Here is another story in Library Lady’s Christmas Stories series.
THE WHIZZER
By Mary Hartwell Catherwood
Edited by Jane Mouttet
That was a cold evening. The snow was just as dry as flour and had been beaten down till the road looked slick as a ribbon far up and far down and squeaked every step. I pulled Mrar on our sled. All the boys went home by the crick to skate, but I was afraid Mrar would get cold; she’s such a little thing. I like to play with the girls if the boys laugh, for some big ones might push Mrar down and hurt her. She misses her mother, so I babied her more than I used to.
We’re almost out of sight of the schoolhouse and where the road elbows by the Widow Briggs’s place when something passed us like a whiz! I’d been pulling along with the sled rope over my arm and my hands in my pockets, and I didn’t hear a team or anything, but it made me shy off the side of the road and pretty near upset Mrar. School lets out at four o’clock, and dusk comes soon after that, but it was woolly gray yet, so you could see plain except in the fence corners, and the thing that passed us was a man riding on nothing but one big wheel.
“O, see there!” says Mrar, scared. I felt glad on her account that we were close to Widow Briggs’s place. It would be easy to hustle her over Briggs’s fence, but the thing runs so still and fast that it might take fences as well as a straight road.
The man turned round after he passed us and came rearing back, away up on that wheel, and I stood as close before the sled as I could. He sat high up in the air and wiggled his feet on each side of the wheel, and I never saw a camel or elephant or any kind of wild thing at a show that made me feel so funny. But just when I thought he would cut through us, he turned short and stopped. He had on an overcoat to his ears, a fur cap down to his nose, hairy gloves on, and a little satchel strapped over his shoulder, and I saw a tiny wheel behind the big one that balanced him up. He wasn’t sitting on the tire either, but on a saddle place, and the big wheel had lots of silver spokes crossing back and forth.
“Whose children are you?” says the man.
“Nobody’s,” says I.
“But who owns and switches you?” says he.
“The schoolmaster switches me,” says I, “but we ain’t owned since mother died.”
Mrar began to cry.
“We live at uncle Mozy’s,” says she. “They don’t want to give us away.”
The man laughed and said, “Are you sure?” But I hated to have her scared, so I told her the wheel couldn’t hurt her or him.
“I’ve seen the cars many a time,” I say, “and I’ve seen balloons and read in the paper about things that went on three wheels, but this”—
“It’s a bicycle,” says he. “I’m a wheel-man.”
“That’s what I thought,” says I.
Then he wanted to know our names.
“Mine’s Steele Pedicord,” I said, “and this is my little sister Mrar.”
His eyes looked sharp at us, and he said: “Your mother died about six weeks ago?”
“Yes, sir,” says I.
“Tomorrow won’t be a very nice Christmas for you,” says he.
“No, sir,” says I, digging my heel in the snow, for he had no business to talk that way and make Mrar feel bad when I had a little wagon all whittled out in my pocket to give her, and she cried most every night, anyhow, until Aunt Ibby threatened to switch her if she waked the family anymore. I slept with the boys, but when I heard Mrar sniffling in the big bed, a good many nights I slipped out and sat by her and whispered stories to take her attention as long as my jaws worked limber; but when they chattered too much with the cold, I’d lay down on the cover, with my arm across her till she went to sleep. I like Mrar.
“They said we might go up to cousin Andy Sanders’s to stay over,” says I. “We don’t have to be at Uncle Moze’s for Christmas.”
“That’s some consolation, is it?” says he.
I would not tell him what the relations did, but I only liked relations in our place. At Aunt Ibby and Uncle Moze’s, the children fight like cats. And they always act poorly at Christmas and make fun of hanging your stocking or setting your plate, for you’d only get ashes or corn cobs. Aunt Ibby keeps her sleeves rolled up so she can slap real handy, and Uncle Moze has yellow streaks in his eyes, shivers over the stove, and keeps everybody else back. They have no children at cousin Andy Sanders’ house and don’t want them. You can hardly come out of the snow, and all the best things on the table will make you sick. If there is a piece in the paper that is hard to read, and ugly as it can be, they will make you sit still and read it; and if you get done too quick, they will say you skipped, and you have to read it out loud while they find fault. I knew cousin Andy Sanders never had any candy or taffy for Christmas. Still, Mrar and I could be peaceable there, for they don’t push her around so bad.
