A Dog for Christmas Read online

  Harvey laid the rope carefully along the surface of the sled. He looked at Henry.

  “Lie down or sit?”

  Henry eyed the long descent, pursed his lips with the decision.

  “Better lie down.”

  So Harvey flung himself on the sled, with Henry coming down hard on top of him.

  “Don’t hit the fence at the bottom,” he yelled in Harvey’s ear as the sled began a slow coast in the sugary snow. Speed picked up rapidly. The wind brushed their faces with cold. Yelling their exhilaration, they reached up to smooth their straw hats down on their heads, but it did no good. Halfway down the long slope, the wind grabbed the hats and flung them away, to skitter across the snow, rolling like a plate.

  Then there was only the heart-stopping speed, the cold rush of air that brought tears to their eyes, making a white blur of everything. The sled’s runners made no sound; their ears filled with air and their own shouts.

  Harvey leaned on the right side of the wooden rudder, desperately trying to avoid the oncoming fence. They escaped by inches, rolling off the sled at the last instant, sprawled in the snow, their bodies convulsed in helpless giggles.

  “Hu-uh!” Henry finished.

  “Whoo-eee!” Harvey echoed, pounding the snow with his bare fists.

  They leaped to their feet, stuck one cold reddened hand into one pocket of their trousers, bent over and ran back up the hill, their noses running, their faces wet with spitting snow.

  “Hey!” Harvey pointed.

  Together, they watched a huge, lolloping dog stop to inspect a straw hat, look in their direction before grabbing the brim in his teeth, lifting his head with the treasure he found, and running across the slope.

  They took off after him, dropped the rope, and the sled careened haphazardly down the hill, to rest against a fence post.

  “Dog! Dog! Stop!”

  They ran, shouted, slipped and slid to their knees, jumped up, and resumed the chase. The huge dog stopped, turned, eyed them, but kept the straw hat clutched in his mouth. Dipping his head, he wheeled away with the odd gallop of a big, ungainly dog.

  Out of breath, their legs shaking with fatigue, the boys stopped. They looked at each other.

  “Whose dog?” they both said at once.

  They both shrugged their shoulders and resumed their running. The dog stopped. He dropped the hat, his mouth wide, his tongue lolling, and watched the boys approach. His tail began to wag like a flag waving. As they neared, he bent his front legs, leaped to the side, took up the hat, and bounded away, looking back over his shoulder to taunt them.

  They were going farther and farther away from their farm. Woods rose up in front of them, a tangle of briars and tall weeds growing around the trunks of huge trees, their leaves gone, with branches spread to the sky like a giant pattern.

  The boys stopped. The only sound was their ragged breathing. The dog stopped, the hat in his mouth. He wagged his long, bushy tail in surrender, sat down and dropped the hat, his mouth spread like a welcoming smile.

  Henry extended a hand, wiggling his fingers.

  “Here, dog. Here, boy. Be nice and give us our hat.”

  The dog obeyed.

  Harvey snatched up the hat. They sighed with relief, not wanting to return to their new parents with the announcement of a lost straw hat. As it was, the brim was torn, tattered by the dog’s teeth. They examined it, shook their heads.

  “Dog, now look what you did. Schem dich.”

  The dog was certainly not ashamed. He bounced around on all fours, whining and begging for attention. The boys touched the top of his head, then boldly ran their hands along his back, where the long black hair parted in the middle, falling down on either side in a luxurious flow, like a girl’s hair before her mam wet it and rolled it back.

  The dog had small brown eyes, set far apart in his head, a huge, grinning black mouth with a gigantic pink tongue that flapped when he smiled. His skin was loose, his feet were huge. Long hairs grew all along his legs to his feet. There was no collar, no sign of anyone owning this dog.

  They put their arms around his neck and squeezed. He slobbered his pink tongue all over their faces. They closed their eyes and laughed.

  They rolled in the snow, playing with this soft, kindhearted animal. They chased each other in circles, till they all piled in a big heap, took long breaths, and laughed some more.

  Together, they retrieved the sled, rode down the hill, over and over, the dog lolloping by their side, then on the sled with one of them.

