Six Christmas Stories
By C.K. Edwards
Published by C.K. Edwards at Smashwords
Copyright 2011 C.K. Edwards
(Cover art by Tasha and Vladimir Chopine)
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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Five years ago my wife suggested I write a Christmas story to share with neighbors. Come mid-December, when every copy had been handed out, no mob with torches and pitchforks in hand had even stepped foot in our front yard. I took that as a good sign. I've been writing one Christmas story a year since then. I hope you enjoy.
Merry Christmas
A Thing My Mother Taught Me
Mom could make a drizzle dry. That’s what dad said. He was good at saying things nobody understood until he explained them.
Drizzle - dry. See, rainy days make people sad, and nobody ever felt sad when mom was around, so she made rain go away. Simple, right? Only, I liked rainy days, so when I was young it always confused me when dad said that.
Especially on that day in December when I met Santa Claus.
Well, met might be an overstatement, but I did see Santa when I was stealing toys out of his workshop.
Sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself.
Where I come from, there was never any rain in December to describe as a drizzle, only snow. Blankets of snow. We’d had two storms the week before. Great storms, but the snow-blankets they had provided were now poked through with footprints, driven over and made muddy in the streets, and generally ruined for any use a boy might make of them.
But I had gone to sleep the night before knowing the weatherman predicted another storm, a fresh coating of snow that would renew what Time and use had destroyed.
Mom shook me awake that morning, and the first words from her mouth were a confirmation of what the weatherman foretold.
“It snowed, Scotty.”
This news meant mom only had to come back into the room one more time before I climbed out of bed. It was just past sunrise and still cold in the house. Dad always set the thermostat low at night and seldom remembered to turn it up until after breakfast. I didn’t dare touch the thermostat myself. Dad said he had annexed the thermostat into the small kingdom mom allowed him to rule. That's another thing dad often said that I didn’t understand back then.
But I knew it was serious. Dad was a man who liked to talk about the price of natural gas, though how that related to the thermostat I didn’t know. He also grumbled about open doors and heating the neighborhood, which seemed like a nice thing to me, but not to him. I couldn’t even make jokes about gas and the natural places it came from, couldn’t say anything funny when it came to the thermostat.
DON’T TOUCH! That maxim I did not question.
So it was cold in my bedroom that morning, and I knew this wouldn’t change soon. I hurried and dressed so I could be in the kitchen where I knew some semblance of warmth existed.
Mom insisted on her family eating a hot breakfast each morning. Truth told, if I were telling some kind of fairy tale, mom’s cooking would have been good enough to name a syrup after, but Aunt Jemimah was safe. Mom had never seen a bowl of porridge she couldn’t put a lump in. She’d never flipped a pancake that wasn’t darker brown than a chocolate nickel, never served eggs that weren’t runny enough to suck through a straw. I see this as a testament to how wonderful mom was because I always loved breakfast. There was a freshness to the morning when mom slung hash - magic.
I sprinted to my chair at the table and was greeted by Mom’s “Hey, Bed-head,” and Dad’s raised paper. Mom had timed the meal perfectly. Standing by the stove, she lifted a pan of eggs just as my butt hit the chair. She smiled like she always did as she spooned first the yellow curds to Dad and then a portion to me, which I promptly murdered with ketchup. Mom gently flicked Dad’s paper, reminding him to put it down, and then we all dug in. The pot of cracked wheat cereal was already in the center of the table.
Mom led the discussion, just like she always did. She and I reveled in the topic of school and its delicious absence that week. She got Dad to describe the latest building he was designing, and almost on the second I would have predicted, she reminded me to learn well the math I studied. We spoke of summer plans - a fishing trip on the Green River - and Dad made his mention of gas prices. We did not, however, make any mention of the “C” word, even though it was now only a day away.
And by “C” word I do mean December 25th for you uninitiated.
December 25th was a day of such portent in our house that it was blasphemy to utter its rightful name on any other day of the year. Yes, you heard me right. We only ever said the word on its rightful day. Mom enforced that like Dad enforced the thermostat.
