Christmas Secrets
Nondenominational Christmas Stories for the Entire Family
by
N. Beetham Stark
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Discover other titles by N. Beetham Stark at
Smashwords.com or at
NBeethamStark.com.
Christmas Secrets: Nondenominational Christmas Stories for the Entire Family
Written by N. Beetham Stark
Copyright 2010 by N. Beetham
Stark
Cover art by N. Beetham Stark
Published by Smashwords, Inc.
ISBN 978-1-4580-8691-4
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any
form
without the written permission of the author or trust agents.
Smashwords Edition License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.
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Dedication: This book is dedicated to Tintagon, Tarsie and Picotso and their mutual friend, 'PP'.
“Christmas should be a state of mind that shepherds us through the trials of every day life throughout the year.”
N. Beetham Stark
Acknowledgements
The stories in this book are all original creations from the pen of N. Beetham Stark. Any resemblance to other stories is coincidental.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 – Christmas for Tub and Chub
Chapter 6 – Surprise, Surprise
Chapter 8 – The Pugilistic Sparrow
Chapter 9 – The Prince of Tacky Town
Chapter 10 – The Driftwood Madonna
Chapter 12 – A Strange Family for Christmas
Chapter 1 – Christmas for Tub and Chub
By N. Beetham Stark
“Don’t push! I’m going as fast as I can,” grunted Chub. Groan!
Tub, his twin brother, brought up the rear as the two extremely fat boys ascended the stairs on all fours. “Spanky,” their pet terrier was racing circles around them, up the stairs to cheer them on and over the top of them down stairs again to nibble at their heels. There was a lot of heavy breathing and grunting as the two came to the top stairs and trundled off to their bedroom.
Chub burst through the door and dove under the bed. He began to dig furiously as if he were the dog, not Spanky. Out came a dirty sock covered with dust mice, then a tooth brush, a tennis ball, part of a chocolate doughnut, a wash cloth, a tattered slipper and one paper bag covered with chocolate stains. There was a wrenching sound and then total silence. Tub stood close to the bed, just out of reach of the flying debris, with a curious half smile on his face. You might call it a smug smirk?
“What gives!” came a frantic cry from under the bed. “The larder is empty!” One could hear rustling and groaning as Chub tried to put together what he saw. His hands made thumping sounds as he ran them over the floor of the empty cache.
“You ate all of the candy we had left! You scoundrel! I’ll whip you for this!” More grunts and much wiggling brought Chub out from under the bed, his face flushed and screwed up in anger. Spanky had to pull at his trouser legs to help get him out from under the bed.
Chub wheeled around at his brother’s feet, glaring up at him with angry eyes, that were beginning to fill with tears.
“You ate it all, didn’t you!” he said accusingly, trying not to hide the hurt.
“Well, I was hungry the other night and you were asleep. Surely you did not want me to waken you and ask you if you wanted a piece of candy.” The argument was logical enough, but logic could do nothing to stave off a small six-year-old’s craving for candy.
Chub sat down heavily, as if the cares of the world had suddenly been unloaded on his young shoulders. He could not trust his twin brother! That was a terrible thing to learn. He sat in a daze for a few minutes, lost in his private world, one totally devoid of candy.
Now Tub Butterworth had been born Tobias or “Toby” for short and Chub was christened Charles or “Chuck” for short, but as the two boys began to grow sideways faster than upwards, their nicknames had soon changed to Tub and Chub. The real problem was simple, plain sugar! We had an incurable craving for sweet things. Cereal with sugar was a natural, but if they could have their way, which they did not, it would have been sugar with a little cereal. At dinner the ham, steak or chicken had to be sprinkled with sugar in order to find its way down their throats. And vegetables, “Ugh!” All vegetables were unfit to eat unless they were floating in sugar and butter.
Alice Butterworth was a good mother and she tried her best to control the boy’s access to sweets, but it was impossible. They would take their lunches to school and sell or trade them for candy. If they worked it right, they could get enough traded candy, cookies and cakes to last the day and have some left over to put away in their private cache. Harry and Alice Butterworth had hunted tirelessly for the cache of candy that they knew the boys kept, but had never been able to find it. With two such fat little boys, you would have thought that Mr. and Mrs. Butterworth would be large people also. But the opposite was true. Alice was a slender, pretty, nervous little woman, a caring mother, who worried constantly about her boys. Harry was a slim and wiry fellow who could have played a cowpoke in the movies. He worked as a teller at the bank. He just couldn’t understand where the boys got all their tubbiness from.