  When the sun cast a reddish glow on the hillside and the air around them turned pink, they knew they’d overstayed. Shamefaced, their cheeks red with cold, their hats smashed on their heads, hiding their eyebrows, they walked slowly into the forebay, the sled resting by the side of the barn, the dog keeping watch, sitting upright and serious.

  The milking had already started, the kerosene lantern casting a yellow glow above the backs of the black-and-white Holsteins, the air heavy with their breath, silage, and warm milk.

  Ephraim put away his milking stool, dumped his bucket of frothy milk into the strainer setting on a galvanized milk can, and looked at them. The shamed faces and torn straw hat softened his heart. The dog softened it ever more.

  He grinned his slow, easy grin, tickled the dog’s head with his large round fingers, and said it looked as if they’d found a faithful buddy, now hadn’t they?

  Chapter Three

  Christmas morning arrived.

  The boys were awakened by the sound of feet dashing past the door of their room, suppressed shrieks, and small tittering sounds.

  Henry grabbed Harvey’s arm beneath the covers, hissed a dry-throated question, his heart pounding.

  “You think the house is on fire?”

  Rapid breathing was his only answer.

  Four eyes stared wide-eyed at the ceiling. Four hands clutched the quilts as they trembled beneath them. What could have caused the girls to run that way?

  They stayed still, their ears strained to hear any sounds that would help them understand what was going on.

  More shrieks.

  They heard Ephraim and Rachel’s voices, although no one seemed especially alarmed. They sniffed. No smoke, so far.

  Then they heard their names being called.

  “Ya,” they answered as one voice.

  “Come on down. It’s Christmas morning!”

  Bewildered, they dressed, tucking wrinkled shirttails into freshly washed trousers, snapping suspenders in place as they went downstairs.

  They had never experienced Christmas morning. Too poor to buy or make Christmas gifts, the Rueben Esh family did without presents, although they always received a peppermint stick or an orange from Grandfather Beiler. Never both.

  Their eyes widened to see the three girls, Malinda, Katie, and Anna sitting on the floor, brown paper wrappings strewn like fluttering birds around them. Their faces were shining, their eyes bright. Between them was a tiny porcelain tea set, white with delicate purple violets etched on the little plates and cups. The teapot had a little spout and a lid you could take off and put back on. This was Katie’s Christmas gift.

  Anna was holding a rag doll in her arms, her face bent over the doll’s white, upturned face. Black eyes and eyelashes were sewn on the face, brown yarn was stitched into the head and braided into two stiff braids on either side. The nose and mouth were embroidered in red.

  “Her name is Lucy. Lucy Miriam Wenger,” she announced.

  The twins nodded solemnly, their dark eyes showing their respect and admiration to Lucy Miriam Wenger. She was a pretty rag doll.

  Malinda cradled a pale blue brush and comb set on her lap. There were scrolls of gold all over the back of the brush and across the comb. It was nestled in a silk-lined box that she could open and close with a very small gold latch. For once, she was quiet, even reverent, admiring her gift.

  Anna told them these gifts were from the Grischt Kindly. During the night, the Grisht Kindly brought gifts of kindness to children.

  He had brought a gift for the boys too.

  Rachel pushed them gently to the sofa, where they sat waiting till she placed a box on their laps. Each box was about as big as a shoebox, wrapped in brown paper packaging.

  “Go ahead. Open it.”

  They had never opened a package, so they weren’t sure how. Their fingers scraped across the smooth top, searching for a splice or dent in the paper.

  Ephraim smiled.

  “Just rip it off,” Malinda said, bossy.

  So they did.

  The box was red, white, and black, with the words Canadian Flyer written sideways across it. When they saw the picture of black figure skates, their heads turned toward each other and they both said the exact same thing: “Skates!”

  “Did you ever own a pair?” Ephraim asked.

  “Oh no. Never. We could just slide on the ice with our boots. But we watched Danny and Bennie, already.”

  “Now you can learn to skate. Malinda will show you how it’s done.”

  “What do you say, boys?” Rachel asked, not unkindly.