“Well, hand me your rope,” says the man, “and I’ll give you a ride.”
I liked that notion, so I handed him the rope. He waited until I got on the sled in front of Mrar.
“That’s Widow Briggs’s homestead, isn’t it?” he said just before he started.
I told him it was and asked if he ever lived down our way. He laughed and said he knew something about every place, then set the wheel a-going. Mrar held tight to me, and I braced my heels against the front round of the sled. The fence corners went faster and faster, and the wind whistled through our ears while you could not see one dry blade in the fodder shocks move.
“Ain’t he a Whizzer?” says I to Mrar.
We turned another jog, and the spokes in the wheel looked all smeared together. It did beat horse racing. I got excited and hollered for him to “Go it, old Whizzer!”
He went it till we were past cousin Andy Sanders’ before I knew the place was close.
“Cast loose, now, Mister, we’re much obliged,” says I.
But he kept right on as if he had never heard me. So I yelled louder and told him we were there, and he turned his head for a minute and laughed.
“Please let go, Mister,” I say. “That’s cousin Andy Sanders’s away back there. We’re obliged, but we’ll have to go back.”
The Whizzer never let on. He whizzed ahead as fast as ever. I thought it was a mean trick for him to play on Mrar and wished I could trip up his wheel. It would be dark long before I got her back to cousin Andy Sanders’, and the Whizzer whizzed ahead like he was running off with us.
I had a notion to cut the rope, but there was no telling when I’d get another, and it was new. I decided to do it, though, when we came by our old place, but the Whizzer turned around and jumped off the road.
I picked up the end of my rope and shook my head because I was mad.
“Why didn’t you let go?” says I.
“Haven’t I brought you home?” he says.
I looked at the shut-up house and felt worse than when I thought he was running off with us.
“O Steeley,” says Mrar, “let’s go in and stay. I want to come home so bad!”
“Now you see what you done!” says I to the Whizzer. He was a grown man, and I’s only ten years old, but he ought to know better than to make Mrar cry till the tears run down her chin.
I’d been to look at the house myself but never said a word to her about it. Once at noon, I slipped by the cornfields roundabout, sat on the fence, and thought about Mother till I could hardly stand it. The house looked more lonesome than an old cabin about to fall because an old cabin about to fall had forgotten its folks. Still, all our things were locked up here, except what Aunt Ibby and cousin Andy Sanders had carried off. Our sale was to be in January. The snow was knee-deep in the yard and drifted even on the porch, but tracks showed where Aunt Ibby walked when she got out a load of provisions and bedclothes. She had the front door key and took even the blue-and-white coverlid with birds wove in, which I heard mother say was to be Mrar’s and the canned fruit for fear it would freeze when our cellar is warmer than their stove. When she didn’t know I was near, she told Uncle Mozy that Mrar and I would have ten times as much property as her children and that she ought to be paid more to keep us. She might have had our money, for all I cared, but I did not know how to stand her robbing things out of Mother’s house and wished the sale would come quickly and scatter them all.
The Whizzer leaned his chin on his breast and looked pitiful out of his eyes at Mrar, for it seemed like the tears had a notion of freezing on her face, only she kept them running down too fast, and he says:
“Let’s go into the house.”
“Oh, do, Steeley!” says Mrar, hugging my knee, for I was alongside the sled. “And I’ll cook all your dinners. And we’ll hang up our Christmas stockings every Sunday,” says she, “and Aunt Ibby’s boys won’t dare to take away my lead pencil mother give me, and if you see them coming here, you’ll set Bounce on them.”
“Mrar,” says I, “we will go in and make a fire and act like Mother’s just gone out to a neighbor’s.”
