Now, one of the reasons Lowcandle was small was that a lot of strong, strapping sons had marched off to war from its houses and the farms all around. Twice. Not all that many of them had come back, and some of those that did were missing arms or legs or eyes, and had to do something else besides farming. Like old Bert Hamilton, who was missing his left foot and walked with a wooden crutch. He’d sold insurance, but by the time I was old enough to know his name, he was retired, and all that was left of his business was the fading sign over the side door of the old inn downtown that had been his office, that was too high up for him to take down. It sported a pretty good painting of his crutch, and above it his business motto: “You never know when you’ll need a leg up!”
The little cabin down on Creek Lane was Bert’s house, where he lived alone and spent his nights. His days were spent wheezing his way down to the Legion, sitting there until late with his fellow vets playing cards and checkers and smoking up a storm—they let you smoke indoors, in those days—and then wheezing his way home again. Aside from the old guys at the Legion, I thought for a long time that I was the only one in the village who knew how Bert whiled away his nights and Sundays, when the Legion was closed.
When he wasn’t eating or snoring, he was sitting with a set of sharp knives, whittling toys out of wood. Toys like tops and blocks and dolls and cars and airplanes. Little pigs and bigger locomotives—in fact, just about everything except tanks and soldiers.
Bert Hamilton made toys. Hundreds of toys. Every year. Until he took some time off, early in December, to drag together that year’s big woodpile on his front lawn.
Early, early every Christmas morning he’d light it, and the kids would
come running. From all over the village, from farms clear down the far end of the valley, kids hurried to Creek Lane, even a few who were a little older than Bert had been when he’d gone marching off to war, who ended up standing there looking a little sheepish.
And Bert would give them all a big dip from his cauldron of sweet, hot cider—everyone sipped from the same dirty old ladle, no throwaway cups in those days—and wave them to the table in his front room, and tell them to pick a toy from what Santa had left.
Oh, yes. Bert never told anyone he made any toys, and neither did any of the grownups in the valley. If I hadn’t been out sneaking around one night looking for robbers, and seen a sliver of Bert’s room with the lamp over the workbench, when he stepped outside to tap out his pipe, I wouldn’t have known either. It was always Santa who brought those toys.
Santa always came to Bert Hamilton, some of the dads said, because he was right on the edge of the village where the reindeer had space to land, and lit the bonfire to guide them down—and because he slept so soundly he never woke up and saw Santa. And because Santa liked hot cider.
This went on for years, until I was getting a bit old to take a toy from the bench. I still liked watching the kids squeal and laugh and run around the village waving their toys every year, though, and I used to go outside and stand where I could watch the smoke from the bonfire rise up into the cold, clear sky, and smell it. That smoke meant Christmas was here, for sure.
That all went on for a few more years, with old Bert not getting any younger, until the year came when he took sick, not long after Christmas, right in the icy heart of the worst of winter, and stopped trudging down to the Legion.
Old Agatha Jenkins—who never missed a chance to poke her nose inside a house where she’d ordinarily not be welcome—went to check on him, and came back and told Bertha Finkbeiner next door that he was “very poorly, very poorly indeed.” That set the women of Lowcandle to trundling down to the end of the village in regular shifts, to check on old Bert and “take him a little something,” usually in the soup line.
Bert Hamilton hated soup, but he must have been really sick, because he thanked them for it and accepted the spoonfuls of it and never shooed any of them away. They soon started saying he never got out of bed, and “wasn’t long for this world.” Then they started right in planning his funeral—who would do the flowers and who would sing a solo and all of that; the sort of talk that made the men of Lowcandle look disgusted and go out to do some chore or other they’d just thought of, and gather outside muttering things like, “How’s about we lay in some wood for old Bert, to see him through the winter? The women have planned him right into his grave already!”
And so they had. Agatha and Bertha were deep in the world of floral arrangements and who would try to contact Bert Hamilton’s cousin, who was said by some to have moved to Montreal, though others insisted she’d “gone out west,” maybe as far as Sarnia. Their curiosity over what the inside of Bert’s little cabin looked like long since satisfied—“Squalor is squalor,” was all Agatha would say, or rather sniff—they had long since delegated Bert’s daily visits to younger women farther down the pecking order among the church ladies. One of those women was Janice Walker, and as her youngest, Alec, was at home with her—we had no kindergarten in those days, nor school buses, either; back then, for some strange reason, school boards were supposed to be all about what was taught, not operating transportation companies and giving our kids lengthy free tours of most of the backroads of Ontario twice a day—she took him with her when she went to visit old Bert.
And Alec, too young to know any better, too young to know when an old man was dying, asked Bert what would happen at Christmas, if he didn’t light the fire. His mother shushed him, but the words were out.
