The Winds of Autumn (16 page)
“I’m glad that’s over,” she said with a sigh as she always did, and Uncle Nat gave her an impromptu hug.
“You did a great job,” he assured her.
The next morning Aunt Lou was back in true form again, scurrying around doing the work of three people. Christmas was just two days off.
The next morning I took my four dollars and fifteen cents and went to the store to purchase the family presents I had planned to buy in the first place since I didn’t need the fifty-five cents for Camellia. Then borrowing some bits of paper from Aunt Lou, I got them all wrapped up.
I had to ask help from Aunt Lou in wrapping Camellia’s present. I wanted Camellia’s gift to look especially nice.
I took the gift over to Camellia’s house when I knew she would be off to Miss Thompson’s house for her weekly piano lesson. I gave the package to Mrs. Foggelson and asked her to place it under their tree on Christmas Eve, and she promised to do that for me.
I felt real good about it all. When I got back home I gave Pixie a big hug, feeling that I hadn’t compromised a bit.
On the twenty-fourth we were up early and packed into the cutter with boxes and bags stacked in all around us. We were off to the farm for our annual Christmas festivities. I had never called them “festivities” before, but that was what Camellia’s ma called them.
“Where will you celebrate your Christmas ‘festivities’?” she had asked me.
At first I didn’t know what she meant.
“Don’t you celebrate Christmas?” she asked, looking puzzled.
“Oh, sure,” I said, the light beginning to dawn. “We always go to the farm and have it all together.”
“The farm?”
“My grandpa’s. Him and Uncle Charlie and Gramps live there. Uncle Nat and Aunt Lou and me—and I—go on out there and join ’em.”
“That’s nice,” she said, “—a real old-fashioned Christmas.”
“Yeah,” I answered, “yeah, a real old-fashioned Christmas.”
So now we were on our way to our “festivities” and I was all excited inside, just like I was every year.
It was a good Christmas, too. We had the best-tasting turkey I can ever remember, and I got the nicest presents, too. There was a new store-bought sweater from Grandpa, a real fishing rod from Gramps, a shirt from Uncle Nat and Aunt Lou that she had made, and a brand-new five-blade knife from Uncle Charlie. There was even a surprise gift. A large, colorfully illustrated book from Camellia titled
How the World Began
was full of the strangest pictures and diagrams. I could hardly wait to read it and find out what it was all about.
I wondered what she had thought of the “treasure box” from me. I sure hoped she liked it.
After the paper had been pulled from all of the presents and each one had told the others how much we liked their gifts, Uncle Nat went out and brought in the chest for Aunt Lou. It was about all that one man could carry, and when she heard the thumping behind her and wheeled to see what was going on, her breath caught in a little gasp and tears filled her eyes.
She nearly bowled Uncle Nat over when she threw herself into his arms and wept against his shoulder. I kept checking her face to be sure, but the tears were for joy, not sadness. I had never seen a woman quite so “joyous” before.
“It’s lovely! It’s perfect!” she kept saying over and over, and Uncle Nat just held her close and patted her shoulder.
Then Aunt Lou turned to all of us. The tears were still sliding down her cheeks, but she had the brightest smile that I have ever seen her wear.
“I already have plans for its use,” she said, “and I can hardly wait to fill it. The chest is going to be for our baby’s things.”
A real commotion took place then. Everyone seemed to be hugging everyone else, and more than just Aunt Lou were shedding tears. I couldn’t make much sense out of any of it until I heard Grandpa asking, “When? When?”
“In July,” said Aunt Lou. “Oh, Pa, I’m so happy I could just burst!”
I understood it then. My aunt Lou was having a baby! I was getting a new cousin. Imagine that! Me, a cousin! I’d be able to help take care of it and everything.
With a whoop I was across the room and hugging Aunt Lou as tightly as I dared. I wasn’t sure, but I thought there might be some tears on my cheeks, too.
I
WAS ANXIOUS TO
get back to school again after our Christmas break, and not just to find out what Camellia had thought of my Christmas gift. I also wanted to tell the fellas about the nice gifts I had gotten and how much stuffed turkey and apple pie I had eaten and all. It was the same every year.
