by Jody A. Harmon
Chapter Five
Christmas was approaching Sunville.
The parents and the adults were going over their credit card bills, which were quite high, and pouring over their checking account statements. Everything was empty.
They fretted and sobbed into their pillows. How would they buy Christmas this year for the children? How would they get them the latest trendy expensive sunglasses and bigger faster sports cars and name brand clothes and electronics? They visited the doctor very often as Christmas approached for more big bottles of all types of pills. The doctor himself had many big bottles of pills in his own medicine cabinet.
There was no borrowing from Buckaroo’s bank. Johnny had taken his grandfather off to Gentry and committed him to an old age home where he sat in a chair all day every day all alone. Then Johnny and his buddies, who all needed drinking money, stole every dollar in every shoebox in his grandfather’s metal-doored back room.
The cold seemed ever more intense as Christmas approached. The people of Sunville could not find enough heavy clothes to wear in order to keep out the cold. They were cutting all the trees in the forests down to build bigger hotter fires in their stoves but they were still never quite warm enough.
Lindy Lu had not found a chance to slip out of her house to question the old woman. But on Christmas Eve, her parents lay flopped across the couch and the floor, fast asleep, exhausted. The family Christmas tree lay toppled on its side, its needles brown and brittle from lack of water. The little girls’ parents had been far too busy worrying to remember to water it.
The lights adorning their five story twenty room mansion did not flicker bright Christmas colors into the frosty evening because the electric company had discontinued service due to failure to pay. Her parents had both lost their upper management positions at the sun tan lotion plant. Bar and pill bills had taken all the money they had saved to pay for electricity.
The little girl wrapped herself up in her warmest coat and slipped out into Christmas Eve.
The smiling old woman made her rounds twice daily. No one knew exactly where she went or what she did or really anything at all about her. No one had ever asked.
She carried a heavy bag on her back as she hobbled, using a knarled cane carved from a tree branch, to lean upon as she went her way.
Lindy Lu hung back a couple hundred feet and followed her down the icy cobbled sidewalk until it ended at the outskirts of the village.
‘Where was she going?’ the little girl thought to herself. ‘She’s such an old woman to walk so far and carry such a large heavy bag. And she doesn’t’ seem to stoop beneath the burden.’
Snow began to fall, in lazy large flakes that came down faster and faster and thicker and thicker. The little girl had to peer hard through the falling flakes to make out the form ahead of her, so she could follow.
On and on the ghostlike form wobbled until the little girl’s legs ached with the cold and the effort of keeping her balance on the edge of the slick roadway as she tried to keep the old woman in sight.
Far ahead, she thought she saw, through the snowflakes, a glow in the distance, almost like the sun was shining down on one particular spot within a field.
“That is odd. This can’t be,” the little girl said to herself, shaking her head, believing herself to be suffering from a cold delusion.
The form ahead of her was hobbling into the spot of light. Or was the spot of light following the old woman? The little girl’s heart raced and she was given energy by her excitement. She hurried ahead and hid behind a fir tree near the road to watch.
The old woman was heralded in a circle of sunlight. In the midst of the circle of light was a tree, decorated with cut out white angels and stars. The woman stopped and knelt quietly beside the tree in the circle of sunlight and warmth.
The little girl watching held her breath in astonishment.
The old woman began to call, very softly.
One by one, out they came–the animals, the stray dogs and cats without homes, rubbing against her in delight, licking her hands and face. She greeted them each by name, scratching their ears and stroking their backs.
Then she opened the heavy bag she had carried so far upon her thin frame. She set out many many bowls and plates and poured large quantities of food into each. The cats and dogs ate hungrily, stopping every few moments to look into the old woman’s eyes with nothing less than adoration. As they did so, the circle of light and warmth grew larger and stronger until even the little girl felt it.
Lindy Lu stared in disbelief. Then she couldn’t stop herself. She ran towards the circle of light surrounding the old woman, the animals and the Christmas tree.
The animals startled to see her and ran off a distance. The old woman turned, and her bright smile warmed the chilled little girl through and through.
“You don’t understand, do you?” the old woman said. “You want to know why.”
“Yes please, if you would tell me,” said the little girl humbly.
“The light has left Sunville because the warmth has left Sunville’s hearts”, the old woman said sadly. “Here,” the old woman said, taking the little girls’ hand, “feel my heart.”