Then she began to laugh, and one of her tears stuck to an in-spot that comes and goes in her face like it was dented with your finger.
“But now you mind,” I said, “if Aunt Ibby or Uncle Mozy comes to whip us for this, you tell them I put you up to it and made you go along with me.”
Mrar looked scared.
“And you tell them,” says the Whizzer, lifting his wheel across the snow toward the gate, “that I put you both up to it and made you go along with me.”
I pulled Mrar over the drifts and went to the side door.
“Aunt Ibby’s got the big key,” I said, “and I’ll have to raise a window while you wait here.”
The windows were all locked down, but we went round and round till the one in the shed gave way, and I crawled through and broke the latch of the kitchen door. I breathed so fast that my heart thumped when I unlocked the side door and let the Whizzer and Mrar into the sitting room. I noticed then he’d hung his wheel on a tree limb, for it glittered.
“Bounce ain’t here to jump on us, is he, Mrar?” says I.
“No, and he hates to stay at cousin Andy Sanders’ house,” says she.
Bounce would come to the schoolhouse and cry until I asked the master, “Please, may I go out?” Then Bounce and I would have a talk behind the schoolhouse, and I’d tell him I could not help it. He’d say that he might live at Aunt Ibby’s with us if he could only keep from chewing up their miserable yellow dogs, and we’d both feel better.
But I did miss him that minute I opened the door, when here he comes like a house a-fire and lit down on the floor panting and pounding his tail and laughing, and then he jumped up and pawed us in the dark till Mrar had to hold him round the neck to keep him still while I got a light. He must have smelled our tracks when we whizzed past cousin Andy Sanders’ house.
I fell to the pantry and put my hand in the candle box, but Aunt Ibby never left one. I knew there was a piece in a candlestick in the shed cupboard, though. It burnt half out the night Mother died. So I got it, and the Whizzer scraped a match and lit the wick. The Whizzer and me set to, then, and brought in loads from the woodhouse. We built a fire that went up into the chimney, and Mrar took the broom and swept all the dust into it. Bounce laid on the carpet licked at us and whacked his tail till we were in a broad laugh.
The fire got me warmer than I’d been since mother died. The Whizzer took out a thick gold watch, wound our clock, and set it. Then he says:
“Let’s go over the house.”
And we did. I carried the candle, and Mrar and the dog went along.
The Whizzer looked in all the upstairs closets and opened the bureau drawers. I stayed outside the parlor, and Mrar and Bounce did, too. I did not want to think of the sheet stretched in the corner, for it was not like Mother under the sheet. But her picture hung up in there, and so did Father’s.
The Whizzer stayed in with the candle for a good while. I heard him going from one thing to another and wondered what he was about. I’d rather have gone to the graveyard, though, and sat on the fence watching Mother’s and Father’s graves and hearing the dry sumac bushes scrape together than step into the parlor. Father died a year before Mother, but I didn’t like him the same as I did her.
Then we looked down in the cellar, and I thought I ought to tell the Whizzer about the provisions and bedclothes being taken out of the house, or he’d suppose mother never kept us nice. He smiled under his cap, and I found one jar of candied honey behind some barrels where Aunt Ibby overlooked it. We carried that up to the sitting room. Mrar likes candied honey better than anything.
As we entered the sitting room, I heard somebody pound on the front door.
“They’re after us!” says Mrar.
“Let me see to it,” says the Whizzer.
So he stepped around the house, came back with his wheel on his arm, and held the door open. The snow made the outdoors light, and we saw a little fellow lead a horse and buggy through the yard into the barn lot. He came right in, carrying a couple of baskets.
“All right, Sam,” says the Whizzer. “Put your horse in the stable, and then build a fire in the kitchen stove.”
The man he called Sam stopped to warm himself at our hearth, and I had never seen such a looking creature before. He had a cap with a button on top of his head, and his hair was braided in a long tail behind. He laughed, and his eyes glittered, and they sloped up like a ladder set against the house. He was just as yellow as brass and wore circular cloth with oversized sleeves, but the rest looked like other folks. Mrar went back into the corner, and I noticed the Whizzer set his wheel against the wall, and I wondered if he’d left it out for a sign so the little yellow man would know where to stop.