“So what are we going to do?” said Chub. “You heard Mom. We won’t get any candy for Christmas and father has said that the sugar bowl will be taken from the table. Now that you have eaten our very last piece of candy, we are destitute. We’ll starve!”
“Never fear, little brother. We’ll think of something. There must be some way to get candy.”
They sat amidst the terrible clutter of their room in an old New England house and anyone could see that they were deep in thought. You might have mistaken them for a couple of aged seers the way they concentrated and meditated, but they were really only two fat, hungry little boys who were temporarily suffering from a cut-off supply of vital candy.
“What about going to see Henry? His folks always have a lot of candy. Maybe they would take pity on us.”
“Not likely,” said Tub. “They are off to see some relatives in northern New Hampshire. They won’t be back until after Christmas. Besides, their mom is friends with our mom and we’d be found out.”
“Hmm. School is out and we will not be back until after the first of the year, a full three weeks.”
Spanky sat at their feet, first on his hind legs, looking for some attention and when that did not come, he laid down with his head on his paws, beady eyes peering through a mop of hair lovingly at the two boys. They loved Spanky, but they found it hard to play with him. If you want to know the truth, they were so fat that the little tan dog could run circles around them and they could never keep up. So Spanky had to cope by staying at their sides and nudging them from time to time to get some action going.
Suddenly, he barked, a playful bark that brought the boys back to reality. Chub ran his hands down the little dog’s back. Spanky turned his head from side to side, proud of the attention and hungry for more.
“I know,” said Tub sitting bolt upright. “We can make some candy.”
“Make! What do you mean make?”
“Well, somebody has to make candy, don’t they? We can become candy makers just for the holidays.”
Now it had never occurred to Chub that candy had to be made before it was eaten. He mused for a few minutes. “Well, what does it take to make candy?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Fudge must be just chocolate, sugar and water, I suppose. Should be easy to make,” said Tub.
“And when do you suppose Mom will give us time to get into the kitchen to make the stuff? She lives in the kitchen this time of year, making cookies and cakes to give away.”
That did pose a problem even for the nimble brain of Mr. Tub. He sat for awhile as Spanky nudged him with his nose. “I know!” he shouted. Then he lowered his voice to a whisper. Mom is going to the reception for the new minister, a Rev. Preach, this afternoon. He giggled at the name. She will never take us to a lady’s party with all those sweets. We would only embarrass her by eating everything in sight. So she will have to leave us here since every other lady in town will be at the reception too. That will give us lots of time to make the fudge,” said Tub.
“Could work,” said Chub. “Sure you know how to make the stuff?”
“It’s a sugar cube. Trust me,” said Tub. Tub was the one who always planned the mischief. He was the doer of the twosome.
They ate their toasted cheese sandwiches sprinkled with sugar and washed the whole bit down with milk. Then they set about squabbling and playing pick-up-sticks on the living room floor. The Christmas tree was not there yet, but they stared at the spot where we knew it would sit and Chub saw a fine little brightly painted train with track set all around the tree. And there was a station and some logs to haul. Tub saw a top that would spin in place and send off pretty colors.
“Wonder what kind of a tree Dad will get this year?” He was known as the fussiest man in the village when it came to a Christmas tree. His had to be the biggest and prettiest tree that anyone could find. He would bring it home tomorrow night and they would all help decorate it together.”
“Let’s take our money and go buy some presents for the folks,” said Tub who was bored with waiting. “We always have to rush when Mom takes us shopping the day before Christmas. She waits impatiently in the car and we have to rush so.”
“Not a bad idea, for once. How much money do you have?”
“Oh, about 14 cents,” said Tub.
“I’ve about a dollar sixty eight cents,” Chub chimed in proudly.
“If we pool our resources, we should be able to buy something for both of them,” said the spendthrift Tub. They made the arduous ascent to their room and picked up the money, Chub shook the piggy bank nearly to death to choke every penny out of him.
The boys, tired of playing, marched off to find their mother.