I guess they were just as eager to share their Christmas news—they were all there waiting at the corner of the schoolyard when I arrived.
We all talked at once and no one really listened much, but I did get the feeling that they all were pretty happy with the Christmas they had just shared with their family.
Willie had some other news too. Jack Berry had dropped out of school. It shouldn’t have surprised us any, and I guess that it didn’t much. I mean, Jack Berry had never been fond of school. It was his pa’s idea that he keep on going. Well, with him missing so many days before Christmas with the flu and all, I guess Jack decided he didn’t want to work so hard to catch up to the class, so he finally talked his pa into letting him quit.
I wouldn’t have said so to the fellas, but I wasn’t going to do much crying over Jack being gone. He had been acting so nasty of late that I figured school, at least for me, would be a better place without him. No, I wasn’t prepared to be missing Jack Berry much at all. I was content to let the matter drop.
I felt pretty good about life when Camellia told me she really liked my Christmas gift. She said she was going to keep her hankies in it and, not wanting to argue none with her, I didn’t tell her I thought hankies to be rather strange “treasures.” They sure weren’t treasures in my book.
I knew Aunt Lou wouldn’t be too happy with me spreading the news of the coming baby among all of my school chums yet, so I held my tongue; but it was awfully hard to keep the excitement to myself. We had never welcomed a little one into our family since I had arrived, and of course I didn’t remember anything about what happened at my own coming.
There were some days when Aunt Lou didn’t feel too well. I could tell it by looking at her, but she never made any mention of the fact. I guess Uncle Nat and I were both watching for signs. I tried to keep the woodbox a little fuller and made sure there was plenty of water on hand from our yard pump. Uncle Nat was watching for ways he could ease her load as well, but she usually laughed at our anxieties and assured us that she was just fine. She did look a little tired at times, though, and I knew she skipped breakfast some mornings.
Still, things seemed to settle down and the household pretty much ran as it had before, except for the underlying current of anticipation that we all felt.
I started “tutoring” Camellia again. We spent most of the time poring over her pa’s books, discussing interesting things that we found.
I had read the book that Camellia gave me for Christmas. It was rather a strange one. Parts of it I couldn’t make much sense of. I mean, it said, bold as brass, that man sort of oozed into being, coming up out of the muck and mire and then went from a primitive stage to a more progressive stage of development. As I say, it puzzled me at first because I knew how man really had come into being, and I scratched my head a bit until I realized that the book must be some new sort of book of fancy. Then I settled back and tried to let the imaginings of this writer interest me.
It was quite a tale. All about how this new man creature “evolved” until finally he discovered how to walk up on his two hind feet and use his forefeet to grip things. He did this so much that finally his forefeet turned into fingers for gripping, and then he learned new skills and lost his shaggy fur so he had to make clothes to protect himself and build homes to live in and plant crops for food that he learned to store and preserve.
Even though the whole book was a fairy tale sort of thing, I couldn’t make out the reasoning behind it. What I mean is, each stage that this man “advanced” seemed to bring him a lot more troubles and complications instead of simplifying things for him. So why did the teller-of-the-tale bother with the advancing?
It must have been that some folks thought it made interesting “supposing,” but I preferred fanciful stories to make a bit of sense. Anyway, I guessed that the Foggelsons liked this kind of fairy tale and wanted me to become acquainted with it, too. I certainly didn’t plan to tell Camellia what I thought of her book.
Then one day when we were reading some of Mr. Foggel-son’s other books, we came on the same kind of tale again.
“Here’s another one,” I mumbled more to myself than to Camellia.
“Another what?” she asked.
“Another fairy tale about man creepin’ up outta particles of something or other and startin’ to live on his own.”
“Joshua,” said Camellia, surprise in her voice, “that’s not a fairy tale.”
I just looked at her. I didn’t know what to say.
“What do
you
call it?” I finally asked, thinking that Camellia must know a new word for a fanciful tale that I didn’t know.
“Evolution,” she answered, as though surprised I didn’t know the word already.
“Evolution. Oh!”
I let the matter drop, but I repeated the word several times to myself so I wouldn’t forget it. I intended to look it up when I got home so that next time I could impress the Foggelsons by naming the tale by its proper name.
