"I've bought three pair since I moved here and they're all too short in the fingers. I wind up with webbed hands like a duck."
"Well, see, I wondered. Your fingers are about twice what God gave the rest of us."
I held out both gloved hands, stunned by the sight of perfection. "How did you do this? Did you measure me in my sleep?"
She grinned. "A grease stain on one of your letters. You must have leaned on the table to stand up, after eating a bacon sandwich."
"Very impressive."
"I brought in a rule and measured all the fingers."
I turned my hands over, admiring the row of slant stitches across each thumb gusset. "Not blue, though. I thought you specialized in indigo."
"Oh, those socks you mean, out of that cheap handspun. Those were for the children. This is pure merino from Belk's. I can use quality on you, because you're not planning to outgrow these in a year or run holes in them on purpose."
"I'll try not to let you down."
A memory of snow. A hill striped sideways with blue shadows of trees. Screaming, the thrill of pursuit, some adult lobbing white balls, making the sound of a cannon blast with every volley. Cupping up hard snow that leaves pills of ice clinging to the fuzzy palms. Mittens, red with a snowflake pattern across the knuckles, made by someone. Father's mother? No contact was allowed later on, it was Mother's choice to leave everything: grandmothers, snow. All water-ice returns to the breath of the world. But those cast-off mittens might still be somewhere. Evidence of a boy's existence.
I told Mrs. Brown she'd given me my first Christmas gift in over ten years. In our many days together, she has not betrayed such emotion as that confession invoked. "Ten year! And not one soul to give you a measly giftie?"
"My family is all gone."
"But people. In Mexico you worked in homes, did ye not?"
"The last ones were Russian, they didn't pay Christmas any notice. Mr. Trotsky had us work through like any other day."
"He didn't hold with our Lord Jesus?"
"He was a good man. But no, he didn't. He was Jewish, his background."
"He's the one that got killed."
"Yes."
"And the ones before that, all Jews?"
"No. Mrs. Rivera was crazy for Christmas, she always organized feasts. I was the cook."
"So you had to work straight through."
"I did."
"Mr. Shepherd, it pains me to be gone away next week."
"Honestly, I'm glad you asked. You need to go see your family, and I need to be reminded what regular people do at holiday times."
"Well, regular, I wouldn't know. But you. You'll have nought here to tell you it's Christmas. What will you do?"
What will an acorn do when it has lain awhile in the ground and the rain swells its husk? Become a fig? "I have the galley proofs to finish," I said.
"Now Mr. Shepherd, that is a fib. You finished those, and I know it."
"I wanted to have one more look. And then I'll start writing something new."
The eyebrows soared. "What about?"
"I'm not sure."
She gathered up her purse and gloves, preparing to go. A light snow had been falling all day. "All work and no play, Mr. Shepherd. Makes the meat go to gristle."
"Does it? I thought it made Jack a dull boy."
"It would do that as well."
"I'll probably get nothing done at all, thanks to the pile of books you brought from the library. I'll poke up the fire and have Christmas with Mr. Hardy and Mr. Dickens. What could be better? And Tristram Shandy. The cats are hinting that I should cook a leg of lamb, so maybe I will. And I'm sure Eddie Cantor and Nora Martin will sing some carols for me on Wednesday night."
"I hate to tell you, but they're singing for their sponsor. I think it's Sal Hepatica."
"You are cruel, Mrs. Brown. Next you'll tell me all those girls on the Lucky Strike Hit Parade are crooning for Lucky Strike cigarettes, and not me."
She sat with her hands on her pocketbook, waiting.
"You want to say something. Go ahead."
"None of my business, Mr. Shepherd. But a man would have a girl usually. Or attachments. That aren't cats or books."
I took off the gloves and folded them carefully. "Now this is really a case of the skillet calling the kettle black. Thirty years is a long time to stay a widow."
"I did have a runny-go at marriage. The one time."
"Well, don't worry. I've had my runny-goes. Attachments, as you say."
"If you say so. And no Christmas present for ten years. If you get attached to something, seems like it wouldn't come all that far loose."
