THE MAN WHO BROUGHT THE COUNTRY DOWN

by Hunter James

The house was fearfully dark and silent as Ryerson opened the gate to the picket fence and went up toward the porch. Dark with dark with the promise of early death. Like a house from which all life had fled long ago. Yet the living room was a glorious scene of greenery and sparkling bells and shiny decorative balls and tinsel, amid which stood a shrunken Santa Claus with a dirty white beard. It had been a present at his first Christmas and though no longer the lusty fellow of those first days Ryerson always made sure that he enjoyed a prominent place amid the great wealth of greenery and tinkling bells.

Then he saw the single light way back in the kitchen at the end of the hall. He still did not go in. He ran back down the walk and waited for his father to catch up. He had paused by the gate under their tall loblolly pine tree to put another lozenge in his mouth. Ryerson worried that it would take a lot more than that to hide the truth from Mother's nose. Smell of Negro, smell of beer, smell of the decadent night itself. He has just never heard of a nose with the kind of power that his mother claimed for her own.

His father came up beside him and they went back to the porch and entered the house as burglars, moving very slowly now, being as careful as possible as they went along the unlit hall and feeling their way into the brightly lighted kitchen where his mother sat holding her Red-Letter Bible.

On the table sat the remains of the Christmas Eve dinner they had enjoyed before he and his father had left for town. A big Christmas eve supper with succulent honey-baked ham, a special cheese and macaroni dish, vegetables still fresh from the summer garden, a huge Swedish krumkake, wonderfully golden brown as only she could make it.

They had been gone for more than two hours. His father had said nothing about their leaving till he got up from the supper table. "Honey, I hope you don't mind if the boy and I take a quick little run downtown after we finish supper. Just a little piece of business I need to get outa the way. Won't try to drive and fight all that traffic. All the streetcars will be running late tonight."

Even before they left it looked very much as though she was about to fall into one of her spells. No need to say anymore when she fell into one of those terrifying moods. Maybe if she would just keep taking her pills she could finally get rid of the terrible fear that came into her face every time his father looked at her a certain way or when he came home late and often drunk from making the rounds of his rental properties.

He had got up and slapped his hat on and stood looking at her across the room, flashing the big friendly smile that would almost always be followed by a huge laugh. She had got up at the same time, glaring at him menacingly "Sit down and finish your supper, honeybunch. Might want a little piece tonight, it being Christmas Eve and all."

Piece?

Piece of what? Was his father still hungry? Ryerson was about to offer him part of his apple pie when he saw that his mother's face had suddenly turned to stone, the anger coming in her voice:

"Well, you'll not get it, sot! Do you hear me?"

The boy just didn't understand. His father had not played the sot tonight. Even the boy could tell that his father was not drunk; and everything had started out so well! It was to have been the best night of the whole year. Christmas Eve. Tinsel and candles in all the windows. The big cedar glowing in the front room. The decorations sparkling magically in the dark. A big fire waiting to be lit in the hearth. It was really very strange the way his mother was acting—leaving the table like that and grabbing up her Bible and the tears starting to come as she struggled to regain her voice.

Father went on out through the dark hall. "Honey, don't forget your medicine now, and try to eat a little supper, will you? Why, we'll be back before you can say ‘jackrabbit!’”

He got no answer. They went on out anyway, because the boy knew that when they got back with the presents she would have to smile again and give each of them a big piece of the apple pie and everything would be all right again. His father had been putting aside a little money for the last couple of months or so, but he had been so busy keeping an eye on his barbershops and rent houses that he just hadn't had time to get out and do any shopping. That was all right. The stores were always open late on Christmas eve.ch

Earlier, his mother had spoken a little more calmly about the terrors of the city night, the danger of running into desperate characters on the streets at almost any time and especially during the big Christmas rush. "Nothing is safe for us any more—never will be safe for us now that Roosevelt and his people have taken over the White House. I thought you would understand that by now. And to think that you would leave me here alone like this on Christmas Eve. Why? I ask you. Why?"

“Won’t be gone but an hour or so, honeybunch. Then we'll all have a nice little cup of hot chocolate and talk about all the good times and maybe I'll be able to talk you into that little piece."

