A Song for Christmas

by

Steve Carr

I was sixteen.

Ma’s upright piano stood against the wall in the dining room where it had been since Ma and Pa were married. It was Grandma’s piano, but she gave it to my Ma as a wedding present. It was made of mahogany and Ma polished it almost every day. I was sitting at it just plucking randomly on the black keys when Ma placed a bright red runner across the top of the piano and, a few minutes later, placed the crèche on the runner. She arranged the figures of Mary and Joseph around the baby Jesus lying in a manger.

“You’re late puttin’ that out this year, Ma,” I said.

“Each year there are more and more boxes of Christmas decorations to sort through,” she said.

I strummed several keys with an unmelodic result and heaved a loud sigh.   

“Have you decided yet which song you’re going to do for the Christmas service?” she asked.

I rapidly tapped the D flat key three times, producing a discordant sound. “Not yet, Ma,” I said.

This was going to be my first solo in front of the congregation of the Piney Creek Baptist Church, and on Christmas morning to boot, so I wanted it to be perfect, something everyone would remember. 

“Christmas is only two days away,” she said.

“I know, Ma,” I said. I closed the cover over the keys and got up from the stool. “Where’s Pa?”

“He’s out in the barn gettin’ the wagon ready for tonight’s hayride,” she said. “If you’re not going to practice your music, you should go help him.”

“Yes, Ma,” I said.

Sitting on the coffee table was the three-tiered candy dish Ma set out every Christmas. It looked fancy, like it was made of etched glass, but it was plastic. Pa had given it to Ma their first Christmas together as a married couple, back when, as Pa always liked to say, “They didn’t have two sticks to rub together to make a fire.” They still didn’t have much money, but me and my little sister, Kaylee, never went without. Starting on the twelfth day before Christmas, Ma loaded all three tiers of the candy dish with homemade chocolate fudge; sugar cookies topped with icing made from powdered sugar and colored with blue, green and red food dyes; and possibly every kind of nut known to mankind. I took a cookie from the top tier, stuck it between my teeth, and held it there while I put on my coat, hat, and gloves.

I bit into the cookie as I opened the door. The front yard was covered with a light dusting of snow. On the other side of the road, our corn fields looked bleak and barren, with broken, brown stalks sticking up here and there out of the frozen ground. I swallowed the piece of cookie and marveled at how the icing tasted like their color, although Ma never added flavoring to it. The red tasted like cherry, the green like mint, and the blue like berries.

I stepped out onto the porch and closed the door behind me. As I ate the rest of the cookie, I watched Canadian geese flying in a V-formation as they crossed the sky. Kaylee came around the side of the house and ran up the porch steps. She had our pet Manx cat, Stinky, in her arms. Stinky was the same age as Kaylee, ten. Kaylee had tied a large silver bow to Stinky’s collar. The cat was used to being decorated for the Christmas holidays. Kaylee had been doing it to her since both of them were four.

“Pa says I can go on the hayride tonight,” she said excitedly. “If Ma says it’s okay.”

She nuzzled Stinky’s light gray fur. “Do you know what song you’re going to sing?”

I brushed cookie crumbs from my coat front. “Not yet,” I said. “Why?”

“I like that song about the drummer boy,” she said. “Bum, bum, bumty, bum, bum,” she intoned. “That one.”

“Yeah, I know it,” I said. “I’ll think about it.” I started down the steps.

“Do you think Ma is going to say no?” she asked.

I looked over my shoulder at the worried, gloomy look on her face. “I’ll talk to her if she does.”

“You’re the best brother ever,” she shouted. She went into the house loudly humming the tune to “The Little Drummer Boy.”

I walked around the house and to the barn. The ground crunched beneath the soles of my sneakers.  The warmth inside the barn enveloped me as I walked in and closed the door. Pa was up in the loft and pitching hay into the wagon positioned beneath the loft. He was wearing his favorite blue flannel shirt, the one Ma had given him two Christmases before.

“I’m here to help,” I yelled up to him.