Don’t think her daft. My mom wasn’t descended from Scrooge. Our house was decorated. The lights were up. Music did play in the background. We allowed friends and extended family to do as they liked, but for us, the name of the 25th was like a balloon that only popped once a year.
Many, most, if not everyone we knew wondered how we could do such a thing. None of them had any idea how delicious it was to wake up one morning each year and hear the greeting from your mother that was forbidden every other.
“Merry Such-and-Such!”
This simple moment made each instant of denial not only a worthy sacrifice, but a pittance to be forgotten. On December 26th of every year, I wondered how anyone could think such a word-fast was hard.
I didn’t doubt the existence of magic. I was eleven years old and I had never doubted that Santa Claus lived up north. I knew in my heart that one day every year he delivered presents to the good boys and girls who believed in him. I had never doubted any of that because mom had proved the existence of magic in so many ways.
When breakfast was over, Dad began wandering around the kitchen trying to collect the things he needed for work. This was almost always a pointless task because he ended up asking mom where half the things he needed were.
I took my plate to the sink, pretended to scrape it clean, and then I dashed to the laundry room to outfit myself. This season I had a new pair of galoshes, last year’s coat, and out in the garage the fastest wooden sled on the block. We lived across the street from the high school so there was a huge field to play in. It was early, so if I hurried, I could be the first to make fresh tracks across it.
By the time I was nearly done, Dad had given up, asked Mom for help, and now had everything in hand. Mom kissed him, he said she could make a drizzle dry, and then her attention was on me. That always meant another layer of clothing, which if a boy wasn’t careful, meant one layer too many. This could be a dangerous inconvenience, especially in a snowball fight where a bulky extra layer could be the difference between a bull’s eye and a near miss. One layer couldn’t provide much extra padding, but it could hinder your throwing arm. So I always underdressed in anticipation. It usually worked.
Mom grabbed a long-sleeved shirt from the dryer and had me remove my coat to put it on.
“Billy going to meet you outside?”
Billy Bronson was my best friend and lived two doors down.
“Yeah.”
She raised an eyebrow. “It’s pretty early. You might be alone out there for a while.”
I shrugged. “That’s okay. I’ll just build up our fort.”
Billy and I had built a snow fort in the schoolyard the week before. We’d spent three days on it, shoveling snow in buckets and then dumping them in piles to shape one huge edifice. Now the fort was taller than any of us, and probably the best fort any two boys had ever built. In the last week, the sun had barely touched it. The fort had actual walls, a place inside big enough for three boys to find protection from incoming snowballs, and the crowning touch, on one corner, a tower with enough of a depression at the top for one boy to hide and rain down terror upon approaching enemies.
When I had my coat back on, Mom inspected me one more time then she jammed a hat on my head. She looked into my eyes and light seemed to dance in her own.
“You’ve been a good boy this year, Scott.”
I smiled, because this was a game we had played since I was little. “But it only takes one bad day.”
She nodded, feigning seriousness. “One bad day, and should an elf notice . . .” She left the rest unsaid.
“I’ll be good, Mom.”
“Make sure you do that.”
She opened the door, and I beat Dad outside.
The air was delectably cold that morning. It burned in my throat and made my nose tickle. Dad opened up the garage, but I decided against grabbing my sled. There was a good seven inches of new snow on the ground.
Looking up and down the street, I was glad Dad always took the approach of seeing what the sun would do in a day, and then in the evening shovel the rest off the driveway. I wouldn’t have to worry about that chore for some time.
I shuffled my feet through the snow all the way down the driveway and into the street. The snowplows hadn’t made it to our neighborhood yet. It was a wasteland of snow. I broke into a run, and when I came to the fort, I had already built up in my mind plans for a structure as big as the school. Mom always said there was no time like the present to realize a vision, so I grabbed a half-buried bucket next to the fort and filled it with snow. We’d carved steps up the walls on the inside, so I used these to get high enough to dump the bucket of snow, then I repeated this a number of times before I noticed my friend, Billy, approaching. Billy had dark brown hair cut in a buzz. His front teeth were so far spaced apart that he whistled when he breathed hard. I could tell he had not been smart in the pre-dressing department today. His mother’s mandatory one-more-layer-rule had put him over the edge. He moved like the “Lost in Space” robot and I half expected him to start shouting, “Danger, Will Robinson!”