“It’s so warm,” said Lindy Lu.
“As is yours, if you let it be,” said the old woman. “And together, our hearts warm the world.
But the warmth of hearts has been replaced with cold things. Things made of steel and paper. Cars and electronics and money—these things are without warmth or the ability to warm. Not only this, but they steal the warmth from living.”
“It can change back, can’t it?” the little girl implored. “We can change it back.”
“I don’t know.” Said the old woman, scratching a cats’ ear as she spoke. “Now look at this lovely kitten. She has no home. All she wants is love.”
“I have love,” said the little girl, “and I always wanted a kitten. “May I have her?”
“Ask her and if she agrees, then, of course.”
The little girl hugged the calico kitten and the kitten purred.
“Thank you,” Lindy Lu said slowly, as she rose from her knees. She didn’t know what to do now, with knowing why Sunville was cold. What could she do? She was just a little girl.
Lindy Lu trudged slowly back to Sunville holding the kitten beneath her coat. She was deep in thought.
Just as Lindy Lu came around the bend and into sight of town, the roaring engine sounds of a racing car and then the screech of brakes pierced the stillness of falling snow behind her. She whirled around. She’d also heard a very loud thud.
After those sudden noises, the landscape behind her was again filled in with whiteness and silence. Lindy stood on the edge of the road, with her feet together and her face like a stone trying to look through the blanket of white to see what might have just happened.
Then she heard cranking sounds, like a car makes when someone is trying to get a car with a dead battery to start, and slurred cursing and some bangs, like a foot was hitting metal. She started forward towards the sounds.
Johnny was sprawled forward over the hood of his car with his hands over his face when Lindy Lu found him. There were a few scattered drops of red blood in snow that was fast accumulating on the hood of his car. There was blood on Johnny’s face, too, but not much. He was muttering to himself and cursing.
“Johnny, what happened?” Lindy asked urgently, looking this way and that way, remembering the thud and that the old woman had been walking home somewhere behind her. The creek, down the bank on the far side of the road, was not quite yet completely frozen over. The waters babbled and tinkled loudly, as if trying to speak.
The kitten squirmed out of Lindy Lu’s coat and tumbled into the snow. Lindy Lu reached for her in panic, but the kitten ran towards the side of the road and disappeared down the bank.
“Johnny, my kitten,” Lindy cried.
“Ah, it’s freezing, forget the kitten. Let’s get back to Sunville and out of this cold. My nose hurts,” Johnny slurred.
But Lindy Lu was already halfway down the embankment following the little calico.
Johnny hadn’t turned all bad. He wasn’t one to leave a kid out in the cold alone. He stumbled after Lindy Lu.
When he found her, down the bank by the side of the creek, she was clutching her kitten but her eyes were wide in horror as she stared down at the water. There, beneath the filmy ice, rimming the frigid creek waters, eyes wide open and face white as snow, lay the old woman. She was in the creek under the water!
“Oh, for the love of….”Johnny was panicked and cursing, realizing he had hit the old woman with his car, sending her sliding down the bank and into the creek. And there she lay beneath the water, all frozen and probably dead.
Johnny charged into the knee deep waters without even a mille-second of thought, and pulled her out.
“She’s frozen, Lindy Lu. There’s not enough heat anywhere in Sunville to warm her up and save her now. And I’ll go to jail forever for killing her.”
“Come on! Quickly Johnny! We must get her town and to the doctor.”
Johnny somehow got his car back on the road and started. Lindy was really sure, later on, that the kitten had something to do with his car starting, but she couldn’t ever say how this could be.
Johnny slammed the pedal to the metal and this time nobody and I mean nobody was going to give him the what for because he was speeding.
Johnny spun the car around in the snow so it came to rest directly in front of the good doctor’s night and day pharmaceuticals. Then Johnny laid on the horn.
Old Doc came out blearily rubbing his eyes “What in tarnation is….”.
“We need your help,” Johnny interrupted. “The old woman, she’s near frozen. She….she was in the creek. I …..I hit her with my car,” at this confession, Johnny, nearly a grown man, broke down and sobbed.
“Oh, oh my,” Doc fretted, “I don’t think I have a pill to cure severe cold.”
When he said this, something lit up in Lindy Lu’s brain. It was something the old woman herself had said.