He dumped a pitchfork full of hay into the wagon. “Shouldn’t you be workin’ on your song?”

“I’ll do it tomorrow,” I said. “I just have to decide which song I’m going to do.”

“I’ve always been partial to ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas,’” he said as he leaned on the handle of the pitchfork.

“I can’t sing that in church,” I said.

“I guess not,” he said.

As Pa dropped hay into the wagon, I spread it out, building a comfortable bed. Pa did the hayride during Easter and Christmas for the teenagers in Piney Creek. Being a small town, there was usually no more than twenty teenagers who participated. Pa started doing it when I turned thirteen, and I suspected he enjoyed it more than I did.

#

Ann Chernay sat with me huddled under a quilt with cloth cut-outs of Christmas trees, candy canes and reindeer sewn onto the squares. She had her head on my shoulder and the coconut fragrance of her shampoo filled my senses. I was certain I was in love.

Between the clouds, bright stars glittered in the night sky. When the crescent moon appeared, its glow blanketed the fields in pale moonlight. The rhythmic clip-clop from the hooves of the horses was as relaxing as a lullaby. Pa had strung small, silver bells on the sides of the wagon. They tinkled gently as the wagon rocked and swayed.

We sang “Jingle Bells,” “Santa Claus is Coming to Town,” and “Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer.”

Kaylee sat on the seat next to Pa, snuggled against his side.

Ann didn’t attend Piney Creek Baptist Church. I don’t know how she found out I was going to sing a solo in church, but she asked, “Are you nervous about singing at your church on Christmas?”

“I can’t decide what song to sing,” I said.

“Do you know ‘Ave Maria?’” she asked.

“That’s not a Christmas song.” I sighed. “I’m beginnin’ to wish I had never told Reverend Smith I’d do a song at all.”

When Pa pulled the wagon into our driveway, everyone quickly jumped down and rushed into the warmth of our house. Ma had placed trays of sandwiches, cookies in the shape of Christmas wreaths with green butter cream frosting, and chewy Rice Krispy Treats on the dining room table. The entire house smelled like hot apple cider Ma served to everyone in red plastic cups

When her parents arrived to take her home, Ann kissed me on the cheek before she went out the door. “I’ll be at your church Christmas morning just to hear what song you select.”

“Oh, great,” I said. My stomach quickly tied itself into a knot.

#

The morning before Christmas day, Ma and Pa cleared the place in front of the living room window where the Christmas tree would go. Ma placed a white sheet on the floor and scattered silver glitter on it. Pa placed the tree stand in the center of the sheet and Ma bunched it up around the edges to give it the likeness of miniature snow drifts. Boxes of tree ornaments were stacked against the wall.

“You comin’ with me to get the tree or are you practicin’ your song?” Pa asked me.

I glanced at the piano and was overcome with a sense of dread. “I’ll go with you,” I answered.

I was happy Ma didn’t insist that I practice my song, or any song for that matter.

Pa and I put on our boots, coats, hats, and gloves and went out the back door. The ice crystals on the frozen ground shimmered in the dull morning sunlight that was filtered through thin, wispy clouds. Inside the barn, Pa hitched our mare, Gertie, to the sleigh. Before leaving the barn, Pa handed me the axe. He led Gertie down the driveway and into the woods while I walked alongside him. The runners of the sled glided easily over the icy ground. The air was heavily scented with pine.

“Your Ma says you’re still strugglin’ with findin’ the right song to sing,” he said.

I grunted. “Nothin’ I think of is what I want to sing.”

“Nothin’ will gum up the works worse than over-thinkin’ somethin’,” he said. “Sing whatever you think the baby Jesus would want to hear. It’s his birthday, after all.”

We didn’t go very far into the woods before we found the right tree.

“It looks like it grew specially to stand in our living room,” Pa said.

For the second year in a row, I cut down our Christmas tree. We tied it on the sled and Gertie pulled it back to the barn.