And Bert Hamilton smiled from his bed and told Alec firmly, “Santa brings the toys. Santa will come, whether I’m here or not. Just you wait and see.”
Well, they did get old Bert into his grave, not much more than a week after that—they never did find the cousin, but everyone agreed Agatha’s flowers were magnificent and Bertha’s niece did a good job on “Abide With Me”—but Alec told his friends what Bert had said, and . . . well, news has a way of spreading in Lowcandle.
A lot of parents told their kids not to expect anything next Christmas but an empty cabin down by the bridge, with no bonfire, that the toys really came from Bert Hamilton and not Santa, but the kids knew better.
There were grownups who’d lie to you, and there were grownups who wouldn’t.
And old Bert had been pretty clear. “Santa brings the toys. Santa will come, whether I’m here or not. Just you wait and see.”
Those words got said defiantly back to a lot of moms and dads that year, usually with the addendum “old Ber—er, Mr. Hamilton said so.”
Now Tom Fenner, who owned the gas station, and Bob Ogletree, who owned the hardware store, had this same talk with their sons about not expecting toys, but their sons stood just as firm as they were, and insisted there would be a bonfire, and there would be toys.
So Mr. Fenner and Mr. Ogletree went and had a talk with Reverend Wilkins at the church, to see if perhaps if everyone got together and bought just one toy each, and the church elders built a bonfire, the children would get what they were hoping for—but the minister wasn’t having any of that. Christmas, he told them, was about God and celebrating the coming of Jesus, not presents.
Now, the only place in Lowcandle where you could buy a drink, then and now, was the Legion, and Mr. Fenner and Mr. Ogletree fetched up there a little later to have a beer and grumble a bit. Neither of them thought putting a toy into a young and eager hand was the Devil’s work, nor any sort of creeping, insidious evil. Reverend Wilkins seemed to like creeping, insidious evils; he saw them everywhere.
Now I went to the Legion not just because I could buy a beer, but because I could hear good stories there, and find out what was going on in the village just as quickly as if I’d been Agatha’s friend—which I wasn’t—or one of the church ladies, which I also wasn’t. And even though the only wars I’d fought in were conducted in the schoolyard at recess, I was welcome. So I was sitting there that night, just after Fenner and Ogletree had told all the vets what Reverend Wilkins had said to them—and I was still sitting there, a minute or two of old men shaking their heads and rumbling later, when Reverend Wilkins himself walked in.
Now, the minister didn’t visit the Legion to drink beer. Or anything stronger. He went to the Legion to chide the vets for not coming to church, and for spending their days sitting there drinking beer. No catching flies with honey for him.
But this time, before he could even get started, old Jimmy Longford swung his wheelchair away from the pool table and growled out, “What’s all this about no gifts for the little ones at Christmas, hey?”
Reverend Wilkins didn’t take it well.
“Christmas is not about a fat man in a red suit handing out presents!” he snapped. “It’s a holy time, when we celebrate the birth of our Lord Jesus!”
“To some,” one of the vets at the euchre table said.
“If it’s all about Jesus being born in a manger,” another piped up, “why can’t we all just head out to the barn and sing ‘Happy Birthday,’ then?”
“You mock when you should tremble!” the minister said, and sure enough, he was trembling. He was red-faced, too, so angry he was starting to stammer and spit as he glared around at all the vets and commenced to waggle his finger. “You should come to church, not hang about this—this old boys’ club!”
“Can’t smoke in church,” another of the old guys told him. “And it’s not a club. It’s our place, that we share with our friends who never made it back home, just like the church is your place. We don’t need fancy suits and a special building to pray.”
“I know,” the Reverend came back at him. “I’ve heard you. But yelling ‘Jesus Christ’ when you stub your toe or drop something or hit your thumb with a hammer doesn’t count, gentlemen. Your immortal souls are in peril.”
“Huh,” said one of the vets. “Well, when we went overseas to fight for King and Country, our mortal bodies were in peril—and I didn’t see Father, Son, nor Holy Ghost taking much interest in us then. No toys for the kiddos? Where’s your Christian charity, Reverend?”
“Charity is visiting those in need, seeing that widows have a roof over their heads and those who stray receive proper guidance,” the minister almost shouted. “It is not . . . ‘presents.’”
“Maybe not, but I sure wanted presents,” old Jimmy growled. “And it was presents that made my nephews smile. That, and chocolate cake. Not singing carols and listening to three kings following a star.”
“Well, perhaps your nephews weren’t raised to have the right values,” Reverend Wilkins told him back, as lofty and sneering as the worst school teachers on their bad days. Then he snapped “Good evening” as if he wanted them to have anything but, and turned and strode out.
Leaving the room full of old men wearing frowns and muttering things like, “There’re going to be a lot of long faces around this village come next Christmas.”