“Mom, we want to go out to play in the snow,” said Tub.
“Well, it has stopped snowing. I guess you can go out for an hour or so. Don’t go far though.” Tub thought that it would be impossible to go far in any direction in Addipost, New Hampshire. The town had about a hundred people and covered all of four blocks.
Mom dressed Chub first. The snow suit was fitted over chubby legs and eventually, with some holding of the breath and sucking gut, zipped up the front. On went the rubbers, cap and mittens. Then she began to work on Tub. She had him properly suited up and was just putting on his cap when Chub let out a whine.
“I gotta go, Ma.”
“Oh, well, I guess if you gotta go, you gotta go.” she grabbed his hand and led him down the hall to the bathroom. Tub stood by the kitchen door, a chessycat grin on his face. Chub was always the weak one!
When Mom returned with a fully suited Chub, she looked at Tub, “You too?”
“A,a.” He shook his head, to his mother’s great relief. She was busy these days and it had taken a whole twenty minutes to get the boys ready for “out.” Meanwhile, Spanky had done his traditional Scottish dance all around the boys, eager to get out into the cold snow and race a bit. Mom led them out the door and said, “Be back early. I have that reception to go to this afternoon you know.”
Once on the street, the boys scuffed through the snow, short, chubby legs not quite adequate for a foot of fresh snow.
“Come on. The 5 and 10 is just around the corner,” said Tub. “Spanky, you stay home,” said Tub, pointing at the little dog, his voice husky with all his authority. The little dog wagged his tail, sat down and looked terribly sad, ears drooping.
Once in the store, they began a two hour search for the perfect presents for their parents. They looked at everything, I mean, everything. But strangely, they seemed to always come back to press fat noses against the candy case. The “5” did not have much of a selection of candy, but it was the real thing and looked and smelled so good, especially the candied cherries.
After a long look, Tub looked at his brother and said, “There is no use fighting it. We have all but 2 cents needed to buy a big box of cherry chocolates for both our parents. Maybe I can talk the lady into letting us have the chocolates for two cents less?
He walked to the counter with the box in his hand. He reached out for Chub’s money and began to count out the pennies. Then he put the box on the counter and smiled a sugary smile at the pretty girl who was at the cash register. She took the box and was about to put it into a bag. “Please, could you gift wrap it,” said Tub.
“Why yes, sir,” she replied with a smile.
When the wrapping was done, she counted out the money, and looking at Tub, deduced that he could not yet count correctly. “You are two cents shy of the price,” she said. Tub said nothing, but shrugged what little shoulders he had, putting on a most innocent look.
“Oh well, it is Christmas, and what are two cents anyway,” said the nice lady. She handed the wrapped box to the boys in a brown paper bag and smiled at them both. “Merry Christmas.”
In unison, “Merry Christmas.”
But the way home was not merry at all. Both boys felt an uncomfortable churning in their stomachs. The bag with the box of candy was handed back and forth like a hot potato. Neither of them wanted to get too close to the luscious candy, for fear all control would disappear and he would tear off the wrapper and go on a chocolate and cherry binge. There was real pain in their faces as they approached the house.
“What are we gonna do with this?” said Chub. He could almost taste the sweet cherry liquor inside the chocolates as he imagined they would run together in his mouth. “This stuff is dynamite! We can’t keep it in the room. Surely one of us will weaken and there will be a disaster. You know how sick you get when you eat too much chocolate.”
“Don’t either. It’s you that gets sick on too much candy. But you are right. We can’t keep it in the house. Besides, Mom might find it. So where can we hide it?”
“We could put it in the woodshed.”
“Naw. There is too much chance of Dad finding it there.”
“What about in the dog house? Spanky sleeps in our house in winter. We could slip out Christmas Eve and rescue the candy and put it under the tree.”
“Guess it will have to do.” They crept around the house and Tub knelt down in the snow, nuzzled by Spanky, as he put the bag with the candy in the dog house, on top of the frozen water bowl.
At quarter to four that afternoon, their mother came into the living room where the boys sat playing. She had her coat and rubbers on and was carrying a flat box. By the smell, it was a lovely cake. Chub had to bite his tongue to keep from asking for a piece, just a little one?