"Yes," she said. "All the good times. The times you have left me here alone while you drag that child into one of Roosevelt's filthy beer joints." The boy’s mother simply could not understand why Roosevelt had brought beer back to the counters of America. "I know what I know. You're planning the same thing right now, aren't you? Yet I'm supposed to sit here all by myself while you're out celebrating with those common characters that you like to call 'your boys.' I should certainly hope you won't try to drive. And don't be too sure you'll find me here when you get back either."

"Honey, you know it's nothing like that. Why I haven't touched a drop in whole month of Sundays."

"How late will you be? Why am I even fool enough to ask?"

His father came back into the kitchen and gave her a little kiss on the forehead. "It's only six. Be back by eight at the latest. Don't forget, now. It'll soon be time for your next pill."

"I suppose you think you can always count on me to be here when you get back."

"You know that isn't it, sweetheart."

"Well, I know what I know."

She was sad and about to cry again and had gone off to sit with her Bible in one corner of her bedroom and did not even look up as they started out.

Yet they had hardly got out out the door before she was behind them again. "I just hope you aren't planning to put me through any more of that pain and torture tonight. If you come back to this house with any of that Roosevelt's filthy beer on your breath, you might as well bury me. I don't know how much time I have left to me anyway."

"Take the medicine that the doctor gave you, honey. You'll feel a whole lot better. And try to eat a little something. This little piece of business won’t take us any time a-tall.”

The boy knew she was watching them as they went down the front walk and on out of sight beyond the big loblolly pine tree that marked the edge of their driveway. Surely she must have guessed the reason for their outing. She must have known that he had been saving up to make her a nice Christmas after the bad time they'd had the year before.

That was the time his father had come home with that drunken and merry look on his face, and the house had been full of screams and shouts all night long as the boy tried to sleep. But his father had made a solemn vow this time. The boy just hoped it would be OK. So far it had been one of the best Christmases he had known in all of his seven years. He felt cheerful out in the cold wind as he and his father had walked to the trolley stop.

Almost no room left when they got there. They had pushed their way on board and worked their way slowly back through the crowded aisle to where the Negroes sat. Oh what a fuss his mother would have made if she could have known!

"To stand with nigras," she had always said. "To sit with nigras. All because of that Roosevelt and that damnable wife of his. You'll see that papa was right. He was a real smart man, papa was. He always said that Roosevelt and all these new programs he was bringing in would destroy this county. Oh, how right he was! People who want to change all the old ways that have made this country great—why I'm telling you, they ought to be strung up by their . . . Well, never mind. But you just mark my words: this country will never be the same again. And I will tell you something else: If you put that man back into office, he'll have us right in the middle of this European war. Papa was right about that too. You wait. It won't be long before you see all his words coming to pass. I only wish that he himself could have lived to see how right he was."

The boy could not think of that now. Not on Christmas Eve. He’d felt very warm and excited looking out the windows of the big trolley; the remains of the recent snowstorm lay scattered in fringes about the edge of the street, and in the windows of all the houses the lights of the Christmas trees sparkled with glorious promise.

Six o'clock—yet already quite dark, with the lights of the town beginning to appear through the frosted-over window panes. Except for the Negro section in back there was no room left on the trolley. That was all right; his mother would not have to know that they had stood with Negroes.

His father always spoke with them very freely, not like mother, who always made a face and said: "I hope they don't expect me to ride on that streetcar. I'm telling you, son, we'll never ever have order in this country again. I'm telling you that they'll soon be letting those nigras sit anywhere they please." And his father:

“Don’t be ridiculous, honey. You know there’s no way in the world anybody’s ever gonna let that happen.”

The trolley clanged down Liberty past the tenements and boarding houses where the "tarts" lived. His grandfather had called them that. Though he was only seven, the boy had already heard about the old man's long and close relationship with the tarts. Sometimes when he and his parents were out at the farm, where they would be going next day for the big Christmas dinner, the old man would get a little too much to drink and talk very freely about his good times with his gambling buddies in boomtown Winston and about all the other times with the tarts in their two-story rooming houses on North Liberty Street.

