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."