My All Time Favorite Christmas Story

They are a vanload of pilgrims, climbing through the swirling snow of a late December night from the Denver airport up toward ski country – a family from Missouri, another from North Carolina, a couple of college kids headed home for the holidays.  And the Guitar Man.

He wears jeans and a faded leather jacket.  His luggage consists of a duffel bag and a battered guitar case – a six-stringed Martin or Gibson probably, wood worn bare by the brushing wings of a million notes and chords.  He’s in his late twenties and he has a nice smile.  But he has a road-weary look about him, sort of like his guitar case.

The van driver is a jolly sort who keeps up a running conversation with his passengers, partly to relieve the boredom of the trip he makes up and down I-70 so many times that every boulder, every snow-crusted pine is etched in his subconscious; but also because he’s genuinely interested in people and he full of the holiday spirit.  He’s got Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops playing “Good King Wenceslas” on the stereo.  And he wants to know who the pilgrims are and where they’re from.  That’s how they get to know that they’re Missourians and Carolinians and college students, trading names and places and bits of personal background here in the warm temporary intimacy of a rubber-tired cocoon.

The last to speak is the Guitar Man, who says he’s a folksinger.  He’s been traveling the East, playing coffee houses and college campuses and small bars, trying to figure out if he can make a living with his music.  He’s soft-spoken and engagingly modest and the rest of the passengers can hear the music in his voice – a traveling troubadour, a man who tells stories in song.  And he has a story of his own.

There’s a lady in Frisco, a little mountain town just off the interstate.  A rather special lady, or at least she used to be.  She and the Guitar Man were more than friends once upon a time not loo long ago, until the music took hold and pulled him out on the road.  The Lady in Frisco begged him not to go, but it was something he just had to do.  The music was strong inside him – stronger, he thought, than love.  So he went, hoping that maybe love would wait.  During these long months while he was out there in the coffee houses and bars, the Guitar Man and the Lady in Frisco haven’t spoken or written, not once.  That was the way she wanted it.

Now, on this snowy night just before Christmas, the Guitar Man is headed back to Frisco, back to the tiny apartment where the Lady lives, carrying his duffel bag and his guitar and his heart.  The Lady in Frisco doesn’t know he’s coming.  And he doesn’t know what he’ll find when he gets there.  Maybe there’s someone else.  Maybe she’s so hurt and disappointed, maybe she thinks he’s so unreliable, she doesn’t want to see him any more.  She may not let him in.  But he’s come all this way to try.

The Guitar Man’s fellow pilgrims are all but struck dumb y his bittersweet story and by the anticipation of what’s to come.  The Guitar Man will be the first passenger to disembark, and all of the others will get to see if the Lady in Frisco turns him away.  If she does, he’ll ride on to the next town and find a place to crash for the night.

The van climbs on, past the meadow where the buffalo herd hunkers against the frigid night, past the rocks where the big-horn sheep scramble by day, up and over the Continental Divide.  The driver and the pilgrims are quiet, lost in their thoughts, considering the Continental Divide of the heart where east meets west and sometimes the altitude and the bitter wind are too much, where even the most resolute traveler has to turn back and seek shelter elsewhere.

On the stereo, the joyous strings of the Boston Pops ring out, “O Come All Ye Faithful.”  But the pilgrims hear another song of another season:  Ramblin’ Man, why don’t you settle down; Boston ain’t your kind of town; There ain’t no gold and there ain’t nobody like me.

And then they’re in Frisco and the van is crunching along a back street, pulling up in front of a row of one-story apartments.  Inside the van, you can hear a pin drop.  The Guitar Man climbs out.  “Good luck,” the driver says.  The Guitar man smiles, closes the door behind him, hoists his duffel bag and guitar case, and climbs the steps.  There’s a Christmas tree in the window, all decorated with colored lights and tinsel.  But for the pilgrims in the van, their faces pressed to the windows, it won’t be Christmas unless…

The Guitar Man knocks.  The door opens, the rectangle of light framing a young woman in a bathrobe.  The folks in the van can’t see her face very well, but they can imagine surprise, shock, maybe even anger.  Or maybe nothing.  That would be the worse.  “Come on lady,” somebody in the van says softly, “let him in.”  But they stand there in the light for a long moment, the Guitar Man and the Lady from Frisco, oblivious to the cold, the rest of their lives hanging in the balance.

Then she steps back from the door, making room for him.  The Guitar Man turns and gives the van folks a thumb’s up and then he enters and closes the door behind him.  In the van, they’re cheering and crying.