"Shut up, papa," Aunt Sally or Aunt Esther would say. "Shut up, do you hear? We don't need that kind of talk at this table." He would just laugh and finger his mustache suggestively and go on talking about it anyway.

The trolley clanged on down into the main business district, stopping at last in front of the courthouse at the corner of Fourth and Liberty. As they got off a statue of the Unknown Soldier stared imperiously over their heads. Even though no one would have to know that they had stood with Negroes, the boy felt a lot better now that he was out on the streets again.

A crush of people had been waiting to climb aboard and get to the seats. And to hang with where the Negroes sat! Christmas shoppers mingled with a crowd of worshippers that had just come from the First Presbyterian Church. Among them, a little boy with no arms. Ryerson watched him climb up ahead of his parents and then saw him again as the trolley lurched off down the tracks: a real little guy, no more than four or five at most, standing with his face pressed against the glass and the stubs of his arms hanging down.

Poor little guy. Poor little guy.

Ryerson walked on down Fourth Street behind his father, still looking back at the streetcar. Around them now the clear joyous sound of Christmas: a sound of bells and carols and church chimes.

O holy night. The stars are brightly shining.

At one corner stood a kind of house, white and very small, with an iron mesh over the window and, inside, a shrunken Salvation Army Santa Claus with another dirty white beard; he, too, with a bell, though he was no longer ringing it.

Still great swarms of people on the streets, some with packages and some without, some cheerful and others almost forlorn: a great mass of shoppers and non-shoppers over which wafted not only the crisp wind-blown sound of the bells but also the sound of cars stopping and starting, the iron sound of the trolley wheels and always the sound of the people themselves, angry and not angry, moving in and out of the revolving doors, lurching along the sidewalks and out into the streets, shouldering one another under great burdens of packages, shoving and talking loudly, Negroes and ordinary people like himself, climbing into the trolleys and into their automobiles with a merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

At the Belk-Stevens department store the crowd had begun to thin out. He and his father moved down past the long wooden counters, the salesgirls watching them intently as they stopped and rose to return unbought gifts to their proper niche.

May I help you, mister?"

Ryerson watched his father talking to them, grinning, rocking back on his heels and rolling a Camel from one side of his mouth to the other, the ash already beginning to curl over. He picked out a sweater, some cologne, a purse. He had wanted to buy more, a skirt perhaps and a leather belt to match the purse; but times had been hard that year and indeed for as long as the boy could remember.

"Maybe we can do a little better next year," his father said, almost apologetically. "After all, there's still a Depression on."

The salesgirls wrapped the packages in paper glistening with tiny bells and holly berries. Then he and his father were off to Walgreen's for a box of those special dark chocolates that mother liked. There, the girl had run out of all her special gift paper. But that was nothing. Ryerson knew his mother would be pleased anyway—surprised too, because his father had been talking for weeks as if there would be no money for presents this year.

"Please call again, sir."

"Thanks you and a merry Christmas to you."

"And a merry Christmas to you, sir."

So back out again into the cold dark, the streets not nearly so crowded now yet very cold, with a new wind blowing down from the Blue Ridge Mountains. O holy night. A whimper of bells above them in the wind, a new promise of snow. They paused, listening, before again moving along the dark tinsel-bright street past stores now locked and shuttered.

-*-

Ryerson had started for the trolley stop when he realized his father was not going that way at all. After a long walk up Trade Street in the cold, blustery dark they’d found themselves in the Trade Street Bar & Grill, a steamy beer-and-hotdog joint next to the Hauser & Moser Wholesale Grocery House and only three doors down from the first of the three barbershops his father had ever owned. He had sometimes gone with his father to Charlie's place for early breakfast, and at least once to sit with him while he drank a beer toasting Roosevelt's health.

He remembered it all so clearly: a long ago Saturday night in 1935. Mother hardly knew what beer was. She had waited on the sidewalk for him to have his little drink, and said nothing at all on the way home. It wasn't long before everything changed.