It was Tom Fenner who cleared his throat and said, “Uh, y’know, I used to help my dad carve decoys. Making a few toys can’t be that hard, if we get started right away.”
And it was Bob Ogletree who said, “I’m no good with my hands, but I can chip in lots of paint, and tools. Nails and screws, too.”
By then the vets were crowding around them both, looking interested—heck,
looking eager. Too eager, even, for anyone to rib Bob Ogletree one more time for running a hardware store but not being any good at working with his hands.
“Let’s do this,” one of them said, fierce-like.
“We’ll show him ‘Christian charity,’” another snorted.
Which was when Jimmy Longford whirled his wheelchair around to face me, and said, “Now listen, young Jack. This has got to be kept secret. One word out of you, and all Lowcandle will know, and the women will start on us, and—”
“And it’ll be all over,” Tom Fenner said mournfully. They were all nodding and muttering agreement.
“I swear,” I told them, just as firm as I could say it. “I want that bonfire, this Christmas and every Christmas!”
“Good. Settled,” said old Jimmy, turning back to the ring of men around Fenner and Ogletree. “So who can make what?”
“Dolls and wooden wagons,” another of the vets said. “Keep it simple and make a lot. If we get enough, we can make more little men and women and suchlike to put in them, so’s to make everything better. Charlie, we’re going to need your drill.”
“Take it. Run me back tonight in Frank’s truck, and bring the drill back here. We’ll work in the back, and put things in the furnace room to dry. No other place is safe from the women.”
“Heh. Start smoking your pipe again, Charlie, and we can keep them away from anywhere you walk!”
“The Lord helps those who help themselves . . .”
“So he does, so help yourselves to the tools you need, and let’s get going!”
And that was how Old Bert’s toymakers got started.
Well, the months passed, and the vets worked like beavers, and I did, too. At first the toys were pretty crude, with most of the old men being pretty rusty, and getting tired and shaky all too fast, but we all pitched in and learned from each other, and someone found some plans in some old magazines . . . and the production line started to pick up.
Simple carts and whittled horses at first, but then planes and cars and people to go in the carts and on the horses, with arms and legs that moved. Dolls, too, and little mazes for marbles . . . and old marbles to go through those mazes.
Until the night—it was late September by then—when old Jimmy said he reckoned we had four toys now for every kid he’d heard of in the valley, and we could slow down at bit.
“Good,” Charlie told him. “We’re none of us getting any younger. We’ll be needing a bonfire, out at Bert’s place—but don’t build it yet. Collect all the wood, somewhere secret, so we can get it out there late, late Christmas Eve.”
“I’ll do that,” I volunteered. “I can go out cutting and not have it be noticed the way it would if any of you guy—gentlemen did.”
“Good, good. Tell Frank when you’ve got a truckload, and take him to wherever it is, and we’ll haul it to the back of Henderson’s junkyard.”
So we did that.
The days seemed to go faster and faster that year, and Christmas came up at us like a puck in the face.
And Christmas morning, as if by magic, the smoke was rising from a bonfire on old Bert’s front lawn, up the little lane at the end of the village, and the children came running.
I saw them, and so did most of the vets. They’d broken into Bert’s place two nights earlier and had to fix the door, afterwards, and they didn’t intend to miss a minute of seeing those smiles. And someone had to make the cider.
Which was different than Bert’s, of course, but hot and sweet just the same. Nor did they miss those smiles, as the kids came, and then their parents, and most of the grownups in Lowcandle, from Tom Fenner and Bob Ogletree to Agatha Jenkins and Bertha Finkbeiner. They all stood around in Bert’s yard, watching the kids laugh and run and play, and staring at all the toys left on the bench, and then they stood around the bonfire and chattered, as grownups do.
When no one came to the Christmas Day service, Reverend Wilkins came looking for everyone.
Which brought him to old Bert’s place, where everyone was.
“Welcome!” Bob Ogletree called out to him, waving the cider ladle. “Cider, Reverend? Or a toy?”
Reverend Wilkins did not take that well.
He stood there, eyeing all the grownups standing around—they were watching and listening to him, now—and getting redder and redder.
Then he glared at Bob Ogletree and snapped, “You did this, didn’t you?”
Ogletree tried to look innocent, but it’s hard to do that when you’re struggling not to laugh. “Did what?”
The minister waved his hand around old Bert’s trampled yard. “All these toys!”
Mr. Ogletree shook his head, and took old Bert’s battered Bible out of his coat pocket and held it to his chest. “Oh, no!” he replied firmly. “Flat truth, Reverend: as God is my witness, I haven’t made a single toy. Not one.”
“Oh? So just where did they all come from, then?”
And Bob Ogletree smiled at him and said, “Have some faith, Reverend. Santa came, just like old Bert said he would. And he’ll come again next year. Just you wait and see.”