Unrivaled (20 page)

The little girls and boys at the front window jumped up and down, waving their arms. As I straightened, I slipped a hand inside my bag.

A cough came from behind the curtain. “Don’t forget the Royal Taffy.”

I wasn’t about to. Taking the taffy from my pocket, I held it out for everyone to see. Gasping in pretended shock, I clapped my hand to my cheek and then, in apparent horror, cast it away from me toward the curtain.

“Ouch!”

I hoped I’d hit the manager.

“What is she doing?”

Taking the packet of Fancy Crunch from my handbag, I smiled at the crowd and mouthed the words
Fancy Crunch
. Then I handed it to Santa. Raising one foot, I leaned toward him and kissed him on the cheek.

“That’s enough foolishness for today,” he muttered. Then he pantomimed another
Ho, ho, ho
.

Hiding my face with the muff, I attempted to sing “Adeste Fideles” along with the band. I lowered it whenever the chorus came along. When the song finished, I bid the crowd farewell with what I hoped was an exuberant wave.

Several of the children remained at the window for so long, I thought my hand would come right off my arm. But eventually they left. And then there was only one man left standing on the sidewalk in front of the window.

It was Charlie Clarke.

And he was glowering at me.

“Did you see the
Post-Dispatch
?” My father tossed it down the table toward me.

I caught it, then unfolded the newspaper to see a photograph of Lucy Kendall, foot kicked up, kissing Santa Claus. The headline proclaimed,
Father Christmas Prefers Fancy Crunch
.

“How did that happen?”

I wished I could tell him that I didn’t know. “It was Lucy.”

“What?”

“The Queen of Love and Beauty. Lucy Kendall. She didn’t do what she was supposed to.”

“The Kendall girl?”

“Yes. It was all arranged. She was supposed to hand Santa a Royal Taffy. Only she didn’t.”

“Figures. Kendalls are like that. They don’t do what they’re supposed to.” The thought didn’t seem to please him. “I may owe a favor, but that doesn’t mean I have to be taken advantage of! You need to find some way to fix this.”

Curse Lucy Kendall!

All that hard work. No thanks from my father. No “Well done.” Just a command to fix what she’d messed up. If I’d known, at the Veiled Prophet Ball, that she’d cause me so much trouble, I would have tossed her over the rail of that balcony instead of handing her a handkerchief.

Fix it.

How could I possibly fix this? Every kid, every person in St. Louis knew that Santa preferred Fancy Crunch to Royal Taffy. If I didn’t want so much to strangle her, I might have admired her for it. For a girl she was doing pretty well at the underhanded side of business.

Fix it.

Who could give a better endorsement than Santa Claus?

I jammed my hat on my head and walked out of the bedroom only to realize, halfway down the stairs, that I was wearing one of those rolled-neck sweaters . . . with a pair of worsted wool trousers and my suit coat. I paused in my steps. Old Dreffs would definitely not have approved. But who was really going to notice?

Everyone.

Everyone who mattered in St. Louis would realize I wasn’t the man I was supposed to be. Did I care? Truly? Not enough to change. I kept going, walking down the front steps to the waiting car, wishing I was wearing a cap that I could pull down around my ears as I went.

“What’s wrong, Mr. Charlie?” Nelson scrambled to open the door at my approach.

Only everything. “My father just asked me to do the impossible.”

“Isn’t nothing impossible for God, Mr. Charlie. Surely you know that by now.”

I smiled. I couldn’t help it. It was something my mother would have said. It was nice to know that somewhere, someone still believed that. “Thanks, Nelson.”

“I mean it, Mr. Charlie. Nothing means nothing.”

Nothing? I was betting even God couldn’t solve this problem.

The first few weeks of December went by in a blur of taffy-scented activity. Orders were up, and not just in St. Louis. The rest of the country was demanding more Royal Taffy too.

My father was happy.

Mr. Gillespie was at his wits’ end. He couldn’t seem to get supplies into the factory fast enough, and one day a spark from a machine started a fire. That morning, as he saw me approach, he pointed out toward the floor, toward the workers that were swarming the place like ants. “They just won’t work fast enough.”

“They’re not machines. They’re people.” Boys and girls, mostly. He was pushing the workers to make more Royal Taffy, ordering them to work through breaks, so they could have Christmas Day off. I didn’t like the way some of the girls looked so peaked, though, and I mentioned it to him.

He sent a sharp-eyed glance in the direction of the wrapping station. “They look fine to me.”

“They look like they’re falling asleep on their feet. And what about the Boys’ Brigade?” That’s what I called that long line of boys who wheeled pails of syrup to the mixer. As we watched, one of them fell out of line and was nearly hit by a cart that was carrying crates from the wrapping table to the loading platform.

“Happens all the time. Don’t worry. If he can’t keep up, then I’ll find someone else who can.”

“We can’t keep expecting them to work like this. Christmas is still a month away.”

He shrugged. “Less than. So they have to. Or we’ll end up like City Confectionery.”

“What do you mean?”

“Mr. Kendall always used to treat everyone like family. Insisted on it. Little good it did him. That’s why he got into trouble. Always trying to make things better for everybody. Sentiment doesn’t pay. That’s what your father says.”