I laughed, though he clearly did not see the humor. I handed him my bucket and he seemed to forget his discomfort the next moment. We spent some time looking at our fort and pointing out weak points that needed work. I doubt if my dad had ever looked at a building with as much scrutiny as we did. At last we decided on an order and emphasis for our efforts that day and we began to work. Through the morning other boys from the neighborhood joined us and we cleared a circle of snow around the fort like villagers clearing trees around their town.
We broke apart numerous times that morning for snowball fights, wrestling, and lesser activities like making snow angels. The energy of the day before the big day was apparent in all of us, and that word forbidden to me was on the mouths of all my friends.
At noon we left the field when mothers poked their heads out of doors up and down the street and called our names. Billy came to my house and we ate a quick lunch of Campbell’s tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. Mom couldn’t ruin tomato soup, and the sandwiches were passable. We were the first back on the field. It had been such a great day to this point, and even though I was tired from building snow walls, that is all I wanted to do. Two other boys returned from lunch, Johnny Farmer, a short chubby kid who had moved into the neighborhood a couple of months ago, and Alan Batey, my second-best friend and a polar opposite to Johnny. Where Johnny was low to the ground and wide, Alan was the tallest kid in our grade and skinny like a stalk of corn.
We got inside the fort and then climbed up the walls to survey the high school field that we were scouring of snow. Johnny Farmer bragged that his older brother played football for the school and had probably tackled someone on the very spot we were on. Like we didn’t know his brother played football. Johnny had told us this a hundred times.
About then I noticed Alan dig his hand into the section of the wall he sat on and make a snowball. He was looking at the opposite side of the field and frowning. I followed his gaze.
Someone was coming, and it didn’t take me long to recognize Kyle Federson. My stomach sank inside of me before I remembered that I was with three other friends, including Alan, who wasn’t afraid of anyone in our grade.
Kyle Federson wasn’t exactly a bully. He wasn’t big enough to be a bully, but he was mean, and he came from a part of town that all the mothers in our neighborhood warned us to keep away from. His house was close to the train tracks, and his dad was seldom home because he worked for the railroad and spent his free time in the bars. I had never seen Kyle’s mom, but everyone knew her voice. When she screamed at her kids, you could hear it across town. Kyle was always dirty, and he either peed the bed or slept with a brother who did, because he never smelled good. I would have felt sorry for him, and in fact, had tried to be nice to him a number of times, but like I said, he was mean. Just a week ago, on the last day of school, he had teased me in front of Cathy Anderson about still believing in Santa Claus.
By the time Kyle reached the fort, we were all looking at him from our vantage points atop the fort walls. Kyle didn’t have a friend on the field, and I could tell that he knew that. He usually walked with bravado, but he approached our fort with short steps. We had the numbers, and when Billy spoke, I could tell he was mad at Kyle. Billy knew Kyle had teased me in front of a girl. Billy said I was crying when I walked home that day, but I wasn’t, really. I just had something in my eye.
“What do you want, Kyle?”
From those very first words I had a feeling we would regret where this went. It wasn’t because of what Billy said, but because of the look in Kyle’s eyes that first moment after Billy spoke. There had been a cautious excitement in Kyle’s eyes, a wonder, perhaps over our fort, perhaps over the approaching day. I saw this in the very moment after Billy spoke, and I watched the feeling flee from Kyle’s eyes like a frightened animal.
Johhny Farmer spoke next. I knew for a fact he had been the recipient of everything but a warm welcome to the neighborhood from Kyle. “We used white snow for this fort, Federson. Yellow snow’s on the other side of the field.”
