into the room, The Rev. Mr. Efficiency, himself. He did not even remove his overcoat, a black cape with a fuzzy yellow cross on each lapel. He carried a fitted valise, which he plopped onto the end of the bed, snapped it open, and then proceeded to pull out the most godawful assortment of religious bric-a-brac that Jack Taylor had seen in forty years in ministry.

            There was a plastic cross. Charles snapped it together and set it on the rolling tray table. There was a purple stole with gold scroll work, which he draped around his neck. There was a tray for the wafers and a flagon for the wine and a three-footed stand on which to put them. There were two candles with electric switches on their bases. Jack Taylor was sure Charles Compworth probably even had spare batteries for them. There was a purple banner, with a misspelling of “Hallelujah” worked into it in gold, which The Rev. Compworth hung on the IV pole. There was a bell, which The Rev. Mr. Ridiculous—as Jack Taylor was now calling him in a rage under his totally bland exterior—actually rang before he broke the wafers.

            Charley Compworth grabbed his leather-bound, India-paper ritual book from an inside pocket of his cloak, raced through the communion service, broke a wafer, ate it, and drank the wine.

            “Hey, where’s mine?” yelled Jack Taylor, but of course the offensive right pastor did not hear a thing, did not even realize that J.P. Taylor, who had talked to him every day for nine years, was trying to say a thing to him now.

            “Come on, Charley, you idiot, give me the bread and wine. You can’t do communion by yourself. We wouldn’t call it communion if you could. We’d call it ecclesiastical solitaire. You’re doing it all wrong. Pour some of the blood of Christ down me so I can choke and get the hell out of here.”

            The Rev. Mr. Compworth, of course, simply left. Watching him, J.P. Taylor remembered why he had always insisted on doing communion for the sick himself. He did feel a pang of sympathy for his long-time associate, though. Charley was trying to do the work of both pastors in a church that should have had four anyway. Naturally he was in a hurry. He knew he was next in line for the bed that his old mentor held down now. In Charley’s case it would be a heart attack, of that his senior pastor was sure. No wonder Charley did not even want to look at him. It was too much like peering into the mirror of the future.

            Well, that was Charley’s problem. Now Jackson Peter Taylor had to deal with his own problem, which happened to be standing beside his bed. He wondered briefly if Jesus had simply come to get him, swinging low to swoop up a favorite son and him on home. That would be nice. If was so nice that it was highly unlikely. That only happened to lay people. Ministers were subject to law, not grace. When they answered “the call,” they forfeited all claims to grace, even to salvation, of that J.P. Taylor had been sure for years. Lay people rode to heaven on the backs of ministers who themselves were not allowed through the pearly gates; they were just sent back for another load.

            “And good Lord—pardon the expression, Jesus—they have been coming in here looking for a ride even when my back has been sticking out of this heathen hospital gown. If I can’t go to heaven, can’t you at least send me to hell and get me out of the comatose ward? It’s almost Christmas. Can’t I have just this one little present? I can’t go around the world with Molly, I know, but can’t I at least get out of here? People come in here, and they think I can’t hear a thing, just because I can’t say a thing, and they babble on.

            “So, what do they say?”

            J.P. Taylor was answering before he realized that there was something a bit unusual about having Jesus standing beside his bed and asking questions like that.

            “Well, like the time Charley Compworth was trying to comfort Molly. He said, I don’t know what to say. Molly knows Charley well enough that she doesn’t have to be reminded of how stupid he is. And the other day this cleaning lady was in. she looked at me and said, I understands you used to be a preacher. I wanted to be a preacher once, but they said girls couldn’t do that. Then big tears began to run down her cheeks, and she wiped them on my sheet. Sam Mason, the chairman of the trustees at church, was in. He ought to be chairman of the trusties at the jail. You know what he did? He stood right there, where you are now, and he whispered, Jack, you’re the only person I can tell this to. I’ve been embezzling at the bank. I had to do it to pay the bills for my mistress. She’s twenty-three years younger than I am, and nobody knows about her. Isn’t that a fine howdy-doo?”

            “What did you tell him?”

            “Well, nothing! You know I can’t say anything. I’ve had a stroke, for Pete’s sake, no offense intended to St. Peter, of course. I’ve been to his church in Rome and all, you know…”

            J.P. Taylor knew he was getting in deeper all the time, but Jesus did not really seem all that interested in his peccadilloes, not nearly like the people in the church who claimed they were following Jesus all the time. That stuck the Rev. Mr. Taylor as being not a little strange.

            “What did Sam Mason do then?” asked Jesus.

            “Well, he got down beside the bed on his knees. Began to cry and beg my forgiveness. Darndest thing I’ve ever seen. Then he stood up, and he dried his eyes on my sheet, and he took my hand and said that he knew he had done wrong, and he was going to repent and fly right. Walked out like a new man. I wish Charley Compworth was an embezzler; might get a new start for him, too. Well, not meaning that I really would want Charley to sin, you know…”

            This talking to Jesus was tricky business, thought Jack Taylor, but he seems to sort out the wheat from the chaff pretty well… But Jesus was continuing…

            “You still owe, you know,” said Jesus.

            “Well, yes, I was thinking about that when I first saw you standing there. It’s because of Molly, isn’t it?”

