Every year, one of our reporters writes a fictional Christmas story, carrying on a tradition started by Steve Manor, who staffed our Northern Tier bureau until his death in 1996. Here's our 2009 story, written by Feature Editor Suzanne Moore. As is also a tradition, the story is illustrated by local artist Les Cosgrove and dedicated with affection to Steve Manor.
I
Her feet sliding in oversized rubber boots, Maggie Mooers trudged through the thin layer of snow to the clothesline. Muttering under her breath, she plucked the wooden clothespins off the nearest sheet, bending the frozen cloth to fit it into her basket.
"Waste of time," she griped to herself, reaching for a patched gray wool blanket. "Waste of soap."
At least the hunting party due to stay in her big brick farmhouse had had the courtesy to cancel before she'd wasted any of her precious cash on food for them. But the lost income would hurt sorely over the winter. The garden would keep her in vegetables; chickens flourished in the henhouse. But flour, sugar, coal "¦ Maggie shook her head. The big crash in New York City, the one that had rich people diving out of windows, was making poor folks like her even poorer. Not many tourists would take the train north to tiny St. Armand near the Quebec border for a country vacation now, and that's how Maggie managed to make ends meet. Or almost meet, anyhow.
A clothespin popped off a faded red quilt, and she pulled the stiff cloth aside to look for it. And there it was, held up in a grimy hand that belonged to a boy who'd appeared like magic on the coverlet's other side.
"Here, ma'am," the boy said, deftly doffing his worn cap respectfully with his other hand.
Maggie took the clothespin, her expression sour.
This was no local boy, she knew, as the wail of a train whistle seemed to affirm her appraisal. Threadbare clothes, dirty face, pinched, hungry features "¦
"Name's Arnold," the boy told her, a gamin grin lighting his face. "Kin I work for a meal, ma'am? For a place to sleep tonight?"
Maggie mentally yanked back a thread of sympathy that began weaving its way from a heart she'd thought completely hardened long ago. She'd turned away dozens of tramps without a qualm, without one bit of concern for their welfare.
But this boy was so young. So alone. And perhaps his mother suffered somewhere, wondering "¦
In the kitchen, Arnold spooned up chicken soup with enthusiastic slurping. His hunger was plain to see; it almost made Maggie remember what it was like to actually enjoy eating.
"I kin cut wood, kill chickens, milk cows," he paused to say.
"No cows here," Maggie said shortly. "Just eat."
Truth to tell, she didn't trust the young stranger. Stories of theft and worse ran rampant about tramps taken in by solitary women, and she didn't plan to become one of them.
Come bedtime, she showed Arnold to a spare bedroom, one with just a bed, not even a lamp.
"I'm locking you in," Maggie told him. "I'll let you out in the morning."
Arnold nodded, that grin flaring again. "Can't be too careful," he agreed.
It was with relief that Maggie turned the key next morning to find the room empty. She slid the window shut, eyeing with satisfaction the footprints in the snow below that led away from the house to the road.
But Arnold turned up midmorning, carrying a brace of rabbits.
"I'll skin 'em," he told Maggie, ignoring her frown. "They'll make a nice stew."
After that, the boy didn't bother asking what chores he could do. He pulled the axe from its rotting stump by the summer kitchen door and attacked the fallen tree by the horse pasture. Then he cut the ropes Maggie had used to keep the mare in her field and fixed the fence properly. Next day, after again exiting by the window, he snared two partridges and a grouse.
"When the lake freezes up, I'll get us a mess of fish," he told her.
Before the week was out, Maggie stopped locking the bedroom door. And without thinking, she began putting out two place settings for every meal.
II
Maggie was digging up carrots when the next boy showed up, a dog on his heels. The pair were two peas in a pod, the boy's face covered with freckles, his shaggy hair the same red as the flecks on the dog's white coat.
"I suppose they call you Rusty," Maggie greeted the child.
Plainly affronted, the boy pulled himself upright, his eyes flashing.
"Name's Emerson," he said. "Emerson Matthew Brady. My dog is Eustis."
For the first time in as long as she could remember, Maggie stifled an urge to laugh out loud.
"So what brings you to my fine establishment, Mr. Emerson Matthew Brady?" Maggie asked.
The boy shuffled his feet, and Maggie got the sense he was embarrassed. "Uh, can I work for some food?" he finally blurted out.