No wonder Santa Claus preferred Fancy Crunch. City Confectionery sounded like his kind of place.

First Presbyterian Church was having their nativity the evening of the seventeenth, a whole weekend before Christmas Eve. Even though it wasn’t our normal church, Augusta insisted that we all go, since my father had promised to provide a donation to their missionary fund.

“I don’t know why I can’t just have it delivered.” He was peering at his piece of duck over dinner as if he didn’t know what to do with it.

“Because it’s Christmas.” Augusta signaled for more wine.

“Not for another week.”

She gave a sigh as if this were just one more battle in a long-running conversation. “What’s the use in giving a donation if no one knows that you’ve done it?”

He put down the knife he’d been trying to cut the duck with and picked up the meat with his fingers instead.

“Warren!”

“Don’t know why we keep being served things that can’t be eaten. It’s too small to cut. I wouldn’t do this if we were having some fancy party, but it’s just two of us.” His gaze caught mine and he winked. “The three of us.”

“Yes. And Charles needs the benefit of your good example.”

“He’s a smart boy. He knows he should do as you say and not as I do.” He kept gnawing on the bone. Finally, he laid it on his plate and then wiped at his lips with his napkin. “I suppose you should choose what I’m to wear this evening so I don’t embarrass you again.”

“I already did.”

“Good. That’s good.” He took another drink of wine before rising from his chair. “I’ll just have a cigar and then I’ll dress.”

Augusta frowned as he left, then gave her napkin a good twist before she set it on the table and followed him.

At the church, I paused behind my father and Augusta as they walked up the steps. I didn’t like churches. Not the one I’d been going to since I got here and not this one either. I always felt like everyone was watching me. Left over, I suppose, from my boyhood when the preacher always guarded the offering plate. I’d never done anything bad, but that hadn’t stopped me from feeling like other people expected I might.

Not that I could have blamed them.

But mostly, I didn’t want to have anything to do with a God who’d just sat and watched as a seven-year-old boy had taken charge of his family. It hadn’t seemed fair. And if I were being honest, I’d always resented Him for it.

And I resented Him even more now, knowing that my father had been getting rich while we’d been living on the South Side. Where was the justice in that?

I’d taken up the habit, in Chicago, of staying at a saloon so long on Saturday nights that it was late on Sunday mornings before I got home. If church got to be too bad, maybe I’d start doing the same thing here.

Unfortunately, I’d delayed too long and now the entry had
filled with shepherds and wise men and a child-sized Mary and Joseph. They were ringed by a real goat and several sheep, one of which began to nuzzle my overcoat.

A boy dressed up in a bedsheet with a pillowcase tied around his head pulled at the sheep’s lead.

A little girl with feathered wings strapped to her back knelt beside the sheep and offered it her bouquet of ivy, which the sheep wasted no time in eating. She burst into tears. “I only wanted him to smell it.”

The boy sneered. “It’s a girl sheep. And besides, those aren’t flowers. They’re just leaves.”

“Well, he wasn’t supposed to eat them!” Tears poured down her cheeks.

“It’s a
she
sheep.”

“I don’t care. He’s dumb.”

“He is not.” The little boy stepped closer and glared down at her. “Take that back!”

“He is. Everyone knows you shouldn’t eat ivy.”

“Stop being mean.” He reached down and shoved the little girl, who toppled onto her bottom and began to wail.

“He pushed me!”

One of the wise men came to her defense. He was holding one of those fancy carpets around his shoulders and a feather duster was tied to his head. He stalked over and placed the vase he was carrying down on the floor. “Who did, Bessie? Who pushed you?”

“He did.” She pointed a pudgy, dimpled finger at the shepherd.

“I didn’t mean to. It’s not my fault she—”

The wise man had already leaped on him.

“Hold on, now.” I waded in and tried to separate them. One of them kicked me in the shin; the other stepped on my foot. And before I could pry them apart, the other two wise men had put down their own vases and joined in the fight.

“Wait just a second here!” I managed to grab the shepherd and pushed him behind me to try and keep him safe. “Three on one isn’t a fair fight.”

“He said Bessie was dumb.” The first wise man stood with his arms crossed. The feather duster had fallen down around his ear.

The little boy I was trying to hide peered out around my side. “No, I didn’t! She said
my sheep
was dumb.”

I put my arm out to keep the others from advancing.

“I did not.” The little girl had stopped crying and was now petting the sheep.

“You did too!”

“Well, he is.”

“See! She
did
say it.”

“Children!” One of the sourest-looking women I had ever seen clapped her hands and then formed the kids into lines. “Matilda! Mary would never hold Jesus that way.”

An older girl was holding a live baby straight out from her chest, letting its feet dangle in the air as she flexed her knees, bouncing up and down like a jack-in-the-box. “But this is the way my mother holds him.”

“Mary would hold baby Jesus like this.” She took the child and cradled him in her arms as if he were some sort of China doll.

“He’ll start crying.”

“Hold him
like this
.” The lady pushed the baby into position in the girl’s arms, even though the kid had already started crying.