#

For Christmas Eve, Ma fixed a ham topped with pineapple rings for dinner. Ma always said the Christmas Eve dinner was “light,” which it never was. Along with the ham, it included mashed sweet potatoes topped with miniature marshmallows, steamed asparagus, homemade applesauce, yeast rolls, and for dessert a Yule log smothered with chocolate icing. She covered the table with the white lace tablecloth that my grandmother passed on to her and set candles in silver candlesticks on each end of the table. Before dinner began, I played “O Holy Night” on the piano while my family stood around me and we sang it.

Ma timed it so that we began decorating the tree at the same time the movie White Christmas started on the television. Pa strung the lights on the tree, and then Kaylee and Ma hung the strands of popcorn and cranberries. We all hung the ornaments while Stinky lurked about under the tree and swatted at the hanging bulbs. Kaylee had attached a large green bow to the cat’s collar. Pa put the antique golden angel on the top of the tree. It had a small key on the back, that when turned the tune to the song “Angels We Have Heard on High” played.  He turned the tree lights on just as Bing Crosby sang “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas.”

Like every Christmas Eve, Ma and Pa brought out one gift for my sister and me. Kaylee tore apart the shiny blue paper wrapped around a large box Pa had placed on her lap. When she opened the box, she screamed with delight. She pulled out a large stuffed gorilla, the one she had seen in the window of Tiswell’s Department Store. As she hugged it, I said, “I thought you said you were getting too old for dolls.”

“This isn’t a doll,” she replied curtly.

Stinky hopped up onto the sofa, sniffed the gorilla, meowed softly, and then laid down against Kaylee’s leg.

For several minutes, I stared at the flat package wrapped in red tissue paper Ma had set on my knees before I opened it. It was a framed photograph of Grandma sitting at the piano. She was the first person to tell me I had musical talent.  The smile on her face in the photograph was inscrutable. There was an envelope attached to the back. The words “For Music School” were written on it. Inside there was a hundred-dollar bill.

Before we went to bed, we went out on the porch and watched as large snowflakes began to fall.

#

I awoke Christmas morning not thinking about the presents under the tree, or the aroma wafting from the kitchen of Dutch baby pancakes, something Ma only made on Christmas mornings. Tunes of Christmas songs cluttered my brain. Most of the night my dreams had been filled with panicky scenarios where my voice was gone or I forgot how to play the piano. I climbed out of bed with a headache. I dressed in my best pants, put on the tie Pa had given me for my birthday, and joined the rest of my family in the kitchen. Ma had placed a large Dutch baby heavily sprinkled with powdered sugar on my plate. I sat down at the table, avoiding looking at anyone, although I could feel their eyes on me.

“Merry Christmas,” Ma said as she kissed me on the forehead. She put a glass of orange juice by my plate.

“Merry Christmas, Ma,” I said, staring at the puffed-up pancake in front of me.

Peripherally, I could see Kaylee stuffing large forkfuls of her Dutch baby into her mouth, hoping to speed breakfast along in order to get to the business of tearing open the gifts.

“Don’t let this singin’ at the church ruin Christmas for you,” Pa said to me after several minutes of silence from everyone.

It had been a long time since I had done it, but right there, while staring at my Dutch baby, I began to sob. It surprised my family as much as it surprised me. They affectionately huddled around me as if I had just told them I was dying from a terminal illness.

“Let’s go open the gifts,” Pa said. “That’ll make you feel a little better.”

“Yay!” Kaylee exclaimed as she ran from the kitchen.

In the living room, gifts had been placed under the tree during the night by Ma and Pa. Kaylee passed them out, and as we opened them, for that little while, I forgot all about singing at the church service.

Afterward, leaving wrapping, ribbons, bows, and our gifts, strewn about the room, we put on our boots, coats, hats and gloves, and left the house. There was about a foot of soft snow on the ground and our boots sunk in it as we walked to the car. I helped Pa clear the snow from the windows and then got in the back seat with Kaylee.

“Here we go,” Pa said as he started the car.

Kaylee grabbed my hand and held it all the way to the church.