Billy and Alan laughed, and I started to laugh, though my smile froze in the already cold wind. I saw the hurt enter Kyle’s eyes. It was an unexpected thing, to me, and to him as well it appeared. That was the first time I ever remember being a bully, the first time I participated in something that brought intentional harm to another.
Kyle turned away from all of us without saying a word.
He walked away, and I was sure that by the second step tears were silently spilling down his face. Billy and Alan stopped laughing, and none of us said anything for a while. We just watched Kyle walk away. I wish to this day that one of us had called him back. I was only eleven then, but I knew an opportunity had been presented and a door was now shutting. When Kyle disappeared down the hill on the other side of the field, the door snapped shut.
We stayed silent, and I wonder if the same thoughts in my head were being shared by my friends. Finally, Alan, who had been straddling the wall, slung his outside leg over and prepared to jump down. “I’m gonna go home.”
That is what I had been thinking.
Alan jumped down, and the sound he made when he landed inside the fort was so unexpected that we all looked down at him like he had sprouted a tail. Instead of the soft sound of displaced slush and snow, Alan landed on what was clearly something wooden and hollow, like a door.
We forgot all about what had just happened and jumped down with our friend to investigate. It only took us a few minutes clearing snow to find that, in fact, it was a door. It was set inside a frame, had hinges, and seemed to open into the ground. In three seconds I imagined a dozen places where the door might open to. China was the easy one, and the first, but Narnia or the sands of Mars were close behind. The door was small, about half the size of any door in my house. It was stained a rich, dark brown and the grain of the wood swirled in fascinating ways that seemed almost to move of their own accord. Only when I concentrated on one spot did I realize that the grains were not moving. There was an elaborate gold knocker in the center of the door, and an old fashioned latch on the side that held the door closed.
When the last of the snow was cleared and the door fully exposed, none of us could move, I think for fear that we would blink and the magic of the door would melt away. The door's existence was clearly impossible, and yet there it was before us in the snow. We had all read stories about strange passages to unknown lands, and here we were, possibly standing before one of them.
Many times in my life I had shouted in my head at characters in books who paused before such wondrous things, gaping like yokels in a big city. Jump, I would think, can’t you see what awaits you?
And yet there I stood, mouth agape.
I’m not sure any one of us would have moved ever again if the door itself hadn’t opened. It swung up out of the ground, an even, straightforward motion, the person pushing below not hesitating for fear of who might be above. No fanfare. One moment we were gawking at a closed door, the next it was open and we were gaping at an elf.
The elf stood at the top of a long set of steps that faded behind him into blackness. He was clearly an elf, and a Santa’s elf at that. I knew this for sure, though I had never seen one in person. He was a third my size, thin and wiry looking, and an amazing energy seemed to radiate from his small body, as if a whole power plant had been stuffed inside of him. His eyes were clear blue and kind, his nose oversized, and his brown hair long and in disarray. These things told me he was an elf. His clothes told me the Santa part. Red pants and red shirt trimmed in white. Black boots, each with a silver bell tied with a red ribbon at the heel. A Santa elf. You would have to be stupid not to recognize this.
I was speechless. None of my friends seemed capable of sound either. We stared at the elf, and the elf stared at us. We stared in surprise, and the elf, as I studied him, stared at us in what seemed to be careful thought. From the wrinkles at the corner of his eyes, he was one who smiled often, but not today. He held a small sheaf of papers in his left hand. The papers were thick and light brown in color, like parchment. There was writing on the top sheet that I could see, but I couldn’t read what it said. The ink was black and the handwriting a cursive scrawl that could have doubled for Egyptian.
We stood there at an impasse, until the elf seemed to make up his mind about something. He smiled finally, and when he spoke, the playful, singsong sound of his words made me think of toys a boy would love: erector sets, metal dump trucks, pigskin footballs, G.I. Joes with every conceivable accessory.
“A good day to you, boys.” He held the sheaf of papers before his eyes and studied the first page. “Alan Batey.” He said it like a teacher taking roll.