  “Denke. Denke.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  And then because they were so shy, and receiving this kind of gift was almost more than they could comprehend, their faces turned pink, and they blinked rapidly. This kindness made them uncomfortable, as if the family would expect something in return, and they had nothing. Perhaps in the end, they would fail, horribly, at some major task, something that was expected of them that they could not fulfill. But for now, they would accept the skates and try not to let the thought bother them.

  Breakfast was pancakes and maple syrup, eggs and fresh ponhaus, stewed saltine crackers in hot milk, and grape juice. It was a breakfast fit for a king, Ephraim said, smiling at Rachel, who sipped her tea and waved a hand to banish the flowery words of praise before she was caught with a case of hochmut.

  Finally, Henry had the nerve to ask if the dog was still here. Ephraim had done the morning chores by himself, only Rachel helping with the milking, as a treat for Christmas Day.

  “Yep, he’s still here. I put the wooden doghouse in the corner of the forebay, filled it with clean straw for him. He’ll have plenty of things to eat with the leftovers Mama gives him, a dish of milk here and there. If I have to, I’ll get a bag of Purina dog food from the mill, although that would be an extra expense, of course. We can’t let the dog go hungry.”

  His face turned serious. “Now I hope you realize, boys, that someone could show up and claim the dog. This is not a common breed, so don’t get too attached to him.”

  They shook their heads no, already sidling toward the kesslehaus, their faces attentive to what he was saying. They couldn’t get their outerwear on fast enough, stomping around the kesslehaus floor to pull the rubber boots up over their black leather shoes.

  And there he was. The beautiful, magnificent dog with the long, black hairs on his tail that waved back and forth like a flag of welcome, the smiling black face with the funny brown eyes shaped like a triangle.

  “There you are, dog!” shouted Henry. Harvey plowed straight into the big dog with his arms wide open, and closed them somewhere around the region of his neck.

  “Dog, dog!” he shouted, squeezing his eyes shut as the enormous pink tongue sloshed all over his face.

  They chased each other around the forebay, until the horses began to bang their hooves against the sides of their stalls. They stopped, looked at the frightened animals, and took the dog out in the gray, white morning that hid the sun away from them.

  They played all morning. They hitched the dog to the wooden sled with a harness made of bits and pieces of leather and rope they found on the wooden floor of the closet where the driving horses’ harnesses hung.

  Harvey sat on the sled while Henry led the dog by the makeshift bridle. He ran in circles, trying to see what was behind him, dumping Harvey into the low ditch by the barnyard fence, The dog became tangled in the harness, overturning the sled, and both boys lay on their stomachs, laughing so hard they couldn’t get their breath.

  “Whew-ee!” Harvey said, letting out all that pent-up air. Henry held his sides. He had to, the way they hurt from laughing.

  “He needs a name. We can’t keep calling him dog,” Henry squeaked, wiping his eyes.

  “Puppy?”

  “Not Puppy. A dog as big as this?”

  “Abraham Lee’s have a Puppy.”

  “That little short haired one?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, that’s different.”

  Harvey thought awhile.

  “What about Bear?”

  “Naw. Not Bear. He’s way too friendly,” Henry snorted.

  “I know. Lucky! We’re lucky he found us!” Harvey shouted.

  “Yeah, Lucky!” Henry shouted, agreement clinched.

  So Lucky he was, both in name and adoration.

  Christmas Day contained so much joy the twins felt as if they might burst with all of it. For one thing, there were all the cookies, set on the tabletop all day, free, if you wanted one, anytime of the day, even after lunch and before supper.

  There was homemade potato candy, made with mashed potatoes and peanut butter, soft little whorls of it spread on the white dough and rolled up like a cinnamon roll. There was some chocolate candy, but only a small amount in a petite glass dish. No more than two, Rachel said. She had to save the rest for tomorrow, which was second Christmas, another day set aside for celebrating that was not as holy as the real Christmas Day. That was when the large amount of aunts and uncles and grandparents and children would arrive.

  Henry told Harvey he was not looking forward to it.

  Then, after all that ham for supper, they were allowed to pop popcorn on the wood range, and roast chestnuts in the oven.