The man behind the counter, a big fellow by the name of Charlie Simpson, was an old friend of the boy's father. He always joked with Ryerson and gave him pretzels; but tonight he seemed somber.

"Well, Prather," he said, snapping the cap off a Budweiser. "Mighty tough tryin’ to cheer up for the holidays after a year like this ‘un. I'm a-tellin’ you, it's been mighty tough these past few months. A tough year, and no joke neither. Voted for Roosevelt two times now and we still got this damn Depression hangin’ over us. Reckon it's ever gonna be any better?"

"I'd sure hate to go back to the Hoover days."

"Yeah, I reckon that's true enough." He sat the cold Bud in front of Prather and poured a frosted mug half full. "How about you, young fella? They tell me this stuff will grow real hair on your chest."

Ryerson thought about his mother sitting at home waiting. He thought about all the other times she had waited and him with her in the big dark living room. He remembered the time his father had given him beer at a baseball game in Southside Park. His father had almost wrecked the car on the way home, and his mother had smelled beer on both their breaths. "You devil! You devilish sot! Now we're all paying for what that Roosevelt has done to this country!"

"How about it, son?" Charlie Simpson said. "A small glass half full."

"Nope," his father said. "Better not. Nope, not this time. The madam, I sure don't want to do anything to get her all upset. And that would do it quicker than anything. Always making him promise he'll never touch the stuff. Anyhow, I was kinda counting on getting a little piece tonight."

Piece? Ryerson still didn't understand. What kind of piece? It didn't sound like pie he was talking about now. It didn't sound like anything he'd ever heard anybody talking about.

Anyway, it had thrown both Charlie Simpson and Father into a big squall of laughter. The laughter quickly passed, and now his father seemed somber again. The boy watched him staring at the beer until the frost had melted off the mug.

"Yessirreeee, Charlie, you're right as rain about this Depression business. A mighty tough year for everybody. Have to grant you that. But what would that Hoover have done? Why we've got electricity out at our old farm now for the first time in my life, and I guess we can thank Roosevelt and his New Deal people for that at least. Can't help but think he's on the right track. If we can just stay out of this war. That's the big worry right now."

A tough year for everybody. Ryerson wondered how many times he'd heard the same conversation. And all the talk of the war. Having known no other life he would not realize until he was almost grown how edgy and uncertain everything had been during those early years. Yet his father had had it better than most. He had traveled the country as a kind of itinerant barber long before the Depression came along. It was not long after that that his special knowledge of tobacco had got him a good-paying job as a buyer for the R. J. Reynolds cigarette manufacturing company. The job kept him on the road only from late July until shortly after the first of the year, with time out for the holidays, and it paid well, and he was soon investing some of the money in barbershops, the only other trade he knew, and in rental property.

During the early years of the Depression he'd had four shops, the one on Trade and another on Liberty, up near the courthouse, and two others in East Winston. He'd had to get rid of one of the two in East Winston and had long ago given up following the tobacco market. He still spent a lot of time cutting hair at the Trade Street shop, mostly just to make enough "to keep the madam in furs," he always said, though not to her face.

He talked about all that again as he sat at the counter drinking his second beer— all about where his travels had taken him that year and all the hard times he had seen on the road and how tough it was getting back home for Christmas. All the way back from Lexington, Kentucky, where he had been working the burley market.

"And I have to tell you, Charlie: we aren't seeing ten-cent tobacco any more. Those government supports have helped keep many a poor dirt-farmer out of the bread lines. Still a lot of folks going hungry out there, but I don't reckon we can write everything off as a loss.”

"I guess that's the truth, Prather. Maybe there's just not a whole lot nobody can do. And like you say: the whole country's talkin’ about war now. But, shit, it can't get a whole lot worse'n it is now if you ask me." He gave the county and angry swipe of his towel. "Yessir, this is one year we'll be well rid of, I'm a-tellin’ you."

"Maybe 1939 will be better."

His father was suddenly quite jolly in spite of the bad year. Ryerson looked at him and tugged anxiously at his coat sleeve. "Shouldn't we go." And him:

"Yep, son, it's about that time. But let's not stand out there at that cold trolley stop any longer than we have to. What say?" He looked back over at Charlie Simpson. "Say, Charlie, you got anything the boy can drink? Maybe some chocolate milk or something? Something like that that you can let the boy have?"

