note: this is merely a short preview of "a primitive Christmas Carol," tentatively scheduled to come out one week from today, in time for Christmas.
a primitive Christmas Carol…..hippywife Mrs. Alfred Packer suddenly woke up, finding a small boy standing by the side of the couch, looking at her.
She had no idea where he’d come from. He was about four, five, years old, dark brown hair, pale skin, a Welsh cast to his features. He wore his hair in a most peculiar way, a “page-boy†style that had gone out of fashion more than eighty years ago. He was wearing a light blue cotton shirt, brown corduroy pants, and brown leather shoes.
He stared at her, saying nothing.
Mrs. Alfred Packer stared back at him. He was small, and looked pretty harmless to her.
She arose, and guided him into the kitchen; while placing her hand on his shoulder, she noticed his skin was unusually cold, although he didn’t look discomfitted about it himself. Sitting him down at the table, she asked who he was, and from where he’d come.
He stared at her, saying nothing.
Mrs. Alfred Packer asked him what he wanted.
He stared at her, saying nothing.
“Well, child, if you’re not going to say anything, at least you should have something to eat,†she offered.
He stared at her, saying nothing.
Shrugging her shoulders, Mrs. Alfred Packer got up to turn on the natural-gas stove, and taking a cast-iron griddle, prepared to fry him a grilled-cheese sandwich. She also poured a glass of milk for him.
When she turned from flipping over the sandwich on the griddle, she saw that the glass of milk was empty, in like a split-second, as if it’d been vacuumed down. Well, he’s a growing boy, she thought to herself, and poured him another glass.
The grilled cheese sandwich done, Mrs. Alfred Packer shut off the burner to the stove, but shutting it off too quickly, extinguished the pilot light without noticing it. The glass of milk was empty again, and so she poured him a third one.
She sat across from him, her elbows on the oilcloth-covered table, watching him as he ate. He too watched her warily, as if trying to figure out who, and what, she was.
When he finished his sandwich, he politely wiped his mouth with a napkin.
Mrs. Alfred Packer kept chitchatting to him, but while he seemed to absorb what she told him, he refused to emit anything in return, instead merely staring at her.
What a well-mannered little boy, she thought, excepting that he doesn’t talk back. But she did start feeling some unease about him; there was something not quite right. She imagined he was hollow, or from another world, or some sort of phenomenon never seen before. He was real, but then too he wasn’t real.
Trying to please him, she gave him some scratch-paper and crayons. Sucking on each crayon before he applied it to the paper, he immediately got busy drawing. He drew a child’s version of an ancient stable with animals, two people standing inside the building, looking at something in a manger. He drew other people, too; what looked to be an innkeeper standing hushed in wonder, and shepherds and their sheep gathering outside.
Adding a bright star above it all, he then wrote a caption, “CHRISTMAS†at the bottom of the page, and gave it to her.
Oh dear, Mrs. Alfred Packer thought; we don’t do Christmas here.
Fearful that hippyhubby Wild Bill might come in and see it, getting all upset and bent out of shape, she quickly consigned the picture to the flames of the wood-burning furnace in the living room.
Suddenly hippywife Mrs. Alfred Packer and the boy were soaring through the air as if birds, his hand tugging hers. They were far up in the air, flying over northeastern Oklahoma, over Missouri, over Indiana, and then starting a descent over Ohio…..