            “Yes. No man deserves love like hers, or love like mine, either. Besides, you’re a minister. You have to pay thrice for all your sins.”

            The Rev. Dr. Taylor was almost sure Jesus was hiding a smirk in his beard, but what if he was not? What if he was serious? This pay-back for both blessings and sins was double jeopardy.

            “So you’ve come to collect, huh?”

            “You’ve got it. However, the collection is that I’m not collecting. You have to stay a while longer.”

            “Oh, no,” groaned the weary pastor. “Can’t we work out a deal or something? You know, like when I was little, and I told you I would never do it again, whatever it was.”

            “By your definition of little, you were little up to the age of sixty-three, since that was the last time you made that promise.”

            The Rev. Mr. Taylor knew he’d been had.

            “Okay, give it to me straight. I’m not going to die, right?”

            “Right, but it’s only for a little while. You can die soon, but not quite yet. There are too many people who need you yet.”

            “Need me? Unless you intend to work a miracle, and I’m not saying you can’t, of course, I’m not going to be any good to anyone. I’m stuck here in so much white I feel like I’m in one of those little glass Christmas houses that you shake up and there’s snow all over the place.”

            “Don’t you see, Jack? That’s the point! Would Sam Mason have confessed to you if you could have talked back? He’s been embezzling and womanizing for years while you were his pastor, and he never said anything to you before. Would that cleaning lady have shared her broken dream with you if you’d been bustling down the hall like the elder version of that ass, my servant, Charles Compworth?

            Ouch! That hurt, thought the increasingly less reverend Jackson Peter Taylor.

            “And what about Charley himself? He doesn’t say anything because he doesn’t know what to say. But he’ll eventually figure out what he should say, because for the first time in nine years you won’t be giving him better lines than he can think up on his own. With you silent, maybe he’ll be able to think up what he needs to say, in his own words.”

            “But I was called to preach, not to lie here in the comatose ward!”

            “I was called to preach, not to die on a cross. When I was born in that stable, Jack, was that for crucifixion? I didn’t want the cross any more than you want this bed, but it came with the territory. Do you think you can follow me, Jack, and only have the shepherds and the wise men and gold, frankincense, and myrrh, and not take the cross, too? Sometimes the best preaching is done by listening, Jack. Sometimes the best giving is done just by being quiet and taking.”

            The words were gentle, but they reached deep.

            “Okay, boss,” breathed J.P. Taylor. “You’ve got me as long as you want me. Whenever you want to change the deal, you know where to find me.”

            “Right,” said Jesus. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. Merry Christmas, Rev. Dr. Taylor, and get back to work.”

            Jesus was already gone when the nurse flung the door open and marched in to do bed check on the six occupants of the comatose ward. She came to Jack Taylor’s bed last.

            “What in the world? Who’s been in here, anyway? Some ninny nurse took your poor arms and stretched them straight out and forgot to put them back. Well, Christmas eve, and you can’t get decent help, I can tell you that.”

            Go ahead, tell me, sighed Pastor Taylor, as the nurse pulled up a chair…

 

 

 

WHEN FATHER RODE THE MAIL—1926

[When I was preaching, I wrote a short story each year to use as a Christmas Eve sermon. This is the one which has been most published, in various periodicals, and which I reprint here every year. 900 words. It's an actual-fact story.]

                    

WHEN FATHER RODE THE MAIL—1926

John Robert McFarland

            Before the green hills had become the spoil banks of the strip mines, when United States highways were graveled ribbons and mules still pulled the plows, where the Wabash meets the Ohio, my father "rode the mail." 

            It was not a regular job.  The people in the hills read slowly and wrote only when they had something important to say.  A postage penny was a lot of money.

            Once each week or two, however, the letters and circulars for the folks in the hills mounded up until they filled a leather mail-pouch.  When the papers peeked over the bag top, my father unhitched the mules with which he had been grading the roads since he was twelve, saddled up his horse, and clucked a "giddyap" out toward the cabins where no roads dared to go. 

            The trackless hills, where the woods are deep, are cool and pleasant in the haze of summer.  When the autumn comes, though, the heavy rains dump the soggy maple leaves down upon your head.  The water sneaks in between your hat and the collar of your coat. Then the hills hunker down and close in and say, "Beware."

            It was on such a day that Father lost his way.  So when he crossed a clearing and saw a cabin, it was both relief and fear that ran with the rain down along his backbone.  From underneath his dripping hat he hailed the gray, unpainted shack. 

            "Helloooo, the cabin," he called.

            No answer.  The owner must be in on such a day, he thought, or else the cabin was deserted.

            His right foot had left the stirrup and was half-way over the horse's rump when he saw the shotgun.  Only one barrel, but it was big, and it looked straight out at him from where the door had cracked open.  Off the saddle, he waited.

            "What do y' want?" a thin voice from behind the shotgun demanded.

            Father thought fast. 

            "I'v brot your mail," he called. 

            "And I need a place to git dry," he added.

            The shotgun held its place, and so did Father.  Finally, however, the muzzle lowered toward the rough boards of the porch, and Father lowered himself to the ground.

            "Come," the cabin called, and Father went.