Alan jumped like he’d been bitten. “Yes, sir.”
The elf studied Alan up and down then he shuffled the first page to the back and studied the next. “Johhny Farmer.”
Johhny didn’t jump, but it took him three tries before any sound came out of his mouth. “Present.”
The elf gave him the one-two look, then he shuffled the papers again. “Billy Bronson.”
Billy raised his hand and spoke in a soft, very unBilly-like voice. “Here.”
The elf looked at Billy and then shuffled the papers once more. For a terrible second, the thought entered my mind that my name wouldn’t be the next one the elf called.
“Scotty Lilibee.”
Relief so sudden and so complete weakened my knees.
“Here.” My voice cracked, but no one seemed to notice.
The elf shuffled the paper with my name to the back one more time, and he studied what appeared was the last sheet of paper. He didn’t say anything for a time, and then he shuffled that paper to the back as well. He then rolled the papers up and stuffed them in his sleeve.
“Well, boys. T’will be a day you remember the rest ‘a your lives, or,” he raised an eyebrow, “won’t even remember tomorrow.”
Billy spoke, having clearly regained some of his personality back. “What d’ya mean, Mister?”
The elf turned around and looked down the stairs. “Let us start walking. It’s a long day we face and we need to be about it.”
I still laugh to myself that not one of us hesitated. I was first on the stairs, but the rest were second. There wasn’t a third or fourth. Don’t go thinking that we were boys who disobeyed our mother. You could examine my life with a microscope and fill a list with checks - not a stranger talked to, not a single scissors-while-running incident. My friends were the same. Yet we followed the elf without a thought.
“Now boys.” The elf paused ten steps down and, without looking back, held up his right hand, snapped his fingers, and the door closed behind us. Brass lanterns lining the stairs flared up immediately, and I didn’t even look back to consider the shut door. All I could think of was where the elf might lead us.
The elf starting walking again. “We’ve a bit of fun ahead of us. I’ve been watching you. Been watching a lot of boys, to be honest, but I chose you this year. That fort above just happens to be the best of its kind in the world. And for that, you getta play a little game with Santa.”
The mention of Santa on the elf’s lips was like the buzz of a nearby lightning strike at night. Billy was the only one of us who seemed capable of speaking, which was okay, because he asked the question all us wished to.
“Do we get to see him?”
The elf laughed. “Not if you’re lucky. Not if you’re good. I’m gonna give you a day at the workshop. Search high and low, anywhere, open any door or cupboard. One present is your reward, your favorite of everything you see, and all you have to do is not get caught by St. Nick. But should he catch you, not a moment of this will you remember. And I warn you. Tis a game he likes, and one he’s played as long as there’s been . . .” The elf paused. He didn’t turn around, but I had the distinct feeling he was thinking of me. “Well, it’s an old game. Hide-and-Seek, if you will.”
We arrived at the bottom of the stairs and were greeted by another door, the twin of what we had seen above. The elf turned to us, and his eyes were so full of light and merriment that I laughed out loud. I had no cause to be embarrassed, because all three of my friends did the same.
“No sleigh ride, boys. Toy room’s on the other side of this here door. The game will start when you step through. What will you do?”
I finally found something I could say. I spoke not only because I knew what my friends would want, but because in the instant of speaking I knew it was the right thing to say.
“We’ll stick together.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Alan nod, and that was just what the elf did. “Good. That is good, Scotty. That’s what all the best ones do. Are you ready?” The elf put his hand on the door latch, but before he lifted it, Johnny spoke.
“What’s your name, Mister?”
The elf seemed very pleased that he had been asked. He let go of the latch, bowed low before us, and spoke in a formal tone. “I am Riffelmunchin. I am pleased to make your acquaintance, gentlemen.” He straightened, lifted the latch on the door, and then opened it.
