Except that after gaining a lot of speed, the toboggan had wandered off course and struck one of the Civil War cannons. The score was two broken arms, a broken wrist, a total of seven broken ribs, a concussion, plus contusions far too numerous to count. Only the boy riding on the shoulders of the tail-ender had escaped completely unscathed, When the toboggan hit the cannon, this
fortunate soul flew over it and landed headfirst in a snowbank.
Cleaning up the human wreckage hadn’t been fun, and Louis had scored all of the boys liberally with his tongue as he stitched and bandaged and stared into pupils, but telling Rachel about it later, he had again laughed until he cried. Rachel had looked at him strangely, not understanding what was so funny, and Louis couldn’t tell her that it had been a stupid accident, and people had been hurt, but they would all walk away from it. His laughter was partly relief, but it was partly triumph too—won one today, Louis.
The cases of bronchitis in his own family began to clear up around the time that Ellie’s school broke for the holidays on December 16, and the four of them settled down to spend a happy and old-fashioned country Christmas. The house in North Ludlow, which had seemed so strange on that day in August when they pulled into the driveway (strange and even hostile, what with Effie cutting herself out back and Gage getting stung by a bee at almost the same time), had never seemed more like home.
After the kids were finally asleep on Christmas Eve, Louis and Rachel stole downstairs from the attic like thieves, their arms full of brightly colored boxes—a set of Matchbox racers for Gage, who had recently discovered the joys of toy cars, Barbie and Ken dolls for Ellie, a Turn ‘n’ Go, an oversized trike, doll clothes, a play oven with a light bulb inside, other stuff.
The two of them sat side by side in the glow of lights from the tree, fussing the stuff together, Rachel in a pair of silk lounging pajamas, Louis in his robe. He could not remember a more pleasant evening. There was a fire in the fireplace, and every now and then one or the other of them would rise and throw in another chunk of split birch.
Winston Churchill brushed by Louis once, and he pushed the cat away with an almost absent feeling of distaste—that smell. Later he saw Church try to settle down next to Rachel’s leg, and Rachel
also gave it a push and an impatient “Scat!” A moment later Louis saw his wife rubbing her palm on one silk-clad thigh, the way you sometimes do when you feel you might have touched something nasty or germy. He didn’t think Rachel was even aware she was doing it.
Church ambled over to the brick hearth and collapsed in front of the fire gracelessly. The cat had no grace at all now, it seemed; it had lost it all on that night Louis rarely allowed himself to think about. And Church had lost something else as well. Louis had been aware of it, but it had taken him a full month to pinpoint it exactly.
The cat never purred anymore, and it used to have one of the loudest motors going, particularly when Church was sleeping.
There had been nights when Louis had had to get up and close Ellie’s door so he could get to sleep himself.
Now the cat slept like a stone. Like the dead.
No, he reminded himself, there was one exception. The night he had awakened on the hide-a-bed with Church curled up on his chest like a stinking blanket . . . Church had been purring that night. It had been making some sound, anyway.
But as Jud Crandall had known—or guessed—it had not been all bad. Louis found a broken window down-cellar behind the furnace, and when the glazier fixed it, he had saved them yea bucks in wasted heating oil. For calling his attention to the broken pane, which he might not have discovered for weeks— months, maybe—he supposed he even owed Church a vote of thanks.
Ellie no longer wanted Church to sleep with her, that was true, but sometimes when she was watching TV, she would let the cat hop up on her lap and go to sleep. But just as often, he thought, hunting through the bag of plastic widgets that were supposed to hold Ellie’s Bat-Cycle together, she would push him down after a few minutes, saying, “Go on, Church, you stink.” She fed him regularly
and with love, and even Gage was not above giving old Church an occasional tail tug . . . more in the spirit of friendliness than in one of meanness, Louis was convinced; he was like a tiny monk yanking a furry bell rope. At these times Church would crawl lackadaisically under one of the radiators where Gage couldn’t get him.
We might have noticed more differences with a dog, Louis thought, but cats are such goddam independent animals anyway.
Independent and odd. Fey even. It didn’t surprise him that the old Egyptian queens and pharaohs had wanted their cats mummified and popped into their triangular tombs with them in order to serve as spirit guides in the next world. Cats were weird.
“How you doing with that Bat-Cycle, Chief?”
He held out the finished product. “Ta-dat”
Rachel pointed at the bag, which still had three or four plastic widgets in it. “What are those?”
“Spares,” Louis said, smiling guiltily.
“You better hope they’re spares. The kid will break her rotten little neck.”
“That comes later,” Louis said maliciously. “When she’s twelve and showing off on her new skateboard.”
She groaned. “Come on, Doc, have a heart!”
Louis stood up, put his hands on the small of his back, and twisted his torso. His spine crackled. “That’s all the toys.”
“And they’re all together. Remember last year?” She giggled and Louis smiled. Last year seemingly everything they’d gotten had to be assembled, and they’d been up until almost four o’clock Christmas morning, both of them finishing grouchy and out of
sorts. And by midafternoon of Christmas, Ellie had decided the boxes were more fun than the toys.
“Gross-OUT!” Louis said, imitating Ellie.
“Well, come on to bed,” Rachel said, “and I’ll give you a present early.”
“Woman,” Louis said, drawing himself up to his full height, “that is mine by right.”
“Don’t you wish,” she said and laughed through her hands. In that moment she looked amazingly like Ellie . . . and like Gage.
“Just a minute,” he said. “There’s one other thing I gotta do.” He hurried into the front hail closet and brought back one of his boots.
He removed the fire screen from in front of the dying fire.
“Louis, what are you—”
“You’ll see.”
On the left side of the hearth the fire was out and there was a thick bed of fluffy gray ashes. Louis stamped the boot into them, leaving a deep track. Then he tromped the boot down on the outer bricks, using it like a big rubber stamp.
“There,” he said, after he had put the boot away in the closet again.
“You like?”
Rachel was giggling again. “Louis, Ellie’s going to go nuts.”
During the last two weeks of school, Ellie had picked up a disquieting rumor around kindergarten, to wit, that Santa Claus was really parents. This idea had been reinforced by a rather skinny Santa at the Bangor Mall, whom Ellie had glimpsed in the Deering Ice Cream Parlor a few days ago. Santa had been sitting on a counter stool, his beard pulled to one side so he could eat a cheeseburger. This had troubled Ellie mightily (it seemed to be the cheeseburger, somehow, even more than the false beard), in spite
of Rachel’s assurances that the department store and Salvation Army Santas were really “helpers,” sent out by the real Santa, who was far too busy completing inventory and reading children’s last-minute letters up north to be boogying around the world on public relations jaunts.
Louis replaced the fire screen carefully. Now there were two clear boot tracks in their fireplace, one in the ashes and one on the hearth. They both pointed toward the Christmas tree, as if Santa had hit bottom on one foot and immediately stepped out to leave the goodies assigned to the Creed household. The illusion was perfect unless you happened to notice that they were both left feet. . . and Louis doubted if Ellie was that analytical.
“Louis Creed, I love you,” Rachel said and kissed him.
“You married a winner, baby,” Louis said, smiling sincerely.
“Stick with me and I’ll make you a star.”
They started for the stairs. He pointed at the card table Ellie had set up in front of the TV. There were oatmeal cookies and two Ring-Dings on it. Also a can of Micheloeb. FOR YOU, SANNA, the note said in Ellie’s large, sticklike printing. “You want a cookie or a Ring-Ding?”