“Now boys, I am off to the reception for the Reverend Preach at the church. I will be gone only an hour, so you stay warm and play with your lincoln logs.” She picked up a handful of wood and laid it on the fire. “I will be right back to make dinner.” She bent and kissed each fat little cheek and the boys exchanged a sly look as she straightened up and headed for the door. “Yes Mom,” came in unison which it often did.
Tub had inhaled deeply as she bent down to him, hoping to get some taste of the cake from its wonderful aroma. “Yum, Chocolate,” he said under his breath.
They sat on the floor, looking at each other and listening intently. Fudge was just minutes away! They heard the front door open, then click shut. They waited anxiously for the sound of the old Ford chugging to life in the driveway, and then it happened, as if by some secret signal. Spanky, who had been sitting idly by, bored with such inactivity, bounced up with them as they let out gleeful laughs and raced as fast as two tubs could go, to the kitchen, jostling to get through the kitchen door at the same time.
“You find the sugar and cocoa. I’ll get the milk and pan,” said Tub.
The milk came out of the refirg with only a small spot spilled on the floor as Tub opened the cap too soon. Spanky licked up the spot. Chub found the cocoa easily in the cupboard, but the sugar had been put on the top shelf. Now these two boys were so wide and so short that they had trouble working on the countertop, let alone reaching the top shelf.
“I’ll get a chair,” said Tub. With the chair in place, Chub climbed up gingerly, with Tub providing a not too helpful push from the rear and Spanky dancing around the kitchen with the excitement. But Chub could still not reach the top shelf. He climbed onto the counter and looked down at Tub in dismay. “There can be no fudge without sugar.” Tub said, “Wait.”
Soon he returned with a stool that he put on top of the chair. “That should work. Try it.”
Chub obediently climbed onto the rickety stool which wanted to slide on the slippery seat of the chair. He reached for the sugar, but the top of the bag was open and he managed to spill a good bit before he got it to the countertop. As he began to climb down, there was a crack and the seat of the chair split under his ponderous weight. He was nearly to the floor when it happened, so he tumbled and rolled over the kitchen floor, screaming as if he had been shot.
“You hurt, Chub?”
Chub sat in the middle of the scrupulously clean kitchen floor and wined softly. “No, I’ll live, but what are we going to do about this chair? You and your bright ideas!”
Tub thought for a second.
“Come on, we gotta get this cleaned up. Mom will be home soon.”
Tub flew into action. He grabbed the chair and slipped it behind the curtain in the dining room where it usually sat next to the table. “We have six chairs and there will be only five people for Christmas dinner. Maybe no one will notice the chair is missing from the table,” said Tub.
Chub shook his head. “Let’s get the fudge made.”
Tub held the big pot, his mother’s favorite, while Chub poured in lots of sugar. Spanky looked on, head acock. “Put in some more,” said Tub. Then he poured in some cocoa and finally some milk. At six, they had never heard of recipes or measuring things.
“It’s getting late. Turn the gas up high so it’ll cook fast,” said Chub.
A chubby hand turned the gas on and there was a “whoosh” as the pilot light lit the burner. Flames licked yellow up around the pot, but that was what was needed. Speed! No one had thought about stirring the mess inside, so the sugar was all on the bottom, now moistened by milk.
“Let’s go back and play with the Lincoln logs,” said Tub. That will take a while to cook.”
“How long?”
“Don’t know, but I bet it’s done by the time Mom comes back.”
So they went back to their games and built a fort of logs for the train that they hoped to get for Christmas.
A bit later, “you smell something funny?” said Chub.
“No.” but his fat nose wrinkled as he tested the air. “Yes. There is something that smells like burning.”
They got up ponderously and trundled to the kitchen. The fudge was just about to crawl out of the pot onto the stove top and there was evil smelling smoke all through the kitchen. Ever the man of action, Tub grabbed the pot by its handle and pulled it off the stove. He winced in pain as the warm handle burned his hand. He reached up and turned the gas off. “Chub, open both the front and back doors, quick before Mom comes home! We gotta clean up this mess.”
Fresh air did a good bit to hide the smell, but no amount of water would wash away the baked sugar in the bottom of Mom’s best pot! They dug at it with knives and forks and when they tried to sample the stuff, it was perfectly awful, meaning it could not have been worse!