I didn’t see Riffelmunchin again, even though I must have walked by him. I hope I had enough training in courtesy from my mom to mumble “thank you” as I passed, but I don’t remember saying it. From the moment the elf opened the door, nothing existed in the world or in my head but what I saw before me. I had seen fanciful drawings of the North Pole before. I had seen the same for Santa’s village, for Santa’s workshop, for any number of places associated with Santa Claus and where he supposedly lived. Many had been fine and could fire the imagination of a boy in December. What I knew instantly when Riffelmunchin opened the door is that not only had all those paintings been inadequate, but that it would be impossible with just canvas and paint to capture the reality.
The door opened onto a single room, spacious with high ceilings, and filled not only with toys spread out to be showcased, but with . . . color. Color so that I had to blink my eyes as if I were looking at the sun. I had never imagined that reds and yellows and purples and greens and every other color known to man could be so vivid and so intense that were it not for the joy they engendered, I am sure I would have felt pain.
I don't know how long it was before I became aware that I was myself and not just a pair of eyes viewing a world more marvelous surely than Heaven could be. All I know is that I started, and abruptly I was aware that my friends stood around me. I turned around and the door we had walked through was closed. I noticed this only in passing. The room continued to draw me away from conscious thought. There were so many toys to look at, toys I knew and toys I could hardly comprehend. Legions of army men nearby were spread out on a miniature field of battle. As I stared at them, I imagined that I could hear the bombs explode as planes flew overhead. Next to them there were shelves of board games. The brightly colored boxes sported names both foreign and forbidden sounding, games that surely came to life at the roll of the die or the spin of a wheel. Magic seemed to boil off the toys and overwhelm my senses. There were rows of baseball bats and gloves, footballs and basketballs, and each seemed to call out that their magic would inhabit a boy and make him a star. In another corner, some elf had built a monstrous castle out of Legos, and Lego soldiers battled a Lego dragon at the gates. There was a giant contraption in the center of the room that looked for all the world like an oversized, yellow and brown microscope, but out of the end where the lens should have been, globs of different colors of liquid spilled out, fell a few feet, and then before they hit the ground, seemingly realized that they were lighter than air and began floating about the room. As I stared at the different shapes of colored goo, I noticed that they didn’t pop, didn’t collide with each other and smear into one, but winked out eventually like stray thoughts.
There were so many toys that I could never begin to describe them all, so many that I didn’t even feel the urge to play, for each time one drew my attention, another called me away.
I felt a hand on my shoulder.
Without looking I knew it was Alan. He was the practical one out of all of us.
“Remember what the elf said.”
I had forgotten about Riffelmunchin. “Remember what?”
“We can’t get caught.”
Alan’s words brought me completely out of my toy stupor. According to Riffelmunchin, to be caught meant to forget this place, and though I had been here less than five minutes, the idea of forgetting it terrified me. Walking away from this place with a toy would be secondary. We could not forget.
I stared at Alan. “What do we do? I’ll take anything here.”
Johhny nodded next to us. “Me too.”
I opened my mouth to speak again, but then shut it when the most authentic ho, ho, ho I had ever heard wafted into the air. I turned in the direction it had come from, saw only toys, but knew we had scarce seconds. I turned again and ran, and found that my friends were already ahead of me. We ran towards the Legos, but before we reached them Alan turned right down an aisle of cap guns, water guns, and BB guns. I followed Billy and Johhny. We reached the Legos and sprinted right, and I was the first one who noticed the door. I hissed to my friends and we all bolted through that door like light through a keyhole.
Billy slammed the door shut and we leaned against it for a moment, panting more from panic than exertion. Johnny was the first to straighten up, but we were right behind. He pointed at the door we had come through. It was much weathered, and a plaque in the center of it read “Toys for boys.”
We were in a hallway. To the left were three more doors before the hall turned to the right. To our right there were only two doors before the hall turned to the left.
Billy spoke. “He could be right behind us.”
“What about Alan?” Johnny said.
Billy and I both shook our heads and spoke at the same time. “Can’t go back.”
Johnny didn’t argue, but still we remained where we were. The sound of Santa’s laugh in that room had meant something so different, so abruptly, to me.