#

The pews were full as they always were for the Christmas service, but we found a pew near the front of the church. Reverend Smith’s pulpit was wrapped in gold foil with a large red bow in the front.

Reverend Smith was a tall, lanky man, who moved very slowly despite not being very old. As he crossed the podium, he glanced at me and smiled warmly. Once behind the pulpit, he gazed out at the congregation. “This morning, instead of starting the service with a prayer, we’re going to begin it with a gift to our Lord and Savior. Most of you know has a song prepared for the occasion of the miracle of the Christ Child’s birth.” He nodded to me and then gestured for me to come up onto the podium.

My mouth was dry and the palms of my hands were sweaty. I could hear the thumping of my heart.

“Sing what your heart tells you to sing,” Pa whispered to me as I stood up.

I passed by the piano and walked up to the podium. I looked at the expectant expressions on Ma and Kaylee’s faces. And then I looked at Pa who winked at me. I heard his voice echoing in my head, “It’s his birthday, after all.”

I opened my mouth, and sang.

“Happy Birthday to you,

“Happy Birthday to you,

“Happy Birthday, dear Jesus,

“Happy Birthday to you.”

The End

Craps

Steve Carr

Lester was dangling a nylon rope that was tied like a hangman’s noose.

Leon’s teeth chattered. He could barely get his words out. “Whaddya goin’ to do with that?”

Lester had his eyes locked on Leon’s. “You know what I’m goin’ to do,” he said, softly, as if whispering sweet-nothings. The voice and the pronounced veins in his forehead and the way his nostrils flared didn’t match. He continued swinging the noose.

“I said I’d give it back. All of it,” Leon said, his voice as high pitched and tight as a plucked violin string.

“It’s not the money. You cheated. Your dice were loaded.”

“I made a mistake. I’ll never play again.” He pointed north, as if he could see beyond the room. “I’ll leave town and never come back.”

“Once a cheater, always a cheater,” Lester intoned. “There’s no room for cheaters in craps.” He finished the last knot and then held up the noose. He dangled it from his hand, swinging it slightly.

“You have any last words?”

“Please don’t do this,” Leon screamed.

#

Sitting at the back of the large room, visible through a narrow aisle crowded on both sides with crates and boxes, sat Marge Turnbull. The bare, dim lightbulb that dangled on an exposed wire from the ceiling to about a foot above her head cast her fleshy face half in shadow, hiding her eyes in darkness. She was fifty-four but in the lighting, looked over a hundred, easy. She was sitting at a table she used as a desk. Her hands were resting on it, clasped tightly.

He knew she was watching him, like a hawk watches its prey. She watched everyone that way.

He closed the door, returning the room to its usual darkness, except for that lightbulb, which was always on whether Marge was sitting there or not.

“The job is done?” Her baritone voice was raspy. A heavy smoker’s voice, masculine.

“Yeah, it’s done,” Lester replied. “He pissed himself.”

“He know why he had to die?”

“He knew.”

She let out a loud fart and waved away the smell. “We gotta get back to my games being clean and aboveboard and weed out the cheaters. “You know who to see next?”

“Not exactly.”

“See if you can find Pat Luzi. That weasel gets around.” She opened a tin box and took out a wad of hundred-dollar bills and summoned him with a wave of the hand to come get it. “This should cover your expenses.”

It was then he noticed a teenager, ragged and unkempt, obviously fresh off the streets, standing in the shadows among stacks of boxes watching him and Marge.

Lester took the cash and walked out of the room without looking back to see if she was watching him, because, of course, she was.

#

In the Capitol Hill area of Seattle, Lester had an early dinner at the upscale Italian restaurant Altura. He left on top of a linen napkin a $100 tip. The napkin was twisted into a cord, not that it meant anything, but it had become a habit. He did the same thing at every restaurant. He walked down Broadway, stopping in front of the only vacant shop on the street, and looked around before surreptitiously slipping down the narrow walkway between it and the building next to it. The heat of the day had warmed the tight space between the buildings, perfuming the air with the scent of bricks. Around the back of the shop, the crapshoot was already in progress. Six players were assembled in a semi-circle around the shooter. Bills – mostly tens and twenties – were being laid down as fast as the dice were being rolled. The shooter was having a run of luck.