Then they heard it. The chug of the old Ford as it reached the drive and slid in beside the house. It had begun to snow and the sound was muffled, but with the doors open, they just heard it in time. Chub waddled to the front door to close it as Tub yelled, get the front door Chub. What are we going to do with this pot?”
There was no time to think. Tub slipped on a bit of sugar on the kitchen floor, but managed to get out the back door to the woodshed just in time to ditch the pot far back into the wood pile. “They won’t find that until sometime next spring,” he said to himself. He raced back into the kitchen, grabbed the broom and swished the sugar under the table. Then at his top speed, puffing all the way, he joined Chub who was playing innocently on the living room floor with their fort.
Mom should have been mighty suspicious when she came in. Two not too clean little boys playing on her living room floor, huffing and puffing, but she was late and had to get dinner for father. She did mention how cold the house seemed and came into the living room to put another log on the fire. “You boys know to put a log on the fire when it gets low. It’s freezing in here!”
In unison, “Yes Mum.”
A few minutes later, they were able to relax as they heard no explosions from the kitchen. Chub whispered, “Your grand ideas, huh. Make fudge, eh. All we did was make a mess! Now we are gonna get a spanking for sure.” said Chub.
“Never mind. We’ll think of something else. Spanky, who was bored with this fort stuff, made several trips into the kitchen to lick at the sugar under the table, but Mrs. Butterworth was too busy preparing fried chicken and dumplings to notice.
At dinner, Mom asked, “Have you boys seen my large green pot, the one with the nice handle?” Tub looked at Chub, whom he was not sure of, and in unison, “No Mom.” It had taken a slight shake of the head to convince Chub that he did not want to cross his brother. But Chub nearly bit his tongue as he said it. If Tub had a conscience, it was not showing at present. They ate all they could manage of chicken and dumplings glazed with sugar. The boys asked to be excused for bed early that night. After all, it had been a trying day, what with all that racing around for nothing. And they had some big thinking to do. They still were suffering from a serious sugar deficit. Both Mr. and Mrs. Butterworth thought it odd that they wanted to go to bed right after listening to, “Renfrew of the Mountain.” on the radio, but these were hard children to understand. They lay awake for several hours trying to think of a way to get some candy. Finally, Tub said, “Leave it to me. I’ll think of something.”
The next day was two days before Christmas. Alice called her husband’s great aunt Hattie and asked her to come to Christmas dinner, which was expected. And as expected, Aunt Hattie readily accepted. The boys thought it strange. Tub commented on their Aunt Hattie. She came, ate with them, opened presents and then retired to her room (their room really) and sat and read and snoozed all day long. It was as if the old wizened prune came just to get dinner and cared nothing about visiting with the family. Worse yet, she always stayed in their room because, “It is close to the bathroom.” That meant that the boys had to pick up sleeping bags and blankets and sleep in the cold sewing room, which they hated. It was the same every Christmas.
But other things were scheduled for two days before Christmas. Mom always took them shopping at the 5 and 10, and they got to visit father at the bank to see the Christmas tree and get a candy cane from the president of the bank. That was grocery shopping day too. And it was the night that father would drag home the most beautiful tree in town and put it up in their living room.
It was cold and snowy. They had no notion to play out of doors. So they played their favorite indoor game. It was called, “Who can mess up the hall runner the most?” The hall floor was a polished hard oak and it was covered by a long loose rug called a “runner.” When they learned of its name, they decided that a runner should “run.” So they devised a game of running around the dining room table, as fast as one could on fat, stubby legs, and then heading full tilt into the hall. Once the feet struck the runner, the boy would stop and the runner slid easily down the smooth oaken floor. He who slid the farthest and stayed on his feet longest was the winner, but rarely did either boy manage to stay upright. They slid, laughing and giggling like girls on their tummies or backsides, until the runner stopped.
At the end of the hall was a “hall tree,” a strange stand with places to put umbrellas, canes, overshoes, coats and hats and a mirror to see if an adult was properly dressed. They had watched mother straighten her hat before putting the pin in place and Dad look at the patch of white toilet paper where he had cut himself while shaving his face. There was a seat for Mom’s purse too.