            Inside the door he met the oldest, frailest-looking woman he had ever seen.  A hound dog that must have shared her birthday lay in front of the fireplace.  A table, a ladder-back chair, a bed, the shotgun, a shaker chest, and a stool were the cabin's only other occupants.

            The woman was still wary. 

            "I don't git no mail," she said.

            Father fished into the pouch and hooked an old circular.  He pushed it out across the gap between them.  A thin, veined hand took

it and held it close to two slow eyes.  The eyes were satisfied.  The hand pointed to the chair. 

            "Sit," she said. 

            Father sat.  He wondered a little at how the old woman had read the circular while holding it upside down.

            She brewed some tea.  They sipped and sat before the fire until the silence of the roof reported that the rain had gone.  They did not talk--just sat and sipped together--the very young man who was only beginning, the very old woman whose life was ending. 

            Father said, "I'll be goin' now.  I thank you for the shelter and the tea." 

            The frail old hands picked up the circular as he left.

            From then on when Father rode the mail, he put into the pouch an old sale bill, or a circular, and he took it to the little cabin in the clearing in the woods.  Each time the young man and the old woman sat and sipped in silence.  Each time Father noted that the "mail" of his last trip had been tacked up on the wall.

            When the winter comes, the rains stop, but the sky is gray as slate sometimes, and the wind sneaks past the button sentries.  In those cold days, Father was especially glad for the cabin and the fire and the tea and the silence.

            A week before Christmas, Father put an old catalog into his pouch, along with all the cards for others on the way, and set out to ride the mail.  He took the catalog to the cabin.  There they sat, the silent young man and the quiet old woman.  As Father rose to leave, the old woman spoke into the silence.

            "It was good of y' to leave your own family and come out to see me on Christmas day," she said.

            Father looked at the walls around him.  There was no calendar, only the circulars and sale bills winking back at him in the firelight.

            Father did not ever talk very much, but many, many years later, when he told this story to his children and grandchildren, he said, "I guess she never did know it wasn't really Christmas day."

            Perhaps he never knew it really was.

 

 

 

THE MIRROR OF CHRISTMAS-1954

[Another Christmas eve sermon. As usual, too long for this column, at 2000 words, so put it aside until you have extra time. When writing, I was meaning to pull them together into a book entitled The Years of Christmas, so I added the year in which the story was set to each title.

 

THE MIRROR OF CHRISTMAS-1954

John Robert McFarland

 

            Miller Raymond knotted his Christmas tie.  He was very careful as he slipped the knot.  The paint was dry and trying to flake.  At last, he had the knot balled and the tie spread.  He gazed at it for a long time as he stood before the mirror, recalling the many Christmases that had passed since the one when he was eleven years old, just a couple of months short of twelve.  His mother had been so young then....

            Being almost twelve meant that he was almost a man, at least in the Raymond clan.  Miller knew what that would mean when he opened his presents on Christmas morning--long underwear, a flannel shirt, four-buckle galoshes.  He wanted to be a man, but he wanted Christmas, too.  Everyone knew that "Christmas is for kids."  He had heard that all his life.  It's a great idea when you are a kid.  "Maybe when I get far enough into being a man, I won't miss Christmas," thought Miller, "but I don't want to give it up yet."

            So, he set his hopes on the Christmas Eve Sunday School gift exchange.  That was the one place where he might get by with being a kid for one more Christmas.  In the Sunday School gift exchange, he surely would receive a toy or a book or a puzzle or a game...  Even one of those little boxes where you rolled BBs around and tried to get them all into the little holes in Santa's nose and ears and hands--even one of those would give him something to do on the long Christmas afternoon while the grown-ups snored and snorted in their chairs.

            The whole family went to church on Christmas Eve, even Uncle William.  Uncle William was not used to going to church, however, so he could not take the entire evening.  About halfway through the recitations, he would slip out.  It was not until he was almost ten that Miller realized Uncle William always came back in, at the time of the gift exchange, but did not return as Uncle William.  Miller wondered a little, as he approached twelve, if perhaps he had become a man when he first recognized Uncle William's dual identity.

            In the Sunday School classes they had drawn names.  Each person had brought a gift for the one whose name she or he had pulled from the offering basket.  They were all anonymous, those gifts.  It was a great point of honor to be sure no one ever knew who was the giver in the Sunday School gift exchange. 

            Miller loved Christmas Eve because it was such a perfect mixture of the expected and the unexpected.  The service was always the same, so it was warm and comfortable and fit everyone there.  Through the entire evening, though, there was an undercurrent of excitement building. 

            The high point of the evening started when the minister acted like it was all over.  In the very middle of his thanking people for coming and wishing them a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year and saying he was looking forward to seeing them again at Easter, there was the sound of sleigh bells.  Then the door behind the pulpit burst open, and Santa Claus himself would fill it full with his red suit and white beard and shouts of "HO, HO, HO!" 

            The minister acted really surprised, as though this didn't happen every year, and he said, "Why, it looks like we have another visitor.  What could he be doing here?" 

            The little children would chorus in reply, "The gifts!  He's come to hand out the gifts!" 

            Then    Santa took over.  The minister always sat down in front of the crèche set, like he was making sure the holy family didn't see the people make fools of themselves.