"Comin’ right up."

There it was: the glass of milk that was supposed to keep him content until time to go. He took a swallow and juggled the sack of presents in lap while his father finished the beer and signaled for a third.

"Don't you think we ought to just go on?" He could tell time well enough to know that his mother would be getting awfully anxious by now.

"Just a minute, son, and we'll be right on our way."

Charlie Simpson came back after swapping a joke with one of his other customers. "What's the matter, young fella? Don’tcha know it's Christmas Eve? Better celebrate while we can. We'll sho be into this war first thing you know. Don't reckon we're just gonna just stand around and let Hitler take over this here country whenever he gets ready. Lots of folks figure that's exactly what he's got in mind."

The boy counted two more beers before his father was ready to leave. He downed them in a hurry, maybe in too big of a hurry, stepping down unsteadily from the barstool and stopping on his way out to give everybody a lusty handshake and then throwing up his arms with a great shout of "hallelujah!" as he and the boy moved on out into the cold bright dark.

They had gone only half a block when Ryerson realized he didn't have the presents. Back he went on the run, his father behind him, stopping again to shake hands and talk with all the others along the counter. Ryerson got the packages while his father ordered another beer and drank this one quickly too and he was really quite wobbly as he moved back to the front, slapping all his buddies on the back and again stopping at the door to shout out a merry Christmas greeting.

"Come again, Prather. And a merry Christmas to you both."

"A merry, merry, merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!" his father said, falling backward and cracking his head against the doorjamb. He didn't seem to feel it at all.

"Thanks, Prather. And you come again, hear?"

"We'll see all you boys."

"Goodnight, Prather."

"Goodnight."

The boy had walked fast, holding the sack of presents, the wind coming harder now, moving them an extra step for every step they took on their own, his father wobbling from one side of the pavement to the other. The cold air must have sobered him a little. He seemed OK when they got back to the trolley stop. They stood between the two great show windows of Pegram & Wallbrook's shoe store.

It had got colder by the minute, and now the boy wondered if they had overstayed their time had got Charlie Simpson's beer palace and had missed the last trolley. Even the Unknown Soldier seemed to have grown colder waiting out there in the harsh wind. His father just stood their grinning, with the perpetual Camel in his mouth and not minding the cold at all, his smile a little silly now from all the beer he had drunk. Nobody in sight now except four or five others who had just come up to join them in the entrance to the shoe store and, directly across from them, on his granite pedestal, the tall patient statue of the Unknown Soldier, quite still, quite frozen.

"Either of you boys know when the streetcar is due?" his father asked the newcomers.

"Oughta be along any minute now."

The first car that came up had no room left, not even in the Negro section, and the second was going the wrong way. It was past ten o'clock when their trolley clanged up. The boy held the sack awkwardly as he climbed the iron steps. There was plenty of room this time. His father moved to the back, to sit with the Negroes, to sit and talk with the Negroes just as though they were his own kind. Would his mother be able to smell the smell of Negro all over his father? Would she be able to smell even that smell beneath all the smell of beer?

She had always said her nose was the best in the world for scenting out all kinds of evil, and that Father would never be able to taste even one taste of Roosevelt's evil brew without her finding it out instantly. The smell of Negro and beer all over him. Ryerson watched as he put some kind of lozenge in his mouth. He just hoped there wouldn't be a fight. He tried to feel cheerful and excited about everything, about the mystery of the night, and the thought of waking next morning to find all the gifts waiting for him, and most of all because the family would be going out to the old homeplace at Dobbs Station for the big Christmas dinner.

Those were always the best times at the farm. The log fires going in every room, the huge Christmas cedar dominating the corner of the parlor, with more presents to be opened after dinner, the tables laden with platters of fried chicken and spiced ham and roast beef and huge slabs of honey baked ham and mince pie, with great steaming bowls of dumplings and dishes full of rice and giblet gravy and all kinds of succulent garden vegetables, and more of his mother’s krumkake alongside grandman’s towering coconut layer cakes that seemed forever on the very of toppling over of their own weight, and all sorts of chocolate deserts.

