By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, December 21, 1935.
“Nineteen-fifty,” muttered Jimmie Frise. “Twenty-one, twenty-four fifty, twenty-six.”
“What’s this?” I asked.
“My Christmas list,” growled Jim, concentrating on a slip of paper. “Twenty-seven fifty, thirty-one forty, thirty-five. How horrible.1“
“Horrible what?” I inquired.
“How horrible,” said Jim, angrily, “to be rating my loved ones and friends according to their price. Behold me, in the name of Christmas, pricing my love and my affection.”
“Don’t be silly,” I laughed.
“It’s tragic,” declared Jim. “That’s what it is. Just tragic. We make a list, carefully, we set down all the names of those from whom we expect presents. We go over it, pruning with the utmost exactness all names that might not return a gift. Then we set opposite each name a price. Big prices for our immediate family, and getting smaller and smaller as we go down the list. Memory comes to our aid, as we recall what each one gave us last Christmas. We estimate the cost and value of that gift, and set it down as a working basis on our own list for this year.”
“Nothing,” I said, “is more embarrassing than to receive a Christmas gift from somebody you did not send one to.”
“How horrible,” cried Jimmie. “How unutterably horrible.”
“Nonsense, Jim,” I explained. “It’s a convention. I can’t think of any more sensible way of handling the Christmas giving than the way we do it.”
“We should set apart ten per cent, of our Christmas funds,” said Jim, “for giving anonymous gifts to people from whom we have no earthly expectation of receiving anything. Then it wouldn’t be so wicked, this cold-blooded exchange business.”
“I’m afraid this is a practical age, Jimmie,” I demurred. “And mystical things don’t happen.”
“I believe,” stated Jim slowly, “that there is some strange thing happens to all human hearts at Christmas. And I think it happens outside of all human control. Nothing makes me a true believer more than the strange miracle that occurs every Christmas to every sort and condition of men.”
“You’re romancing,” I smiled.
Jim stood up and put on his coat.
“Let’s go out,” said Jim, “and prove it. Have you the afternoon? I tell you what we do. We’ll fill the car tank. We’ll drive down here to the lakeshore highway. At all the corners of the city streets leading into it, there are two or three or more men, hitch-hikers.”
“Ah?” I said, getting up.
“Young chaps, with suit cases and white silk scarves,” said Jim, “and gleaming smiles, thumbing their way home to some country town or village for Christmas. Older men, shabby, trying to get home for Christmas. Bums, too. Bur Bums with nothing to redeem them in any man’s eyes. Where are they heading, at Christmas?”
“Aha,” I agreed.
“I show you,” said Jim. “We’ll pick up a bum. An oldish bum. A life-long flop of a man. A man without a single attractive or appealing thing about him. And we’ll drive him where he is going, even if it takes all night.”
“What if he’s heading for Vancouver?” I asked,
“Be reasonable,” huffed Jim. “We’ll pick up this derelict, and we’ll deliver him home. Not to the middle of some town. Not to a cross roads somewhere. But right to his door. And we’ll so befriend him. He’ll have to invite us in. We’ll get into his house some way.”
“And you’ll show me this miracle?” I laughed.
“I’ll show you this miracle,” grinned Jim. “At random, deliberately picking every gamble against us, I’ll show you this miracle.”
“Probably,” I snickered, as we went down the elevator, “they’ll kick him out and sock us for bringing him home.”
“Probably,” said Jim.
“Or else, it will be some dumb little cottage, in some dumb little village,” I surmised, “and some dowdy old lady ill say to him ‘Hello, George,’ and she’ll offer us a cup of tea.”
“Probably,” agreed Jim, heading out into the gray day and the threat of sleet.
“Because,” I pointed out, “if you have a loafer in the family, you are never surprised to see him when he turns up.”
“I’ll show you,” said Jim.
And we had the tank filled with gas, and Jim borrowed a couple of rugs from a friend’s car, and we set out for the lakeshore highway.
Down the highway swept a wintry wind with sleet in it, and under the concrete bastions of the subways leading down from the city huddles of men stood, young and old, well dressed and shabby, with bags and bundles, signalling in the old fashion, and watching eagerly the outbound cars for a lift.
“Some miracle you’ll show me,” I said, as we coasted past the first corner and saw no one to fit our bill. “The only miracle will be Jim Frise giving some dull cluck a free ride home.”
Jim coasted past the second subway. Five men stood there. But none were old, and none were ragged, and none looked like derelicts.