            The first gift would come out of Santa's bag.  It was for the minister d his family.  It was usually something like a picture of the Last Supper that they could plug in and haloes would come on above Jesus and the disciples and the wine in their glasses would look like it was sloshing around.

            Then Santa "ho-ho-hoed" over to the Christmas tree.  He would cajole the teen-aged girls, in their new red and green dresses, to come up and help him hand out the presents.  Finally, Santa began to call out the names. 

            There were gag gifts for the men, but never for the women.  Women got handkerchiefs or perfume, regardless of who had their names.  A man got gloves or shaving lotion if a woman had drawn his name.  If a man bought for another man, however, he got a hula girl doll for the dash-board of his car, or a gross of vitamin pills, or a hair brush if he were bald.  One year Mrs. Taylor got a bottle of hair dye, of a blond color just like her hair, and it took the minister half a year to get her to come back to church.  That's when the handkerchief and perfume tradition for the women got started.

            Santa kept calling out the names, and Miller's excitement mounted.  What would he get?   It depended entirely on who was doing the giving.  But it was someone in his own class, so the chances were good that it would be a toy or game or book.  It might not be expensive, but it would be a Christmas gift for a kid.  The Christmas Eve service reminded him of how wonderful it was to be a kid at Christmas, and that was now what Miller wanted more than anything else in all the world.

            Miller smirked when he saw Ozzie MacNamer open his gift.  Ozzie's eyes opened up about three sizes, and he wheezed out three "Gee, whizes" in a row.  It had taken Miller two months of allowance to buy the exact Lionel switch engine that fit Ozzie's set, but it was worth it.  He didn't like Ozzie that much, but to be able to present the perfect gift on Christmas Eve, with no one knowing you'd done it, that was truly something special.

            Santa began to get hoarse, the girls slowed down, the pile of gifts was almost gone, and Miller was still waiting.  A slow dread, like a personal fog, began to close in around him.  Before the last package was handed out, he knew for certain that there was none for him. 

            "Who didn't get a gift?" called Santa, pulling a handful of green and red pencils from his pocket.  Several of the middle-aged men, who didn't come to Sunday School, raised their hands, and Santa gave each one a pencil, with admonitions that they should come to Sunday School next year and get in on the exchange.

            Tommy Mason was sitting beside Miller.  He nudged him with his elbow.  "You didn't get nothin!  Raise your hand."

            "No, Tom," muttered Miller.  "That's okay." 

            But it was not okay.  He sat in silence in the back seat of the car as the rest of the family chatted about how beautiful the service had been.

            They were taking their coats off when his mother said, "You're awfully quiet, Miller.  Didn't you like your gift?"

            How could he tell anyone, even his mother, that he had received no gift at all?  He felt ashamed somehow, guilty, as though he had committed some crime and was being punished, but he had no idea what he had done to deserve such awful treatment, to be left out.  She waited, and he had to tell someone...

            "It's not fair," he muttered.  "I got Ozzie that engine , and it took two months allowance.  Some jerk drew my name and didn't even get me anything.  He was there, too.  I was the only one in our class who didn't get anything, so somebody came and got a present and didn't give one.  That's not the way Christmas is supposed to be."

            He stood there and fumed.  Now he knew for sure that Christmas was for kids and he wasn't one anymore.  He didn't much like being a man. 

            His mother did not hug him or tell him everything would be all right.  That was not the way they did things in the Raymond clan, especially if you were a grown-up.

            "Go on to bed, Miller," she said. "Tomorrow is Christmas morning.  Don't spoil it for the little ones."  He trudged off upstairs.  As he did so he heard his mother ask his father to take the mirror off the wall and prop it up on the kitchen table for her.  It seemed a strange request. 

            The house was warm on Christmas morning, but strangely absent were the usual smells, roasting turkey and baking bread.  Mrs. Raymond normally got up very early on Christmas morning to start the special dinner preparations.  The kitchen, however, was cold, even though her hair was wisping around her head and her eyes were red-rimmed with sleeplessness, and the kitchen table was a mess.

            The little children were pleased with their toys and games and delighted that they were allowed to dig into the fruit and candy in their stockings.  Those treats were usually not allowed until after Christmas dinner.

            Miller did his best to look satisfied with his flannel shirt and galoshes.  When all the presents under their tree had been opened, Miller's mother put a hand on his arm and pulled him aside.

            "There's something for you in the kitchen," she said.

            Miller followed her to the kitchen, so strange in its coolness and disorder.  On the table were old rags and cracked tubes of drying paint and stiff little brushes.

            Miller could barely remember them.  When he was very little, he recalled, his mother used to paint pictures.  He vaguely recollected a story from his grandmother, of how her talented young daughter had wanted to be an artist, but fell in love with Miller's father and had given up that ambition to raise children.

            On the table was an old sheet of newspaper.  Miller's mother pulled it away to reveal what lay beneath it.

            "I had some trouble with it," she said, "because my paints were so old, and the brushes were stiff, so I didn't have time to wrap it, but here it is.  It's a special Christmas present for you."

            In the middle of the table lay a tie.  Miller recognized it as one of his father's ties, an exceptionally wide, dark-blue tie.  But now it was decorated with a strange design.  Lines and swirls, in every possible color, almost covered it.  It was the strangest looking thing he had ever seen.