"You can collect the eggs," Maggie told him, gesturing at the henhouse. "There should be 14 hens — one was getting broody, so you might have to search her out."
"I'll find her," Emerson replied smartly.
"Leave the dog here," Maggie said. "I won't have that animal killing my flock."
But the boy ignored her, instead tipping up the dog's chin and speaking directly to him.
"Find the eggs, Eustis."
Maggie followed the two, watching the dog move from hen to hen, nosing the plump body of each to move it off the nest with a squawk. Emerson quickly gathered the eggs.
"Just 13 hens," he announced. "We'll find the other one."
The pair ranged around the yard; then Eustis led the way into the barn. Five minutes later, Emerson came out with a hen under his arm and a grin a mile wide.
"Now can I eat?" he asked.
Later that day, Maggie stepped outside her front door onto the porch, shaking her head at the peeling paint and sagging floorboards. She studied first one porch post and then another, and there it was, some kind of symbol scratched into the wood. A stick figure, one arm raised as if in a wave.
A wave of welcome, Maggie thought. Tramps had their own language, a way to leave messages for the next one to come along. She'd found them there before, big Xs or other marks she'd easily interpreted to mean the stingy woman in the brick house wouldn't give even a scrap to a hungry hobo. Maggie started to rub at the stick figure but then stepped back and studied it some more.
Then she left it alone.
III
Nights for Maggie were long. Sleep had deserted her 10 years earlier, though over time, she'd managed to suppress the memories that had driven her into her self-imposed solitude. She just lay awake, hour after hour, thinking of nothing, feeling nothing but a dull sense of loss and guilt. Now, she found herself visiting the past, letting snippets of memory surface. Her boy, Jim, had had a dog, one that did kill chickens. But the two were inseparable, and neither Maggie nor her husband had the heart to get rid of the big shaggy creature.
Her son had had a knack with a snare and fishing line, like Arnold. She could still see him, holding up a northern pike almost as long as the boy was tall "¦
It was those boys, those hobos, who had unlocked those doors in the recesses of Maggie's mind, and every morning she got out of bed determined to send them on their way. But then Arnold would force a smile from her with a little joke. Or Emerson would demonstrate the latest trick he'd taught Eustis "¦
She was lonely, she realized. But was the company of the boys worth the pain of remembering?
Three weeks before Christmas, a freak warm spell drenched St. Armand with pouring rain. By midday, it had turned to slivers of ice that clicked and tapped at the windows of the parlor where Maggie and the two boys sorted butternuts by the warmth of the little stove.
At first, only Eustis heard the knock at the front door.
The child who stood shivering on the steps couldn't have been more than 9 years old, Maggie thought. For a winter coat, he wore a ice-encrusted men's flannel shirt. He started to speak, but a paroxysm of coughing wracked his small frame, and a wheeze accompanied every breath.
Without a word, Maggie pulled the boy inside and steered him into the parlor; she'd heard that wheeze before, and the sound sent a chill of fear through her.
Grabbing an old envelope and pencil from the desk, she barked out instructions. "Arnold," she said, scribbling quickly, "get towels, the nightgown on my bed. And blankets."
She turned to the red-haired boy. "Emerson, get the mare and take this note to Mrs. Charbonneau. She lives down past the church, fifth, no sixth, house. She's a nurse."
Arnold rushed in, hidden by the mound of bedding he carried. He dumped it beside the child.
Maggie stripped off the boy's clothes, rubbing him briskly with a towel then opening the neck of the nightgown to slip it over his head.
The boy put his hands up, trying to stop her.
"That's a girl's dress," he spoke for the first time, teeth chattering.
"Taddy, put it on," Arnold spoke up.
Taddy? Hmmm, Maggie thought.
IV
Maud Charbonneau listened to Taddy's chest, studied the thermometer, then smiled at the boy.
"We're going to fix you right up," she promised him.
In the kitchen, her expression turned somber.
"Maud," Maggie whispered, "is it pneumonia?"
The other woman nodded, reaching for a bowl from the drainboard and spilling some dry mustard into it. Maggie handed her the flour sack and watched her mix in water to make a mustard plaster.
"Maggie," Maud said. "I heard how you've been taking in these boys. It's good of you."
"It's the Christian thing to do," Maggie answered, then flushed. She hadn't stepped a foot into a church since her husband's funeral 10 years earlier.