“We need to stay together.”
Billy and Johnny nodded again. But where to go? The hallway seemed the worst place we could choose, though there was a warmth to the soft browns of the wooden walls and yellow lit lanterns that could have lulled me to sleep.
I pointed to the left. “Let’s go this way.”
I figured there were three doors that way at least, no telling what was around the corner. What other fantastic things would we discover?
The first door was a disappointment. “Pearls for girls,” it read. Billy made a rude sound.
The second door was no better. “Peace on Earth,” the plaque proclaimed.
Johnny actually sounded perplexed when he spoke. “Who would want that?”
I could only nod in agreement. The first two doors hadn’t even contained enough promise in their titles to caution a look inside. But the third door was different. Before we even got close to it, I knew what the plaque would say, and I could hear Johnny’s stomach begin to rumble.
When we stopped before the door, the plaque read: “Sweets for the sweet.” This door presented another first for me. My nose had never known ecstasy before. The smells wafting from beneath the door were as intense as the colors in the first room had been. Johnny didn’t hesitate. He didn’t open the door a smidge to see if anyone was inside. He flung it open like he was home from school and anxious for a plate of his mother’s cookies.
The “Sweets for the sweet” room was larger than the “Toys for boys” room had been, and though this would have seemed impossible to me before I saw it, this room was crammed with far more things. Chocolates and confections in every conceivable variety and shape were everywhere you looked. The ceiling was obscured by soft billowy clouds of pink cotton candy. There was a mountain of jelly beans in the center of the room surrounded by hills of sugar babies, taffy, and Red Hots. Winding through the hills were rivers of other candies: licorice some red, some brown, some black; cascades of bubble gum; eddies of caramel popcorn; and wide, surging masses of candy bars. All these spilled into a lake of Lemon Heads that begged to be swum in. The room was a wonderland of shapes made from chocolate: fairy-tale houses of milk chocolate and a dark chocolate castle with clear gates spun from sugar so fine that you could taste them from a distance.
Just inside the door, I noticed a kettle of chocolate coins, and above the kettle there was a sign with an arrow pointing down. The sign read, “Doesn’t count.”
I grabbed a handful of the coins, shoved them into my mouth - and it was like an explosion of taste the chocolate was so fine. It was smooth and silky and seemed to melt into the tissues of my mouth before it could flow down my throat. Billy and Johnny joined me and we all took handfuls of chocolate and stuffed our faces, coin after coin. The kettle didn’t seem to empty and I didn’t for a moment feel full.
Only when I heard the ho, ho, ho again did it occur to me that the kettle was a trap. We fled, around the mountain of candy, past the chocolate castle, and again, it was me who saw the door. I hissed as I had before, and Billy followed me. When we reached this new door, Billy and I both paused. Johnny had not followed. We turned and saw Johnny hiding behind a glass column filled with strawberry twists.
“Johnny!”
Johnny didn’t turn, and I realized he had found what he wanted, that he would not leave this room but would take his chances.
“Come on, Billy.” I pulled at Billy's arm.
We left the room of candy and found ourselves in another hallway. It was a short one that came to a dead end at a single door. We walked forward and the plaque read “Gifts that give.”
“What d’ya suppose that means?” Billy sounded like he wished he was back at the Toys for boys room.
I shook my head. There was only one way to find out. I lifted the latch on the door and shoved it inward. It opened on a small and seemingly empty room. We walked in, looked at each other, both shrugged, then I turned away from Billy. For the briefest moment the room remained empty, and then there was a shimmer in the air and before me, blurry like a mirage, was what I instinctively knew was the idea of a present, a possibility. I saw right in front of me the idea of a train set, one so intricate and extensive that it would take a boy a lifetime to set it up. I thought of my Uncle Andrew and how he would love such a gift. The air shimmered again and there was the idea of an erector set box that could never be emptied, one that would forever supply pieces to build structures that would rival anything man had ever built. I thought of my dad and his stories of erector sets when he was my age. What a fine gift that would make for him.