Not that he was thinking so much about that now. He was thinking of that other time long ago, a Saturday night in the summer, when he and Mother had gone downtown over the sweaty cobbles and him saying, "Stay off the streetcar tracks, mama!" And her saying, "Oh, no, son. Don't worry. Don't fret yourself. There's no streetcar coming now."

That was in 1935 or 1936 and they were on their way to pick up Father at the barbershop on South Liberty. When they got there all the other barbers said, "Who do you want to see, boy? Who're you looking for?" And him saying: "Just my daddy." And then all laughing and saying, "Your daddy ain't here, boy. Your daddy's gone away." And Mother saying, "My God! O my God! Why would he do this to me? Tell me, Ryerson. How could he let himself become a slave to liquor?"

When they found him, next door in the poolroom, he was drunk and they drove all the way home with him promising never to touch the stuff again, sitting there in the front seat of the Model-A with his hat falling off and Mother driving because she said he would kill them all if she let him behind the wheel and her crying and saying What am I going to do what are any of usgoing to do I'd rather be dead than endure this hell I'd rather be dead and in my grave . . . and then turning to Ryerson and saying, Promise me, son. Promise me that you will never touchliquor . . .

-*-

Would it be the same as all the other times, the trembling voice, the insistent tearful stare: “Promise me, Ryerson, honey. You must promise your mother that you will be a good Christian boy all your life and never touch liquor.” And his father saying, “Don’t make him promise such a thing as that, honeybunch. Growing up is a long time. You can’t hold a boy to that kind of promise.”

Yes, it would almost certainly be the same. Now that they were back he could see at once that nothing had changed. She sat in the near corner, facing the stove, not even turning to look at them. Yet Ryerson could tell that she had been crying. "I knew it! Before you ever walked out of this house I knew it as well as I know my own name. Why didn't I stop you? Why? I ask you. Why?"

Father didn't know why; he stood there grinning, having taken the presents from Ryerson and waiting for her to turn around and be surprised.

She did not turn around. She began to shake all over with the crying and almost fell onto the hot stove—would have fallen onto it if his father hadn't caught her in time. Ryerson realized now that she had indeed smelled the Negro smell and the smell of the beer and all the other smells, maybe even from the very moment they had stepped off the streetcar. He had never heard of a nose like that in his whole life.

"I should have known that you can't leave this house with that child for two minutes without making an utter fool of yourself. But, of course, I did know, didn't I? You and that Antichrist up there in the White House and that devil wife of his and all that filthy beer inside you!"

Then at last she did turn, shaking convulsively. "Why must you insist on doing me this way? Why? I ask you. Why?"

Father only smiled as he spread the presents in front of her on the table. "Come on now, honey. It's OK. We have you a little something."

"Why must you put me through this hell! But, of course, I should have known . . "

"Come, don't make a fuss. It's Christmas Eve. Don't you want to open your things?"

"What? You take that child out and endanger his life by exposing him to all the nigras on that streetcar and now do you know when one of them's gonna pull out a knife and cut you both wide open? And then you come back in here and expect to buy me off with presents? Is that what you think, sot!"

"C'mon, Ellie. You know it's not like that. C'mon and look at your things."

Ryerson watched her. His father had held back one of the presents. The box of dark chocolates. She was quite beautiful even when she was crying and refusing to look at her presents.

"What do you expect of me? What do you want from me?"

She got to her feet, holding the Bible open at Revelation. She was not crying now. Her voice was suddenly quite sharp and alarming, her entire face, attitude, everything, suddenly transformed into something awesome and terrifying. She looked back at the Bible and began to read.

"'All drunkards' . . . Do you hear me, sot? . . . 'All drunkards shall have their place in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone . . .’"

"We can talk about all that tomorrow, honey. Sit down now. It's OK. Besides, we want you look at some of the things we bought. I wish it could have been more, but you know it's been a tough year."

"Coming in here like this and expecting to buy me off with presents? You think that's all you have to do to change the hell you've made of my life? Is that what you think?"