On one fateful run, Tub managed to stay upright just a second and then lit on his fanny on the floor. As he passed by the hall tree, his eyes were just at a level with its seat. When the runner came to a stop, he sat there, transfixed for a whole minute or more, staring at Mom’s purse. “Get up you clown and let me have my turn,” said Chub. But Tub continued to stare. His mind came back to the hall only when Chub gave him a kick in the buttocks. Slowly, Tub got up.
“Do you see what I see?” said Tub.
“Just the hall tree,” said Chub, who was always the innocent one.
“No, silly,” as he pointed to their mother’s purse.
Chub’s eyes bugged out. “Mom’s purse! You don’t propose to steal from our Mom do you?”
Tub hesitated a minute. “No, just borrow for a few days. How else are we going to get any candy for Christmas?”
“But Tub, that’s wrong. Dad will whip us if we get caught.”
“He won’t catch us. If they ask us, we will just say that we know nothing about it. Aunt Hattie is coming day after tomorrow and we can use the Christmas money that she gives us to pay Mom back. She will never know the difference.”
Tub was delighted with his new plan, but Chub was skeptical. “Aunt Hattie always gives us pajamas for Christmas. She has never forked over any cash yet,” said Chub in defiance of the plan.
“Trust me. This will work,” said Tub. Then chubby hands reached for the shiny gold-colored buttons that held the purse shut. His fingers went white from the pressure as he parted the buttons and opened the purse. Chub stood close by, looking fascinated at the contents of the black patent leather purse. “Wow,” said Tub. “There is so much stuff here, I wonder where the money is?” The boys heard comforting sounds from the kitchen. Mom was singing Christmas carols with the radio and clinking pots and pans.
Stubby fingers explored the contents of the purse. “A compact, hanky, no two hankies, lipstick, a notebook, many pens and pencils, photographs, a chocolate bar, two strange little white mice with white tails that had crawled out of their wrappers, three kinds of chewing gum, keys, a small wrench, a thing full of numbers, toothbrush, face cloth, a recipe of some kind, four small light bulbs, a towel and, oh, there was a small wallet.” The boys looked on fascinated and terribly frightened too. Tub opened the wallet and gently lifted out three five dollar bills. His eyes grew large. He had not seen all that much money before. Chub looked as if he was about to be run over by a Mack truck, as if the world was about to end. His eyes were as big as hen’s eggs! Tub took one of the five dollar bills and stuffed it in his pocket and then put the wallet back into the purse, in something like its original array, but not really the same of course. That purse would never be the same after it had been so vilely defiled, thought Chub.
“Come on. We will ask to go out and play in the snow, but we will go to the candy store instead. OK,” whispered Tub. But his conscience whispered back, “Not OK.”
“Mom, we want to go out and play in the snow,” said Tub. A patient Mrs. Butterworth began suiting up her boys, Tub first this time. When he was ready, she completed Chub’s dress by snapping his overshoes on. Just as she was about to straighten up, Tub let out a wail. “I gotta go, Mom.” he said as he bounced up and down, his face screwed up anxiously. Well, you know what happened and who stood there with the big grin as his brother was led away. When the awesome deed was done, Chub headed for the front door. He could not wait to get to the candy store. “Be back by three,” said their mother. “I want to take you to see father and the bank tree.”
Two brown heads nodded obediently. If she only knew! thought Chub. Chub looked ever so much like a stuffed penguin as he bobbed down the sidewalk. I must look like that too, thought Tub with a wry smile.
Once in Mr. Finnegan’s candy store, trauma set in for the twins. They had come to this nice man for years to buy candy after school with their loot, a nickel or a dime, but now there was the whole wonderful display of Christmas candies set before them, and what should they buy? Tub shot a blank look at Chub, who was equally puzzled.
“Well, boys, what’ll it be?” said Mr. Finnegan.
Tub, who was always fast on the draw, piped up. “We’ll take some of each,” pointing his finger all along the counter front. Chub nodded eagerly.
“But how much money do you have, boys?”
Tub struggled to unzip his snowsuit and with great anguish managed finally to pull out the crumpled five dollar bill. He waved it at Mr. Finnegan, whose blue eyes popped open a bit wider than usual and his long chin dropped down. His white head nodded in agreement, but something inside told him he was doing wrong. OK. Business is business.