“Quick Johnny,” Lindy Lu said, “Ring the church bell. Get everyone out of bed and into the square. DO IT NOW.”
Johnny grabbed his hat and went sliding off as fast as he could go. Only moments later, the church bells began to ring. Johnny was around back of the bar, where the church used to be, pulling methodically on the old bell tower rope, which was fortunately still standing. With each pull, the bells rang loudly.
People stirred inside their houses. “What’s that noise?” a husband asked his wife, as they woke together, stirred from sleep. “Something’s happened,” she said, “that’s what. We better get the children awake and get out there.”
It was that way in every household. Parents shook their children and grumpy children donned long socks and boots and hats and gloves and followed their parents out into the cold and snow of Christmas Eve.
When everyone was assembled and milling about in the town square, whispering to one another “what is this about” and “what has happened?” Johnny hoisted Lindy Lu atop his car and blew the horn five times.
Lindy Lu took a deep breath and spoke very loudly. Her voice was like a clear melodic bell, people would say when they talked about it later.
“Sunville has changed,” Lindy Lu started out. “Sunville is no longer warm. It is cold. And we are cold. (a few people nodded slightly in agreement). Do you wish Sunville could once again be warm? Do you?” (Some people whispered yes, but not loudly.)
“If we could turn time back, would we? Who among you wants to feel warm again?”
Piola was at the back of the crowd sitting miserably, on the cold steps of the corner store. But Lindy’s words had her dreaming again of what she had once desired so long ago, when Sunville was warm. A slight smile crossed her face.
Suddenly, she leapt to her feet and screamed as only a wannabe rock star could scream, “I WANT THE SUN BACK IN SUNVILLE! I WANNA BE WARM!”
And after that, well, there were more cheers and screams for the way things were than anyone could ever have imagined. Johnny could be seen pushing his way through the crowd and taking up Piola in his arms and swinging her in circles.
Lindy Lu started in again. “We must act now. The old woman here has been in the creek and is frozen. She must be warmed. We need Sunville warm now to save her. She told me how it could be done.
“Bring all things cold and lifeless to the square immediately!! We shall burn them!”
With war cries of exuberance the townspeople raced away, looting their own homes and lives of all things that had brought them coldness and stolen warmth.
Some brought televisions. Some brought credit cards–piles of them. Some brought cars. Some brought electronics and video games. Almost everyone included his or her pair of expensive sunglasses in the pile.
In very short order, the residents of Sunville had erected a massive pile of cold and lifeless objects.
The old woman lay cradled in the arms of at least ten Sunville citizens as the match was struck.
The fire burned gloriously, furious and high, and as it did, the people sang Christmas carols, fed one another cookies and caught up on one another’s lives. They danced in the falling snow and were filled with peace and joy.
As Christmas day dawned upon Sunville, something glorious appeared; something Sunville had been without for a very long time, returned. The sun dawned again upon the village of Sunville.
The old woman, still cradled in the arms of Sunville, stirred as the sunlight touched her face. As she awakened, the first thing she said was “Merry Christmas, Sunville!”
Lindy Lu cradled her calico kitten, looked deeply into the kitten’s eyes and said, “Who are you, really?”
The kitten purred loudly then scooted off to chase a string.
Epilogue
If you could peek in on the goings on of Sunville now, you’d see that Johnny and Piola did get married after all and that Johnny is now the keeper of the shoeboxes. Johnny and Piola live in the old bank house and Buckaroo lives in the back room amongst the shoeboxes.
Piola and old Doc keep the townsfolk healthy together. While Doc mends broken arms and sews up cuts, Piola rubs sore backs, tells jokes with excellent punch lines and concocts healing potions derived from wild flowers and sunlight.
Lindy Lu is an animal doctor now. When the children of Sunville rescue homeless animals, they bring them back to Lindy and the warmth of Sunville, where they find love forever.
The old woman has passed along, as we all will one day. Lindy Lu presided over the service and it seemed every resident of Sunville was present. The animal population of Sunville and greater surrounding areas was well represented at the service, also.
After much laughter, singing and story telling, meowing, howling and scratching of fleas, the old woman was presented back to the Earth from which she was conceived. The following spring, she grew a great leafy tree above her in positive commentary on her life in Sunville.
And Sunville itself is now as Sunville once was
—a very fine place to call home.
The End