"No, wait, I forgot. Last Christmas Romulus brought over a jam cake from his mother. Half the cake, actually. He said they'd had enough of it."
"Blessed are the grateful, Mr. Shepherd, but that is no account as a real present. Half a jam cake showing signs of prior use."
Chispa slipped into the room, around the edge of the door and along the wall, flattened to it, as if pulled sideways by a separate order of gravity. Slowly she crossed the bottom of the bookcase in similar manner, into the inglenook by the fireplace. I unfolded the gloves. It was tempting to put them on, wear them until Whitsuntide. "I'm not the sort of person who attracts gifts."
"Mr. Shepherd, do ye think I believe it? I open the mail, with all such things in it as people can let sail. Even little embroidered things."
"Then I should say I'm not a good recipient. When people are no good at relationships, I've noticed they often blame the other people. But I don't."
"I've never heard you blame a soul for anything, Mr. Shepherd. It's one of your qualities. To the extent I sometimes wonder if your mother dropped you on your head."
"No, she probably carried me in a suitcase--she was eternally on the move. Anyone I especially liked was soon gone, household people or friends. It's been like that. Or they've left me on their own initiative. Mostly by dying."
"Well. I am not a one to argue with mortal demise."
"Well said, Mrs. Brown."
"You ought to write it down. About yourself and all those that went away."
"What, write about my life? Like poor old Tristram Shandy trying to remember his whole story helter-skelter?"
"You'd get further," she said. "You've been keeping good notes all along."
"Who would want to read such trivial stuff?"
"Well, why write it down in the first place, then? Because you do. I'm not putting my nose into anything, you do it plain in the open, Mr. Shepherd. Seems to me, if you really wanted shed of your own days, you'd not take such care to put them all down on a page. I see you go so deep in it, you forget day or night and have breakfast at supper."
"I'm just a writer. It's my way of thinking."
"It's your attachments. That's what it looks like to me. You might do as well to attach to your own self, alongside all these story people you dream up from nowhere."
"But who would want to read that?"
The light outside had gone dusky, and now the wind raised a low keen against the window. Clumps of snow fell out of the trees, shattering across the yard. "You won't want to miss your five-fifteen bus," I said.
She donned a formidable knitted hat and stood to leave, reaching to shake my hand. "I will see you on Monday week. Happy Christmas, Mr. Shepherd."
"Happy Christmas, Mrs. Brown. I thank you for the gift."
She closed the door and stepped out toward Haywood, leaving behind a house as silent as an underworld. Chisme slipped into the room, pulled by the same sidelong gravity across the bottom of the wall into the inglenook. Chispa immediately left it then, according to the inscrutable laws of attraction and indifference. The hall clock divided the scene into measured increments: Tick, tick.
Who would want to read all this?
Kingsport News, March 2, 1947
Book Review
by United Press
Picture the lady walking by, a real looker, gold bangles on her arm an
d a tattoo on her ankle. She's headed out for some shopping, with a basket strapped on her back. For today's menu she may choose iguana roasted on the spit, or perhaps armadillo. For cash, her gal pals trade cocoa beans, or a handy gadget that's the rage with their better halves here in ancient Mexico: a double-edged throwing spear called the atel-atel.
That's the opening scene of Pilgrims of Chapultepec, a novel by Harrison Shepherd that reads like a joyride. This tribe of ancients will settle down in village life for only so long before it loses its charm to pox, invasion, or bandits--you can count on it. Then they hit the trail again, goaded on by a wild-eyed chief who claims he'll lead them to a promised land. How will they know they've found it? He claims the gods told him to look for an eagle on a cactus, snacking on snake.
Apart from its forehead-wrinkle of a title, this book aims to please: hair-rising battles, narrow escapes, and a heaping portion of adventure, in a tale of hardnosed leaders and men who suffer them.
The Evening Post, March 8, 1947
"Books for Thought," by Sam Hall Mitchell
The Quick and the Dead
Author Harrison Shepherd, the diffident but talented prodigy who last year brought us Vassals of Majesty, has another winning turn based on historical fact in ancient Mexico. In Pilgrims of Chapultepec, the Aztec people are driven from their ancestral home in a journey with more twists than a Chinaman's queue. By its end, the author has tackled some surprising themes, including the atom-bomb question.