He pulled out 20 small white bags and began putting candy in each bag, adding more bags to the scale as he went. Both boys stood drooling with their faces pressed to the glass counter front, watching each movement with the fascination appropriate to brain surgery. When he had twenty bags on the scales, he adjusted the weights a bit and put the bags, each neatly folded at the top, into a larger bag. As he handed the bag to the boys, he said, “Don’t eat all that at once. It should take even you two a couple of months to plow through that much candy.”
The two boys bobbed out the door, wishing Mr. Finnegan a “Merry Christmas.”
No sooner had their feet hit the snowy sidewalk and they tore into the bags, extracting a small bag apiece and gobbling handfuls of candy. This was true heaven and they had been admitted as distinguished guests!
By the time they reached home, the big bag was a little lighter and the boys a bit heavier. “Where are we gonna hide this until we can get it into the cache?” said Chub.
“What about the dog house again?” said Tub.
“If this fails, we are both gonna spend a lot of this winter in ol’ Spanky’s dog house,” said Chub.
“It’s gotta work,” said Tub. “Remember, if anyone asks us, we know nothing about the money or the candy or the pot, right!”
“I guess,”said Chub.
The worst of all things did not happen. Neither boy got sick. That afternoon Mom took them to see their father at the bank. They liked to see him behind his cage with all that money in his hands. He popped out from behind his cage to bring the tree to put in mother’s car. It was a real beauty. About then, the bank president came out of his office. “Mighty fine tree you have there, Harry. Wish I could find one like it for my house. And these are your boys. My, how they have grown!” Now that last statement usually brings smiles to the faces of fond parents, but not in this case. It was clear to all that the boys were not a bit taller than they had been a year ago, but they were a lot wider. Alice looked at her husband with that, “We have to do something about this” look. The president handed each boy a candy cane, but wondered secretly if he was doing the right thing. Their parents were somewhat surprised when the boys did not tear off the wrappers and devour the canes right before the eyes of their benefactor, but they said, “Thank you,” in unison and walked to the bank tree to look for presents with their names on them.
The next stop was the grocery store. The boys enjoyed pushing the cart and their mother was skilled at filling it to the brim. She bought a large turkey, cranberries, and things to make pies and cakes with. When she reached the check stand, Mr. Wilson rang up each item and put them in bags.
“That’ll be $11.48.”
Alice opened her purse and dove in to find her wallet. Nothing seems to be in the right place, she thought idly.
Tub looked at Chub, but Chub could not bear the pressure. He looked at his rubbered feet. More scratching in that purse, like a hen trying to get some grubs out of the ground. Wish this were all over, thought Chub.
When the wallet was found and opened, she looked quite dismayed. She brought out only two five dollar bills. “I am sorry Mr. Wilson, but I am sure I had $15 here. She dove back into the purse and scratched some more. “Oh, I am so embarrassed. I guess I must have spent the other five. She looked about frantically for some source of solace, but there was none. “Can I have my husband stop by on his way home from work and pay you the $1.48 that I owe you?”
“Oh, I guess it will be fine, Mrs. Butterworth. You folks are good customers.”
When the bags were bundled into the car and they were on the way home after a frantic stop at the bank, mother kept shaking her head. I know there were fifteen dollars there. Do you boys know anything about the missing five?” They nodded two little brown heads, “No” in unison, two almost identical mouths formed a perfect “O” and breathed out a stolid “No.” Had it not been so dark and she not so distraught, she might have seen a bit of chocolate smudge on Chub’s cheek and a tiny dollop of creme on Tubs chin, but as things were, it all went off well, so far.
That night at dinner, Mrs. Butterworth told her husband what had happened. “I just can’t understand where the money could have gone,” complained Alice.
“Now dear, you probably spent it on a Christmas present and just don’t remember it. No harm was done. Mr. Wilson was glad to see me and it is all settled. The boys don’t know anything about the missing five, do they?” he said as he looked at his two fat sons.
Two brown heads and two perfect “O” mouths declared they knew nothing.
“You put up the tree Harry. When I finish the dishes I have some errands to run before the stores close. May I have five dollars, please.” Harry dug into his pockets and came up with five one-dollar bills.