Even before I sat down with my cookies and milk when I got home, I looked up the word. Old Webster was a good friend of mine, and I guess I depended on him to know the meaning of most every word there was. I found “evolution” and his meaning for it. Webster said a number of things about evolution that didn’t seem to fit. He talked about development and growth, about movement of troops in marching or on the battlefield, and about arithmetic and algebra. None of those meanings made sense when I connected them with the Foggelson books. Then he said, “The gradual development or descent of forms of life from simple or low organized types consisting of a single cell.”
I still couldn’t understand it. I tossed the words around in my mind all the time that I was choring, but I never did get them sorted out.
After supper was over and we’d had our Bible reading together, I again pulled out Webster’s dictionary. I read it over again, but I still couldn’t get the meaning, so I let my eyes travel down the page a bit and checked some other words, hoping that that would help. “Evolutional” was pertaining to evolution. That sure didn’t help me any, and then I read through the lengthy explanation of “evolutionist” until I came to the part that said, “The theory that man is a development from a lower order of creation; a teacher or advocate of Darwinism.”
I read it again. Surely no one really believed that man “developed” that way. Why, that wasn’t anywhere near what the Bible said. I may not have listened to preachers as much as I should have, but I had listened enough to know how man came into being, and how they had gotten to their sorry state of sinfulness, too.
Before closing Webster up again, I got a stub of a pencil and a piece of paper and wrote down the words from the printed page. I needed to do some thinking about this and talk to Mr. Foggelson and Camellia. Did the fact that they weren’t churchgoers mean that they had never heard how things
really
happened? I couldn’t believe that someone could have missed out so completely on the facts.
I wasn’t sure whether I should make use of Uncle Nat’s help on this or not, but I hated to bother him with my problem. I knew he had plenty of his own—and other peoples’.
Gramps and I had a chance for some checker games that weekend. The weather was stormy and cold, and it didn’t make much sense to go out in it unless one had a good reason for going. So Uncle Charlie and Grandpa spent some time working on harness mending and drinking coffee, and Gramps and I read and played checkers.
Gramps beat me, which wasn’t unusual. He had won three games before I pushed the board back a bit and stood to stretch.
“Mind not on the game, Joshua?” he quizzed me.
I grinned. “You ’most always beat me,” I answered good-naturedly. “Can’t always blame it on my mind bein’ elsewhere.” “No not always—but this time I think we can.”
I stopped my grinning. “Maybe so,” I admitted, and sat back down again.
“Just thinkin’ on some of my studies. Been reading some real interestin’ books. Lots of new things to learn—new ideas. Some of them I understand, some I don’t.”
“Like?” said Gramps.
“Well, like—like—well, evolution.”
I expected I would have to stop and explain the word to Gramps, and my hand started into my pocket to pull out the paper I had written Webster’s words on, but Gramps surprised me.
“Hogwash!” he said with sort of a snort.
My eyes popped wide open.
“Pure hogwash,” Gramps said again, and I knew he felt pretty sure of himself.
“What’s it all about anyway?” I asked him.
Gramps didn’t even hesitate.
“This man, Darwin, got these funny ideas of where man came from—where everything came from,” he said. “He saw the similarity in the animals and birds and fish, and decided that they had a common source.”
I nodded.
“Well, he was right,” went on Gramps to my surprise; “they do have a common source. A common Creator. Only thing is Darwin got mixed up about the beginnings. He thought that because this ‘common’ bond, this thread, ran through all creatures, the one came from the other. He decided that he knew more about things than anyone else who ever lived and threw out what the Good Book said about God creating all things in the beginning. Got himself in a heap of trouble, because try as he did to make all the pieces fit, he never did get them untangled.
“But others jumped on that theory and they too kept trying to come up with ‘proofs’ for what they thought they found. They haven’t let it die yet. Been lots of books written on it and some places now teach Darwin’s theory as if it were fact. Don’t let it throw you, Joshua. It still is theory. No facts have proved it yet—and they never will. What God has said still stands. Remember that. God was the only one around at the time, so I’m willing to take His word on just how it all happened.”