“We only have about three more spots where the hitch-hikers stand,” I remonstrated. “And then we’ll be outside the city.”
“Keep watch,” said Jim. “It’ll happen. Around Christmas, it always does.”
“Heh, heh,” said I.
We passed two of the remaining city streets touching on the highway. At one, a boy stood. At the other, two young chaps with those paper shopping bags. The last point was the Humber. And as, through the murk and wind, we came in sight of this last hope, there was no one at all waiting there.
“Ho, hum,” said I.
“We’ll go a little way out,” said Jim. And drove on past the Humber and through the suburban villages westward, until we passed the golf clubs and before us stretched a lonely road, with shut cars snoring along, heads down homeward.
“So much for miracles,” I said. “Where do we turn around?”
“We don’t turn around,” replied Jim. And I looked ahead, where his eyes were fastened, and saw a figure trudging by the side of the pavement.
Jim slowed as we drew near to it. It was, by the legs, an old man, for they were bent, and they picked themselves up and put themselves down the way the legs of old men do. He had no overcoat, but a leather windbreaker, and a heavy gray muffler high about his neck and ears. A battered fedora was drawn low.
“Maybe,” said Jim, “he is only going up the road to the next farm. But something tells me not.”
And with a last shove on the gas, he ran the car alongside.
“Mmmmm,” said I.
For the face that turned up to us as we paused, was an unattractive face, the eyes were small and gray and cold in their expression, with red rims. The face was withered, and out of it stood a beaked nose. The mouth, hidden by a ragged white moustache, seemed only to be a slit.
After Long Absence
‘Lift?” I called, winding down the window. “Thank you,” said the old man. I reached back and opened the door for him and he got in back.
“Going far?” asked Jim.
“Far enough,” said the old man.
“How far can we take you?” Jim requested.
“How far are you going?” the old man retorted. No smile broke the stoniness of his face. His bleak eyes regarded us levelly.
“We are not going any place in particular,” said Jim. “We’re out scouting around for some Christmas trees, so one way is as good as another.”
The old man studied us in silence. I nudged Jim on the leg.
“Going out Guelph way?” the old chap asked finally.
“Sure,” said Jim. “I was just thinking about Guelph or somewhere even beyond there.”
“Stratford?” inquired the old man.
“Stratford would be great,” said Jim. “Are you going to Stratford?”
“The other side of Stratford,” said the old man, leaning back on the cushions, and loosening his muffler around his neck.
I twisted around in the seat to chat with him, but he was looking out the car window with that far away expression or lack of expression you see in people looking out train windows. He did not turn to face me. I saw his ancient boots, his patched trousers. His hands were knuckled and harsh.”
“Have you come far?” I asked.
“Province of New Brunswick,” he answered, without turning from the window.
“Hitch hiked?”
“Yes.”
I nudged Jim again. I was smiling to myself. Miracles. What a stuffy old stager was for the manifestation of miracles. Between Clappison’s Corners and Guelph, I got from him that he had not much luck at hitch hiking. That he had stood four days at Toronto’s corners but finally had started on foot for Stratford.
When we reached Guelph, he sat up and stared with great interest at the streets, the people, the busy pre-Christmas scene.
“You’ve been away from Ontario a long time?” I asked.
“Since 1920,” said he.
“You were born up here?”
“Born and raised and spent all my life in Mannering,” said he.
“Is that the name of the village you’re going to?”
“That’s it. The other side of Stratford. I’ll soon be there.”
“We’ll be delighted to take you there,” said Jim. “One place as good as another to us.”
And the old chap relaxed on the cushions and continued his endless blind staring out at the winter fields and drab little villages.
Through Stratford, he sat up and twisted, this way and that, eagerly scanning the streets, stores. But when we stopped for a red light, he sat back and sank his head on his breast, as if to prevent the people crossing from seeing him in the car.
“Mmm, mmmm,” said I, this time giving Jim a pinch and a sly nod in the mirror.
Back To the Old Village
Mannering, which, of course, is not its true name, nor anything like it, is a few miles beyond Stratford, and neither will I say northwest or southwest. But in a few minutes we came to the village of Mannering, just a wide place on a second-class highway, with painted cottages and old and somewhat faded red brick and yellow brick mansions, and a street of shops and cottages and two banks and one motion picture theatre.
“Which house?” asked Jim, as we started into the village asphalt.
“Just drop me anywhere,” said the old chap, his voice husky.
“Not at all, not at all,” cried Jim, heartily. “We’ll set you down right by your door.”