The overhead light seemed brighter, too bright, so bright that the boy's parents seemed momentarily lost in it, like bright shadow-figures grown dim with too much sunlight.

"I don't want them! Do you hear me? I don't want anything a drunken sot brings into this house!"

She raked the presents violently onto the floor and drew Ryerson to her. He dropped the box of chocolates among the other refuse.

"Why must we endure this hell? Why, son? I'd rather be dead than married to the kind of poor miserable drunkard your father has become. I'd rather be in my grave. A thousand times I'd rather be dead and in my grave."

"Come on now. There's no reason to start again and get yourself all worked up over a little bottle of beer or two. It's Christmas, honey. Have you taken those little pills the doctor gave you?"

He stood rocking back on his heels, his hat cock-sided, his spectacles and the gold crown on one of his molars catching a sharp glint of overhead light. He had picked up the presents and placed them back on the table.

"C'mon now. Go ahead and open your presents — or would you rather wait and open them with the other things tomorrow?"

She looked around, her face pale, frenzied. "You want this child to grow up into

another drunkard? With all that rotten blood inside him? Just don't open your mouth to me!. Oh, what a wonderful example you're setting for him! You and that devil Antichrist both!"

She stood glowering at him with her back to the bedroom door.

"It's Christmas, honey." His father took the chair she had left vacant. "Come and sit on my lap and we'll open our things and have a nice little time and maybe talk about that little piece."

There it was again. Might want a little piece tonight, honeybunch. Ryerson looked at the stove, where the pie was. But he began to understand now that it wasn't the pie his father was talking about. He remembered that some of the boys had used that same word at school and how he had been laughed at when he asked what it meant. And now he had heard it from the mouth of his own father.

"Christmas?" she said. "Piece? Peace? What are you talking about, sot?"

"Peace on earth and good will toward men!" Father said. "That's all, honey. Just come and sit on my lap for a moment."

Ryerson was glad he had misunderstood Father. Bringing that kind of talk into the house! He knew Mother would never have allowed that for a moment.

She looked at the sacks of presents, almost vacantly, the tears starting again, and her long auburn hair stiffly framing her lean almost girlish face. Ryerson wondered if the vial of pills would help. She was always forgetting to take them.

She looked back at Father. "Christmas, you say? So that's what you think it is? Christmas, and you coming home drunk like this, making a fool of yourself, ruining this boy's life —and then . . . and then expecting everything to be all right just because you brought some presents picked up as a second thought at some cheap five and dime as you were on your way out of town, thinking, I'm sure, that nothing more than that would be needed to make everything perfectly OK."

She paused, lifting her hand, trembling. "You must promise me, son. You must promise that you will never ever touch that filthy stuff. Will you promise your mother?"

"I promise."

"My Lord in heaven, honey. Don't make him promise that. You think he'll remember a promise like that when he's all grown up? Come on and open your presents."

He sat slumped and weary, yet still with that grin on his face.

"Why did we have to put that filthy monster in the White House? Why, I ask you? Why?"

"Why do you keep bringing Roosevelt into it. Don't you know that he saved the country?"

"Saved the country! That filthy gangster. Is that what you think? Who could have done more to bring this country down than that loathsome creature? Bringing Armageddon to our very door. Turning us all into swine, into filthy sots!"

"C'mon, sweetheart. Are we going into all that again? Can you imagine what kind of shape the country would be in if we’d let those Republicans back in?"

"Are you actually going to sit there and tell me that the Republicans are responsible for this mess we're in? Was it the Republicans who fed all those potatoes to pigs when people were going hungry in the country? And plowing under all those crops, or storing them in warehouses so that all your Democrats could bargain them off and fill their pockets with money? Was it the Republicans who told the nigras to get on their high horses? And brought that filthy beer back into our homes?"

Father sat slouched and grinning. Ryerson watched him. He had a way of waiting her out. Maybe everything would be OK after all.

"C'mon," Father said. "Let's open our things and have a little celebration. We want to get an early start tomorrow."