Lester recognized only one of the men, Pat Luzi, a small-time thief, mostly purse snatching and dime store burglaries. Pat was skinny to the point of looking emaciated, and tall, as if his body had been shaped in a noodle-making machine. The bright pink scar that ran down his left cheek was put there courtesy of Lester. That was back in the days when Lester was a master with the switchblade, before he took up the noose which he found to be cleaner, less bloody; he also liked watching how, with the noose, his victims squirmed. Pat had made a crack about Marge that didn’t sit well with Lester. Say what you will about him, but be careful what you say about Marge. It was the last time Pat made a crack of any kind about Marge. He was lucky that Lester hadn’t killed him.

Lester could feel the dice in their royal purple felt case inside his back pocket wanting to get out and join the game, and he was salivating to get in on the action.  But the crapshoot would have to wait. He tapped Pat on the shoulder, leaned forward and whispered in his ear, “Marge says you know who’s been using loaded dice at her high stakes crapshoots.”

When Lester breathed on you, it wasn’t just warm air that came out of his mouth; it was hot, like having a lit match applied to your skin. Pat stood bolt upright, and, without looking at Lester and still watching the dice being rolled, said, “I didn’t know anyone was cheating.”

“Marge is losing money, and as you know, Marge doesn’t like to lose money.”

Pat gulped audibly. “ I don’t know nothing, I swear.”

Lester patted him on the back. In any other circumstances, it would have been seen as a friendly gesture. Lester wasn’t the back-patting friendly type.

Pat’s knees buckled slightly. “I know nothing first-hand, just rumors, you know, street chatter.”

“Tell me about the chatter.”

The two of them stepped back from the others. Pat told Lester everything he had heard. Lester gave him a hundred dollar bill—“for your trouble”—and made his way back out to the street.  It was growing dark. In the back, the boys would soon be rolling the dice by flashlight until the middle of the night.

#

“A cheater at dice, a cheater at everything else,” Marge once told him. Her husband had just deserted her for his girlfriend and headed East. Marge found in his sock drawer a box of loaded dice, some of the spots on them changed in such an obvious way that she wondered how he had gotten away with it. For the next ten years, Marge played the craps, cleanly, not even a hint of cheating, and amassed a lot of money. She was good. Lucky. When she found Lester trying to hustle tourists out of a few dollars and looking as wild as a feral cat, she took him under her wing and taught him everything she knew about rolling the dice. He was sixteen at the time. She was forty. There was nothing sordid or sexual about their relationship. They regarded each other the same as a patron of the arts regards a protege.

The salted taffy and pecan bon bon export company that she ran from Pike’s Place Market was just a front for her crapshoot activities that involved some of the wealthiest dice players in Seattle and men and women who came to Seattle from all over the world just to play in one of her games.

Lester was her chief lieutenant. There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do if she asked him. She paid him handsomely and had taught him everything she knew about shooting craps. If he ever set out on his own, she had prepared him for it. He was better at rolling the dice than anyone knew, including her. He played craps all over Seattle but managed to keep his skill with the dice a secret.

Connie Mateo was one of those people who embodied what Marge thought about cheaters and cheating. She had money to burn and played in one of Marge’s games on those occasions when a man she was interested in was also going to be there. Her husband was too busy running an international tech software company out of Vancouver to worry about what his wife was up to.

Lester had called her earlier to arrange to meet her at her mansion in the Medina suburb, the wealthiest part of Seattle. He didn’t need to tell her why he wanted to see her. She made her own assumptions about the reason.

She opened the door, dressed in an expensive flesh colored negligee. It was tight, revealing and practically see-through. It was hard to tell where the negligee left off and her skin took over. “I gave the staff the evening off,” she cooed. “The place is all ours.”

“That’s good,” he replied. “I don’t think we want word getting around that I paid you a visit.”