  Malinda said every raw chestnut had a white worm in it, but after it was roasted, the worm turned to powder and became part of the chestnut. You could never eat a raw chestnut or you’d get the worms and die.

  Harvey’s eyes became big and round. He looked at the tray of roasted chestnuts and rolled one eye toward Henry.

  “I am not going to eat them,” he whispered.

  “They’re roasted,” Henry answered.

  Ephraim cracked so many chestnuts in his mouth, chewed so loud, that Harvey decided the only safe way to spend the evening was to stick with salted popcorn.

  Rachel read the story of Jesus’ birth from the Bible. The boys had heard it before, of course, with their sad-eyed father gathering his many children about him on Christmas Day and introducing their fledgling souls to the milk of Christianity, which was the Christ Child’s birth.

  Rachel was a good storyteller.

  She said the Baby Jesus was a good baby to be born in the stable with the cows and donkeys and sheep, and He lay quietly in His manger bed filled with straw.

  Henry had never thought of that. He elbowed Harvey’s ribs and asked what born meant. Harvey didn’t know, so he shook his head, told him to be quiet.

  They drank cold cider. Ephraim heated his in a saucepan and drank it like coffee.

  It was warm and bright in the farmhouse, as the twins sat listening to Rachel’s voice rising and falling. They imagined the shepherds in the field, the host of heavenly angels singing to them of Jesus’ birth. But as the hour became late, their eyes grew heavy, and they thought only of the dog, Lucky.

  The wonderful Christmas Day came to a close when they trudged wearily up the stairs, shed their clothes, and climbed beneath the covers with soft sighs of happiness and contentment. They fell asleep without remembering to say their “Müde Binnich.”

  Second Christmas arrived a bit differently, having to get out of bed in their frigid, upstairs bedroom, shivering into pants and shirts, then straight to the kesslehaus to don their outerwear.

  They lifted their faces to the snow that fell sideways, blown in by a steady moaning wind that whipped the bare, black branches in the moonless early morning. They pressed their tattered straw hats on their heads and raced for the warm, steamy barn, closing the cast iron latch firmly behind them.

  You’d think Malinda would be friendly, having received that gift on Christmas Day, but she glared at the boys from her crouch on the wooden milking stool, telling them to walk quietly, or they’d scare the cow she was milking, and she’d turn over the bucket of milk if she kicked.

  So they said nothing, just went quietly to greet Lucky in the forebay, who wiggled and bounded and jumped all over them, so glad to see his beloved little friends.

  They fed the heifers and the horses, by the dim flickering light of the kerosene lantern. Harvey carefully placed two long, yellow ears of corn in the small section of the wooden trough that was worn smooth by the heavy leather halter and the chain attached to each horse. Henry dumped their portion of smooth, slippery oat kernels, and they stood side by side, watching the massive noses in the trough, crunching and chewing.

  A horse had an expert way of eating the hard, yellow kernels of corn off a cob. They never ate the cob, just stripped the corn off with their long, yellow teeth and chewed with a steady, popping sound. Some corn fell out of the sides of their mouth, but they lipped it up after the cob was bare.

  It was their job to gather up the cobs after the horses were finished and carry them to the tool shed. Ephraim stuck them upright into a bucket that contained a few inches of kerosene, which the cobs would soak up like a sponge. That was what Rachel used to start a fire in the cookstove every morning.

  Nothing went to waste on the farm in those days. The twins knew to sweep up every bit of hay to make sure the horses ate all of it. If they spilled oats out of the scoop, they were expected to sweep it up and give it to the horses. Every bit of manure was loaded on the spreader with pitchforks, drawn to the fields with sturdy Belgians, and spread on the land for fertilizer. The gardens and flower beds were also covered with a heavy layer in the fall, where it would decompose, enriching the fertile soil in spring.

  Breakfast was oatmeal and toast with apple butter, eaten quickly and quietly. Ephraim knelt by his chair and everyone else followed suit, kneeling by their own bench or chair, as he said the German morning prayer from the Gebet Buch. This morning, even his words were spoken faster than usual, with respect to his wife’s red face and snapping eyes.