            "Now that you're a man, or at least almost," his mother said, "you need a tie to wear on Christmas.  Pick it up and hold it up to your neck."

            Miller did as he was told, but as if he were in a trance.  How could he ever wear such a thing?  Even the very old men did not wear such odd ties.

            He held it to his neck.  His mother came and stood beside him and pointed at the mirror, which was propped up on the other side of the table.  They looked into it.

            Miller's eyes shot open.  Before him was the most amazing scene, painted right onto his tie.  

             There was the nativity story, with the baby Jesus, and Mary and Joseph, and the star and the shepherds and wise men, and even a camel.

            There was also a boy, in a flannel shirt and galoshes, kneeling there with the others.  His mother had painted onto the tie what straight-on looked like just a hodge-podge of lines and lumps.  When you looked into the mirror, however, there was the whole picture of Christmas.  His mother had sat up all night with a mirror and old paints, in a cold kitchen, to paint him a present.

            "You see, Miller," she was saying, "Christmas is like a mirror.  When you look at the Christmas scene, you see yourself reflected back.  If your heart is full of bitterness over being left out, all you see is a strange design that makes no sense.  But if your heart is full of love, you see yourself in that story, and you know that you belong there."

            "Miller, are you ready?" his wife called gently from the door.  Miller was startled back to the present.  It is amazing how that tie seems to grow, he thought.  Now when he looked into the mirror, he not only saw its original nativity scene, but forty years of Christmases that had come since.  Here was another Christmas Eve now to add to it.

            They drove through the soft snow to the nursing home.  His mother was getting weak now, but she could still sit up in bed.  Miller unhooked the mirror from the wall of her room, sat down beside her, balanced the mirror so they could peer into it together, straightened his tie.  Then they looked into the mirror for a long time.

 

 

 

 

SHEETS FOR CHRISTMAS [W, 12-17-25]

 

SHEETS FOR CHRISTMAS

John Robert McFarland

 

[Continuing the series of stories that I wrote originally as sermons for Christmas eve services. Again, beware of reading time. 4000 words instead of the usual 500.]

 

John White's clod-hoppers started to drag in the fine dust. He had been walking most of the day. First it was the eleven miles to Meadville to borrow the book from Doc Hollywell. He and Doc had shared a pot of coffee and a pouch of burley. Then it was the eleven miles back home. Five of those still gapped out ahead of him in the gray of the early December twilight. He had been reading as he walked.

         "I'm getting too old for this," he muttered to himself, as he finally closed the book against the failing light, sticking a square of faded cloth between the pages to mark his spot.

         The cloth was ripped from the sheet that had shawled his little Maggie, his youngest daughter, as she died in his arms. She had been now dead for many years, but he held her close in the arms of memory.

         John White believed in memory. He trusted in memory. He was sure that life was mostly memory. He remembered Maggie every day as he moved the sheet rag place markers in his books, page by page. John White read most of every day, so he remembered Maggie a lot.

         Memory was what he and Doc Hollywell had talked about that day as they chatted in Doc's consulting room, while a shaft of late-afternoon sunlight challenged the cloud of coffee steam and tobacco smoke that enveloped them.

         "I worry about these pieces of cloth you use for book-marks, John," Doc ventured. "I can understand you wanting to remember Maggie, but I'm not sure it's healthy for you to face every day the very sheets she died on. It almost seems like you're punishing yourself, every day remembering about how she died."

         "No, that's not why I use the sheet pieces, Doc. It's because when Maggie died, that was the very last time she was alive. I want to remember all of her, right up to the very end. Otherwise I'm short-changing her memory."

         "I think maybe you're putting too much into memory, John," said Doc, slipping the words in between sips from his heavy white coffee mug and puffs on his truly disgusting briar. "Like all those history books you read. A person can't live in the past."

         "You're how old now, Doc, about sixty?"

         "Sixty-two," the doctor replied, with the air of a man who was pleased to be alive at all, rather than envious of those who had yet to live as long.

         "Sixty-two," echoed John White. "How much of that is memory?"

         "Well, I don't know, John," said Doc, scratching his head with the stem of his pipe. "I can remember a good deal of it, I guess."

         "No, no. I don't mean how much of it can you remember. I mean, how much of it is past?"

         "Well, all of it's past, you ninny, except for right now, of course, and whatever's yet to come. By hokies, John, you're wading through the long grass again."

         Sometimes Doc was exasperated by John White's line of reasoning. John White was the smartest man Doc knew. Why, with all his smarts, he couldn't get to the point any easier than he usually did was beyond Doc's figuring.

         "I'm wading through the long grass because I have to or I can't get to the swamp you're sinking in," replied John White, equally exasperated that a man with a formal education had to be led by hand into the halls of logic. "All your life except right now is in your memory. That's where you live it. If you've got no memory, you've got no life, even if you're as old as sixty-two."

         John White thought Doc Hollywell was pretty old. He was only sixty-one himself.

         He remembered their afternoon conversation now with satisfaction. It was satisfying to have a friend who felt free to call you a ninny, even if it were not an accurate description. John White knew from his reading that a ninny was a fool or a dolt. He might be a bum, as most people said, but he certainly was not a fool. He preferred to think of himself as a curmudgeon.