But Maud didn't seem to notice her gaff. She wiped her hands on a tea towel then pulled a copy of the Saturday Evening Post from her bag.
"There's a story in here about child tramps — seems there are thousands of them riding the rails these days," she said. "I thought you might like to read it."
Maggie glanced at the story, with a pang seeing the author's last name was Amos — her late husband's first name.
"Thank you," she said. "For coming, I mean."
"Oh, Maggie, you know I would have come any time all these years." Maud's eyes were awash with tears. "So now can we be sisters again?"
V
Nursing Taddy exhausted Maggie to the point that she finally slept at night. But now she dreamed.
There was Amos, just home from the war, gaunt and stooped and wheezing from the mustard gas he'd breathed in on the battlefields of France.
She dreamed of Jim, of ordering him to stay home that fateful night.
"You could bring the flu home to your pa," she told him. "You know he can't chance catching it with his weak lungs."
And then Amos lay dying, flu turned to pneumonia, and the rasp of his breath somehow turned into Taddy's. Maggie sat bolt upright in the rocker by the boy's bed.
"Kin I have something to eat?" he asked.
Taddy got well quickly, and the household soon fell prey to the little boy's pranks. Eustis chased a piece of meat Taddy yanked out of his reach on a string. Eggs perched over the kitchen door broke on Emerson's head.
Only when Arnold chastised Taddy did he pay the least attention. In fact, the little boy tagged along after Arnold like a shadow.
At last, Maggie asked them. "You're brothers, aren't you?"
Arnold looked down but nodded.
"Why weren't you together?" she asked. "Taddy is too young to "¦"
Taddy interrupted. "One by one," he said. "That's Jim's plan."
Arnold poked his brother, hissing at him to shut him up.
Jim. Maggie felt the pang that always struck when she heard her son's name.
"Who's Jim?" she asked.
But the boys had scampered, almost tripping over their own feet in their haste.
That very afternoon, Maggie got her answer.
The new boy was slender, taller than 12-year-old Arnold but delicate looking.
Maggie didn't even bother making him go through the usual "Kin I work for food?"
"See Arnold over there?" she asked the boy. "He'll show you where the apples are in the cellar. Take a pile of them into the kitchen and start peeling."
"Thank you, missus," the newcomer said. He hesitated then smiled shyly. "Name's Jim."
VI
Jim proved handy in the kitchen; he peeled the apples quickly then quartered them without instruction. He scoured the pots and scrubbed the wide plank floor.
Maggie had wondered about all the children, what sad stories made them roam the country, alone and unloved. But for selfish reasons, she'd kept her tongue — if they answered her questions, they'd ask some of their own.
But after Jim had been there for three days, there was something Maggie just had to know.
"Where are your parents?" she probed.
"Pa left to find work, didn't come back," Jim said, his face wooden. "Then Ma died."
"Jim," Maggie said softly, "you know an awful lot about cooking for a boy. And I saw you watching me quilting — looked like you were itching to take the needle."
Tears streamed down Jim's face, and Maggie pressed the child against her.
"It was safer to be a boy," came the muffled reply. "I've been a boy now for two years."
"What's you're real name, honey?"
"It's Jem, for Jemima."
As Maggie knew they would, the questions soon followed.
"How come you live alone?" Jem asked as they dusted the knickknacks in the china cabinet one afternoon.
"My husband died," Maggie said.
"Don't you got no kids?" asked Taddy, fingering a dainty teacup.
"No. Not anymore."
They worked in silence for a while, Maggie reliving in her mind the agony of that awful day, when Amos lay dead in the parlor and 16-year-old Jim, recovered from his own bout of the Spanish influenza, cowered beside the coffin as Maggie raged at him.
"You killed him! You killed your papa! I told you not to go out "¦"
Jim had run away that very night, leaving a note on his pillow that said, simply, "I know I did, Ma. Don't know how you can ever forgive me."
"Missus Maggie?" Taddy said, with a tentative tug on her sleeve. "We can be your kids."
For a brief moment, the grief in Maggie's heart dissolved in a cautious swell of hope. To save these children, to give them a happy home "¦ She could never forgive herself for driving away her own sweet boy. But she could be a mother again — a better mother.