These pilgrims hike for decades, pushed by a mad king who always promises happiness is just around the bend. The author's "Studs Lonigan" is an Indian youth named Poatlicue, watched by the jealous king as he hones his skill in battle. Golden boy Poatlicue was singled out by the gods at thirteen to hurl the first atl-atl--a razor-sharp flying weapon put in the hero's hand as he was about to die in his first battle. In a New World Deus ex machina, the weapon was carried to the hero by an eagle.
The ruthless king fears an upstart's power to unseat him, and offers a bargain: if Poatlicue maintains his loyalty without a hitch, he'll someday help rule the nation. But "someday" never comes, and Poatlicue grows a cynical stripe, doubting the value of following an unwise leader. On dark nights he wonders if the gods chose him for a reason: to behead the sniveling king, and rule in his place?
Poatlicue even questions the seductive power of his atl-atl. His tribesmen revere it as a god, rushing to make replicas of the weapon, worshipping it on an altar, believing it will grant them absolute rule. But Poatlicue notes a worrisome trend: as his tribesmen reproduce the blade's design, so do their enemies. Having perfected it, they fashion harsher weapons. With each battle the death numbers grow higher, the killing tools more precise.
Just as we've lately been warned by Bernard Baruch's somber report to Congress, these pilgrims must choose between the quick and the dead, when fate gives them a dread power without means to stop its baleful use. Baruch argues for disposal of all atom bombs, while author Shepherd only calls the reader to wonder until the final page: has the sacred weapon saved those who wield it, or doomed them?
The Asheville Trumpet, April 8, 1947
Asheville Writer a Mystery
by Carl Nicholas
Here where Mountain Air is clearest and Heaven is the Nearest, our most prominent writer gives a taste of faraway places in Pilgrims of Chaltipica, a new book flying off the shelves this month of every bookstore in the nation. Mrs. Jack Cates, owner of Cates Bookshop, tells us Harrison Shepherd knows the ropes of his trade and this book will not disappoint. "We had a hubbub the week it came in," she said. "Nobody wants to read anything but. And I'm going to warn you, it's got more bare skin in it than a hot day at Beaver Lake."
The author bases his books on his own experience growing up in Mexico, but has resided in the Montford Hills neighborhood since 1941. Calls from the Trumpet have not been returned. Mrs. Cates speculates he may regard his privacy, as "the most eligible bachelor in town, if not North Carolina."
At the Asheville Skating Club next door to the bookstore, 21 comely lasses partook of our survey on the subject, with fifteen saying they are "Hep to Shepherd," but definitely. Six maintained otherwise, "Spooky" and "cold cut" among the reasons given. Nine young ladies say they hold it against him for not serving in the armed forces due to a 4-F status, but the others say it was not his fault due to a perforated eardrum, the condition shared with crooner Frank Sinatra. All wondered how a well-heeled single fellow spends his time, as the author has sold nearly one million copies. As the old Asheville saying goes, Our moonshine is the meanest, our Stories are the keenest, our Sportmen are the gamest and--so it seems--our Bachelors are the Tamest!
The Echo, April 26, 1947
Pilgrims of Chapultepec, BY HARRISON W. SHEPHERD
$2.69, Stratford and Sons, New York
Don't look now, but a new chump named Harrison W. Shepherd is more popular than Wendell Wilkie. His Pilgrims of Chaplutepec is storming the nation this month and sure to be translated abroad. Don't be surprised one day if you hear they're reading Harrison Shepherd in China.
This one will be snapped up by the movies, so read it now before you see the picture. The glittering backdrop of Mexico spreads across every page, and the young hero is a heart-throb, with good looks and a secret weapon to boot. Ladies, this one will break your heart. Will this author ever give us a happy ending?
Shepherd slathers emotion on the page, yet in real life he is a shy fellow who guards against any showing of his feelings. A friend who's known him since college days revealed this mental reserve goes back to Shepherd's short-pants days, when even at his mother's funeral he remained cool as ice.