“I’ve had my eye on you for some time,” she said. “I was wondering when you’d come to see me.”

He walked in, closed the door, and after a moment of  being stunned by the garish lavishness of the foyer and winding glass steps leading to the second floor, he adjusted the gloves he was wearing and said, “Word has it you’re not always on the up and up with the dice you been rolling.”

She looked stunned. “That’s a lie. I know better than try to cheat in one of Marge’s games.”

“Do you? I have a reliable source that says otherwise.”

“Hey, what’s this all about? I thought you came here so that we could become better acquainted.”

“We’re getting acquainted,” he replied. He had a thin nylon cord noose tied around his waist, the loop hidden in the back. He deftly took it off and held it up, the loop dangling at the end of the rope. “You know what this is?”

She knew exactly what it was and what it meant. “Okay, you’re right. I have used loaded dice on a couple of occasions. Just for kicks. I can give the money back to Marge. There’s no reason to threaten me.”

“This isn’t a threat. It’s a death sentence.”

 She screamed, turned and ran up the steps. He wasn’t going to give her a chance to get her cellphone, and took off after her. He caught up with her at the top of the stairs, lassoing her with the noose. He tightened the noose as he pulled her close.

“Please don’t do this,” she begged. “I’m sorry. Please stop and tell Marge it won’t happen again. I don’t know why I did it.”

“Some people just can’t help themselves.”

Strangling her was easy. She struggled and clawed at him at first, but with her windpipe cut off, she dropped to her knees and remained there until she died. He removed the noose and threw her body over the railing. It landed with a soft thud on the marble floor.

#

His name was Cooper. Marge had saved him from being arrested for vagrancy, giving the cop about to arrest him a bribe to hand the teenager over to her. “You ever shoot craps?” was the first thing she asked him.

“No.”

“I’ll teach you how,” she said. “You do everything I ask and you can lead a very comfortable life.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

He had watched when Lester arrived the first time, curious about the guy who Marge said would teach him everything he needed to know about shooting craps in Seattle.

Lester entered Marge’s “office” in Pike’s Place Market to report to her that another cheater had been eliminated. She introduced him to Cooper who was casually sitting on the end of her desk.

“I found Cooper on the streets just like I found you,” she said. “Show him the ropes.”

“What’s he going to be doing?” Lester asked.

“Eventually the same thing as you.”

Cooper followed Lester out of the market and stood back while Lester hailed a taxi.

“Where we going?” Cooper asked as they got in the back seat.

“Alki Beach,” Lester told the driver.

They rode in silence all the way there. Lester led Cooper to one of the trails.

“We haven’t done it yet, but you must know. Does she like her sex kinky?” Cooper asked, trailing behind Lester.

Lester had already made up his mind what was going to happen to this punk, this nobody, this kid who Marge threw in his face and had now insulted her. He knew cheaters and cheating and this had all the earmarks of that. He removed the cord from around his waist, turned, and in a matter of moments he had the noose around the kid’s neck. “Marge is too good for the likes of you,” he said to Cooper as the teen’s eyes bulged out, his face turned bright red, and then he stopped breathing.

Two hikers told police everything they had witnessed.

#

A year later, as Lester was led to the gallows, escorted by two guards, each holding on to one of Lester’s arms, he couldn’t help but smile at the conversation they were having.

“We’ll use my dice,” one guard said. “I don’t trust you.”

“I don’t cheat when it comes to rolling the dice,” the other one replied.

“What you guys rolling for?” Lester asked.

“High roller gets the stuff you leave behind. It’s crazy what people will pay just for a smelly pair of your underwear.”

“Since Washington is one of the last states that allows hanging, your things will bring in higher prices,” the other guard interjected.

In the courtyard where the gallows had been erected, the guards marched Lester up the gallows stairs, stood him on the trap door, and lowered the noose. Lester refused to have his head covered, preferring to see the noose slide down past his eyes to his neck. One of the guards rolled the dice; Lester watched them intently as they tumbled near his feet.  They came to rest a second before the trapdoor opened.

Snake eyes.