"Don't speak to me, drunkard. And don't expect me to go anywhere with you tomorrow—not out to that farm, not anywhere. Do you hear me? Not tomorrow, not ever. I don't want to see any of them again."

She fell back, crying, clinging to the doorknob, and then again looked at Ryerson. "I could have had a good life—been somebody. People have told me so. They had said, 'Eleanor, if you'd just gone on and got that college degree, you could have done remarkable things with your life. You could have written books. You could have gone on the stage. You could have been anything you wanted to be.' Now just look at me, won't you?"

She drew the boy closer and talked only to him now, though loud enough for Father to hear. "It's in his blood, child, that terrible weakness for liquor and for leaving drawers open every time he goes through the house. And for never shutting closet doors. And dropping cigarette ashes all over the place. It's a genetic weakness that comes down from god knows where and its in every last one of those Goodes; and, I'm greatly afraid, child, in yours as well. That's why I want you to promise me that you will never touch liquor."

The sobs shook her like an old rag as she leaned against the bedroom door. Father sat shaking his head, staring at the floor. For some reason Ryerson kept thinking about the little armless boy they had seen on the streetcar, wondering how he would celebrate Christmas and who would open his presents for him and whether his mother and father would take him out to his grandparents' house for a big holiday dinner.

He was still thinking about all that, about the sad little guy sitting beside the Christmas tree watching the others open their presents, while his mother screamed at his father and kept looking around for something to throw at him. Then she found it: the bundle of packages his father had put back on the table. Her own presents. Only the second time she had touched them, and now in a final tumultuous fury she grabbed them all up hurled them at his father, so that they exploded all over him like pasteboard shrapnel.

He did not say anything. He looked a little dead, maybe more than a little dead as he sat there with the packages in his lap and all around him on the floor. Something in one of the boxes had knocked his hat off and his glasses awry and left a spot of blood on his noggin. In almost the same motion she flung herself into the bedroom and slammed the door. Ryerson heard the latch fall. Then the key turn. He could still hear the crying a long time after she had locked herself in.

Father was all right except for that single trace of blood on his forehead. "It's nothing, son. It'll be just fine. I guess we'll have to try and find ways not to worry your mother so much." Ryerson was thinking about the farm again and how awful it would be if they had to spend Christmas at home and about the little boy with no arms and about how Roosevelt had brought the country down when suddenly his Father said:

"Come here, Ryerson. Come on over here and sit with your old papa a minute." He straightened his glasses and drew the boy onto his knee. "Don't worry about it, son. We're gonna be all right. There'll be lots of other times when we can go out to mama's. Lots of times. Try not to worry about all that tonight."

"What about tomorrow?"

"There are so many tomorrows for you, sonny boy. Just you don't worry about that now. We'll just have to wait and see. Your mama can be awful determined when she sets her mind to something. You might even say 'stubborn.' A whole lot like her sisters. There's hardly a one of them that hasn't had their share of these little spells at one time or another. It's just something that they're born with, like that weak blood she's always talking about, 'cept I guess she sees it as something different than that in herself. Anyhow, I don't guess they can do anything about it. You sure can't budge one of them a single inch when they make up their mind about something. Even when they see these hard times we're having, why they'll just close their eyes and mark that Republican ballot every time!"

"Can’t hardly believe she’d simply refuse to go."

“To the farm? Well, I don’t know, son. We’ll just have to wait and see. We’ll just have to wait and see how she is in the morning. Awful hard to do anything with her when she makes up her mind, though.”

Ryerson sat thinking again about the little boy with no arms, wondering what Christmas would be like at his house, not wanting to think about it at all, only wanting his father to say something to assure him that, come what may, they would not miss Christmas dinner at the old homeplace out at Dobbs Station. Somehow he had come to feel that he himself was the little boy with no arms, forever to be locked out of life, shut up behind doors with latches for which no key could be found, forever crying with no one to hear and forever vowing to take revenge on the world by voting Republican if he ever got out.

"Don't worry, son. You run on to bed and I'll have a nice little chat with your mama and try to get a spoonful of that new medicine with her. A couple of those pills. Whatever it is she's supposed to be taking. Who knows? Maybe she'll be her old self in the morning."