However, our source revealed, old friend Harry has one curious quirk: "He cannot look at a beautiful woman without whistling."
April 30
It was the perforated eardrum that put the pepper on Mrs. Brown. And the whistling at girls. "This friend from college days. Is that a person?"
"I don't think so. Given that I didn't go to college. The people of my past are dead and gone, Mrs. Brown, that's a fact." Billy Boorzai's huge hands, both of us suffocating with laughter, trying to keep still. An officer's footsteps outside in the hall. Pounding hearts, scarlet shame.
"Who would reckon. The papers make things up out of the blue sky."
"Or, they find a little rain cloud and help it along."
She hesitated in the doorway, backlit from the upstairs hall in her square-shouldered, putty-colored suit. Platform shoes with ankle straps, oh my, and hair let out of its net today, pinned at the sides and curled at the shoulders, longer than I remembered. She looks like a tiny, earnest Jane Russell. Lately it's crossed my mind to wonder if there is some fellow. She takes a midday break for errands and a bite in one of the luncheonettes on Charlotte. She could be meeting a sailor, for all I know.
"When you see a thing like this in print, Mr. Shepherd, people think it's true. I almost think it myself, and that's me, knowing better. How can they do it?"
"Somehow they manage, every day of the year. Why be surprised, just because this time the victim is me?"
She stayed in the doorway. She doesn't like to come in the study, for fear of disturbing. "Mr. Shepherd, why are ye not? A shocking thing ought to shock."
A shocking thing. "The man I worked for in Mexico, I don't even know how to tell you what the newsmen did to him. One night some gunmen broke into the house and attacked him with machine guns, attacked all of us, the staff and his family. His grandson got hurt. We were terrified they'd come back. But the press said Lev had organized this attack himself to get sympathy for his cause. They reported that as fact."
"My stars."
"It didn't help us get police protection, I can tell you. And that's just one thing, a case that comes to mind. The other man I worked for reportedly ate human flesh."
"Well. That's Mexican newspapers. We want to think ours are better here. But I suppose they say the same about us."
"It was all over everywhere, abo
ut Trotsky staging the shooting attack. Europe, New York. It starts in one paper, and that's the source. The others pick it up and pass it along. Lev used to say there are two kinds of papers, the ones that lie every day, and the ones that save it for special campaigns, for greater impact."
"But a perforated eardrum. My stars. It's like you said. It starts with one and then it goes. We've not heard the end of that one."
"Like howler monkeys."
"The Trumpet's your own hometown. They could have asked."
"If they had called, what would you have said?"
She looked like a model standing for a portrait of misery: shoulders squared, high eyebrows knit, hands tightly folded. "I would do as you ask. Mr. Shepherd has no comment to make on that."
"Thank you."
"But."
"But?"
"When they have nothing, they fill in. If you don't stop them, they fill in more. It's like you've agreed to it. To their way of thinking, saying nothing is the same as agreeing."
"Are you saying it's my responsibility to stop another man from lying?"
"Well. No. It's his to stop himself."
"Dios habla por el que calle."
"Meaning what, Mr. Shepherd?"
"God speaks for the man who keeps quiet."
"If you say so."
' "No comment' means 'no comment.' It does not mean, 'I hate to admit this, but yes, he has a punctured eardrum.'"
"Well, people think that. And taking the Fifth means you're guilty."
"Whatever they may think, it does not. A blank space on a form, the missing page, a void, a hole in your knowledge of someone--it's still some real thing. It exists. You don't get to fill it in with whatever you want. I'm staking myself on a principle, Mrs. Brown. This country promises us the presumption of innocence."
"Presumptions we have got, Mr. Shepherd. Coming out our ears."
"What would you have me say? Mr. Shepherd does not have a punctured eardrum, he does not have a friend from college days, he does look at pretty girls without whistling--oh, that's a trap. Where does it stop?"
She had no answer.
"If the atl-atl was meant as a symbol for the atom bomb, can't we let the reader have a chance to decide?"
"Well, I know what you're saying. The reporters would have you put in the grinder and feed you to Baby with a spoon."