The pilgrims move on into the night, now lovely and silent and at peace with itself, all of them touched in some deep place of the soul they had forgotten was there.

Wretched February -- A Permanent Solution

Pardner, I don’t want to cause you overmuch distress, but February – that most wretched of months -- is bearing down on us like a runaway buckboard, and this year, I am taking defensive action.  I am circulating petitions to get rid of the month.  Yes, wipe it from the calendar, as it deserves.

January is statistically the coldest month of the year, but for the most part, that’s all it is: cold.  If you have a warm coat, earmuffs and a good battery, you can survive January just fine.  But February?  A depressing abomination of snow, ice, freezing rain, and presidential primaries.  Enough to drive a strong person to drink, and that, in fact, is one of the best antidotes I know for February.

So let’s just do away with it.  I got the idea from a character in my novel The Governor’s Lady.  It’s January.  Mickey Spainhour’s daughter Cooper has taken office as Governor of her southern state, while her son-in-law Pickett is running for President.  Mickey’s in poor shape in the hospital, crotchety because nobody will bring her a cigarette.  She says to Cooper, “I hope I make it to March.  I would hate to die in February.  It’s a miserable month.  If Pickett gets to be President, I want him to outlaw February.”  The minute it came out of Mickey’s mouth, I said to myself, “Huzzah!”

Now, you ask, how would we outlaw February?  Simply change the calendar to go directly from January 31 to March 1.  February no longer exists.  But, you protest, what about Valentine’s Day, the only redeeming feature of February.  Move it to January, when the cold weather invites you to stay inside snuggling with your honey-bunch and roasting chestnuts on an open fire.  The details can be worked out.  We’ll form committees.

My friend Delbert Earle is in total agreement with me.  He hates the dismal drearies as much as anybody.  And here, in January, the gloom has already set in at his house.  Old Shep the Wonder Dog is holed up under the house with his head between his paws, refusing to come out even to chase the garbage truck.  His boy Elrod broke up with his girlfriend and spends all evening in his room playing Everly Brothers records: Teen angel, teen angel, woooooahhhhh.  And Delbert Earle’s wife has that wild look in her eyes that says, “Time to shop!”

Delbert Earle, even before hearing of my petition campaign, has taken matters in his own hands.  He has written to the President, urging him to work for a new treaty called the “I-F-B” which stands for International February Ban.  Make it worldwide and total.  Delbert Earle imagines that it’s just as cold and dreary in Russia in February, and Putin might just as well skip the month too.

I’m afraid to tell Delbert Earle about the rumor that the President will take February off and spend it in Hawaii, leaving weighty matters in the hands of Congress.  And that doesn’t bode well either, does it.  Somehow, February and Congress just seem to go hand in hand.

So, we may be out of luck this year, but if enough of us get fed up enough next month and our petition drive gains steam, a February ban might be a good prospect for 2017.  We’ll have a new President and new Presidents like to make a splash.  That would be a goodie.

Now, about your question of whether Mickey Spainhour makes it to March?  In a gesture of crass commercialism in the true spirit of February, I say, “Read the book.”

What Is Winter For, Anyway?

In my novel The Governor’s Lady, Mickey Spainhour is suffering from congestive heart failure and figures she’s not long for this world.  Her son-in-law Pickett is running for President.  In January Mickey says, “I hope I make it to March.  I would hate to die in February.  It’s a miserable month.  If Pickett gets to be President, I want him to outlaw February.”  Mickey’s daughter Cooper, who has just taken office as Governor of the state, says, “I doubt Pickett will waste a minute on February.”

Well, he should.  Let me hasten to associate myself with Mickey’s opinion of February.  It can be, often is, a miserable – nay, a wretched – month.  Just ask Boston.  If I get to be President, I will outlaw February by Executive Order.

But…fair-minded fellow that I am, I admit that February does have one redeeming characteristic: Valentine’s Day, when my heart is full to bursting with thoughts of my own true love.  So I would move Valentine’s Day to March.  February also has the Chinese New Year, but the Chinese can deal with February as they please.

One thing about winter in the Carolinas, where I live, is that it may grab you by the throat, but not for long.  Even in abominable February, we always have a mild and pleasant day when winter loosens its grip and gives us some hope that cold and gloom are not a permanent state of affairs.  Most of our winters here are mild, and maybe we don’t appreciate them enough.  Even February.