“Right through,” said the old chap in a low voice; and, turning, I saw he was almost crouched down in the back, yet stealing eager looks over the rim of the windows at the passing scene. It was growing dusk. Snow had begun. The houses seemed cuddled down, and soft lights were glowing in a few of the windows.
After we passed through the store section, the old chap sat up and leaned forward to watch ahead.
“On the left,” he said, clearing his throat. “A white house. Second past this church.”
But second past the church, when Jim slowed down, there was no white house. There was brown house. A two-storey frame house, painted brown. And about it, every sign of neglect. The lawn all high-grown with weeds. It was dark. A pane of glass was broken in one of the downstairs windows.
Jim and I both felt the hands grip the cushion of our seat back.
“Vacant,” said Jim, cheerfully. “Well, a couple of inquiries…”
“No, no,” gasped the old chap, “just drop me off outside the village a bit.”
“Miracles, miracles,” I said casually.
Jim turned the car around on the gravel. He drove slowly back to the store section, where the lights were bright and colored bulbs were festooned from store to store. In front of a little restaurant and candy store he stopped.
“Come in,” he said firmly. “And we’ll have a cup of coffee and a bite to eat.”
The old man, bending his joints, got off the cushions and slowly stepped out of the car.
I got out and Jim and I started to escort the old fellow into the candy store. His head was bent. His hands, as they fumbled with his old gray muffler, were shaking.
A man standing in the doorway next the candy shop. festooned with boots and shoes and goloshes, suddenly stepped forward.
“Ed,” he cried at our old man. “Ed.”
The old man straightened and stared with his curiously bleak eyes at the stranger.
“You’re Ed Stout,” accused the stranger, his eyes bulging, his mouth wide in a wild grin.
Clamor and Bedlam
“Hey,” roared the stranger to the wide world, to the street of Mannering, to the men and women and boys and girls busily coming and going along the street now sparkling with new falling snow. “Hey, here’s Ed Stout!”
And as if a thunderclap had sounded, as if we had driven our fist into a hornets’ nest, as if we had set fire to Mannering, there rose such a clamor and bedlam. “Ed Stout, Ed Stout,” they shouted and squealed and yelled, and men in coon coats and men in smooth coats shouldered us aside to touch Ed Stout, and women, yammering, pushed sideways past us to seize Ed Stout’s hands, and children pushed and shoved underneath the throng, to stand and stagger and stare at Ed Stout, and from stores people came running, wiping their hands on white aprons, and above the mob, the first stranger stood roaring for somebody to run and tell the Stout boys, any of them, any one will do, that Ed Stout is home. And in less than two minutes a bell was ringing in a church or a fire hall, and cars came rushing and slithering down the street; and farmers driving teams; and the crowd grew and grew and the big stranger led Ed Stout inside the shoe store, and up and down and whirling around the store front, the mob, with faces gleaming and eyes shining and mouths jabbering “Ed Stout, Ed Stout is home, Ed Stout, Ed Stout.”
“Miracle,” said Jim, pulling me out to lean against our car.
“What the heck is it?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” said Jim. “But anyway, Ed Stout is home.”
And while the mob was at its height, and two handsome men in their forties arrived in a big dark car and thrust their way into the store with everybody making way for them when they saw who they were, the tall stranger who had first seen Ed Stout came through the mob and beckoned to us.
“Come in, gentlemen,” he cried.
“But what is it?” we asked.
“It’s Ed Stout,” said he, “home!”
“But what’s the excitement?”
“Ed Stout.” said the stranger, is the greatest man this country ever grew. The greatest sport, the greatest friend any man ever had, and the greatest soldier. He came home from the war. He quarrelled with his young sons, who were too young to go to war at that time. You know the age?”
“Yes, yes.”
“He quarreled with his family and disappeared,” said the stranger, his face like a high priest’s. “And they and we and everybody all over this country have been looking for him for twenty years.”
“We’re glad we picked him up,” I confessed. “I guess we ought to go in and shake hands with him before we go.”
“The boys took him home out the back way,” said the stranger. “But I was to bring you a message from them to come up right now and have dinner with them at the Big House.”
“Big House?”
“The Stout boys’ house; we call it the Big House,” explained the stranger.
So we went.
But Jim says this part is sacred.
Editor’s Notes: This story appeared in The Best of Greg Clark & Jimmie Frise (1977).
- Jim’s total of $35 dollars would be about $795 in 2025. ↩︎
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