         He sighed a non-curmudgeonly sigh as he tucked the book under his arm and set his face for home. He didn't mind the walking as long as he could read as he walked. He always saved the last 150 pages of a book borrowed from Doc for reading while he walked to Meadville to return it. He also tried to read the first 150 pages as he walked from Doc's office to his home near Coal Town. He usually returned a book the day after he borrowed it.

         These short December days, however, did not cooperate with his reading schedule. Now he had five miles to go, and it was too dark to read. Well, perhaps he could entertain himself by assaulting famous quotes, a favorite game that no one, not even his wife or Doc, knew about.       

         "Trudge on, MacDuff," he muttered. "I have not yet begun to read. I only regret that I have but one book to read in the country. To read or not to read, that is the question. I came, I saw, I returned the book the next day...."

         He was so engrossed in the process of unarmed robbery of Bartlett's that he had been staring at the glow in the woods for over a quarter of a mile before he realized it was out of place.

         He was walking the old Shake-Sheet road, now almost abandoned. The Old Jeff coal mine shafts honey-combed the entire area; it was all undermined. Most of the houses along the road had begun to shift and sink, and the road itself was suspect. Hardly anyone was willing to take a chance on driving a rig or wagon on the Shake-Sheet. Besides, there wasn't much reason to do so with no one living on it. John White liked to use it, however, because he could concentrate on his reading or his quoting without being bothered by folks who wanted to stop him for a chat.

         This glow back in the trees.... What could that be? It was in the general direction of the old Brooks place. "Ham" Brooks had built his place well off the road to keep his eight boisterous sons from bothering folks as they drove by. It had not worked, so "Ham" and his wife, "Beanie," eventually had to move out of the county.

         John White didn't have much ambition to go back in the woods toward "Ham's" old place. The house was about half sunk in, and it was totally overgrown. There were all kinds of potholes and sinkholes and boulders and vines and no telling what else back in there to trip a man up or pull him down. Besides, he had Doc's book; didn't want to take a chance on something happening to it. Nonetheless, the glow should not be there. It almost had to be a fire.  

If it started spreading, it could really get out of control. This was the warmest winter that anyone could remember. In addition, November had been a remarkably dry month, and the first week of December not much better. The fire didn't look too big, yet. If it were contained down in a sinkhole, maybe he could put it out. He was still thinking all that when he realized that he had already started back toward the light in the woods.

         "Well, might as well go on back since I'm already going," he thought.

         John White was so used to walking as he read that his feet often made decisions for him.

         He worked his way into the woods very quietly, not because he was trying to be quiet, but because he was trying to avoid stepping in something or on something that might prove disastrous. Thus he made it all the way to the edge of what used to be "Ham's" yard with hardly a sound. It turned out to be a darn good thing that he did, too, for as he peered around the corner of the sinking old house and into the big square where "Ham" had kept the creatures that gave him his name, he saw a sight so amazing he could hardly believe it.

         There, where "Ham's" hogs used to root and snoot, were about a dozen men. At least John White had to assume they were men. He could hardly tell for sure. They were covered with white sheets, even their heads. They had cone-shaped caps of sheet over their heads, with little holes for their eyes, but none for their mouths. John White thought that was strange but later realized they thought that talking through the sheet would disguise their voices.

         The glow he had seen was a fire, all right, but one like he'd never seen before. It was a burning cross, right there in the middle of "Ham's" hog lot, not very tall, and not burning real well. One of the sheeted figures was trying to help it along with a torch and a string of curses, but neither the torch nor the epithets seemed to help much.

         John White's mouth dropped open so wide a squirrel could have run in. He'd heard about people like this, "white-cappers," who crept about at night in disguises, burning crosses and haranguing colored folks, claiming they were true Christians who were only trying to save the nation. He'd even read about them. He had no idea, however, that they actually existed in his own environs.

         The hooded characters slouched about in a vague circle around the cross, except for one. He stood in sheeted splendor right in front of the cross, if you counted "front" as the direction facing toward where John White now spied on them from the trees along the edge of the hog lot. He was an especially big man, judging from the expanse of sheet billowing around him. He had to do a little dance whenever the man with the torch got near him, to keep his billowing sheets from being set on fire. The man in front of the burning cross began to speak.

         "You'uns know why we's here. Them Dickersons got to be run out the county. We've tried to be nice to 'em, tried to git 'em to go peaceful like, and they ain't paid no more mind than you would to an old hound dog. Now we got to take action!"

         The voice started out on a note of high anxiety and managed to achieve a falsetto whine by the time the speaker finished. John White could tell the man was trying to whip his troops up, but doubted that his voice would stir up much action. There was something familiar about that voice, though. John White began to riffle through his memory pages to see if he could spot it.

         "Aw, the Dickersons ain't so bad," said another voice from somewhere in the circle.

         "Yeah, 'bout the only thing's wrong with 'em is they's niggers," chimed in another.

         Still another voice added, "And they's the only ones in the county. Don't cause no harm, really."

         The leader set his fists into his hips, arms akimbo. His sheet stretched so far that John White could no longer see the burning cross. There was just a marginal glow around the man, making him look something like a giant, fading lightning bug.