What is winter for, anyway?  It makes us hunker down, gives us grim looks and sniffles and a bad outlook on life.  On the surface, winter seems to have little redeeming social value.  But perhaps Mother Nature knows what she is doing when she gives us winter.  Maybe she intends it as a time to just be quiet and wait and listen to the secrets locked deep in our hearts, to discover anew who we are and where we’re bound.

We modern humans are unaccustomed to silence.  We surround ourselves with recorded noise and idle chatter.  Much of our daily existence is filled, as the Bard said, “with sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

But Nature is smart enough to spend the winter in quiet contemplation.  Deep in the icy ground, or under the awesome silence of snow, animal and seed are locked in winter’s thrall, listening to the secret ticking of the great clock of the universe.  The hands move slowly, as nature’s creations regenerate and replenish, gathering strength for the noisy explosion of spring.  Nature knows when to dash about madly and when to bide her time, waiting and listening.

As I write this, the wind is howling outside, rattling the shutters and shaking the bare limbs of the trees.  The temperature will dip to 20 degrees tonight, even colder tomorrow.  But I am hunkered down inside – some peaceful hours at my desk working on a new book.  Soft music on the stereo, a cup of hot tea, my imagination.  A time of discovery, possibility, serendipity.  And Valentine’s Day is just ahead, hearts and flowers, my own true love.

Okay, maybe February is okay.  But just.  Still, like Mickey Spainhour, I hope I make it to March.  I’ll leave it to you to figure out if she does.

Bad Weather? Blame an Author

There are some folks who seem to think my writing contributes to natural calamities.  There may be some truth to that.  The evidence keeps piling up.

As I look out my office window, there is a foot of snow in my back yard and on the golf course just beyond the hedge.  Kids on sleds are having great fun barreling down the twelfth fairway while some of their parents are slipping and sliding along the roadways in our area.  It’s the biggest snowfall in North Carolina in a decade.  For those who consider anything more than an inch of snow a calamity, I’m afraid they may start blaming Cooper Lanier.

Cooper is the heroine of my latest novel, The Governor’s Lady, newly-elected governor of her southern state.  On the second day she’s in office, the state is hit by a blizzard which paralyzes everything, and the snow serves as a backdrop against which a test of wills plays out between Cooper and her husband Pickett (former governor and now presidential candidate).  Will Cooper be a figurehead, a stand-in for Pickett, or will she be a dynamic decision-maker in her own right?  How she deals with the blizzard sets the stage for what comes after.

When ill-prepared Atlanta got flummoxed by snow a couple of weeks ago, several readers suggested that the honchos there should have read The Governor’s Lady to see how to handle things.  So far, no one has suggested that my inclusion of the blizzard in the story was a portent of Atlanta’s calamity.  But with a foot of snow in my back yard today, and folks slipping and sliding, I’m a tad concerned that rumblings will begin and Cooper and I will get the evil eye.

Nonsense, you say.  But it has happened before.  I grew up in a river town in Alabama, and during my youth the local lore was rife with stories of the Great Flood of 1929, when the river got out of its banks and inundated the town.  My grandmother and her four kids had to escape their home in a rowboat.  While I was growing up, the river behaved itself.  Then in 1991, I published Old Dogs and Children, set in a southern town much like my own.  One of the major events is a flood.  My heroine, Bright Birdsong, escapes with her small child in a rowboat.

The novel had barely made it into print when – you guessed it – my hometown flooded.  The river, calm all those years, went nuts.  Local folks are invariably nice people, and no one said to my face that the book was to blame for the calamity, but for years after, I got jaundiced looks whenever I visited, even in church on Sunday.  I think most folks have finally forgotten and forgiven.

I would like to share the blame for any natural disaster with my fellow storytellers.  We may all be complicit in this sort of thing, whether we write of calamities or not.  The computer age has a lot to do with it.  I sit at my keyboard typing away and constantly mashing the backspace key or even highlighting and deleting entire sentences – nay, paragraphs – of slovenly prose.  By definition, it is bad stuff, not worthy of human consumption.  Where does all that bad stuff go when I zap it from my computer?  I wonder if it may be floating around out there in the ether, roiling the atmosphere and contributing to floods, hurricanes, forest fires, sun spots, and other assorted natural maladies.  Who knows, it may even be contributing to the dysfunction in Congress.

But if any of this is the case, my fellow storytellers and I will just have to live with it.  We scribble on, employing imagined disasters as grist for our tales.  All we ask is, the next time a blizzard hits your locality, don’t run over your local author with your sled.