The yellow man went out to his horse, and the Whizzer took off his cap, gloves, and coat and hung them in the sitting-room closet. He looked nice. His eyes snapped, and his hair was cut off close, except for a brush right along the middle of his head. We set our chairs up to the fire, and I watched and watched him.
“If you and that fellow travel together,” I said, “what makes him go in a buggy and you on a wheel?”
“Oh, I like the bicycle,” says he. “I’ve run thousands of miles on it. I sent Sam out from San Francisco by the railroad, but I came through on the wheel. It took me three months.”
I thought he was funny, but I liked him, too.
When Sam came in from the stable, Mrar and I went to the kitchen and saw him cook supper. One of the baskets was jam-full of vittles. He heated a roasted turkey and made oyster soup, mashed potatoes, and chopped cabbage. There were hot rolls, jelly, cold chicken, little round cakes that melted in your mouth, pickles, nuts, oranges. We put the candied honey on the table. The coffee smelt like Thanksgiving. Sam waited on us, and I ate till I was ashamed. We never expected to have such a dinner in Mother’s house anymore.
When Mrar and I got down and began to toss our oranges, the Whizzer told Sam to clear the things away, have his supper in the kitchen, and then fix the beds as comfortably as possible. I’d made up my mind that even if the Whizzer did travel ahead, Mrar and I’d stay there all night. Aunt Ibby’s would think we were at Cousin Andy Sanders’, and Cousin Andy Sanders would think we were at Aunt Ibby’s.
He sat in Mother’s big chair before the fire, and I felt willing. I wouldn’t have felt willing if Uncle Mozy was in the chair. When a stick broke on the dog irons, we piled on more wood, and the clock ticked and struck nine, and I wished we were never going away from there again. Mrar and I played and jumped, and he was a blind man, and we had solid fun till we were tired out. I showed him my books, for I never took one to Uncle Mozy’s. The boys there make you give up everything, and they lick their dirty thumbs to turn leaves.
Mrar and I stood and looked into the glass doors of the bookcase like we used to when the fire made them like a looking glass. There were our faces, hers round and wide between the eyes and curly-headed, and mine long and narrow between the eyes, and my hair in a black roach.
I told the Whizzer she better have a bed made down by the fire, considering the blankets and comforts were most all-out a-visiting, and he guessed so, too. Sam helped me bring lots of quilts and a feather tick from my old room to fix up the lounge with. Sam went into the kitchen and slept by the stove.
Then I undressed Mrar and heard her prayers after I tucked her in. She’s six years old and dressed herself before Mother died, all but hooking up. I hooked her up, and sometimes she’d swell out for mischief when she ought to swell in. But now I tended to her entirely because she missed Mother. The Whizzer acted like he saw something in the fire, but when Mrar was asleep, and I sat down by him, he pushed up my hair and said: “You’re a very fatherly little fellow, Steele Pedicord.”
It made me think of asking him if he was Sam’s father, but he laughed out loud at the notion.
“Sam’s smaller than you, and he minds so well,” says I. “And I never saw a man so handy at girls’ work.”
“Sam is an excellent fellow,” says the Whizzer, “but I don’t deserve to have a Chinaman called my son.”
“Oh!” I say. “Is he a Chinaman? I’ve read about them, but I never saw one before.”
Then I decided to ask the Whizzer what his own name was. But he got up from his chair and brought the other basket to the fire.
“Do you know who Santa Claus is?” he says, talking low.
“I found that out two years ago,” says I.
“Well, get her little stockings, then,” he says.
“I thought you’d like to do this yourself,” says the Whizzer. He acted just like Mother.
We took the things out of the basket. There were toy sheep and dogs, dolls and tubs and dishes, and all kinds of candies underneath them, enough to treat a school. I felt like the Whizzer was Santa Claus. We stuffed her little stockings, like kegs, until they stood alone, tied bundles to them, fastened them together, and hung them on the mantelpiece. Bouncem would wake up and watch us, and then he’d doze off, for Bounce was fuller of turkey bones than he ever expected to be. Mrar slept away, looking like a doll in the fireshine.