         "So, that's how much you know!" he squealed, in the sort of high screech that had been heard many times before in that very place. "If you'd read 'The Klarion Kall,' like you're spose to, you'd know what happens when you have even one bunch of niggers around. Pretty soon they start actin' like they's regular folks. What you gonna do then? Besides, we told 'em to leave and they wouldn't. You can't let people you push around act like it don't matter to 'em. That ain't American."

         "Well, it ain't really like they pushed back or nothin'. Old man Dickerson said they'd like to oblige us but they just didn't have no place to go."

         It was still another voice, one that had not yet spoken. John White was getting the idea that the hooded followers were along mainly in order to get out of the house and have something to do at night. Action was apparently something they hadn't exactly counted on when they signed up and bought their sheets.

         John White began to wonder about a lot of things.  What was "The Klarion Kall," and how could he get hold of it? It sounded like fascinating reading. Why had he not heard anything about the Dickersons being visited by these sheeted visions and told to get out? Well, who could the Dickersons tell? For all they knew the men under the sheets might include the sheriff or a county board member. John White didn't know any more than that himself. Who were these men, anyway? Probably men he knew. All the voices sounded familiar, but he just couldn't place them.

         His pondering was interrupted as the leader took up his cause once again.

         "We been through this over and agin. Ain't no more talkin' to be done. They's got to go, 'cause we don't want 'em here. That's reason enough."

         A new voice arose from out the crowd of sheets.

         "He's right. We all agreed to this, so let's git on with it. Go ahead, Bone."

         The huge leader flapped his sheeted arms up and down, like some prehistoric albatross trying to get up enough power to crash.

         "Don't do that!" he squealed. "You know never to call a brother by name when we're in uniform."

         "Oh, forcrysakes, Bone. Whointhells gonna hear us out here?"

         "Who, indeed?" smiled John White to himself from behind the bole of a white oak tree.

         Things were beginning to fall into place for him now. The leader of this particular pack was "Bone" Brooks, "Ham" Brooks' oldest son, named after his father, christened as "Hambone," but now apparently going by the shortened form of his name. It did not surprise John White, who had never expected anything good to come out of a family that was named for pork. It also explained why they were meeting here, on the old Brooks place.

         "Bone" Brooks puffed himself up, like he wanted to argue some more about proper etiquette when men gather while dressed like pointy-headed ghosts. He wisely decided to take advantage of any opening he could get, however, before he lost his audience entirely.

         "Awright, then. We'll do it on Christmas eve, since you marvels is too lily-livered to do it in front of the Dickersons, which'd be much more better, since then they'd know for sure that it wasn't no accident and be too scared to ever show themselves in the county agin, which is the way it properly oughta be. They'll go to the Quakers for Christmas eve, like they always do. They has service early, so we can git out to their place, burn it down, and be back in time to git to the Christmas eve services at our own churches. No one'll have any idea who it was that done it."

         "I wonder how come the Quakers let niggers come to service anyway?" some vague voice wondered.

         "Ah, hell," someone answered, "the Quakers'd let anyone come, long as they didn't say nothin'."

         Everyone laughed, but John White was already thinking, so he listened to the rest of their plans with only half an ear. He had heard enough of the voices to have a pretty good idea who was in this group and who was not.

         Christmas eve, and they were going to burn a family out, so they would return from church and find they no longer had a home. You can't get much lower than that, thought John White, than to run around in a disguise on Christmas eve and.... A plan began to form in the back of his brain.

         He waited until the sheet-shrouded figures doused their cross and slipped away behind the barn, apparently having left their horses or buggies or whatever they'd come in at the back of the old Brooks place, which abutted the canal road.

         Then John White made his way back to the Shake-Sheet road and walked home, his step lighter and lighter. He almost skipped through the winter dark, buoyed up by the plan that was growing larger and more compelling with every step he took.

         It was just a little over two weeks to Christmas eve. During that time, John White seemed to be everywhere. People saw him walking through the streets of town, up and down every county road, out and back again, and the same the next day. He always carried a book with him, but unlike his usual peripatetic opsimathy, now he did not seem interested in actually reading as he paced along. Instead he was downright garrulous, stepping out into the roadway to chat with passing drivers and riders, going into houses along the way, staying long enough to have a real conversation.

         "Must be the Christmas spirit has even gotten to John White, that old bum," folks said, as they commented to one another on the wanderings of the only professional reader in their midst.

         He was almost always "that old bum" in the social structure of Coal Town, since he read instead of working. John White himself saw his social status as a distinct advantage, especially now, in the days before Christmas. Folks would talk about his unusual routine, but no one would take it seriously. It masked what he was doing, for some of the conversations he had along the roads and in the houses were not just general visiting, although they certainly did have to do with the Christmas spirit. No one seemed to notice that he visited a whole passel of Baptist deer-hunters and Catholic seamstresses. By the time Christmas eve came, John White's plan was ready.

         So, of course, was the plan of "Bone" Brooks and his porky brothers and their cohorts of the sheet. Well, the plan was ready, but a great deal of organization was not evident. As soon as it was dark, they gathered at the site of "Ham's" old hog lot.

         "Let's burn a cross and have a nip before we go," suggested one of the brothers of the sheet.

         "We can't," said another. "We's only got one cross, and we need it to burn at the Dickerson's."

         "Hell, ain't no point in draggin' the durnfool thing clear over to there," replied another. "It'll be burned up by the time they get back from the Quakers."

