In this brief glimpse into the lives of the Nolan family on Christmas Eve are all of the same lessons contained in Dicken’s classic holiday tale. The realities which we live are largely of our own making. And, just as Jacob Marley forged each link of his own damnation in “A Christmas Carol”, we are all capable of undoing those links as well. As you read this, remember that about the tree-seller.
There was a cruel custom in the neighborhood. It was about the trees still unsold when midnight of Christmas Eve approached. There was a saying that if you waited until then, you wouldn’t have to buy a tree; that “they’d chuck ‘em at you.” This was literally true.
At midnight on the Eve of our dear Saviour's birth, the kids
gathered where there were unsold trees. The man threw each tree in turn,
starting with the biggest. Kids volunteered to stand up against the throwing.
If a boy didn’t fall down under the impact, the tree was his. If he fell, he
forfeited his chance at winning a tree. Only the roughest boys and some of the
young men elected to be hit by the big trees. The others waited shrewdly until
a tree came up that they could stand against. The littlest kids waited for the
tiny, foot-high trees and shrieked in delight when they won one.
On the Christmas Eve when Francie was ten and Neely nine,
mama consented to let them go down and have their first try for a tree. Francie
had picked out her tree earlier in the day. She had stood near it all afternoon
and evening praying that no one would buy it. To her joy it was still there at
midnight. It was the biggest tree in the neighborhood and its price was so high
that no one could afford to buy it. It was ten feet high. Its branches were
bound with new white rope and it came to a sure pure point at the top.
The man took this tree out first. Before Francie could speak
up, a neighborhood bully, a boy of eighteen known as Punky Perkins, stepped
forward and ordered the man to chuck the tree at him. The man hated the the way
Punky was so confident. He looked around and asked;
”Anybody else wanna take a chanct on it?”
Francie stepped forward. “Me, Mister.”
A spurt of derisive laughter came from the tree man. The
kids snickered. A few adults who had gathered to watch the fun, guffawed.
“Aw g’wan. You’re too little,” the tree man objected.
“Me and my brother — we’re not too little together.” She pulled Neely forward. The man looked at them — a thin girl of ten with starveling hollows in her cheeks but with the chin still baby-round. He looked at the little boy with his fair hair and round blue eyes - Neeley Nolan, all innocence and trust.
"Two ain't fair," yelped Punky.
"Shut your lousy trap," advised the man who held
all the power in that hour. “These here kids is got nerve. Stand back, the rest
of youse. These kids is goin’ to have a show at this tree.”
The others made a wavering lane. Francie and Neeley stood at
one end of it and the big man with the big tree at the other. It was a human
funnel with Francie and her brother making the small end of it. The man flexed
his great arms to throw the great tree. He noticed how tiny the children looked
at the end of the short lane. For the split part of a moment, the tree thrower
went through a kind of Gethsemane.
“Oh, Jesus Christ,” his soul agonized, “why don’t I just
give ‘em the tree, say Merry Christmas and let ‘em go. What’s the tree to me? I
can’t sell it no more this year and it won’t keep till next year." The
kids watched him solemnly as he stood there in his moment of thought. "But
then," he rationalized, if I did that, all the others would expect to get
'em handed to 'em. And next year nobody a-tall would buy a tree off of me.
They’d all wait to get ‘em handed to ‘em on a silver plate. I ain’t a big
enough man to give this tree away for nothin’. No, I ain't big enough. I ain't
big enough to do a thing like that. I gotta think of myself and my own
kids." He finally came to his conclusion. "Oh, what the hell! Them
two kids is gotta live is this world. They got to get used to it. They got to
learn to give and take punishment. And by Jesus, it ain’t give but take, take,
take all the time in this God-damned world.” As he threw the tree with all his
strength, his heart wailed out, “It’s a God-damned, rotten, lousy world!”
Francie saw the tree leave his hands. There was a split bit
of being when time and space had no meaning. The whole world stood dark and
still as something dark and monstrous came through the air. The tree came
towards her blotting out all memory of her having lived. There was nothing –
nothing but pungent darkness and something that grew and grew as it rushed at
her. She staggered as the tree hit them. Neeley went down to his knees but she
pulled him up fiercely before he could go down. There was a mighty swishing
sound as the tree settled. Everything was dark, green and prickly. Then she
felt a sharp pain at the side of her head where the trunk of the tree had hit
her. She felt Neeley trembling.
When some of the older boys pulled the tree away, they found
Francie and her brother standing upright, hand in hand. Blood was coming from
scratches on Neeley’s face. He looked more like a baby than ever with his
bewildered blue eyes and the fairness of his skin made more noticeable because
of the clear red blood. But they were smiling. Had they not won the biggest
tree in the neighborhood? Some of the boys hollered “Hooray!” A few adults
clapped. The tree man eulogized them by screaming;
“And now get the hell out of here with your tree, you lousy
bastards.”
Francie had heard swearing since she had heard words.
Obscenity and profanity had no meaning as such among those people. They were
emotional expressions of inarticulate people with small vocabularies; they made
a kind of dialect. The phrases could mean many things according to the
expression and tone used in saying them. So now, when Francie heard themselves
called lousy bastards, she smiled tremulously at the kind man. She knew that he
was really saying, Goodbye – God bless you.”
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