But all at once, Bounce gave a jump and a bark. Back went the door like the wind had torn it open, and there stood Uncle Mozy, Aunt Ibby, Cousin Andy Sanders, and the Widow Briggs’s grown son and two or three men behind them. They all looked scared or mad, and Aunt Ibby’s face was so white that her moles bristled.
“This is a pretty how-to-do,” says she, speaking up loud like on wash days or when she took a stick and drove the boys to the wood pile. “What’s going on in this house tonight? Fires, candles burning, travelers putting up, and children running away when they’re let go someplace else to stay all night! You little sneak,” says she, “you’ll get one such a whipping as you ached for when your mother was alive.”
“Stop, stop,” says the Whizzer peaceably.
“What are you doing in this house?” says Cousin Andy Sanders. “Are you the man I saw go past my place tonight on that wheel, pulling the children?”
“I am,” says the Whizzer, “and I’ve been making notes of the personal property that has been carried out of the house.”
“Well,” says Uncle Mozy, “I’m the constable, and this is my posse.”
The Whizzer laughed, saying, “This thornbush is my thornbush, and this dog is my dog.”
I did not know what he meant, and they acted as if they did not either.
“I arrest you,” says Uncle Mozy, “for breaking into a house and disturbing the peace.”
“You can’t do it,” says the Whizzer.
“Go in and take him,” says Uncle Mozy to the other men.
“Because this is my house,” says the Whizzer.
I swallowed my breath when he said that.
“I wish you’d shut the door,” he says, “and since tomorrow is Christmas, and I don’t want to harbor any ill will, you can shut it behind you instead of in front of you. I’m Steele Pedicord, this boy’s father, as you might all know by looking at me.”
Even Cousin Andy Sanders didn’t jump any more than I did, but I jumped for gladness, and it seemed like he jumped for something else.
“I’m appointed guardian to the children,” he says, “and I don’t want any impudent talk from a stranger.”
“You pretend you don’t know me, Andy Sanders,” says the Whizzer, “but I always knew you. You expected to settle on their land while Mozy and his wife pillaged their goods. I didn’t grow up with you for nothing.”
“Steele Pedicord died when that boy was a year old,” says Aunt Ibby, and she looked so awful and so big I could hardly bear to watch her. “He was killed by the Indians on his way from California after he sent his money home.”
“He was only kept prisoner by the Indians,” says my father, “and sick and ill-used. But he had no notion he was dead till he got away after a few years and heard his widow was married again and even mother to another child.”
“It’s a likely story,” says Cousin Andy Sanders, “that a man wouldn’t come forward and claim his own in such a case.”
“Your notion of a man and mine never did agree, Andy Sanders,” says my father. “She wasn’t to blame; her second husband was my best friend. The boy and girl are mine now.”
“It’s some robbing scheme,” says Aunt Ibby, but she looked like she knew him well enough.
“I’ve more to give them than you could have taken from them,” he says, “and you may begin to investigate tonight. Is that the Widow Briggs’s boy?” he says.
The Briggs boy came up and shook hands with him, and the other men stepped in and shook hands, too. They all began to talk. But Uncle Mozy, Aunt Ibby, and Cousin Andy Sanders left the door, and I heard them slam the gate.
Mar slept right through the neighbors talking loudly and fast. I sat down on the lounge at her feet, wondering what she would say Christmas morning when she found out the Whizzer was my own father, who Mother thought was dead since I was a year old!
I felt so weird and glad that something in me whizzed like the wheel. While my father was not looking, and everybody sat up to the fire asking questions, I slipped over and tried to hug it around the cranks he wiggled with his feet.
You can read pieces about Santa Claus coming on a sled, but that’s nothing to having your own father—who you think is dead and gone—ride up like a regular Whizzer and open the house for Christmas!
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