         "No better'n you gits them things to burn, it'd still be there even if they'd been to the moon."

         The hooded speaker guffawed considerably at his wit.

         "Well, then, how'll they know it was us?"

         "They'll know. Who else'd do it?"

         "If we'uns all go in the wagon together, like we said, won't be no room for it none, anyhoo."

         Finally the whining voice of "Bone" Brooks cut in.

         "So, that's how much you know. We don't have time for none of that stuff. The Quakers might let out early, if the Spirit don't move none of 'em. We gotta git over there and git it done. Besides, the cold's finally comin' in."

         "Bone" was certainly right about that. The winter cold, held off by the most prolonged autumn anyone could remember, was even at that moment beginning to cut through the leafless branches as the wind moaned in the gathering dark. The sheets that had previously seemed so protective were now only thin veils against the December night.

         Finally they compromised. They left the cross behind, unburned, but took the jug with them in the wagon. As one of them said, "If a man cain't burn a cross to keep him warm, he ought at least to git a fire in his belly."

         By the time they reached the Dickerson's house, they were feeling pretty light in the head and pretty cold in the body. The wagon pulled up in front of the house and disgorged its load of sheet-covered figures. After the jostling in the wagon and the fire-building in the belly, none was particularly steady on his feet.

         They had all managed to get themselves and their cans of kerosene out of the wagon and headed toward the house, however, when a voice rang out of the darkness and echoed around their pointed heads.

         "Ho, Ho, Ho! Merry Christmas!"

         "Whathuhell..." someone started to cry out from amongst the sheets. Before he could finish whatever it was that he tried to start, a match flared, and then another, and still another, little pin-points of light all around them.

         The matches were touched to pine-knot torches. Suddenly the sheeted figures were caught in a circle of brightening light, torches surrounding them, set in the forks of tree limbs, stuck down into old pieces of machinery, on the tops of fence posts, pushed into the ground. In the light, they could see....

         "Ohmigod!," muttered one of the hoods as it swiveled unsteadily to look around the circle of lights. "I'll never touch the jug again, I swear it...."

         For there, standing beside a flaming torch, was Santa Claus, red suit and white whiskers set comfortably above clod-hopper shoes, with a double-barreled shotgun in his hands. Around the circle, one beside each snapping torch, were Santa's helpers, all with huge white beards and green felt hats and funny brown "britches," and all carrying shotguns, just like Santa himself.

         (If John White had been describing the circle to Doc Hollywell in Doc's consulting room, he would have reminded him that "circle," in Greek, was kuklus.)

         Even through the narrow slits and the wavering light, you could see the eyes of the sheet-wearers get as big and as round as the shotgun muzzles on which they focused. If they had been able to look up from the weapons at the faces of Santa and his helpers, they would have seen nothing but beards.

         "Ho, Ho, Ho! Merry Christmas!" chortled Santa once again. "You're just in time to help. We were bringing presents to the Dickersons here. Nice folks, but they've hit on hard times. Need bed clothes, especially. If you kind fellas would just put your sheets there on the porch, and leave your kerosene cans on the ground there, why, they'd make right nice Christmas gifts."

         Santa pointed both barrels directly at the pile of sheet under which Bone Brooks now shook with rage, indignation, cold, and fear.

         "You, you,... you can't do this," squealed Bone. "We're in uniform. We can't take off our sheets. Nobody's allowed to see our faces."

         "Ho, ho, ho! So that's how much you know. Don't you think Santa recognizes you, Bone Brooks, and your porky brothers and all the others, too?"

         Bone Brooks literally staggered when Santa threw his own favorite phrase back at him and called out his name. Bone and all his cohorts seemed rooted in their places by the impossibility of it all.

         One of Santa's helpers moved out toward the Christmas eve raiders, shotgun at the ready.

         "Do what Santa says, you sheet-heads. It's gittin' cold, and we gotta visit all the good boys and girls yet."

         Mechanically now, and shivering as they did it, the men left their kerosene cans and trudged up to the Dickerson's porch and stripped off their sheets and dropped them into an untidy pile. They ducked their bare heads against the cold and the eyes of Santa and his helpers. Santa knew there would be no more trouble from them; they were now known to the men behind the beards, but they had no idea who it was who knew them. As the torches began to burn down, they hurried out to their wagon as fast as dignity allowed and drove off into the dark of the night.

         Santa turned to the forces of Christmas. "Thank you, gentlemen," he said. "It was good of you to come out on Christmas eve to assure that the Dickersons have sheets for Christmas. Now, I am sure we all have other places to go."

         "What'll we do with the suits and the beards?" asked one of the men.

         "Oh, might as well hang onto them," replied the man in the red suit. "Christmas comes every year. Maybe some time we'll be able to use them without the shotguns."

         That seemed to please the helpers. They tucked the guns up under arms and began to hurry off. Only Santa and one of the helpers remained. The helper pulled a foul-smelling briar out of the pocket of his green coat and lighted it with a twig touched to the last torch left burning.

         "Come on, 'Santa,'" he said. "I'll carry you back home."

         "Just a minute," replied Santa. "I'm going to get one of those sheets up there. I need some new book-marks, and I think this is a Christmas I'd like to remember."