But that flicker of excitement quickly died. If nothing else, Maggie was practical. How could she feed four children when she could barely feed herself? How could she clothe them when her own garments were patched and old?
With a heavy sigh, she smiled at Jem and Taddy. "I'll make sure you're taken care of," she said.
Then, with purpose, her feet took her upstairs to the small bedroom, where her pedal sewing machine sat by the window and a big cupboard opened to shelves of fabric.
Her sure hand wielded the scissors deftly, cutting out squares that she lay on the bed in rows. She moved a red calico next to a yellow print, a green stripe beside a solid brown square. She'd sew the squares into quilts. Wherever these four children ended up, come Christmas, they deserved to find something bright and warm and comforting under the tree.
VII
By nightfall Christmas Eve, a small fir stood in the parlor adorned with strings of popcorn. Maggie told the children about the birth of Jesus — then handed out the quilts, smiling as the four argued cheerfully over who would get which one.
"We have a present for you, too," Arnold said, grinning.
A raised voice outside interrupted them; the children ran to peer out the windows.
"It's not Santa, if that's what you're thinking," Maggie cautioned them. "Santa's poor this year, too."
On the front steps, her neighbor Ovila Ducharme tussled with a slight, bearded man in a ragged coat.
"Just encouraging this tramp to go elsewhere, Maggie," he called. "You've already got your hands full."
But Maggie put up her hand.
"No," she said. "We've got enough for one more."
The children cheered, rushing out to pull the stranger inside. He ruffled their hair and slapped their backs like an old friend, though he looked taken aback at Jem's shy hello.
"Boys, take him into the parlor," Maggie said. "He needs to warm up."
"But this is it," Taddy told Maggie, pushing the man toward her. "This is your present."
The young man's gaze met Maggie's, and she didn't see a stranger's eyes but the dark-brown ones of her dead husband. Suddenly light-headed, she reached for the newel post and found Emerson offering his thin frame to support her. The others swarmed around her, propping her up, concern in their eyes. Eustis barked, dancing around the stranger with obvious delight.
"Jim?" Maggie whispered.
Her son took her in his arms; the four children crowded against them, all hugging tightly.
Had Santa been making his rounds that year, he would have flown right over Maggie's house, for she and Jim stayed up all night long, talking by the Christmas tree.
"I was out of my mind with grief," Maggie told him. "I never meant to blame you."
"It was guilt that kept me away," Jim said. "I shouldn't have gone out that night."
He took his mother's hands in his, and she marveled at their strength. But how he must have suffered, she thought, and still did, judging by his clothes, his worn shoes.
"I did my best for you, Ma," Jim said softly, "once I got on my feet. I told people in the city about your tourist home; I hope plenty of them came your way.
"I didn't know how sad you were until I wrote Aunt Maud last year," he added.
Maggie looked up at him, puzzled.
Jim pulled some papers from his pocket, unfolded them and held them out to Maggie. It was the story from the Saturday Evening Post.
"I read this," Maggie said. "Your aunt gave it to me."
"I know," Jim said. "I asked her to. I wrote that story, Ma. That's my pen name, Jonathan Amos. I remembered how hard it was to make my way when I first left home, back when times were better and people were more willing to share. And I wanted to write about the children living that life now. So I road the rails to find them."
"You're a writer?" Maggie said. "You get paid to write stories?"
Jim laughed. "I do, indeed."
Suddenly, Maggie remembered Taddy talking about "Jim's plan."
"You sent Arnold here," she said slowly. "And then Emerson. And Taddy. Then Jem."
"Except I thought she was Jim," said her son, eyes twinkling.
"But why?" Maggie asked. "Why didn't you just come home?"
"Aunt Maud told me how you kept to yourself," Jim told her. "How you still mourned Papa. And I didn't know if you'd let me in the door.
"Besides," he added, "they needed a mother."
"I'll help, Ma," he added. "I've got coal on order. And groceries. And shoes."
Taddy burst into the room, bare feet thudding on the floor. "Coal and groceries and shoes!" he sang. "Santa is coming after all!"
The sun rose bright that morning, making the snow glitter with silver. By the front steps, Maggie pulled a jackknife from her pocket and carefully traced the stick figure on the porch post, the new cuts making it stand out sharply against the old wood.
In the lee of the old pine across the road, a small figure watched her. Turning, Maggie saw the boy and beckoned.
"Come on," she called. "Come on home."
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